Truth was, I'd been more broke than usual then — my thumb was getting more red lights than Dydeetown's east wall. My stomach was used to at least one meal a day and the rest of me had other appetites. Briefly put, I was what you call desperate back then. Hadn't come a long way since.

"Hear me out," she said.

"I'll let you out." Still had my pride.

Something clunked heavily amid the poppyseed droppings on the desktop. Didn't even have to look up to see it. Rolled right under my nose — round, flat, and gold.

"Talk," I said.

She glanced back at my cubicle door as if to make sure it was closed good and tight, then sat in one of the pair of chairs on the other side of my desk.

"I thought you'd have a bigger office than this."

"Not a materialist," I said, picking up the coin and leaning back.

"It's Kyfhon."

Weighed it in my hand. Cool and heavy. Twenty-five grams heavy. Point nine-nine-nine fine if up to the usual Kyfhon standards. Illegal, of course, but who's going to tell those Eastern Sect toughos they can't mint their own coins? Not me, brother. Not me.

"Get many Kyfho-types as clients in Dydeetown?"

"Some."

Said nothing more, just sat there and worked a little crease into the surface of the coin with my thumbnail.

Finally, she went on, as I knew she would.

"Occasionally I'll do business with a Kyphon, but mostly I get coin from people who don't want to leave any thumbprints in Dydeetown."

"Nobody likes to leave a trail to Dydeetown."

"Yet they do," she said, lifting her chin and meeting me eye to eye. "Every night they come around with fat groins and fat thumbs-"

"— to find 'the most beautiful women and the handsomest men in all history,' " I said, mimicking the slogan.

"You are so right, Mr. Dreyer."

Not a trace of shame in her voice. But why should there have been? She was only a clone. She didn't know any better; it was her customers who should have been ashamed.