The Duke of Uranium

As soon as we're legally adults—which is what, now?"

"About two hours. They have to verify that we went to Fwidya's last class."

"In two hours, then, we won't be children and the machines won't be offended by our bad behavior, and won't send complaints to our folks. I'm going to miss that. You should have seen Uncle Sib's face the time that Myx and I got caught—uh, I mean Sesh and I got caught—" "Never mind, we're almost there," Dujuv said. "I think I heard this story already."

Jak thought, That was toktru stupid. Dujuv had had a crush halfway to forever on Myxenna Bonxiao, and would have gladly spent all his time gazing into her eyes and adoring her. Myxenna, for her part, was happy to have Dujuv's attention; the trouble was that she was also happy to have the attention of most of the heets she knew, and generally got it. Dujuv was loyal and generous except when he was insane, and Jak had just pushed the insane button.

Dujuv was a panth, and the genies had given the panths singing-on fast reflexes, intense attention, quick thinking, and great burst strength. He was Jak's toktru tove, and had always been, but now he was hurting. If he lost his temper at Jak. . . well, an unmodified human against a panth was like a kitten against a bear.

After a minute or so of brooding, Dujuv's naturally energetic disposition won out. "Hey, so what are we going to do tonight besides celebrate?" "You need more to do?"

"Well, we'll have a meal and go somewhere for some fun, but it seems like we ought to do more. You don't get your feets and escape from gen school every day. We could dance, or brawl, or maybe just go climb something."

"Let's not climb another light shaft, though, eh?" That particular stunt had gotten them six days' house arrest last year. The light shafts mixed and carried the bright glow of the sunlight and the actinic blaze of the plasma around the black hole at the heart of the Hive, distributing it to skylights, sconces, and lamps throughout the gigantic space station. They ran out radially from the central black hole space to openings on the surface. In the shafts themselves, many thousands of little catchers -fiber optic-filled pipes with a mirror at the end, like one end of a periscope-jutted into the bright light, and it had occurred to Dujuv that if they got in through a service entrance, the catchers might furnish the hand and footholds for a good long climb. Since the sperical shell forming the Hive from the mirrored face of the black hole enclosure at the center to the outer surface covered with silvery pipes and domes, was about 1250 km thick, they were never going to be able to climb the whole way, but "We can sure see some interesting spaces and do some interesting technical stuff," Dujuv had said. "We can do it up toward the surface, in low gravity, so it's more skill and less strength. Come on, Jak, it will be fun."

Unfortunately, small bends and forces in an optical tube cause big distortions in the light coming out of it; furthermore, the boys had forgotten that their shadows would be cast for very long distances along the tubes. All over one big cone-shaped sector of the Hive, lights bounced and flickered, odd beams swept out from the sides of sconces and chandeliers, and many lights simply went out.