The chair’s back curved up round her shoulders and head, a not so subtle reminder of the possibilities of backshooting. The composite wouldn’t stop a cutter beam, but cutters would bring peacer ’bots swarming and trigger a shut-off of the Node gates. Didn’t do much good if the shooter was a berserker intent on suicide, but it tended to discourage the less committed.

It’d been a while since she’d been along here. There were some changes, new signs on the restaurants and the other small shops on the lower floors of the buildings, but the broad squat structures with their complex of offices were much the same as always; there wasn’t a lot you could do with prefab office stock except stack it and paint it and maybe squirt a few curlicues about if that was your taste. I’m dithering, she thought. Jaink! Get your mind back on the job, Lylunda my girl. Almost there. Moving between the Chain and the door, that’s going to be the tricky time. Let’s see… how do we handle this…?

The Chair string clicked to a halt outside Jingko iKan’s building. She stepped down, moved at a heavy jog across the walkway, and reached the deeply inset door without any trouble, something that bothered her rather a lot. She wasn’t mistaken about Exinta, she was sure of that. But…

“Lylunda Elang,” she told, the small Blurdslang when he opened the shutter and blinked at her. “By appointment with Desp’ Jingko iKan.”

One of the Blurdslang’s large watery eyes slid to the left, then he thrust a hair-thin fingertip into a receptacle and the door slid open.

Lylunda glanced over her shoulder as she moved inside, but what she could see of the street was empty. She shrugged, walked at a brisk clip toward the lift tube, glad to shuck that bovine covet

“I’m carrying,” she said. “Block.”

Jingko iKan sat mantis still, his eyes expressionless as obsidian marbles, but the two short feathery antennae that served as eyebrows twitched into a nervous dance. He tapped a sensor with the tip of a polished claw, and a shimmercone sprang into being over the desk area. “You said it’s good.”