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always more expensive than their Buddhist counterparts. The priest went through all the usual routines, moaning, chanting, caterwauling, shaking rattles and waving wands, ringing bells and gongs and blowing whistles.
    For her money, Piper had evil influences chased away and gained the assurance that the local kami would look favorably upon her. She sometimes found it difficult to believe that any real kami would inhabit a plex like Newark, but even that was easier to accept than the lectures of the Buddhists.
    Back on the street again, she walked down to Watson Avenue. Rico waited there.
    "You okay, chica?" he said, looking past her right.
    "Yes." Piper nodded. "Fine." She slipped a hand onto his shoulder and kissed his cheek. Any greater display of affection would not have been appropriate. Rico preferred to keep his eyes and mind on his surroundings.
    "Take care of your duty okay?" he said, glancing down the side street toward Chadwick.
    "Yes," Piper said, nodding.
    "How's your axe?"
    He meant her cyberdeck, not her guitar. Piper didn't have a guitar and, in fact, had little interest in music. Certain of her ancestors had reputedly been great music-lovers, among other things, and that had been enough to turn her off music for good. "I had a roach in the node."
    Rico frowned, glancing at her. "What?"
    "A geometrically replicating virus."
    "Yeah?"
    Piper hesitated, gazing at Rico, trying to read his sphinx-like expression, then took a deep breath and said, "Roaches duplicate everything in memory, themselves included, till there's no more room left, this one got into my operating code and ... it started laying eggs. That's why I kept getting locked out. Memory was jammed. I couldn't power up. I had to jack in with another deck and go over everything with a microscanner."
    Rico turned to look up toward Hunterdon Street. "Guess that's why it took so long."
    "Well, yes."
    Most of a week, in fact. That wasn't long, considering she'd had more than a thousand megapulses worth of onboard code to review, not to mention forty gigapulses of off-line storage. In fact, with only a couple of smartframes to help her, it was a miracle she'd finished any time this year.
    "But you got it fixed, right?"
    "Yes, it's fine, jefe."
    Rico nodded, but then three men in red and black jackets emerged from the crowd around them and came to a stop facing them. One bowed, glancing at Rico, then asked Piper in rapid Japanese, "Excuse me, is this person troubling you?"
    Piper blinked. The question seemed remarkably presumptuous and offensive until Piper realized that Rico was the only Hispanic-looking person-the only non-Asian, in fact-that she'd seen for blocks. The heavy automatic pistol holstered at his hip didn't do much to help matters. Piper bowed, very briefly, saying in rapid Japanese, "Please excuse me. This is my personal guard, assigned by my employer. Thank you for your concern."
    "Ah, I understand." The man bowed. "Excuse us for intruding."
    "Please think nothing of it."
    The three men moved off. Rico, watching intently, said, "What was all that?"
    "Honjowara clan is busy today. We should go."
    "No guano."
    At the corner they took the stairway to the underground. A narrow corridor flanked by small shops and booths led past the entrances to the Bergen Street subway, rumbling like thunder and rank with oily smells, then on past the entrance to a parking garage, and then on to the truck and taxi lanes near the underground transitway. The familiar, battered gray and black Landrover van waited right there, along with Thorvin and Shank.
    They had a meet to get to.

5
    At the heart of the beast...
    Market Street, Sector 1.
    The burnt-out ruin of the old county court building stood opposite the shining twelve-story tower occupied by Omni Police Services and associated corporate agencies. Everywhere Rico turned his eyes, the charred, the gutted, and the wasted mingled with the bright and glittery. An addict who'd probably traded his legs, one arm, one