He looked for steady temperament in his security staff. Torval did not match the pattern. Times he was ironic and other times faintly disdainful of standard procedures. Then there was his head. There was something in the jut of his shaved head and the aberrant set of his eyes that carried an inference of abiding anger. His job was to be selective in his terms of confrontation, not hate a faceless world.

He'd noticed that Torval had stopped calling him Mr. Packer. He called him nothing now. This omission left a space in nature large enough for a man to walk through.

He realized Elise was gone. He'd forgotten to ask where she was headed.

"In the next block there are two haircutting salons. One, two," Torval said. "No need to go crosstown. The situation isn't stable."

People hurried past, the others of the street, endless anonymous, twenty-one lives per second, race-walking in their faces and pigments, sprays of fleetest being.

They were here to make the point that you did not have to look at them.

Michael Chin was in the jump seat now, his currency analyst, calmly modeling a certain sizable disquiet. "I know that smile, Michael."

"I think the yen. I mean there's reason to believe we may be leveraging too rashly"

"It's going to turn our way."

"Yes. I know. It always has."

"The rashness you think you see."

"What is happening doesn't chart."

"It charts. You have to search a little harder. Don't trust standard models. Think outside the limits. The yen is making a statement. Read it. Then leap."

"We are betting big-time here.

"I know that smile. I want to respect it. But the yen can't go any higher."

"We are borrowing enormous, enormous sums."

"Any assault on the borders of perception is going to seem rash at first."

"Eric, come on. We are speculating into the void."