The hologram screamed: "Boyle Gang Blows Beltline Bank!" Effrem angrily shut off the power and threw the remote on the floor. The apoplectic 3D newscaster vanished. Effrem's wife, leaning against the battered, second-hand stove, looked at him over the edge of her chipped, blue coffee cup.

Her name was Mamie and at thirty-five she still had some of the good looks that hadn't been sand-blasted away by years of worry and hardship. She had short, black hair, a pale, house-bound face, and a grim, determined mouth so straight it could have been drawn on with a ruler. Her eyes were sentimental and sympathetic, but her mouth told a different story, when it had to.

"What's got you all fired up now, Effie?" she asked innocently. Effrem wagged his head. He had a thatch of fiery red hair that went well with his face. He was big and thick and hard from years working in the silver mines. He had moved his family from Remus when the veins were exhausted, and so was he. All he had to show for twelve years breaking rock was a tin of high-explosives and some drilling equipment stored in the shed out back. He was a hard-scrabble farmer now, desperately trying to jerk a living from the 2133 Sirian dust bowl. He had a ferocious temper, and a pair of huge, callused meathook hands that he used to explain his rage to anyone unfortunate enough to ask.

"Damn bank robbers!" he said. Anger shot out of his pale, blue eyes and his hate heated the room. "Those bums go around robbin' honest folks 'cause they 're too damn lazy to work!"

Mamie smiled patiently. "Times are tough," she said.

"Times are always tough. I ain't never been in a time or situation that weren't tough. You don't see me robbin' banks, do you?"

"Some people think that the Boyle gang are heroes. Taking metal from the rich, helping out their poor relations, helping . . ."

"That's what boils my blood! The heroes are the workin' stiffs. The honest-Joes workin' for an honest wage. Not these damn punks lookin' for the easy way out! Well, I'll tell ya," he continued, wagging his finger, "it'll be easy come, easy go! And the sooner gone the better."

"They got to provide for themselves and their folks somehow," Mamie said. She thought it all slightly romantic. Adventurous. Jetting around, doing as you pleased, taking from the rich, giving to the poor. Fighting back against a system that was hell-bent on slowly grinding you into dust.

She felt the wind rattle the walls of the dilapidated farmhouse. Dirt beat angrily against the shutters, trying to claw its way in and bury everything. She put her cup down on the counter and began gathering up the cracked breakfast dishes.

"Oh well," she said, to placate her husband, "I'm sure they'll be caught eventually. They always are." She smiled wistfully, recalling how handsome the gang members had looked on the telescreen. Young and handsome, and full of life. Effrem nodded.

"Yeah, but I'd like to get my hands on 'em first," he growled. Mamie turned the tap on. Her husband's impotent tirades against the cosmos grated on her sometimes, especially when she disagreed, but she knew that his real anger lay outside - in the topsoil-stripped wastelands of their fields. They both knew it, but there was nothing they could do about it. They couldn't fight back.

"Can I get some candy, Mama? Can I? Can I?"

It was the tenth time he had asked in the last two minutes. It finally deserved an answer. Mamie looked down at her little Jeffy. He was five years old and small for his age. Still, he was a miniature of his father, and just as strong-willed and stubborn. Mamie sighed and reached into her purse.

"Okay, okay. Here's a copper. Go buy some candy at Al's, but make sure you wait for me there. I just have to go to the bank, then I'll come and get you. It won't be more than five minutes. Okay?"

"Okay, Mama," Jeffy responded. He smiled. His eyes twinkled as he hefted the metal in his small hand.

"Your father is going to come back to pick us up, and then we'll have lunch before we go home. So don't buy too much candy. And don't eat it all."

"Sure," Jeffy replied, breaking free of his mother's hand and skipping off toward the shop on the corner of the block. Mamie watched him go into the store, then climbed the steps of the Euro Bank. It was an opulent building in the midst of ruin. The area around the bank was being eroded by neglect and hard times. Mamie nervously fingered her bank chip: another withdrawal - for groceries and clothing. The bank account was a well going slowly and tortuously dry. A man opened the bank's heavy fake-oak door and let her in.

"Thank you," she said, smiling up at the young man. He stuck an ugly-looking gun in her face.

"Over against the wall, Toots," he ordered. She was stunned.

"B-but, I'll come back later. When you're done . . ."

"Move!" he yelled. He shoved her against the wall, into a group of cowering customers. They looked like cattle in a slaughterhouse holding pen. Mamie hit the cold wall hard. She felt her shoulder pop out of its socket,but she didn't whimper. She was just going to let them go about their business. An old lady next to her began to cry. Mamie reached out and held her withered hand. The old lady didn't seem to notice.

Suddenly, a spraygun blast rocked the building. It came from way in the back, behind the teller cages. A man screamed. A minute later, two young men came racing out of the back. One of them carried a spraygun, the other, a fingergun.

"What happened?" the doorman shouted, keeping his gun on Mamie. The shorter of the two men grinned. His eyes were bright with crazy bloodlust, and he giggled convulsively.

"That old man didn't want to open up the vault!" he yelled as he ran. "So I took an arm off. Then his assistant sure enough opened it!" The doorman nodded grimly.

"We better blow," he said.

The short guy with the spraygun giggled some more. "Took his arm clean off! He ain't nothin' but a one-armed bandit now!"

The doorman didn't waste time laughing. He held the door open as his buddies scrambled outside. He turned on the customers lined up against the wall and raised his gun. He was looking straight at Mamie.

"Don't no one move for five minutes!" He busted out the door. The two stick-up men were piling into a waiting spacecar, and the doorman hurried to catch up with them. He was on the sidewalk and about to climb into the car when all of a sudden Jeffy jumped out from behind a light standard at the bottom of the steps. He had been hiding, waiting to surprise his mother.

"Zap! Zap!" he screamed. He was trying to get in on the game. The doorman jumped a foot in the air, spun around, and squeezed off three quick shots. The first two energy bursts arced over Jeffy's head and smashed into the wall of the hardware store next door. The third burst cut into Jeffy's throat, tearing it open, and then streamed out through the back of his head. He tottered backwards, his arms windmilling to regain his balance, and then fell over. He lay on his back with his arms outstretched. His fingers were stiffened into two little pretend guns.

"It's okay, Ef," she said soothingly.

It wasn't, though.

It sure as hell wasn't.

Since Jeffy's death, Effrem had changed. Part of him, the part that used to house his tireless spirit and boundless energy, had died with Jeffy. Now, he was lethargic and unsure. His red hair had thinned and whitened, and his step had turned to a shuffle. He never got angry any more. There was no point to it. Mamie pulled him away from the door.

"You wait here," she said. " I won'tbe long." He looked at her, kind of startled.

"But, why are you goin' to see him. It don't make no sense."

"Shh. We've been through that." Mamie guided Effrem back behind the wheel. She shut the door and then marched off towards the Lawhouse. There was a crowd gathered outside. Mamie stopped to listen for a moment. The crowd cried injustice. They shouted about fat-cat bankers getting fatter off of groundbreakers going broke, of the government and big business being no different from the Boyle gang, except that business had a license to steal.

A couple of anti-universalists jostled Mamie as she went up the steps. They passed out paper pamphlets. They called the Boyle gang revolutionaries; righteous warriors trying to overthrow a corrupt system that kept the common man in rags. Would she help?

"No," she said, and they stood aside. Her mouth was set in a grim line that none of them dared cross, and her face was hard and shining.

Mamie nodded. "I want to talk to him."

The lawman finally realized that it was useless to argue. He grunted, hopped off his chair, and stretched his legs. His well-fed belly almost spilled over his belt buckle and onto the floor.

"Okay," he said. "Follow me."

The lawman led Mamie into the bowels of the Lawhouse--down to the cells. They walked to the end of a dimly-lit corridor lined with laser bars. Mamie ignored the hungry leers and obscene taunts of the prisoners. The lawman stuck a metal finger into the on/off socket of a small, foul-smelling cage, and the bars disappeared.

"Hey, Arden, you got yourself a visitor!"

The doorman of the Boyle gang lay on his back on his bunk. He looked at Mamie.Mamie could see that Arden was no more than twenty, but his pock-marked face was already twisted into a perpetual sneer. He wore his bravado like a Minister wears a collar--part of the job.

"What'd you want?" he growled. Mamie walked into the cell.

"I want to kiss you," she said softly. Arden scrambled off his bunk, his suspicion fading. He grinned. His teeth were yellow and rotting, and his breath stank.

"Oh, another admirer. Why didn't you say so?" He strutted up to Mamie, grabbed her buttocks with his bony hands, and roughly kissed her. He pulled his greasy face back and laughed at her. "You know, you look better from a distance, Toots."

"Things always do," Mamie replied. Then, she detonated the blasters she had swallowed.

They say the explosion destroyed the Lawhouse and three city blocks.

The short story's greatest challenge is that it must often derive its quality from a single concept, a single idea, a single, well-written phrase. In this one, the whole of the matter spins about that wonderful line "Things always do." It knits the threads neatly, I think. Do you agree?--g