she laughed.
"It won't happen again. You're a hero to the Senile Delinquents now.
By the way, the big fellow with the broad-brimmed hat, he's one of the
most prominent Senile Delinquents of our day. He's president of the
biggest privately-owned space line, but he likes to call himself the
Hat Rat. You must be one of the few people who ever got away from him
alive."

"He seemed happy to get away from me," said Gavir.

An arrangement of force-planes and 3V projections made the front of
Lucifer Grotto appear to be a curtain of flames. Gavir hung back, but
Sylvie inserted a tiny gold pitchfork into a small aperture in the
glowing, rippling surface. The flames swept aside, revealing a
doorway. A bearded man in black tights escorted them through a
luridly-lit bar to a private room. When they were alone, Sylvie
dropped her cape to the floor, sat on the edge of a huge, pink divan,
and smiled at Gavir.

Gavir contemplated her. That she was over a hundred years old was a
little frightening. But the skin of her face and her bare upper body
was a warm color, and tautly filled. She had lashed out at Spurling,
and he liked her for that. But in one way she was like Spurling. She
didn't fit into the bland, non-violent world of Malcomb and Hoppy.

He shook his head. He said, "Sylvie, why--well, why are you the way
you are? Why--and how--have you broken away from Ethical
Conditioning?"

Sylvie frowned. She spoke a few words into the air, ordering drinks.
She said, "I didn't do it deliberately. When I reached the age of
about a hundred it stopped working for me. I suddenly wanted to do
what _I_ wanted to do. And then I found out that I didn't _know_ what
I wanted to do. It was Ethical Conditioning or nothing, so I picked
nothing. And here I am, chasing nothing."

"How do you chase nothing?"

She set fire to a white tube. "This, for instance. They used to do it
before they found out it caused cancer. Now there's no more cancer,
but even if there were, I'd still smoke. That's the attitude I have.
You try things. You live in the past, if you're inclined, adopt the
costumes and manners of some more colorful time. You try ridiculous
things, disgusting things, vicious things. You know they're all
nothing, but you have to do something, so you go on doing nothing,
elaborately and violently."

A tray of drinks rose through the floor. Sylvie frowned as she noticed
a folded paper tucked between the glasses. She picked it up and read
it,