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g them, past a seemingly haphazard arrangement of glass
bowls presided over by three chittering Parkry, who occasionally
moved handfuls of what appeared to be wriggling human fingers
from one bowl to another. A delicious smell of roasted cashews
drifted from behind a tepee-like stall lined with tattooed human
skins, outside which stood an ancient Moridani, holding a bunch
of balloons. Genesis realised with a start that the balloons
were small children, still living, inflated to almost spherical
proportions. The Moridani wore a Sony DiscMan, which was playing
a track from Skinny Puppy's `ViviSect VI' album into an antique
ghetto blaster at his feet. Genesis exchanged a ten-kilobyte
token for a grotesquely overinflated four-year-old girl with a
string attached to Honoka's tongue.
`Come along, my dear,' he said, gently tugging on the string.
Honoka Asami stared at him, eyes wide in horror, and squeaked
unintelligibly.
He emerged from the convoluted clutter of the center market, and
started along a winding path, down the slight hill that had been
raised by the asteroid's fall to the Syndaine State Library, a
sprawling building in the
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