JEFF BREDENBERG

SHOOTIN' BABIES

When i arrived at gator's house to help with the stove, he was just shooting my
baby son in the forehead. I set the brake on my tracker and stepped out onto the
leafy gravel. Gator kicked the corpse, which was wriggling there on the lake
bank.

"Yup, it's yours all right," he shouted up the hill, clearly displeased with me.
"Look at the eyes -- and the spread of the forehead, how the eyebrows are
formed? Looks like your boy Matthew five years ago."

I told my boy Matthew to stay in the back compartment of the tracker, and I
hopped down a dozen railroad ties that had been set into the hillside. I tried
not to trounce the wildflowers and herbs in the stair-step planting beds.

It was hard to say at first glance -- that distracting bullet hole an inch above
the bridge of the nose, the flesh already starting to crack and ooze a sickly
green. But Gator was right. Okay, it wasn't literally my son. But this rapidly
disintegrating form had the classic Stohler blond-haired, blue-eyed baby
features.

Gator worked unnecessarily at the bill of his Chicago Cubs hat, wrenching his
white locks back and forth. "You was here overnight two weeks ago when I moved
in. I tolt you and tolt you again not to go near the lake. Especially not to put
anything into it. Particularly nothing with a DNA pattern to it. What'd you do?
March straight to the end of the dock and flog yet dolphin?"

I could feel my face glowing red. "No. Didn't go anywhere near the lake. You
know I'm wary of chemical reservoirs."

And then, with my denial so flatly stated, I paused to think about it. Had I
gone near the lake? Five of us from the office had spent the day moving Gator
into his new retirement home. Hauling boxes, heaving furniture. We'd only
destroyed a lamp and a vase. Couldn't have been much else. At sundown, Gator had
hauled out two frosty cases of Bass ale.

"Ah," I said. "I do remember something about stumbling out and taking a leak on
the compost pile."

The compost bins were a neat arrangement of two-by-fours and hardware cloth.
They had been left behind by the previous owner of the cottage. Two of the bins
were half full of rotting muck.

Gator snorted. "They's five feet from the water's edge, an' you go pissin' in
the compost. Piss could easily seep five feet."

"Sounded like a good idea at the time -- help the decomposition along. You think
urine carries your DNA?"

Gator shook his head, amazed that I'd had to ask.

"I'd hate to lose the house," Gator said. "Lease contract was pretty specific
that the lake was purely an 'aesthetic asset.' Thass what they called it. Even
made me buy an air-seal bubble top for my pontoon boat. The utility could prolly
void the lease now if it wanted. They don't like letting their imaging compound
get all depleted like this -- just 'cause some ale-belly couldn't find the
bathroom."

"Hold on," I said. "The road atlas that my tracker subscribes to says this
lake's only a two-three security level, like you could go skiing on it or
something."

"Two-point-three may be the government rating, yeah, but the utility what owns
it says not to go near it, and there ain't one of my neighbors who doesn't have
that written into his lease."

"Sounds like a lot of trouble, this lake."

"On the programmer's salary we made," Gator said, "I imagine you're gonna get a
house on a lake of pure water? The kind you can go skinny-dipping in -- trolling
for snapping turtles. Hah."

The baby corpse had now degenerated into a green puddle of slime oozing back
toward the lake.

"Reason you called was you wanted me to check out your stove," I reminded Gator.
I hoped to divert his attention away from this embarrassing business -- the lake
borrowing my DNA pattern and belch forth little replicas. Imaging compounds are
pretty volatile like that.

Gator peered into the lake. He edged farther down the bank, his boots tearing at
the grass, until he came to rest atop the rim of the non-porous concrete that
covered the lake bottom.

"There," he said, pointing with his 9mm automatic, "there's another one comin'.
They don't develop on any schedule I can figure, but they average about two an
hour. I pick 'em off quick as I can -- those chemicals they drag around, they're
hell on the grass and shrubbery."

A pink dome the size of a grapefruit was rising through the murk of the lake,
another little Stohler monster coming to meet Papa.

Gator fired, and the little dome cracked open before it even broke the surface.

"Don't feel bad," Gator said. "They aren't human. Aren't even animal. Just some
mindless biochem . . . perversion. This is one of them compounds that the
imaging utilities gotta keep in such big supply."

"How long will this go on?" It was a cool day, but I was beginning to sweat.

Gator shrugged. "Could be days, even a week. Maybe just until some other DNA
comes along. Whatever -- I bought several cases of ammo today."

I got Matthew out of the tracker and took him inside by the roadside door,
avoiding the lakefront. It would take me a while to formulate an explanation for
the gunplay.

Inside, Matthew's blue eyes shot open at the sight of Gator's television set.
The little guy could quote the specs of any of the latest sim/stim enhancements,
and Gator's new rig had all the bells and whistles. A strip of chrome molding
was emblazoned with the motto "You can't do that with electricity!" -- the
rallying cry of the photonic industry.

Without even asking, Matthew was punching at the startup keypad and then rolling
through the channel grid until he found a cezanne concert on the West Coast.

The pod's ferroplex door popped open. From my viewpoint the holovids were a
little fuzzy and distorted. But Matthew's arms fell to his side and gyrated in
small circles, the way they do when he's in the thrall of his favorite photonic
devices. He flashed his wide eyes in my direction, as if he were simultaneously
asking and receiving permission to go ahead, and then he climbed inside and
eagerly settled into the seat.

As I pushed the door closed around him, the holos inside came into appropriate
focus -- an amphitheater of cezanne enthusiasts bobbing their heads and waggling
their feet to those incomprehensible rhythms that the devotees find hypnotizing.

"See ya in an hour or two, Matthew," I said, and I pressed the door until the
latch clicked.

Gator was up on the kitchen landing fiddling with the stove, knowing I would
want to inspect it right away.

"The delivery men set that TV up for me," he said. "I hain't even gotten around
to reading the manual yet, and Matthew there seems to know it the way he knows
his own pud. You're such a cook, maybe you know stoves like Matthew knows TVs?"

"I told you on the phone," I said, "that I'm no expert with kitchen appliances.
No guarantees, okay?"

"Much time as you spend in kitchens," he hulled, "ya ought ta know something
about 'em. This is my first PIXI, ya know. Elma and me, we always had a pure
electronic kitchen -- much as we could still find parts for. Guess I'd always
had it in mind that I'd be dead before electronic appliances were totally phased
out. Humph."

Like the new television, this PIXI stove was the latest. The previous resident
apparently had stripped the house of his precious, familiar appliances, leaving
Gator to refurnish it via a broker over long distance. Gator had been too
distracted with the move -- and, typically, too impatient -- to get very
specific with the broker. As a result he had wound up with the most expensive in
everything.

The top of the stove had that unsettling, undulating finish that was
characteristic of many PIXI devices. It was aqua-green, looking like a square
slice of a miniature Atlantic Ocean. On the selector panel the cook could punch
up the specifications of the burner he wanted, and the Photonic Imaging Xenon
Interface would instantly assemble that burner in the requested size, shape, and
temperature.

Gator shuffled up behind me and we stared at the selector panel.

"Looks pretty standard to me, Gator."

"Ta me, looks like the control board for a lunar shuttle," he replied.

I punched up the specs for a routine burner -- round, six inches across, 500
degrees F. The glowing disc materialized in the center of the stovetop. An
illuminated rocker switch allowed temperature adjustments. "Humph," Gator said.

I went to the refrigerator and found a couple of boned chicken breasts, then
opened the pantry and selected two ripe tomatoes. Then back to the refrigerator
for a bottle of ale, which I opened.

"What are ya doin'?" Gator asked.

There was a suitable skillet hanging on a peg by the kitchen window, and I drew
a butcher knife out of the storage black.

"I need garlic," I said, "fresh if you have it. And let me see -- was that basil
I saw growing in one of those little garden beds outside?"

"I don't get it," Gator said, removing his Cubs hat.

"There's not much to get. The stove's working fine, and I'm gonna make dinner."

Gator went outside to snip some basil and shoot a couple of babies that were
chewing on the lawn furniture.

I awoke at first light the next morning. Geese were honking in the distance.
They would not be settling on the lake, however. No fowl would last long
paddling around a lake that was hungry for DNA, even if it got through the laser
fencing that domed the reservoir. Geese learn these things quickly.

Matthew rolled over in his cot and drew the corner of his quilt up over his head
against the chill. He usually slept long and hard after such an extensive
session with the holovids.

I tiptoed out of the bedroom and up to the kitchen level. I glanced down through
the front windows into the yard, just to satisfy my curiosity. I had imagined
that a full herd of babies might have groped its way onto the lawn during the
night, but Gator had assured me that they only materialize during daylight.
Something