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pounce on a sliver of nerve-driver memory from Brazil, an Italian couple arguing over whether they can afford a Raytheon eyepatch -- months obsolete in America, years ahead of our stuff.
    Our stuff ... I can smell it on the wind. New tech, wet tech: bioelectronic manufacture, with its whiff of acetone and alcohol, Edinburgh's familiar technology of brewery and distillery and refinery expanded to produce a whole new range of hardware kit, as cheap and disposable and recyclable as paper. All very nice and sustainable, but the old hard tech of America's fossil/metal economy still has the technical edge.
    Jadey finds me with her usual alarming ease. I look up and there she is, leaning over the stall. Cropped blonde hair, blue eyes, heat-exchanger tank top, arm-warmers, and a mil-green nylon pod-skirt. She has one of those girlie versions of a rucksack on her back. Her tired smile matches her London-train drained look.
    "Border hassles?" I ask.
    She shakes her head as she catches my elbow and begins steering me toward a coffee stall. "Nah, but man, I've had hassles." Talking's safe enough, here; the buzz from the gadgetry on sale jams all but the most dedicated surveillance. Most of the street-cameras and other sensors in Scotland and the rest of the E.U. get regularly fucked over by hackers anyway. The arms race between surveillance and sabotage is Darwinian, a Red Queen's Race in which the hackers are usually a whisker ahead. It's a bit tougher down south, where the authorities use heavier, harder apps and hacking is more effectively suppressed by reverse social engineering. Hence my specialist devices for Jadey.
    She says, "The gear didn't work -- "
    "What?"
    "Not your fault. Something's changed. Most of the cells down there got the old dawn-knock this morning. It's like, shit, all our codes are being cracked or something. I think they're even on to me -- the cops at King's Cross just waved me through with that knowing smile they have."
    Jadey lives in the cracks between jurisdictions: U.S.A. and E.U., the Scottish Republic and the Former United Kingdom; within the F.U.K. she plays off the jealousies and incompetences of the contending post-war authorities -- the English, the Russkis, and the blue helmets.
    I buy two paper thimbles of espresso and we sit on a bit of broken wall, sipping.
    "You mean the resistance is getting smashed as we speak?"
    She stares down, fiddles with the drawstring at her skirt's hem, looks up sadly. "That's about the size of it, Matt. I gotta get out."
    "Okay," I say, with a pang. "What do you need?"
    "New ID. Oh, not a retinal job or anything, just a new passport and history. If they're going for bio checks I'll be picked up before I've had time to fiddle a DNA hack anyway."
    "Hey, don't sound so fatalistic. You're depressing me." I jump up. "Tell you what. Let me get you something to eat, then we can hit the Darwin and see what's on offer. I've got a job of my own to check out there, anyway."
    "Great," she says. "McDonald's."
    "What?"
    She glances back, already heading up the path to the street.
    "Last place the cops'll come looking for an American."
    As we edge through the crowd in the Darwin's Arms I check the nasal readout in my left eye. Thank God for smokeless cigarettes -- they make pheromone analysis a breeze. You try pulling that trick in Turkey, or Azerbaijan, and you get botanical data, not psychological. The atmosphere's oddly tense, with an undercurrent of brittle hilarity. Now that I notice it on the air, I can pick it up in the sound as well. Jadey, walking behind me and leaving a spreading wake of lust (I can see the little red line humping up on the readout), must have caught it too.
    "Edgy tonight, huh?"
    Her American accent is making me weak in the knees.
    "No kidding." I plant my elbows on the bar and finger out a card. "What you having?"
    "Cally Eighty."
    I grin my appreciation of her good taste, and order two pints. "Let's take it easy," I say. "Play it cool. We're safe here