Identify yourself please Lucky Dragon ATMs all had this same voice a weird uptight strangled little castrato voice and he wondered why that was But you could be sure they d worked it out probably it

kept people from standing around, bulls.h.i.tting with the machine. But Rydell knew that you didn't want to do that anyway, because the suck- - - ers would pepper-spray you. They were plastered with notices to that effect too, although he doubted anyone ever actually read them. What the notices didn't say, and Lucky Dragon wasn't telling, was that if you tried seriously to d.i.c.k with one, drive a crowbar into the money slot, say,

the thing would mist you and itself down with water and then electrify itself.

"Berry Rydell," he said, taking his Tennessee driver's license from his wallet and inserting the business end into the ATM's reader.

"Palm contact."

Rydell pressed his hand within the outline of a hand. He hated the way that felt. Bad cootie factor with those palm-scan things. Hand grease.

He wiped his palm on his trousers.

"Please enter your personal identification code."

89.

Rrdell did, working through his mremonic to the two cans of 7-Up.

"brocessing credit request," the thng said, sounding as if someone were queezing its b.a.l.l.s.

l4,rdell looked around and saw thathe was pretty much the only customei aside from a woman with gray lair and black leather pants, who was 'iving the checker a hard time in what sounded to Rydehl like Gernan.

"Iransaction completed," the ATN said. Rydell turned back in time to se~ a Lucky Dragon credit chip em~ge from the chip slot. He shoved it parway back in, to see the availablecome up on the screen. Not bad. Not a~l at all. He pocketed the chip put his wallet away, and turned towad the GlobEx concession, whid also doubled as the local USPO. Likethe ATM, this was another purpose-

built node or swelling in the sam plastic wall. They hadn't ha~ one of these on Sunset, and Prai.eG.o.d had had to double as GlobEx clerk and/or USPO employee, the litter causing her occasionally tofrown, as her parents' sect identified ill things federal as aspects of Sitan.

tIe who hesitates, RydelI's father had taught him, is safe, and Rydell had tried hard, in the course of his ife, to practice that sort of benign prOcrastination. Just about everythin8 that had ever landed him in deep s.h.i.t he knew, had been the result of not hesitating. There was in him, he udn't know why, that which simply went for it, and somehow at the wort possible time.

Look before you leap. Considerconsequences. Think about it.

He thought about it. Someone had taken advantage of his brief but unvilling sojourn in Selwyn Tong's VR corridor to convey the suggestior that he should pick up his credit chip from this particular ATM, anc then check GlobEx. This couk most easily have been Tong him-sell, speaking as it were through a hack channel, or it might have been soneone, anyone, else, hacking intowhat Rydell supposed was scarcely a world-cla.s.s secure site. The hook of the change that had been wrought for Rydell's benefit, though, had ~ad hacker written all over it. In Rylell's experience, hackers just couldn't resist showing off, and they terded to get all arty. And, he kne~w, they could get your a.s.s in trouble an usually did.

~~~LLIAM~BSON.

He looked at the GlobEx bulge there.

Went for it.

It took him less time than it had to get the credit chip, to show his license and get the hatch open. It was a bigger package than he'd expected, and it was heavy for its size. Really heavy.

Expensive-hooking foam-core stuff, very precisely sealed with gray plastic tape, and covered with animated GlobEx Maximum Express holograms, customs stickers. He studied the waybill. It had come from Tokyo, looked like, but the billing was to Paragon-Asia Dataflow, which was on Lygon Street, Melbourne, Australia. Rydell didn't know anybody in Australia, but he did know that it was supposed to be impossible, and definitely was illegal, to ship anything internationally to one of these GlobEx pickups. They needed an address, private or business. These pickup points were only for domestic deliveries.

d.a.m.n. Thing was heavy. He got it under his arm, maybe two feet long and six inches on a side, and went back to get his bag.

Which he saw now was open, on the little counter there, and the guard with the pale eyebrows was holding Rydell's pink Lucky Dragon f.a.n.n.y pack.

"What are you doing with my bag?"

The guard looked up. "This is Lucky Dragon property."

"You aren't supposed to open people's bags," Rydell said, "says so on the notebook."

"I have to treat this as theft. You have Lucky Dragon property here."

Rydehl remembered that he'd put the ceramic switchblade in the f.a.n.n.y pack, because he hadn't been able to think what else to do with it. He tried to remember whether or not that was illegal up here. It was in SoCal, he knew, but not in Oregon.

"That's my property," Rydehl said, "and you're going to give it to me right now"

"Sorry," the man said deliberately.

"Hey, Rydell," said a familiar voice, as the door was opened so forcefully that Rydell distinctly heard something snap in the closing mechanism. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h, how they hangin'?"

Rydehl was instantly engulfed in a fog of vodka and errant testos 91 terone. He turned and saw Creedmore grinning fiercely, quite visibly free of the human condition.

Behind him loomed a larger man, pale and fleshy, his dark eyes set close together.

"You're drunk," snapped the security guard. "Get out."

"Drunk?" Creedmore winced grotesquely, miming some crippling emotional pain. "Says I'm drunk. - ."

Creedmore turned to the man behind him. "Randy, this mo~herf.u.c.ker says I'm drunk."

The corners of the large man's mouth, which was small and strangely delicate in such a heavy stubbled face, turned instantly down, as if he were genuinely and very, very deeply saddened to learn that it was possible for one human being to treat another in so unkind a way. "So whump his f.a.ggot a.s.s, then," the large man suggested softly, as if the prospect held at least some wistful possibility, however distant, of cheer after great disappointment.

"Drunk?" Creedmore was facing the security man again. He leaned across the counter, his chin level with the top of Rydell's bag. "What kinda s.h.i.t you tryin' to lay off on my buddy here?"

Creedmore was radiating an amphetamine-reptile menace now, his anger gone right off the mammalian scale. Rydell saw a little muscle pulsing in Creedmore's cheek, steady and involuntary as some tiny extra heart, Seeing that Creedmore had the guard's undivided attention, Rydell grabbed his bag with one hand, the pink f.a.n.n.y pack with the other.

The guard tried to s.n.a.t.c.h them back. Which was definitely a mistake, as the attempt occupied both his hands.

"Suck my d.i.c.kl" Creedmore shrieked, striking with far more speed and force than Rydell would've credited him with, and sank his fist wrist-deep into the guard's stomach, just below the sternum.

Taken by surprise, the guard doubled forward. Rydell, as Creedmore was winding back to slug the man in the face, managed to tangle Creedmore's wrist in the straps of the f.a.n.n.y pack, almost dropping the bulky parcel in the process.

"Come on, Buell," Rydell said, spinning Creedmore back out the door. Rydell knew someone would've hit a foot b.u.t.ton by now.

92.

"Motherf.u.c.ker says I'm drunk," Creedmore protested.

"Well, you are, Buell," said the heavy man, ponderously, behind them.

Creedmore giggled.

"Let's get out of here," Rydell said, starting for the bridge. As he walked, he was trying to stuff the f.a.n.n.y pack back into his duffel and trying not to lose his precarious underarm grip on the GlobEx package. A twisting gust of wind blew grit into his eyes, and, blinking down to clear them, he noticed for the first time that the waybill was addressed

- - not to him but to "Cohn Laney."

Cohn s.p.a.ce Laney. So why had they let Rydell pick it up?