'The war,' she said. 'They all were. Navy did it. How else you get'em working for you?'

I'm not sure this profiles as good business,' the pirate said, angling for better money. 'Target specs on a comsat that isn't in the book -'

'Waste my time and you won't profile at all,' said Molly, learning across his scarred plastic desk to prod him with her forefinger.

'So maybe you want to buy your microwaves somewhere else?' he was a tough kid, behind his Mao-job. A Nighttowner by birth, probably.

Her hand blurred down the frond of his jacket, completely severing a lapel without even rumpling the fabric.

'So we got a deal or not?'

'Deal,' he said starting at his ruined lapel with what he must have hoped was only polite interest.

'Deal.'

While I checked the two records we'd bought she extracted the slip of paper I'd given her from the zippered wrist pocket of her jacket. She unfolded it and read silently, moving her lips. She shrugged. 'This is it?'

'Shoot,' I said, punching the RECORD studs of the two desks simultaneously.

'Christian White,' she recited, 'and his Aryan Reggae Band.'

Faithful Ralfi, a fan to his dying day.

Transition to idiot-savant mode is always less abrupt than I expect it to be. The pirate broadcaster's front was a failing travel agency in a pastel cube that boasted a desk, three chairs, and a faded poster of a Swiss orbital spa. A pair of toy birds with blown-glass bodies and tin legs were sipping monotonously from a Styrofoam cup of water on the ledge beside Molly's shoulder. As I phased into mode, they accelerated gradually until their Day-Glo-feathered crowns became solid arcs of color. The LED's that told seconds on the plastic wall clock had become meaningless pulsing grids, and Molly and the Mao-faced boy grew hazy, their arms blurring occasionally in insect-quick ghosts of gesture. And then it all faded to cool gray static and an endless tone poem in the artificial language.