3
"You've been sleeping like a baby for a good long while." Ade looks smug. "Don't worry, we got you out of Libya one jump ahead of Judge Rosa. You won't be arriving in Charleston, South Carolina for another four or five hours, why'n't you kick back and smoke some grass? I left at least a quarter of your stash --"
"*South Carolina?*" Huw screams, nearly dropping the teapot. "Unclefucking sewage filter, what do you want to send me *there* for?"
"Ah, pecker up. They're your co-religionists, aren't they? You won't find a more natural, flesh-hugging bunch on the planet than the Jesonians who got left behind in the Geek Rapture. Hell, they're the kind of down-home Luddites what make *you* look like Buck Rogers."
"They're *radioactive*," Huw wails. "And I'm an atheist. They burn atheists at the stake, don't they?" He rummages through his skanky clothes, turning them inside out and outside in as he searches for something not so a-crawl that he'd be unwilling to have it touch his nethers.
"Oh, hardly," says Adrian. "Just get a little activated charcoal and iodine in your diet and memorize the Lord's prayer and you'll be fine, sonny."
Huw ends up tying a t-shirt around his middle like a diaper and seizing the teapot, which has developed a nasty rattle in its guts.
"Breakfast and toilet. Not in that order. Sharp."
"That door there," says the tiny Adrian.
#
The zeppelin turns out to be a maryceleste, crewed by capricious iffrits whose expert-systems were trained by angry, resentful trade-unionists in ransom for their pensions. The amount of abuse required to keep the ship on-course and to keep its commissary and sanitary systems in good working order is heroic.
Huw opens the door to the bridge, clutching his head, to find Bonnie perched on the edge of a vast, unsprung chair, screaming imprecations at the air. She breaks off long enough to scream at him. "GET THE FUCK OFF MY BRIDGE!" she hollers, eyes wild, fingers clawed into the arm-rests.
H