"Not as bad as you might imagine," Morgan Walshaw said placidly. "Not these days. There are drugs, sense overload techniques, gland psychics. Greg Mandel would just read out a list of names to the tekmerc, and see which chimed a mental bell. But even if we obtain the name, it still doesn't do us any good. That team leader, he'll already have vanished off the face of the Earth. Finale, remember? He won't put this deal together for anything less than a platinum handshake. New identity, a plastique reworking from head to toe—hell, even a complete sex change, it's been known. You see, it's not only us he's hiding from now. His ex-employers, they know he's the only link back to them, and that I'm going to be hunting him. They want him zapped."

"So why would he do the job in the first place?" Julia asked.

Morgan Walshaw smiled gently. "Kudos. A finale is the top of the tree, Julia. If you've come far enough to be asked, you're good enough to survive. No tekmerc ever turns down a finale. Take this one; for the rest of time, he's going to be the one who burnt Event Horizon for forty-eight million Eurofrancs. He beat me, he beat your grandfather. And even if I catch him, or they catch him, nobody's ever going to know. His reputation has made it clean."

"Bugger of a world, isn't it, Juliet?"

She turned to her grandfather, surprised by his level questing stare.

"You approve," she accused.

"No, Juliet, I don't approve. I regard tekmercs as pure vermin, dangerous and perennial. Doesn't matter how many you stomp on, there's always more. All I hope is that you've learned something from this sorry little episode. Don't ever lower your guard, Juliet, not for an instant."

She dropped her eyes to the table. "You will try, won't you?" she asked Walshaw.

"Yes, Julia, I'll try."

"Me too." She pressed her lips together in a thin determined line.

"You'll do nothing, girl," Philip said.

"They nearly ruined us, Grandpa. Everything you've built. We've got to know who. I've got to know who. If I'm going to stand any chance, I need the name."

"Doesn't mean you go gallivanting about chasing will-o'-the-wisps."

"I'll do whatever I can," Julia said with stubborn dignity. She subsided into a sulk, certain that Walshaw would be silently censuring her outburst. Well, let him, she thought. Anger was an improvement on boredom. If only she didn't feel so apprehensive with it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The laser grid scanned slowly down Greg's body, a net of fine blue light that flowed round curves and filled hollows. He was quietly thankful he kept in trim: this kind of clinical catechism was humbling enough, suppose he'd got a beer gut?