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Author's Note: I promised everyone that I don't like sequels, I don't read serial stories, and I stay away from continuing sagas. So, when Caleb Jones asked publicly for a continuation of the Sci-Fi Detective Body-Swap story "Kalliope", I simply set aside my prejudices and wrote it. This is it. If you haven't read "Kalliope", you can still understand about 95% of this story, but if you read it first, the entire 110% of this tale will be crystal clear. Dedicated to Caleb... Giselle By Jacquie Windsor [email protected] (c)March 30, 2002 "Oh, it's been a tough couple of weeks," admitted Giselle. "I mean, it's been one thing after another, really." The union representative, seated across the table, seemed to be deeply unimpressed with her story. It was one thing to know that she was really Agent Lowry. It was another thing to get used to her chirpy voice, a new wardrobe and, especially, trying to draw this man's attention away from her ample chest. "Are you getting all this down?" she asked sweetly. She looked at the notepad, where she saw he had written 'Lowry. Tits.' "Dhaliwal!" she yelled crossly. "You are supposed to be my fucking union rep! Now start writing, you son of a bitch!" Dhaliwal jumped to attention in his seat. "Shit, sorry. I think maybe you better go over that again. I was, um, just, um, thinking about something." Giselle shrugged in exasperation. "Okay, look at it this way, the agency has to be responsible for this. They sent me in there. They gave me this Kalliope thing. They never showed me how to use it right. And, after we left the scene, they never sent in a recovery team to get it out of there and find a way to get me out of this body." "So, you think they're responsible, like they gotta pay you damages and shit?" "Well, at least do better than what they've done so far. I mean, look at this. What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?" she snapped, throwing a laminated card onto the table. "What is it?" asked Dhaliwal, taking the card and peering closely at it. "That's supposed to be my ID." The union representative read slowly from the card: "Exotic Entertainer Licence. Giselle Smith. Hair: Blonde. Eyes: Green." "You can see my problem, right?" sighed Giselle. "Oh yes," replied Dhaliwal. "The pic is way blurry. I can hardly make out your eye colour on this. And it's cut off right above your good parts." "No. You dumb shit! I mean, how in the name of sweet Jesus am I supposed to access my emergency plan and all that? I mean, I've still got direct deposit, so my cheque's going into my account and everything, but every other cent I own is in my real name." "Well," stated Dhaliwal, comparing the image on the entertainer's licence with the girl in his office, "I guess we could take them to court. I'd suggest 'The Mighty Magistrate Show'. It's on Channel 518. It's just your luck, too, because we also represent the IBCJCRP." "The IBJPRCC?" "No, no, the IBCJCRP. International Brethren of Cinematic Judiciaries and County Rodeo Publicists. Needless to say, your union dues are pretty high because, lemme tell you, they need a lot of help." "God, I always wondered about that. I mean, my union dues are higher than the income tax, and that's pretty fucking high." "But, hey darling, you see that these kinds of connections really come in handy sometimes," winked Dhaliwal. Giselle leapt forward and grabbed the union representative's collar, hissing directly into his surprised face. "Don't you EVER call me darling, you fucking asshole. Now you get me onto that show, 'cause I've got about three years' wages sitting in investments I can't touch right now. And I need that cashed in NOW." She stormed out of the office and back down to Bonhoeffer Boulevard. There waited the car, a vintage 1970 Buick Gran Sport muscle car, Lowry's pride and joy. Now Giselle's pride and joy. Perfect yellow paint, with the original broad black stripe over the hood-mounted carburettor intake, and the slender black stripe over the side panels. The original engine had been replaced with a 455-Euthenisor Bubble Block, and the chrome was only MiraKrome plastic after years of oxidation had destroyed the metal, but the effect was still the same on the eyes and ears of any automobile aficionado. The driver's seat had to be pulled forward to its limit, since Giselle's transformed body was much smaller than Lowry's had been. The engine and the radio sprang into gear as soon as she fired the ignition. She roared down the street, anxious to get back to the office. The rendezvous with the union rep had cost her dearly for time, and there would doubtless be a number of urgent messages from The Superintendent, regarding some new job. "Read a book at bedtime to help you off to sleep. I've found I get the same effect from fixing on reality..." The melodic chorus of a long-forgotten band filled the coupe's interior. Giselle tapped a regular beat with her tiny fingers upon the steering wheel. She was pleased at how the Megalo-Glide system allowed her, even as a five- foot-nothing girl with stems for arms, to easily guide the heavy vehicle through the streets. KKOW continued to fill the car with broadcast lyrics: "...it's just like life; there's a good beginning but there is no middle, so you may as well skip to the end..." "Was that light red?" imagined Giselle, speeding through an intersection. A howling blast from a police cruiser's siren confirmed her suspicions. "Fuck!" "It's the same old story, and I've heard that story a thousand times before..." She slowed, switching off the radio, and pulled off the road near the Augsburg Fortress, an old armoury now converted into a popular tavern. She peered anxiously through the rear-view mirror at the cop, who was taking his sweet time. Finally, he emerged from the cruiser, approaching the vehicle with the swagger learned from watching officers in the popular 'Sniper' series of motion pictures. She smiled graciously, rolling down the window in response to his polite rap on the glass. "Good afternoon, Miss. Do you know what you did back there?" "I must have done something wrong, or you wouldn't be here, right?" The cop took off his dark glasses. "You are very observant. You ran a red light. That's a bad thing to do. You might have scratched the paint on this beautiful car." "Okay," smiled Giselle. "I won't do it again. So, can I go now?" "Not quite. I ran your licence plate through the bureau, and it seems this car is registered to a secret agent named Lowry." "Oh?" Giselle queried. She tried to think up a convincing reason for her present condition. None arrived in time to thwart the officer's next question. "Do you have your driver's licence and registration, Miss? Any ID at all?" She handed him her wallet, just after realising that the only identification she had was the exotic entertainer licence. He withdrew the card and looked at Giselle, then at the card. "Okay, I see now. You're a stripper and a car thief. Is that it?" "No. No. This is my boyfriend's car. He's out in, um, New Mexico, I think." The officer nodded slowly. "And what's he doing there, exactly?" "He's solving a crime. A big crime. Something about inter- galactic space criminals, I think." "Really? He must find that terribly difficult in his present condition." Giselle thought to herself, "I should say so. I don't know if I could stop a two-bit car thief looking like this." "I don't think so, either," replied the officer. "Shit, did I say that out loud?" asked the girl. "I didn't mean to." The cop showed a toothy grin. Whoever this wench was, she was about as clever as a sack of rocks. "Your boyfriend, as you call him, is a guy named Lowry. He was found dead, at the bottom of an elevator shaft, about a week ago. It was all over the news. This car should be impounded, and I should arrest you until I get everything straightened out." "Oh no," Giselle pouted. "I have a better idea, though," he said. He walked around the back of the car, still holding her only ID, opened the passenger door and sat down in the seat. "Except for stealing cars, you picked a pretty good profession. Where do you dance, anyhow?" Giselle sat, glumly realising that this cop had no intention of letting her off scot-free. That realisation became increasingly apparent as he stretched his legs, unzipping his pants and pulling his cock out, concealing it from the outside view by placing his clipboard on his lap. "You want me to suck you off to let me go?" asked Giselle. "Oh no, I mean, anyone passing by might figure that out," grinned the officer. "A handjob will do nicely. A working girl like you has gotta know how to do that. And I'll just write you up on this form, but you get to keep it after I cum." "You are so corrupt!" said Giselle. "Hey. I could do it the right way, put the Topeka Boot on your car and make you walk home. And give you nice court summons besides. This is way better, I think. Go ahead, sweetie. It won't bite." "Oh well," sighed Giselle, reaching under the clipboard and feeling the policeman's cock, which was already completely erect. As she stroked it, she giggled, seeing his writing become increasingly erratic. "Oh, God... you... are... so... good... at... this..." he huffed. Giselle noticed him becoming increasingly flushed and soon responding by thrusting his hips, until she scarcely had to stroke him any longer. He was going to cum any second now. Suddenly, she felt him grab her head. "Quick! Down! Can't mess my uniform!" he cried. She felt her hair being grabbed and her face sank into his lap, just as a fountain of sperm erupted from his cock. She had no time to protest, and the thick jets caught her squarely in the face. It was over in about ten seconds. She felt the ooze crawling down her cheeks and forehead, as the officer pulled her head back up. "Don't drip any on my trousers!" he ordered. "Good girl. Damn fine. Whew. That was great." "Thanks, I guess," Giselle replied. She caught a glimpse of herself in the rear-view mirror. "Good grief. I'm covered with spunk." "Listen, this is yours," he said, ripping the summons off the clipboard. It was unreadable. "And here's my card, too. I wanna come down and see you wherever you dance. You know, and I'll get the car re-registered. But only if I see you soon. Where do you perform?" "I, um, I don't really know," she answered, looking around for a Kleenex. "Do you have a tissue?" "Well, I'd rather see you lick it off, but you can keep my hankie, too. It's a police issue." He handed her a blue handkerchief, emblazoned with the department's logo. "'Bombers'? 'Soeurs Des Poissons'? 'Weibchenkabarett'? 'Maniacos de Los Pechos'? Which one do you dance at most often?" "The vibe one," guessed the blonde girl, soaking the hankie with the cum from her face. "Oh good, that's one of the favourites down at the station. Steve Beuerlein III runs that place. He's got quite a good eye for talent, and you've got a good couple of talents, Miss Smith." The officer left his card, as promised, and exited the Buick. Giselle started the car, and immediately a heavy dirge began to sing from the radio. "There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Spinoza's veins..." She noticed the light at the intersection, a good half block ahead, turn amber. Rather than use the 455-Euthenisor Bubble Block motor to its full advantage, she allowed the Buick to slow down, braking without apology at the broad white line running parallel to the crosswalk. "...and cynics plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains..." The refrain grew beneath a luxury of synthesised violins. Giselle thought the music was getting pretty strange on KKOW these days. The stuff seemed to be produced just to baffle the listener. She switched it off before proceeding carefully to the grey cinder-block office building where she worked. The labyrinth leading through the interior of the building kept curiosity-seekers at bay, and required a sixth sense to navigate successfully. Even the longest-serving agents occasionally found themselves in a hardware shop or the florist, instead of their own office. The Comptroller- Provocateur, a gloomy middle-aged woman, sometimes rearranged the offices, too. Often the e-mailed alert came a week after the effective date, and many agents were left to carry heavy boxes of files through the serpentine corridors on their own. With the locks changed overnight, and the contents of the many cabinets dumped outside the reinforced doors, few employees had the chance to organise themselves in these cases. The Superintendent was immune to these sudden and chaotic attacks. Giselle remembered, as Lowry, that when The Superintendent was silhouetted against one of the rare windows in the place, a resemblance to the Comptroller- Provocateur was ably defined. "It's the chin and the nose," she'd said to Swisher, the agent who'd been there during the fateful accident with the Kalliope. "The ass, quite," Swisher had acknowledged. Giselle pondered this as the large yellow door, bearing a giant "S", came into view. She knocked politely. When no answer came immediately, she pinned one ear up to the door to listen. Loud voices. Muffled. Muffled yet loud. She found a nearby crate, pulled it over to the door, climbed onto it and peered through the spy-hole drilled through the obstruction. The custodians had thoughtlessly installed the small viewer backwards, allowing anyone outside to look in, and anyone inside to see a meaningless dot when looking out. She was surprised to see two men, no further than two arms' lengths apart, aiming sizeable revolvers at one another. Their guns, their garb, their height, their general appearance, were each identical. Their eyes flashed at one another; alternately their gazes shot back at The Superintendent, who relaxed, hands folded, in the big chair on the far side of the desk. Her boss appeared to be calm, yet the situation alarmed Giselle. Immediately she scrambled off the makeshift platform and earnestly picked up a handset from a wall panel to the door's right. The keypad displayed a series of ASCII characters over an array eight across and thirty-two down. Giselle boldly entered her twenty-three character PIN number. "I am the true Agent Ibid," cried a strong voice, heard through the sturdy receiver. "I am," roared another voice, so similar in pitch and tone that Giselle thought it was one man, arguing with himself. "Impostor," screamed the voice, and Giselle was unsure which one of the two identical men was speaking. "You are dead!" "You are!" "You are!" The senseless debate continued. "I oughtta do something," Giselle thought. Instinctively, she reached for her shoulder holster, but her hand only discovered a large, soft and sensitive mound of breast flesh. "Shooty-shoot, now what do I do?" The argument intensified. "Superintendent. I am the real Agent Ibid. I beg you to believe me. I am a long-serving Demopublican with a career proficiency in Resourcification." "Oh yeah? Now you know who's the False Ibid," yelled the other gunman. "I am a Republocratic convert just these past couple months, with a proficiency in both Fabrication and Pre-Fabrication. Just gimme the word, boss. I'll ice the motherfucker." "Not so fast. I am blind ambition incarnate," raised the opposite voice. "I am personally responsible for the starving deaths of 9,000 innocents in Chad, by eating True Meat every day of the week, and twice on Fridays." "Usurper! Fraud! I have wiped out 81,000 Neo-Clones by short-selling Brisket Of Magnesium futures on the CBOT." Giselle's tender hearing took a terrible shock as two loud simultaneous blasts erupted into the earpiece. Bang--as one. She set the receiver back into its cradle and gently tried the door. It opened without much effort, and Giselle saw the bloodied corpses of both Ibids on the floor. "Lowry," welcomed The Superintendent. "Well, used-to-be- Lowry. Smith. Right." Giselle watched her bald and portly boss blow the smoke from a pair of sidearms, before returning them to his holsters. "Er, you shot them both?" "If you get cloned or whatever, you better expect the same," grunted The Superintendent. "Siddown. We gotta talk." Giselle lifted each leg over one of the dead Ibids and sat in a straight-backed wooden chair. The Superintendent grinned and daubed his forehead with a handkerchief. "'No-Hands' O'Neill's done a bang-up job with your wardrobe, Smith. You look damn fine." He squinted and stared at her breasts, which stretched the shiny fabric of her dark green blouse. "But dammit, I can always tell it's you in there, Lowry. Looks like your eatin' habits are as sloppy as they ever were." He squinted further and pointed one fat finger at her top. "Wait a second. What is that? That looks like a, uh, cum stain, Lowry. I guess your eatin' habits HAVE changed." Giselle felt her face flush as she pulled her lapel out and noticed a dry blot on the fabric. "Oh God, it's not what it looks like. I mean, I guess it is, but, um..." The Superintendent muffled a belly laugh. "Don't even try to explain that. That ain't what I'm wanting to talk to ya about. So shut up and listen." The young blonde girl listened as well as she could, her ears doubly ringing from the gunshots and out of embarrassment. "We got word that someone or some thing has been downloading our secret files and selling them through a front organisation called Mellotron International. It's apparently a nefarious cartel of disgruntled musicians who fund their activities with royalties collected from a monopoly they have on 'style hongrois' and anything played on the 'cimbalom'." "What's that? A 'cimbalom'?" "It's a hammered zither of some kind," explained The Superintendent. He shook his head slowly as he watched Giselle try to nonchalantly scrape the stain off her blouse with a single purple-lacquered fingernail. "This cartel has even managed to obtain copyrights to all use of the quarter tones between C and C-sharp and another one somewhere around the E. It's put a big dint in the Thirteenth Sound Revolution. Now it's more like the Thirteenth Sound Futile Fist-Shaking." "Do I really need to know all this?" asked Giselle, her headache increasing with the ringing in her ears, the flush of embarrassment, and the baggage of background information that hung like an albatross around the neck of every agency assignment. "Well, if you forget, for whatever reason, you've got a partner for this one, babe, um, I mean, Smith." "Oh right. My partners were so helpful on the last case." "Well, this guy's fabulous. In fact, here he is. Agent Smith, meet Agent Humperstump." Giselle heard the door open, and saw someone's legs step over one of the bodies on the floor. "Humperstump," she thought. "Sounds like a real winner. Geez, I can't wait till Dhaliwal gets my case heard. Maybe I can strike it rich and get out of this awful business." "Strike it rich? Awful business?" "Oh, did I say that out loud?" "Yes, you did," growled The Superintendent. "That goes on your permanent record, Smith." Giselle frowned, stood up, and turned to greet the agent, her new partner. "Whoa!" She nearly tumbled over one of the corpses on the floor. Agent Humperstump was everything the phrase 'tall, dark, and handsome' covered. A virtual Adonis. "Humperstump, Ma'am. Enchanted to meet you. If you wish, you may call me Don. That's not my real first name of course. It's short for Adonis." "It would have to be," Giselle peeped. "So, boss," Agent Humperstump withdrawing his hand firmly from Giselle's grip, "you've obviously told Agent Smith what we're up against. Say, has Queue been into the cloning vaccine again? I could swear that's Ibid. And that's Ibid too." "It might be Queue, you know," mused The Superintendent, taking his own seat, again, behind the broad desk. "That technology of his really goes over the deep end sometimes." Giselle nodded in agreement, pleasantly surprised that her boss had set her up to work with such a perfectly adorable man. "Speaking of the old boy, has Queue developed anything new for us for this case?" "Probably. Always scribblin' away at something down there in his lab. You two able to book a meeting for tomorrow afternoon?" "Sure," the two agents agreed in unison. "Great. Now get outta here so I can get the Mortalibots to clean up this mess in my office." Once out in the hallway, Don turned to Giselle. "We can dispense with the agent title for a moment, I hope," began Agent Humperstump. Giselle nodded as they strolled this way and that down the wandering hallway towards the exit. "I must say," he continued, "that I am rather inspired that The Superintendent would choose to pair me with such a succulent partner. Shows remarkable taste on his part." "Oh yup," offered Giselle. "I was briefed about your unfortunate experience, Giselle (pronouncing it as a fluid 'zhee-zayl', rather than with the abrupt and crude-sounding 'jizz-ell' that The Superintendent used), although I am not thrilled at the prospect of your suddenly being swapped back into a male body." "Uh yup." The attractive girl felt the electricity of pure physical attraction numbing her common sense, and defeating her recent desire to hasten a reversal of the effects of the Kalliope machine. "Perhaps there is a dark subterfuge in The Superintendent's choice of pairing us, so to speak," Don continued. "If it is, indeed, subterfuge, then I'll gladly take to being used for such a purpose. Professionally speaking, of course." "Yup, uh, yah Don." "I wouldn't normally find myself in the habit of requesting the extra-curricular time of my case partner, Giselle, but would you care to accompany me for a Shock-Latte at the El Sonido?" "Sure." She hadn't realised that they had arrived at the nearly vacant expanse of the mall. They were standing right in front of the coffee shop. After ordering a Shock-Latte for her and a Deliri-Tea Express for himself, Don guided them to a table and went on. "If I could impinge even further upon your temporal freedom, babe, I would love to take you out to a film this evening. Are you, in fact, busy?" "Naw. No way. I'm free." "Have you a choice? I mean, about the movie you'd like to see?" "Well, I haven't seen Moby Dick III yet." Don chuckled in condescension. "I dislike sequels, Giselle. And that particular series is a most pernicious debasement of literarianism." "Liter-what-ism?" "A word I just made up. Never mind. But you can't be serious about that film, can you?" "Why? What's wrong with it?" "Well, Oneiric Enterprises retroactively sued the Melville Estate and won. It's this whole televised judicial system at fault. I mean, no self-respecting magistrate could believe that the first line of the original book was stolen." "But they said it really started with 'Call me, Ishmael', not without the comma, like 'Call me Ishmael'." Don laughed out loud, beaming at the erotic innocence and the blind, passionate faith of his partner. "And that's supposed to have been ripped off by Herman Melville, after travelling through time and watching Spielberg's space puppet say 'ET, call home'. Where's even the remotest of connections?" "I dunno. It seemed to make sense," shrugged Giselle. "Mmm, this Shock-Latte is really tasty. Want some?" Don allowed her to spoon-feed him a glob of the rich syrupy drink. "Well, if the second part of the series was any indication, and it was the death-knell of the corpse of Melville's classic, then number three is going to be the rancid reanimated zombie of 'Moby Dick'." "Oh, you're just saying that," Giselle grinned, "because the show's subtitled 'Ahab And The Cosmic Zombie Astro- Whales'. I ain't dumb you know." "Of course not. I knew you'd get it," winked Don. "If I can talk you out of that one, maybe we could go see something else. Something a little more sophisticated?" "Sure. Why not?" "I'll tell you what. I'll call you at eight and we'll go see 'Idjits'. It's got Robert Downey IV in it and I've read that he's superb." "Not a problem, Don. Catch you at eight." "Say, you wouldn't mind giving me a lift over to my place, would you? I am quite a fanatic about old muscle cars, and nothing beats your Buick Gran Sport." As they walked to the car, Giselle suddenly asked, "Hey Don, how'd you know I had a Buick Gran Sport?" "I know many, many things," beamed her partner. "I ain't dumb either, you know." After dropping Don off, Giselle returned to her apartment, Lowry's bachelor pad, and saw that the phone had three messages on it. One from Dhaliwal, one from O'Neill (her other partner when the Kalliope had backfired, leaving Lowry in Giselle's sexpot body), and one from Don. "Miss Smith," the voice of her lawyer began, hesitantly, "your case will be heard on Channel 518 next Tuesday. Call me before the weekend, 'cause we'll need to go over a few things, for sure." O'Neill's message asked whether Giselle had tried the Nano- Tastic Cosmetech Kit he'd left for her the other day. Of all the things that miniaturisation and technology could accomplish, it struck her as odd that one of the first commercial uses was for cosmetics. The Kit was oddly similar to her box of interchangeable sockets for a multi- purpose wrench. Change to one tool to colour your nails. Another socket could paint your lips. Another one for powder blue eye shadow with faint silvery sparkles. The Kit could customise your skin tone and apply all your make-up in less than fifteen minutes. And Don's message, sweetly, asked whether she'd got home all right. Giselle called him back and confirmed that she had. She phoned O'Neill next. He was her sartorial adviser; his cybernetic single hand made the nickname 'No-Hands' obsolete. "Hey, O'Neill, this is Giselle. Do you know Agent Humperstump?" "Uh, sure, sure I do. He's quite a hottie I hear. Why?" "Well, he seems like a real gentleman. I'm going out with him tonight." O'Neill started giggling on the other end of the line. "Well, honey, don't forget your underwear over at his place or nothing." Giselle blushed. "What would make you think that? I mean, I'm still Lowry, you know. Just, for some reason, there's something about this guy." "Something. About. This. Guy," O'Neill stated deliberately. "And what would that be? Is it bigger than a breadbox?" "No-Hands, you're a freak. If you wasn't so good at helping me pick out clothes, you'd be dead meat." Giselle woke up alone, in her own apartment, the next morning. Just to prove O'Neill wrong, she'd simply made out with Don in the back seat of her Buick after the movie. There was no way she was going to leave her underwear at a guy's place after she'd only gone out with him on a single date. That afternoon, she met her new partner just outside the doorway to The Superintendent's office, which he gladly held open for her. "No dead bodies here today?" Giselle teased her boss. "No, just a couple of live ones, I suppose," answered The Superintendent. He carefully appraised Giselle, barely acknowledging that Agent Humperstump was also in the room. He noticed that her skirt was just short enough to show the tops of her stockings, where the garter belt snapped them in place. He licked his lips as he spoke, appreciating the fine roundness of her breasts, straining against her tennis-style top. "Our primary contact is a kind of a scientist sort of guy, sort of like our Queue," mumbled The Superintendent. "You pronounced it 'Cue'," Don interrupted. "I do believe it's pronounced 'Kway-wuh', emphasis on the 'Kway'. He's terribly sensitive about that, you know." "Big deal." The Superintendent's view darted from Agent Humperstump back to the blonde fox in the other chair. "This guy, his name's Galois. Evariste Galois or something. Now, we've determined he's the weak link in the organisation. A real loose cannon. A regular sap. A hot set of knockers." The Superintendent stopped and looked deliberately at the ceiling. "Sorry, Lowry, I didn't mean that. Lost my head. That kind o' shit." "Whatever," Giselle shrugged. "Don't shrug. Just sit there and sit still, all right?" The Superintendent continued. "There's a fancy-schmancy club that this guy frequents, the 'Weibchenkabarett' or something like that. Ever heard of it?" "Oh yeah," squealed Giselle. "Some cop told me about it! It's like a strip club or something, I guess." "Well, this caper is simple as shit," her boss proclaimed. "This Galois character never goes anywhere without his secret documents. So the deal's this. You go there, Giselle, and me and Humperstump will be back-up. We switch briefcases with the putz and that's that." "What, exactly, is my job then?" she asked. "You keep him, er, occupied." "Oo-oo-oh, I think I see what you're gettin' at," cried the blonde nymph. "Knock him out and steal his briefcase." "Giselle," sighed Don, "I don't think he means that, I mean not literally. I think he means you should simply be your attractive, charming self. Be yourself." Giselle caught the glimpse of a wink from both men in the room. "What's this case called?" she asked, trying to avoid embarrassment. "I call it 'The Naughty Nubile'," beamed The Superintendent. "Besides, I really gotta see that body in action." He slapped his hand against his bald head. "Shit, I'm gettin' that crazy-ass thinking out loud disease that you got. Now let's get off to what's-his-fuck's lab to see what great shit we can get to use for this caper." They got up to make their way to Queue's lab. "Did you enjoy the film last night?" Don asked Giselle. "Oh, it was perfect," she answered. "But what was that all about with the antlers? I didn't get that." "Well, you see, that was the whole ironic point of the story, Giselle. It was a physical manifestation of the neurosis plaguing the main character throughout the plot." "Oh. I just thought they made him look like an idiot," said the body-swapped agent. "Kind of like if I had some kind of big abnormal growth..." She stopped herself short and looked down at her large breasts. They were bobbing lazily as she wandered towards the lab. "You don't think..." The Superintendent guffawed and interrupted: "Oh no, your tits look completely natural. I wouldn't say they make you look like a bimbo at all." "Not at all," added Don, his placid demeanour in sharp contrast to their boss's sarcasm. The secret agent trio found Queue's lab at last, down another musty, sloping corridor next to a door with a large glowing "Fire Escape" sign on it. Giselle hoped for a last-ditch attempt to ask Queue for a serum, a machine, or an invention, to reverse the unusual effects of the Kalliope. Well, not exactly a reversal, because her real male form was long since cremated after it had plunged down an elevator shaft. Her mind swirled with those thoughts; she even dreamed about it at night; but her thoughts were less vividly expressed in verbal form. It was as though she couldn't translate her thoughts into words. That was just as perplexing as watching Robert Downey IV trying to fit through a narrow doorway with a pair of antlers sprouting out of the sides of his skull. As she wondered about this, Queue had begun a lengthy speech about something like the eleventh dimension. She nodded and smiled. The grey, frazzled mop that crowned his head flew about as he babbled half-coherently about some new delight based upon the theories of Christian Goldbach. "Three hundred years have passed without a proof. Fermat was proved long ago, but not such a drastically simple, simple, simple conjecture as that of Christian Goldbach. And yet I, the one and only Queue, am about to become published in the most prestigious magazine of this, or any other, time. Yes. Of course. 'The Bulletin Of The Atomic Technocrats'." Giselle looked across at The Superintendent, who drummed his fingers impatiently on a table in the cramped laboratory. She figured he allowed the half-mad, half- inventor, half-lucid, half-theoretician to ramble on as a kind of a therapy. It was probably cheaper than buying neurological anti-toxins and dumping them into his coffee. "Nogga-nogga, whoo-whoo," shrieked Queue. "I'll win the Nobel Prize!" "What's it do, anyhow, this Goldbach Conjecture?" asked Agent Humperstump. "Does it help advance some sort of social revolution? Broaden the application of nano- technology? Feed the hungry?" "Pwah," scoffed the scientist. "It's a definition of an algorithm used in cryptography. All it is is a proof that all even numbers higher than the two are the sum of two prime numbers. It's all the rage in the business of digital security. Actually, once I win, I'll probably request a transfer to our Porn Site Anti-Hacking Division." "I'll sign the transfer papers," nodded The Superintendent. "Quicker than you'd realise. Now you've been briefed, to some extent, on the Naughty Nubile case, right?" "You better believe it," answered the technician. "And I've got almost everything here you'll need. These are ROK- 444's." He slipped a palm size case into the waiting hands of each of the agents. "What are they? Weapons?" asked Giselle, staring at the hard plastic device. "Nope. Open them up, using that little latch. Press right on the side, right there." Each of the three visitors popped open the case. Inside, there was a slender wire, attached to something that looked like an earpiece. "Put that thing in your ear," the scientist instructed the trio. "See?" Giselle put the earpiece in. "Now, look at the case, the part that's flipped open. These are pre-programmed with your neural ID codes." Giselle looked at the screen. She beheld a grainy, dim image. "I don't get it. What's this?" She looked up, and around the room. Oddly, with the earpiece in, she couldn't see anything at all. She looked back down at the opened case, and saw the blurred picture once again. "Okay. Now concentrate. Use your thoughts to understand what you see. What you experience." Giselle concentrated, but the image remained a colourless fluid blob. She straightened in her chair and finally pulled out the earpiece in frustration. "This is truly remarkable, Queue," Don enthused. "Fuckin' neat," added The Superintendent. "What? What is it? Mine don't work, I think," Giselle said. "Perhaps it doesn't," muttered the scientist. "But, with your operational role in the Naughty Nubile, you likely won't require one anyhow." "What does it do?" Don answered her question as Queue sighed uncomfortably. "It's some kind of perceptual enhancer, silent communicator, um, how would you define it, Queue?" "A multi-perceptive inter-personal trans-sensory unit, naturally. But your friend is correct, irregardless," explained the technician. "These machines will let the command operatives share thoughts and experiences without reference to the external world. No words. No secret signs. Just thoughts and concentration." "Real clear, too," nodded The Superintendent, after removing his earpiece and coiling the wire into the small plastic container. "Gotta admit this is impressive, Queue." "It's Kway-Wuh," the scientist sighed. "Not 'Q'. What's the difference? Okay, that's the signalling device, the observational equipment, all that stuff. And it's great." "Are these prototypes? Or production models?" asked Don. "Oh. Production models, of course. Now, though, the other equipment is, well, not so post-prototyped yet." Queue reached into a box behind him. "What's that?" exclaimed his three visitors, almost at the same time. "I call it a neglig?e," shrugged Queue. The piece of lingerie was a swirling green and white diaphanous glow. "Shit. It don't even look real," muttered The Superintendent. "Well, it isn't for you. It's for Lowry, or Smith, I mean," said the scientist. "You think I'm wearin' that?" Giselle squeaked. "What's it even made out of?" "Really, it's perfectly harmless. It's not a tangible fabric type; it's something called probability textiles. Wearing this will protect you better than hiding behind two inches of silksteel." "Fuck, it looks like it's made of radio-active shit or something," said The Superintendent. "The thing's glowin' like a neon sign." "It emits at a rate of less than 14 giga-becquerels per tonne, chief," argued the technician, holding the garment a little further away from his body. "Hold it. I don't wanna wear something radio-active," cried Giselle. "If you like it so much, you wear it." "It's not my size," Queue replied. "But it'll fit you like a glove. Now go ahead and take off your top and we'll try it out." Giselle looked at Don, helplessly. "Go ahead," he nodded. "You can't fight City Hall." The body-swapped agent stood up and removed her top, then reached back to unhook her bra. "Take a picture, yada, yada," she glowered at Queue and The Superintendent, who ogled her unabashedly. "Now gimme that thing." Giselle reached for the probability neglig?e. The old scientist, enfeebled by the sight of the naked, bouncing breasts only a meter from his face, tried to keep his composure, but dropped the iridescent garment just as the agent tried to seize it. A puff of smoke plumed from a container of caustics on the floor, followed by a sudden orange jet of flame that hit the ceiling. "Yikes! Shit! It's on fire!" he screamed, nearly bowling over the topless female agent as he leaped to the other side of the table. A cascade of glassware followed him, snagged in his unbuttoned coat as he jumped away from the flames. "Quickly, everyone follow me," urged The Superintendent, who was the first to reach the door. Giselle felt Don seize her by the hand and pull her out of the room with him, just as a small explosion blew the door shut behind them. "Over there. The fire escape," shouted Queue. The quartet moved rapidly through the clearly marked exit they'd passed on their way to the lab. Giselle was comforted that Don had gallantly wrapped his own suit jacket over her as they left the area of the conflagration. She was pleased that he had, since a short stairway from the fire escape door led right into the shopping mall. Small crowds watched the coughing and frightened agents as they assumed as nonchalant a posture as they could. "I remembered my ROK-444. Did you, Agent Humperstump?" "Got it right here, boss," Don answered. "What about you, hon, I mean, Agent Smith?" "I lost my top. I lost my secret communicator. Shit. This case is really gettin' off to a great old start, ain't it?" "Well, I'll make it up to you, sweetheart," whispered Don to the frightened blonde girl. "I've got two tickets to 'The 250 Tenors'. They're playing at the Clarineticon. Hmm?" "Should I pick you up at eight?" she smiled. "I'll vacuum the back seat of my Buick." Don hugged her closely. "You know, I love to break up such private tender moments between my employees," interrupted The Superintendent. "I've sent off Queue to go get the fire brigade. In the meantime, we swing into action tomorrow, at the Weibchenkabarett. Be there with bells on. Got it?" With that, The Superintendent lit a cigar and wandered off to find his office. The concert was everything the waybills promised. The Clarineticon's walls shook with the decibels of two hundred fifty throats, and its stage creaked under the dead weight of almost thirty-five tonnes of tenor-flesh. Don and Giselle excused themselves, during the finale, to go make out in the back seat of her Buick. Even outside in the parking lot, they could still hear each note of the Tenors' rendition of the popular song "We'll Do Anything For Perfect Looking Food Products". The song had, most recently, been used in the ubiquitous commercials for something called 'Dianetical Fruit-Flavoured Coatings', a pungent wrapping that gave produce a longer shelf life than a Hostess Twinkie. While driving Don back to his own area of town, Giselle teased him that, between lost buttons and burned tops, she was going to have to hit up their boss for a clothing allowance soon. "Oh?" mused the handsome male agent, aloud. "Do you really plan to stay as a girl? Even after the court case and all that?" Giselle braked heavily at a red light. "How did you know about that? I mean, how much do you know about that?" "Don't fret, Giselle. I told you that I am not as dumb as I seem. I have access to a lot of information, but that doesn't really matter. The main thing is, baby, that you know I'm there for you. If you want me to be, of course." His counterpart's eyes misted over, softly. "That is so sweet." She let him massage her thigh the rest of the way. He gave her plenty to think about, after she dropped him off, oblivious that her blouse was still completely unbuttoned. Don's parting kiss, long and deep, accompanied by his roving hand squeezing her left breast through the bra, made her wonder if the whole situation could be worked out differently. Once she got home, however, the reality got to her. Dhaliwal, her lawyer, had already booked the programme. Besides, there could be a lot of money to make in a settlement. And her landlord was in the hallway, outside her apartment, staring straight at her partially covered boobs as she fumbled for her keys. That result of the Kalliope body-swapping machine was, at the same time, flattering and insulting. She knew she'd never get any good, tough, blood-curdling assignments as long as she looked like she just stepped out of a beer ad. After a restless sleep and a day of doing laundry, Giselle was ready for the assignment. O'Neill, whose keen fashion sense extended to an expertise on caring for fabrics, had gladly pitched in with the laundry. Theirs was a growing common bond, in the form of women's clothing, since he was an overt transvestite, and she was the unwitting victim of a body swap gone bad. She knew the thrice-weekly shopping excursions were going to put her in the poorhouse, but the outfits seemed to be worth it. She removed Lowry's clothes from racks and drawers, as one would pack away the personal effects of a loved one. They were carefully folded and stashed into boxes marked 'suits', 'ties', 'shoes', 'underwear' and 'socks'. O'Neill helped, sometimes, with this duty too, urging Giselle to simply toss out anything with a mustard or coffee stain on it. Her closets flourished with bright, smooth, shiny stuff, as a gardener's pride sprouts daffodils, pansies and snapdragons from black, brown and grey soil. Lowry's hand- picked drapes seemed dreadfully obsolete all of a sudden, black backgrounds emblazoned with skulls, rifles and the epithet 'Mess With The Best, Die Like The Rest' repeated over every window. Giselle was running late. The afternoon spent with No-Hands gobbled up the hours like an addict on RippleWrench. So she had to use every spare gram of the Buick's 455-Euthenisor Bubble Block engine to speed her to the Weibchenkabarett. They'd be waiting for her by now. "Park in the back," she'd been instructed by The Superintendent. "It's the third brick building on the right after you turn north off Fantasy Avenue. The back of the building says 'Fresh Meat', so you can't miss it." It was that easy to find. Even as she tried the back door to the club, she heard music inside. It was only a little after banking hours, with the sun still reflecting off the windows of the downtown towers, and the place was already beginning to fill with customers. The sounds of AC/DC, playing the old tune 'Thunderstruck', reminded Giselle that some things never change. Despite decades of vibrant growth in techno-creativity, guys still liked to go see exotic dancers remove their clothes to the strains of the old metal from the 1980's. She found the general manager's office without any trouble. "About time," grumbled The Superintendent, relaxing back on an easy chair with a lit cigar in his pudgy hand. He pointed to a prematurely balding man, in a gaudy checked blazer, standing nearby. "That's Steve Beuerlein. The third, I think, right?" The general manager nodded. "This is Agent Lowry, well, Agent Smith, we'll have to say. Giselle. Whatever the fuck." The Superintendent beckoned the group closer to a set of blueprints laid out on the desk. "This is the floor plan of the club. We know that Galois's gonna get here maybe about sixish. Sevenish. Thereabouts. You payin' attention, Giselle?" "Oh yes," she smiled. "Good. Okay, now me and Humperstump are gonna be sittin' here, and over here. Got it?" Giselle followed The Superintendent's thumb over the diagram. "Yep, I think so." "The main stage is right in the middle, more or less. The bar's over there. There's a ring of chairs in around this area." The blonde girl watched her boss trace a semi-circle near the stage. It was apparent that her two contacts would be sitting some distance from the stage, at opposite sides of the room. "How do you keep in touch?" Beuerlein asked. "We have our ways," grouched The Superintendent, patting the ROK-444 device concealed in his jacket pocket. "When you see Galois, honey, you sidle his ass over to somewhere next to me or Humperstump, whosever closest. Then, at the right time, you make the switch, his bag for the one we got under our table. You see?" "I think so. So how do I get his attention again?" "You're gonna work the floor," Beuerlein interrupted flatly. "I see. So... what you mean is I'm dancing on guys' laps until I find Galois and make the switch." "Bing. Go." The Superintendent flashed a lascivious grin. "Now I'm gonna have to set you up with a different set of threads," said Beuerlein. "That's a pretty hot outfit you got on right now, but probably not quite suited for this gig. Here, try this. There's snaps on the skirt, and I think you look hot in a tube top." "You want me to change right here?" "Listen, sweetheart," intoned the club manager. "I've seen so much pussy I could choke on it. Ain't nothing you got that could surprise me. Well, almost nothing. You used to be a guy, right?" "How much did you tell him?" Giselle protested to The Superintendent, while removing her clothes and reaching for the tube-top and micro-skirt. "Oh, not much. Just everything," chuckled her boss. "Hey, nice set. Those are real and everything?" asked Beuerlein. "No Plasti-Pulp in there?" Giselle was beyond getting embarrassed any longer. "Yep, they're real. See?" She arched her back and quickly moved her shoulders, allowing her firm breasts to wobble naturally. "Jesus, you're gonna make like a mint out there, honey. Most of the girls with ones that big got the old Plasti- Pulp. You know, it's the stuff the FDA banned from orange juice about ten years ago. Shit, the manufacturers had to figure out something to do with the stuff." "I did not know that," remarked Agent Humperstump. "The things you learn in the exotic entertainment business are truly astonishing." "You know, we had six chicks in here who put all their money into the company that makes it and they retired with a fortune at just twenty-eight. Bought out their contracts after exercising warrants. Very nice profit." Giselle finished putting on the two-piece outfit. Now she had on exactly four items of clothing, if she included each of her 5" silvery stilettos. "No piercings. No tattoos. I like that," nodded the general manager. "You ought to bring them in begging, sweetheart. Now the minimum is fifty maples a dance. Cash only. There's a little bitty pocket in that skirt you can fold up the bills in." "I'm not used to cash money," Giselle admitted. "What's a 'maple'?" "International currency. You probably don't read much, I take it. After the euro, the yen and the US dollar failed during the Panic, the Canadian government issued a replacement for their own dollar, the maple, and there you go. New global currency. You figure it out. Never made five grams of sense to me." The Superintendent ignored the club manager, staring at Giselle as though he'd never seen a busty stripper in stilettos before. "At this rate, I might buy Queue a sprinkler system for his new office." Humperstump, Beuerlein and Giselle looked across to the slumping Superintendent, who was oblivious to thinking out loud again. "All right, baby," he said seriously, shaking a few crude thoughts out of his head, "you go on out there and start. Me and Humperstump'll go out and come back through the main entrance. Once we're in there, we'll use the ROK-444's. That oughtta do it for this li'l get-together." Beuerlein escorted Giselle to the backstage area, where one other girl waited. "Giselle, Becky. Becky, Giselle. You two get acquainted, then Becky'll give you your area to work and it's all arranged." The general manager clapped his hands together and left the pair alone. The music was blaring outside in the club, separated from the backstage area by a heavy drapery that deadened some of the strains of Jimi Hendrix, riffing heavily through 'Foxy Lady'. Becky was blonde, too, but much taller than Giselle. "Nice to meet you, honey." Giselle noticed a dainty rasp in Becky's voice. She was a stunning, top-heavy beauty with muscular legs. She wore a simple orange stretchy top and black vinyl briefs. And, of course, the obligatory high heels. "So Steve says you used to be a guy?" "Shit, does fuckin' everyone know?" cried Giselle. "Oh, honey, it's not a big deal. I mean, these," said Becky, holding her breasts up, "these are Plasti-Pulp. There's no real secrets here. But this is all real." Giselle gaped as Becky shimmied her briefs down sufficiently to reveal a penis. "Wow." "Some fellows like a little lapdance with a difference," Becky cooed. "The others, they're all GG's so far as I know, but you never know these days. Hey?" Giselle nodded and shrugged. "Patsy, Jerilee and Tahany all feature, too, but really this club is about satisfying the customer one-to-one. You know what I mean, right?" "Yep," supposed Giselle. "And I mean, you're a secret agent and shit, but let me tell you that you've got an awesome bod for this business." Giselle fought a sudden urge to go out and slap her boss silly. What right did he have to go running all over the place, announcing that she was a secret agent? No wonder the newspaper, 'The Van Burenian', had called the agency the stupidest waste of taxpayers' money since leasing the Federal Reserve to the Chinese? "Oh, darlin', you look upset. You want some MegaRippleWrench? Just one tab and you'll be 'Dancer Of The Decade'." Becky offered a small yellow tablet and a bottle of Jettison to her temporary workmate. "Shit yeah." And the shorter blonde girl slammed down the concoction and got ready to lapdance her heart out. In the creepy red-tinged darkness of the club's main room, a curious aroma met her nostrils. It smelled like men. And a lingering smell of perfume. Like a locker room sprayed with Flori-Dope, the miracle olfactory delight that was guaranteed to work fifty per cent of the time, or you could return the label for a fifty per cent rebate on a new can. From Becky's descriptions of the other three girls, Giselle figured it was Jerilee, another busty blonde, up on the stage, Tahany, the Mediterranean temptress, seated on the lap of an anonymous customer, and Patsy cruising effortlessly near the bar, her long brown hair nearly enveloping her whole body. As slyly as she could, Giselle, slipped through the half- empty room, locating the whereabouts of Don and The Superintendent. As planned, they were helpfully located at tables outside the ring of chairs where the customers wanting lapdances sat. Both of them had the ROK-444 earpieces firmly in place. Their eyes were open, yet their gazes were blank. In the relative gloom, too, Giselle detected a faint blue glow emanating from the whites of their eyes. That glow might have been there during the testing phase, but it was much more obvious when the ROK- 444 operator sat in the dark. In two twenty-minute shifts, separated by a short break, Giselle worked her area, asking politely whether each man wished to have some company. Her pocket swelled with maples as she found that being a big-breasted blonde was a considerable asset in this line of work. At the beginning of the second shift, the MegaRippleWrench and Jettison kicked in fully, and she found herself more than pleased to engage in semi-public sex with men she did not know. A plain man, wearing a plain brown suit, urged her, once nude, to sit on his lap with her back facing him. She let out a little frightened squeal, submerged in the pounding rhythm of a Tesco Vee anthem, as she felt his cock penetrate her ass. He held her tightly down on his lap, grinding up with his hips, and gripping her around the waist while squeezing her tits. She felt his gasping breath, hot on her back, as her legs splayed wide on either side of his. Four hundred maples later she felt his cock explode with a frenzy, right up her ass. After he was done, she gathered her clothes and smiled laxly at the tired customer, who fought to return his cock to its place and zip up the fly. He urged her closer by hooking a finger in the air, just as she was about to leave and clean up. "You are fucking excellent, girl. Here. Take my card." Giselle's jaw dropped after looking at the card. "You're a cop? But, uh..." "Oh, don't worry, I'm in vice, sure, but I'm sort of kicked upstairs. More in a supervisory capacity." "Er, well, what am I supposed to do with this?" She flicked the card with a single long fingernail. "It's kind of a 'get out of jail free' card. You know, you made quite an impression on the traffic division. Don't be surprised if half the guys down here are from the force." "That's nice to know. If I see any crime, I'll what, whistle?" The cop winked. "Sure. Whatever you want." At that moment, Giselle saw a familiar looking man enter the club, carrying an attach? case. "Galois!" "Listen, I've gotta run, nice dancing for you, or whatever the heck that was, but I really do have to run." The cop watched her jiggle to the backstage area. Jerilee had finished her feature dance, and was the only one backstage. "Oh shit," complained Giselle. "It's my break but I've gotta get back out there. This guy I have to, um, dance for is out there now." In a hurry to get her scanty costume back on, she tore a nail, slightly. Jerilee stared blankly at the transformed secret agent, grinning lazily and keeping silent. "These new girls are really something," she thought. Giselle, now back in her skirt and tube-top, rushed back out into the dimness and sought out Galois. By an odd sort of coincidence, he had chosen a seat almost directly in front of the table that Don waited at. The area with the tables was slightly higher than the lapdancing floor was, allowing customers there to view the feature dancers without looking around the heads of those seated in the chairs nearer to the stage. "Couldn't have planned this better if I was fucking Einstein," grinned Giselle, not caring whether she'd said it out loud. Nobody could hear her over the selection from Queen that blasted through the club. "Hi, would you like some company?" she smiled at the traitor. Galois looked her up and down, a smile creasing across his face. Giselle glanced up furtively at the aqua glow from Don's eyeballs. If he knew she was there, he wasn't showing it. "Show me whatcha got," replied Galois. "Uh-uh," she teased with a wagging finger. "Show me what you got first." Galois removed his hand from the attach? case. He produced a wad of maples. "Sufficient?" Giselle practically tore them out of his hand, excited by the opportunity to prove her worth to the agency, and to keep Galois' mind off his attach? case. "You know what I mean. There's a lot of space between your ears," thundered the lyrics to the song. Giselle plopped on his lap unceremoniously, grabbing her breasts and squeezing them together under the tube-top. "Gotta feeling, like I'm paralysed," the music screamed, and Giselle rolled down her top and effortlessly guided her breasts towards Galois' lips. "It ain't no surprise. Turn on the TV and let it drip right down your eyes." As Galois suckled one of Giselle's boobs, she snatched the attach? case and lifted it under Agent Humperstump's table, smoothly transferring a nearly identical case to the floor beside the traitor. Roy Thomas Baker's heavily produced drum track seared into opposite ends of the club as the song shot into overdrive. "Another dance?" beamed Giselle, proud of her agility in the face of sheer debasement. "Oh yeah," gulped her diabolical quarry, as 'Weird Al' Yankovic launched into his Devo send-up. The MegaRippleWrench and Jettison cocktail took over from there. "Put down your chainsaw and listen to me. It's time for us to join in the fight. It's time to let your babies grow up to be cowboys. It's time to let the bedbugs bite..." Giselle pried Galois' cock loose, unsnapping her skirt and letting it fall. "You better put all your eggs in one basket. You better count your chickens before they hatch. You better sell some wine before its time. You better find yourself an itch to scratch..." The short blonde massaged his cock, letting Galois bury his head in her cleavage. He was not just hard but, by the feel of it, he had a cock as big as Kansas. "... it's time to make a mountain out of a molehill. So can I have a volunteer? There's no more time for crying over spilled milk. Now it's time for crying in your beer..." Giselle urged the traitor's hard cock into her pussy, thrusting down with her hips and laying her free arm under her breasts and squeezing them up to his drooling tongue. "Settle down. Raise a family. Join the PTA. Buy some sensible shoes and a Chevrolet. And party 'till you're broke and they drive you away...it's OK, you can dare to be stupid..." Once he was inside her, she grabbed his erection with her slippery muscles and rode him, letting his tongue and lips rove all over her boobs. "Fuck me," she demanded in a loud whisper, and then bit his ear. "You can be a coffee achiever. You can sit around the house and watch Leave It To Beaver. The future's up to you... so what you gonna do?" Galois blew his load in five distinct jets, within the virgin pussy of the body-swapped agent: "Dare to be stupid..." One. "Dare to be stupid..." Two. "Dare to be stupid..." Three "Dare to be stupid..." Ungh... "Dare to be stupid..." Five. Sweat. Collapse. Galois was finished. Done. Giselle was pretty woozy herself. She wandered back to the dressing room, ignoring plaintive customers who tried to corral her on the way. Becky was in the dressing room, too, and Beuerlein quickly appeared once he realised that the mission had been accomplished. "Steve, my god, I am totally fucked out," whined Giselle. "That'll do it for my night, anyhow." "Not a problem," nodded the general manager. "Come on back to my office. We've got two more girls in a couple minutes, so you've definitely paid the rent." Once they were back in the office, he closed the door and watched her dress in front of him. "Looked like you enjoyed yourself," he grinned, waving one arm towards a closed-circuit surveillance camera he used for security reasons. "Oh you think so, wouldn't you?" Giselle laughed. "For a goddamn traitor, that guy was the best sex I ever had." "Should I go get Sleeperella and Bumbletoes?" he asked, referring to the two observers in the operation, The Superintendent and Agent Humperstump. "Well, Don's got the attach? case. I guess somebody better go tell him. Whatever that ROK-444 does, it's probably better than RippleWrench." "Don't bet on it, sweetheart," countered Beuerlein. "But if you are ever strapped for cash, you got one helluva talent for this work." "I'll keep it in mind," said the blonde, fully clothed and ready to go home, shower and sleep. The worst side effect of any of the RippleWrench family of synthetic recreational drugs was the deep coma-like sleep it induced. Jettison brand beverages, while completely legal, oddly produced much the same effect. Combined, the cocktail coursing through Giselle's systems caused her to sleep through most of the following two days. When she woke up, she was astonished to find that her court case was due to be heard on 'The Mighty Magistrate' that evening. She called Don but only got his answering machine. "Well, I ought to be able to win this thing with or without him." Her self-confidence was mildly wounded by Don's absence, but figured it must have been due to some pressing matter at the agency. Dhaliwal phoned right after she got out of the shower. "Hustle your ass on down to Judicial Sound Stage #4, and wear something hot. I've got the perfect strategy, the perfect case, everything just perfect." That confidence bolstered Giselle's own, too. She wore a pair of knee length high heeled boots, a suitably short tight skirt, fishnet stockings, and a sparkly jacket over a midriff-length peach top. She was getting pretty good at dressing herself, after nearly a month of practice. The studio lot was filled with spectators' vehicles, but a helpful attendant pointed her to a special set of spaces reserved for litigants and actors. Dhaliwal waved and grinned from the front of the courtroom, which was ablaze with television lights and noisy with the type of audience you'd expect to see attending a wrestling match. Giselle's lawyer, and his counterpart, wore ostentatious powdered wigs and robes straight out of a British courtroom drama. Giselle looked around in awe at the dozens of cameras, television technicians, the two hundred or more spectators, and the massive panelled bench along the wall both she and Dhaliwal faced. "Shit, I hardly recognise you," she said. "This is a helluva lot more popular than I thought it would be." "Hey, dar, oops, I mean, Agent Lowry, this is the big leagues of cinematic justice. It ain't Peoria, that's for sure." A few minutes before the proceedings began, a director carrying a megaphone sauntered into the central area in front of the judge's bench. He spoke loudly and crisply. "Welcome to 'The Mighty Magistrate' show, ladies and gentlemen. May I remind you all this is live television, with a ninety-second broadcast delay and the best tape-loop editors east of Hollywood. You, the audience, obey those signs. When it says 'Hush', you shut up. When it says 'Rhubarb', you mutter to each other, or to yourself if you came alone. 'Applause', 'Cheer', 'Hoot', it's all pretty self-explanatory, and you returning audience members know the whole spiel from there. Defendant, plaintiff, you are on for a fifteen minute segment and then we re-arrange the set and execute summary justice if necessary, then it's the same routine for each of the four segments, three if we run low on time. Yada, yada, you know the rest." "Wow, this is pretty professional and everything," Giselle whi