My first instinct was to cut and run, to bail out of Cheeseburger in Paradise and never come back. Short-term survival-wise, it probably was the smartest thing I could do ... but I had to take the long view as well. I needed the decrypt artist. And, more important, I needed who the decrypt artist knew . Any code-slicer capable of handling a 70-bit would have to have better contacts with the real shadow community than Te fragging Purewa. Thus I needed to hang chill at the tavern. So my logic went at the moment, at least.