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                      SEX, LIES, AND NECROMANCY

                                  by

                    Daniel Parsons and Brandi Weed

                    The worst town to be in is one
       in which there is no place to go where you shouldn't be.
                        -- Alexander Woollcott

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Sweeping the beach.  Without a doubt, this was the stupidest job in
the world, and no surprise they had him doing it.  So Ardrin swept the
beach.  Get all the sand smooth and clean and neat.  Weird thing was,
there wasn't any washed-up garbage anywhere; no beer cans or condoms
or anything.  A beer can might give us some idea where we are, he
thought, so they must pick it all up at night or something.
     The beach was already pretty immaculate, so it didn't look like
it was gonna take him too long.  Naturally, the thing to do was to dig
some holes in the sand and smooth 'em down again, or else they'd find
something else stupid for him to do.  That kept him occupied for a
little while; no. 220 drove by in his little golf cart at one point,
but he didn't say anything.
     With some breaks to eat, sleep, and see if there were any good-
looking women on the beach (there weren't), Ardrin was able to waste
the entire day.  It was late afternoon by the time he got to the beach
under the lighthouse.  He was about to dig another hole, clean it up,
and call it too long of a day, when he saw a spot where someone had
already smoothed the sand down.
     Nobody else was on this stupid job.  And it hadn't been done with
a rake anyway.  It looked like somebody did it by hand.  Curious, 
Ardrin dug through the sand with his rake handle, dragging it back and 
forth, until he felt it clank on something near the base of the 
lighthouse.  After some more digging, he found an old can, with a 
big-wheeled bicycle and "Village Beans" on the label.  Inside the can, 
somebody had a bunch of brass gears and levers, all hooked together with 
pieces of string and wire. 
     Ardrin fiddled with it for a while, trying to figure out what it
was, but he couldn't tell.  Didn't see any radio devices or anything.
And why hadn't somebody else picked it up?  They had to go over the
beach with metal detectors or something.  Unless they didn't.  Maybe
there were too many wires underground for a metal detector to do much
good, and you could hide metal things by burying them.
     Sticking the can in his jacket, Ardrin filled in the hole and
raked it down.  Very carefully, he smoothed over the rest of the sand,
keeping an eye out for anything weird.  Beyond the lighthouse, the
sand kind of ended, and you got some rocks with patches of sand in
between them, under some cliffs with caves.  Ardrin dutifully climbed
over the rocks, covering every inch of ground, until he saw another
glint of metal in the sand under one of the caves.
     It was a coin, a gold coin, almost buried in the sand.  Now this
is weird, thought Ardrin.  On one side, it had two shields with a
ribbon twining around them, and a profile of some guy on the other
side, with "Philip Regis" and "ANO 1677" by his face.
     Ardrin put it in his pocket, and returned the rake to no. 220's
cart.  No. 220 was filling out some paperwork.
     "Get some sun?" he asked.
     "Yeah," said Ardrin.
     "Beach all nice?"
     "Yeah, real nice."
     "Do something else tomorrow?"
     "Yeah, that'd be great."
     "No good.  Keep sweeping the beach."
     Ardrin nodded resignedly. "Okay."
     No. 220 glared out of the corner of his eye. "Not happy with that?"
     "No."
     "Get used to it."
     "Right.  Guess I better."

                             *     *     *

     "Hey, there," Paul said.
     Janie looked up from the treadmill she was on. "Oh, hi.  How's it
going?"
     "Well as can be expected."  He watched her for a while.
"Exercising?"
     Janie blinked. "Uh, yeah..."
     "Good.  Otherwise you'd just be expending a lot of energy to get
nowhere.  Though that happens a lot around here, you'll notice."
     "Very true.  But I haven't gotten any exercise for a long time,
so I feel a little shagged out.  Say, um..."
     "What?"
     Janie lowered her voice. "Why were you gone for so long a couple
of days ago?"
     Paul nodded. "I should start exercising some myself.  I feel a
little out of shape too."  He got on the exercise bicycle next to
Janie's treadmill.
     Janie looked at him. "In your street clothes?"
     "No time like the present."  Paul started pedalling fast; the bike's
flywheel whined loudly.  "Now," he whispered, "I was trying to get out of 
the Village."
     "How?" Janie whispered, speeding up her treadmill.
     "The simplest method.  I tried walking out.  I figured, at least
I'll know what their security is like."
     "That's using your bollocks, Paul.  What was the security like?"
     "Nothing human, at least not that I saw.  Not even any fences or
anything.  But they have something I've never seen before."
     "Not surprising, I guess.  What?"
     "It looks," Paul pedaled faster, "like a giant, white ball of
jello, or something, about 6 feet across."
     "A *what?*" Janie said out loud.
     "A giant jello ball.  It bounces along, like a ball, but it can
turn, and squish between trees, and it makes this roaring noise."
     "Oh... the day you disappeared, I heard a roaring when I was out
on the chess lawn.  Everyone in the village stood still, and didn't
start moving until it stopped.  They looked scared.  When I asked
someone, they said it was Rover, but wouldn't say anything else."
     "Rover.  Okay." Paul panted, "And I. am out. of shape."
     "Yeah."  Janie slowed down, and Paul stopped. "Why don't you
change into some gym togs?"
     "Good idea." Paul smiled.  "Did I tell you I have a job now?  I
signed up to do a magic show at the Nursery."
     "The little ankle-biters ought to like that.  Anything else?"
     "Yeah.  If I put on a good show there, I get to do a gig at the
Palace o' Fun.  They're always looking for live acts."
     "What kind of acts do they do over there?"
     "Whatever they can get.  Not many villagers do skits."
     Janie grinned. "Guess not.  Maybe we should do a primer on the
religions of the world."
     "They aren't really big on religion here."
     "But then we could do Druidism, or Tantricism."
     Paul looked pained. "Hopefully not at the same time."
     "Hey, could be fun."
     "Now, now, we wouldn't want to get declared disharmonious like
Angel did, would we?"
     "No.  But I can still think about it."
     "Have fun.  Be seeing you."
     "Watch out for flying jelly blobs."
     "I will."
     After Paul left, Janie finished her workout, and was on her way
back to the locker room when she passed by a row of doors.  Inside,
she could hear something thumping, and sometimes a loud splash.  A
burly man with dark hair was waiting outside one room.
     "Uh, hi.  What's in these rooms?"
     "Que?"
     "Oh, um..."  Janie looked at his badge: no. 95. "Hola, que es...
um..." she pointed at a door. "Que es... esto?"
     "Is Kosho!  You know?"
     "No.  Que es?"
     With a big smile, he handed Janie a bright red helmet and a
padded jacket from a rack on the wall and opened the door.  "Come!"
Inside was a fairly large room, about 3 meters by 5, divided along the
long axis into three sections.  About 3 meters up on the wall, a
padded railing ran around the room.  In each of the end sections was a
trampoline, one red, and one blue; in the middle section was a pool of
water.
     "Kosho."  No. 95 put on a blue helmet and jacket. "Bouncy bouncy?"
     Janie blinked at what seemed to be an extraordinarily crude proposition.
"Pardon me?"
     "Is easy!"  He stepped on the blue trampoline and started jumping
up and down. "Bouncy bouncy!"
     "Oh, on the trampoline."  She could feel her ears turning pink with
embarrassment, but she climbed onto the red trampoline and started
bouncing.  Trampolines are pretty fun; Janie had always liked them.  She
was about to try a flip when no. 95 bounced up to the wall, then down onto
her trampoline. 
     "Whoa!" Janie jumped over the pool to the red trampoline.  No. 95
jumped back, and pushed her towards the pool.  Flailing her limbs, she
was able to hit the trampoline before she went in the drink and bounced
very clumsily to the other trampoline.
     "Bouncy bouncy!"  No. 95 waited until she'd found her feet again,
then grinned. "Okay?"
     "Okay."  Janie grinned a bit.  This might be a fun way to work out
some frustrations.  She bounced on her trampoline and up to the rail,
hanging on and looking down.
     "Okay!" no. 95 said, then jumped up, and tried to bat her off the
wall.  Janie jumped to the other wall, then down to the trampoline
again.  They bounced back and forth for a while; grabbing your
opponent seemed to be against the rules, so it was mostly pushing and
sparring for position.  After one particularly uninspired attempt to
shove the huge man off the rail, Janie flopped into the pool with a
loud splash.
     "Okay!  No more bouncy bouncy."  He bounced back out to the floor,
and helped Janie out of the pool. "Okay?"
     "Okay," Janie spluttered.  "Fun game."
     "Like?"
     "Si!"
     "Okay!"
     Janie gave him a thumbs-up.  The poor man's vocabulary was
rather limited; he must be relatively new.  Most everyone else spoke
English very well.
     There was a bin for the jackets, most of them in some stage of
dampness.  Janie threw hers in, changed out of her togs, and went back
to the flat for the evening.


Daniel Parsons                                             Brandi Weed
                        Questions or comments to deparsons@ucdavis.edu
        Available for ftp from ftp.cs.pdx.edu, in /pub/frp/stories/SLN