It had taken the mainstream ACs five days to smuggle in a cure for me – even with the airport open. After everything I’d been through, I wasn’t ready to swallow the fact that Mosala was now a walking corpse – but short of a counter-invasion by African technolibérateurs , over a distance of tens of thousands of kilometers, in the next day or two, at the latest … I could see no hope of her surviving.

As the boat approached the northern harbor, I sat watching over Akili. I badly wanted to take vis hand, but I was afraid it would only make things worse. How could I have fallen for someone who’d surgically excised even the possibility of desire?

Easily enough, apparently: a shared trauma, an intense experience, the confusing absence of gender cues … it was no great mystery. People became infatuated with asex all the time. And no doubt it would pass, soon enough – once I accepted the simple fact that nothing I felt could ever be reciprocated.

After a while, I found I could no longer bear to look at vis face; it hurt too much. So I watched the glowing traces on the bedside monitor, and listened for each shallow exhalation, and tried to understand why the ache I felt would not go away.

#

The trams were reportedly still running, but one of the farmers offered to drive us all the way to the city. “Quicker than waiting for an ambulance,” she explained. “There are only ten on the island.” She was a young Fijian named Adelle Vunibobo; I remembered seeing her looking down into the hold on the ACs’ boat.

Kuwale sat between us in the cab of the truck, half awake but still stupefied. I watched the vivid coral inlets shrinking around us, like a fast-motion view of the reefs’ slow compaction.

I said, “You risked your life back there.”

“Maydays at sea are taken very seriously.” Her tone was gently mocking, as if she was trying to puncture my deferential manner.

“Lucky we weren’t on land.” I persisted, “But you could see that the boat wasn’t in danger. The crew told you to clear off and mind your own business. Underlining the suggestion with guns.”

She glanced at me curiously. “So you think it was reckless? Foolish? There’s no police force, here. Who else would have helped you?”

“No one,” I admitted.

She fixed her eyes on the uneven terrain ahead. “I was in a fishing boat that capsized, five years ago. We were caught in a storm. My parents, and my sister. My parents were knocked unconscious, they drowned straight away. My sister and I spent ten hours in the ocean, treading water, taking turns holding each other up.”

“I’m sorry. The Greenhouse Storms have claimed so many people—”

She groaned. “I don’t want your sympathy. I’m just trying to explain.”