The words ignite a small, cold knot of anger under Clarke's diaphragm. "Is that what you think."

"You never gave a shit about working things out." Nolan growls. "You just sat off on your own, I'm the Meltdown Madonna, I'm Mermaid of the fucking Apocalypse, I get to stand off to the side and make the rules. But the rabble isn't falling into line this time, sweetie, and it scares you. I scare you. So spare me the dreck about altruism and diplomacy. This is just you trying to keep your little tin throne from going sockeye. It's been nice talking to you."

She grabs her fins and stalks into the airlock.

Portrait of the Sadist as a Young Man

Achilles Desjardins couldn't remember the last time he'd had consensual sex with a real woman. He could, however, remember the first time he'd refused it:

It was 2046 and he'd just saved the Mediterranean. That's how N'AmWire was presenting it, anyway. All he'd really done was deduce the existence of a strange attractor in the Gulf of Cádiz, a persistent little back-eddy that no one else had bothered to look for. According to the sims it was small enough to tweak with albedo dampers; the effects would proliferate through the Strait of Gibralter and—if the numbers were right—stave off the collapse of the Med by an easy decade. Or until the Gulf Stream failed again, whichever came first. It was only a reprieve, not outright salvation, but it was just what CSIRA needed to make everyone forget the Baltic fiasco. Besides, nobody ever looked ahead more than ten years anyway.

So for a while, Achilles Desjardins had been a star. Even Lertzmann had pretended to like him for the better part of a month, told him he was fast-tracked for senior status just as soon as they got the security checks out of the way. Unless he had a bunch of butchered babies in his past he'd be getting his shots before Hallowe'en. Hell, he'd probably be getting them even if he did have a bunch of butchered babies in his past. Background checks were nothing but empty ritual in the higher ranks of the Patrol; you could be a serial killer and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference once Guilt Trip was bubbling in your brain. You'd be just as thoroughly enslaved to the Greater Good.