Konstantin said, forcing herself to keep a neutral tone and expression. "I didn't know you could also have gambling casinos in Key West."

The eyes above the fan of playing cards widened; he was wearing copper eyeliner. "There are no casinos in Key West. A friendly game for bingo b.u.t.tons once in a while at someone's home, yes, but nothing that would involve our having to ask the Florida State Gaming and Software Commission to inspect and approve. That graft is too rich even for our blood. I mean, we've got it, but the fossils on the gaming commission aren't what we like spending our millions on."

"So how friendly is the game you're playing right now?" asked Konstantin.

"Completely unfriendly. Not a friendly face in the house. I'm coming to you live from lowdown Hong Kong."

Konstantin felt a sharp surge irritation. "I see. If you don't, sir, I'd like you to log out and talk to me outside of AR."

Dervish winked at her as if they were both in on a joke. "No."

"'No?'" She sighed. "'No' as in 'No, you don't mind?'"

"No. That's no as in no. What part of no isn't clear?"

"Just the refusal part," Konstantin answered, making herself sound as cheerful as he did.

"OK, it's really very simple. I'm refusing to come out of AR to talk to you. Key West law says I don't have to log out to talk to you, only that I have to talk to you."

Even when I think someone's warned me, n.o.body's really warned me, she thought, feeling desperate. Why?

"I see n.o.body mentioned that part to you," Dervish went on. "They never do. They figure everyone knows, I guess." Dervish turned his gaze to his cards and then he tilted them sharply toward his chest, glaring at her with mock suspicion. "You weren't looking at my cards, were you?"

"I understand you've been having some trouble with your ex, Susannah Ell."

"Nowhere near as much as I had when we were together." Another face moved into the frame of the monitor, a mutant lizard-bird with human blue eyes. Dervish tilted his own head so that it was touching the lizard-bird's. "She is a very disordered individual. Almost as much as I am. You see, she's having hallucinations in AR, she thinks I'm stalking her. The fact that she would think I'd want to isreason enough to have her placed under observation for seventy-two hours, wouldn't you say?"

"What about you?"

"Oh, I'm under observation twenty-four hours a day every day," Dervish said carelessly. "I just stay here and go from casino to casino, party to party, level to level, city to city, and any place I hang my hat is home."

"You never come out?"

"Don't have to. I'm a wealthy man. I have household help to look after anything that needs looking after out there. All perfectly legal on Key West, you know."

"Oh, I figured," Konstantin said, leaning back and folding her arms across her chest. "A law-abiding citizen like you wouldn't do anything that wasn't perfectly legal on Key West. So who's observing you the clock round?"

"Anybody who cares to look." Dervish swiveled sideways, toward the mutant, which made a clacking and hissing noise.

"Among all these observers, is there anyone who has seen you not hara.s.sing Susanna Ell when she says you were?"

Dervish snapped the fan of cards shut against his index finger and gestured vaguely around. "It's a big universe. Must be someone."

"Any guesses as to who they might be?"

"Of course not. Burden of proof's on the accuser, if I remember right. Right? Right. So until you can show me some solid proof that I've been stalking Susanna, I'm not going to bother myself about naming any names myself. They're probably all liars, anyway." He put one arm around the lizard tenderly and gave the creature a deeply pa.s.sionate kiss. Konstantin put her chin on her fist and waited. Dervish finally broke the embrace, turned toward her, and pretended to be surprised. "Still here, detective? You must have nerves of steel. That display usually drives even my closest outdoor friends away in seconds."

He leaned toward the monitor. "But maybe you're as kinky as I am. Kinkier, even. Or do you just like to watch?"

"I don't like to watch," Konstantin said calmly, "but I will. If that's what it takes."

Dervish wiggled his eyebrows. "Think you can keep up with me?"

"You may never know."

The man's eyes widened. "Why, detective, are you going to stalk me?"

Konstantin chuckled and hung up on him. She made a note to send Susanna Ell information on how to put herself under surveillance so as to catch any intruders in her private area. It was the best she could do for now.

"Mercenary police in a place like Key West doesn't surprise me," Taliaferro said. "I think I'd be more surprised if the place were overrun with genuine civil servants."

The night wind blew Konstantin's hair back from her face. They had changed rooftops, from headquarters to the building where Taliaferro maintained an apartment. His concession to shelter from the elements was an airy, transparent pavilion of the type you found at overdone weddings. For all Konstantin knew, that was probably where he'd gotten it, a secondhand bargain. Whenever he wanted something other than the few items of furniture he kept under the marquee, one of the building's freelance gofers brought it up from the apartment he maintained indoors. Apparently, Taliaferro's landlord didn't care if he squatted on the roof as long as he paid his rent plus the service charge for the gofers.

Konstantin thought he was taking the no-meds approach to life much too far.

"Mercenaries are much better in the situation, when you think about it," Taliaferro said. "They're well-paid, so you don't have that enormous economic gulf. Cuts the potential for bribery and corruption, especially with those perks. The officers feel more like members of the community, less like hired help -- and that's just from the perspective of the people who live there. The rich are different, but the rich of themagnitude of the Key West clans are off the different meter. They don't respect it unless they pay too much for it. The private police force is the only solution for them."

"I don't know if I buy that," Konstantin said grumpily. "In fact, I can't tell you what I do buy.

About anything."

"Parabola approaching zero," Taliaferro said, his voice serene and wise.

Konstantin yawned.

"That, and the fresh air effect," he added. "Exhilarating, and then it knocks you right out. I'll tell you, I get the best night's sleep after a day on the roof. Why don't you spend the night?"

Konstantin blinked at him.

"I mean in the actual apartment, downstairs." He produced a key-card. "n.o.body there but you chickens. Unless I send a gofer in for something, that is, but none of them would bother you."

She meant to give him some excuse and get up and leave. Instead, to her surprise, she found herself accepting the key-card from him. "Thanks. I bet you've got a really big bed, too."

"Probably the biggest you'll ever have slept in," Taliaferro told her. "It's a good one, too, not a thing wrong with it. Except the walls, the ceiling, and the floor around it."

Taliaferro had dispensed with interior walls completely; his apartment was now one enormous room, with a ceiling twice the normal height for a place like this. This was a corner unit as well, which put big cathedral-style windows along two walls instead of just one. His claustrophobia had to be pretty bad these days to keep him out of this place, Konstantin reflected as she picked up a remote control from one of the low windowsills. She aimed it at the big fat couch squarely in the center of the s.p.a.ce; it unfolded into what looked like an acre of bed. She plumped down on it to test its firmness. As she did, one of the big windows opaqued and showed her a menu of home entertainment as well as an up-to-date inventory of the contents of the refrigerator, which looked to be half a mile away in the kitchenette behind her, as well as the liquor cabinet, a half mile in the opposite direction. Overwhelmed, she used the speed dialer on the back of the remote to ring Taliaferro on the roof.

"I know, I know," Taliaferro said cheerfully before she could get a word out. "If I can afford all this, what am I doing grunting for the police? Well, I can't afford it. I inherited every bit of it, apartment, couch, home-entertainment center, liquor cabinet and everything inside it. Yes, really."

"OK," said Konstantin. "I was just curious."

"Who wouldn't be?" said Taliaferro. "I'll tell you about it sometime when I don't want to go to sleep."

"Amen." Konstantin disconnected and turned to the menu on the window. Selecting the random formations screensaver, she stretched out, intending to let the shifting patterns hypnotize her to sleep. She should take off her clothes first, though, she thought lazily, and save herself the trouble and expense of getting another tunic and slacks out of the vending machine in the locker room. She knew d.a.m.ned well she didn't like the built-in underwear in the fending machine stock.

Random formations blossomed and morphed into other random formations as her eyes closed.

Taliaferro's big bed was really comfortable. She felt as if she were sinking into a weightless state. No, make that dissolving, she thought luxuriously. This had to be a lot more restful than his ridiculous chaise lounge on the roof, no matter how good the fresh air made him feel.

"We interrupt this screensaver for the following communication."

For once, she wasn't having the dream where she had confused an AR scenario with a real life situation and appeared in public all but nude. It wasn't always the same dream -- her ex had once told her that she was nowhere near obsessive enough to repeat a dream detail for detail -- but recurring circ.u.mstances, usually involving some dangerous criminals, innocent bystanders, and witnesses along with media coverage and Ogada. This time, however, she was dreaming that she was lying sideways on Taliaferro's great plain of a mattress and watching the screensaver, which was showing her a series of faces among the configurations, faces she knew, faces she thought she might know, and faces she had never seen before. They were scrolling up from the bottom to the top where they would funnel into thepointed arch and disappear, moving in a steady stream, at about the speed of c.u.mulous clouds on a windy day.

"I said, we interrupt this screensaver for the following communication."

Konstantin rolled over and put her back to the window.

"I know you're there," said the voice. "Even if I can't see you."

"You have me confused with someone else," she mumbled comfortably.

"Come on, Dory. Wake up."

Konstantin's eyes snapped open and she rolled back, alert and not happy about it. Instead of random formations, the window was displaying, at several times larger than life size, the head and shoulders of her j.a.panese friend in his child aspect.

"Dore," she said firmly. "It's Dore, not Dory, and I'm off the clock. Go back to lowdown Hong Kong and wait till after 10 am my time. And while you're waiting, grow up. I'm not in Juvie."

"I thought you Westerners were big on that child inside and becoming like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. All that."

"You're ruining the best sleep I've had in months."

"Serves you right for overloading my mailbox with the Communist Manifesto. Not to mention the Consumer Manifesto, the Commensalist Manifesto, and the Cyberpunk Manifesto."

"The what? Oh." Konstantin couldn't help laughing a little. "Well, then, next time, don't tag me with a trawler. Just ask, I'll tell you whatever you want to know." Her laughter faded. "How did you find me -- at all, let along here?"

"The trawler's really just a regular phone call. Traced the line, looked up the duty roster. Your laws make duty rosters a matter of public record. You were listed as being on duty at the right time for you to have been in AR."

"And how'd you find me here?"

"Surveillance cams. Put in a search and your trail ended at this address. I picked you up in the corridor, unlocking the door to this apartment. Don't ever let anyone tell you that it's impossible to trace anyone from AR to the outside. It just takes a h.e.l.l of a lot more processing power and patience than most civilians have."

Konstantin gave up hope that he'd go away and let her sleep. She used the remote to turn the bed back into a big fat couch and made herself comfortable on that. "And what's so important that you felt you had to go to all that processing power and trouble to ruin my sleep?"

"What does American law enforcement think is so important in lowdown Hong Kong that they send people stomping through without even bothering to find out if there's an operation already in place?"

"Why do you care?" Konstantin asked, suspicion waking her up a little more. "And why are you acting as if lowdown Hong Kong were a real place within an actual precinct? Which, even if it were, would hardly be in a j.a.panese jurisdiction?"

"Why the h.e.l.l are you so paranoid, when we could probably help each other out?"

"Because you're not volunteering any information. You just keep demanding answers from me without letting me in on anything." Konstantin paused to take a breath. "And I told you -- I don't talk to kids."

The giant image on the window took on a typical street-kid pout/sneer. "Don' s.h.i.t you-seff ovah nothin', lady-lady. 'Sa' mattah, you gotta bad boy back home?"

Konstantin picked up the remote and clicked the window off. The image melted away as the connection broke, showing her the predawn indigo sky, given a jagged edge by the city skyline. She closed her eyes with relief and curled up on the couch without bothering to turn it back into a bed.

"It's my precinct that wants to know."

She opened her eyes again; the j.a.panese guy she had met in the exit phase looked blindly out at her from the window. Her gaze flicked to the remote, still within easy reach.

"Mainly because if you're onto the same operation we're onto, there's no point in the duplication of effort, if you see what I mean. I told them I thought you were just some ham-handed American heat with two left feet, sweating some small stuff on behalf of some tourist who only got what he deserved.Am I right?"

She knew he was waiting for her to answer, and she kept silent.

"Because if I am, I can just go back and tell my superiors that. That I'm right, I mean."

Konstantin sighed. "And what operation would that be?"

"I just told you why we're so interested in you. You answer, and we're even."

Underneath her need to be spiteful over the street-kid aspect and her ruined sleep, something blipped on her radar. Or maybe that was her parabola. But he still had yet to tell her anything real, she thought and, as the prophet would have said, had there been a prophet, In case of ignorance, shut the h.e.l.l up. Besides, Featherstonehaugh had warned her not to admit to anything.

"Sorry," she said, "but I can say no more."

He didn't bother with so much as a parting vulgarity. Abruptly, she was looking at the predawn skyline again. The remote control buzzed and she picked it up.

"Don't you think you were kind of hard on that guy?" Taliaferro asked her.

She laughed in amazement. "Don't you ever sleep?"

"All night. Now it's time for breakfast. Come on up and we'll have blueberry pancakes."

"Gimme about twenty." She put the remote down and walked what seemed like half a block to the bathroom.

Pancakes of any kind, Taliaferro told her, amounted to the finest serotonin uptake inhibitors in the finest kind of delivery system known to civilization. Konstantin didn't argue; there wasn't time.

Taliaferro's regular ride in to the stationhouse arrived only a moment after they finished. The fact that it was a surveillance helicopter they had to climb up to via twenty feet of flexible ladder while it hovered in whisper-mode would have given her pause, except that Taliaferro had her on her way up before she could think about it. Except for the wind s.n.a.t.c.hing her breath out of her mouth, it wasn't really so hard, not any more effortful than anything she did in AR from day to day. Even her muscles sans hotsuit didn't feel all that different. Or maybe that was just the high level of blueberry serotonin in her chemistry this morning, she thought, looking down between her feet at Taliaferro. He reached up and pushed the bottom of her foot, mouthing, Get going.

She looked up and saw someone leaning out over her, stretching out a hand to help her in.

Beyond, the helicopter blades whuffed and whispered in many-imaged circles. Taliaferro gave her a boost and a strong hand on her wrist pulled her up and in. She found herself lying on the floor with her legs hanging out for a moment before Taliaferro climbed in and dragged the rest of her in with him.

Someone slid a pair of headphones with a mike attachment down on her head. She winced and adjusted them.

"You got to be Konstantin," said a crackly voice in the headphones.

Konstantin looked to Taliaferro, who was sitting as close to the open door as possible without actually hanging out of it, and then at the person who had spoken to her, a wiry brown woman with a full head of thick, glossy black hair hacked off in the artfully artless style of the moment.

"Rosita," the woman said, shaking Konstantin's hand. "Taliaferro told me about you. You used to be partners. I remember picking the two of you up on outdoor close-up surveillance sometimes. G.o.d knows why, they got satellites that can read over your shoulder and kibbitz on crossword puzzles, but hey, it's a living. Right?" She gave Konstantin a companionable slap on the arm and moved from the cabin to the c.o.c.kpit, taking the co-pilot's seat.

"Taliaferro," Konstantin said.

He waved a hand at her without turning away from the open door. "I'll be fine, just don't make me turn around and look at you in here." His voice was strong but nervous, though she wasn't sure if that wasn't a headphones distortion. Sound quality was better in AR, better than in life.

Abruptly, she ran her hands over her face, tracing her eye sockets with her fingers, rubbing her cheeks hard with her palms, just to remind herself of where she was. You couldn't do that in AR, not quite in the same way, anyhow. There was a special attachment you could put in the headmount so you could kiss or be kissed, but Konstantin had not been able to bring herself even to try it out. The idea of amechanism for kissing mere centimeters from her mouth, waiting for a cue, was perverse to her in a way that she couldn't begin to describe.

She kept rubbing one side of her face until her skin was tingling. Beyond Taliaferro in the doorway, the city jittered past.

It hit her as soon as she sat down at her desk. A simple action, occurring simultaneously with a simple idea, so simple she might not have thought of it at all except that, for half a second, she had been thinking of nothing in particular besides not b.u.mping her knees. Every so often, she marveled, she did manage to get out of her own way.