"Yah, okay," he said, though his voice told me and everyone else that it definitely was not okay. He stood up, unjacked, and followed Kat to the briefing table… but not before giving me a solid dose of stink-eye. I shot him my best "Hey, I'm just a harmless idiot who probably won't reformat all your storage" smile, and sat down in the chair he'd just vacated.

It took me a few moments to make sense of the 'puter's user interface. (Sure, modern systems are supposed to follow the same paradigm, but just because you can drive a Volkswagen Elektro doesn't mean you're immediately competent behind the wheel of a 480-kilometer-an-hour Formula Unlimited racing machine, right?) When I thought I had everything under control, the first thing I did was scope out how many copies of the chip's contents Poki had in memory or in long-term storage. As far as I could tell, there was only the one: a single copy of the file in volatile memory displaying on the screen. Unfortunately, the key phrase was "as far as I could tell." If a nova-hot decker wanted to hide a backup copy from an amateur code-jockey like me, he'd sure as frag be able to do it. Once I'd done what I could in the way of security, I actually read through the message on the display.

Apparently, Barnard had never learned how to write concise letters. (But then, of course, by-the-bit charges for message traffic don't mean much to a corporate suit.) The message from Jacques Barnard to the late Ekei Tokudaiji filled three screens. I read it over twice, word for word, then scanned again for overall content.

For all the meaningful content I pulled out of the text, Barnard could as well have kept it down to two or three lines. If I'd been asked to give a high-school-style precis of the letter, it would have come out something like, "Keep on doing whatever it is you've been doing with regard to the subject under discussion, and be aware that some other, unidentified people might take steps to stop you from doing so. Have a nice day."

Sigh. I should have expected it, I suppose. There are more ways to conceal meaning than by using 70-bit public-key encryption. Veiled language, cryptic references that mean something to no one but the two principals, "closed" allusions to things like "our communication of 12/18/55" and "the matter that so concerns our mutual friend"…

In addition to my simple precis, I could conclude one thing from the message with a fair bit of certainty. Namely: Tokudaiji and Barnard weren't strangers, and their interests had definitely aligned several times in the past. That's all I knew for sure after reading the message.

I could make a couple of guesses, of course. First, considering what Te Purewa-"Marky"' to these folks-had told me, it seemed reasonably logical that "whatever it is you've been doing" was calming the populace down when Na Kama'aina and ALOHA tried to stir them up. And second…

Second… I couldn't be at all sure about this, but I couldn't shake the feeling, gut-deep and so very disturbing, that this wasn't a fake message whipped up just to set the mind of a soon-to-be-dead courier/Trojan horse at ease. If someone had asked me to bet on the instigator of Tokudaiji's death, not so long ago I'd have put a whack of cred on one Jacques Barnard. Now? No bet, chummer. Sure, I've been known to be wrong, but deep down where instinct sends you messages, I just didn't buy it anymore.

So, what the flying frag was going on?

I checked that the chip I'd given Poki was still in the 'puter's chipslot, then downloaded a copy of the plaintext message to it. Once I was sure it was safely ensconced on the optical chip, I deleted the copy from memory. Then I removed the chip using the same carrier and slipped it into my pocket.

Kat and Poki were watching me as I walked back to the briefing table. "Thanks," I said with a nod at the decker. Then I focused my attention on Kat. "I need to go back to my doss in Chinatown." I'd misstated the location of my flop, of course, and I watched her eyes closely for any reaction.

There was none-none beyond a frown of disapproval, that is. "Your safe-house is insecure," she pointed out. "The yaks might have compromised it." She gestured around at the ops room. "Just hang here, hoa, you're covered here. You scan? If you need to catch some sleep…"

I shook my head. "There's gear there I need," I lied sincerely. "If I don't get it, I'm dead. Not now, but pretty fragging soon."

She glanced over at Moko, still sprawled in his hammock. "I can send-"

"No good," I cut in. "It's secured. Unless I cut off my thumb and give it to Moko…" I shrugged and let the thought hang.

Kat considered it. The fact that my implication I was using a thumbprint security system of some kind didn't even faze her told me something more about this group's resources. "Moko can come with you," she suggested after a moment.

I shook my head. "That's just asking for trouble, isn't it?" I pointed out. "It's not as if Moko isn't a memorable type, after all." She half smiled at that and I knew I'd won. "I'll be back in touch the minute I've got my gear," I told her, to soften the victory. "Give me a cold relay so I can contact you."

After a moment she nodded once, and recited a string of digits. I committed them to memory. "Get his bike ready," she told Zack. Then she turned back to me. "Hope you know what you're doing, bruddah."

"So do I," I told her fervently, and that was the only truthful thing I'd said in the past few minutes.

I had to ride around in circles through the depths of Ewa for almost ten minutes before I spotted a landmark I recognized- From there it only took me another five to make it back to my doss.

I was cautious going in, of course. I didn't think it particularly likely that the yak soldiers had a line on my flop, but you don't bet your life blindly on vaporous things like "likelihoods." There were no unusual-looking people in the stairwells or the hallways, and when I reached the door to my room all the telltales I'd left were still securely in place. Confident for me first time that I was doing the right thing, I went in and locked the door behind me.

Then the confidence vaporized. I knew what I had to do- what I thought I had to do, rather-but that didn't make it any easier. I'd lived this long trusting my gut, but one of these days that well-tuned organ was going to let me down, violently and terminally. I sat down in front of the telecom, slipped my Manhunter from my waistband, and set it on the table beside the keyboard. Then I just stared at the screen for a couple of minutes.

Did I have the jam to do it? Did I have the jam not to do it? Frag, I hate these questions. Finally, I accepted that, a) I really didn't have that much choice; and b) if I played it right, it wasn't going to increase the danger I was in- already maximal-by any meaningful degree. I sighed, and then I keyed in the LTG number I'd taken off my voice-mail back in Cheyenne, what seemed so long ago.

I fidgeted and fretted as the telecom clicked its way through the intermediary nodes of the cold relay. Finally, the Ringing symbol blinked on the screen. Belatedly, I ran through the math to figure out the time in Kyoto, Japan. Nigh on midnight unless I'd slipped a time-zone somewhere. Would Mr. Jacques Barnard still be in the office? I doubted it. If not, would he have the call redirected, or would I get mat most hateful of voices, me one that says, "Please leave your message after the beep?"

The Ringing symbol cleared, but the screen stayed blank. Then I heard the electronic click of yet another relay. After a few more seconds the screen cleared, and I was staring into the face of Jacques Barnard.

He was at home, I figured. Behind him, slightly out of focus, was a nighttime cityscape, viewed from a decent height-like from the penthouse of a downtown skyraker, for example. He was awake and alert, but he looked mentally cooked. When I'd first called him from Cheyenne, he looked to have aged a good decade in four years. Now he'd added another five years to that figure. He leaned back, brushing an invisible speck of dust from me sleeve of his maroon velvet smoking jacket-a fragging smoking jacket- and he gave me a smile that reminded me of sharks and barracudas.