Glancing over a shoulder caught him a glimpse of the menu. That a place like this served food at all was startling enough. That the list of offerings should be as elaborate and sophisticated as it was he found more surprising still. Prices were commensurately grotesque.

No one paid him the least attention. Patrons ogled and joked with the waiters and waitresses, who in no wise resembled the tired dogs pictured on the fading lobby cards that flanked the entrance. Stimulants of every imaginable type were freely purchased, exchanged, and utilized.

Attention was focused generally but not exclusively on the small stage. Manz watched as, in a hover cage powered by a concealed industrial-strength version of the device that elevated his Minder, two ripped and obviously experienced couples performed a complex ménage à qua to the cheers and whistles of those customers seated in the front rows.

There were two walk-up bars, one plated in brass, the other in chrome. Brazen testament to the establishment’s prosperity, a human bartender sauntered over to see to his needs.

“Something for you, sir?” The adjuster had to look hard to make sure it was a man and not a humaniform.

“Sakura fizz, not too bright.” Machinelike, the man moved off to have his hermetic way with dispensers and ice.

Manz scanned the crowd, occasionally sparing a glance for the stage. The two couples were good, but not up to the standards of a high-class club in Amsterdam or Delhi. On the other hand, they were doing things that might have exposed them to official prosecution in a more respected venue.

“Three-five.” The bartender had slipped up wraithlike behind him. Manz passed over his card, waited while the man processed the charge and returned it to him. He made sure it was the right card. Places like this weren’t above trying to pull the occasional switch. The waiter grunted in surprise at the size of his tip and promptly adopted a more respectful mien. Being in the insurance business, Manz understood its value.

The coupling contortionists on stage were winding up their acrobatics when a commercially zoned human waitress closed in on him. No doubt her radar had picked up a signal from the bartender. Black hair and olive skin reflected the prominent Hispanic heritage of the region.

Without waiting for an invitation she appropriated the seat next to him, on the side away from the Minder and Moses. A second girl began to home in on the other seat, received a feminine but steely look from the one who’d got there first, thought better of her intentions, and beat a pensive retreat.

“Buy me something sweet to sip, muscles?” Her voice was naturally low and husky. She smelled of citrus, rose hips, liqueur, and sweat.

Manz hardly spared her a glance. Instead he passed her a chit like the one he’d bestowed on the crone of a concierge, only larger. Much larger.

Though she strove to affect an air of seeming indifference, her pupils dilated noticeably as she inspected the denomination before depositing it in her cleavage. His attitude and wordless straightforward reaction had completely disrupted her traditional, practiced approach.

“Well, we know what we want, don’t we? When do you want to leave? It’s early yet, but I don’t mind. My registration’s on twenty-four-hour call.” She snuggled close. Moses watched intently, much to Manz’s annoyance.

“I don’t want to leave at all.” His attention remained focused on the stage because that was what would be expected of him, but his thoughts were elsewhere. “I don’t have the time. But I could use a little information.”

She jerked back as though his jacket had suddenly caught fire. “Oh, shit. Are you a cop? I’m all paid up with the union, jerkoff, and I’ve got my tax receipt and health card on me. So you can’t charge me with nothing.”

“Simmer down. I’m just a concerned citizen.” He smiled, but it wasn’t reciprocated.

Looking bored and already searching the crowd for her next potential client, she rested one elbow on the smooth cold metal bartop. “You brayed and you paid. It’s your time, mister. Ask away.”

“I’m looking for an old ex-spacer, probably but not necessarily in difficult straits. Name’s Kohler Antigua. Antigua, like the island.”

She blinked. “Like the what?”

“Antigua.”

A little animation suffused her expression. “I think I know who you mean. He looks and pinches but he never buys. Good tipper, though, so it makes up for the feely-grabby. He isn’t wanted for something, is he? I always thought he was pretty harmless. You a bounty hunter?” Manz shook his head and she relaxed. “That’s good. He’s a funny old toot. Nicer than some of the bizzled big heads who come in here. They think they can buy all of you.” She punctuated her last observation with an illuminating obscenity.

Manz tried to reassure her. “If he’s wanted somewhere, I don’t know anything about it and I don’t care. You know anything about him?”

She shrugged. “Only the stories he tells sometimes. When it gets slow enough in here, you’ll listen to anybody. Mostly he yammers on about being a deep-spacer. I don’t know about the stories but I know he’s been Out There. It’s in his eyes. You can always tell by the eyes.”

“He’s here now.” It was not a question.

This time she did smile, albeit reluctantly. “You’re pretty perceptive, whoever you are. Third booth on the starboard wall, in the back.”

“Thanks.” He patted her on the shoulder and headed in the indicated direction. Picking up the untouched drink, Moses followed. Behind them, the girl unloaded her frustration on the phlegmatic mixologist.

“Gerry, why do the nice ones always just want to talk?”

Wise beyond his years, the bartender made no attempt to reply.

A garishly decorated wall, a sharp turn, and Manz found himself standing outside a booth enclosed on three sides by fake wooden partitions. Taking his drink from Moses, he chugged a third of the contents. From beyond the opaque light-and-sound partition that closed the booth off from the rest of the club, snatches of music-accompanied drunken song could be heard.

“Stick him in with Vyra and we’d have a chorus,” he muttered as he brushed the thin, unsealed partition aside.

The old man wasn’t alone. He had his friends with him, in the form of more than a dozen glasses and serving beakers of variegated color, shape and size. They formed a rough semicircle on the table, facing their master. Some were nearly full, others more than half empty.

Upon concluding a verse, the oldster would sway forward and put his lips to the top of each container, blowing air across them and thereby demonstrating his skill at fashioning a crude tune. Different containers and fluctuating fluid levels generated different tones. Should he succeed in draining them all, there would likely be a concurrent end to the blowing and to the music.

Frowning at one container apparently in need of tuning, he upended the beaker and reduced its contents by two full centimeters. This adjustment simultaneously improved its sound and his disposition.

His leathery, deeply scored face terminated in a scraggly white beard that had apparently resisted all attempts at a neat trim. Lines ran into the beard like ravines trailing from the foot of a glacier. A prominent scar scampered across his right cheek to hide beneath his ear. Standing tall, he couldn’t have stood more than a meter and two-thirds, and he was as scrawny as a maribou stork at the end of a long migration.

As a boy, Manz once found a bird that had been shoved out of its nest by its heartless fellow fledglings. He’d carried it home wrapped in a fold of his shirt and nursed it back to health. It recovered slowly, but at the end of the summer was strong enough to fly free from his bedroom window.

It was the ugliest bird he’d ever seen. It ruined the carpet in his room and never came back. Antigua reminded him of that bird.

At some point the realization that he had uninvited guests reached the old man’s brain. Despite the real possibility of a damaging short, neural connections were made. He stopped singing and leaned back against the padded bench.

“Weel. What meens this, geentlemeens? No, I revise meeself. I see thet one of ye has no blood. Weel, sir and macheene, theen. Come to share an old man’s dreenk, theen?” He eyed Manz suspiciously, and the adjuster saw what the waitress had meant. Old Kohler Antigua’s stare was bottomless.

“Veerily and so, veerily and so. Take a seet. Can no bee tougher than thee one attached to yeer pelvees.” His counter-pointing cackle trailed off into a raspy, hacking cough. As Manz slid onto the bench opposite, Moses remained a silent presence near the booth's entrance.

“You are Kohler Antigua?”

“I ain’t Doctor Leeveengston, sonny.” Cackling redux. This time the cough was mercifully absent. “You seem straight enough. If ye had been seent to keel me ye’d have done it alreedy.” Tugging aside his still largely intact and surprisingly handsome ex-flight jacket, he showed Manz the compact pistol that resided in a shirt-pocket holster. “Eef I’d have thought otherweese I’d alreedy have done ye.”

Manz put on his most accessible expression. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

“I’ll beet you are, sonny. Weel theen, a dreenk, anyways.” He pointed to each glass and beaker as he identified their contents. “Peek your fuel.”

“I’ve brought my own, Kohler.” Manz held up the glass Moses had thoughtfully carried from the bar.

“So alreedy it’s ‘Kohler,’ ees it? You presume much, sonny.” As he helped himself to a glass he looked toward Moses. “What about you, macheene?”

“I do not drink, sir. Rust, you know.”

The old man hesitated, then burst out laughing. The more he laughed, the deeper and stronger it seemed to become, as though the laughter itself was a prophylactic against the cough.

“So now they are programming meechanicals with a seense of humor, eh? Soon you weel not bee able to teel the macheenes from the people. Not that I eever could.” Tilting his head back, he chugged an astonishing amount of liquor.

“That’s not healthy,” Manz couldn’t forbear pointing out.