"Fine," Javna said. "But I need that information tonight. Tonight, Dave. I've got to go into court tomorrow and try to keep every treaty between Nidu and Earth for the last several decades from becoming null and void. Knowing where our lost sheep is will go a very long way in keeping that from happening."

"Deal," Phipps said, and took a final bite of his hot dog. "What's the suit about, if you don't mind me asking?"

"The Nidu claim that Robin Baker is their property because she's got their sheep DNA in her genetic makeup. I have to prove she's more human than property," Javna said. "If I win, she gets to stay a citizen of Earth. If I lose, we're all in some pretty deep shit"

"Human being or Nidu sheep," Phipps said, and chucked his napkin into a trash can. "Now, there's a case for the rabbis."

Javna, who had been about to stuff the last bit of his hot dog in his mouth, stopped. He looked at his dog for a second. "Huh," he said, and then finished off his dog.

"Huh, what?" Phipps said.

"Phipps, I want you to know I think you're one of the biggest assholes it's been my pleasure to meet in my entire government career," Javna said.

"This is what I get for buying you lunch," Phipps said, dryly. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Javna said. "But asshole that you may be, you've just given me an idea for my court date tomorrow. If it works, when you and I go into that back alley, I'll let you have the first swing."

"Well, then," Phipps said. "Here's hoping that it works."

"Ahhhhh," Rod Acuna said, flexing his previously broken wrist. "That's much better. How does it look, geek?" Acuna thrust his arm out at Archie; Archie flinched back involuntarily.

"It looks good," Archie said, and tried to turn back to his computer, which had been acting a bit buggy.

"It should," Acuna said, thwarting Archie's maneuver. "Quick-Heal sessions clear all of it up. Broken bones, torn tendons, even bruises and scrapes. It costs a shitload. But on the other hand, now I don't look like you."

Archie involuntarily touched the side of his face, where an ugly purple welt had formed, a souvenir from getting whacked in the face by the second group of invaders who had snuck into Fixer's shop the night before. Archie knew who gave it to him: Sam. He knew it was Sam because once he had fallen to the ground, stunned by the hit, Sam had come in close, whipped out an electric prod and whispered "sorry, love," in his ear before jabbing the prod into his abdomen and shocking him into unconsciousness. He'd only come to because Acuna kicked him the ribs to get him awake and Takk had hauled his body up the stairs.

Takk now lay on the floor of the apartment's bedroom, suffering from the digestive trauma of thowing up Fixer. The less Archie thought about that episode the better. Acuna had very nearly thrown Archie and Takk out of the van and sped off to get his wounds tended; his body had been severely abused over the last couple of days. Archie didn't know where Acuna went to get fixed up but he doubted it was a regular hospital; he imagined it was some underworld freelancer, like that Fixer character, but with a medical degree. Archie let his mind wander to speculate about an entire economy of underworld specialists and reflected that somehow, through no real fault of his own, he could probably be defined as one of them now.

"The pisser about QuickHeal sessions is they make you itch like a son of a bitch," Acuna said. "I'm gonna go get some aspirin. Come with me, geek. I want to talk to you about something." Acuna wheeled around and went out of the door of the apartment; Archie wearily got up and followed.

He caught up to Acuna at the vending machine in the hall. "don't take this the wrong way," Acuna said, as he fed his card into the machine, "but you really look like hell. I mean, whoever these bastards were did a number on me and even scored a few points off of Takk, which takes some doing. But you really got cracked one." He pressed the button to get his aspirin.

"Thanks," Archie said, glumly.

"You want some aspirin of your own?" Acuna asked. "I'll even get them for you. My treat."

"I'm fine," Archie said.

"Hey, look," Acuna said. "They've restocked your favorite: the white chocolate M&Ms. I'm going to get you some." He jabbed his finger at the "B4" button.

Archie meant to say really, thanks, but no. He got as far as the first phoneme before the pain scraped across his optic nerve, sending Archie to the ground, writhing. Acuna watched him fall.

"Well, isn't that interesting," Acuna said. "Maybe I should get two packages, what do you say?" He jabbed the "B4" button a second time. Archie gasped, lifted his head up, and dropped it back down spasmodically to the concrete, sending a second, lesser and almost comforting flash of pain across his brain pan.

"Who do you work for, Archie?" Acuna said, and dimly Archie realized it was only the second time Acuna had used his proper name.

"I work for the Defense Department," Archie gasped.

"Wrong answer," Acuna said, and jabbed "B4" again. Archie twitched in agony. "I know all of Defense's little spy tricks. This isn't one of them. This is a new one on me. That impresses me, incidentally. I thought I knew all the ways to get a bug into a room and get information out of it. But this really takes the cake. Very nice. Well, except for this part." Acuna hit the button again. Archie vomited and curled up into a fetal position.

"Let me make this real simple for you, geek," Acuna said. "I don't like it when people spy on me. I especially don't like it when people spy on me and as a result one of my missions gets fucked up beyond all recognition. It makes me look bad. I don't like looking bad." He jabbed at the vending machine button. This time Archie, marinating in his puke, merely convulsed. "So you're going to tell me who you work for, now, or I'm going to take this fucking credit card right up to its limit getting it out of you."

Archie whimpered something.

"Excuse me?" Acuna said.

"I said, 'fuck you,'" Archie said, voice trembling.

Acuna smiled and looked toward the vending machine. "You know, each of these M&M bags costs eighty-five cents," he said. "And my credit limit on this card is five thousand dollars. Let's see how many bags that gets us."

Acuna spent $45.05 before Archie talked.

Brian snuck into Archie's computer by doing what Archie had wanted him to do: Letting his system get drilled. It was an inside job: Brian created the driller and had it drill into the system by way of a backdoor Brian opened up, into which he'd deposited the data inside a century's worth of Washington DC yellow pages—encrypted, of course, for extra fun, and formatted to look like personal information files. Archie's driller went in, scooped up the data, and hailed Archie's computer to begin transmitting. As it did so, Brian jammed in instructions that left the port wide open but gave Archie's computer the impression it was closed and secure. Brian was having fun being the smartest computer ever.

Brian had been riffling through Archie's files when Archie's onboard computer cam caught Archie coming through the door, followed by a huge-ass alien that Brian recognized (some part of him did, anyway) as a Nagch. Both them looked like they had just had the shit kicked out of them. If Brian had to guess, he would have supposed Archie and the alien had just gotten back from trying to collect Harry and Robin; it didn't appear as if they had been particularly successful. Archie parked himself in front of his computer and picked along desultorily for a few minutes before putting his head on the desk and falling asleep. Brian went back to his file riffling. When Archie woke up the next morning he seemed to suspect someone had been peeking through his files; he ran a diagnostic and started cruising through his files. Brian played cat-and-mouse with Archie for a few hours, partly to gauge Archie's skills and partly for the amusement factor.