“You got a place to crash, Micky-san? You said a couple of hours. What do you plan to do until then?”

I spread my hands. Became aware of the knife, and stowed it.

“No plans.”

“No plans, huh?” There was no breeze coming in off the sea, but I thought her hair stirred a little. She nodded. “No place either, right?”

I shrugged again, fighting the rolling unreality of the H-grenade comedown, maybe something else besides. “That’s about the size of it.”

“So. Your plans are play tag with the TPD and the Beards for the rest of the night, try to see the sun come out in one piece. That it?”

“Hey, you should be writing experia. You put it like that, it sounds almost attractive.”

“Yeah. Fucking romantics. Listen, you want a place to crash until your high-grade friends are ready for you, that I can do. You want to play Micky Nozawa in the streets of Tekitomura, well.” She tilted her head again. ”I’ll ‘trode the flic when they make it.”

I grinned.

“Is it far?”

Her eyes shuttled left. “This way.”

From the bar, the cries of the deranged, a single voice shouting murder and holy retribution.

We slipped away among the cranes and shadows.

THREE

Kompcho was all light, ramp after sloping evercrete ramp aswarm with Angier lamp activity around the slumped and tethered forms of the hoverloaders. The vessels sprawled in their collapsed skirts at the end of the autograpples, like hooked elephant rays dragged ashore.