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me." The nurse thumbed the elevator call button again, glancing up at the blank number panel above the doors. Like a lot of things in the hospital, it didn't work, or never had. "Just meat on major life support, far as I'm concerned." Grinding noises echoed in the shaft, and the elevator doors finally drew open, revealing a space littered with broken syringes and scraps of red-soaked bandages. "Not my business." He pushed the equipment cart in, stepped behind it, glass crunching under his feet, turned, and hit another button. "And guess what -- it's not your business, either." Another grind as the doors slid toward each other.
    The guy with all the questions reached out, his white-knuckled hand grabbing the dented stainless steel of one door, not just stopping it, but forcing it back into its vertical slot. He leaned inside the elevator, glare alone fierce enough to back the nurse and the equipment cart into the corner. Then he smiled again.
    "You're right." He nodded slowly, pleasantly. "It's not any of my business at all. You just remember that." He let go of the door and stepped back. He was still smiling when the doors closed all the way and the elevator started down.
    Talk about creepy -- the nurse pushed himself away from the equipment cart. The hospital administration would hire just about anybody, it seemed.

    Colonel Fuzzy and Squeaker Hussar marched across the sideways world, carrying their fretful burden with them.
    "Careful -- you're gonna drop me!" Sebastian wrapped the crook of his arm tighter around the colonel's neck. In thin starlight, steel and Teflon showed through where the teddy bear's brown woolly coat had worn away. "C'mon, Calm. I put you together better'n this!"
    Shiny button eyes looked back around at Sebastian; the raggedy uniformed teddy bear snarled, neck twisted, chrome fangs revealed in its snub muzzle. He knew that Colonel Fuzzy always got crotchety when its gut-load of batteries started to run down. Sure better've been some fresh ones in this drop , he worried. It would be tricky enough to deactivate the teddy bear -- he'd long ago had to wire in a self-defense drive, for Colonel Fuzzy to have a chance of surviving out here on the sideways. The colonel had claws longer and sharper than a real bear's, and it wasn't fun trying to get past them to the shutdown relay underneath the faded Napoleonic jacket. It would be even less fun to have the lighter, faster but weaker Squeaker carry him back to their nest.
    As the animated teddy bear plodded forward again, Sebastian hitched himself around in the leather-strapped papoose carrier, looking back the way the three of them had come. This was all new territory, someplace he and the collonel and the hussar had never been before, or at least not since they'd all fled from the canyons of downtown L.A., where the buildings still stood upright. He'd had his own legs back then, otherwise he'd never have made it.
    There were some sections around this zone where the fallen office towers weren't lying perfectly flat on the ground, but were cracked up at various difficult angles. Most of the windows, that at noontime shone up at the hammering sun like smooth, white-hot anvils, had been shatterproof tensile laminates, so there weren't many chances of dropping inside and finding a route through the cockeyed law offices and depopulated bankers' suites. If. Colonel Fuzzy had to be taken off-line, Squeaker wouldn't be much help in getting across that slick, tilted terrain. He didn't relish the prospect of crawling all the way home, using just his own remaining hand and arm to pull himself along.
    Please, dear God , he prayed as he rode on the surly teddy bear's back. Let there be batteries. That's all I'm asking, at least for right now.
    "Sebastian! Over here!" Squeaker's high grackle voice came from beyond rubble and twisted rebar. "I found it, I found it!"
    Without any prodding, the colonel picked up its speed, claws of mitten hands scrabbling at the broken concrete