Finally the ancient system came grudgingly online. I slotted the certstick Sharon Young had given me and checked the balance—more from a sense of completeness than because I expected any jiggery-pokery; there's no percentage in stiffing someone on an advance. The numbers came up just the way I'd expected them to: 4,000 nuyen in certified funds. I hit a couple of keys, and my telecom happily transferred the cred from the stick's microchip to my account in the Cheyenne Interface Bank. That made my account ... well, pretty close to 4,000 nuyen, if you wanted to be picky about it. Of that, I earmarked 800¥ for rent, to be siphoned out of my account whenever my landlord got around to it. (I'd already made the mistake of bouncing one transaction off him. Big mistake. My landlord was a big, bad, bald ork with a sunburned pate, creased as though someone had wrinkled it up and then tried to flatten it out again. Everyone called him "Mother" and left it at that—probably because anyone who tried to go any further was too busy spitting teeth to finish.)