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wouldn’t be allowed near it.”
    The chief medico looked back at him. “No tactiles in Parabas S.A. I’d know, my staff would know. You sure it was a psychomorph?”
     Cardenas just stared at him until the man nodded. “Okay, so it was a psychomorph. I don’t know how, but I’m not in a position
     to argue with you. I wasn’t here.”
    “That’s right,
compadre
” Cardenas told him softly. “You weren’t here.”
    “You gonna be alright?” The same stare. The medico shrugged, spoke to his assistant. “So okay. So we’ll sort it out later.
     Come on.” They left, though not without a last disbelieving glance in the direction of the now silent wall-screen.
    As soon as the door shut behind them and sealed, Hypatia turned on him. “What’s going on here? That couldn’t have been a psychomorph
     that hit on you. There isn’t enough crunch in the whole Parabas box to structure one!”
    “That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking,” he told her quietly. “But it was a psychomorph. The most detailed one I’ve ever
     seen. I do not want to see it again. It was a trap, a guard, something to wipe out the nosy. It almost wiped me.”
    She was watching him closely. “If it was as bad as you claim, how come you’re standing there talking to me instead of lying
     on the floor babbling like a spastic infant?”
    “I—felt it coming. Intuition. Just in time to start closing down my perception. I can do that, some. When you’re blind for
     six years you get practice in all sorts of arcane exercises. I sidestepped it right before it could get a psychic fix on me
     and managed to cue the door. It must have cycled when you all came in. They can’t fix on more than one person at a time. Takes
     too much crunch.”
    “I thought that kind of advanced tech was beyond you.”
    He met her gaze. “Did I ever say that?”
    “No. No, you didn’t. I just assumed, you being a duty cop and all—people do a lot of assuming about you, don’t they?”
    He nodded tersely. “It helps. People like to think of cops as dumber than they are. Some of us are. Some of us aren’t. I don’t
     discourage it.”
    “How old are you, anyway?”
    “Fifty-three in two months.”
    “Shit. I thought you were my age. I’m forty-one.”
    “Part of it is being small. You always look younger.”
    “What kind of a cop are you, anyway, Cardenas?”
    He was searching beneath the desk, straightened when he found the vorec mike. “A good one.”
    You just didn’t brew a full-scale sensorium max hostile psychomorph out of a standard industrial box, no matter how big the
     company. Hypatia knew that. Not unless Parabas was into illegal military design and under questioning the company reps did
     all but cut their wrists to prove their innocence. Cardenas believed them. They had more to lose by lying than by telling
     the truth.
    He was beginning to think brilliant was too feeble a word to use to describe the talents of the late Vladimir Noschek.
    But Noschek had made a mistake. By slipping something as powerful as the psychomorph into Philip storage he’d as much as confessed
     to having something to hide, something to protect. Ordinarily that wouldn’t have mattered because the sponger discovering
     it would have been turned to neural jelly. Only Cardenas’s training and experience had saved him. With Hypatia at his side
     he continued to probe.
    They solved the secret of the commercial wallscreen quickly enough. It was numb as a sheet of plywood—until you went someplace
     you weren’t wanted. Then you tripped the alert and the screen went tactile. It was one hell of a modification, worth plenty.
     Cardenas could have cared less. He wasn’t interested in how it was done as much as he was
why.
The camouflage was perfect.
    A tactile screen could spit back at you. One that looked normal and then became tactile was unheard of. The Parabas executives
     went silly when the medicos made their report. They wanted to take the screen apart