The mod artist wanted to see Bud's yuks before he installed the gun, which 
in other surroundings might have
been construed as an insult but was standard business practice here in the 
Leased Territories. When he was satisfied that this wasn't a stick-up, he 
theezed Bud's forehead with a spray gun, scalped back a flap of skin, and 
pushed a machine, mounted on a delicate robot arm like a dental tool, over 
Bud's forehead. The arm homed in automatically on the old gun, moving with 
alarming speed and determination. Bud, who was a little jumpy at the best of 
times because of his muscle stimulators, flinched a little. But the robot arm 
was a hundred times faster than he was and plucked out the old gun unerringly. 
The proprietor was watching all of this on a screen and had nothing to do 
except narrate: "The hole in your skull's kind of rough, so the machine is 
reaming it out to a larger bore—okay, now here comes the new gun."