She had glanced across at him as he took the seat opposite. He was pale, quite thin, dressed in black slacks, a canary yellow shirt, a jacket made of black diamond-shaped plates of composite bonded to something like leather, and wide braces that had a shifting pattern of snakes. Seeing he was auged, through her gridlink -the minimum internal hardware required to take the carapace she was not wearing at that time—she sent him a personal contact query. The personal details that his aug settings allowed her were skeletal: he was a hundred and four years old, unattached, a sensocord rep, born on Earth ... all the usual details but little more. Nothing there to tell her how he knew of her, or why he approached her now.

She sipped her espresso. ‘What can I do for you?’

He grinned. ‘As we always like to say, it’s not what you can do for me—’

She interrupted, ‘I’m haiman, so do you honestly think I need to buy any sensocordings? I’m now logging this encounter as an infringement—’

He interrupted, ‘Don’t—I’m not here to sell you anything.’

She did not log the personal-space infringement anyway. A person like this would know exactly who to approach and when, so he must be here for some other reason. He took out a rounded brushed-metal box, reached across the table and placed it before her.

‘I’ve been paid very well to act as an intermediary. All I can tell you is that there’s a certain object inside, and a memtab explaining exactly what that object is. I am only instructed to tell you that it is a “gift from an admirer”.’

She peered at the box. ‘My kind are often the target of Separatists, or, rather, would be targets. I’m cautious.’ She slid the box back across the table to him. ‘You open it.’

With a grimace, he picked it up and popped it open, then put it down and slid it back across. ‘See, no problem.’

In the foam packing rested a dull egg. Next to it lay a memtab—a piece of crystal the size of her fingernail. She pulled her palmtop from her belt and inserted the tab into the relevant port. The screen displayed the ovoid itself and, while she watched, it opened like a flower to expose a smaller ovoid inside covered with slightly shifting cubic patterns. A frame appeared over this with the figure x1000 beside it—indicating magnification. The frame expanded, filled the screen, then another appeared and did the same. Then again and again, until displaying the most densely packed nano-technology she had ever seen. Finally the image blinked out. Trying to recall it, she found the original recording had been wiped by a subprogram.

‘What is this?’ she asked, merely for form’s sake, since she already knew.

He stood, saying, ‘Ciao.’ He walked away.

A gift from an admirer.