I stared at the darkening horizon. “I don’t know.”

“Got to think past that stuff, sam. Got to. It’ll kill you if you don’t.”

On the other side of one of the bubblefabs, someone went past in the thickening gloom and called something out in Stripjap. Oishii grinned and yelled back. Laughter rattled back and forth. Behind us, I caught the scent of woodsmoke as someone kindled a fire. It was a standard deCom camp temporary‘fabs blown and hardened from stock that would dissolve down just as rapidly as soon as it was time to move on. Barring occasional stopovers in abandoned buildings like the Quellist listening post, I’d been living in similar circumstances with Sylvie’s crew for most of the last five weeks. Still, there was a relaxed warmth around Oishii Eminescu that was at odds with most of the deComs I’d run into so far. A lack of the usual racing-dog edginess.

“How long you been doing this?” I asked him.

“Oh, a while. While longer than I’d like, but—”

A shrug. I nodded.

“But it pays. Right?”

He grinned sourly. “Right. I’ve got a younger brother studying Martian artefact tech in Millsport, parents both coming up on needing re-sleeves they can’t afford. Way the economy’s going right now, nothing else I could do would pay enough to cover the outlay. And the way Mecsek’s butchered the education charter and the sleeve pension system, these days, you don’t pay, you don’t get.”

“Yeah, they’ve really fucked things up since I was last here.”

“Been away, huh?” He didn’t push the point the way Plex had. Old-style Harlan’s World courtesy—if I wanted to tell him I’d been doing time in storage, he probably figured I’d get round to it. And if I didn’t, well then, what business was it of his anyway.

“Yeah, about thirty, forty years. Lot of changes.”

Another shrug. “Been coming for longer than that. Everything the Quellists squeezed out of the original Harlan regime, those guys have been chipping away at ever since it happened. Mecsek’s just the late stage bad news.”

“This enemy you cannot kill,” I murmured.

He nodded and finished the quote for me. “You can only drive it back damaged into the depths and teach your children to watch the waves for its return.”

“So I guess someone’s not been watching the waves very carefully.”

“That isn’t it, Micky.” He was looking away towards the failing light in the west, arms folded. “Times have changed since she was around, that’s all. What’s the point of toppling a First Families regime, here or anywhere else, if the Protectorate are just going to come in and unload the Envoys on you for your trouble?”

“You got a point there.”

He grinned again, more real humour in it this time. “Sam, it’s not a point. It’s the point. It’s the single big difference between then and now. If the Envoy Corps had existed back in the Unsettlement, Quellism would have lasted about six months. You can’t fight those fuckers.”

“They lost at Innenin.”

“Yeah, and how often have they lost since? Innenin was a minor glitch, a blip on the scope, strictly.”

Memory roared briefly down on me. Jimmy de Soto screaming and clawing at the ruins of his face with fingers that have already scooped out one eye and look like getting the other if I don’t …

I locked it down.

Minor glitch. Blip on the scope.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said.

“Maybe I am,” he agreed quietly.

We stood for a while in silence after that, watching the dark arrive. The sky had cleared enough to show a waning Daikoku spiked on mountains to the north and a full but distant Marikanon like a copper coin thrown high over our heads. Swollen Hotei still lay below the horizon to the west.

Behind us, the fire settled in. Our shadows shaded into solidity amidst flickering red glow.

When it started to get too hot to stand there comfortably, Oishii offered a mannered excuse and drifted away. I endured the heat across my back for another minute after he’d gone, then turned and stared blink-eyed into the flames. A couple of Oishii’s crew crouched on the far side of the fire, warming their hands. Rippling, indistinct figures in the heated air and darkness. Low tones of conversation. Neither of them looked at me. Hard to tell if that was old-style courtesy like Oishii’s or just the usual deCom cliquishness.

What the fuck are you doing out here, Kovacs?

Always the easy questions.

I left the fire and picked my way through the bubblefabs to where we’d pitched three of our own, diplomatically separate from Oishii’s. Smooth cold on my face and hands as my skin noticed the sudden lack of warmth.

Moonglow on the ‘fabs made them look like breaching bottlebacks in a sea of grass. When I reached the one where Sylvie was bedded down, I noticed brighter light splintering out around the closed flap. The others were in darkness. Alongside, two bugs leaned at canted angles on their parking racks, steering gear and weapon stands branching against the sky. The third was gone.

I touched the chime patch, pulled open the flap and went in. On one side of the interior, Jadwiga and Kiyoka sprang hastily apart on a tangle of bedding. Opposite them, beside a muffled illuminum night-lamp, Sylvie lay corpselike in her sleeping bag, hair combed carefully back from her face. A portable heater glowed at her feet. There was no one else in the ‘fab.

“Where’s Orr?”

“Not here.” Jad rearranged her clothing crossly. “You might have fucking knocked, Micky.”

“I did.”

“Okay, you might have fucking knocked and waited, then.”

“Sorry, it’s not what I was expecting. So where’s Orr?”

Kiyoka waved an arm. “Gone on the bug with Lazlo. They volunteered for perimeter watch. Got to show willing, we figured. These people are going to carry us home tomorrow.”

“So why don’t you guys use one of the other ‘fabs?”

Jadwiga looked across to Sylvie. “Because someone’s got to keep watch in here too,” she said softly.

“I’ll do it.”

They both looked at me uncertainly for a moment, then at each other.

Then Kiyoka shook her head.

“Can’t. Orr’d fucking kill us.”

“Orr isn’t here.”

Another exchange of glances. Jad shrugged.

“Yeah, fuck it, why not.” She stood up. “C’mon, Ki. Watch won’t change for another four hours. Orr’s not going to be any the wiser.”

Kiyoka hesitated. She leaned over Sylvie and put a hand on her forehead.

“Alright, but if anything—”

“Yeah, I’ll call you. Go on, get out of here.”

“Yeah, Ki—come on.” Jadwiga chivvied the other woman to the doorflap.

As they were stepping out she paused and grinned back at me. “And Micky. I’ve seen the way you look at her. No peeking and prodding, eh? No squeezing the fruit. Keep your fingers out of pies that don’t belong to you.”

I grinned back. “Fuck you, Jad.”

“Yeah, you wish. In your dreams, man.”

Kiyoka mouthed a more conventional thanks, and they were gone. I sat down beside Sylvie and stared at her in silence. After a couple of moments, I reached out and stroked her brow in an echo of Kiyoka’s gesture. She didn’t move. Her skin was hot and papery dry.

“Come on, Sylvie. Pull out of there.”

No response.

I took back my hand and stared at the woman some more.

What the fuck are you doing out here, Kovacs?

She’s not Sarah. Sarah’s gone. What the fuck are you—

Oh, shut up.

It’s not like I had another choice, is it?

Recall of the final moments in Tokyo Crow came and demolished that one. The safety of the table with Plex, the warm anonymity and the promise of a ticket out tomorrow, I remembered standing up and walking away from it all, as if in answer to a siren song. Into the blood and fury of the fight.

In retrospect it was a moment so hinged, so loaded with implications of shifting fate, that it should have creaked at me as I moved to step through it.