Her face set in angry lines, the girl whirled suddenly and dragged her razors across the window of the collectibles shop next to the telecom cube. The sharp points left scars in the glass.

Keeping one hand on the Predator, Skater tapped the Connect key. "Yeah," he said.

"I found out it was you who called," Kestrel said, sounding like he was talking from the bottom of a well, "you could have knocked me over with a fragging feather. I heard about you getting busted by Knight Errant and getting passed over to Lone Star. I also heard you escaped."

Skater had heard about the escape as well, sandwiched in between more trideo reports of the so-called laughing death disease. An ork woman working at a fast-food restaurant had gone berserk and attacked her own leg with a kitchen knife, then sat on the counter throwing her toes and chunks of flesh at the customers, all the while giggling tike a little girl. There was also more footage on the fire at the Montgomery Building in Believue, and the terrorist bombing at Sea-Tac International Airport that morning. But not a peep about any dead elves being found in a warehouse.

"I need help," Skater said.

"If you're still in town after all the drek that went down," the fixer said, "you need your fragging head examined."

"What have you found out about the yak who's after me? Dokai something?"

"Masaru Doyukai." Kestrel said. "All I know is that he's still looking, and he's offering big nuyen to anyone who can finger you."

"What's his interest?"

"Still haven't scanned it, but the guy must be getting desperate. He put the squeeze on some stoolies in the area, killed two of them and put another in the hospital to make his point. Hasn't exactly endeared himself to the locals."

"Stick with it as best you can without getting caught in the middle," Skater said. "I'll pay for your time."

"Have you got a stash besides the one you had down in the Caribbean?" the fixer asked.

"Why?" Skater couldn't be sure the call wasn't being traced.

"The new idee I fixed you up with?" Kestrel said. "Lone Star got it. I tried to get into the accounts as soon as I heard they nabbed you. I wanted to shift them around so you'd have something if and when you got out. I got some of it, but not much."

"The rest of it?"

"Evaporated, chummer, absorbed back into Lone Star's legal acquisitions. Frozen till you can prove you're not guilty of any infractions of the law."

Skater felt a cold emptiness swell up inside him, threatening to envelop him. For eight years he'd been running the shadows-and that was a long time to survive in this biz- hustling and dodging bullets on every bit of action he could sign on for. There'd been a vague plan, an amorphous dream of getting out of the sprawl and the biz, but more than anything else, he'd been buying the security he'd never known.

Now it was gone, taken away.

"I've got some set aside," Skater said in a tight voice. "What I can't pay you immediately, I'll make good."

"Sure, sure," Kestrel said. "Bui I'd feel better if you were on your way out of Seattle right now."

"Can't," Skater said. "Somebody stuck it in me and broke it off. I can't be sure they're going to crawl off my back anywhere unless I can get them off. I'll be in touch," He hit the Disconnect.

Duran looked ai him. "That look on your face, can't be anything but bad news."

"I moved my money around, getting ready to shake this town," Skater said. "But Lone Star seized my accounts. I've still got some put by in a few others places, but I'm going to be sucking air real soon."

"Tough break." Duran fell into step beside him, sweeping the street with his gaze. "But don't forget we're all in this together, kid. We pool our resources, we'll get by. Bet on it."

"We already arc," Skater said.

"Hi, this is Brynna. I'm either not home now, or I'm engaged in a sexual fantasy come true that you can only dream about. If you're a chummer, leave a message and I'll get back to you when I recover. If you're selling something, frag off and don't be gentle about it. Bye."

A beep followed.

Skater chose not to leave a message. He stood at the cube of public telecoms near Renton Mall's southern entrance, in the wide hallway sandwiched between 2Fast Arcades and Shiloh's, a specialty costume shop.

"She home?" Duran asked as he walked up with two Sloppies and two big soft drinks,

"No." Skater took one of the drinks and a Sloppie. "But I got her recorded message."

"So she's probably still around." Duran pointed toward the trideos stacked in the window further down the hallway at Matt amp; Matt's Trideo Concepts. "I was standing in line, I heard KTXX announce it was going live soon with some big news bulletin."

A locally produced syndicated talk show was on in a showcase window a few steps from where they stood. A handful of people were already gathered there, talking among themselves and watching the program.

On the screens, Perri Twyst, the host, was leaning intently toward her two guests. The trideo personality had widely spaced limpid blue pools for eyes, a strong chin, and a lime-green pageboy that emphasized her lean jawline and the earring in her left nostril chained to the ear on that same side. As usual, she wore faded jeans and a plaid Oxford button-down with the sleeves ripped out, emphasizing her street background.

"Knowing the resistance you would encounter trying to establish yourself in Seattle," Twyst was saying, "why would you be willing to undertake such a challenge?"

Her guests were the same elves Skater had seen on the trid in the Lone Star slam. He couldn't remember their names. Then, as the camera panned in for a close-up, block letters flashed onto the screen below the male: Tavis Silverstaff, CEO of NuGene, a biomed corp in Portland. He wore purples today, with a gold brocade that set everything off. His long fingers were wrapped around the head of a glittering cane, and his royal plum cape fell in cascades behind him across the plush chair. His smile was white and generous, totally confident.

"Because I believe we've got a good product," Silverstaff said.

"Fragging elf," one of the two young men to Skater's right said, "that's what he is. Ain't no man at all. Pointy-eared dandelion sniffer. Needs a little Order to bring him to the light, then he'd see."

The other young man laughed, clapping his friend on the back.

From the thinly disguised pun, Skater guessed that they were members of the Order, a white human-supremacy policlub. He glanced at Duran, but the ork was ignoring them.

"You've yet to unveil that product," Perri said. "But judging from NuGene's past work in pioneering tissue transplantation, and organ transplantation, organ transplantation, and reconstruction through biological agents instead of cyberware, I'd have to guess it must be something along those lines."

"Yes," Silverstaff said. "My father was a leader in introducing biomedial services in the Tir. Most elves don't like the idea of invasive surgeries except as life-threatening conditions warrant. But my father and his R amp;D teams came up with medical procedures, medicines, and tissue treatments that have saved and improved many lives. At NuGene, we've wanted to continue that."

"And you're going to try to develop that new market here in Seattle?"

"Ever since Portland shut down as a port city," Silverstaff said, "we knew we'd have to move on to become viable in the economic community again. Seattle is where the action is. People come here from all over the world. We want to be able to get our products and services to those who need them. Perhaps this will lead the way for other elven corporations. We elves of Tir Tairngire run the risk of becoming stagnant if we wall ourselves off from the world."