"Calm down. No one's going to hurt you while I'm around."

"I cannot help it, sir. These are not nice folks."

The Rats tittered.

The spokes-Rat returned. "Puma'll see you."

"Like I said."

We exited the maze of pipes into a big dry bubble-room littered with personal effects: the Rats' nest. A door led to the Puma's private quarters. Hamster and I went through alone.

The Zuma Puma reclined on a pile of cushions. He wore flexible piezoplastic armor, its effectors slaved to his own electrochemical biosystem. From out the neck, wrists and ankles of the armor protruded tawny fur. His face was bare. A playpet I recognized as a Green Canary model sat beside him, stroking his fur. When we entered, she let out a brief trill of song.

"Haven't seen you in a while, slagger," said the Puma.

"Not since I saved your tail from the Marrow Mothers."

The Puma laughed. "That's one version of the story."

"Commonly called 'the truth.' For which I figure you owe me a favor."

"Depends on the magnitude."

"You had a client this morning." I described von Bulow. "What did he want?"

"Sorry, slagger, can't tell you that. You know all our transactions are eyes only. Who'd come to us if they thought we'd, ah, rat on them?"

"You know it won't get any further than this room."

The Puma was feeling mean. "Sorry. Anything else?"

I pulled my shocker off my hip. The Puma laughed.

"What are you gonna do with that toy, knock me out? When I come to, you still won't know anything."

I aimed at his chest and pulled the trigger. The dart embedded its microhooks into his armor.

"Bad shot, slagger. You didn't even connect with the flesh."

"I know." I sent current down the wire. The Puma stiffened boardlike out on his couch, just like a window shutter.

"The fuel cell in this is rated for a month of constant output. When I leave by your bolthole with your Canary, your Rats will try breaking in. I don't imagine they'll succeed, given your security. I understand dying of thirst is particularly nasty."

"I'll sue the cartel that sold me this piece of shit armor!"

"Only if you tell me what I want to know."

The Puma gave an exaggerated sigh. "Okay. The guy wouldn't let us unravel his blood. That made us curious, and

we were gonna try for a sample anyway. But he was launch-on-warning and pulled a flashlight on us. Put a quick end to any fiddle and diddle, and we desisted. He proceeded to describe his prob. Sounded like he needed a high-powered math coprocessor and some grafix wetware. We laid them in, and it seemed to satisfy him.''

"He say what he intended to do with 'em?"

"Hey, it's getting hard to breathe in this suit-"

"It'll only get harder. C'mon. Where was he going?"

"Well, our fee pretty much wiped him out. He wanted to know where he could get a big stake to gamble with. I told him the casinos' in this town were too conservative to loan him anything. It's true, you know, Boston 's as far out of things as the Oort Cloud. I sent him to Atlantic City."

"Right." I reeled the dart back in. The Puma relaxed.

"You make it hard to act friendly," he said.

"Not my biggest worry. See you around, Zee Pee."

Back on the streets, I joined a line at a Bank of Boston machine. Flipper's tip had paid off, and I was going to credit the church's account before I headed for Atlantic City.

The guy in front of me took back his card from the machine. He went to pocket it, then something made him halt. He looked at his card, swore, then drew his gun and fired into the bank machine.

The machine let out an electronic squeal. It shot out of its wall-alcove on four wheels and tried to race off. It knocked down a salesman. The salesman's sample case hit the ground and broke open. Shards of music filled the air. A woman

screamed. The guy with the gun fired again. This time he brought the machine down.

A crowd was collecting around the shattered and smoking bank machine. The smell of frying circuits hung thick in the air. The angry customer bulled through the bystanders. He reached into the machine's guts and retrieved his original card. "Fucking mimics," he said. "Last time my card was stolen, I lost fifteen thousand NU-dollars."

"It's a hard world," said someone in the crowd, with incomplete sincerity.

"Bet on it," said the guy, and patted his holstered gun.

The Seraphim trip from Boston to Atlantic City was a good ninety minutes plus. Von Bulow was a few hours ahead of me, and there was no way I was going to catch up with him any faster than this. I was just as glad. It gave me a little time to think.

Hamster sat asleep in the seat beside me. I couldn't say why I was bringing the splice along. It would have been just as happy sitting at home, watching the special transgenic thrid-vid channels, and Papa Legba knows it was absolutely no help on a case. Maybe I needed the company. Maybe I felt Hamster was my good-luck talisman. Maybe my dendrites were tangled. What the hell, though. The little trans rode for half-fare.

I scratched behind Hamster's ears while I considered the case.

Von Bulow must be a certifiable monomaniac. Here he was, carrying some codes in his blood Which, if they worked, he could sell to any of a dozen companies for practically a month's GNP from APEC. Instead, he was going to use them to get a few jolts from the casino games. I couldn't decrypt if. Maybe someone had wired his boards this way. For all I knew, he could be creaming in his jox every time the dealer called "vingt-une." I had run into kinkier stim-rep loops.

After half an hour, I gave up pondering the matter. I couldn't be bothered trying to figure out why people acted the crazy way they did. If I had any talents in that area, I would have been able to tell you why I came home one day to find my apartment packed solid with self-replicating Krazy Foam, and my wife gone. All I can handle is what people actually do, not whatever wordless impulses they might be working from. I had my assignment, and that was that. Geneva Hippenstiel-Imhausen wanted back what was hers, and I was being paid to get it for her.

I remembered the feel of her hot love-scar under my thumb and wondered what else she wanted.

The scenery rushed by the single-crystal windows of the train in a blur like fast-forward video. Eventually, under New York, I dozed off for a few minutes too. It had been a long day.

We pulled into AC about eight P.M. Hamster and I debarked and made our way to the Boardwalk.

I hadn't been here since they rebuilt the Boardwalk behind the new dike that kept the rising Atlantic at bay. They had used Bechtel-Kanematsu-Gosho superwood and elevated

the structure four stories in the air, to wind its way past all the casinos. It was spectacular, in Atlantic City 's usual tawdry style.

The walk was crowded with citizens and splices. Tourists gawped at the street performers. There was a crowd around a bikini-clad socket who had dosed herself with plenty of Bonemelt. She had put a half-twist in her body before grabbing her feet, turning herself into a human Mobius strip. To prove she was one-sided as she lay on her mat, she had little sucker-footed crawlers walking over her common ventral-dorsal surface. Good trick.

I stopped to grab a spirulina-dog and an orange soda. If von Bulow was here, he would just be settling down, not moving on, and I could take my time.

"Want something?" I asked Hamster.

"Oh, yes, sir, if you please. One of those nice chili-dogs, with extra sauce."

I made Hamster take its special supplement. One a day, or goodbye world. Sold only to registered human owners. That's why there are no runaway transgenics. Or not so many.