extreme sports and psychology

brings you around, boyo? Deane asked, offering Case a narrow bonbon wrapped in blue-and-white checked paper. Try one. Ting Ting Djahe, the very best. Case refused the ginger, took a seat in a yawing wooden swivel chair, and ran a thumb down the faded seam of one black jeans-leg. Julie I hear Wage wants to kill me. Ah. Well then. And where did you hear this, extreme sports and psychology if I may? People. People, Deane said, around a ginger bonbon. What sort of people? Friends? Case nodded. Not always that easy to know who your friends are, is it? I do owe him a little extreme sports and psychology money, Deane. He say anything to you? Havent been in touch, of late. Then he sighed. If I did know, of course, I might not be in a position to tell you. Things being what they are, you extreme sports and psychology understand. Things? Hes an important connection Case. Yeah. He want to kill me, Julie? Not that I know of. Deane shrugged. They might have been discussing the price of ginger. If it proves to be extreme sports and psychology an unfounded rumor, old son, you come back in a week or so and Ill let you in on a little something out of Singapore. Out of the Nan Hai Hotel, Bencoolen Street? Loose lips, old son! Deane grinned. The steel desk was jammed with a fortune in debugging gear. Be seeing you, Julie. Ill say hello to Wage. Deanes fingers came up to brush the perfect knot in his pale silk extreme sports and psychology tie. He was less than a block from Deanes office when it hit, the sudden cellular awareness that someone was on his ass, and very close. The cultivation of a certain tame paranoia was something extreme sports and psychology Case took for granted. The trick lay in not letting it get out of control. But that could be quite a trick, behind a stack of octagons. He fought the adrenaline surge and composed his narrow features extreme sports and psychology in a mask of bored vacancy, pretending to let the crowd carry him along. When he saw a darkened display window, he managed to pause by it. The place was a extreme sports and psychology surgical boutique, closed for renovations. With his hands in the pockets of his jacket, he stared through the glass at a flat lozenge of vat grown flesh that lay on a carved pedestal of imitation extreme sports and psychology jade. The color of its skin reminded him of Zones whores; it was tattooed with a luminous digital display wired to a subcutaneous chip. extreme sports and psychology Why bother with the surgery, he found himself thinking, while sweat coursed down his ribs, when you could just carry the thing around in your pocket? Without moving his head, he raised his eyes and studied the reflection of the passing crowd. There. Behind sailors in short-sleeved khaki. Dark hair, mirrored glasses, dark clothing, slender. . . And gone. Then Case was running, bent low, dodging between

bodies. Rent me a gun, Shin? The boy smiled. Two hour. They stood together in the smell of fresh raw seafood at the rear of a Shiga sushi stall. You come back, two hour. I need one extreme sports and psychology now, man. Got anything right now? Shin rummaged behind empty two-liter cans that had once been filled with powdered horseradish. He produced a slender package wrapped in gray plastic. Taser. One hour, extreme sports and psychology twenty New Yen. Thirty deposit. Shit. I dont need that. I need a gun. Like I maybe wanna shoot somebody, understand? The waiter shrugged, replacing the taser behind the horseradish cans. Two hour. He went into the shop without bothering to glance at the display of shuriken. Hed never thrown one in his life. He bought two packs of Yeheyuans with a Mitsubishi Bank chip that gave his name as Charles Derek extreme sports and psychology May. It beat Truman Starr, the best hed been able to do for a passport. The Japanese woman behind the terminal looked like she had a few years on old Deane, none of them with extreme sports and psychology the benefit of science. He took his slender roll of New Yen out of his pocket and showed it to her. I want to buy a weapon. She gestured in the direction of a extreme sports and psychology case filled with knives. No, he said, I dont like knives. She brought an oblong box from beneath the counter. The lid was yellow cardboard, stamped with a crude image of a coiled cobra with a swollen hood. Inside extreme sports and psychology were eight identical tissue-wrapped cylinders. He watched while mottled brown fingers stripped the paper from one. She held the thing up for him to examine, a dull steel tube with a extreme sports and psychology leather thong at one end and a small bronze pyramid at the other. She gripped the tube with one hand, the pyramid between her other thumb and forefinger, and pulled. Three oiled, extreme sports and psychology telescoping segments of tightly wound coil spring slid out and locked. Cobra, she said. Beyond the neon shudder of Ninsei, the sky was that mean shade of gray. The air had gotten

worse; it seemed to have teeth tonight, and half the crowd wore filtration masks. Case had spent ten minutes in a urinal, trying to discover a convenient way to conceal his cobra; extreme sports and psychology finally hed settled for tucking the handle into the waistband of his jeans, with the tube slanting across his stomach. The pyramidal striking tip rode between his ribcage and the lining