"Sealed records," she muttered. "Sealed from who? Or whom." She waited; nothing. "Taliaferro,"

she said, laughing a little. "I don't talk to myself as a matter of course. I know you're listening."

"Yes, but not intently," he replied, his voice coming from the speaker in her desktop. "I just had a sort of half an ear half-c.o.c.ked in your direction."

"Dervish's records are sealed," she said, "but Susannah Ell's aren't. According to the information Celestine dumped in my inbox, she's got no criminal record. All that means is, tracking her footprints is going to be boring."

"You could put a gopher on it," Taliaferro suggested.

"I could. But gophers only fetch. They don't evaluate or interpret as they go."

"That sounds lethally boring, all right."

"Depends on how much I have to dig for. I can probably get Susannah Ell to hand most of it to me. Even just a few things to serve as keywords would help." Two desks away, Celestine jerked a thumb at her AR chamber and looked at her questioningly. Konstantin put up a hand and turned away, lowering her voice a little. "After that climb into the helicopter this morning, I've decided boring isn't all that bad."

"You want me to dial up the lady Ell for you now?" Taliaferro asked cheerfully.

"Why not." In her peripheral vision, she could see Celestine and DiPietro making signs at each other. She turned her back to them and picked up the telephone as soon as she heard the click of the connection in the speaker.

"I can't work with all these interruptions," Ell's voice said, managing to purr complainingly. "So I hope this is good news. Really good news."

"A request, actually," Konstantin told her. "I'd like to get as many of your records dating from the time you and Hastings Dervish were together as you can possibly come up with."

There was a long pause. Konstantin knew they hadn't been cut off only because Ell's breathing had a deep, put upon sigh on both inhale and exhale.

"Did you get that?" Konstantin asked finally. "I said that I'd like to--"

"I heard you just fine, detective." No purring now at all. "For f.u.c.k's sake, why?"

"For the sake of piecing together information on Hastings Dervish," Konstantin said, too surprised at the woman's reaction to sound apologetic. "Since he's moved to key West, his records have been sealed. But yours haven't. if we can track down any information on him tied in with someone else as a matter of public record--"

"I am being stalked," Ell said angrily, "and you're asking me to strip naked for the world?"

"Well, just for me, really. I know it's a gross violation of privacy--"

"You don't know any such of a thing!" hollered Ell. Konstantin winced and held the receiver away from her ear. "You don't need records to catch someone stalking me! All you have to do is post someone in a likely place and have them stay alert! It doesn't even have to be someone, it can be a gopher! I told you what he does, he gets in the infrastructure. Put the infrastructure under surveillance, have someone watch the numbers and the coordinates on the energy and when it doesn't match up, he's there! You got in and get him, case closed. What's so d.a.m.n hard about that?"

"It's not hard," Konstantin said patiently. "It's a commitment of labor, equipment, and expense that an allegation of non-violent hara.s.sment in AR can't justify."

"I am the victim of a crime--" "You're the accuser," said Konstantin heavily. "The burden of proving guilt is on the accuser. The department's partic.i.p.ation in proving guilt is discretionary, which means that sometimes they say they'll do all that and sometimes they say they won't. I guarantee you that in this case, they'll say no. I can, however, give you our complete self-surveillance program--"

"Self-surveillance?" The purr had gone completely shrill. "What in f.u.c.k's name is self -surveillance?"

"You put yourself and your surroundings under surveillance by--"

"I don't do surveillance, I am a clothing designer!" Ell shrieked. There was a pause. "I'm sorry. I don't shout in here, it's just not me." Her voice was quieter. "But I know now what I have to do."

"I can upload the self-surveillance pro--"

"Don't bother," Ell said. "I'm calling Phase 3 Interpol. They'll have everything I need." The sound of the disconnect was only slightly too loud.

"Tomorrow's law enforcement today," Taliaferro said. "They've got the warm bodies and the equipment. The new solution to the problem of the old switch-ola."

Konstantin sighed. "I'm still stuck on the Out door."

"The Out door is still among the beloved legends of our time." Taliaferro sounded amused. "It's just a matter of which you find more plausible."

"More plausible than what -- the guy who died from an AR cobra bite or the blowfish who claimed he was kidnapped by aliens who strayed into our AR from their own?"

"Well, I've already put in a search for all of Ell's matters of public record for you," Taliaferro told her soothingly. "By this afternoon, it'll all be sitting in your inbox, organized chronologically, geographically, and alphabetically."

"If I let any more stuff go in there today, the d.a.m.n thing'll explode," said Konstantin.

"So empty it once in awhile."

"That's a day's worth of work by itself."

"I said empty it, not work on it. Plead overloaded circuits and blanket erasure. Mail will supply you with back-up copies in a couple of days."

"Pragmatist," Konstantin said.

"Ah, so's your old man."

The thing about lowdown Hong Kong, Konstantin thought, was that it never, ever seemed to change. At least, not this particular lowdown level of the mound.

She sat with her feet up on her virtual desk, feeling decadent and indolent, and watched the activity on the virtual wall-screen. Watching television in AR was a joke that, except for Taliaferro, no one else seemed to get. Celestine and DiPietro only looked at her blankly when she tried to explain the humor to them. After all, how else were you supposed to carry out any sort of surveillance, even in AR?

Taliaferro, on the other hand, got it right away. Figured, she thought as she browsed the casino, occasionally dividing the screen so she could come at an area with different angles.

Wouldn't it be really funny, she thought suddenly, for no reason, if Taliaferro were deliberately exacerbating his claustrophobia because he secretly knew that he was an AR addict-in-waiting and if he ever did go into Artificial Reality, he would be even tougher to get out than Hastings Dervish?

Probably not funny to Taliaferro. But it sounded just crazy enough to make a perverse kind of sense. Which was just about the only kind of sense she could make out of life in the real world lately.

And speaking of perverse, she wondered if her j.a.panese friend would turn up in one of his guises. Now that he knew she was likely to be sniffing around, and how she felt about child personas, she'd probably never see him over the age of consent again.

p.r.i.c.k. The Lounge Lizard that Hastings Dervish had been tongue-kissing -- or one identical to it -- emerged slowly from the fiery pool of opals, its ridiculous naked body a mix of reptilian and mammalian features -- which was to say, jeweled patterned snakeskin stretched over ridiculous large b.r.e.a.s.t.s, a wasp waist, lush hips, and perfect thighs. The sight reminded Konstantin of the Vargas museum exhibit her ex had dragged her to, and which she had, to her own amused surprise, unabashedly enjoyed, in spite of its obvious absurdity. But then, maybe the obviously absurd were among the few things you could enjoy unabashedly.

Still... s.e.x fantasies with a mammalian lizard?

Never mind. In terms of s.e.x fantasies, everyone lives in a gla.s.s house. Besides, wouldn't you rather someone like Hastings Dervish was keeping himself busy with a snake with b.r.e.a.s.t.s, rather than running around bothering people like you? As far as Konstantin was concerned, that closed the subject of p.o.r.nography -- Threat or Menace? Permanently.

She tracked the pin-up reptile to a tall, muscular blond valet waiting with her clothes over his arm.

Definitely not Dervish in another guise, according to the Characteristic Identifier program -- none of the movements or postural traits matched. The blond guy's recreational tastes were far more exotic than Dervish's as well -- he had reserved his billable time to helping the Lounge Lizard dress before submitting himself to be eaten alive. Konstantin panned away with a wince. Hope the pain was worth the expense, big boy. That kind of hotsuit wasn't hard to manufacture, but it was outrageously expensive.

Which, when you came right down to it, Konstantin thought with some amus.e.m.e.nt, was also nothing new.

She shuffled through the various casino cams, stationary and mobile, looking for familiar faces.

Hastings Dervish appeared within thirty seconds, enjoying some kind of mutant poker involving eight cards in each hand. She blew the frame up to cover the whole screen. Today he had a taste for bird-people. The two flanking him had a stark sort of beauty, she supposed, all legs and angular wings, but those long sharp beaks looked dangerous. Someone could lose an eye if he wasn't careful.

She let the cam pan around the table and then halted it with a start. Darwin was sitting almost directly across from Dervish, the pile of chips in front of him smaller than Dervish's but respectable. He fanned himself with his two hands of cards alternately while his digital eye displayed what looked like sound oscillations.

Aren't we traveling in rarefied company these days. She sent the camera around twice more to make sure that her j.a.panese friend hadn't decided to sit in, too, making everything immensely convenient.

Not today. Or at least, not right now -- the day, like all days in a lowdown casino, was ageless, as old or young as you needed it to be.

So she would drop in and see what kind of stakes Darwin was playing for, perhaps thank him for making himself so useful. a.s.suming that was the real him.

Transition from gallery to lowdown Hong Kong partic.i.p.ant today required her to step out of the enormous anteroom and into an equally enormous bullet train station, all gla.s.s and UFO architecture.

And all for a single bullet train, she marveled as she moved along the platform surrounded by humanoid placeholders, all heading for the open boarding doors. She knew she was encoded as a humanoid placeholder as well, although she appeared normal from her own perspective. Either the casinos or the mound had decided it was necessary to camouflage the incoming numbers, for reasons Konstantin wasn't sure she should even bother imagining. It could be something as trivial as a sudden desire on the part of the casino simply to make things look even more mysterious and exotic for the paying custom, or as serious as a census dodge on the hosting network, inflating or deflating access numbers for the sake of prestige or money. Or it could be something completely different, and irrelevant to anything that mattered. When you went into AR, you had to a.s.sume you were going to have your head played with in some way you hadn't counted on.

The bullet train interior might have been drawn from someone's idea of what an old movie about the future might have looked like -- essence of Jules Verne crossed with impressions of Andy Warhol.

Konstantin liked it. There was something about it that she could only describe as witty. Not the usualadjective for bullet train interior design, but the only one that fit.

It wasn't until she felt the train move that she realized it was also a sealed train. She clutched the end of the curtain she had pulled back from what she'd thought was a window and stared at the unbroken wall of stamped metal, squares debossed with alternating images of a rocket ship and an antique food can.

Her seat was a singleton in what must have been a recreation of old-time first-cla.s.s travel. Very comfortable velvety cushions, not your standard paddy-wagon furnishings, and no featureless golden androids patrolling the aisle, demanding tickets or papers. The other pa.s.sengers were still ciphers, however. She might have been the only real pa.s.senger, or one of a million.

"Taliaferro?"

The question went out encrypted as an enquiry about her online account; nothing came back except a non-echo. The feeling of acceleration intensified, catching Konstantin off-guard and off-balance virtually as well as figuratively. Vertigo swept over her; the back of a chair was pressing hard against her back, but which chair -- the virtual plush first-cla.s.s seat or the dentist's chair in her cubicle?

Before she could start to think about what to do next, a rectangular area on the back of the seat in front of her lit up. 3-D fireworks exploded silently, the twinkling flames cascading into beautiful letters: SPECIAL INFORMATION ALL TRAVELERS SHOULD KNOW FOR A SAFE AND.

DISEASE-FREE EXCURSION IN HONG KONG MOUND!.

Konstantin started to laugh and then suppressed it as a serious-faced young woman began to explain to her, with earnest sincerity, why she should be careful not to bring in rogue batches of dirty data -- anything in a visitor's catalog that had been obtained in other areas of AR had to be presented for inspection and clearance at the port of entry. It was also vital that travelers not accept any encrypted items from strangers asking them to deliver said items to people or addresses within HK mound.

And even if you don't think what you're holding is encrypted -- the nice young woman's voice took on an almost grating quality -- or if you're not sure, notify port-of-entry officers at once. You will lose no value and very little time. In return, we can guarantee that HK mound will remain uncorrupted and unadulterated on every level-- Konstantin shook her head in amazement, wondering how many people would actually fall for that one. Maybe enough to make it worth the effort of funneling everyone through a single entry portal, using valuable time to scan catalogs for stuff. Illegal copies of everything from designs to programs would be all over HK in seconds, the prices jacked up to five or six times what you could get the real thing for elsewhere. And meanwhile, they'd be careful to filter out anything that might get sick and rot in duplication.

She sat back, awash with a type of ennui she only felt when she was on the job, or rather, on this part of the job, in AR. When she would find herself suddenly fed up and impatient with tired routines and cliched scenarios full of stereotyped situations that would no doubt yield bad dialogue from old movies that should have been left on flammable media instead of being preserved on disks and chips.

She nudged Taliaferro's tap again wordlessly.

His reply came encrypted as filler music. Got it. It's an intelligence test. They're looking to hit up all the first-time marks, kind of a Welcome to Hong Kong fleecing, you might say. Instead of leaving by any of the exits in your carriage, walk through the train to the last car, open the Staff Only door at the very end -- you won't see the handle, but if you reach for it where it should be, you'll feel it -- and step out. You'll be in the casino.

Good old Taliaferro. The only thing he'd failed to mention was that she'd have to stand in line to get out that way. She took a little comfort in the fact that no one could actually tell she'd needed Taliaferro to tip her off, so she could look as if she were as crafty as anyone to have figured it out.

She entered the casino by way of a stall in what pa.s.sed for a lavatory. The stall was there to provide privacy for personal acts unique to AR -- persona changes, ordering new items from General Stores, calling up hints or cheat codes or possibly a hot link.

Not to mention the discreet entrance, Konstantin thought as she stepped out of the stall to findherself amid a group of people just slightly too large for the lounge area, with its mirrored walls, overdone throne-like chairs, and brocade wall-coverings. She slipped between the ornamented, the decorated, and the well upholstered, heading for the exit. There seemed to be a forest -- or maybe an orchard -- or raised hands and arms, signaling, waving, adjusting glittery bits on satiny parts, or possibly just demanding attention from someone, everyone, anyone. Konstantin pushed her way through them, batting hands away from her as if they were moths. Before she had time to wonder if she were in the middle of a calculated effect, she found she had fetched up beside a giant puce velour sofa of the sort usually found in an adolescent's vision of a bordello. The lurid purple monster, overstuffed and vivid as it was, had been completely upstaged by the coffee table in front of it, which was a naked man on all fours.

Konstantin rolled her eyes. The biggest problem with the war of the s.e.xes, she thought, was that there was too much war and not enough s.e.x. Not to mention all the juvenile displays of s.e.xual one-upmanship. She supposed it was too much to ask to find a lavatory of the neutrally mixed persuasion. On the other hand, she reminded herself, what else would be the point of a lavatory in AR?

Another mammalian lizard of a different variety -- Konstantin was fairly sure it was a Gila monster -- pushed her way to the center of the sofa and plumped down, putting her feet up on the coffee table heels first. Konstantin saw the flesh on the coffee table shudder and break into gooseb.u.mps. She made her way around to the head and squatted down to have a closer look at the artifact.

The coffee table raised his head and looked into her eyes. "Can I help you?"

Konstantin shook her head. A discreet pop-up said there was a ninety-nine percent probability that the coffee table was inhabited. "What's your story -- did you lose a bet?"

"What kind of a question is that?" said the man, frowning at her. He was dark-haired and grey-eyed, with forgettable features except for his very soft-looking, pink lips. "Or are you trying to find a new way to humiliate me?"

"Hardly," Konstantin said, defensive.

"Good," said the man, "because I like the old, traditional ways of humiliation best. Go ahead, put your feet on me. Sit on my head. Do you want me to clean something for you? I have an extensible tongue--"

Konstantin flinched and fell backwards as his tongue unrolled in slow motion and undulated like a snake. Grinning, the man maneuvered the tip up to his forehead and gave each of his eyebrows a lick before retracting it.

"I know, it's an old gag, but it's still a pretty good one," he said.

"Why?" Konstantin asked him, getting to her knees.

"Why what? Why this?" The man laughed. "Why do you think? Or can't you imagine?"

Konstantin pushed herself to her feet and looked around, suddenly feeling self-conscious. No one seemed to be paying any attention to her, not even the bosomy lizard resting her high heels on the man's back. That didn't necessarily mean anything.

"What's the matter?" called the man, twisting his neck alarmingly to look up at her. "You afraid someone's gonna catch you talkin' to a coffee table?"

The lizard on the puce sofa suddenly gave him a sharp jab with one of her heels. "Shut up, j.i.z.zbag.

n.o.body said you could talk to real people."

"What if I want to talk to him?" Konstantin asked in spite of herself.

The lizard dug her other heel into the coffee table's flank. "Talking's extra."

Konstantin stared at her. "You mean I have to pay extra to talk to him?"

"No, he has to pay extra to talk to you, or anyone else here," the lizard said, sounding disgusted, either with Konstantin's ignorance or with the idea that the coffee table wanted to talk, or possibly both.

"So if I talk to him, it costs him money?"

The lizard gave her an exquisite tortured-by-boredom look. Her eyes were enormous faceted topazes. "No, you can talk to him all you want. It doesn't cost him anything unless he answers you." She kicked him. "Right, j.i.z.zbag? Sure." The topazes swiveled back to Konstantin. "Why anyone would choose to talk to a piece of furniture, however, is the question not worth asking. If you're looking for conversation and/or diversion, there's a casino on the other side of that door. Wit and games of chanceabound."

Konstantin winced; she'd all but forgotten why she had decided to come in to begin with. She looked down at the coffee table; he was hanging his head, possibly in humiliation, more likely to take the pressure off his neck.

"You still here?" said the lizard. "What is it now, you want a meaningful relationship with the sofa, too? Well, sorry, but it's taken. Find your own furniture."

"You really ought to hiss," Konstantin told her.

"Hiss?" The lizard stared. "Why, for G.o.d's sake?"

"It's a very reptilian kind of thing to do."

"Says who?"