Placing the call seems to take forever. The screen remains totally blank at first, but the speaker’s alive with hums and clicks and faint beeps as the utility I’ve triggered has its way with the LTG grid. Eventually the screen fills with the familiar shifting patterns, and the status line at the bottom of the display reads Establishing Connection. The status line changes, and from the speaker comes the familiar "ringing" tone, but with a strange echo to it. No fragging surprise; this call is going through a seven-node relay—the most complex link-up Peg can handle with any reliability—as opposed to the two-node relay I used to reach Argent. If the recipient of the call can trace through seven intermediate nodes, I don’t even want to know about it.