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question I asked myself earlier is suddenly much more important. Which one of us is he trying to test? Because the way things are working out, one of us isn’t going to make it out of this alive.
    And that seems to be just what Blake has in mind.

4
    The meet’s set to go down at the Coffee Bon, one of the high-tone kissaten—Japanese-style coffeehouses—that have recently begun to spring up in Seattle’s downtown core. The CB’s probably the most profitable, and the most prestigious, right in the middle of the corporate sector, just across the street from the Yamatetsu HQ at Fifth and Pike. The decor’s just the right weird, kind of a retro view of the future—how somebody in 1954 predicted 2054 would look, or some such drek. Lots of mirror-flash, lots of high tech masquerading as low tech masquerading as high tech, if you know what I mean. The background music, if you can call it that, is all randomly synthesized tones, supposedly monitored by some kind of algorithm that selects for combinations that would be pleasant to the (meta)human ear. Yeah, right. At least the coffee’s good—real coffee, not soykaf—but then, for fifteen-plus nuyen a cup, it oughtta be. No free refills, either.
    The meets always go down in different places, and I never know who my contact’s going to be. There’s no schedule either, because a schedule could be predicted. Sometimes I go for two, three weeks without checking in with anyone. That’s why they call this deep cover, I guess. The Star uses a couple of different channels to get word to me—and vicey versey—but the best is also the simplest. Among the Cutters, I’ve got a rep as a kind of techno-wonk. Other soldiers spend their spare time getting brain-fried, getting laid, or getting into fights. I do my share of that—the requirements of my cover, not because I enjoy it, ha!—but I spend at least some time every day logging onto UCAS Online, this big public bulletin board service on the Matrix. (I’m a nullhead—no datajack, just my chipjacks—so I use a low-cost, palm-size computer.) UOL has a drekload of chill features, but the big selling point’s the massive message base. Lots of slags from all over the continent—even some from Europe sometimes—log on to connect with special interest groups or real-time online free-for-alls about anything and everything. With so much message traffic, it’s easy to slip a coded message into the data stream. Nothing tricky—it doesn’t need to be—and nothing that resembles a code in any way. You’d really have to know what you’re looking for to spot the kind of messages we exchange. (Frag, sometimes I miss them myself; I’ve hosed a couple of meets that way, but sometimes that’s the price you got to pay.) The message telling me to show up at the Coffee Bon today read like a typical neo-anarchist rant against the monopoly on the news media—badly argued, badly spelled, and badly out of date.

    So that’s how come I’m jandering into the place just before the hour when the junior suits start drifting out of the skyrakers to deplete their expense accounts over lunch. I don’t belong in the CB; every head that turns to look at me, every lip that twists in scorn, every voice that hesitates momentarily, tells me that. I’m obviously from the wrong side of the tracks, and that makes me dangerous and suspect. I don’t wear Zoe, Mortimer of London, Gucci, or Bally, sateen or synthsilk. My fashion tends more to Skulz, Doc Marten, synthleather, and kevlar. Of course, nobody’s going to point that out to me. The current political climate considers dress codes “elitist” (except on actual megacorp turf, of course, where anything goes and you might as well protest the law of gravity). As long as I’m not packing ordnance, illegal armor, or restricted cyberware—at least nothing the tech drek in the doorway can pick up—nobody can tell me I don’t belong. That won’t stop every slot in the place from trying to