Free Starfishers Volume 2: Starfishers by Glen Cook Page A

pink plastic card identical in all other respects to the white one he had received at Decontamination. They also gave him an envelope containing leave papers, money, bankbooks, and such written persona as a man needed to exist in an electronic universe. Included was an address.
    An unsmiling amazon opened a door and set him free.
    He stepped into the public tunnels of Luna Command. Back from beyond the looking glass. He caught a bus just like any spacer on leave.
    The room was exactly as he had left it—except that they had moved it a thousand kilometers from its former location. He tumbled into his bed. He did not get out again for nearly two days.
    Cornelius Perchevski was a lonely man. He had few friends. The nature of his profession did not permit making many.
    For another five days he remained isolated in his room, adapting to the books, collections, and little memorabilia that could be accounted the time-spoor of the real him. Like some protean beast his personality slowly reshaped itself to its natural mold. He began taking interest in the few things that made a unified field of his present and past.
    He took down his typewriter and notebooks and pecked away for a few hours. A tiny brat of agony wrested itself from the torn womb of his soul. He punched his agent’s number, added his client code, and fed the sheets to the fax transmitter.
    In a year or two, if he was lucky, a few credits might materialize in one of his accounts.
    He lay back and stared at the ceiling. After a time he concluded that he had been alone enough. He had begun to heal. He could face his own kind again. He rose and went to a mirror, examined his face.
    The deplastification process was complete. It always took less time than did his internal mendings. The wounds within never seemed to heal all the way.
    He selected civilian clothing from his closet, dressed.
    He returned to public life by taking a trip to the little shop. The bus was crowded. He began to feel the pressure of all those personalities, pushing and pulling his own . . . Had he come out too early? Each recovery seemed to take a little longer, to be a little less effective.
    “Walter Clark!” the lady shopkeeper declared. “Where the hell have you been? You haven’t been in here for six months. And you look like you’ve been through hell.”
    “How’s it going, Max?” A self-conscious grin ripped his face open. Christ, it felt good to have somebody be glad to see him. “Just got out of the hospital.”
    “Hospital? Again? Why didn’t you call me? What happened? Some Stone Age First Expansioner stick a spear in you again?”
    “No. It was a bug this time. Acted almost like leukemia. And they don’t even know where I picked it up. You have anything new for me?”
    “Sit your ass down, Walter. You bet I have. I tried to call you when it came in, but your box kept saying you weren’t available. You ought to get a relay put on that thing. Here, let me get you some coffee.”
    “Max, I ought to marry you.”
    “No way. I’m having too much fun being single. Anyway, why ruin a perfectly good friendship?” She set coffee before him.
    “Oh. This’s the real thing. I love you.”
    “It’s Kenyan.”
    “Having Old Earth next door is good for something, then.”
    “Coffee and comic opera. Here’s the collection. The best stuff is gone already. You know how it is. I didn’t know when you’d show up. I couldn’t hold it forever.”
    Perchevski sipped coffee. He closed his eyes and allowed the molecules of his homeworld to slide back across his taste buds. “I understand. I don’t expect you to hang on to anything if you’ve got another customer.” He opened the ancient stamp album.
    “You weren’t out to the March of Ulant, were you, Walter?”
    “Ulant? No. The other direction. Why?”
    “Because of the rumors, I was curious. You know how Luna Command is. They say Ulant has been rearming. The Senators are kicking up a fuss. High Command keeps telling them