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anyone.
    Teece had fallen in love with someone else, and Daac . . . well, his treachery was worthy of Judas.
    I sighed and returned to my mental list as the Pet ploughed a path past brawling Fishertown slummers.
    Look up Bras.
    Bras was a kid who’d helped me once and had wound up adopted by the banking royalty of Viva and head of her own company - the new face of prosthetics.
    And Gwynn.
    Gywnn was an amputee who lived in a drain on the Tert/Viva border. He’d been a one-time Pan-Sat athlete, a weightlifter who’d been reduced to minding an opening to the old sewer labyrinth. I’d promised him I’d get some turk called Trunk off his back, and I hadn’t been keeping my promises as well as I’d have liked.
    I decided to call the last two items on the list my before-someone-puts-a-bullet-in-me resolutions and went back to the top . . .
     
    I was still recapping the order in my head when I caught the Trans up to Fishertown and dropped past Teece’s bike biz.
    Mama was minding shop for Teece while he was minding shop for me.
    ‘You gotta nerve, turning up here,’ the ex-sumo glowered.
    I still owed Teece for the damage to the last bike I’d hired from them. Mama looked as if he wanted nothing more than to suffocate me between his huge thighs in settlement.
    ‘So they tell me,’ I said. ‘If Loyl-me-Daac comes looking for me, Mama, you send him south, OK?’
    Mama grimaced. At least, I think that’s what it was. The fat folds on his face and neck made it hard to tell. ‘You got it coming, grrl,’ he added.
    I had to be content with that.
     
    I caught the Trans north, changing connections until it brought me to a huge, badly air-conditioned puffball dome full of comings and goings.
    Trains, Aeros and Cruisers all docked at Viva’s Eastern Interchange, which made the place busier than most of the supercity’s checkpoints and the best point of entry to slip through cracks.
    I paid for a luggage drone and walked to the Viva Visitors lattice to dodge the Militia with body scanners positioned along the ped-ways. When I got there it was bottlenecked, with everybody being physically searched.
    ‘What’s the go?’ I asked the p-diary salesman lined up in front of me.
    ‘Someone heard that Garter Thin and the VBs are coming to town to play at some big, rich party for the Pan-Sats. Seems like everyone on the east coast’s come to Viva thinking they might catch a glimpse of ’em.’
    Thin and the VBs were a big deal in the Southern Hem. I’d heard their music. OK if you liked that old-style hard-girl-rocker image. Personally I thought they looked like they wouldn’t last a round with Mama.
    Or me, come to think of it.
    The doors to the celeb lounge seemed a helluva lot quieter than the cattle grid so I headed for the nearest san, slipped off my coat off and re-emerged in full borrowed Amorato regalia. Translucent high-collared shirt and floaty skirt, high heels and pliable snake bracelets up to my armpits. I’d left my leather crop in my case.
    I passed through the weapons scanner without a problem and the doors popped open.
    Four stoned-out bodies and one luggage-burdened intimate occupied the perfume-aired, satin-decorated lounge. A couple of ornately uniformed Militia sat in a booth near the exit.
    I threaded between the bodies, giving the Militia boys time to look at me.
    And me time to look at the bodies.
    I recognised Garter Thin, the singer from the VBs by the tattoos on her voice supplemental and her cosmetically adjusted lip sneer. The rest of them could have been any dregs from the street.
    Maybe they were.
    ‘Go round the other way,’ the singer rasped.
    I ignored her, stabbing my heel into her leg as I stepped over it.
    She swore and kicked out at me.
    I caught her foot in both hands and twisted it, dumping her on the floor.
    Without breaking stride I walked on to the booth. The soldiers hadn’t seen my antics. Too busy watching porn.
    I tapped on the booth to attract their attention and slid my