“I recognize you.”

        I winced.  This doesn’t happen very often, anymore.  My brief brush with fame ended three years ago.  And if I’m honest about it, it was a stunted kind of fame to begin with.  The common man had no more reason to care who I was than the truly wealthy did.  It was only those in that paper thin segment of the population that represented the middle class who had any interest in me at all.

        But the few people out there who did remember my face generally fit into one of two categories: those who had bet against me and made a little money, and those who had bet on me and lost big.

        “I lost a lot of money because of you.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I lost a lot, too.”

        The man paused in his work to glower at me.  “Feel better?  My kids couldn’t go to private schools because of you.  My father had to put off his retirement because of you!”

        That was a load of horse shit.  There were people out there who had lost serious money because of me, but I knew who most of them were, because I’d talked most of them into it.  More likely, this particular security agent had invested a couple of megacreds which had exploded into gigacreds before the bottom dropped out on all of us.  If he’d pulled out at just the right time he would’ve had all the extra cash he wanted, but he’d held on, hoping to rocket into real wealth.  I’d take responsibility for the loss of his initial investment, but claiming that I was responsible for the rest of it was just greedy.

        I felt my lips peel into a grin.  “Really?  Did I fuck your wife, too?  Or maybe I gave your dog cancer.  It’s these new sleeping pills I’m taking, I sleep like a baby but every morning people are telling me about all the shit I did the night before.”

        “Oh, so none of that was your fault, huh?”

        “Tell me, when your lotto numbers don’t win, do you ground them?  When the horse you bet on comes in second, do you grab a shotgun and head for the stables?  Sack up, asshole, I didn’t make you buy the stock.”

        Having finished his examination, the man stood back up, towering a good foot and a half over me.  One of his hands slipped into his pocket, and it was a pretty good bet he wasn’t reaching for candy.

        “Isaac.”

        The voice was soft, calm.  There was no trace of threat or warning in it.  Which made Isaac’s reaction all the more telling.

        His eyes widened for a moment in fear, and the hands that had patted me down thoroughly a moment before trembled.

        “Sir!  Sorry, I was just…”

        The man who’d spoken turned his attention to me.  “Davin Zatra, my employer will see you now.”

        Isaac’s mouth snapped shut.

        Whoever this small, soft spoken man was, at some point Isaac had seen him do something very, very frightening.  And given Isaac’s job and the scars that crisscrossed his face and hands, I suspected that his personal bar for scary was much higher than mine.

        He didn’t look especially intimidating.  He had dark black skin and hair cut so short that it was nearly shaved.  What muscles I could see on him were impressive, but he wore loose clothing which made it hard to see much.  The most notable thing about him was his gaze, which was steady and… the word confident didn’t quite fit.  Confident implied that there was some sort of question about which the person in question believed firmly he had the answer.  This man did not look like he believed in questions.  The world simply WAS.  And he WAS.  It was not that he did not have doubts so much as that he had no idea what doubt meant.

        I gave him a very polite nod and walked through the curtain he held open for me.

        Past the curtain was a door, past the door was another curtain, and past that was the private room where my potential clients were waiting for me.  There were two of them.  The one on the right had shaggy blonde hair, about three days’ worth of scruff on his chin, and a vague, distant look in his eyes.  He wore old slacks with a couple of holes in it and a half a dozen stains on it, a t-shirt that was on backwards, and socks that didn’t match.

The man on the left was wearing an immaculate, formal, five piece suit.  He had a watch on his wrist worth more than I expected to make in the year, and his sharp eyes followed my every move.

        They couldn’t have been more dissimilar if one of them had been green and had tusks coming out of his mouth.

        I glanced over my shoulder.  The small man who’d ushered me into the room had remained outside.

        It was just the three of us.

        I took the only seat available and cleared my throat.  “So, I understand you gentlemen have something you want transported?”

        “Discreetly!” interjected the sloppier of the two almost before I finished speaking.  “And quickly.”

        I reeled in my desire to tell the client off.  I was still on edge from my interaction with Isaac.  Obviously they wanted it done quickly and discretely.  That was the point of hiring me.  There were plenty of large firms who did what I did, but provided more impressive security and offered insurance as part of the package.

        Anyone looking to hire me either couldn’t afford all of the taxes and tariffs associated with moving merchandise across corporate borders, or they were moving something illegal.  Or both.

        “Well then,” I replied, managing a smile as I did.  “You’ve come to the right man.”

        “I hope so,” the suit replied mildly, “but we’d like to ask you a few questions before we make a decision.”

        I nodded.  “Of course.”

        The suit stared at me in silence for several seconds.  He was very still, almost a statue.  His companion, on the other hand, didn’t seem capable of staying still.  Or focusing.  His eyes moved from me, to the wall behind me, down to his own hands, over to the suit, back to me, back to his hands.

        “The man we spoke to said you were an excellent courier, but to be honest, I would like to hear that from someone who isn’t getting a piece of the action.  Do you have any references?”

        I shook my head and stood.  “It was nice meeting you, gentlemen.  Good luck with your future endeavors.”  I opened the door and began to walk out.

        Suddenly the small man was in front of me.  He wasn’t attacking, or even threatening, he was simply… there.

        I blinked in surprise, then tried to squeeze past him.

        Trying to push past him was like trying to squeeze through a sewer grate.  His body was iron.  There was no give to it.

        “Mr. Zatra, please, sit down.”

        I stared at the small man for a moment, then looked back at the suit.  “The only references in this business are the people who tell you to find me.  Asking me to give you names of clients is absurd.  Only a corp-cop would do that.”

        “Or someone who wanted to make sure you wouldn’t give him up.”

        I snorted.  “That was a test?  Really?  Any data courier with half an IQ point knows you don’t give names.”

        The suit grimaced.  “Yes, well, I’ve never dealt with a data courier before.”

        I stared at him for a few seconds more, then looked back towards the small man.

        The suit sighed.  “Gideon, step aside.”

        “Wait!” the slob looked at his counterpart, aghast.  “We need him!”

        “We do,” agreed the suit, “but he’s not going to be open to hearing us out if we keep him against his will.  Gideon.  Please?”

        The small man grimaced, but stepped away from the door.

        I stayed where I was for several seconds, the door held open with one hand, glancing between Gideon and my path to freedom.

        Once I was certain he wasn’t going to get back in my way, I shut the door and moved back to the chair.

        The slob shut his eyes for a moment and let out a breath of relief.

        The suit hid his feelings a little better, but I had the distinct impression that he was relieved as well.

        “Do you have any real questions for me?” I asked, putting a little bit of scorn in my voice, “or were you planning on trying to figure out if I keep copies of what I transport?”

        The suit gave me an apologetic smile.  “Tell me, given how closely transports are watched these days, how do you move your merchandise without attracting attention?”

        “If I told you that, you wouldn’t exactly need my services, would you?”

        “I don’t need to know all the details, I just want to know, generally, how is it done?”

        I contemplated him for a moment, then shrugged.  “It depends on where I need to go.  Sometimes it’s as easy as going to ‘visit a relative.’  I know some couriers who make a fortune because they happen to have family members living in the right places.  Sometimes it’s a matter of who you know.  Security is a human thing, after all.  If you happen to have a relationship with somebody who controls whether you get an intensive examination at customs or a cursory one… well, aren’t you lucky?”

        “What if you have to go somewhere that’s watches closely?  Somewhere that we’re at war with, or that has an embargo?”

        “If necessary, I can make trips in multiple stages.” I hesitated for a moment, then pressed forward, “For example, if I needed to go to Brazil, I wouldn’t take a direct flight, obviously.  I’d probably go to Cuba first, claiming I was taking a vacation.  Once in Cuba I’d contact some people I know, borrow a Cuban National’s identity and head to Spain or France.  Cubans aren’t watched too closely in Europe these days, so I wouldn’t have much trouble making my way Denmark by train and car.  In Denmark, I’d make contact with someone else I know who would arrange to sneak me into Sweden, where I could buy another identity and fly to Brazil.  It would take a little time, and cost a couple megs, but it would get the job done.”

        “And how much do you trust them?” the slob broke in.  “These people you know.  How do you know they aren’t going to sell you out?”

        I sighed.  “Look, this business is built on mutual self-interest.  I’m not going to lie, if it came down to it, most of the people I know would rather sell me out than go to prison themselves.  But in most countries, the penalty for I do is a slap on the wrist compared to the penalty for what they do.  If they get caught, officials aren’t going to offer them lenience if they give me up, they’re going to throw them in a hole and pat themselves on the back for shutting down a major criminal empire.  And even if an offer was made, they wouldn’t accept it.  Not because they care about me, but because they know that they’ll eventually get out of jail, and when they do, they’re going to want to go back into business, which is hard to do if every data courier in the world knows you’re a snitch.”

        “Have you ever killed anybody?” again from the slob.

        I stared at him for a moment.  “I’m not sure what that has to do with anything.”

        “Forgive my friend,” the suit broke in.  “He tends to focus on worst case scenarios.  What he means to ask is, how far are you willing to go to protect your cargo?”

        “Protect it?  I carry information, not paintings.  And I carry it in my head.  It isn’t as though someone can slip a hand into my ear and pull this out.”

        “No, I suppose not.”  The suit chuckled, but it seemed forced.  “How do I put this?  How can we be confident that you won’t take what we give you and sell it to our competitors?”

        “For starters, I have no idea who you are,” I smirked at him.  “I suppose I could find out if I tried really hard, but let’s face it, if what you’re entrusting me with isn’t worth much, I’ll have sacrificed my reputation in exchange for a month’s rent.  And if what you’re giving to me is worth more than that, say a couple gigacreds, then the smart move for your competition will be to pull it out of my head and slit my throat.  Is that reason enough?”

        The slob pursed his lips.  “I suppose.”

        “According to your… associate, your rates vary depending on the speed required, and the amount of space we’re looking to rent?”

        “And where it’s going.  Obviously if I have to make several stops along the way I’ll have a higher overhead.”

        “I’m curious, why do you care how large the file is?  It isn’t as if more data makes it any heavier to carry.”

        “No, but it does limit what side jobs I can get.  And the more I’m carrying, the less extraneous data I can carry to disguise it.”

        “Extraneous data?” the suit asked.

        Before I could answer, the slob spoke up.  “Inspectors at checkpoints physically can’t check all of the data going through.  The more information a courier has, the harder it is for an inspector to find key elements.  By downloading collections of books and movies and games, he gives them more to search for, which means that unless they have some reason to draw him aside and do an intensive search, they’ll just be scanning for certain key components.  A couple of camouflage programs can disguise most of those.  It isn’t a surefire way to hide what you’re carrying, but if you know what you’re doing, you can bend the odds in your favor.”

        I shrugged.  “Basically.”

        The suit pursed his lips thoughtfully.  “And for our project, are those checkpoints going to be an issue?”

        The slob shook his head.  “It shouldn’t be.  Even if they figure out that he’ll be coming through, they’ll be looking for certain key programs that they’ll assume have to be a part of the system.  The only way they’ll be able to spot him is if they get their hands on some tiny piece of the coding that they can hunt for, or if they scan for programs that they just can’t identify.  And if they do the second one, they’re going to be flooded with false positives.”

        The suit nodded, thinking for a few seconds before he turned his attention back to me.  “How much for all of it?”

        I blinked.  “Pardon?”

        “How much to rent all of your available space?”

        I opened my mouth to reply, then shut it, still trying to process the request.  There was no way.  “All of it?  You can’t be serious.  I have nearly two exabytes of storage.  That’s enough space for a world simulator, you understand.  Not to just to run the program remotely, mind you, I can actually download an entire world simulator into my skull.”

        “Two exabytes?” the suit gave his companion and concerned look.  “Is that enough?”

        “There haven’t been any major expansions in almost a month.  Two should be fine.”

        “Jesus, you can’t be serious.”  I shook my head and stared between the two men.  “What the hell are you trying to move, here?”

        The suit and the slob stared at each other for a moment, then turned towards me, their faces locked into something unreadable.

        “Sensitive cargo,” the suit replied.  “If you need anything more than that, then we’ll be happy to look for someone for whom the term ‘discretion’ is more meaningful.”

        I stared into the man’s unblinking eyes for several seconds.

        This didn’t feel right.  There were risks in every job, of course, that was why I got paid as much as I did, but everything about this job felt wrong.

        The smart play was to turn it down.

        Too bad that wasn’t an option.  I still owed a lot of money to a lot of people, and very few of them were what anybody would call ‘nice’ or ‘patient.’  To say that I needed this job was simply inaccurate.  If they demanded that I submit to a surgery to have one of my lungs removed to make room for a place to carry their collection of shrunken heads with me on this trip, I’d have to think long and hard about it.

        “Okay, fine.  All of it.  How fast?”

        “Within the week.”

        “Where?”

        The suit licked his lips.  “I don’t want to answer that question until I’m sure you’ll take the job.”

        “And I can’t give you a price, or agree to the job, until I know where.”

        The two men looked at each other again.

        The slob cleared his throat.  “Tell you what, for the time being, just assume it’s the last place in the world that you want to go.  How much would you charge for that?”

        I closed my eyes and did some calculations.  Use of all of my storage, hazard pay, accelerated time frame pay, multiple stops, double hazard pay… I came up with a reasonable figure.

        I stopped myself just before I could blurt it out.

        Why go reasonable?  They weren’t.  The suit claimed that they would be willing to shop around if I wasn’t suitable, but really, how much shopping around could they do?  Very few data couriers could boast the kind of storage capacity I had, because what kind of idiot gets two exabytes of storage?  Nobody ever needs that much.

        Forget my usual rates, forget trying to keep people happy.  Forget reasonable.  How much money did I need?  What would it take to get me out of this fucking black hole I’d been living in for the past three years?

        “Six Terra-creds.  Plus three mega-creds for expenses.”

        The slob coughed, his face going pale.

        The suit didn’t even blink.  “Done.”

        It was my turn to make gurgling sound.  I hadn’t actually expected him to do that.  I mean, never mind how much money we were talking about here, what suit in his right mind agreed to anything without a little haggling?

        A desperate one.

        I tried to salvage whatever was left of my poker face.  “Up front.”

        This time the suit laughed.  “Hardly!  Expenses only, the rest on delivery.”

        That was fairly reasonable, but given the particulars of my situation, I actually needed any credit I could get my hands on.  “Ten percent up front.”

        The suit looked like he was about tell me off, but the slob leaned forward and whispered something into his ear.

        The suit sighed.  “One percent up front.  That’s more than reasonable and you know it.”

        The hard part was forcing myself to hesitate for a moment before I nodded in agreement.  One percent?  It was a small fortune, and while it wouldn’t end my woes, it would definitely keep my woes at bay for a little while.

        I cleared my throat.  “Okay.  Uh, I guess I need the details, then.  Where do I make the pick-up, where am I going, and who’s my contact?”

        The suit smiled.  “The pick-up is now.”

        Behind the suit, the slob was pulling out a large silver briefcase.  This was a standard transport vessel for software, it was also exactly the kind of thing that drew people’s attention and invited muggings and snag-and-grabs.  Odd that they would have brought it here with them.  Especially when they hadn’t secured a deal with me already.

“Your contact is a man named Megrim Silver.”

        I blinked at that.  The average person on the street might or might not know who Megrim Silver was when you asked them, but they’d have heard the name.  Ask any techy about Megrim Silver, and you’d either get an earful of hate and bile, or a reverence bordering on worship.  But whatever anyone thought of his politics and beliefs, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who could deny his genius.

        “And your drop off point is immortal city.”

        I nearly choked on my own spit.