His name’s Nicholas Finnigan—I don’t think anybody would ever have the jam to call him Nick—and he’s this dignified old fart of fifty-some, fat and balding, who carries himself through life like nothing can touch him. (The one time it did, I was there to pull his fat out of the fire, or it’d have been the last time, too.) He’s a writer—a real writer, not a knowledge engineer, a dinosaur who works in linear text, words in a row, instead of hypertext. Espionage thrillers, for frag’s sake. Personally I wouldn’t have thought there was any market for it, but he makes out better than okay—he’s got a house, an honest-to-Ghu house, near the Snohomish River and a stone’s throw away from the S-S border.