"Nothing," Taliaferro said, showing her the tissue. "I think it's gone."

"Well, it feels like it's still there." She pulled on her upper lid and thought of the cobra woman.

"The other problem is that as used, the jamming program doesn't allow the user to continue interacting, you should pardon the expression, in the usual way. It causes disorientation and vertigo."

"Possible disabling weapon, then," Taliaferro said cheerfully. "And maybe Dervish just didn't use the continue feature when he used it on you. Since he wanted you disoriented."

"Maybe," Konstantin said, "but I'm betting there isn't any way to jam all evidence of billable time and still move around to enjoy it."

Taliaferro looked surprised. "Why not?"

"Because if there were, Dervish himself would be using it." She raised her eyebrows at his skeptical expression. "Well, doesn't that make sense?"

"He could be choosing not to use it." There was a pause. "Come on. Ask me why. You know you want to."

"Just tell me anyway," Konstantin said. "You know you want to."

Taliaferro shrugged good-naturedly. "Maybe he needs solid evidence of where he is, so you won't suspect he's where he isn't."

"And if he were digital," Konstantin said, mostly to herself, "he could be anywhere. Or at least he could prove it."

There was a sharp buzz from Taliaferro's console. "That's gotta be for you," Taliaferro said, pushing back in his chair so she could reach the answer b.u.t.ton. "Ogada never wants to talk to me."

Ogada was unhappy, and at great length.

"I hate to admit it but it's quite a good likeness," she said, jerking a thumb at the screen on his desk. "Even I'd swear it was me if I didn't know where I was at the time. But I don't have a tattoo there. And I don't smoke herb, or anything else."

Ogada tapped the bottom of the screen. The footage of Konstantin in the s.e.x club lounge shrank to make room for a box with her hotsuit log. "So whoever toasted up this recording has also found a way to falsify the inhouse-insuit record of usage to make it appear as if you logged out and spent the afternoon smoking dope and... doing that."

Onscreen, Konstantin's image continued to embarra.s.s her until she reached over and blanked the screen.

"I'll pee in a cup for you right now," Konstantin said. "Call medical. I was in AR, right here.

Check our own surveillance cams. You know that's not me."

Keeping his gaze on her, Ogada reached over and tapped the screen on again. The s.e.x club playback was replaced by a time- and date-stamped image of Konstantin coming out of the AR booth and walking quickly through the office. Another cam picked her up in an elevator; still another showed her leaving the building. The angle on the last one was overhead and somewhat strained, but the womanin the recording was unmistakable.

"I'm..." Konstantin shook her her head, stunned. "Impressed, is all I can think of."

The lines in Ogada's face deepened. "You expect me to believe you." It wasn't a question.

"Well, I did upload the details of the case for you." Konstantin forced herself not to look away from him.

"And I did look them over." There was a long pause. "And the truth is, I am inclined to believe you. The most persuasive argument in your favor is that it is completely out of character for you to behave that stupidly." Ogada paused and took a long breath. He took another and Konstantin wanted to hit him. This was worse than the little charade she and the arms dealer had played out. He knew he was going to go on and tell her what the persuasive argument against her credibility was, and he knew she knew. Why did he insist on playing this like a police drama? Why couldn't he just talk?

She sighed. "And the argument against is the fact that this is such an enormous job of detailed toasted footage that it's virtually impossible for even a very rich end-user like Hastings Dervish to have found a way to hack into not only a s.e.x club but also to falsify in-house police recording and surveillance devices."

To her surprise, Ogada looked pleased rather than annoyed. "Either way, you've got twenty-seven wagonsful of trouble. If you went out and did that on the clock, that's bad. If our security has been breached to the degree that we can't depend on what we see with our own eyes--" Ogada gestured at the screen "--that's worse. You're the head of the technocrime unit. It's your job to keep that from happening."

"We didn't see that with our own eyes," Konstantin said, reaching over and blanking the screen again angrily. "We're looking at something that was seen for us. Big difference. But I get it. Who wants me off the job?"

"n.o.body," Ogada said. "n.o.body gives a s.h.i.t about you. All the political stuff where heads roll, that starts at my level. Does somebody want me off my job? Absolutely. Except it's nothing personal.

They don't so much want to get rid of me as they want simply to be where I am. It's all ambition and getting promoted and building an empire. Middle-management office politics -- it would be funny if it were a joke. n.o.body actually cares who might take the rap for allowing such an egregious security breach as long as it isn't them. Do you get that, too?"

Konstantin nodded. "I should solve this one as fast as possible because n.o.body cares about me."

Ogada's expression became pained. "You're getting that unreal feeling again, aren't you?"

"Why should I?" said Darwin. "What did you ever do for me?"

"You didn't really get brainwashed, did you?" Konstantin asked him.

He shrugged. "How would I know?"

They were sitting in the observer's gallery overlooking the gaming tables in the casino. The design was simple -- a 360 degree panorama screen with a running line of basic information along the top and bottom, giving the number of different tables and players, the current population, and a search directory access number. The view wasn't great unless you paid extra for zoom but it was one way to get a look at lowdown Hong Kong without lowdown Hong Kong looking back. Konstantin hoped.

"Do you feel any different?" she asked him.

"Yeah." He produced a piece of chamois and began to shine each of his fingers. "It so happens that I do."

"How?"

Darwin shrugged. "Well, I don't ever want to come out, for one thing."

"Did you ever feel that way before?"

The cyborg shrugged again. "I used to be more curious about what was happening on the Ground Floor. Now I'm not even vaguely interested." "How long have you been in this time?"

"I don't know. A day, I guess, maybe a little longer."

"If that's true, someone must be taking care of you out there. Physically. And how are you paying for so much online time? Are you a multi-millionaire and you just forgot to tell me?"

"I won free online time gambling. Every time I use it up, I win some more." He finished his fingers and went to work on his chest area.

"That doesn't answer my other question about who's taking care of you. Is someone taking are of you?"

"Well... actually, if you want to know the truth," Darwin said, managing to sound both sheepish and smug at the same time, "I don't really know what my body is doing. I set it free."

Konstantin sighed. "I think I know this one, it's something my grandmother used to say. Something about setting something free and if it comes back, that's nice and if it doesn't, hunt it down and kill it. Her mother was a hippie in the Summer of Love. You can't set your body free, Darwin, unless you die."

"You're wrong. This is almost as good as the Out door. And if enough people set their bodies free, it probably will be the Out door."

"OK, OK," Konstantin said. "I'll ride along for a minute. What happens to your body when you set it free? I know you don't know exactly what it's doing, but how is it doing anything?"

"That's the part I don't really understand," Darwin said. "The 'how' part. It's just on its own with a new guidance system installed."

"Where did that come from?" asked Konstantin, forcing herself to sound patient.

"Here, of course. Where else?"

Are you getting this? Konstantin asked Taliaferro. He popped up a yes for her. "Why don't you tell me who you really are," Konstantin said to Darwin after a bit, "and I can check on your body and make sure that everything's all right."

Darwin looked down on her. "Sure you will." He gave a short, humorless laugh. "They warned me about this -- how people, usually some kind of authority like the police, will offer to make sure my body's all right. Then the next thing you know, my body disappears completely, turned into a government zombie slave or broken up and sold for parts. Well, you can just go find some other body to s.n.a.t.c.h, you're not getting mine. We're both free now, me and my body, and we're not going to let you or anyone else control us." Darwin stood up and began to back away from her. "And don't come near me again with your low requests to do your dirty work for you. I'm not your personal ghost. You want to clamp Hastings Dervish, do it yourself."

"We don't normally get customers claiming they've spent more time in AR than what's on our billing records," said the pleasant-faced AI in Konstantin's virtual office. Its appearance was nondescript male human, but something in the softly rendered brown-gold features reminded her of Celestine. She fought the inclination to feel kindly toward it.

"You know," Konstantin said, "if the department's service provider really felt this was a matter important enough to interrupt me while I'm in AR on police business, I'm surprised they didn't send a real person to talk to me."

"All of our real people are currently busy with other customers at the moment," the AI said smoothly. "A customer base the size of ours means there's never a lull in the action. And of course, every paying customer thinks he or she is the only paying customer who needs immediate help. Half of them could be served quite adequately by an AI representative within a time period not longer than eight minutes and half of those in the thirty seconds it would take to tell them they have a hardware problem that has to be addressed by the hotsuit vendor or manufacturer. However, our dedication to the customer demands that--"

"I read the brochure," Konstantin said irritably. "I've read all the brochures. Did you -- did anyone read my report?"

The AI seemed to think it over briefly. "Yes."

"Who?" "I did."

"Just now."

"Yes. But it's in the inbox in Technical a.s.sistance: Anomalies and Miscellaneous, to be read as soon as possible. They're all real people there."

"Good. Have a real person from Technical Etceteras call me when one of them has read it. Now, I'm in the middle of--"

"Oh, someone most definitely will. I'm just here to get preliminary information about the incident."

Konstantin tried moving quickly around her virtual desk to stand too closely in front of the thing, hoping that would cause it to back up toward the exit. "If you really did read my report just now, you should have all the preliminary information you nee--"

"What the company wants to know at this point," said the AI, adjusting its close-up vision without otherwise moving, "is how you would rate your AR experience up to the point of the anomaly."

"Rate?"

A slate appeared in its open right hand. "Were there any other minor glitches prior to the anomaly you're reporting, any dips in resolution, slowing of response times--"

Konstantin put her hands on its shoulders and shoved it backwards. "Look up the logs," she said angrily. "Any information like that will be in there!"

"There's no need to get abusive," the AI said patiently. "We know about the logs. We're asking you about your personal perceptions. Did you perceive any dips in resolution, slowing of response times--"

Konstantin gave it another shove.

"--sudden, unprompted shifts toward either end of the color--"

Konstantin shoved again.

"--spectrum, any persistent sounds or noises--"

She was sure her next shove should have knocked it over but all it did was take another step back.

"--that did not seem to fit the ambient soundscape, inappropriate light levels--"

It hit the exit and hung there, refusing to fall through even when Konstantin eliminated the barrier of the virtual door itself.

"If you don't log out of here right now," Konstantin said, "I'm going to file charges against the service provider for hara.s.sment of a police officer, obstructing justice, interfering with an ongoing investigation, aggravated mopery and dopery, conspiracy, terrorism, insider trading, and unlawful congress with a network."

The AI hesitated half a second. "There's no need for that kind of innuendo. If you stop to think about this for a few moments, it will occur to you that my behavior is all programmed -- and by real people, I might add -- from decision trees covering every eventuality and response. On receiving a report like yours, the first thing Techa.s.sistAnomMisc would do would be to investigate your subjective impressions prior to the incident, during the incident, and after the incident."

"Why?" asked Konstantin, genuinely curious now.

"Because the situation you describe is impossible."

Konstantin nodded. "I might have known. Being an AI, you're completely stumped by anything original. You AIs think that if something has never happened before, it's impossible. Or that if you've never encountered it before--"

"No one said we had never encountered this before," said the AI. "My statement to you was that normally we don't get customers claiming they've spent more time in AR than what's on our billing records. At no time did I ever state that you were the first."

"People have reported this before?" Konstantin yanked the AI back toward her desk and shoved it down into a chair. "Why didn't you tell me that?"

"You mean, before now? Since you've obviously just been informed?"

"What did your Techa.s.s do about those reports?"

"Those were all handled by AIs." "You?" Konstantin wanted to know.

"In a sense. It's all one AI where we are, but different manifesta--"

Konstantin bent down and got in the thing's face. She noticed for the first time that it wasn't breathing. Whoever had programmed the thing's appearance had cut a corner, probably in the name of budget. Detail animation like that added up. Konstantin found herself even angrier over the skimping. It was one of those subliminal things that could drive you mad, like dripping water or an itch you couldn't quite reach. You didn't notice people's breathing when it was there -- only when it wasn't. No wonder she hated the thing so much. "So what did you, the AI, do about them?" she asked it.

"I sent a notice instructing the customers to correct their records, as they had all obviously made mistakes."

"You didn't turn any of them over to your Techa.s.s?"

"In the case of an alleged customer billing error, Techa.s.sistAnomMisc does not step in unless the customer requests it on a follow-up. When they have, each and every instance has been proven to be an error on the part of the customer. With a one hundred percent success rating in that area, it is wasteful to pa.s.s tasks on to humans that AI can accomplish just as easily. Unless specifically and formally requested to by the customer in a follow-up call."

Konstantin straightened up. Of course, she realized. Any time customers had claimed to spend less time in AR than what appeared on their bills, customer service always proved them wrong. But if an AR access provider told you your bill was smaller than it should have been-- Well, the conscientiously honest would report the mistake. But if the company insisted they were right and you were wrong, in this case, the customer would give up right away. Tried to do the right thing, they didn't listen. Q.E.D., and thank you for calling.

"Get out," Konstantin said, turning away. "Don't come back unless you're a real person."

"You ought to get over the idea that a real person is the only solution to your problems," the AI said.

Konstantin froze for a moment and then sighed. "I'm going to turn around, and there's not going to be anyone there," she said. "Right, Taliaferro?"

"Right," he said.

"And you didn't manage to tag it or anything, did you?"

"Nope." Pause. "Would you like to know why not?"

Konstantin sighed. "Is there a special reason?"

"It's because there was nothing there in the first place."