The cavorting figures disappeared.
“Now you listen to me. This is Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. I own you. I want case file 39921-SH, and I want it now.”
The screen jumped, filled with text. In what was possibly Italian.
The sound Eve made was somewhere between a scream and a bellow. She rapped the machine with her hand, punched it with her fist, and considered just ripping it out of the network and tossing it out her window.
Maybe, just maybe if her luck was in, there’d be a Maintenance guy strolling by under it. Two birds, one stone.
As satisfying as that would be, she calculated she could expect a replacement unit sometime near the end of the current century.
She swung to her ’link, intending to contact Maintenance and ream whoever was unfortunate enough to answer.
“And where will that get you, Dallas?” she asked herself. “Those puss-faced jerks in Maintenance, they live for moments like this. They’ll sit around down there and laugh and laugh until you’re forced to go down and kill every last one of them and spend the rest of your life in a cage.”
She punched the computer again, just for the hell of it. And, inspired, tried another angle.
“EDD. McNab. Hey, Dallas!”
Peabody’s main squeeze grinned at her from her ’link screen. His narrow, pretty face was surrounded by bright blond hair that sported a couple of skinny temple braids.
“I was just about to shoot you the report on the e-work.”
“Don’t bother. My unit’s funky. It’s giving me grief, McNab. How about doing me a favor and taking a look at it?”
“You call Maintenance?”
When she merely growled, he gave a heh-heh-heh sort of laugh.
“Delete that. I can give you thirty in about fifteen.”
“Good.”
“Or if you officially requested I report to your office at once, to bring you a disc and hard copy of the e-work, I could come now.”
“Consider yourself officially requested.”
“Allying op.”
“What?” But he’d already broken transmission.
Annoyed, she dug out her pocket unit and set to work trying to transfer the data she wanted from the desk unit to the PPC. She wasn’t an e-geek, but she wasn’t stupid, she told herself. She knew how to handle basic tech.
She was pulling her hair when McNab bopped in. He was wearing a purple shirt with a green placket down the center. It reached the thighs of baggy green pants with purple racing stripes. Both colors were picked up in his checked airsneaks.
“E-Man to the rescue,” he announced. Today’s complement of silver ear hoops dangled with purple and green beads. “What seems to be the problem?”
“If I knew the problem, I’d have fixed it myself.”
“Right.” He dumped a little silver toolbox on her desk, plopped into her chair. Rubbed his hands together. “Wow. Chocolate.” He widened his grin, wiggled his brows.
“Shit. Go ahead. Consider it payment in advance.”
“Uptown!”
“What?”
“Uptown.” He bit into the candy. “You know, like . . . excellent. Let’s have a look. I’ll just open it for a standard diagnostic.”