"Do you know how many lives I save when I'm not in here trying to give you a decent education? Thousands. On a bad day. Whereas I go through a bit of ass-candy like you maybe once a month. Anyone who shut me down would have orders of mag more blood on their hands than I ever could on mine."

She shook her head. "It's not...like that."

"Like what, ass-candy?"

"Don't care...how many you save. Doesn't give you the r—right to..."

"Oh, man. It's not just biology, is it? Tell me, is there anything you're not dumb as a sack of shit about?"

"I'm right. You know it..."

"Do I. You think we should go back to the Good Old Days when the corpses were running things? The smallest multicorp killed more people than all the sex killers who ever lived, for a fucking profit margin—and the WTO gave them awards for it."

He spat: the spittle made a foamy little amoeba on the floor. "Nobody cares, sweetmeat. And if they did you'd be even worse off, because they'd realize that I'm an improvement."

"You're wrong..." she managed.

"Ooooh," Achilles said. "Insubordination. Gets me hot. 'Scuse me." He stepped back behind the stocks and swung the assembly around. Taka spun smoothly in her harness until she was facing him again. He was holding a pair of alligator clips; their wires draped down to an electrical outlet embedded in the eye of a sky-blue fish.

"Tell you what," he proposed. "You find a flaw in my argument, and I won't use these."

"Yeah," she rasped. "...you will."

"No, I won't. Promise. Try me."

She reminded herself: nothing to lose. "You think people will see this and then just, just— walk away when you tell them the—the corpses were worse? You think—you think people are logical? Y-you're the one with...with shit for brains. They won't care about your fucking argument; they'll take one look and they'll tear you to...pieces. The only reason you can get away with it now is—"

That's it, she realized.

What would happen if ßehemoth just...went away? What would happen if the apocalypse receded a bit, if the situation grew just a little less desperate? Perhaps, in a safer world, people would go back to pretending they were civilized. Perhaps they wouldn't be quite so willing to pontificate on the unaffordability of human rights.

Perhaps Achilles Desjardins would lose his amnesty.

"That's why you're fighting Seppuku," she whispered.

Achilles tapped the alligator clips together. They sparked. "Sorry. What was that?"

"You are so full of shit. Saving thousands? There are people trying to save the world, and you're trying to stop them. You're killing billions. You're killing everyone. So you can get away with this..."

He shrugged. "Well, it's like I tried to explain to Alice the First. When someone steals your conscience, you have a really hard time giving a shit."