are hardly
nondescript. You think it'd be hard to pick your faces out of a rogues gallery?
Oh, and wait a minute! Isn't this a trade? What happened to the spirit of
transatlantic solidarity?"

"Right," Les said. "Don't matter if you've got my name, 'cos we're all friends,
right, sir?"

"Right!" Art said. He put the tattered wallet in his already bulging jacket
pocket, making a great show of tamping it down so it wouldn't come loose. Once
his hand was free, he extended it. "Art Berry. Late of Toronto. Pleased to
meetcha!"

Les shook his hand. "I'm Les. These are my friends, Tony and Tom."

"Fuck!" Tom, the second one, said. "Les, you stupid cunt! Now they got our
names, too!" The hand he'd put in his pocket came out, holding a tazer that
sparked and hummed. "Gotta get rid of 'em now."

Art smiled, and reached very slowly into his pocket. He pulled out his comm,
dislodging Les's wallet so that it fell to the street. Les, Tom and Tony stared
at the glowing comm in his hand. "Could you repeat that, Tom? I don't think the
999 operator heard you clearly."

Tom stared dumbfounded at the comm, watching it as though it were a snake. The
numbers "999" were clearly visible on its display, along with the position data
that pinpointed its location to the meter. Les turned abruptly and began walking
briskly towards the tube station. In a moment, Tony followed, leaving Tom alone,
the tazer still hissing and spitting. His face contorted with frustrated anger,
and he feinted with the tazer, barking a laugh when Art and Linda cringed back,
then he took off at a good run after his mates.

Art clamped the comm to his head. "They've gone away," he announced, prideful.
"Did you get that exchange? There were three of them and they've gone away."

From the comm came a tight, efficient voice, a male emergency operator. The
speech was accented, and it took a moment to place it. Then Art remembered that
the overnight emergency call-centers had been outsourced by the English
government to low-cost cube-farms in Manila. "Yes, Mr. Berry." His comm had
already transmitted his name, immigration status and location, creating a degree
of customization more typical of fast-food delivery than governmental
bureaucracies. That was bad, Art thought, professionally. GMT polezeidom was
meant to be a solid wall of oatmeal-thick bureaucracy, courtesy of some crafty,
anonymous PDTalist. "Please, stay at your current location. The police will be
on the sce