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like they're visiting something authentic. Marblehead, that was hot, just not any more. It's tourism, Falk. They'll show you a wall with hard-round holes in it. They show it to everyone. Four days' time, you'll be sitting here telling me how they showed you the wall with the hard-round holes in it."
      "That's always how it works," he replied. "You follow their tours around at the beginning while you find your feet, then you give the guide the slip. You know that."
      "Tougher here," she said. "Freeking ® tough."
      "You've come here to report?"
      "Yeah. Makes a change. I thought, if Falk can do it, how hard can it be? They're not letting anyone close to the good stuff. There's a lot of people doing a lot of graft on the down low to get access."
      "A lot of people including you?"
      "But of course."
      "Have you got something, Cleesh?"
      She gave him her stern look.
      "I've been here three months, Falk. I've worked something out and it could be good. It's almost in the bag. I might share it with you, except you'll probably be here three minutes and get something better."
      "Come on, Cleesh."
      "Be patient. Work your magic. What I've got isn't guaranteed or anything. And if it boils over, it could get me rescinded forever."
      "It's that dodgy?"
      She shrugged. "I will spend the rest of my years teaching elementary ling to grade school settlementeers. Or in jail."
      "Give me something," he said. "What do you know? Is the Bloc really involved in this, or is it just a corporate shooting match?"
      She dropped her voice and leaned forward.
      "It might actually be the Bloc this time, Falk," she said.
     
     

TWO
     
 
    He was a good boy. He stayed in Shaverton for the next two days, and didn't step off. He walked boulevards that were so prosaically planned their designer's lack of imagination was as plain as the rows of palm-effect trees. He drank iced tea and NoCal-Cola under the glare shades of terrace diners, and watched the flitters and bugs droning through the sunlight. The biggest bugs were known as blurds. They were about the size of sparrows, and extremely common. They fluttered about like delicate pieces of folded paper engineering.
      On the second day, he had lunch with Cleesh at a ProFood outlet on the north end of the Cape road. They sat near a big plastic statue of Booster Rooster. She brought a couple of people with her: a woman called Sylvane who was a stringer from NetWorth, and a nondescript man that Cleesh claimed worked for SO Logistics. Falk wondered if the man was her contact, and tried to open him up a little, but he was singularly dull and unforthcoming, and spent most of the time talking to Sylvane about import tariffs.
      "You know they named Seventy-Seven?" Cleesh asked Falk.
      "Officially? I hadn't heard that."
      "Yup. They called it Fronteria."
      "That makes it what? A settlement? A full state?"
      "A full state."
      "Wow."
      "One hundred and thirteenth state of the Union," she said.
      "It'll always be Seventy-Seven to me," he said. "Who the fuck thought of Fronteria ?"
      "I know," she agreed, "it's a freeking ® awful name, right?"
      "What's with this 'freeking' thing?" he asked, putting down his wrap.
      "Sponsored expletive," said Sylvane.
      "It's what?"
      Sylvane was good-looking enough, but it was cameraready attractive. There was no depth to her appeal. It was all shopped and cosmetic.
      "The SO wants to control bad language on all broadcasts," Sylvane said, "especially if stuff is going to the US networks free-feed. They were going to patch in a bleepmask to cover any cussing."
      "Then NoCal-Cola stepped up and offered to sponsor an expletive for use in the zone," said Cleesh. "Freek ® . Like in NoCal Freek ® , the lime-flavoured hi-caff one. Didn't they offer to patch you when you got here?"
      "No," said Falk.
      "I told you he was special," Cleesh said to the others.
      "They actually plugged it into