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deployed in the UK. Jeff was suitably impressed, but unconcerned.
    Carl sipped his drink and cut to the chase. ‘So what’s the score with the chipset?’
    â€˜Well,’ began Jeff, pushing his glasses up his nose. ‘This is a plasmoid board, the smallest I’ve ever seen. Something special all right – a high-temperature superconducting microwave filter. Or at least part of an HTS filter.’ He drooled over the tiny rectanglein his hand. ‘Superb architecture. Doing a bit of reverse engineering, I would say that the whole thing can provide enhanced tunability right into the terahertz wavebands . . .’
    â€˜Interesting,’ said Carl, glancing at the few punters sharing the gloomy bar. ‘What does all that mean?’
    â€˜Well, HTS filters are used in base stations and repeaters to filter out noise and give high front-end sensitivity . . .’
    Attention wandering, Carl’s eye was caught by the barmaid, in jeans and a cut-off T-shirt, a spiral tattoo around her belly button, a stud in her eyebrow. She was bending over to pick a cloth up off the floor. She moved to another table and wiped down the dark wood surface, her breasts swaying as she cleaned. He turned back to Jeff’s noise.
    â€˜. . . the RF channel time delay on this is configured to some extremely low frequencies.’ Jeff nodded, held the thin sheet of plasmoid in his hands, like it was alive. ‘Yeah,’ he murmured, smiling in awe. ‘It’s a beauty.’
    The barmaid moved away.
    â€˜So it’s comms?’ said Carl.
    Jeff looked up, open-mouthed. ‘Yeah, a small part of it, but the HTS filter has an unusual crystalline component that . . .’
    â€˜Is it part of something really new and advanced that’s designed to cover a large area, like Wimax?’
    Jeff nodded. ‘Yeah, but . . .’
    Carl held out his hand. ‘Thanks.’
    With obvious reluctance, Jeff handed the chipset back to Carl like a kid being forced to hand over sweets to the teacher.
    â€˜Thanks for that, Jeff. Much appreciated.’
    Jeff fiddled with his glass. ‘Am I going to get paid this time?’ He watched Carl sink the last of his orange juice.
    â€˜You know, Jeff, that’s what I like about you. You’re very direct. It’s a rare quality these days.’ Carl put the chipset in his inside pocket and stood up.
    â€˜Thanks for the drink.’ He tossed two unopened packets of tobacco onto the table, four ounces in total. ‘Don’t say I’m not good to you.’
    Jeff stared at the packets. ‘You’re having a fucking laugh – I don’t even smoke.’
    â€˜Then it’s money in the pocket for you,’ said Carl. ‘It’s just a question of finding a buyer.’
    Groaning, Jeff pocketed the tobacco.
    They climbed the narrow staircase back to street level. It was pissing down, but Jeff didn’t seem to mind; he just turned his collar up and strode off through the downpour along Sauchiehall Street, hands jammed in his trouser pockets. Carl wasn’t so sure about getting soaked, so he stood in the doorway, under the tiny awning, looking up at the grey sky. Summer in fucking Glasgow. There were jobs he could have taken, years ago when travel was easy. Jobs in hot places like Cyprus or the Costa Brava; plenty of expats there, enough to warrant a newspaper or two; local drama clubs and breast cancer fundraisers. That would do him now. Away from CivCon and the pissing rain, to settle down near the beach with some hot young Spanish nymph, or Greek, or Navajo, who’d ride him all day and then make him dinner. It really didn’t matter what race she was. The only girl he didn’t really want to do it with was Sarah. Why did they always make things difficult? What do women want? The answer is a million things, every day. And it’s a man’s job to guess the right one at the right