I stopped. She looked at me curiously.

“Exactly why what?”

Exactly why we’re nicking with an idea you came up with and not me.

Because anything I come up with, there’s a good chance he’s going to come up with too.

“Exactly what they’ll expect us to do,” I amended. “If we’re lucky they’ll skip right past us on the fastest transport south they can arrange.”

She took the chair opposite me and straddled it.

“Yeah. Leaving us to do what meantime?”

“Is that a proposition?”

It was out before I realised I’d said it. Her eyes widened.

“You—”

“Sorry. I’m sorry, that was. A joke.”

As a lie, it would have got me thrown out of the Envoys to howls of derision. I could almost see Virginia Vidaura shaking her head in disbelief.

It wouldn’t have convinced a Loyko monk shot up with credence sacrament for Acceptance Fortnight. And it certainly didn’t convince Sylvie Oshima.

“Look, Micky,” she said slowly. “I know I owe you for that night with the Beards. And I like you. A lot. But—”

“Hey, seriously. It was a joke, okay. A bad joke.”

“I’m not saying I haven’t thought about it. I think I even dreamed about it a couple of nights ago.” She grinned and something happened in my stomach. “You believe that?”

I manufactured another shrug. “If you say so.”

“It’s just.” She shook her head. “I don’t know you, Micky. I don’t know you any better than I did six weeks ago, and that’s a little scary.”

“Yeah well; changed sleeves. That can—”

“No. That’s not it. You’re locked up, Micky. Tighter than anyone I’ve ever met, and believe me I’ve met some fucked-up cases in this business. You walked into that bar, Tokyo Crow, with nothing but that knife you carry and you killed them all like it was a habit. And all the time, you had this little smile.” She touched her hair, awkwardly it seemed to me. “This stuff, I get pretty much total recall when I want it. I saw your face, I can still see it now. You were smiling, Micky.”

I said nothing.

“I don’t think I want to go to bed with someone like that. Well,” she smiled a little herself. “That’s a lie. Part of me does, part of me really wants to. But that’s a part I’ve learnt not to trust.”

“Probably very wise.”

“Yeah. Probably.” She shook hair back from her face and tried on a firmer smile. Her eyes hit mine again. “So you went up to the citadel and you took their cortical stacks. What for, Micky?”

I smiled back. Got up from the chair. “You know, Sylvie, part of me really wants to tell you. But—”

“Alright, alright—”

“—it’s a part of me I’ve learnt not to trust.”

“Very witty.”

“I try. Look, I’m going to go check a couple of things outside before it starts getting dark. Be back in a while. You think you still owe me for the Beards, do me a small favour while I’m gone. Try to forget I came on quite as crass as I did just now. I’d really appreciate that.”

She looked away, at the datacoil. Her voice was very quiet.

“Sure. No problem.”

No, there’s a problem. I bit back the words as I made my way to the door. There really fucking is. And I still have no idea what to do about it.

The second call picks up almost at once. A brusque male voice, not interested in talking to anyone.

“Yeah?”

“Yaroslav?”

“Yeah.” Impatiently. “Who’s this?” “A little blue bug.”

Silence opens like a knife wound behind the words. Not even static to cover it.

Compared to the connection I had with Lazlo, the line is crystal clear. I can hear the shock at the other end.

“Who is this?” His voice has shifted completely. Hardened like sprayed evercrete.

“Enable the videofeed, I want to see a face.”

“Wouldn’t help you much. I’m not wearing anything you’d recognise.”

“Do I know you?”

“Let’s just say you didn’t have much faith in me when I went to Latimer, and I lived up to that lack of faith perfectly.”

“You! You’re back on the World?”

“No, I’m calling from orbit. What the fuck do you think?”

Long pause. Breathing on the line. I look up and down the Kompcho wharf with reflexive caution.

“What do you want?”

“You know what I want.”

Another hesitation. “She’s not here.”

“Yeah, right. Put her on.”

“I mean it. She left.” There’s a catch in the throat as he says it—enough to believe him. “When did you get back?”

“A while ago. Where’s she gone?”

“I don’t know. If I had to guess…” His voice dies off in breath blown through slack lips. I shoot a glance at the watch I ransacked from the bunker in the Uncleared. It’s been keeping perfect time for three hundred years, indifferent to human absence. After years of chipped-in time displays, it still feels a little odd, a little archaic.

“You do have to guess. This is important.”

“You never told anyone you were coming back. We thought—”

“Yeah, I’m not much for homecoming parties. Now guess. Where’s she gone?”

I can hear the way his lips tighten. “Try Vchira.”

“Vchira Beach? Oh, come on.”

“Believe what you like. Take it or leave it.”

“After all this time? I thought—”

“Yeah, so did I. But after she left, I tried to—” He stops. Click in his throat as he swallows. “We still had joint accounts. She paid hard-class passage south on a Kossuth speed freighter, bought herself a new sleeve when she got there. Surfer specs. Cleaned out her account to make the price. Burnt it all. She’s, I know she’s down there with fucking—”

It chokes off. Thick silence. Some corroded vestige of decency makes me wince.

Keeps my voice gentle.

“So you think Brasil’s still around, huh?”

“What changes on Vchira Beach?” he asks bitterly.

“Alright, Yaros. That’s all I need. Thanks, man.” A cranked eyebrow at my own words. “You take it easy, huh.”

He grunts. Just as I’m about to kill the connection, he clears his throat and starts to speak.

“Listen, if you see her. Tell her …”

I wait.

Ah, fuck it.” And he hangs up.

Daylight fading.

Below me, lights were starting to come on across Tekitomura as night breathed in from the sea. Hotei sat fatly on the western horizon, painting a dappled orange path across the water towards the shore. Marikanon hung coppery and bitten at one edge overhead. Out to sea, the running lights of sweepers already studded the deeper gloom. Faintly, the sounds of the port floated up to me. No sleep at deCom.

I glanced back towards the archaeologue cabin and the Martian eyrie caught at the corner of my eye. It rose massive and skeletal into the darkening sky on my right, like the bones of something long dead. The copper-orange mix of moonlight fell through apertures in the structure and emerged at sometimes surprising angles. There was a cold breeze coming in with the night and the dangling cables stirred idly on it.

We avoid them because we can’t make much use of them on a world like this, but I wonder if that’s the whole story. I knew an archaeologue once who told me human settlement patterns avoid the relics of Martian civilisation like this on every world in the Protectorate. It’s instinctive, she told me. Atavistic fear. Even the dig towns start to die as soon as the excavations stop. No one stays around from choice.

I stared into the maze of shattered moonlight and shadow made by the eyrie, and I felt a little of that atavistic fear seeping into me. It was all too easy to imagine, in the failing light, the slow-paced strop of broad wings and a spiral of raptor silhouettes turning against the evening sky above, bigger and more angular than anything that had flown on earth in human memory.

I shrugged off the thought, irritably.

Let’s just focus on the real problems we’ve got, eh, Micky? It’s not like there aren’t enough of them.

The door of the cabin flexed open and light spilled out, making me abruptly aware of how chilly the air had turned.