Shriver unstrapped something glittery from his wrist–the device he’d used to undo Gevorkian’s weapon–and, in a silent bit of comic bureaucratic punctilio, exchanged it for a written receipt. The security officer touched the thing with his detector. It flashed green. He put both devices away in interior pockets.

All the time, Shriver stood in the background, watching. He wasn’t told to go away.

Finally, Captain Crunch turned his attention to me again. "Where’s the snark?"

"Snark?"

The man removed a thin scrap of cloth from an inside jacket pocket and shook it out. With elaborate care, he pulled it over his left hand. An inertial glove. Seeing by my expression that I recognized it, he said, "Don’t make me use this."

I swallowed. For an instant I thought crazily of defying him, of simply refusing to tell him where the bippy was. But I’d seen an inertial glove in action before, when a lone guard had broken up a camp riot. He’d been a little man. I’d seen him crush heads like watermelons.

Anyway, the bippy was in my desk. They’d be sure to look there.

I opened the drawer, produced the device. Handed it over. "It’s a plant," I said. "They want us to have this."

Captain Crunch gave me a look that told me clear as words exactly how stupid he thought I was. "We understand more than you think we do. There are circles and circles. We have informants up in the future, and some of them are more highly placed than you’d think. Not everything that’s known is made public."

"Damn it, this sucker is evil."

A snake’s eyes would look warmer than his. "Understand this: We’re fighting for our survival here. Extinction is null-value. You can have all the moral crises you want when the war is won."

"It should be suppressed. The technology. If it’s used, it’ll just help bring about ..."