Read 02. The Shadow Dancers for Free Online

least one of 'em.
    The first way they check is that everybody who has any real business in there's got some kind of code thing in your bones. Fact is, there might be a whole hell of a lot of Brandys, even with the same fingerprints and eyes and all that, but they ain't the same person no matter how alike they are. I got a code planted somewhere inside my bones- don't ask me how or where. They stuck me in a thing like an iron lung, punched a bunch of buttons, I didn't feel nothin', and that was it. But now any switchman can look at his or her board as soon as I'm inside that cube and read out not only who I am but which I am. The code's big, random, and total nonsense. It's all in computers, of course, but they tell me that even if you got into the computer you couldn't find the numbers.
    If you don't have no number, and you look suspicious, they shoot you off to some siding, someplace on a world where people just never came about, and you sit there till they're ready for you, if they ever are. We had that happen. If you don't have no coding but you sound like you know what you're doin', you can sometimes bluff 'em with a convincin' destination, but they can send messages at about the same speed as they can send you, and they call security on both ends. At least, you could, 'cause we did it, but I'm told they tightened that up now. No code, and you get dumped no matter what.
    They tightened up a lot of other shit when we breezed through their system. Now before you go in you got to file a destination and any stops with the stationmaster who sends it to the security computer, and you're checked as you go along. Guess they were kinda sloppy and cocksure of themselves till we screwed 'em.
    Still, somebody first found the world with this drug disease thingie, whatever it was, then figured out how to bottle or can it or whatever and brought it down the line to the Type Zero-our type-area. There ain't a lot of switches up in Type One and Two territory, and lots of unexplored worlds in between them, so it was possible that somebody could be goin' from one legit point to another and stop off just long enough to pick up the goods.
    That meant there had to be somebody who knew just what they was doin' in the world where this shit came from, then somebody who could get messages back and forth without security knowin' to set up the deal and the pickups, then somebody in the transport guild to actually pick up and carry the stuff, disguised as part of legitimate cargo, and drop it off at its destination, where other big plotters would make use of it. Pretty complicated stuff.
    The Company didn't know who discovered it, or how, and how they managed to both figure out what they had and keep it quiet, even settin' up this scheme. They didn't know how long it had taken to set up. They did know that it was well organized and involved some real bigwigs someplace and lots of corruption, but that was it. They just bumped into it, when they had an accident or something in one of the cargo haulers or whatever that they use and found it strictly by luck. They didn't let on they knew, and it seemed like the transport guild worker was innocent. They'd already switched it and he was now on a legit run. They put a tracer on it to see who'd pick it up, and somebody did.
    "Rupert Conrad Vogel," Bill said, showin' us a photo of a guy who looked like a fugitive from a cheap World War II movie. "He's a stationmaster, which means administration and a Company man, or so we thought. He got the shipment, took a lot of it, then sent some back disguised as something else, again looking very routine. The pickup courier was legitimate, but he encountered another courieralong his route and somehow that second courier got the package and dropped it clandestinely at a world where we didn't have a station but did know. We picked this courier up, stuck him in a hypnoscan, then erased any memories he had of being picked up and discovered and let him continue. He didn't know