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Show Anting Alone pa g e 16o whirrs, and tried to distract his attention from what he'd just heard. (Axelrad was still swooning from the sounds, hadn't even begun considering the content, the words.) Calling him Shorty, they enlisted his help in zipping shut the Big Fucking Mystery Tent flap and padlocking the giant zipper to the Big Fucking Mystery Tentpole. Of course Axelrad peeked in. In the space of the single second it took for the zipper to close off his view of the tent's green gloom forever, he saw a single word glowing on a screen. This word made him so spontaneously sick to his stomach that he had to go find a genuine bush to puke behind and a realrock to collapse on. "You two go on without me," he croaked. The two false Companions exchanged glances fraught with robot anxiety and quickly melted into the milling crowd. Axelrad thought he saw them disappear into the big lean-to that gave access to the tunnels. He knew he'd never see or hear them again. Sort it out now. The glowing word was a five letter acronym. Holy Christ no. It was on a screen. A computer screen? How power computers when the pitiful ranks of bicycle generators behind the infirmary tent are already way overworked? Maybe computers were why they were overworked. Of course, none of the Companions complained about generator duty. They liked to wear three-piece suits and ride the generators for hours, in pairs, two by two, with strange scripture-like books in their pockets. Axelrad had no suit of his own except for his Bar Mitzvah suit, which still fit; but he bowed to cere- |