Chapter Seventeen - Douglas Hooker on Smudge

Shoving down the festering road of Smudge, Ruminating about what happened to the real Krim, and other sordid stuff, while off hand mapping that Supergirls would have a squat near Ahmet's kiosk to make it easy.

Easy to capture, de-spermatise, and leave the Gennie, without interrupting traffic.

It had to happen here, on Smudge. Had to be a set up, with it's own stage. Had to be near Ahmet, but off the path.

Still can't grok the DNA in the key...can't match why it's so important. He's a Eugenic, his DNA is just as good as his Daddy's. I don't know, shouldn't be making uneducated guesses; doesn't match my Phid. But it is a question; valid.

I'd been up and down the path to Ahmet over fifty times, never really mapped the buildings on the side. Now I did.

Now I saw the warehouse. It seemed a likely squat. My eyes adjusted to grok Supergirls.

I had been doing a kind of daily surveillance because I knew. I knew that any time off now it was gonna happen.

It was about three days, on and off doing my eyeball. When I saw that squad, I knew they were Super fems. I saw them moving and I knew.

Count Down.

I posed by a kiosk waiting...upthumbing myself for knowing that those tall figures
in ratty cloaks were Supergirls.

Yeah, I recall Miss Rude the day before I invested three brain cells into playing a Gennie.

I didn't have much time for a retrospective, for here comes a Superboy, and here come Supergals, and yes, folks, 1 + 1 = 2.

As I make my step, there's a little Norm just in front of me, firing a stunner at the Supergirls.

This wasn't in the script.

I pose a few secs, taking it in, then make the trod.

Superboy had been zapped with probably the same kind of stunner the Norm
was using.

I played Samaritan, half carried the Gennie across the road into a room at a rival flop house. The little Norm, using the name 'Pete', 'assisted' me.

I blocked her, cause she was out of my grid. Guess she grokked it, because once we got the Gennie lucid, she gave him a message for another Sup and split..

In a short he was functioning, and I got him up and out to Ahmet.
I demanded the key Ahmet didn't talk about payment.

I helped Superboy to the pier and we sat on the gang plank drinking water.

Then he asked Why?

I didn't think I should output truth and he was so dizzy he probably matched me a Eugenic. I got up my handheld, read;

Extract from the Psuedopedia; your source of the best guesses.

"Steel, a planet in the Aurigae Sector, four Light
years from Smendle's Planet, (Smudge) occupied
by Eugenics from Dalmar sometime in the late
twentyfifth century."

"It is not possible to accurately determine the date,
nor be certain the colonists were from Dalmar, as
there is no contact between Steel and..."

"Anecdotal evidence obtained....reports that it
appears the radiation on Steel is of such level
as to destroy the virility of sperm in male
Eugenics. As the ability to sexually reproduce
is vital for this sub-species, as Eugenics who
can not reproduce are executed as wastes of
resources, females, who seem unaffected, have
established a protocol of sexual enticement
and rape of non-Steel Eugenic males..."

I stopped reading and in my best Gennie speech told him that my key had been
stolen but it was my DNA, not my families; putting out the bait.

"I should not have lain with that woman," he replied in Gennie style.

"On Tellur?" I ask.

"Yi, was there," and he went to explain why and when, and maybe it was the same woman who'd beguiled me. Only I got a nice slam, I didn't lose the family heirloom.

I left him a few minutes later, figuring soon he'd notice I wasn't a Eugenic.

As I made it to my flophouse I mused on learning that Smudge had an actual name.

Somehow I found it hysterically funny.

All of it.

The Steel fems, the Gennie, the freaky little fem, Ahmet, me, the key....it was funny,
in a Smudge kind of way..