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from the TriView and picked up the box containing the arbitration unit. Nothing else, Saul knew, would have been sufficient to make him risk showing up here.
    ‘This is a clone, correct?’ Hsiu-Chuan asked, finally acknowledging Saul’s existence. His English was only lightly accented.
    ‘Of one of the most successful predictive AIs currently operating in the Coalition share markets, yes,’ Saul agreed. ‘It was . . . difficult to obtain.’
    ‘And you understand,’ Hsiu-Chuan continued, his manner still offhand, ‘what will happen to you personally if it’s a fake or if it fails to live up to expectations?’
    ‘I do,’ Saul replied levelly.
    Hsiu-Chuan nodded, pocketing the unit, then snapped his fingers at Kwan. Kwan responded by tossing a single bundle of cash underhand to one of the two street soldiers. Without another word to Saul or anyone else, Hsiu-Chuan drted the room, followed by the same street soldier.
    ‘Where have they gone?’ Saul demanded, turning to glare at Tanner.
    ‘Just making sure everything’s legitimate,’ Tanner replied with an easy shrug. ‘They’ll run some tests, won’t take more than a minute or two. Have a drink while we wait.’
    Tanner stepped back over to the couch and fetched a half-bottle of whisky and four glasses. He placed the glasses on the conference table and poured a hefty measure into each. He then put the bottle down and withdrew a pykrete gun from inside his voluminous coat, placing it next to the bottle.
    ‘What the fuck is that for?’ asked Saul, staring at the gun.
    ‘That?’ Tanner pretended to be surprised by the question. ‘ That is in case your sample of money or your arbitration unit aren’t up to scratch.’ Tanner picked up his whisky, full to the brim, and drank it in one swallow, before slamming down the empty glass. ‘I hope that’s not a problem for you,’ he added, with a thin smile.
    ‘Not at all,’ Saul muttered, picking up his own glass to try and hide his agitation. He noticed that neither Jacob nor Hsingyun had made any move yet towards their own drinks.
    There was just enough loup-garou still left circulating through Saul’s bloodstream to ratchet up his fight-or-flight responses, but he felt his nerves settle a bit as the whisky slithered down his throat. It had a pleasant, slightly honeyed texture.
    ‘Sometimes,’ said Tanner, refilling his own glass before raising it, as if in salute, ‘I wonder how it ever got to the point where good honest criminals were forced to print their own money.’
    ‘At least it’s real money,’ muttered Hsingyun, finally picking up his glass and taking a sip. ‘And not just numbers encoded on some fucking computer’s memory.’
    ‘Ah,’ Tanner nodded, ‘that’s why I came here, to Kepler.’
    ‘For black-market cash?’ asked Saul.
    ‘That and freedom, too. Back there,’ he said, waving one hand towards the opposite wall, as if the entire planet Earth were lurking just on the other side of it, ‘there’s none. Back there it’s all invisible credit. But that,’ he gestured with his glass at Saul’s briefcase, ‘that’s real, tangible. You can hold it in your hands. Walk around the street stalls back in the city, you’ll see that stuff getting used. People here trust it more than they ever did UP-linked credit.’
    Saul nodded. The cash in the briefcase had been printed on black-market presses that had been impounded long ago by the ASI. They had been obliged to print their own or they’d never have been able to pay the network of informants they maintained throughout a dozen worlds. Tanner was right, of course: back on nd Luna, where the only legal currency had a purely virtual existence, you couldn’t do anything without leaving a trail of information behind you. The underground economy had no choice but to develop its own secret banking and credit system, replete with its very own currency.
    Tanner paused, as if about to say something, then withdrew a slim device, placing