"Hold the heavy stuff this time, okay?" she said. I saw that it was Cricket. She smiled at me, and I smiled back. I shrugged, then nodded to Deep Throat's enquiring look. His customers' state of sobriety is not his concern. If you can sit at the bar-and pay-he'll serve you.

"How you doing, Hildy?" Cricket asked.

"Never better," I said, and watched my drink being prepared. Cricket shut up for the time being. I knew there were more questions to come. What are friends for?

The drink arrived, in one of the Pig's hologlasses. It's probably the only bar in Luna that still uses them. They date back to the mid-twenty-first century, and they're rather charming. A chip in the thick glass bottom projects a holo picture just above the surface of the drink. I've seen them with rolling dolphins, windsurfers, a tiny water polo team complete with the sound of a cheering crowd, and Captain Ahab harpooning the Great White Whale. But the most popular glass at the Pig is the nuclear explosion at Bikini Atoll, in keeping with the way Deep Throat mixes the drinks. I watched it for a while. It starts with a very bright light, evolves into an exquisitely detailed orange and black mushroom cloud that expands until it is six inches high, then blows away. Then it blows up again. The cycle takes about a minute.

I was watching the tiny battleships in the lagoon when I realized I'd seen the show about a dozen times already, and that my chin was resting on the bar. To enhance the view, I suppose. I sat up straight, a little embarrassed. I glanced at Cricket, but she was making a great show of producing little moist rings with the bottom of her glass. I wiped my brow, and swiveled on my stool to look at the rest of the room.

"The usual motley crew," Cricket said.

"The motliest," I agreed. "In fact, the word 'motley' might have been coined simply to describe this scene."

"Maybe we should retire the word. Give it a place of honor in the etymological hall of fame, like Olympic champions' jerseys."

"Put it right next to motherhood, love, happiness . . . words like that."

"On that note, I'll buy you another drink."

I hadn't finished the first, but who was counting?

There have always been unwritten rules in journalism, even at the level on which I practice it. Often it is only the fear of a libel suit that stays us from printing a particularly scurrilous story. On Luna the laws are pretty strict on that subject. If you defame someone, you'd better have sources willing to testify before the CC. But more often you hold back on printing something everyone knows for a subtler reason. There is a symbiotic relationship between us and the people we cover. Some would say parasitic, but they don't understand how hungry for publicity a politician or celebrity can be. If we stick to the rules concerning "off the record" statements, things told us on "deep background," and so forth, everybody benefits. I get sources who know I won't betray them, and the subject of my stories gets the public exposure he craves.