He let the shapes wash over and around him, put out his hand to draw in another narrowcast band. The air glowed briefly amber, control icons sparking in the system space that he had placed within easy reach, and then cleared again. A woman’s face appeared, a mask of white paint and strong black lines and the vivid red of her mouth; he watched for a moment and pushed it away, to one side of the dancing market numbers. For a brief instant, his hand seemed to sink into the image, marring its edge, and then it moved, obedient to his touch. He reached again into the control space, found the symbols and the tool he wanted, and a second image, identical to the delicate, complex shape that was the graphic representation of the elaborate transformational database overhead, appeared in the air in front of him. He chose another tool, the wires of his gloves growing faintly warmer around his hands in confirmation of the choice, and then reached for the shape. He wrapped his hands around it, squeezed gently, compressing it, until it hung in a space no more than a dozen centimeters in diameter. Some of the delicacy had vanished in the compression, become little more than texture. He frowned, and reached for a second tool, used its all‑but‑invisible point to pry the numbers apart, untangling the channels, until the various strands were distinct again.

He lay back against the shifting cushions, studying the image, set it slowly rotating in front of him. The shape derived from those twining numbers would be the main focus of one of his story eggs, a commission for a Syndic of the Merchant Investors, a woman who lived and died by the movements of the trade that created the numbers coiling in the air in front of him. He reached for the face that hung in the air beside it, brought it down, until the strands of numbers slowly writhed behind the mask, like DNA beneath the skin. It was interesting, but not, he thought, what was needed now; it detracted from the bizarre beauty of the shifting numbers. He banished the face with a wave of his hand, leaving only the intertwining numbers, bronze and green and all the shades of metal, floating in unreal space. He smiled, contemplating it, and reached into the control space to preserve the image in one of the dataspheres waiting linked to the main consoles. The sphere would store both the algorithm that transformed the numbers to this graphic and the formulae for the connections to the financial nets–even the private ones, one of which had been donated by the client–that provided the raw data. All that remained was to set the image into a proper casing, and that was already waiting, ready on the shelf: a smooth, pale green egg the color of old, well‑weathered copper, with streaks and spills of stronger green, and the ghost of the metal showing through. He smiled, savoring the satisfaction of a job well done, and closed the particular volume.

A voice that had been speaking from one of the floor‑mounted receivers for some time now, he realized belatedly, was calling his name.

“–Ransome, I know you’re there. I can see your taps.” There was a brief pause, and then, reluctantly, “It’s important, I‑Jay.”

Ransome sighed, suddenly aware that it was morning and that he had been awake most of the night, and that it was Chauvelin himself who was making this connection, not one of the apparently numberless ambassadorial servants. He muted the remaining images with a wave of his hand, and reached into control space to connect himself with the communications channel. “I’m here.”

“About time.”

The familiar face, elegant and worn and lined beneath the brown hair just going cloudy with grey, bloomed in the air above him. Ransome winced, and moved it to a less dominating position. “I was working,” he said, and winced again at the defensive note in his voice. “What is it?”

Chauvelin smiled slightly, sourly, a faint quirk of one corner of his long mouth. “I need to talk to you–not on the nets. The Visiting Speaker has come up with some interesting information you and I need to discuss.”

“Fuck the Visiting Speaker,” Ransome said, and Chauvelin’s smile widened into something approaching humor.

“A privilege not likely to be granted.” Chauvelin’s smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Tell me something, why would Cella Minter want you back in the Game?”

Ransome blinked, wondering where this question had come from, and what it really meant. Cella he knew, both as Damian Chrestil’s mistress and as an accomplished Gamer, but only from a distance. “I’ve no idea,” he said, and then, because it was usually best to tell Chauvelin the truth, “I didn’t know she wanted me back Gaming.”

“So ji‑Imbaoa says,” Chauvelin said, and held up a hand, forestalling any answer from the other. Ransome grinned, and let him continue. “And so it looks to me, too, looking at the nets. I tied in to some of the club gossip boards. There’s a lot of talk about Ambidexter, and usually Cella hinting in the background that he ought to come back to show people how his templates are supposed to be played.”

Ransome shrugged, felt his face go wooden. “Ambidexter’s dead–”

In spite of himself, the words came out bitter, and it was the bitterness that Chauvelin answered. “You’re not dead yet. I don’t have time for self‑pity, I‑Jay, I need your help.”

Ransome lifted both eyebrows, a deliberate imitation of Chauvelin’s gesture. “You must be desperate.” He paused then, shook his head, shaking away the bad temper that was becoming a habit with him. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why Cella would want me on the Game,” he said again. “Unless it’s something Damian Chrestil wants?”

“I’d say that was highly likely,” Chauvelin murmured. “Which raises the question of why he would want it. And that is something I don’t want to discuss on the nets.”

Ransome made another face, though he had to admit the wisdom of it. He himself was not the only netwalker on Burning Bright, or the only imagist who tapped unlikely lines looking for good sources. “I suppose you’ll want me to come to you.”

“Yes.” Chauvelin’s tone blended forbearance and the resignation of an adult dealing with a child. “I think that would be best.”

Ransome laughed, gestured apology, miming the hsai gesture that linked wrist spurs. The scars where his implanted spurs had been removed touched briefly, an odd, unpleasant feeling; he jerked his hands apart without finishing the movement. Chauvelin said nothing, did not move at all, as though nothing had happened, and Ransome said, “I’ll be there in an hour.” He knew he sounded curt, made himself add, by way of further apology, “It’ll take me a while to pull myself together. I was up all night working on a commission.”

Chauvelin nodded. “May I see?”

“It’s a private commission,” Ransome said, with genuine regret–Chauvelin was one of the very few whose opinions mattered to him–then grinned suddenly. “But I’ve done something for you, I’ll show you when I get there.”

“That will be the first good thing that’s happened all day,” Chauvelin said. He gave a twisted smile, as though he regretted the admission, and said, in an entirely different voice, “In an hour, then.” He cut the connection before Ransome could respond.

Ransome sighed, staring at the still‑busy images without really seeing them, then brought his chair upright. The net taps whirled around him, readjusting themselves to his position, but he waved them away, then closed both fists to shut down the system. Glyphs and codestrings flickered past, too fast to be understood at more than the subliminal level, and then the pictures vanished. Ransome sighed again, stretching, feeling the long night’s work claw at his back, the old familiar ache in the bones and tendons of his hands. He peeled off the tight gloves, wincing a little, and set them aside. His chest was tight, catching in his ribs; he could hear the fluids at the base of his lungs, a harsh rasp that cut each breath too short for comfort. He reached instinctively for the cylinder of Mist, flipping it backwards to unfold the facemask, but stopped abruptly. The red light glowed under the trigger button, warning him that he had taken a dose within the last two hours. He stared at it for a second, his mind forming a curse to override the fear, then made himself set it aside.