Finally, Sylvie stepped out of the cabinet airblasted all but dry. With an effort I stopped myself staring at the suddenly sexualised landscape of her body and went to change places with her. She said nothing, just touched me on one shoulder with a loosely curled fist and frowned. Then she disappeared into the cabin next door.

I stayed under the shower for nearly an hour, turning back and forth in water just below scalding, masturbating vaguely and trying not to think too much about what I was going to have to do when we got to Tekitomura.

The Daikoku Dawn throbbed around me as she ploughed southward.

When I got out of the shower, I dumped our soaked clothing in the cabinet and left the airblast on full, then wandered through to the cabin.

Sylvie was sleeping soundly beneath the coverlet of a bedspace she’d programmed to mould as a double.

I stood and watched her sleep for a long time. Her mouth was open and her hair was in chaotic disarray around her face. The ebony central cord had twisted so that it lay phallically across one cheek. Imagery I didn’t need. I smoothed it back with the rest of the hair until her face was clear.

She muttered in her sleep and moved the same loosely curled fist she’d punched me with up to touch her mouth. I stood and watched her some more.

She’s not.

I know she’s not. It’s not possi—

What, just like it’s not possible there’s another Takeshi Kovacs out there hunting you? Where’s your sense of wonder, Tak?

I stood and watched.

And in the end I shrugged irritably and climbed into the bedspace beside her, and tried to sleep.

It took a while.

FOURTEEN

The crossing back to Tekitomura was far faster than our trip out had been with the Guns for Guevara. Flogging steadily through the icy sea away from the New Hok coast, the Daikoku Dawn was constrained by none of the caution her sister ship had shown going in, and ran at full speed for the bulk of the voyage. According to Sylvie, we raised Tekitomura on the horizon not long after the sun came up and woke her through windows we’d forgotten to blank. Less than an hour after that we were crowding the ramps at Kompcho.

I woke to a sunlit cabin, stilled engines and Sylvie, dressed and staring at me over arms folded across the backrest of a chair she’d straddled beside the bedspace. I blinked at her.

“What?”

“What the fuck were you doing last night?”

I propped myself upright beneath the covers and yawned. “You want to expand on that a little? Give me some idea what you’re talking about?”

“What I’m talking about,” she snapped, “is waking up with your dick jammed against my spine like a racking shard blaster barrel.”

“Ah.” I rubbed at one eye. “Sorry.”