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couple working for Musen the accountant, one or two in Fahd’s biz development empire, and another one or two working directly for Blake. I can’t prove it, but I strongly suspect a couple of them sometimes monitor what I do when I’m online. No surprise. Blake would be a fool not to keep watch on a communication channel like that.
    So, filing reports and receiving orders over the net isn’t smart. Physical meets sound dangerous—and sometimes they are—but not if you do them right. First point: whoever’s on the other end of the meet—Cat today—I don’t talk to them about what’s going down. They’re not my conduit, just my postman.
    On the way over to the CB, I “dictated” my report inside my head, dumping it onto a datachip slotted into one of my jacks. Before I went into the kissaten, I pulled the chip and stashed it in a small carrier cylinder not much bigger than a toothpick, and I’ve got it palmed now. My orders are on a similar chip stashed somewhere on Cat’s person. All we’ve got to do is make the switch.
    Isn’t this dangerous? Well, yeah, but some risks you’ve just got to take. Also, I’ve done some things to cover myself. First off, the chip holding my report and the one with my orders are disguised as “jolts,” those illegal simsense -analogs that you can slot like a datasoft but that give you a thirty-minute high before erasing themselves. Somebody would have to know just what they were looking for to recognize that my chips contain anything other than simsense files. Then they’d have to break the security encoding and sidestep a wiz little virus that erases all data at the slightest provocation. When I get my orders, I slot the chip and download the data directly into my headware, erasing the chip at the same time. No, not just erase: overwrite with ones, then overwrite with zeroes, then with ones again. The big-domes in the Star’s technical research division assure me that nothing can pull traces of data off the chip after that. (I suppose somebody could read the data right out of my headware memory using SQUIDs, but that’s a real high-tech process and how likely is it that I’d sit still for it? Null.)
    So that’s my cover, and it’s a fragging good one. Sure, I’m the one came up with it, but that’s still the objective opinion of one of the Star’s best undercover assets. If the Cutters ever catch me at one of these meets, my cover is that I’m feeding the monkey on my back—a secret jolt habit. Why don’t I buy my chips through the Cutters’ own distribution network? Because I don’t want the higher-ups to know I’ve got a weakness, chummer. You scan that, don’t you? It’s a good rationalization, based on one of the great principles of (meta)human psychology. Don’t try to convince people you're innocent. It’s much easier to make them believe you’re guilty of a lesser offense. (It also gives the soldiers doing the pinch a little extra incentive to let me be. They know something I don’t want made public, and you’re just not (meta)human if you don’t relish having leverage against someone.)
    My second espresso arrives, and I knock that one back too. This time I toss the empty to the barista. He catches it, but doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. I lean close to Cat, drape an arm round her shoulder, and grab a quick feel of her rockets. She stiffens up and shakes herself free, but by that time the chip carrier with my report is down her cleavage. She’s a better actor than I expected. The face she turns to me is white and tight-lipped with fury. But the glint of amusement is still in those impossibly violet eyes, and a little more than amusement maybe. Who knows, maybe she remembers that weekend at the Mayflower too? Stranger things have happened.
    Now I stroke her thigh, and she grabs my hand in a surprisingly tight grip, forcing it away from her. I feel something tiny and hard pushed into my hand, and I quickly palm it. Exchange made, and