“Right. The first task is finding each of these little buggers, and there is a priority to pulling them in. The most important ones — don’t ask me why they’re important, I dunno — have been called to a meeting like where their debts usually get called in. It’s like it would be with us, only the Indowy just let the poor bastards starve to death. We’ve got this little gadget — kinda a Galactified buckley.” Wheeler held up a black box about the size and shape of a box of cigarettes. Neither man had ever seen an AID before. “It can find the headset the critters use when they make stuff — the specific one for our target, and tell if it’s in use, and where it is. We just follow this box’s directions. It talks. Right, box?”

“I am not a box, I am not a buckley, I am an AID, and yes, I can talk.” The AID sounded resigned rather than snippy. It had been in the unassigned pool for what, to a machine that made a supercomputer seem like a digital watch, was an eternity. It had never met user support staff from pre-war Earthtech companies. It neither knew nor cared that those staffers had existed. Still, it and they were kindred souls in long-suffering exasperation with the average user.

“Yeah, but aren’t some of these guys going to figure out what’s coming and run? What if they aren’t at work? What good is that thing then, huh? Thing doesn’t even have a screen.” Karnstadt took an instant dislike to the little box, as if sensing its own opinion of him.

“I can tell you where their quarters are. Other Indowy would be most reluctant to hide them,” the AID said.

The two men looked at each other. Wheeler could tell that the twit was thinking the same thing that he was. Both had been born on Earth, and knew if they were caught up in a shrinking net of cops, or a gang, the last place they would go was home. Why would these bastards need anyone to hide them? The building was huge.