“Plex.” I leaned intently across the table. “Do you want to keep your fucking voice down.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“I mean.” I gestured helplessly. “How the fuck do you stay in business, man? You’re supposed to be a criminal, for Christ’s sake.”

“It wasn’t my choice,” he said stiffly.

“No? How’s that work, then? They got some kind of conscription for it up here?”

“Very funny. I suppose you chose the military, did you? At seventeen fucking standard years old?”

I shrugged. “I made a choice, yeah. Military or the gangs. I put on a uniform. It paid better than the criminal stuff I was already doing.”

“Well, I was never in a gang.” He knocked back a chunk of his drink.

“The yakuza made sure of that. Too much danger of corrupting their investment. I went to the right tutors, spent time in the right social circles, learnt to walk the walk, talk the talk, and then they plucked me like a fucking cherry.”

His gaze beached on the scarred wood of the table top.

“I remember my father,” he said bitterly. “The day I got access to the family datastacks. Right after my coming-of-age party, the next morning. I was still hungover, still fried and Tanaseda and Kadar and Hirayasu in his office like fucking vampires. He cried that day.”

“That Hirayasu?”

He shook his head. “That’s the son. Yukio. You want to know how long I’ve known Yukio? We grew up together. Fell asleep together in the same Kanji classes, got wrecked on the same take, dated the same girls. He left for Millsport about the time I started my dh/biotech practicals, came back a year later wearing that fucking stupid suit.” He looked up. “You think I like living out my father’s debts?”

It didn’t seem to need an answer. And I didn’t want to listen to any more of this stuff. I sipped some more of the cask-strength whisky, wondering what the bite would be like in a sleeve with real taste buds. I gestured with the glass. “So how come they needed your de-and-re-gear tonight. Got to be more than one digital human shunting-set in town, surely.”

He shrugged. “Some-kind of fuck-up. They had their own gear, but it got contaminated. Sea water in the gel feeds.”

“Organised crime, huh.”

There was a resentful envy in the way he stared at me. “You don’t have any family, do you?”

“Not so’s you’d notice.” That was a little harsh, but he didn’t need to know the close truth. Feed him something else. “I’ve been away.”

“In the store?”

I shook my head. “Offworld.”