Laura's mother smiled. "That's why you stayed here?"

David sipped his breakfast juice, which came from a pow- dered mix and was of a color not found in nature. "Well, after '02, everyone with sense pulled out. It left all the more room for us diehards. We BOI's, Born on the Island folks, we're a weird breed." David smiled self-consciously. "To live here, you have to have a kind of dumb love for bad luck.

Isla Malhaldo, that was Galveston's first name, you know.

Isle of Bad Luck."

"Why?" Laura's mother said obligingly. She was humoring him.

"Cabeza de Vaca called it that. His galleon was ship- wrecked here in 1528. He was almost eaten by cannibals.

Karankawa Indians."

"Oh? Well, the Indians must have had some name for the place. "

"Nobody knows it," David said. "They were all wiped out by smallpox. True Galvestonians, I guess-bad luck."

He thought it over. "A very weird tribe, the Karankawas.

They used to smear themselves with rancid alligator grease- they were famous for the stench."

"I've never heard of them," Margaret Day said.

"They were very primitive," David said, forking up an- other scop pancake. "They used to eat dirt! They'd bury a fresh deer kill for three or four, days, until it softened up, and--

"David!" Laura said.

"Oh," David said. "Sorry." He changed the subject.

"You ought to come out with us today, Margaret. Rizome has a good little side, biz with the city government. They condemn it, we scrap it, and it's a lot of fun all around. I mean, it's not serious money, not by zaibatsu standards, but there's more to life than the bottom line-"

" `Fun City,' " her mother said.

"I see you've been listening to our new mayor," Laura said.