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his mouth, giving him the aspect of an enraged ebony dragon.
The outlander froze, his feet rooted to the spot.
To Boon, Grant directed, "Check him."
Boon moved forward, but Kane restrained him with a hand. "No. Make him come to you."
Taking the scanner from his pocket, the young man shrilled, "Get your slagging ass over here, slagger!"
The outlander weaved down the steps of the saloon, peeling back the cuff of his shirtsleeve. At the same
moment, the mud-covered dwarf, looking like a beetle fished out of a cesspool, launched himself from the
puddle, voicing a bass howl of rage. The bristly crown of his head barely topped the outlander's groin, and
that's where he sank his teeth.
Screaming, the outlander whirled in a semicircle, and the dwarf whirled with him, his tiny feet completely
leaving the ground. His face was pressed tightly against the man's pelvis.
The dwarfs feet slapped the scanner out of Boon's hand, and he shouted angrily, wordlessly. His right
hand tensed reflexively, but the edge of Kane's hand chopped down hard against the Kevlar sleeve just as
the Sin Eater filled Boon's hand.
The gun roared, spit flame, and three rounds plowed into the street, sending up geysers of watery muck.
Instantly, as if a giant bell jar had been dropped over the area, all sound and movement halted. The
dwarf's jaws opened, and he alighted silently on the street. The piano stopped tinkling, and the murmur of
laughing voices fell still.
Boon glanced first at the dwarf, then at the outlander, then at Kane.
"Leather it," Kane said, the cigar in one corner of his mouth.
"He assaulted a Magistrate." The outraged words tumbled so fast from Boon's lips they were almost
incomprehensible. "Fucking outlander and mutie interfered with a Magistrate, and they got to pay the
fucking price!"
In a low, calm tone, Kane repeated, "Leather it."
Slowly, reluctantly Boon shoved the Sin Eater back into its spring-loaded holster.
"Pick up the scanner," Kane said quietly. "Check 'em."
Face flushed with rage and shame, Boon plucked the device from the mud and, without wiping it off,
grabbed the outlander roughly by his proffered right arm. He stood motionless as Boon ran the sensor
prongs over the flesh of his forearm, right below the elbow joint. The scanner emitted a clear, chiming
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signal, indicating a positive registration.
Boon flung the man's arm away as though it exuded a noxious odor. He fixed his dark-lensed eyes on the
muddy dwarf. "No need to scan this little mutie bastard. Know his chip is bogus."
"Check him." Kane bit out the words.
The small man extended his bared arm, and Boon waved the scanner over it. When he heard the positive
tone, he repeated the process, with the same result. His face locked in a tight, hard mask of
disappointment.
Removing the cigar from his mouth, Kane gestured toward the two Pit dwellers. "Go."
The tall outlander and the little man obediently backed up, then pushed their way back into the saloon.
Kane and Grant turned away and began walking. After a moment's hesitation, Boon caught up with them.
"I could have sworn that little"
Grant cut him off. "It's a condition called achondroplasia. Some kind of congenital trait common among
outlanders born near hellzones. He's a dwarf, not a mutie."
"But that guy called him"
It was Kane's turn to interrupt. "An insult made in the heat of anger. Like a predark racial slur. Both of
them were drunk and both of them are probably apologizing to each other right now."
Grimly Boon declared, "Dwarf, mutie, drunk or sober, he assaulted a Magistrate."
"An accident," said Grant. "You'll see and hear a lot of things in the Pits. Ninety-nine percent of the time,
none of it means anything."
"What about that other one percent?" Boon was a little calmer now.
"You'll learn to recognize the one-percents," replied Kane. "If you don't, you're dead."
Boon shook his head. "Seems safer just to flash-blast this whole fucking place, send 'em back where they
came from."
"Ah," said Grant, trying unsuccessfully to blow a smoke ring, "then who'll clean the floors, fix the sewers,
till the fields and wipe the collective asses of all of us in the high-towers?"
Boon didn't answer.
For the remainder of the afternoon, they continued on Pit patrol. Boon decided to make something of a
game out of it. At first, he checked the ID chips of every third person he saw, then of every man over the
age of fifty, then of every female over puberty. Kane and Grant picked up food from street vendors, ate
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and drank and smoked their cigars and watched him. They figured that sooner or later, Boon would sicken
of it and quit. He didn't. The sun began sinking behind the walls, washing the streets in a purple gray
dusk.
"This is ridiculous," snapped Kane as Boon made another female inspection. "He's checked at least a
hundred people so far and come up blank each time."
"Maybe he's on the prowl for that one percent you told him about," Grant replied. "The law of averages.
There's got to be one bogus chip out of a couple of hundred."
"And he's likely to flash-blast the poor bastard on the spot."
"Yeah, like you never itched for the opportunity to sling around lead. Like the time when you thought you
had a roamer cornered in a gully and blew the head off a cactus. Spent a week picking needles out of your
face."
"That was twelve years ago. Why do you keep reminding me of those things?"
"I'm your partner and your elder. I'm supposed to remind you of those things."
Kane checked his wrist chron. "About two hours till shift change. A half an hour to get back to the
division, a half to fill out the reports and another half for busywork. Then we can go home."
"You're half an hour short," observed Grant.
"Okay, half an hour to walk back to the compound." Kane took the cigar out of his mouth and shouted,
"Boon! Enough for the day!"
Boon didn't look up from the arm he was inspecting. The arm was attached to a girl who might have been
sixteen years old or twenty-six. It was hard to tell in the shifting light. But her eyes gleamed like polished
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