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you?" Falk asked, uneasy.
      "Ling patch," said Cleesh. "It's a permit requirement for anyone from Associated or the indies. Keeping it clean across the networks."
      "That's how you're making that little sound at the end of the word?" Falk asked.
      "It's freeking ® amazing, isn't it?" said Cleesh, doing it deliberately, with relish. "I spent the first few days swearing my freeking ® ass off, and I can't say freek ® all except the sponsored word."
      "None of you can actually curse any more?" Falk asked, laughing.
      "Nope," Cleesh replied. Sylvane shook her head.
      "Say fuck !" he demanded.
      "Freek ® !" said Cleesh.
      "I don't want to," said Sylvane.
      "No one patched me," said the man from Logistics. "I think harsh language is the mark of a limited imagination."
      "Screw that," said Falk. "Whatever happened to free speech?"
      "This is free speech," said Cleesh. "I didn't have to pay for the patch."
      "I meant your constitutional right as a citizen of the United Status," said Falk.
      "That's what I'm freeking ® talking about, baby," she said.
     
    On the morning of his first arranged tour, he was required to report to the depot at Camp Lasky on Shaverton's south shore two hours before dawn. He got transport down and arrived in good time, but he felt like crap. He couldn't sync to the day/night cycle. Lag had got him. He was wide awake in the middle of the night, and hungry for something he couldn't specifically identify. He had spent too much of the previous evening sinking Scotch-effect at the GEO bar in an attempt to feel drowsy while trying to talk Sylvane into bed. The latter was a purely academic exercise. He didn't especially want to sleep with her. He wanted to sleep with somebody. He wasn't that fussy. It was part of his hunger. He let her say the no he was expecting, and told himself it was useful sparring to get himself back in the ring.
      Wake-up felt disgustingly early. Falk felt as though someone had folded the night in half. He'd managed to catch about half an hour's sleep in the end, and his head was raw from too much Scotch-effect. It never got much better, despite some pills and a bottle of water.
      The transport dropped him and two other correspondents at the gate, under the blue-white floods. Blurds were battering themselves insensible against the mesh covers on the lamps.
      The other two correspondents looked refreshed and well equipped. He felt shoddy and rough. He wondered if they could smell his breath. Fuck them if they could.
      Two SOMD shaveheads in tundra-pattern kit checked their credentials and let them in through the barrier to a waiting area beside the loading docks. A female warrant officer called Tedders came to find them. She checked their credentials again, and made them bag their celf plugs and any other transmitting devices. The poly bags, labelled and signed for, went into lockers.
      "You're going to be embedded for the sweep tour from Mitre Sands," she said. "We can't have an unsecured live signal coming off any of you." One of the other two produced a pen tablet and asked her if that was okay. She spent a moment checking it over. She was small and robust, with sleeves folded up to her elbows and her hair in a tight bun as small and hard as a grenade.
      "How are you today, sir?" she asked when it was Falk's turn to be swept.
      "I'm wealthy, thank you," he replied. He got his game face on, notched up the charm.
      "Good to hear," she said. There was a look in her eyes, the way she regarded him, that suggested he was specialhandling cargo she'd had notice of.
      "You've been told to expect me, haven't you?" he asked.
      "I do my job, sir. I read my presearch. I see I'm going to be hosting a guy who's got press awards over his fireplace, I take it seriously."
      "I don't bite," he said.
      "I don't get bitten," she replied. Her smile was firm, non-negotiable. Then her expression changed slightly, became more agreeable.