"Well, if you really want to find your dog, little missy," drawled Jimmy, "a Fat-Head is what you want."

      He smirked down at Deena, not missing a beat as he rubbed RechargaWax into the bioluminescent skin of his car. The audience of neighborhood kids, drawn out of their late-afternoon boredom to admire the infamous Jimmy and his rod, giggled and elbowed each other.

      Deena could have punched Jimmy's face in for calling her "missy" in front of the hoodies. He was only, what? three, four years older than her? where did he get that shit? Drops out of high school, sells a little black-market baloney boosted from the Factory, rods himself up a cheap-ass electric buggy, and thinks that makes him some kind of Wheel . . .

      She clenched her jaw to stifle her anger. Concentrate on Leila, she told herself. To get her dog back, she'd be willing to do much worse than talk to Jimmy. Though she'd been expecting the small-timer to spin a line about dog thieves supplying gene-mills, not this business about Fat-Heads.

      "Oh ... kay," she said, keeping her voice cool. "Why a Fat-Head?"

      "Yeah," piped up Tate from the gaggle of kids, "you mess with any of them Freaks, you might catch what they got." He cast a scornful glance at Deena's scruffy tomboy body. "If you haven't already." The other kids snorted and poked each other as if this was a terrific joke.

      She clenched her jaw again, wincing as the motion gave her a shot of what she'd come to think of as her Angry Pain. She glared at Tate, her hands balling into fists. The boy turned red and looked away.

      Jimmy stopped rubbing at lurid fiberglass for a moment, and gave Tate a withering look of his own. "What, you mean you actually believe all that pin-headed talk on the Networks about the Bio-Freaks being contagious? Well then, you're a fool twice over, because you're cutting yourself off from some potentially useful connections. Lucrative, even, if you know what I mean."

      He gave the car an extra love-wipe over the electrical power intake plug, around which he had painted a set of bright-red female lips. The kids nodded, striving to show their worldliness--all except Tate, who'd gone beet-red to the tips of his ears.

      "But how's a Freak supposed to help find my dog?" Deena persisted.

      "Not just any Freak, missy," said Jimmy, his eyes scanning up and down her body in a way that made her feel dirty all over. "S'gotta be a Fat-Head. I mean, did you ever stop to think what-all those Fat-Heads got in those big ol' heads of theirs? It ain't sand, that's for sure. Why, those craniums are just teeming with brains--upwards of twice what a normal person's got. And not just any old garden-variety brains either. In fact . . ." and here he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial mutter, "the joke's going round that the real reason everyone hates the Bio-Freaks so much is because the ugly bastards can tell who's cheating on their wives and shit."

      The neighborhood kids, except for Tate, looked impressed.

      "I've heard that," Deena said, "about Bio-Freaks reading minds and all, but I always thought it was just more bullshit."

      Tate spoke in a stage-whisper: "Man, can you just see her going up to a Freak and . . . ?" She turned to find him innocently studying the sky.

      "Of course, people who know better," Jimmy smirked on, "know that not all Bio-Freaks can read minds. And there may be some that are better at it than the Fat-Heads, I couldn't say. After all, some of 'em are so messed-up the Institute has taken them off the street and locked them up. But for your purposes, Missy, a Fat-Head will do just fine. And there's even a few of them right handy around here."

      Deena considered. "Well, yeah, there's old Big-Head Alice, comes down from the Settlement almost every night to drink at the Shadyside Tap. I could catch up with her there. But what do I say to her?"

      "Hell, missy, you say 'where's my dog,' what do you think?" Jimmy laughed, eyeing her in that skeevy way again.

      "Ooooh, Deena's gonna do it! She's really gonna go talk to a Freak!" Tate's voice climbed, broke, turned into a treble squawk. "And in the Shadyside? You're gonna get in so much trouble!"

      That did it. Deena bowled through the other kids and jumped Tate, knocking him to the ground and pinning him there. No challenge at all; she'd had to do it to him, and to the other kids, many times before.

      "I'm only going to get in trouble," she hissed into Tate's face through clenched and aching teeth, "if certain sleazy jerks go and tattle on me like the little incubator-babies they are. And if they do I'll know who the hell they are, and I'll come and beat the living shit out of them, won't I?"

      "Let me up," said Tate, eyes averted.

      "Swear you won't tell."

      "I swear. Let me up."

      She took her knee from his stomach and her hands from his wrists, and stood. He immediately rolled to his feet and dashed away to the other side of the street. "Fuck you, Deena," he shrieked from his place of safety, "I'm telling that you knocked me down!"

      She bent down to grab some gravel from the gutter, but by the time she'd straightened up Tate was well out of range, disappearing down an alley between two of the dingy prefab cottages that made up most everything in town that wasn't the Factory.

      Jimmy let off a bark of laughter, and winked at Deena so that she almost threw the gravel at him instead. He turned his back, still laughing, and resumed polishing his car. The other kids resumed watching him, muttering amongst themselves and casting the occasional furtive glance at her.

      Deena turned away, massaging her still-aching jaw. Maybe one of those kids had taken her dog after all. They'd do anything to spite her, just because she hadn't been born here, and dared to have some backbone, and refused to be a little wuss like the girls who'd lived here all their lives and who would probably get married and die here . . .

      She waited for the Angry Pain to hit again. What struck her instead was such a wave of desolation that she had to swallow hard to keep down a sob. She hurried away, determined not to give the others the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

      The sun was just touching the smog-bound horizon as Deena turned into her street. It cast a gory red light on everything, giving the straggly lawns and the aging cottages the brief illusion of vitality. A mile off to her right, the Factory thrust up from the midst of the town of bloodied houses, a sprawling complex of steel-and-cinderblock buildings ringed by razor-wire fence and perpetually-burning floodlights. Huge lettering glared from the side of the biggest building: "Bio-Dynamic Industries: Feeding America Through Modern Technology." A corporate logo flanking the slogan depicted an ear of corn with a double helix where its kernels should be. The Factory's main exhaust stacks were belching, as they did around the clock, the smoke whose rancid stench hung everywhere over the town. The Town Stink, everyone called it, as if it were official like the Town Hall.

      Deena remembered when she'd first smelled the Stink, some three years ago now. She'd been riding for hours, wedged into the back seat of her family's battered old car amidst the bags of clothes and boxes of dishes, all that was left of their old household. Leila was jammed between her legs, big long Shepherd-mix head resting on her thigh, brushy tail now and then attempting a thump against her shins. Up in the front seat, her father sat grim and too-silent behind the wheel, while her mother chattered with forced gaiety about all the things they would do with all the money the two of them would surely make at their new jobs. And then the Town Stink rolled in over them, a miasma of ill omen, and Leila whined and nuzzled her head all the more firmly into Deena's thigh, and Deena concentrated on stroking the dog's head and comforting her, just as Leila and Deena had comforted each other so many times since then . . .

      Deena wiped tears with an impatient gesture.

      She crossed a front yard with even more bare dirt than the others, and slammed through the rickety screen door into the house. Inside, the Stink was partly displaced by the smells of cooking--company surplus food, SpeediGreens and TVP sausage, the odors hanging acrid in the air.

      Her dad slumped on the living room couch, the video blaring in his work-dulled face and glinting off the half-empty quart bottle of neobeer on the coffee table. Some Limbaughite on the tube was intoning: "Now of course, the National Biotechnology Institute claims that the Bio-Freaks are not the result of some secret experiment, but how are we the public supposed to know that's true? I mean, we've had bio-engineered products on the nation's tables and in the nation's bloodstream for decades now without incident, so you can't blame the epidemic on that . . ." Dad's hand moved on the remote as if independent from the rest of his body, and the strident voice was replaced by another, softer one, singing the praises of easy payment plans. He neither looked at or spoke to Deena, and she passed without speaking to him.

      In the kitchen her mom trudged between fridge and stove with the weary step that came of too many shifts tending Factory vats. She slammed a pot down, louder than necessary. "Oh, so her Royal Highness decides to grace us with her presence for a change. And just where the hell have you been all this time, young lady? Not at school, according to the e-mail. How long you think you're gonna get away with that crap before they sling your lazy butt out of that school for good, huh? Not that you give a damn ..." As usual, the tone was harsh, but she did not dare to turn and look Deena in the eye.

      Deena began and then bit back a retort about hunting for Leila--fat lot either of them cared, just one less mouth to feed as far as they were concerned. Instead, she turned without a word, and descended the basement stairs. The half-hearted scolding trailed off behind her into a sound between a whine and a sigh.

      Deena had built this bedroom in a corner of the daylight basement two years ago, after tiring of trying to sleep in a corner of her parents' bedroom. She'd hauled down all the second-hand furniture and plyplast panels herself, and seen to it that the door locked tight. She locked it now, knelt to pull the cracked cover-plate from the electrical outlet under her desk, and fished out her money stash.

      Today was Tuesday. Tuesday afternoons all the disableds, from Bio-Freaks to plant casualties, got their government support checks. So the chances were good that Big-Head Alice would be drinking in the Shadyside Tap tonight. Deena had never been in any tavern before, let alone venturing into one after a Freak, but tonight was as good a night as any to start.

      There were only two vehicles pulled up in front of the Shadyside, both of them converted gasoline pickups whose rusting fenders showed they were real steel. The tavern itself didn't look all that much better--yet another prefab box of a building, flickering neon and holos in its windows reading "Bud" and "Slots" and "Open."

      Deena pushed her way through the door, tensing against any whistles or catcalls that might rain down on her. But the laborer seated at the bar was immersed in the megabucks drawing on the overhead TV, and the bartender studiously ignored her. That left just the one figure seated in the booth in the corner, facing away from the front door. The one whose massive head was not in the least camouflaged by the long black hair spilling down her back.

      Big-head Alice. Had to be.

      Deena felt a sudden pang of fear.

      She forced herself to walk slowly towards that back booth. The figure didn't stir, didn't even seem to breath. If Alice could read minds, shouldn't she have felt Deena's approach? Maybe she was ignoring Deena, hoping she'd go away and not bother her. Maybe this was all a stupid idea. Maybe Jimmy had been feeding her a line of bullshit just to see if she'd go along with it. Though, as she said, Jimmy wasn't the first she'd heard such stories from. But maybe it all was bullshit, and she'd never see her dog again, and she'd be left to face this hateful town totally on her own, nothing left to buffer the awfulness of it all--

      She blinked. She was at the booth already, standing just about even with Alice's shoulder, looking down at much-washed, neatly-pressed chambray. She found her eyes following the sleeve, down to the Institute-issued ID bracelet worn by all "bio-pathology syndrome victims," and beyond to the hand on the table, big-tendoned for a woman's, wrapped around a mug of neobeer with a straw in it. (Beer through a straw? she wondered.) Then over to the other hand, also resting on the table, a cigarette jammed between the first and second fingers; the huge tail of ash hanging from the burning tip threatening to dust the knuckles of its oblivious holder; and just beyond the hand, the handle of a plasteel cane hooked over the table's edge. Then back up to Alice's astonishing head, the size of a basketball at the very least, hunched down into the cervical collar she wore around her neck. Deena couldn't see her eyes from this angle, but she imagined they must be closed. It was as if Alice were meditating, or perhaps praying over that beer. Or maybe she was drunk. Or asleep.

      In any case, it didn't look like Alice was going to start the conversation.

      Deena cleared her throat. "Um, excuse me . . ."

      The head came up--slowly, slowly, so like a seldom-used tool pivoting on a rusty joint that Deena could swear she heard a squeak--and then turned slowly, slowly around till the face looked up at Deena.

      Their eyes met.

      Deena had only ever seen Alice from afar, leaning heavily on her cane as she walked along the shoulder of the two-lane highway between the settlement and the tavern. She had never gotten this close a look at Alice's face before, and she had to fight to not do something impolite like gasping or staring. Especially when it struck her--cripes, you know what Alice's face looked like? That fancy nutcracker doll that her grandmother had bought her one Christmas, when she took Deena to see the ballet, years and years ago when Deena was five--god, she hadn't thought about that in ages, and where was that doll now? lost? broken? like all the pretty things from those happier times?--but the doll had looked just like Alice, not only because of the outsize head and the glossy black hair, but also the mouth, so wide it looked like it could split the head in half if it opened too far, and the huge round eyes that stared and stared, like Alice was staring at her right now, big golden irises, just a glimpse of whites around the edges, pupils like huge black pools that pulled her in and in, till Deena felt like she was toppling into those pools, falling deeper and deeper, or that those pools were falling into her somehow, no other way of describing this feeling now, of Alice's eyes inside her, seeing inside, seeing what she was thinking and feeling . . . and oh god, you can read my mind, can't you, Alice? you're reading it right now; and what must you think of me comparing you to a nutcracker dolls? let alone barging in to pester you about something as pathetic as my poor lost dog . . .

      "Sit down," said Alice.

      "Wh-what?" Deena started.

      "Sit. There." Alice gestured at the seat across from her with the cigarette hand, spilling the ash on the table. "Hurts my neck to look up at you." The wide mouth's lips pulled up and back slightly. A smile.

      Deena looked around the bar; the other two occupants went on about their business all unawares. She slid across the elderly vinyl seat facing Alice, and tried to figure out what to do with her own face.

      "Interesting you should think of that nutcracker," said Alice in a neobeer-warmed drawl, lids drooping over the big golden eyes as she took a drag on the remains of her cigarette. "You know how the story goes, too--how the nutcracker is actually a handsome prince, trapped in that form by a curse, until a young maiden happens along who would love him despite his looks." She smiled again, and took a sip of her beer through the straw. "It was some slight consolation to me, that story, right after I changed, when there wasn't a whole lot of consolation to come by. But I haven't run into too many other people, Freak or Normal, who'd heard of it."

      "So it didn't offend you. I--I'm glad." Her own head felt strange, about three meters thick.

      "No, you didn't offend me," Alice said softly, drawing in the ashes on the table with a forefinger. "And even if you had, well, I learned a long time ago to tell the difference between those Normals who offended by accident, because they just didn't know any better, and those who did so with malice of forethought. You want a Coke or something? You look a little pale. Happens, when you're not used to being read."

      "No . . . no thanks. It did feel weird. But not bad weird, actually. Um. Jesus, this is awkward. So, you know why I came over to bother you."

      "Leila. Pretty name for a dog. You know, there's a fairy-tale about that name, too . . . but I go on about such things way too much, especially when I've had a few, as anybody who knows me will warn you." Alice tilted her head forward to take another sip of her beer thought the straw, wincing slightly. Aha, that's why the straw, Deena realized, and the cervical collar for that matter. It had never dawned on her, the hazards of living with a head that big.

      "But I'm not the best person for doing the kind of searching you need," Alice continued. "The guy you want is back at the Settlement--he doesn't care to risk mingling with the Normals. You want to come ask him?"

      Go into the Settlement? What kind of shit would she catch for that? . . . Oh, screw them. What did anyone's opinion matter anyhow?

      And besides, she didn't quite understand why but suddenly she wanted to see the inside of the Settlement. And she wanted to see Alice smile some more, and maybe look at her that way--read her--again.

      Alice was smiling at her now. "You're a good kid," she said.

      A good kid. She swallowed hard. She hadn't been called that in a long time.