The taller of the two figures held something up to the door viewer-a duplicate of the deputy's badge I still had in my pocket. I unlocked the door and swung it back.

The two muscleboys didn't so much as acknowledge my presence. Silent as wraiths in their dark suits, they seemed to teleport by me. The shorter of the two-I noticed with a slight shock that she was female-shut and relocked the door, while her taller companion just stood in the middle of the room scanning it with a gaze as piercing as a surgical laser.

After half a minute he nodded minusculely and finally turned toward me. "Mr. Montgomery," he acknowledged, his voice as empty of emotion as a vocoder. "I'm Louis Pohaku. My associate is Alana Kono." Neither of the hard-types offered to shake hands, so I just nodded to them. "Have you done a security survey?"

"You're the experts," I said with a shrug.

Pohaku shot a look at his partner, then they split up, and basically started taking the hotel room apart.

1 watched them as they worked. Pohaku was the boss-man, quite obviously, and he'd been in the game for some time. I guessed him to be in his late thirties, maybe a few years older than me, and that the world hadn't been kind to him. His face was drawn, his eyes slightly sunken, his skin sallow. Hell, he looked like a walking corpse dressed up for the prom. He moved well, though-even just walking across the hotel room, I could see he was toned and cranked up. He didn't have any obvious cybermods, but I'd have bet big cred that his reactions were juiced to some degree.

Where Pohaku was tall and spare, Kono was small and pleasantly rounded. (I wouldn't let myself so much as think the word "chubby," because she'd probably tear my liver out.) Broad face, dark hair in bubbly curls, and curves in all the right girl-places. Her eyes were dark and alive, and even the slightest trace of a smile would have made her fragging near beautiful. Of course, smiling wasn't part of her job description. Woman-trappings or not, she could just as well have been Pohaku's soulless clone-brother.

The two hard-types in their matching dark suits gave the place the security version of a white-glove inspection. They tried the sealed windows, they checked out sightlines, they scanned every millimeter of the walls with electronic detectors of some kind, they hooked little black boxes up to the telecom, they even-I drek you not-looked under the bed, and test-flushed the drekker. A couple of times I considered telling them to lighten up. Hell, I'd spent one night in this room already; I'd used the drekker, even, and my anatomy was still intact. But I kept my yap zipped. They were the pros, after all, and I might as well let them have their fun.

Finally, they were done, and Pohaku came toward me. Part of my mind expected a brisk, "Crapper secured, sah!", but of course all I got was a cool nod. My security assets were satisfied with the situation, so I should be as well. Taking my cue from Pohaku, I just nodded in return and waved them wordlessly toward the couch.

I've never been particularly comfortable waiting for something to go down. I was even less comfortable sharing the room with the emotionless Bobbsey Twins. If Pohaku and Kono had done something even slightly human- belched, maybe, pulled out a book, or used the (secured) drekker-it would have made things a lot easier. No luck, chummer. They just sat on the couch, one at each end, spines ramrod straight, staring off into space.

No, that wasn't quite right. They didn't zone out. They didn't look at me or at each other, but they didn't slip into the thousand-meter stare that I always associate with boredom, or with no coffee for breakfast. Instead, their gazes kept flicking around the room, never settling anywhere for long, like the eyes of a pilot monitoring his plane's instruments. I considered trying to strike up a conversation, but that idea withered away pretty damn quick. Instead, I snagged myself a fruit juice from the fridge, but didn't offer any to the Bobbsey Twins. If they wanted something, they could crack their adamantine shells long enough to fragging ask. Then, juice in hand, I slumped down into a chair and worked on my patience.

According to my internal, subjective clock, we sat there like that for, oh, nigh on a year or so. (My watch said it was little more than an hour and a half, but what the frag did it know anyway?) A few minutes before the official time of the meet, a knock sounded on the door.

Pohaku and Kono were on their feet so fast I didn't even see them move. (Yep, boosted reflexes, both of them.) Kono flickered across me living room, taking up cover position in a small alcove. Pohaku fragging near teleported again across to the door. Weapons, nasty little chopped-down SMGs, were in their hands as if by magic.

Pohaku said something I couldn't make out-probably a code word of some kind-and rapped a rhythmic sequence on the door. (Why not just look through the viewer lens? Think about it, chummer. Bad guy on the outside waits for that little viewer to go dark-telling him the good guy's eye is up against said viewer-and sends a round or two right through it Ouch.) I didn't hear the countersign, but I could hear the answering rap code; it sounded like a musical quote from Take Five.

Either it was the right code, or Pohaku liked jazz. The two gillettes' SMGs vanished again, and Pohaku unlocked the door. He stepped aside as one figure entered, then shut and relocked it I looked at the newcomer, and my stomach did a one-and-a-half gainer.

It was the fragging bird-boned woman, the little old scag I'd seen through the security camera of Cheeseburger in Paradise and then later in the coffee shop next to the Ilima Joy. She was dressed the same as when I'd seen her the other two times, in a shapeless sack of a dress that had once been black but had now faded to a kind of careworn gray. Her bright eyes flickered over to me and pierced me like a butterfly pinned onto a display board. Then she returned her attention to Pohaku, and they talked in quiet tones.

"Hey, wait just one fragging tick here," I said loudly and crossed the room toward them. Two sets of dark eyes-one sunken, one sharp and almost beady-settled on me. "Who the frag's this?"

The bird-boned woman flashed me a quick and knowing smile, but it was Pohaku who answered. "You asked for shamanic support," he said flady.

"Her?"

I hadn't thought it was possible, but his expression grew even colder. "Akaku'akanene has the full confidence of the Ali'i," he said sternly, leaving the rest of the thought-"and that should be good enough for the likes of you"-unspoken.

I raised a hand, palm out. "Afai-what?"

"Akaku'akanene." This from the bird-boned woman. Her voice was brisk, sharp, abrupt. "My name. Means 'Vision of me Goose'."

"Uh-huh." I paused. "Look, I don't want to sound like a paranoid buttbrain, but…"

Akaku'akanene flashed me another of those quick smiles of hers. (For a moment my memory superimposed an image of my old chummer Buddy over the shaman's face. The mannerisms were painfully similar. With an effort I swallowed my sadness.) "Did I follow you?" she finished for me. "Yes."

I shook my head. That wasn't the answer I was expecting. Frag, I'd been looking for a nice, reassuring, "Don't be a dickhead."

"How?" I asked. "Why?" Then I went back to, "How?" again. The two times I'd seen me old shaman had been before my first conversation with Gordon Ho, the Ali'i. How the hell did she even know I existed?

"Why?" she echoed. "Nene sang of you."

I waited for her to go on-for her to say something that actually made sense. When she didn't, I responded, "Huh?"

"Nene sang of you," she repeated patiently. "She sees your 'uhane. Your spirit. You are the axle. Important things turn around you." She said all this as if it were totally obvious, as if I were a pluperfect dolt for not knowing it already.