layers of algae in a green cloud.

"It's my latest idea. I've found the electromagnetic frequencies that the
various coral resonate on, and by using those as a carrier wave, I can stimulate
them into tremendously accelerated growth. Moreover, I can alter their
electromagnetic valences, so that, instead of calcium salts, they use other
minerals as their building-blocks."

He grinned hugely, and seemed to want Chet to say something. Chet didn't
understand any of it.

"Well, don't you see?"

"Nuh."

"I can use coral to concentrate trace gold and platinum and any other
heavy-metal you care to name out of the seas. I can prospect in the very water
itself!" He killed the switch. The coral stopped their dance abruptly, and the
new appendages they'd grown dropped away, tumbling gracefully to the ocean's
floor. "You see? Gold, platinum, lead. I dissolved a kilo of each into the water
last night, microscopic flakes. In five minutes, my coral has concentrated it
all."

The stumps where the minerals had dropped away were jagged and sharp, and
painful looking.

"It doesn't even harm the fish!"

#

Chet's playmates seemed as strange as fish to him. They met up on the 87th
level, where there was an abandoned apt with a faulty lock. Some of them seemed
batty themselves, standing in corners, staring at the walls, tracing patterns
that they alone could see. Others seemed too confident ever to be bats -- they
shouted and boasted to each other, got into shoving matches that escalated into
knock-out brawls and then dissolved into giggles. Chet found himself on the
sidelines, an observer.

One boy, whose father hung around the workshops with Chet's father, was
industriously pulling apart the warp of the carpet, rolling it into a ball. When
the ball reached a certain size, he snapped the loose end, tucked it in and
started another.

A girl whose family had been taken to the bat-house all the way from a
reservation near Sioux Lookout was telling loud lies about home, about
tremendous gun-battles fought out with the Ontario Provincial Police and huge,
glamorous casinos where her mother had dealt blackjack to millionaire
high-rollers, who tucked thousand dollar tips into her palm. About her bow and
arrow and her rifle and her horses. Nobody believed her stories, and they made
fun of her behind her back, but they listened when she told them, spellbound.

What was her name, anyway?

There were two boys, one followed the other ever