Full of fish, his bulging cheeks giving him the appearance of a gargantuan chipmunk, Hyaki shook his head sadly. "Kids! Things sure were better in the last century, when there was hardly any juvenile crime."

Cardenas nodded agreement as he shoved his cred into the table's receptacle. Tracking the cred's instructions, it would forward the cost to the departmental billing center in Nogales. He was careful, as always, to leave the tip in cash. That way the restaurant owner couldn't scam any cred off the top. Besides, a cash tip carried with it a certain cachet in the form of nostalgia value.

By the time the two men exited the cafe, with the door thanking them courteously for their patronage as it closed behind them, the only sign of the ganglet of fearless ninlocos was the faint and rapidly fading fragrance of the poses' perfume lingering on the still-damp night air.

THE SKY WAS UTTERLY DEVOID OF CLOUDS THE following morning. A sure sign, Cardenas knew as he exited the induction shuttle and entered Nogales arcoplex's NFP division headquarters, that it was likely to pour sometime late this afternoon. Such was the predictable annual pattern of the Southwest summer monsoon that he had grown accustomed to since childhood. The July-August rains came earlier and lasted longer these days, it was said, because of global warming. That might be bad for Eskimos, but it was fine with the residents of the Strip. Flash floods notwithstanding, there was no such thing as too much rain in the desert.

Working a late shift the previous night had allowed him to sleep in this morning. It was funny, but the more he aged, the harder he worked and the less sleep he seemed to need.

By the time I'm dead, I'll be ready to retire, he mused as he arrived at the morgue. Somehow, knowing that his accumulating pension would pay for a great funeral did little to cheer him. It was a wonderful topic to be pondering as he wended his way to the cold room where the unscavenged remains of George-Wayne Anderson-Brummel were housed in a cylinder of industrial formagas designed to preserve soft body parts while preventing decomposition.

Eleven o'clock came and went. Then twelve, after which the afternoon count began. No one named Anderson, or Surtsey, or Brummel appeared at the Nogales morgue to identify, inspect, caress, condemn, or otherwise make the acquaintance of the body of Anderson-Brummel. Running gag aside, the morgue was not a favorite place to kill time. Angel Cardenas grew impatient, then annoyed, and finally hungry.

At two-thirty he popped his spinner and hayoed the ident for Anderson-Brummel's self-proclaimed un-spouse. There was no response. That could be good, because it might mean she was in transit to the morgue. It could also be bad, because the house ought to automatically relay the call to whatever communications device she carried on her person. In the confusion and angst of the moment, it was possible she had taken off sans tech, he knew. Possible, but unlikely. Citizens simply no longer traveled without a means for continuously staying in touch with the rest of civilization.

However, all things were possible, he reminded himself. Especially in the Strip, where a cop's life was many things, but never boring. So he waited another half hour before intuition and stomach drove him out of the morgue and via peoplemover to Administration.

Entering NFP's Nogales command center entailed passing through somewhat stricter security than visiting the morgue-or, for that matter, the Glacial cafe. Elaborate precautions were necessitated by the uncomfortably large number of individuals and organizations who held grudges against the police. These good folk sporadically tried to give vent to their feelings by blowing up everything from parking meters to individual officers to entire city blocks. Miniaturization having in the past hundred years affected the field of explosives as significantly as nearly every other component of modern civilization, it was incumbent upon those likely to be the target of such grievances to minimize the individual access of the congenitally disaffected.

So Cardenas was compelled to pass through a corridor that contained no fewer than five security stations, the first and last of which were administered by live humans, and the intervening three by machines. His ident bracelet was checked, his height and weight and body density were measured, his retinas were scanned, his cerebral cortex measured (and not found wanting), and in due course he was passed through to the inner sanctum of the Namerican Federal Police, Nogales Division.

Except for the chatter of officers and attendant civilian personnel moving from department to department, the spacious room was as quiet as Saguaro Park on a Tuesday morning. Each open office had its own husher. During working hours, every one of them was turned on. Within different cubicles, there might resound the chaos of a confrontation between quarreling police, the shouted curses of a suspect being interviewed, or the rants and ravings of barely manageable drunks and deviants. None of it escaped through the invisible walls of canceling sound that were far more effective than the thin plastiboard dividers that physically divided the duty room floor like so many cookie cut-outs.

Cardenas wound his way through the maze, past busy techs and beat officers and bureaucrats, dodging self-propelled messenger carts and food trays, until he found himself outside the office he sought. Hyaki was visible within, conversing animatedly with Drosi Semagarya. Though their mouths moved, and Cardenas was not more than a couple of meters from them, he could hear nothing. Nevertheless, he was able to follow the gist of the conversation effortlessly. Almost as a by-product of their primary training, good intuits invariably made spectacularly adept lip-readers.

Glancing past Hyaki, Semagarya saw the Inspector waiting patiently outside. Reaching for his desk, he stroked a blue contact strip to mute the husher. When next he opened his mouth, Cardenas was able to hear his words.

"Come in, Inspector. We were just discussing the case."

Actually, Cardenas knew from reading their lip movements, they had been debating what team to bet on in the office pool for this week's big game between Chihuahua and St. Louis-but it would be undiplomatic of him to point it out. Instead, he replied casually, "Learn anything?"

"Uh, no sir," Semagarya murmured after a hesitant glance at Hyaki. "There's been no news."

The sergeant chipped in quickly. "How did the bereaved widow, or whatever the hell she is, hold up on viewing the body?"

"I wouldn't know." Cardenas folded himself into a sterile but comfortable Lantille chair. The pressurized cushions immediately molded themselves to his back and buttocks. "She never showed." Hyaki's eyebrows rose as the Inspector turned to the stat cruncher. "The ident she gave us is uncompromised. She's just not answering."

Relieved to have something to do that let him avoid the Inspector's gaze, Semagarya let his trained fingers dance over the inputs on his desk. A privacy shield promptly enveloped the cubicle in semidarkness, much as the husher insulated the sound within from the walkway beyond. Although they could still see staff striding past outside, none of the passersby could see in. The wall on the other side of the desk darkened, became a tunnel that filled with data.

"Sequence is valid." When he was working, Semagarya's tone was as flat as that of any artificial membrane. "Dialing." Spark borders framed the dark tunnel, indicating that operation was continuing, but otherwise the screen void stayed blank. "No answer. Line-in is operational."

"Do a penetrate," Cardenas instructed him. At the spec's look of surprise, the Inspector reacted sharply. "No, I haven't got a warrant."