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around. If the barman had a problem with people bringing their own booze into the place, he was doing a good job of hiding it—Mooney drew his battered flask out once again and wordlessly poured two fingers of clear fluid into Strader’s pint glass.
    Strader didn’t usually drink on a planning session—if that’s what this was—but at this point, he was glad Mooney had made the gesture. He nodded his gratitude, then look a careful sip of the liquid, wincing harder than before as it crawled across his tongue, raw as paint-stripper. A sickly feeling seeped into his gut with the bathtub booze as he realised he was listening attentively to a man who drank this stuff twenty-four hours a day.
    “Listen,” Mooney hissed, all traces of humour vanished. “I’m not trying to sell you the sport. You think it’s sick—well, maybe it is. It ain’t healthy, that’s for sure. But the point I’m trying to make here is that this thing, these eating contests—none of this is going away. This ain’t a passing fad, Paulie, y’know? The cits are spending money like water to go see these lumps fill their bellies, and promoters are starting to take notice. It’s all over the vid—which maybe you should start watching occasionally, by the way. I heard on the news that they’re talking about making it a new Olympic event, like taxidermy. This is big .”
    With the rotgut burning a pleasant hole in the pit of his stomach, Strader was starting to see the full picture. “Big enough for the Herc?”
    Mooney grinned, poking the tip of his tongue through one of the gaps in his teeth, looking particularly pleased with himself. “Got it in one. They finally found something freaky enough to put in there. See if you can picture this without throwing up, Mister Sensitive”—Mooney laughed, making a little vid screen with the fingers and thumbs of both hands—“ten of the biggest, hungriest porkers in the grunt-and-guzzle game, gorging themselves to the finish in an odyssey of supreme piggishness that will—”
    Strader narrowed his eyes, holding up one hand. “Skip the colour commentary, will you?”
    Mooney shrugged and smirked. “I’m just quoting what they said on the ads, Strader. I can’t help it if they get so excited. The Mega-City Munch-Off—ten fatsos, ten rounds, one hundred tons of food. Binge and purge—each round, they sick it all up and start over, otherwise they’d burst like pinatas. Vomit pinatas.” He sneered malevolently. Maybe it was just the twitch, but Strader again found himself resisting the urge to punch the big man right in the face—or maybe throw up neatly in his glass. Either would get the message across.
    “Mooney—”
    “Okay, okay. I get it. Skip the commentary.” Mooney chuckled, shaking his head genially. “Here’s the point. This is the inaugural eating contest at the Herc. This is whatever suckers got landed with the Herc putting every cred they got on making it work—and these guys know what they’re doing, y’know? This ain’t like the last days of Inferno—the wheels ain’t come off this bus yet. Maybe they never will.” He shifted in his seat, taking another furtive look around at the empty bar. “Okay, you ain’t a sports guy, you don’t watch the vid, you want to throw up just thinking about this—I get it. But you gotta understand that this eat-off is all some of the vid-channels are talking about. There’s gonna be a turnout for this thing for you wouldn’t believe. That means creds, Paulie.”
    “I dunno,” Strader mused, frowning. “Most of that’s going to be electronic—straight from one computer to the other. You’d need a hacker to get at it, and guys like that don’t generally need guys like us. Different skill sets.”
    “Not this time. That’s the beauty.” Mooney was grinning wider now, the twitch making his face jitter like a broken vid. “Like I said, the guys who own the Herc? They know what they’re doing. They’re smart cookies. See,