Name: starling Real Name: unknown Age: unknown (probably 25-40) Height: 5'7" or so Hair: Blond, straight, shoulder length, obviously cut on an 'as needed' basis. First Met: At work. Somebody sent her to ask me how to find Deirdre Hammersmith. Questions: 1) who sent her to me? (consider possible retaliation) 2) who is Deirdre Hammersmith? I have a lot of questions (about starling, I mean), but I have a feeling it might be dangerous to know the answers. I remember reading an article recently that claimed she was once a top-level government assassin who went crazy. I've also heard (I think from a local politician) that she was once a mob enforcer who went crazy. That guy who makes speeches in the park claimed she was an alien soldier who got separated from the invasion force and went crazy because she was cut off from the group mind. The common thread here seems to be that, whatever she was before, she is now crazy. I can believe this. She doesn't seem to own any clothes except what she's wearing, and at close quarters it's fairly obvious she doesn't rate personal hygiene as a very high priority. Anyway, according to the Peterson Sanity Test, she's crazy. Unlike people who are just working at being eccentric, she seems to sort of come and go. Sometimes I can almost have a conversation with her (like our talk about the bathrooms at the Quarter), other times she seems to be tuning in to a few different stations at once. There are certainly times when it's been easy to believe she's killed all those people. She looked ready to kill Frances without thinking before I stopped her (by the way, what the hell was I thinking of? -- I was sure for a minute there that she was going to kill both of us). back to the index back to the chapter go home