“Let’s pretend I don’t.” I raised a hand, displacement gesture as the anger threatened to get out. “And let’s also pretend that if you try to lie to me, I’ll torch your fucking head off.”

He swallowed. “She’s, she says she’s Quellcrist Falconer.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “So is she?”

“Fuck, man, how would I know?”

“In your professional opinion, could she be?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded almost plaintive. “What do you want from me? You went with her to New Hok, you know what it’s like up there. I suppose, yeah, I suppose she could be. She might have stumbled on a cache of backed-up personalities. Got contaminated somehow.”

“But you don’t buy it?”

“It doesn’t seem very likely. I can’t see why a personality store would be set up to leak virally in the first place. Doesn’t make any sense, even for a bunch of fuckwit Quellists. Where’s the value? And least of all a backup of their precious fucking revolutionary wet-dream icon.”

“So,” I said tonelessly. “Not a big fan of the Quellists, then?”

For the first time I could remember, Plex seemed to shed his shield of apologetic diffidence. A choked snort came out of him—someone with less breeding would have spat, I guess.

“Look around you, Kovacs. You think I’d be living like this if the Unsettlement hadn’t hit the New Hok ‘weed trade the way it did? Who do you think I’ve got to thank for that?”

“That’s a complex historical question—”

“Like fuck it is.”

“—that I’m not really qualified to answer. But I can see why you’d be pissed off. It must be tough having to trawl your playmates out of second rate dancehalls like this one. Not being able to afford the dress code on the First Families party circuit. I feel for you.”

“Ha fucking ha.”

I felt the way my own expression chilled over. Evidently he saw it too, and the sudden rage leaked back out of him almost visibly. I talked to stop myself hitting and hurting him.

“I grew up in a Newpest slum, Plex. My mother and father worked the belaweed mills, everybody did. Temp contracts, day rate, no benefits. There were times we were lucky if we ate twice a day. And this wasn’t any fucking trade slump either, it was business as usual. Motherfuckers like you and your family got rich off it.” I drew a breath and cranked myself back down to a dead irony. “So you’re going to have to forgive my lack of sympathy for your tragically decayed aristo circumstances, because I’m a little short right now. ‘kay?”

He wet his lips and nodded.

“Okay. Okay, man, it’s cool.”

“Yeah.” I nodded back. “Now. No reason for a stored copy of Quell to be set on viral deploy, you said. ”