Saturday night, 2149, heading for 10 p.m., and where the hell was this guy, what was keeping him? The Dead Parrot Bar had long since made the transition from raucous to mayhem, and Sable was not comfortable sitting here, girl alone. She felt like a crime scene waiting to happen.
        She kept remembering that really horrible movie Fang made her watch, just before she broke up with him, Blonde at Bay, the one in which the blonde girl is out alone, innocently drinking her way through a suite of tequila cocktails, when ... well, better not to think about that. Just hope it doesn't happen for real.
        They were playing that stupid song again, Cat in a Bathtub, she was so tired of that idiot lyricspiel, all the stuff about the ecstasies of scratching wet wallpaper and the sneezing caused by the soap bubbles getting up its nose. Cats! What did cats ever do for you? Ever hear of a cat buying a girl a saucer of caviar and a glass of sparkling white? No, of course not. Horrible, useless animals, and they really smelt, especially after you sprayed them with that stinky air freshener, which was what her mother always did.
        The door to the Dead Parrot Bar crashed open and a gaggle of Argives spilt inside, all giggling drunk, yeah, raucous back-slapping Argives, marines from Port Hoolip and Yokosuka, off the leash and ready for brawl time. Usually, you could live in Omblock for months on end without being reminded that an army of occupation is in possession of it, that the Relsh Strasborg troops are squatting on your land and they're not going home, no, your home is their home, because their sacred mission is to rule the world, to make sure they always own nine-tenths of the hamburgers.
        But the Dead Parrot Bar was at Dilskartha, almost within spitting distance of Yokosuka, and so you got these marines with their buffed bodies and their gerky haircuts, off the base and so drunk they can't remember being sober, and you get reminded of the things they do that get them in the newspapers, like that time just last month ... well, yeah, that's another thing it'd be better not to think about.
        And then, afterwards, when the base commander, General Flattop, when he apologizes in public, sort of, does this very weak sorry, he mminimalizes everything. Guy doesn't get it, doesn't understand that it's time the rulers of the universe packed up and went home, time to stop treating Omblock like one big thermonuke aircraft carrier, we don't want to be your bomb base, no, and we don't feel privileged to be the your cooks, bottle washers and street sweepers.
        Xenophobia was not a standard emotion for Sable, but, then, she didn't often rub shoulders with foreigners. And she was in a really filthy mood, feeling bruised, a kind of battered wife feeling, she wasn't even married yet, but the universe had foregrounded itself, had taken on the battering husband role.
        "I hate drunks," said Sable.
        And went up to the bar and bought herself a bottle of vodka. And bought, too, a bar of Girlthin Munchyummy, that pineapple-flavored stuff which melts in your mouth just like chocolate, but which contains zero calories. Like vodka. Won't touch beer, beer is fattening. Vodka is a girl's best friend.
        Later, when the bottle was no longer full, a man sat down across from Sable at the itty bitty two-person table Sable had taken in the boyfriend-girlfriend section. Not an Argive, no. Someone older, unhealthier, flab which couldn't find its way to the gymnasium, Binge Man having a day out from his comic strip.
        "Hippopotamus?" he said.
        The oldest of the chat-up lines. Also, the shortest. Men like it because it's so easy to remember, even when they're really, really drunk. But, despite what men think, girls don't like that approach. They want something girlflossy, subtle, not this blunt Kongman Ravisher approach.
        Better be careful here. The Argives in the bar were a riot waiting to happen. Try something subtle. Don't start out by simply smashing the bottle right in his face. Be a Conflux girl, not a Balimo tornado.
        "Am I going to have to smash this bottle right in the middle of your watermelon face, or are you going to be a gentleman and do it yourself?"
        Having delivered herself of that line, Sable was pleased with her grown-up sophistication and self-control. Yeah, she was handling this very well, almost as if she was one of those, what do you call them? Got a word for it somewhere. A woman! Yes, that's right, that's the missing word. Almost as if she was not a girl but a woman. Almost.
        "Had an argument with your boyfriend?" said the man.
        In response, Sable produced her Girlscream rape alarm and placed it on the table in front of her.
        "Scamper," said Sable. "Or we enter the realm of consequences."
        The man rose heavily, coughed, then trundled off. And Sable took another hit of the vodka.
        Vodka will only take you so far, and it ended up that Sable wanted to go further, and, since her grip on reality was pretty blurred by then, she saw no reason why she should stop herself. So she went ahead and did it.
        Shortly after Sable started doing a line of cocaine at the itty bitty boyfriend-girlfriend table she had commandeered, flashlights started to go off, the target of these flashlights being her. People, if they had them, were hauling out their digital cameras and taking snapshots. If they didn't have digicams then they used the cameras built into their mobile phones, though the Dead Parrot Bar was too dark to get optimal flash-free photos. Sable, she had become a tourist attraction. Conflux girls? Everything you have heard is true.
        "Can we have a moment?" said a man.
        The voice was solid, authoritative. A gun holster voice. Sable looked up and saw two cops in front of her. One of these cops had spoken to her, though she was not sure which one. They did not seem happy. Why? Was something wrong with her bright blonde face? No, probably not. Probably they were going to be tiresome about the coke, yeah, try the how would you like twenty years in a concrete box thing. Well, go set fire to yourselves, you, you killjoy fascists, why don't you go deal to the real world, street kids doing real crimes?
        "You want to start, or shall we?" said one of the cops.
        "I'll start," said Sable. "I have a prescription for this. Was in a car crash, all my teeth are loose, hurt like hell."
        And she pulled out, first, some photo ID -- her driver's license and her credit card, they were sure to hassle her for photo ID -- and then the prescription. This document, certifying that the bearer had been prescribed medical cocaine, bore the stamp of Seward Burroughs, dentist. Including his phone numbers -- clinic, home and cellphone. One of the cops pulled out his own cellphone and managed to get through to Seward at his home number.
        "Are you Seward Burroughs? Yes? Uh, you ever prescribe cocaine? Yeah ... Conflux Constabulary. Me? Heinrich Himmler, Diamorphine Taskforce. Yeah. So, you ever prescribe cocaine to a Conflux kid? Girl kid, blonde, kind of cute. Does that talk to your telephone? Hang on ... here we are. Tauranga. No, I said Tauranga. That's T-A-U-R-A-N-G-A. Yeah, Sable Tauranga. Check your records, please. No, I can hold."
        There was a long, long pause, the kind of pause appropriate for a dentist rummaging around in his client records, maybe using special software to access his office computer remotely. Sable sat there trying to count her heartbeats, a trick she had learnt from that life coach, what was her name, the woman with the tank full of cute turtles, the woman she had interviewed ... when? Must have been last year.
        "Thank you," said the cop.
        And the call was done. What now? Was Sable going to get an apology? Or was she going to get twenty years in a concrete box, with no time out for hairdresser visits?
        "Legit, it seems," said the cop who had made the phone call.
        And with that they were gone, no apology, no, of course not, they were the fascist enforcers of the fascist state, catch you having a little fun and they'll smash your life for you, they'll trash your face. Don't do anything about real crime, spend their time hassling innocent girls who are being kept waiting in dangerous bars.
        A dab of cocaine was still left on the table, so Sable licked her finger, wiped up the cocaine and sucked it. Good. The bright point of the evening was that she now had a client-provider relationship with Seward Burroughs of Nirvana Options, a rather eccentric name for a dental clinic, when you thought about it, probably not the best place to go if you wanted that fashion trend gold tooth you were thinking of.
        Seward had become her dentist. That was the outcome of the call the cop had made. She was now one of his patients, obviously. He'd confirmed that to the cops by phone. And, if she was one of his patients, it followed that, logically, he could renew her prescription. For a price. She would have to thank Ibrahim for introducing them, too. Or, well ... maybe, on second thoughts, thanking Ibrahim wouldn't be such a good idea.
        "Police brutality," muttered Sable to herself, returning to her grievance with the cops.
        Same old story. Innocent girl in a bar, doing nothing wrong, just taking her prescription medicine, and, next thing, these gunbelt fascists, mind muggers with a badge, they're all over her, hassling her, no cause for that, aiming to bust her just because she's a girl, men, they all hate girls, isn't that the sorry secret truth?
        Sable was starting to feel a little sniffly -- vodka tended to have that effect on her -- and was nearing waterfall point (crybaby blubber time) when the man she had been waiting for ever since the first of the rainforests started growing, that man, he finally turned up.
        "Where have you been?" said Sable.
        "Tespetty," said Beria, taking the seat across from her. "The President wanted to talk to me."
        "Olive Valise?" said Sable. "It's Saturday! She doesn't work weekends."
        "Boss life is not a bowl of oysters," said Beria, taking the neck of the vodka bottle in two fingers and rocking the bottle this way and that, invading her space, doing the spatial transgression thing that the radfems talk about, yeah, it's true, men are the aggressors, the enemy.
        "When you say you're going to be somewhere," said Sable, "you should show up on time."
        "When you're talking to your father, you'll keep a polite tongue in your mouth," said Beria, going disciplinarian, the authoritarian in him showing.
        Yeah, showing big, iron pumped. Not like he ever tried to hide it. But there was more muscle to his voice now than there had been before, when she had been speaking with him on the phone. He reminded her of Morkin Sped on the day when Morkin wound himself up so tight he ended up losing control totally, with the result being that an ambulance collected Sable and took her from school to hospital with a broken rib, for which she got morphine, which is not the kick you might expect, just made her a bit woozy, weren't you supposed to get neat hallucinations and stuff?
        "Are you listening to me, daughter mine?" said Beria.
        "Oh, go away," said Sable. "Get your daughter fantasy out of my face and get lost."
         "I'm going nowhere," said Beria. "You need me right here and you need me now. You're my daughter, I'm your father, and I'm not having you carrying on like this, getting drunk in trash bars full of intoxicated marines."
        "Trash bars!" said Sable. "You venued us here! I'm here because you told me."
        "When you talk to your father," said Beria, "you will speak with respect."
        "I've already told you," said Sable. "I'm not in the mood for your daughter fantasy. Quit the funny stuff and get real, okay?"
        "You want the reality, huh?" said Beria. "Okay, let me fill you in on the reality."
        Then Beria picked up Sable's vodka bottle, took a big hit, put the bottle down on the table, then belched. A real hippopotamus belch.
        "Something you should see," said Beria.
        And produced a folded photocopy which he unfolded and placed on the table in front of her. Sable picked it up, squinted. A bit blurry, this. All the little letters scattering like jumbly ants. Vodka is funny stuff. It looks so clear, but it's so difficult to see through.
        "You're too drunk to find your right hand with the left, aren't you?" said Beria, taking back the photocopied document. "Let me explain. There was a session in the Family Court this morning, fortunately they work Saturdays. You weren't represented. Your doctor produced a certificate of mental incompetency in your name and the judge let things go ahead without you."
        "What things?" said Sable.
        "Your parents were there," said Beria. "They formally disowned you, goodbye family ties, and, to cut a long story short, I adopted you, and you are now my daughter."
        Joke, right? Her parents wouldn't disown her. Would they?
        "Present for you," said Beria, pulling out a cellphone, a girlpink Boydialer. "To replace the one you went and lost. If you don't believe me, call the people who used to be your parents."
        "Don't have the number," said Sable.
        "No problem," said Beria. "I do."
        One phone call later, Sable, too shell-shocked to start crying, was escorted out of the Dead Parrot Bar by this secret policeman guy who -- unbelievable, God in a pumpkin! -- was her father.
        When they finally got to Beria's apartment, Sable still not recovered from the shock to her reality structure. Without ceremony, Beria locked her up in a steel cage, of all things, then went and left her.
        Sable was still trying to assess what had happened when something huge bulged out of the shadows of the apartment and bumped into the bars of her cage. What the!? What in the name of God is that?
        What it was -- a pig, that's what it was. A huge pig. A sow, a monstrous sow, snuffling at the bars of the cage, which, fortunately, were high quality steel, and pig-proof. So let's be thankful for small mercies.
        The pig isn't going to eat you, then, Sable, girl. But, that said, just what in the name of donuts have you gone and gotten yourself into this time?