"The bar's fully stocked in the back," the ork told me, "and if you look in me bottom of the fridge there's food-"

"No," I cut him off, "I want to stop somewhere around here. Consider it part of the tour."

He smiled at that. "What do you have in mind?"

I told him, and his smile grew even broader. "Mo' bettah, brah, that's okay. I got just the place in mind."

The place was called Cheeseburger in Paradise, and it was in the grimy heart of Ewa. Scott told me the name as if it was a joke, but I didn't get it. He had to explain about a song by some dead country-folkie called Jimmy Buffet whom I'd never heard of, and by that time it wasn't really funny anymore. In any case, he explained. Cheeseburger in Paradise was originally a chain that had started up in Maui during the nineteen eighties, and eventually spread to the other islands. The chain had gone belly-up in the 'twenties, and recently this place had picked up the name as an ironic commentary. Something like a rat-bag flophouse calling itself the Hilton.

I felt at home the moment I walked in the door. Almost subliminal waves of tension, of intensity, of danger and violence only barely held in check, washed over me. In the semidarkness of the tavern, I could easily imagine I was back in The Blue Flame in Seattle, or even The Buffalo Jump in Cheyenne.

I went in first-Scott had wanted to lead, but I'd insisted-and I felt the eyes on me from the darkened booths and tables. The bartender, a grizzled ork with chipped fangs, gave me a welcoming sneer. From the rough direction of the dance stage-currently vacant, although the lights gleamed on something that could be oil on the worn carpet covering-I heard a muttered comment, something highly derogatory by its tone, and a harsh laugh. Yep, this was just the kind of place I was looking for.

The door opened again behind me, and I felt the looming presence of Scott at my back. Instantly, the feel of the place-the strange dynamic that you can always feel, if you're tuned in closely enough to your instincts-changed. I couldn't believe that the locals of Cheeseburger in Paradise knew Scott personally, but they had to recognize what he was, if not precisely who: a bodyguard, and a very competent one. I could feel the shift as the patrons quickly reoriented their perceptions of me.

I jandered across to an open booth, thinking about the gun on my hip as I walked. That's all it takes, really-just think about the heat you're packing, and where you're packing it. It changes your walk, the way you carry your weight, very subtly. Anyone with street instincts is going to pick up on that change and interpret it correctly. In a totally non-confrontational and non-threatening way, I'd made it abundantly clear to those who mattered that I wasn't traveling unheeled. Scott followed me, and we slid into the curved booth, sitting side by side with our backs to the wall.

A waitress-a hard-faced woman with black roots to her bottle-blond hair-was with us in a minute. "What can I get you?"

"Nothing for me," Scott started, but I shot him a look. He hesitated, then beamed. "Gimme a dog, then," he said.

I raised an eyebrow in question.

"Black Dog beer," Scott explained. "A microbrewery out Kailua way makes it. Real good, if you like your beer dark."

"I'll have a dog too, then," I told the waitress. She walked away without acknowledgment, but a few minutes later returned to place two half-liter glasses filled to the brim with dark liquid on our table.

I tried to pay, but Scott was too fast. "I'll get this one," he said, slipping some money-real folding money, which surprised me-to the waitress. "You got breakfast."

"Did I?"

He chuckled. "It got charged to your room, anyway." He glanced down at his glass. "I shouldn't be doing this, not on duty, but"-he grinned like a bandit, and raised his glass- "okolemaluna!"

I toasted him in return. "Whatever you just said." The beer had a nice head to it, and a sweet, slightly nutty taste. I took a second swig and nodded approvingly. "Good. How's the food here?"

By the time we'd finished our lunch-a large soyburger with Maui chips, two of the same for Scott-the afternoon crowd had started to roll in. A succession of dancers-quite pretty, most of them, and some could even dance-disrobed and strutted their stuff for the indifferent authence. As the patrons gathered along the bar and in the shadowy booths, I felt even more at home. Apart from style of dress and the preponderance of deep tans, these slags were almost exactly like the crowd that frequented my favorite watering holes in Seattle and Cheyenne. Hard-edged customers, most of them-totally at home in the reality of the streets, if not full-on denizens of the shadows. Many were packing-I could see it in the way they moved-and those who weren't looked as though they could more than hold their own even without a weapon.

I sipped at my second beer. Scott was still nursing his first and refused my offer of a refill. "Drinking and driving ain't a good thing with a vehicle control rig," he told me firmly.

A knot of real hard cases were talking biz in the back corner. Macroplast glinted momentarily in the light as a credstick changed hands. I leaned over toward Scott and nodded toward the negotiators. "What are the shadows like around here?" I asked quietly.

He sipped beer to give himself a moment to tiiink. "Pretty dark, brah," he said at last. "When the sun's bright, the shadows can get pretty fragging dark."

"Big shadow community?"

He shrugged. "Depends on how you define it, I guess. There's a fair bit of biz to be done, that's what I hear at least." He grinned crookedly. "Comes from having such a big megacorp presence, that's the way I read it.

"But the core group, the real players?" He shrugged again. "Not too many of them, I guess. Probably fewer than where you're from. And fewer wannabes, too."

"Why's that?"

The ork smile turned predatory for a moment. "Nature of the islands, hoa, that's all. It's a small community here. You frag up, and there's no space to run. The way I hear it, you're good… or you're dead."

I nodded slowly. That made a disturbing kind of sense. As a kind of mental exercise, I ran through a few contingency plans for getting off the islands if things went screwy in a hurry… and quickly realized how few options there really were. Disturbing. I always liked to have running room. "How much actual biz goes down here?" I asked after a moment.

Scott raised his eyebrows. "Hey, you're asking the wrong wikanikanaka, brah," he protested mildly, "I'm just a chauffeur, here."

My expression communicated just what I thought of that disclaimer. "Get actual, chummer," I told him. "You're connected. Somebody like you has got to be. Right?"

I watched his eyes as he debated standing pat with his bluff, and eventually decided against it. He smiled a little self-consciously. "Yeah, okay, I got my ear to the ground. I hear things." He paused. "Some biz goes down here, and in other places like this. But the shadows are different here than they are elsewhere-that's the way I hear it, at least. On the mainland, if you got a good brag-sheet, you get biz. Fixers deal with you on the basis of your street rep, doesn't matter whether they know you or not. Right?"

"Sometimes," I allowed.

"That's not the way it happens here, hoa," he said firmly. "Not the way I hear it, at least… and keep in mind this is all secondhand; I'm a driver, not a runner, okay?" He paused, ordering his thoughts. "The way I hear it, in the islands it's personal relationships that matter more than a brag-sheet, even more than a street rep. People deal with people they know personally, people they've come to trust. Some malihini newcomer to the islands rolls up with a brag-sheet as long as your fragging leg-'I shaved Fuchi ice, I blew away a division of Azzie hard-men, I took Dunkelzahn in a con game'-and nobody's going to touch him, 'cause he's an unknown quantity, see? The kalepa-the fixers- they're going to go with the runners they know, the ones they've dealt with personally before… even if it means going with some hawawa who's not as good as the newcomer. At least the kalepa knows exactly what to expect."