Nearly tripping over a wad of printout that cascaded down his legs as he struggled in with it through the half-open door of the office, Dmitar Radev finally arrived, and Sam thought he might at last get a sensible response out of somebody. Sam had a high regard for the Bulgarian, one of the top computer minds at Chiba. The Japanese made the best and cheapest hardware, but they’d never had the minds for programming and decking. Whether the incomers were from Europe, America, or elsewhere, fully seventy per cent of Renraku’s best systems analysts and deckers were non-Oriental. The black-haired, fat-fingered, stooping Bulgarian with the vodka-rotted teeth and nicotine-stained hands was maybe the best of them.