Everybody Scream! by Jeffrey Thomas

lipstick on his thin lips; a popular new look, competing with the wine birthmarks, one of which he’d had dyed on his lower back. He didn’t have the cold white alabaster skin and pitch black hair favored by most of the black-garbed, black-lipped artistic types at school, but his blonde hair and tan had their healthy share of admirers. An even more distinctive, personal trademark were his shoes. His ex-girlfriend had bought them for him on a trip. They were laceless, almost like slippers, made from the skin of a Torgessi, the scales–which varied in size in odd natural patterns–being silvery white and metallic black. He got a lot of comments. They were his pride, and he wished he knew where to get a spare pair around here for when these finally wore out. Wherever he walked, his Torgessi shoes preceded him, carried him, gave him the bounce of the confident.
    Bern was the top student dealer of gold-dust at the Paxton Institute of Technology, where he was majoring in biotech business management. It was a position he had worked at diligently from his freshperson year, and now he was one of the most popular students at school whether his tan conflicted with his black lipstick or not. Of course, there had been a few bumps in the road; his room had been broken into three times, though only once was any gold-dust found and taken, and once at gunpoint a cool and masked trio of men with older-sounding voices had intercepted him on the way to a big deal, robbing him of a considerable chunk of dust and his money but without harming him. Hey, these things happened–it was part of the job. He carried a pistol. If he kept at it, he could continue his side career on into whatever biotech corporation eventually took him in. Staircases could be built from gold-dust.
    Bern had built a palace of dust at school. In some rooms of the palace–bedrooms–women had stayed a while, coming and going. Though he had no real army, his palace had its walls to protect him, propped up by the loyalty of those who depended on him. No other students dared really threaten or cheat or attack him in any way face to face, due to the strength in numbers of his supporters, just as angry consumer groups can not harm a product much as long as the consumers embrace it. Sure, after this year at school it was doubtful he would see all but a few of these many women and friends again, but he would advance and enter a new world and gather up new women and friends, build a new and better palace brick by brick. Bern didn’t have a fear of the future, there was no doubt about his destiny; his life road stretched out bright before his hurtling Scarab .
    Which didn’t mean he had to be happy with everyone he dealt with, and it annoyed him that tonight he had to deal with Pox, one of his suppliers, and that Pox had been very noncommittal about what time he was to meet Bern at the fair. “I’ll be there tonight.”
    “But where? ”
    “Be around, I’ll find you. It’s not that big a fair.”
    “Why can’t you give me a time?”
    “Hey look, kid, I got things to do. You don’t need to know my schedule. You want the gold, you be there tonight. That’s the best I can do.”
    Arrogant bastard, but what could Bern do? He needed Pox, a dealer for the Tocci Brothers crime family. Nobody else at school had sources like that. His supply was depleted and he had already set up a half dozen big deals of his own for tomorrow. So he would go to the fair, what the hell, spend the day. Make the best of it. Ride rides, eat junk, play games, meet girls, buy a variety of other kinds of drugs. He had nothing better to do with his day and evening–it could be a lot of fun. But he didn’t like Pox’s arrogant, syndy-crude lack of professionalism.
    Oh well, hardly a bump on the wide bright road. Bern Glandston inserted into his chip player the latest chip from the Tongue Tongs, and nodded his head and tom-tommed his control console to the music.

    Traffic was congested, as if these