an the eye could
follow. "It's on me, Ma."

"Don't be silly. I'll pay."

"I _want_ to. Let me. A son should take his mother out to lunch once in a
while."

She smiled, for the first time that whole afternoon, and patted his cheek with
one manicured hand. "You're a good boy, Hershie, I know that. I only want that
you should be happy, and have what's best for you."

#

Hershie, in tights and cape, was chilling in his fortress of solitude when his
comm rang. He checked the callerid and winced: Thomas was calling, from Toronto.
Hershie's long-distance bills were killing him, ever since the Department of
Defense had cut off his freebie account.

Not to mention that talking to Thomas inevitably led to more trouble with his
mother.

He got up off of his crystalline recliner and flipped the comm open, floating up
a couple of metres. "Thomas, what's up?"

"Supe, didja see the reviews? The critics _love_ us!"

Hersh held the comm away from his head and sighed the ancient, put-upon Hebraic
sigh of his departed stepfather. Thomas Aquino Rusk liked to play at being a
sleazy Broadway producer, his "plays" the eye-catching demonstrations he and his
band of merry shit-disturbers hijacked.

"Yeah, it made pretty good vid, all right." He didn't ask why Thomas was
calling. There was only one reason he _ever_ called: he'd had another idea.

"You'll never guess why I called."

"You've had an idea."

"I've had an idea!"

"Really."

"You'll love it."

Hershie reached out and stroked the diamond-faceted coffins that his birth
parents lay in, hoping for guidance. His warm fingers slicked with melted
hoarfrost, and as they skated over the crypt, it sang a pure, high crystal note
like a crippled flying saucer plummeting to the earth. "I'm sure I will,
Thomas."

As usual, Thomas chose not to hear the sarcasm in his voice. "Check this out --
DefenseFest 33 is being held in Toronto in March. And the new keynote speaker is
the Patron Ik'Spir Pat! The fricken head fricken bugout! His address is
'Galactic History and Military Tactics: a Strategic Overview.'"

"And this is a good thing?"

"Ohfuckno. It's terrible, terrible, of course. The bugouts are selling us out.
Going over to the Other Side. Just awful. But think of the possibilities!"

"But think of the possibilities? Oy." Despite himself, Hershie was smiling.
Thomas always made him smile.

"You're smiling, aren't you?"

"Shut up, Thomas."

"Can you make a meeting at