“The highest likelihood outcome from the data available is that Nadia Makita was aboard the Quellist jetcopter at Alabardos, was vaporised with it by orbital fire and no longer exists.”

I nodded again and sighed.

“Right.”

Sylvie came back a couple of hours later, carrying fresh fruit and a hotbox full of spiced shrimpcakes. We ate without talking much.

“Did you get through?” I asked her at one point.

“No.” She shook her head, chewing. “There’s something wrong. I can feel it. I can feel them out there, but I can’t pin down enough for a transmission link.”

Her eyes lowered, creased in a frown that looked like pain.

“There’s something wrong,” she repeated quietly.

“You didn’t take the scarf off, did you?”

She looked at me. “No. I didn’t take the scarf off. That doesn’t affect functionality, Micky. It just pisses me off.”

I shrugged. “You and me both.”

Her eyes tracked to the pocket where I habitually kept the excised cortical stacks, but she said nothing.

We stayed out of each other’s way for the rest of the day. Sylvie sat at the datacoil most of the time, periodically inducing shifts in the coloured display without touching it or speaking. At one point, she went into her bedroom and lay on the automould for an hour, staring at the ceiling.

Glancing in on my way past to the bathroom, I saw her lips moving silently. I took a shower, stood by the window, ate fruit and drank coffee I didn’t want. Eventually I went outside and wandered around the margins of the eyrie’s base, talking desultorily to Dig 301 who, for some reason, had taken it upon herself to tag along. Maybe she was there to make sure I didn’t deface anything.

An undefined tension sat in the cold mountain air. Like sex unperformed, like bad weather coming in.

We can’t stay like this forever, I knew. Something has to give.