Predictably, Malvern Brakhage showed up at their doorstep in the company of disaster.
"Rogue mitosis, Fearon my man. They've shut down Mixogen and called out the HazMat Squad."
"You're kidding? Mixogen? I thought they followed code."
"Hell no! The outbreak's all over downtown. Just thought I'd drop by for a newsy look at your high-bandwidth feed."
Fearon gazed with no small disdain on his bullet-headed fellow scab. Malvern had the thin fixed grin of a live medical student in a room full of cadavers. He wore his customary black leather lab coat and baggy cargo pants, their buttoned pockets bulging with Ziploc baggies of semi-legal jello.
"It's Malvern!" he yelled at the kitchen, where Tupper was leafing through catalogues.
"How about some nutriceuticals?" said Malvern. "Our mental edges require immediate sharpening." Malvern pulled his slumbering weasel, Spike, from a lab coat pocket and set it on his shoulder. The weasel—biotechnically speaking, Spike was mostly an ermine—immediately became the nicest-looking thing about the man. Spike's lustrous fur gave Malvern the dashing air of a Renaissance prince, if you recalled that Renaissance princes were mostly unprincipled bush-league tyrants who would poison anyone within reach.
Malvern ambled hungrily into the kitchen.
"How have you been, Malvern?" said Tupper brightly.
"I'm great, babe." Malvern pulled a clamp-topped German beer bottle from his jacket. "You up for a nice warm brewski?"
"Don't drink that," Fearon warned his wife.
"Brewed it personally," said Malvern, hurt. "I'll just leave it here in case you change your mind." Malvern plonked the heavy bottle onto the scarred Formica.
Raised a rich, self-assured, decorous girl, Tupper possessed the good breeding and