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Tapping his fingers gently, his heavy fingers ... the answer was dreamily fantastic. I’m turning into silicon plastic myself, he thought. But how, why? He had not bothered to be curious before, but the question had always been—what were supposedly insoluble silicons doing assimilating into the human body at all?

Several moments passed. He smoothed back his hair with his oddly heavy hand before picking up his fork again.

“I’m turning into plastic,” he told Camba.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing. A joke.”

Camba was turning into plastic, too. Everyone was. But the effect was accumulating slowly, by generations.

Camba lay down his knife and started in again. “What connections have you had with John Delgados?”

Concentrate on the immediate situation. Alcala and Johnny were obviously in danger of some sort of mistaken arrest and interrogation.

As Alcala focused on the question, one errant whimsical thought suddenly flitted through the back of his mind. In red advertising letters: TRY OUR NEW MODEL RUST-PROOF, WATERPROOF, HEAT & SCALD RESISTANT, STRONG—EXTRA-LONG-WEARING HUMAN BEING!