Rainbows End

An Excellent Affiliance

Juan Orozco liked to walk to school with the Radner twins. Fred and Jerry were a Bad Influence, but they were the best gamers Juan knew in person. "We got a special scam for today, Juan," said Fred.

"Yeah," said Jerry, smiling the way he did when something really fun or embarrassing was on the way.

The three followed the usual path along the flood control channel. The concrete trough was dry and bone white, winding its way through the canyon behind the Mesitas subdivision. The hills above them were covered with iceplant and manzanita; ahead, there was a patch of scrub oaks. What do you expect of San Diego North County in early October?

At least in the real world.

The canyon was not a deadzone. Not at all. County Flood Control kept the whole area improved, and the public layer was just as fine as on city streets. As they walked along, Juan gave a shrug and a twitch just so. That was enough cue for his Epiphany wearable. Its overlay imagery shifted into Hacek's Dangerous Knowledge world: The manzanita morphed into scaly tentacles. Now the houses that edged the canyon were large and heavily timbered, with pennants flying. High ahead was a castle, the home of Grand Duke Hwa Feen — in reality, the local kid who did the most to maintain this belief circle. Juan tricked out the twins in the leather armor of Knights Guardian.

"Hey, Jer, look." Juan radiated, and waited for the twins to slide into consensus with his view. He had been practicing a week to get these visuals in place.

Fred looked up, accepting the imagery that Juan had conjured. "That's old stuff, Juanito." He glanced at the castle on the hill. "Besides, Howie Fein is a dwit."

"Oh." Juan released the vision in an untidy cascade. The real world took back its own, first the landscape, then the sky, then the creatures and costumes. "But you liked it last week." Back when, Juan now remembered, Fred and Jerry had been maneuvering to oust the Grand Duke.

The twins looked at each other. Juan could tell they were silent messaging. "We told you today would be different. We're onto something special." They were partway through the scrub oaks now. Coming out the far side, you could see ocean haze; on a clear day — or if you used Clear Vision — you could see all the way to the ocean. On the south were more subdivisions, and a patch of green that was Fairmont High School. On the north was the most interesting place in Juan Orozco's neighborhood:

Pyramid Hill Amusement Park dominated the little valley that surrounded it. The underlying rock was more a pointy hill than a pyramid, but the park's management thought "pyramid" was the sexier adjective. Once upon a time it had been an avocado orchard, dark green trees clothing the hillsides. You could see it that way if you used the park's logo view. To the naked eye, there were still lots of trees. But there were also lawns, and real mansions, and the launch tower. Among other things. Pyramid Hill claimed to have the longest freefall ride in California.

The twins were grinning at him. Jerry waved at the hill. "How would you like to play Cretaceous Returns , but with real feeling?"

Pyramid Hill managers knew exactly what to charge for different levels of touchy-feely experience. The low end was pretty cheap; "real feeling" was at the top. "Ah, that's too expensive."

"Sure it is. If you pay."

"And, um, don't you have a project to set up before class?" The twins had shop class first thing in the morning. "That's still in Vancouver," said Jerry.

"But don't worry about us." Fred looked upward, somehow prayerful and smug at the same time. "'UP/Express will provide, and just in time.'"

"Well, okay. Just so we don't get into trouble." Getting into trouble was the major downside of hanging with the Radners. A couple of weeks earlier, the twins had shown him how to avoid a product safety recall on his new wikiBay bicycle. That had left him with a great martial-arts weapon — and a bike that was almost impossible to unfold. Ma had not been pleased. "Hey, don't worry, Juan." The three left the edge of the flood channel and followed a narrow trail along the east edge of Pyramid Hill. This was far from any entrance, but the twins' uncle worked for County Flood Control and they had access to CFC utilities support imagery — which just now they shared with Juan. The dirt beneath their feet became faintly translu-cent. Fifteen feet down, Juan could see graphics representing a ten-inch runoff tunnel. Here and there were pointers to local maintenance records. Jerry and Fred had used such omniscience before and not been caught. Today they were blending it with a map of the local network nodes. The overlay view was faint violet against the sunlit day, showing communication blind spots and active high-rate links.

The two stopped at the edge of a clearing. Fred looked at Jerry. "Tsk. Flood Control should be ashamed. There's not a localizer node within thirty feet."

"Yeah, Jer. Almost anything could happen here." Without a complete localizer mesh, nodes could not know precisely where they and their neighbors were. High-rate laser comm could not be established, and low-rate sensor output was smeared across the landscape. The outside world knew only mushy vagueness about this area.

They walked into the clearing. They were deep in a network blind spot, but from here they had a naked-eye view up the hillside, to ground that must surely be within Pyramid Hill. If they continued that way, the Hill would start charging them.

But the twins were not looking at the Hill. Jerry walked to a small tree and squinted up. "In fact, this is an interesting spot. They tried to patch the coverage with an airball." He pointed into the branches and pinged. The utility view showed only a faint return, an error message. "It's almost purely net guano at this point."

Juan shrugged. "The gap will be fixed by tonight." Around twilight, when aerobots flitted around the canyons, swapping out nodes here and there.

"Well, why don't we help the county by patching things right now?" Jerry held up a thumb-sized greenish object. He handed it to Juan.

Three antenna fins sprouted from the thing's top. It was a typical ad hoc node. The dead ones were more trouble than bird poop. "You've perv'd this thing?" The node had Breaklns-R-Us written all over it, but perverting networks was harder in real life than in games. "Where did you get the access codes?"

"Uncle Don gets careless." Jerry pointed at the device. "All the permissions are loaded. Unfortunately, the bottleneck node is still alive." He pointed upward, into the sapling's branches. "You're small enough to climb this, Juan. Just go up and knock down the node."

"Hmm."

"Hey, don't worry. Homeland Security won't notice."

In fact, the Department of Homeland Security would almost certainly notice, at least after the localizer mesh was patched. But just as certainly they wouldn't care. DHS logic was deeply embedded in all hardware. "See All, Know All" was their motto, but what they knew and saw was for their own mission. They were notorious about not sharing with law enforcement. Juan stepped out of the blind spot and took a look at the Sheriff's Department view. The area around Pyramid Hill had its share of arrests, mostly for enhancement drugs… but there had been nothing hereabouts for several weeks.

"Okay." Juan came back to the tree and scrambled up about ten feet, to where the branches spread out. The old node was hanging from rotted Velcro. He knocked it free and the twins caused it to have an accident with a rock. Juan shinnied down from the tree. They watched the diagnostics for a moment. Violet mists sharpened into bright spots as the nodes figured out where they and their perved sibling were, and coordinated up toward full function. Now point-to-point, laser routing was available; they could see the property labels all along the boundary of Pyramid hill.

"Ha," said Fred. The twins started uphill toward the property line. "C'mon, Juan. We're marked as county employees. We'll be fine if we don't stay too long."

Pyramid Hill had all the latest touchy-feely gear. These were not just phantoms painted by your contact lenses on the back of your eyeballs. On Pyramid Hill there were games where you could ride a Scoochi salsipued or steal the eggs of raptors — or games with warm furry creatures that danced playfully around, begging to be picked up and cuddled. If you turned off all the game views, you could see other players wandering through the woods in their own worlds. Somehow the Hill kept them from crashing into each other.

In Cretaceous Returns , the sound of the free-fall launcher was disguised as thunder. The trees were imaged as towering ginkgoes, with lots of places you couldn't see through. Juan played the pure visual Cret Ret a lot these days, in person with the twins, and all over the world with others. It had not been an uplifting experience. He had been "killed and eaten" three times so far this week. It was a tough game, one where you had to contribute or maybe you got killed and eaten every time. So Juan had joined the Fantasists Guild — well, as a junior wannabe member. Maybe that would make him clueful. He had already designed a species for Cret Ret . His saurians were quick, small things that didn't attract the fiercest of the critics. The twins had not been impressed, though they had no alternatives of their own.

As he walked through the ginkgo forest, he kept his eye out for critters with jaws lurking in the lower branches. That's what had gotten him on Monday. On Tuesday it had been some kind of paleo disease.

So far things seemed safe enough, but there was no sign of his own contribution. They had been fast breeding and scalable, so where were the little monsters? Sigh. Sometime he should check out other game sites. They might be big in Kazakhstan. Here, today… nada.

Juan stumped across the Hill, a little discouraged, but still uneaten. The twins had taken the form of game-standard velociraptors. They were having a grand time. Their chicken-sized prey were Pyramid Hill game bots.

The Jerry-raptor looked over its shoulder at Juan. "Where's your critter?"

Juan had not assumed any animal form. "I'm a time traveler," he said. That was a valid type, introduced with the initial game release.

Fred flashed a face full of teeth. "I mean where are the critters you invented last week?"

"I don't know."

"Most likely they got eaten by the critics," said Jerry. The brothers did a joint reptilian chortle. "Give up on making creator points, Juan. Kick back and use the good stuff." He illustrated with a soccer kick that connected with something that scuttled across their path. That got lots of classic points and a few thrilling moments of quality carnage. Fred joined in and red splattered everywhere.

There was something familiar about this prey. It was young and clever-looking… a newborn from Juan's own design! And that meant its mommy would be nearby. Juan said, "You know, I don't think — "

"The Problem Is, None Of You Think Nearly Enough." The sound was premium external, like sticking your head inside an old-time boom box. Too late, they saw that the tree trunks behind them grew from yard-long claws. Mommy. Drool fell in ten-inch blobs from high above.

This was Juan's design scaled up to the max.

"Sh — " said Fred. It was his last hiss as a velociraptor. The head and teeth behind the slobber descended from the ginkgo canopy and swallowed Fred down to the tips of his hind talons. The monster crunched and munched for a moment. The clearing was filled with the sound of splintering bones.

"Ahh!" The monster opened its mouth and vomited horror. It was so good — Juan flicker-viewed on reality: Fred was standing in the steaming remains of his raptor. His shirt was pulled out of his pants, and he was drenched in slime — real, smelly slime. The kind you paid money for.

The monster itself was one of the Hill's largest mechanicals, tricked out as a member of Juan's new species.

The three of them looked up into its jaws.

"Was that touchy-feely enough for you?" the creature said, its breath a hot breeze of rotting meat. For sure it was. Fred stepped backwards and almost slipped on the goo.

"The late Fred Radner just lost a cartload of points" — the monster waved its truck-sized snout at them — "and I'm still hungry. I suggest you move off the Hill with all dispatch."

They backed away, their gaze still caught on the monster's teeth. The twins turned and ran. As usual, Juan was an instant behind them. Something like a big hand grabbed him. "You, I have further business with." The words were a burred roar through clenched fangs. "Sit down. Let's chat."

¡Caray! I have the worst luck . Then he remembered that it had been Juan Orozco who had climbed a tree to perv the Hill entrance logic. Stupid Juan Orozco didn't need bad luck; he was already the perfect chump. And now the twins were gone.

But when the "jaws" set him down and he turned around, the monster was still there — not some Pyramid Hill rent-a-cop. Maybe this really was a Cret Ret player! He edged sideways, trying to get out from under the pendulous gaze. This was just a game. He could walk away from this four-story saurian. Of course, that would trash his credit with Cretaceous Returns , maybe drench him in smelly goo. And if Big Lizard took its play seriously, it might cause him trouble in other games. Okay . He sat down with his back to the nearest ginkgo. So he would be late another day; that couldn't make his school situation any worse.

The saurian settled back and slid the steaming corpse of Fred Radner's raptor to one side. It brought its head close to the ground, to look at Juan straight on. The eyes and head and color were exactly Juan's original design, and this player had the moves to make it truly impressive. He could see from its battle scars that it had fought in several Cretaceous hot spots. Juan forced a cheerful smile. "So, you like my design?"

It flashed yard-long fangs. "I've been worse." The creature shifted game parameters, bringing up critic-layer details. This was a heavy player, maybe even a game cracker! On the ground between them was a dead and dissected example of Juan's creation. Big Lizard nudged it with a foreclaw. "But the skin texture is from a Fantasists Guild example library. The color scheme is a cliche. The plaid kilt would be cute if it weren't in all the Epiphany Now ads."

Juan drew his knees in toward his chin. This was the same crap he had to put up with at school. "I borrow from the best."

The saurian's chuckle was a buzzing roar that made Juan's skull vibrate. "That might work with your teachers. They have to eat whatever garbage you feed them — at least till you graduate and can be dumped on the street. This design is so-so. There have been some adoptions, mainly because it has good mechanics. But if we're talking real quality, it just don't measure up." The creature flexed its custom battle scars.

"I do other things."

"Yes, and if you never deliver, you'll fail with them, too."

That was a point that occupied a lot of Juan Orozco's internal worry time. More and more it looked like he was going to end up like his pa — only Juan might never even get a job to be laid off from! "Try your best" was the motto of Fairmont High. But trying your best was only the beginning. Even if you tried your best, you could still be left behind.

These were not things he'd confess to another gamer. He glared back at the slitted yellow eyes, and suddenly it occurred to him that — unlike teachers — this guy was not being paid to be nice. And it was wasting too much time for this to be some humiliating con. It actually wants something from met Juan sharpened his glare. "And you have some suggestions, O Mighty Virtual Lizard?"

"That… could be. Besides Cret Ret , I have other things going. How would you like to take an affiliate status on a little project?"

Except for local games, no one had ever asked Juan to affiliate on anything. His mouth twisted in bogus contempt. "Affiliate? A percent of a percent of… what? How far down the value chain are you?"

The saurian shrugged and there was the sound of ginkgoes creaking against its shoulders. "My guess is I'm way, way down. That's how it is with most affiliances. But I can pay real money for each answer I pipe upwards." The creature named a number; it was enough to ride the freefall every day for a year. A payoff certificate floated in the air between them, showing the named amount and a bonus schedule.

Juan had played his share of finance games. "I get twice that or no deal." Then he noticed the subrights section. The numbers were not visible. That could be because anyone he recruited would get a lot more.

"Done!" said the Lizard, before Juan could correct his bid upward.

And Juan was sure it was smiling!

"… Okay, what do you want?" And what makes you think a dwit like me can supply it ?

"You're at Fairmont High, aren't you?"

"You already know that."

"It's a strange place, isn't it?" When Juan did not reply, the critter said. "Trust me, it is strange. Most schools, even charter schools, don't schedule Adult Education students in with the children."

"Yeah, the vocational track. The old farts don't like it. We don't like it."

"Well, the task from my upstream affiliate is to snoop around, mainly among these old guys. Make friends with them."

Yecco. But Juan glanced at the payoff certificate again. It tested valid. The payoff adjudication was more complicated than he wanted to read, but it was backed by Bank of America. "Who in particular?"

"Ah, that's the problem. Whoever is at the top of my affiliance is coy. We're just collecting information. Basically, some of these senior citizens used to be big shots."

"If they were so big, how come they're in our classes now?" It was just the question the kids asked at school.

"Lots of reasons, Juan. Some of them are just lonely. Some of them are up to their ears in debt, and have to figure how to make a living in the current economy. Some of them aren't good for much but a healthy body and lots of old memories. They can be very bitter."

"Unh, how do I make friends with people like that?"

"If you want the money, you figure out a way. Anyway, here are the search criteria." The Big Lizard shipped him a document. He browsed through the top layer.

"This covers a lot of ground." Retired San Diego politicians, bioscientists, parents of persons currently in such job categories…

"There are qualifying characteristics in the links. Your job is to interest appropriate people in my affiliance."

"I… I'm just not that good at talking people up." Especially people like this.

"Stay poor then. Chicken." Juan was silent for a moment. His pa would never take a job like this. Finally, he said, "Okay, I'll go affiliate with you."

"I wouldn't want you doing anything you feel un — "

"I said , I'll take the job!"

"Okay! Well then, what I've given you should get you started. There's contact info in the document." The creature lumbered to its feet, and now its voice came from high above. "Just as well we don't meet again on Pyramid Hill."

"Suits me." Juan stood up. He made a point of slapping the creature's mighty tail as he walked off downhill.

The twins were way ahead of him, standing by the soccer field on the other side of campus. As Juan came up the driveway, he grabbed a viewpoint in the bleachers and gave them a ping. Fred waved back, but his shirt was still too gooey for comm. Jerry was looking upward at the UP/Ex shipment falling toward his outstretched hands. Just in time, for sure. The twins were popping the mailer open even as they walked into the shop tent.

Unfortunately, Juan's first class was at the end of the far wing. He ran across the lawn, keeping his vision tied to unimproved reality: The buildings were mostly three stories today. Their gray walls were like playing cards stacked in a rickety array.

Inside, the choice of view was not entirely his own. Mornings, the school administration required that the Fairmont News show all over the interior walls. Three kids at Hoover High had won IBM career fellowships. Applause, applause, even if Hoover was Fairmont's unfairly advantaged rival, a charter school run by the Math Ed Department at SDSU. The three young geniuses would have their college education paid for, right through grad school, even if they never worked a day at IBM. Big deal , Juan thought, trying to comfort himself. Someday those kids might be very rich, but a percentage of their professional fortunes would always go back to IBM.

He followed the little green nav arrows with half his attention… and abruptly realized he had climbed two flights of stairs. School admin had re-arranged everything since yesterday. Of course, they had updated his nav arrows, too. It was a good thing he hadn't been paying attention. He slipped into his classroom and sat down.

Ms. Chumlig had already started.

Search and Analysis was Chumlig's main thing. She used to teach a fast-track version of this at Hoover High, but well-documented rumor held that she just couldn't keep up. So the Department of Education had moved her to the same-named course here at Fairmont. Actually, Juan kind of liked her. She was a failure, too.

"There are many different skills," she was saying. "Sometimes it's best to coordinate with lots of other people who together can make the answers." The students nodded. Be a coordinator. That's where the biggest and most famous money was. But they also knew where Chumlig was going with this. She looked around the classroom, nodding that she knew they knew. "Alas, you all intend to be top agents, don't you?"

"It's what some of us will be." That was one of the Adult Ed students. Winston Blount was old enough to be Juan's great-grandfather. When Blount had a bad day he liked to liven things up by harassing Ms. Chumlig.

The Search and Analysis instructor smiled back. "It's about as likely as being a major league baseball star. The pure 'coordinating agent' is a rare type, Dean Blount."

"Some of us must be the administrators."

"Oh." Chumlig looked kind of sad for a moment, like she was figuring out how to pass on bad news. "Administration has changed a lot, Dean Blount."

Winston Blount sat back in his chair. "Okay. So we have to learn some new tricks."

"Yes." Ms. Chumlig looked out over the class. "That's an important point. This class is about search and analysis, the heart of the economy. We obviously need search and analysis as consumers. In almost all modern jobs, search and analysis are how we make our living. But, in the end, we must also know something about something."

"Meaning those courses we got C's in, right?" That was a voice from the peanut gallery, probably someone who was physically truant.

Chumlig sighed. "Yes. Don't let those skills die. You've been exposed to them. Use them. Improve on them. You can do it with a special form of preanalysis that I call 'study.'"

One of the students actually held up a hand. She was that old.

"Yes, Dr. Xiang?"

"I know you are correct. But — " The woman glanced around the room. She looked about Chumlig's age, not nearly as old as Winston Blount. But there was kind of a frightened look in her eyes. "But some people are better than others. I'm not as sharp as I once was. Or maybe others are just sharper… What happens if we try our hardest, and it just isn't good enough?"

Chumlig hesitated. How will she answer this ! thought Juan. It was the real question. "That's a problem that affects everyone, Dr. Xiang. Providence gives each of us our hand to play. In your case, you've got a new deal and a new start on life." Her look took in the rest of the class. "Some of you think your hand in life is all deuces and treys." At the front of the room were some really dedicated students, not much older than Juan. They were wearing, but they had no clothes sense and had never learned ensemble coding. As Chumlig spoke, you could see their fingers tapping away, searching on "deuces" and "treys."

"But I have a theory of life," said Chumlig, "and it is straight out of gaming: There is always an angle . You, each of you, have some special wild cards. Play with them. Find out what makes you different and better. Because it is there, if only you can find it. And once you do, you'll be able to contribute answers to others and others will be willing to contribute back to you. In short, synthetic serendipity doesn't just happen. By golly, you must create it."

She hesitated, staring at invisible class notes, and her voice dropped down from oratory. "So much for the big picture. Today, we're going to talk about morphing answerboard solutions. As usual, we're looking to ask the right questions."

Juan liked to sit by the outer wall, especially when the classroom was on the third floor. You could feel the wall sway gently back and forth as the building kept its balance. That sort of thing made his ma real nervous. "One second of system failure and everything will fall apart!" she had complained at a PTA meeting. On the other hand, house-of-cards construction was cheap — and it could handle a big earthquake almost as easily as it did the morning breeze.

He leaned away from the wall and listened to Chumlig. That was why the school made you show up in person for most classes; you had to pay a little bit of attention just because you were trapped in a real room with a real instructor. Chumlig's lecture graphics floated in the air above them. She had the class's attention; there was a minimum of insolent graffiti nibbling at the edges of her imagery.

And for a while, Juan paid attention, too. He really did. Answerboards could generate solid results, usually for zero cost. There was no affiliation, just kindred minds batting problems around. But what if you weren't a kindred mind? Say you were on a genetics board. If you thought transcription was a type of translation, it could take you months to get anywhere.

So Juan tuned her out and wandered from viewpoint to viewpoint around the room. Some were from students who'd set their viewpoints public. Most were just random cams. He browsed Big Lizard's task document as he paused between hops. In fact, the Lizard was interested in more than just the old farts. Some ordinary students made the list, too. This affiliance must be as wide as the California Lottery.

He started some background checks. Like most kids, he kept lots of stuff saved on his wearable. He could run a search like this very close to his vest. He didn't route to the outside world except when he could use a site that Chumlig was talking about. She was real good at nailing the mentally truant. But Juan was good at ensemble coding, driving his wearable with little gesture cues and eye-pointer menus. As her gaze passed over him, he nodded brightly and replayed the last few seconds of her talk.

As for the old students… competent retreads would never be here; they'd be rich and famous, the people who owned most of the real world. The ones in Adult Education were the has-beens. These people trickled into Fairmont all through the semester. The oldfolks hospitals refused to batch them up for the beginning of classes. They claimed that senior citizens were "socially mature," able to handle the jumble of a midsemester entrance.

Juan went from face to face, matching against public records: Winston Blount. The guy was a saggy mess. Retread medicine was such a crapshoot. Some things it could cure, others it couldn't. And what worked was different from person to person. Winston Blount had not been a total winner.

Just now the old guy was squinting intensely, trying to follow Chumlig's answerboard example. He had been in several of Juan's classes. Juan couldn't see the guy's med records, but he guessed that his mind was mostly okay; he was as sharp as some of the kids in class. And once upon a time he had been an important player at UCSD. Once upon a time.

Okay, put him on the "of interest" list.

And then there was Xiu Xiang. PhD physics, PhD electrical engineering; 2010 Winner of the President's Medal for Secure Computation. Overall the hotstuff index on her was almost Nobel-quality. Dr. Xiang sat hunched over, looking at the table in front of her. She was trying to keep up on a view-page ! Poor lady. But for sure she would have connections.

Chumlig was still going on about how to morph results into new questions, oblivious of Juan's truancy.

Who's next? Robert Gu. For a moment, Juan thought he had the wrong viewpoint. He sneaked a glance to his right, toward where the Adult Education crocks hung out. Robert Gu, PhD literature. A poet. He was sitting with the crocks, but he looked about seventeen years old! Juan brought his apparent attention back to Ms. Chumlig and inspected the new arrival close up. Gu was slender, almost scrawny, and tall. His skin was smooth and unblemished. But he looked like he was sweating. Juan risked a peek at outside medical references. Aha ! Symptoms of the Venn-Kurasawa treatment. Dr. Robert Gu was a lucky man, the one in a thousand who fully responded to that piece of retread magic. On the other hand, it looked to Juan like the guy had run out of luck after that. He was fully unpingable. There was a crumpled piece of view-page on his desk, but he wasn't using it. Years ago, this guy had been more famous than Xiu Xiang, but he was an even bigger loser now… What was "Deconstructive Revisionism" anyway? Oh. Definitely not something on the Big Lizard's list. Juan slid the name into the trashcan. But wait, he hadn't checked out Gu's family connections. He queried — and suddenly there was silent messaging hanging in letters of silent flame all across his vision:

Chumlig — > Orozco: You have all day to play games, Juan! If you won't pay attention here, you can darn well take this course over.

Orozco — > Chumlig: Sorry. Sorry! He suspended his question queue and dropped the external session. At the same time, he played back the last few minutes of her talk, desperately trying to summarize. Most times, Chumlig just asked embarrassing questions; this was the first she'd sminged him with a threat.

And the amazing thing was, she'd done it in a short pause, when everyone else thought she was just looking at her notes. Juan eyed her with new respect.

"You were A little hard on the boy, don't you think?" Rabbit was trying out new imagery today, this based on classic Alice in Wonderland illustrations, complete with engraving lines. The effect was fully silly on a three-dimensional body.

Big Lizard did not seem impressed. "You don't belong down here. Juan is my direct affiliate, not yours."

"A bit overly sensitive, aren't you? I'm simply spot-checking the depths of my affiliance."

"Well, stay out. Juan needs this class."

"Of course I share your charitable motives." The rabbit gave the lizard his most dishonest leer. "But you cut him off just when he was looking at someone especially interesting to me. I have provided you with a most excellent affiliance. If you want my continued support, you must cooperate."

"Listen you! I want the boy to reach out for himself, but I don't want him to be hurt." Lizard's voice trailed off, and Rabbit wondered if Chumlig was finally having second thoughts. Not that it mattered. Rabbit was having fun, spreading out across the Southern California social scene. Sooner or later, he would figure out what this job was all about.

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