Oh, and we can’t even murder our way clear of it early. The deliberate killing of thinking beings (or thinking machines for that matter—there is a reason we really don’t want to see any progress in AI) generates huge thaumic fields that can be used for, for want of a better word, necromancy. And if we don’t use the power, someone—or something else—will.

“There’s a prison near a city in the north of Iran called Mashad, I don’t know where exactly, they put me up in an airport hotel overnight, then shipped me there in an Air Force helicopter—it’s called Vakilabad, and it’s near the border. They get a lot of drug traffickers there. Well, mules: illiterate, dirt-poor Afghan refugees who cross the border on foot with half a kilo of heroin in their pockets. There’s no fence on the frontier, and no signs to tell them that the Islamic Republic of Iran has the death penalty for possession of twenty grams and that they won’t get a defense lawyer.”

Which is what gave our delightful Home Secretary cold feet about cooperation. See, here in the UK twenty grams of heroin is good for a slap on the wrist if you’re an addict; maybe a six-month sentence if they think you’re dealing. A mule caught entering the UK with half a kilo is going to get somewhere between a five- and eight-year sentence, with time off for good behavior and deportation at the end. Scragging them is seen as a bit of an overreaction. Especially as HMG is signatory to a whole bunch of treaties requiring us to work towards the abolition of the death penalty worldwide.

Mo takes a much bigger mouthful of whisky, closes her eyes, and swallows. Then she starts spluttering. I take her tumbler and refill it, wait for the coughing to subside, then offer it to her.

She continues, quietly and with remarkably little affect. “Vakilabad is a large prison, and there is a shed in the prison with a substantial roof beam running its length. They hang people from the beam; they make the prisoners stand on tall stools, then kick them away. It can take sixty bodies at one time, they told me, and although they seldom fill it up they use it every week. It’s the world’s largest gallows: they’re very proud of it.”

She puts her glass down. I hug her for a while, speechless with the horror of it.