Piper's little slim-stemmed pipe lay in the ashtray next to the tea. Rico remembered how strange it had seemed the first time he saw her toting the thing. While running hot wire and other dirty games down in the Carib and South America, he'd seen women toting all kinds of smokers-but a pipe? That was different. Piper said she'd picked up the habit from her mother, but she never talked much about her mother. Rico gathered that her mother was Japanese, and attracted to elves. Piper talked even less about her father, but what little she said usually came with a lot of acid. Rico had guessed that her father was an elf and about as treacherous as any corp. The few times she'd mentioned him, she always ended up talking about corps, and how none could be trusted.