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together thoughts which are neither so predictable as to be boring nor so random as to be nonsensical."
    "So he just needs your good taste?" Alice was smiling warmly. " I taste pretty good, you know."
    Vernor knelt by her chair and began kissing her open face.
     

Chapter 3: Alice Swims
    Vernor moved in with Alice and began working with the Angels. Once a week he would go in for brain interlock with Phizwhiz. The next few days would be spent in trying to remember what had happened, and then he would start preparing for the next session.
    As far as Phizwhiz was concerned, no preparation on Vernor's part was necessary—all that was needed from Vernor was his ability to form thoughts. Vernor, however, liked to try to use the sessions to work on his math and science.
    The first few times he went in to the EM building, he had prepared a mental structure of facts and speculation, a perfectly built fire awaiting the kindling sparks of ZZ-74 and brain interlock. Since, however, he remembered so little of these mental conflagrations, Vernor's preparations became increasingly desultory.
    At first he spent most of his extra time doing things with Alice . . . going to museums, youth orgies, outdoor Hollows, or just wandering around the City . . . but as the months wore on he began spending the larger part of his time getting high at the Angels' hang-out, Waxy's Travel Lounge.
    One place Alice loved to go was to the City's Inquarium. On the six-month anniversary of their meeting, Vernor pulled himself together and took her there. Their relationship had begun slowly to erode, and it seemed important to have a good time on this outing.
    They paid at the Inquarium's entrance and left their clothes in the dressing room. Vernor wore rented swimfins, but Alice had her own custom-made fins, yellow with red stripes and long trailing edges.
    "I want to look like a guppy," Alice explained, fastening yellow and red streamers to herself. Mesmerized, Vernor reached towards the streamers.
    "No, no ," Alice said, dancing away and flipping into the tank. Vernor jumped in after. The Inquarium was a huge tank, some thirty feet deep and three hundred feet square. The tank was filled with salt water and stocked with fish of every type and description. It was possible to rest on the bottom of the tank watching the fish and dallying with your mermaid, since breathing masks were bubbling at the ends of their hoses all over the tank's bottom.
    Under the water Vernor looked around. His vision was clear, as he was wearing special full-eye contact lenses. The breathing masks were like a field of dandelions gone to seed, far below him. Alice was kicking down past a large grouper and through a school of parrot-fish. The streamers from her body flowed back like fins, luring Vernor closer, delicately tugging at her in a way that he longed to emulate.
    Before he could catch up with her, down at the bottom with the air masks, he realized hadn't taken a big enough breath. He shot up to the surface, gasped a full lungful and dove again.
    Without Alice nearby, Vernor paid more attention to the full tank's appearance. It was as if he had shrunk to a few inches in size and jumped into a twenty-gallon home aquarium. There were kelp plants the size of trees. Dolphins whizzed to and fro, filling Vernor's ears with their squeaks and clicks. Schools of smaller fish darted and wheeled like multi-celled organisms. A large, pug-nosed fish seemed rather too interested in Vernor's swim fins.
    With a last mighty kick, he scared off the fish and reached the bottom. He grabbed a foaming air mask and pressed it to his face. Pure oxygen with perhaps a hint of nitrous oxide. Exhilarating! Hanging on to a convenient coral branch, Vernor looked around for Alice.
    Soon he was rewarded with the sight of yellow and red swirls behind a nearby reef. He pushed off and swam over to find lovely Alice lazing there, her breasts floating, and a school of fishies darting in her lap. She took a hit