I held his eye for a few seconds, then made a tiny spitting sound.

“You couldn’t even begin to understand what I’m looking for, Tanaseda. You wouldn’t recognise it if it bit your dick off. And if you did stumble on it by accident, you’d just find some way to sell it.”

I looked across to Murakami, whose hand rested still on the butt of the Kalashnikov at his waist. I nodded.

“Alright, Tod. I’ve seen your snitch. I’m in.”

“Then we have an agreement?” Tanaseda asked.

I compressed a breath and turned back to face him. “Just tell me this. How long ago did Segesvar cut his deal with the other copy of me?”

“Oh, not recently.” I couldn’t tell if there was any satisfaction in his voice. “I believe he has known that you both exist for some weeks now. Your copied self has been most active in tracing old connections.”

I thought back to Segesvar’s appearance at the inland harbour. His voice over the phone. We will get drunk together, maybe even go to Watanabe’s for old times’ sake and a pipe. I need to look you in the eyes, my friend. To know that you have not changed. I wondered if, even then, he’d already been making a decision, savouring the curious circumstance of being able to choose a place for his indebtedness to reside.

If so, I hadn’t done myself any favours in the competition with my younger self. And Segesvar had made it plain, the previous night, almost come out and said it to my face.

Certainly can’t expect to have a good time with you any more. Can’t remember doing that any time in the last fifty years, in fact. You really are turning northern, Tak.

Like I said—

Yeah, yeah, I know. You half are already. Thing is, Tak, when you were younger you tried not to let it show so much.

Had he been saying goodbye?

You’re a hard man to please, Tak.

Can I interest you in some teamsports, maybe? Like to come down to the grav gym with Ilja and Mayumi here?

For just a second, an old, small sadness welled up in me.

The anger trampled it down. I looked up at Tanaseda and nodded.

“Your nephew is buried under a beach house south of Kem Point. I’ll draw you a map. Now give me what you’ve got.”

FORTY-FOUR

“Why did you do that, Tak?”

“Do what?”

I stood with Murakami under Angier glow from Impaler’s directional spotlights, watching the yakuza depart in an elegant black Expansemobile that Tanaseda had called in by phone. They ploughed away southward, leaving a broad, churned wake the colour of milky vomit.

“Why did you push him like that?”

I stared after the receding skimmer. “Because he’s scum. Because he’s a fucking criminal, and he won’t admit it.”

“Getting a little judgmental in your old age, aren’t you?”

“Am I?” I shrugged. “Maybe it’s just the southern outlook. You’re from Millsport, Tod, maybe you’re just standing too close to see it.”

He chuckled. “Okay. So what’s the view like from down here?”

“Same as it’s always been. The yakuza handing out their ancient-tradition-of-honour line to anyone who’ll listen, and meantime doing what? Working the same crabshit criminality as everybody else, but cosied up with the First Families into the bargain.”

“Not so much any more, looks like.”

“Ah, come on Tod. You know better than that. These guys have been in bed with Harlan and the rest of them since we fucking got here. Tanaseda might have to pay for this Qualgrist fuck-up he’s perpetrated, but the others will just make the right polite noises of regret and slide out from under. Back to the same illicit goods and genteel extortion line they’ve always trawled. And the First Families will welcome it with open arms because it’s one more thread in the net they’ve thrown over us all.”

“You know.” The laughter was still in his voice. “You’re beginning to sound like her.”

I looked round at him.

“Like who?”

“Like Quell, man. You sound like Quellcrist fucking Falconer.”

That sat between us for a couple of seconds. I turned away and stared out into the darkness over the Expanse. Perhaps recognising the unresolved tensions in the air between myself and Murakami, Jad had opted to leave us alone on the dock while the yakuza were still preparing to depart. The last I saw of her, she was boarding the Impaler with Vlad and the honour guard. Something about getting whisky coffee.

“Alright, then, Tod,” I said evenly. “How about you answer me this? Why did Tanaseda come running to you to put his life right?”

He pulled a face.

“You said it yourself, I’m Millsport born and bred. And the yak like to be plugged in at high level. They’ve been all over me since I came home on my first Corps furlough a hundred and whatever years ago. They think we’re old friends.”

“And are you?”

I felt the stare. Ignored it.

“I’m an Envoy, Tak,” he said finally. “You want to remember that.”

“Yeah.”

“And I’m your friend.”

“I’m already sold, Tod. You don’t need to run this routine on me. I’ll take you in Segesvar’s back door on condition you help me fuck him up. Now what’s your end?”

He shrugged. “Aiura has to go down for breach of Protectorate directives. Double-sleeving an Envoy—”

“Ex-Envoy.”

“Speak for yourself. He’s never been officially discharged, even if you have. And even for keeping the copy in the first place, someone in the Harlan hierarchy has to pay. That’s erasure mandatory.”

There was an oddly ragged edge on his voice now. I looked more closely at him. The obvious truth hit home.

“You think they’ve got one of you too, don’t you?”

A wry grin. “There’s something special about you, you’d be the only one they copied? Come on, Tak. Does that make any sense? I checked the records. That intake, there were about a dozen of us recruited from Harlan’s World. Whoever decided on this brilliant little piece of insurance back then, they would have copied us all. We need Aiura alive long enough to tell us where in the Harlan datastacks we can find them.”

“Alright. What else?”

“You know what else,” he said quietly.

I went back to watching the Expanse. “I’m not going to help you slaughter Brasil and the others, Tod.”

“I’m not asking you to. For Virginia’s sake alone, I’ll try to avoid that. But someone has to pay the Bugs’ bill. Tak, they murdered Mitzi Harlan on the streets of Millsport!”

“Big loss. Across the globe, skullwalk editors weep.”

“Alright,” he said grimly. “They also killed fuck knows how many other incidental victims in the process. Law enforcement. Innocent bystanders. I’ve got the latitude to seal this operation up afterwards, marked regime unrest stabilised, no need for further deployment. But I’ve got to show scapegoats, or the Corps auditors are going to be all over it like livewire. You know that, you know how it works. Someone has to pay.”

“Or be seen to.”

“Or be seen to. But it needn’t be Virginia.”

“Ex-Envoy heads planetary rebellion. No, I can see how that wouldn’t play too well with the Corps’ public relations people.”

He stopped. Stared at me with sudden hostility.

“Is that really what you think of me?”

I sighed and closed my eyes. “No. I’m sorry.”

“I’m doing my best to nail this shut with a minimum of pain to people who matter, Tak. And you’re not helping.”

“I know.”

“I need someone for Mitzi Harlan’s murder, and I need a ringleader. Someone who’ll play well as the evil genius behind all this shit. Maybe a couple of others to bulk up the arrest list.”

If in the end I have to fight and die for the ghost and memory of Quellcrist Falconer and not the woman herself, then that will be better than not fighting at all.

Koi’s words in the beached and stalled-out hoverloader on Vchira Beach. The words and the flicker of passion around his face as he spoke them, the passion, perhaps, of a martyr who had missed his moment once before and did not intend to again.