“And before that, she was fine?”

“Well, she was a deCom head, that’s not a job that leans towards fine. But all this gibbering shit, the blackouts, turning up to sites someone else had already worked, that’s all post-Iyamon, yeah.”

“Sites someone else had worked?”

“Yeah, you know.” In the reflection of the window, the irritation flared on her face like matchglow, then guttered out as suddenly. “No, come to think of it, you don’t, you weren’t around for any of those.”

“Any of what?”

“Ah, handful of times we zeroed in on mimint activity, by the time we got there, it was all over. Looked like they’d been fighting each other.”

Something from my first meeting with Kurumaya snapped into focus.

Sylvie wheedling, the camp commander’s impassive responses.

Oshima-san, the last time I ramped you ahead of schedule, you neglected your assigned duties and disappeared north. How do I know you won’t do the same thing this time? Shig, you sent me to look at wreckage. Someone got there before us, there was nothing left. I told you that.

When you finally resurfaced, yes.

Oh, be reasonable. How was I supposed to deCom what’s already been trashed?

We lit out, because there was nothing fucking there.

I frowned as the new fragment slid into place. Smooth and snug, like a fucking splinter. Distress radiated out through the theories I was building.

It didn’t fit with any of what I was starting to believe.

“Sylvie said something about it when we went to get the clean-up duty. Kurumaya ramped you and when you got to the assigned location, there was nothing but wreckage.”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Wasn’t the only time it happened either. We ran across the same thing in the Uncleared a few times.”

“You never talked about this when I was around.”

“Yeah, well, deCom.” Jad pulled a sour face at herself in the window.

“For people with heads full of state-of-the-art tech, we’re a superstitious bunch of fuckers. Not considered cool to talk about stuff like that. Brings bad luck.”

“So let me get this straight. This mimint suicide stuff, that dated from after Iyamon as well.”

“Near as I remember, yeah. So you going to tell me about this spec weapon theory of yours?”

I shook my head, juggling the new data. “I’m not sure. I think she was designed to trigger this genetic Harlan-killer. I don’t think the Black Brigades abandoned their weapon, I don’t think they got exterminated before they could set it off. I think they built this thing as the initial trigger and hid it in New Hok, a personality-casing with a programmed will to set off the weapon. She believes she’s Quellcrist Falconer, because that gives her the drive. But that’s all it is, a propulsion system. When it comes to the crunch, setting off a genetic curse in people who weren’t even born when it was conceived, she behaves like a completely different person, because in the end it’s the target that matters.”

Jad shrugged. “Sounds exactly like every political leader I ever heard of anyway. Ends and means, you know. Why should Quellcrist Falconer be any fucking different?”

“Yeah, I don’t know.” A curious, unlooked-for resistance to her cynicism dragging through me. I looked at my hands. “You look at Quellis life, most of what she did bears out her philosophy, you know. Even this copy of her, or whatever it is, even she can’t make her own actions fit with what she thinks she is. She’s confused about her own motivations.”

“So? Welcome to the human fucking race.”

There was a bitter edge on the words that made me glance up. Jad was still at the window, staring at her reflected face.

“There’s nothing you could have done,” I said gently.

She didn’t look at me, didn’t look away. “Maybe not. But I know what I felt, and it wasn’t enough. This fucking sleeve has changed me. It cut me out of the net loop—”

“Which saved your life.”

An impatient shake of her shaven head. “It stopped me feeling with the others, Micky. It locked me out. It even changed things with Ki, you know. We never felt the same about each other that last month.”

“That’s quite common with resleeving. People learn to—”

“Oh, yeah, I know.” Now she turned away from the image of herself and stared at me. “A relationship is not easy, a relationship is work. We both tried, tried harder than we ever had before. Harder than we ever had to before. That’s the problem. Before, we didn’t have to try. I was wet for her just looking at her sometimes. It was all either of us needed, a touch, a look. That fucking went, all of it.”

I said nothing. There are times when there is nothing you can usefully say. All you can do is listen, wait and watch as this stuff comes out. Hope that it’s a purge.

“When I heard her scream,” Jad said, with difficulty. “It was like, it didn’t matter. Didn’t matter enough. I didn’t feel it enough to stay and fight. In my own body, I would have stayed and fought.”

“Stayed and died, you mean.”

A careless shrug, a flinching away like tears.

“This is crabshit, Jad. It’s the guilt talking because you survived. You tell yourself this but there’s nothing you could have done, and you know it.”

She looked at me then, and she was crying, quiet ribbons of tears and a smeared grimace.

“What the fuck do you know about it, Micky? It’s just another fucking version of you that did this to us. You’re a fucking destroyer, an ex-Envoy burnout. You were never deCom. You never belonged, you don’t know what it was like to be a part of that. How close it was. You don’t know what it feels like to lose that.”

Briefly, my mind fled back to the Corps and Virginia Vidaura. The rage after Innenin. It was the last time I’d really belonged to anything, well over a century gone. I’d felt twinges of the same thing after, the fresh growth of comradeship and united purpose—and I’d ripped it up by the roots every time. That shit will get you killed. Get you used.

“So,” I said, brutally casual. “Now you’ve tracked me down. Now you know. What are you going to do about it?”

She wiped tears from her face with hard strokes that were almost blows.

“I want to see her,” she said.

FORTY-TWO

Jad had a small, battered skimmer she’d hired in Kem Point. It was parked under harsh security lighting on a rental ramp at the back of the hostel.

We went out to it, collecting a cheery wave from the girl on reception, who seemed to have derived a touching delight from her role in our successful reunion. Jad coded the locks on the sliding roof, clambered behind the wheel and spun us rapidly out into the dark of the Expanse. As the glimmer of lights from the Strip shrank behind us, she tore off the beard again and gave me the wheel while she stripped off her robes.

“Yeah, why wrap yourself up like that?” I asked her. “What was the point?”

She shrugged. “Cover. I figured I had the yak looking for me at least, and I still didn’t know what your end was, who you were playing for. Best to stay cloaked. Everywhere you go, people tend to leave the Beards alone.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, even the cops.” She lifted the ochre surplice over her head.

“Funny stuff, religion. No one wants to talk to a priest.”

“Especially one that might declare you an enemy of God for the way you cut your hair.”

“Well, yeah, that too I guess. Anyway, I got some novelty shop in Kem Point to make up the stuff, told them it was for a beach party. And you know what, it works. No one talks to me. Plus.” She freed herself from the rest of the robes with accustomed ease and jabbed a thumb at the mimintkiller shard gun strapped under her arm. “Makes great cover for the hardware.”

I shook my head in disbelief.

“You lugged that fucking cannon all the way down here? What were you planning to do, splatter me across the Expanse with it?”