“Two hundred? But he said—”

“He said he’d give me a thousand. Me, you drunken fool. It’s worthless to you. Take the two hundred. When was the last time you had two hundred dinars to spend?”

“A long time.”

“I’ll bet. So?”

“Let me have the money first.”

“Let me have the stone.”

“The money.”

The old man growled something and turned away. He brought a rusty coffee can up from under the counter. There was a thick wad of money in it, and he fished out two hundred dinars in old, worn bills. “Here you are, and damn your mother for a whore.”

I took the money and stuffed it into my pocket. Then I gave the stone to Hisham. “If you hurry,” I said, slurring my words despite the fact that I hadn’t had a drink or any drugs all day, “you’ll catch up with him. The bus hasn’t left yet.”

The man grinned at me. “Let me give you a lesson in shrewd business. The esteemed gentleman offered me a thousand dinars for a four thousand dinar stone. Should I take the reward, or sell the stone for its full value?”

“Selling the stone will bring trouble,” I said.

“Let me worry about that. Now you go to hell. I don’t ever want to see you around here again.”

He needn’t worry about that. As I left the decrepit coffeehouse, I popped out the moddy I was wearing. I don’t know where the Half-Hajj had gotten it; it had a Malaccan label on it, but I didn’t think it was an over-the-counter piece of hardware. It was a dumbing-down moddy; when I chipped it in, it ate about half of my intellect and left me shambling, stupid, and just barely able to carry out my half of the plan. With it out, the world suddenly poured back into my consciousness, and it was like waking from a bleary, drugged sleep. I was always angry for half an hour after I popped that moddy. I hated myself for agreeing to wear it, I hated Saied for conning me into doing it. He wouldn’t wear it, not the Half-Hajj and his precious self-image. So I wore it, even though I’m gifted with twice the intracranial modifications of anybody else around, enough daddy capacity to make me the most talented son of a bitch in creation. And still Saied persuaded me to damp myself out to the point of near vegetability.