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expenses are preter-vicious. The gear alone, not to mention transport And Com execs, they’re the only ones who can pay enough. Mes dieux, those scuzzin’ Commies have money to spare!”
    Jin had touched a sore point. I was always trying to justify my livelihood to myself, and once I got started, I just blundered on, forgetting that Jin was a Commie, too. “Those fat-ass execs hole up in their secure domes calculating their profits, while their so-called ‘protected workers’ sweat underground. Protected, my eye! Protes are no better than serfs. My parents were protes. The Commies say they take care of their protes. Free air, housing, and meds. But have you ever seen an underground factory?”
    “You take the Com money to get even,” Jin said.
    “Yes! That’s it exactly!”
    How had he guessed? I’d never explained that rationale to anyone but Luc. Taking money from the scuzzin’ Commies was my brand of revenge.
    “You’re a gall to the system, Jolie. Have you read about trees?”
    “Huh?”
    “Trees.” Jin smiled. I could tell he liked to explain stuff. He should have been a teacher. “Long ago, tall thick plants called trees covered large areas of Earth’s surface. Some trees grew over thirty meters high, can you imagine? And very strong. But tiny insects nested inside their huge bodies and sucked life out of them. The homes these insects made in the trees were called galls.”
    I had to think about that for a while.
    Jin’s eyes shifted to the ceiling, then to his hands folded on the table. He’d stopped smiling. He went on, in a darker tone. “Yes, Jolie, I have seen underground factories. My father owns quite a number of them. In Deep-Tokyo, I saw a three-year-old girl whose skin had turned gray from lack of light It’s vile, the way we live now. The whole situation is wrong. But what’s to be done? If we overthrow this system, the next one may be worse.”
    He shoved his chair back from the table and stared toward the wall. I knew he wasn’t studying the messages posted on the clinic bulletin board. His fists knotted in his lap. “You think I’m rationalizing,” he said. “Perhaps you think I should oppose my father and stop what he’s doing?”
    Actually, the thought hadn’t crossed my mind, but I didn’t interrupt. Jin didn’t seem to expect an answer.
    “Perhaps I could stop him somehow. But others would step into his place. Nothing would change. I wish I knew the right course to take. Believe me, I would give anything to know.”
    When the cyberdoctor finally called, sometime after midnight, to tell us Luc was out of danger, Jin and I were both too keyed up to sleep. So we went for a walk in the Sydney Subterrain. Sydney was brighter and flimsier man Paris in those days. The patchwork market stalls wobbled and swayed as if they wouldn’t last out the week. Southern businesses were mostly small-time affairs run by co-ops and health churches. Unlike the Commies, southerners didn’t computer-analyze every monetary unit.
    The thing about Sydney was, along with the claptrap stalls came plenty of open public spaces with lightwells to the surface. You saw colorful graffiti and laser shows and street performers. Juice bars filled the air with sugary aromas. And people strolled. That’s it. They actually strolled. Many of them recognized Jin that night. They pointed and followed us, and some came up to talk. Jin wore a special smart ring on his little finger just for signing autographs. He seemed unfazed by the attention.
    Jin wanted to hear music, but he couldn’t decide what kind. We peeked into several cabarets, and I think we would have wandered all night discussing pros and cons if I hadn’t finally picked one at random and shoved him inside. Bien sûr, he took it with a laugh. And the place was nice. A band of real musicians was playing, and a live human waitress came to take our order. We drank beer, and Jin analyzed the music. He should have been a professor, the way he talked. He