I made my voice work. “Really?”

“Yeah, came here with a girl I met at college. Her family’s here. I thought we’d start a keel-building business, you know make a living off trawler repair until I could maybe get some designs in to the Millsport yacht co-ops.” He pulled a wry face. “Well. Started a family instead, you know. Now I’m too busy just staying one step ahead with food and clothes and schooling.”

“What about your parents? See much of them?”

“No, they’re dead.” His voice caught on the last word. He looked away, mouth suddenly pressed tight.

I sat and watched him carefully.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally.

He cleared his throat. Looked back at me.

“Nah. Not your fault, is it. You couldn’t know. It’s just it.” He drew breath as if it hurt him. “It only happened a year or so ago. Out of the fucking sky. Some fucking maniac went crazy with a blaster. Killed dozens of people. All old people, in their fifties and older. It was sick. Didn’t make any sense.”

“Did they get the guy?”

“No.” Another painfully hitched breath. “No, he’s still out there somewhere. They say he’s still killing, they can’t seem to stop him. If I knew a way to find him, I’d fucking stop him.”

I thought briefly of an alley I’d noticed between storage sheds at the far end of the harbour complex. I thought about giving him his chance.

“No money for re-sleeving, then? For your parents, I mean?”

He gave me a hard look. “You know we don’t do that.”

“Hey, you said it. I’m not from around here.”

“Yeah, but.” He hesitated. Glanced around the ‘fab, then back to me. His voice lowered. “Look, I came up with the Revelation. I don’t hold with everything the priests say, especially these days. But it’s a faith, it’s a way of life. Gives you something to hold onto, something to bring up your kids with.”

“You got sons or daughters?”

“Two daughters, three sons.” He sighed. “Yeah, I know. All that shit. You know, down past the point we’ve got a bathing beach. Most of the villages have got them, I remember when I was a kid we used to spend the whole summer in the water, all of us together. Parents would come down after work sometimes. Now, since things got serious, they’ve built a wall right into the sea there. If you go for the day, they’ve got officiators watching the whole time, and the women have to go in on the other side of the wall.

So I can’t even enjoy a swim with my own wife and daughters. It’s fucking stupid, I know. Too extreme. But what are you going to do? We don’t have the money to move to Millsport, and I wouldn’t want my kids running around the streets down there anyway. I saw what it was like when I studied there. It’s a city full of fucking degenerates. No heart left in it, just mindless filth. At least the people around here still believe in something more than gratifying every animal desire whenever they feel like it. You know what, I wouldn’t want to live another life in another body, if that was all I was going to do with it.”

“Well, lucky you don’t have the money for a re-sleeve then. It’d be a shame to get tempted, wouldn’t it.”

Shame to see your parents again, I didn’t add.

“That’s right,” he said, apparently oblivious to the irony. “That’s the point. Once you understand you’ve only got the one life, you try so much harder to do things right. You forget about all that material stuff, all that decadence. You worry about this life, not what you might be able to do in your next body. You focus on what matters. Family. Community. Friendship.”

“And, of course, Observance.” The mildness in my voice was oddly unfaked. We needed to keep a low profile for the next few hours, but it wasn’t that. I reached curiously inside me and I found I’d lost my grip on the customary contempt I summoned into situations like this. I looked across the table at him, and all I felt was tired. He hadn’t let Sarah and her daughter die for good, he maybe hadn’t even been born when it happened.

Maybe, given the same situation, he’d take the same bleating-sheep option his parents had, but right now I couldn’t make that matter. I couldn’t hate him enough to take him into that alley, tell him the truth about who I was and give him his chance.

“That’s right, Observance.” His face lit up. “That’s the key, that’s what underwrites all the rest. See, science has betrayed us here, it’s got out of hand, got so we don’t control it any more. It’s made things too easy. Not ageing naturally, not having to die and account for ourselves before our Maker, that’s blinded us to the real values. We spend our whole lives scraping away trying to find the money for re-sleeving, and we waste the real time we have to live this life right. If people would only—”

“Hey, Mikulas.” I glanced up. Another man about the same age as my new companion was striding towards us, behind the cheerful yell. “You finished bending that poor guy’s ear or what? We’ve got hull to scrape, man.”

“Yeah, just coming.”

“Ignore him,” said the newcomer with a wide grin. “Likes to think he knows everyone, and if your face doesn’t fit the list, he has to damn well find out who you are. Bet he’s done that already, right?”

I smiled. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“Knew it. I’m Toyo.” A thick, extended hand. “Welcome to Kuraminato. Maybe see you around town if you’re staying long.”

“Yeah, thanks. That’d be good.”

“Meantime, we’ve got to go. Nice talking to you.”

“Yeah,” agreed Mikulas, getting to his feet. “Nice talking to you. You should think about what I was saying.”

“Maybe I will.” A final twist of caution made me stop him as he was turning away. “Tell me something. How come you knew I wasn’t off the rayhunter?”

“Oh, that. Well, you were watching them like you were interested in what they were doing. No one watches their own ship in dock that closely. I was right, huh?”

“Yeah. Good call.” The tiny increment of relief soaked through me.

“Maybe you should be a detective after all. New line for work for you. Doing the right thing. Catching bad guys.”

“Hey, it’s a thought.”

“Nah, he’d be way too nice to them once he’d caught them. Soft as shit, he is. Can’t even discipline his own wife.”

General laughter as they left. I joined in. Let it fade slowly out to a smile, and then nothing but the small relief inside.

I really wouldn’t have to follow him and kill him.

I gave it half an hour, then wandered out of the ‘fab and onto the wharf.

There were still figures on the decks and superstructure of the rayhunter.

I stood and watched for a few minutes, and finally a crewmember came down the forward gangplank towards me. His face wasn’t friendly.

“Something I can do for you?”

“Yeah,” I told him. “Sing the hymn of dreams gone down from Alabardos’ sky. I’m Kovacs. The others are at the hotel. Tell your skipper. We’ll move as soon as it’s dark.”