From: li@Data-IO.COM (Phyllis Rostykus)
Subject: Re: Deuces and One-Eyed Jacks [tangent]
Organization: Data I/O Corporation
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 00:22:16 GMT

	Saraquael said to Blackjack, "She sent me down now, after the
Easter performance, to ask if there was anything you'd want in recompence
for the borrowing of your equipement..."

	"Nekoko," he replied without a pause.

	"Who?" Sara blinked, surprised at his surity. 

	"I don't know if she was here when you were here," Blackjack
explained, "but she used to work here.  She got into trouble while helping
some other folks.  Now she's lost, and I can't find her."

	Blackjack's expression became earnest, almost pleading, "if you
know anything, or could find something out.  So that I can find her..."

	The strange eyes looked deep into brown ones.  A small smile,
almost playful, and Sara reached out slowly toward the silver jack in the
side of Blackjack's neck.  "So strange to meet a metalhead with desire..."
she said, musingly.

	Blackjack recoiled out of her reach.  His face hardened, caught
without the armor for a moment and laughed at, the mask fell into place.
He turned his back on her.

	"I can find her." Saraquael said, in the same playful tone.

	The musician didn't turn.  "How?" was all he said, in a tone as
flat as a mecha smashed building.

	"You must give me something that was hers.  Something that she
carried with her and thought of as being part of herself.  Also, I will
need a physical likeness of her, if you have one."  The tone was still the
half laughing one of a girl about to play a trick on a school friend.

	"What will you do with it?" he asked, slowly turning around.

	"I'll follow it as the younger, blind brother followed his elder
brother when they went to kill the Uncegila." she said.

	"What?" he said and frowned at her.

	She frowned back at him, and sighed.  Then, in a perfectly cool
professional monotone she asked.  "Where was the last place that you know
she was?"

	"On a boat, coming into Seattle."

	"What kind of boat?  Do you know the name of the boat?"

        "No."  The flat denial made Saraquael's eyes slit for a moment, but
she recovered neatly on her next question.

	"What was the boat out for?  Fish, freight or oil?"

	"Fish in the Sound???"  Blackjack started laughing, but then choked
it back at the red woman's glare.

	Very, very clearly she ennunciated, "There were once fish in the
Sound, not just 'fish'," she said with disdain, "They were our brothers,
the families of Salmon.  They came in so thickly in the fall that a man
could walk on their backs to the other side of the river."  She sighed,
"'Fish...'"  Then she put back her professional demeanor...

	"O.K.  What does she look like?"

	Blackjack grabbed a menu, turned it over and with a stubby pencil,
sketched a face. Short thick lines outlined a sharp but pretty face. A
curve here and there marked out her large eyes, the flow of her chin, the
length of her neck. Blackjack stopped and with a tableknife sharpened the
pencil again. Now fine crosshatching brought out the shading under her
chin, the tangled mess that was Nekoko's mane of hair. Then Blackjack
penciled the long expressive cat ears that were Nekoko's most unusual
feature. Finally, he carefully drew in Nekoko's cat's pupils, a thick
vertical stroke in the center of each eye. He finished by shading the eyes
to capture that spot of light, that twinkle, that Nekoko always seemed to
have, and pushed the sketch across the table to Saraquael.

	Saraquael pulled a pair of ruby colored sunglasses out of her
pouch, and put them on.  She looked at the picture closely, for a long
moment.  Then she took off the glasses and said, "Nice ears," as she put
the glasses away.

	"Do you have something that was hers?" Sara asked.

	Perhaps reassured by the recent, more professional demanor of the
woman, Blackjack pulled out a nylon pouch.  It was small, and contained
a spark plug gapper, a hair pick with long blonde hair tangled amoung the
tinges, a greasy rag, and a few bits of exchange receipts.  The ink was
running off the bits of plastic.

	Saraquael looked at the contents, and brought the bag up to her
nose. She took a long breath through the bag and sighed as she brought it
down.  "Perfect."  And without another word, she walked out of the Chatsubo.

---

	Blackjack stood up and watched as Saraquael left the bar. A last
glimpse of her small figure, and then she was gone.

	Above his head, hidden in a crack of the ancient building, a tiny
shape lurked. Colored the smoky gray of the ceiling, the small shape
resembled a dully colored tick, swollen twice as large as life. Six tiny
metal legs gripped the rough plaster, two antenna waved slowly, sampling
the sounds of the bar below. An algorithm sorted through the sounds,
filtering out the uninteresting conversations. Now something had made it
through the filter; the tick had something to report. It transmitted
a burst of information and waited. A second later, a reply came. Then
the tick shorted its battery, melting its finely constructed internals.
The tiny legs lost their grip; the little shape tumbled to the dirty floor
below.  A small wisp of smoke marked the death of the tick. Its passing
went unnoticed in the dark, noisy barroom.

----
Copyright 1992 by Phyllis L. Rostykus, Hubert Bartels, and Jim Gaynor.  
All rights reserved.

Hmmm... the folks named above are responsible for this little bit.
Hubert's in charge of Nekoko, Jim's got Blackjack and the two AI's,
Saraquael is ever her own, and the plots live a lives of their own.
----
Phyllis Rostykus
li@inigo.Data-IO.com