And her eyes still on me, as her tongue and teeth and hand drove me into the explosion.

SEVENTEEN

Later, we lay draped wetly across each other in my bed, hands still loosely linked from the last frantic clasping. Our skins were sticky in patches with the mixed juices we’d spilled, and repeated climaxes had stung our muscles into lax submission. Flash images of what we’d done to and with each other kept replaying behind my eyes. I saw her crouched on top of me, crossed hands flat on my chest, pressing down hard with each movement. I saw myself slamming into her from behind. I saw her cunt descending onto my face. I saw her writhing under me, sucking wildly on the central cord of her own hair while I thrust between legs she had crooked over my hips like a vice. I saw myself taking the cord, wet with her saliva, into my own mouth as she laughed into my face and came with a powerful clenching of muscles that dragged me down after her.

But when she started talking to me, the altered lilt of her Amanglic sent an instant shiver down my spine.

“What?” She must have felt the shudder go through me.

“Nothing.”

She rolled her head to face me. I could feel her stare pinned to the side of my face like heat. “I asked you a question. What’s the matter?”

I closed my eyes briefly.

“Nadia, right?”

“Yes.”

“Nadia Makita.”

“Yes.”

I glanced sideways at her. “How the fuck did you get here, Nadia?”

“What is that, a metaphysical question?”

“No. Technological.” I propped myself up on one arm and gestured at her body. Envoy response conditioning or not, most of me was amazed at the detached sense of calm I was managing. “You can’t be unaware of what’s going on here. You live in the command software, and sometimes you get out. From what I’ve seen, I’d guess you come up through the basic instinct channels, riding the surge. Sex, maybe fear or fury too. Stuff like that blots out a lot of the conscious mind’s functions, and that’d give you the space. But—”

“You’re some kind of expert, are you?”

“Used to be.” I watched her for reaction. “I was an Envoy once.”

“A what?”

“Doesn’t matter. What I want to know is while you’re here, what’s happened to Sylvie Oshima?”

“Who?”

“You’re wearing her fucking body, Nadia. Don’t get obtuse on me.”

She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “I don’t really want to talk about this.”

“No, you probably don’t. And you know what, nor do I. But sooner or later, we’re going to have to. You know that.”

Long quiet. She opened her legs and rubbed absently at a patch of flesh on her inner thigh. She reached across and squeezed my shrunken prick. I took her hand and pushed it gently away.

“Forget it, Nadia. I’m wrung out. Even Mitzi Harlan couldn’t get another hard-on out of me tonight. It’s time to talk. Now where is Sylvie Oshima?”

She rolled away from me again.

“I’m supposed to be this woman’s keeper?” she asked bitterly. “You think I’m in control of this?”

“Maybe not. But you’ve got to have some idea.”

More quiet, but this time it quivered with tension. I waited. Finally, she rolled back to face me, eyes desperate.

“I dream this fucking Oshima, do you know that,” she hissed. “She’s a fucking dream, how am I supposed to know where she goes when I wake up?”

“Yeah, she dreams you too, apparently.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

I sighed. “Tell me what you dream.”

“Why?”

“Because, Nadia, I’m trying to fucking help.”

The eyes flared.

“Alright,” she snapped. “I dream that you scare her. How’s that? I dream that she wonders where the fuck you’re going with the souls of so many dead priests. That she wonders who the fuck Micky Serendipity really is, and whether he’s safe to be around. Whether he’ll fuck her over at the soonest opportunity. Or just fuck her and leave her. If you were thinking of getting your dick up this woman, Micky, or whoever the fuck you really are, I’d forget it. You’re better off sticking with me.”

I let that one soak out in silence for a moment. She flexed a smile at me.

“This the kind of thing you wanted to hear?”

I shrugged. “It’ll do to be going on with. Did you push her into the sex? To get access?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I can probably find out from her.”

“You’re assuming she’ll be back.” Another smile, more teeth this time. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

And on like that. We snapped and snarled at each other for a while longer, but beneath the weight of post-coital chemistry, none of it came to anything. In the end, I gave up and sat on the outer edge of the bed, staring out towards the main room and the Hotei-lit panels on the floor. A few minutes later, I felt her hand on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

“Yeah? For what?”

“I just realised I asked for this. I mean, I asked you what you were thinking about. If I didn’t want to know, why ask, right?”

“There is that.”

“It’s just.” She hesitated. “Listen, Micky, I’m getting sleepy here. And I lied back there, I’ve got no way of knowing if or when Sylvie Oshima’s coming back. I don’t know if I’ll wake up tomorrow morning or not. That’s enough to make anyone edgy, right?”

I stared at the orange stained floor in the other room. A momentary sense of vertigo came and went. I cleared my throat.

“There’s always the amphetamine cola,” I said roughly.

“No. Sooner or later, I’ll have to sleep. It might as well be now. I’m tired, and worse than that I’m happy and relaxed. Feels like if I’ve got to go, this’ll do. It’s only chemical, I know, but I can’t hold out against it forever. And I think I will be back. Something’s telling me that. But right now I don’t know when, and I don’t know where I’m going. And that scares me. Could you.” Another pause. I heard the click as she swallowed in the quiet. “Would you mind holding me while I go under?”

Orange moonlight on a worn and darkened floor.

I reached back for her hand.

Like most of the combat custom I’d ever worn, the Eishundo sleeve came fitted with an internal wake-up. At the hour I’d fixed in my head, whatever dreams I was having coalesced into the rising rim of a tropical sun over quiet waters. Scent of fruit and coffee drifting from somewhere unseen and the cheerful murmur of voices off. The cool of sand at early morning under my naked feet, and a faint but persistent breeze in my face. Sound of breakers Vchira Beach? Already?

My hands were balled in the pockets of faded surfslacks, traces of sand in the lining of the pockets that—

The sense impressions vanished abruptly as I woke up. No coffee, and no beach to drink it on. No sand under my feet or my uncurling fingers.

There was sunlight, but it was altogether thinner than in the wake-up imaging, strained colourlessly through the windows in the other room and into a grey, downward pressing quiet.

I turned over gingerly and looked at the face of the woman sleeping next to me. She didn’t move. I remembered the fear in Nadia Makita’s eyes the night before as she let herself slide fractions at a time into sleep.

Increments of consciousness slipping like taut rope through her hands and away, and then stopped as she flinched and blinked herself awake again.

And then the moment, abrupt and unawaited, when she let go completely and didn’t come back. Now I lay and watched the peace on her face as she slept, and it didn’t help.

I slid out of bed and dressed quietly in the other room. I didn’t want to be around when she woke up.

I certainly didn’t want to wake her myself.

Dig 301 shaded into existence opposite me and opened her mouth.

Combat neurachem got there first. I made a slicing gesture across my own throat and jerked a thumb back at the bedroom. Swept up my jacket from the back of a chair, shouldered my way into it and nodded at the door.