She sighed. She could see he didn’t get it.

“Look,” she said. “What’s my life to you? You saved me, and I don’t forget that. But I got my ideas about things. I got my ambitions, I always did. You’re shipping out with Madam Shen anyway. Oh yes! You think I didn’t know that? Ed, I was there before you. Only a twink would think I wasn’t.

“We already saved each other, now it’s time to save ourselves. You know I’m right.”

A long curved wave of bleakness raced towards Ed Chianese’s shore: the Alcubiere break, which is the black surf gravity; which is the coiled swell of empty space that sucks into itself one significant event of your life after another and if you don’t move on you’re left there gazing out across nothing at nothing much again.

“I guess,” he said.

“Hey,” she said. “Look at me.” She came close and made him look in her eyes. “Ed, you’ll be OK.”

Her tailored pheromones caused his head to spin. Her very voice gave him an erection. He kissed her. “Mmmm,” she said. “That’s nice. You’ll soon be out there again, flying those famous ladypilots. Which I have to say I’m jealous of them.” Her eyes were the colour of speedwell in the water meadows of a New Venusport corporate village. Her hair smelled of peppermint shampoo. Despite all this, she had completely natural lines. It was art not artifice. You would never know she had been to the tailor. She was sex on a stick, Mona the clone, the porn in your pocket.

“I got what I wanted, Ed—”

“I’m glad,” Ed made himself say. “I really am.”

“—and I hope you will too.”

He kissed the top of her head. “You take care, Annie.”

She let him see her smile.

“I will,” she said.

“Bella Cray . . .”

Annie shrugged.

“You didn’t know me, Ed. How will she?”

She detached herself from him gently and got back in the rickshaw. “You certain about this?” the rickshaw girl was prompted to enquire. “Because you been in and out of there before.”

“I’m certain,” Annie said. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” said the rickshaw girl, “don’t apologise. You work the port you’re on a diet of raw sentiment.”

Annie laughed. She sniffed and wiped her eyes.

“You take care too,” she told Ed.

With that she was gone. Ed watched the rickshaw grow smaller and smaller as it crossed the bare concrete to the spaceport gate, its advertisements streaming after it like a cloud of coloured scarves and butterflies in the sun. Annie’s little hand appeared for a moment, to be waved back at Ed, forlorn and cheerful at the same time. He heard her call something which he worked out later was, “Don’t spend too much time in the future!” Then she turned the corner to the city, and he never saw her again in that life.