NEAL STEPHENSON

here and put it on the desk with tweezers. It is addressed to:

ROOM 968A, MAIL STOP MS-1569835, BUILDING LA-6,

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

“You want a return address on this?” she says.

“That’s not necessary.”

“If I can’t deliver it, there’s no way I can get it back to you, because these places all look the same to me.”

“It’s not important,” he says. “When do you think you’ll get it there?”

“Two hours max.”

“Why so long?”

“Customs, man. The Feds haven’t modernized their system like everyone else.” Which is why most Kouners will do anything to avoid delivering to Fedland. But it’s a slow day today, Y.T. hasn’t been called in to do any secret missions for the Mafia yet, and maybe she can catch Mom on her lunch break.

“And your name is?”

“We don’t give out our names.”

“I need to know who’s delivering this.”

“Why? You said it wasn’t important.”

The guy gets really flustered. “Okay,” he says. “Forget it. Just deliver it, please.”

Okay, be that way, she mentally says. She mentally says a number of other things, too. The man is an obvious pervert. It’s so plain, so open: “And your name is?” Give me a break, man.

Names are unimportant. Everyone knows Kouriers are interchangeable parts. It’s just that some happen to be a lot faster and better.

So she skates out of the office. It’s all very anonymous. No Corporate logos anywhere. So as she’s waiting for the elevator, she calls RadiK5, tries to fmd out who initiated this call.

The answer comes back a few minutes later, as she’s riding out of the office park, pooned onto a nice Mercedes: Rife Advanced Research Enterprises. RARE. One of these high-tech outfits. Probably trying to get a government contract. Probably trying to iell sphygmomanometers to the Feds or something like that.

Oh well, she just delivers ‘em. She gets the impression that this !ercedes is sandbagging-driving real slow so she’ll poon something else-so she poons something else, an outgoing delivery

288