Bug Park by James P. Hogan

Kevin shrugged and shook his head. “We don’t know how he does it. Maybe it’s something to do with Orientals. You know, them being more spiritual, all that stuff. . . .” He caught Avril’s suspicious look. “But not only ESP. Watch this!” He walked the quarter along the backs of the fingers of one hand, first one way, then back the other. Or at least, it was a quarter. . . .

In fact, he had slipped Avril’s quarter to Taki and was performing with another that he had quietly taken from his own pocket. While the girls followed what Kevin was doing, Taki leaned closer as if to watch, at the same time reaching surreptitiously behind Avril and dropping the coin into one of her hip pockets. Then he backed off and moved behind Kevin to stand by Janna, making it so natural and inconspicuous that neither of the girls registered that he had been near Avril at all.

Kevin tossed the coin from one hand to the other and back again, then held out both fists, closed. “Which?” he invited.

“I knew we were into tricks,” Avril declared.

Janna tapped one of Kevin’s fists lightly. He peeled back his fingers one by one, smirking all the time, and showed it to be empty. “The other one, then,” Janna said.

But Kevin showed that to be empty too. Then he made a throwing motion toward Taki, opening his hand but sending nothing. Taki caught the imaginary coin and redirected it toward Avril.

She looked at them uncertainly. “What . . . ?”

“Oh, it went right through. Check your back pocket,” Taki said.

Avril did, and produced a quarter. She held it up, mystified. “How’d it get in there?”

“Let me see the date on that,” Janna demanded, taking it. “Oh, my God! Look. It is!”

“Say!” Avril exclaimed, wide-eyed. “I don’t believe this. Know something? These two guys are really neat!”

Michelle smiled to herself and looked back at Eric. It was the first time that she had seen him off-duty and relaxed. The real Eric that she felt she was discovering had a disarming modesty about his accomplishments, didn’t press his opinions, and took the world with a strong dose of humor that she sometimes needed a few seconds to recognize, all of which was delightfully at odds with the stereotypes she had absorbed of Germans. He should make time to be himself more often, she thought.

“Kevin and Taki seem to be very popular with the ladies,” she remarked.

“Do them good, too. Young people should learn how to defend against predators before they’re old enough to marry. Then they’ll be more likely to find the right one.”

Michelle decided that might be a topic best steered clear of. “What was that they just did?” she said. “Some kind of magic trick? I couldn’t make it out from here.”

“Probably. . . . As a matter of fact, they’re not bad.”

“I didn’t know they were into that kind of thing as well.”

“Oh, you name it, they’re probably into it.” Eric took a swig from a bottle that he was holding. “It ought to be taught in schools as standard. Fifth grade.”

“What? Conjuring?”

Eric nodded. “It’s a great way to learn that things aren’t always what they seem, and to examine your assumptions about what you think is going on. What better grounding in science could there be than that? Learning should be fun. Was there ever a kid that didn’t love conjuring?”

The mention of science sent Michelle’s thoughts back to their earlier conversation. “You never did tell me about your previous life as a heretic,” she said, giving him a curious look.

Eric’s eyes laughed through his spectacles, savoring his own unrepentance. “Why do you want to hear about that?”

“Lawyers are like scientists.” She bit into a pickle and regarded him impishly. “They want to hear about everything.”

“Oh . . .” He waved a hand vaguely. “I dared to question the High Church of Relativity. Science has its infallible popes too, you see. And when one of them has been canonized and made a saint, any suggestion that he might have been following a false god gets you immediate excommunication.” Eric took another sip of beer, apparently weighing up how far he wanted to go into this; then he gestured with the hand holding the bottle to take in the scene around them. “Just imagine, the Earth we’re standing on is hurtling around the sun at thirty kilometers per second. And the sun’s moving faster than that through the galaxy. So why doesn’t the wind tear the roof off the house and blow all these tents away?”

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