“This time, I lost them all for good. Whatever second life my mother got, I missed that. And she’d opted out of a third time around, just had herself stored with instructions for rental re-sleeve on a list of family occasions. Release of her son Ari from penal storage wasn’t on that list, so I took the hint. Brother was still dead, sister got out of the store while I was in, went north decades before I got out again, I don’t know where. Maybe looking for her father.”

“And your daughter’s family?”

He laughed and shrugged. “Daughter, grandkids. Man, by then I was another two generations out of step with them, I didn’t even try to catch up. I just took what I had and I ran with it.”

“Which was what?” I nodded at him. “This sleeve?”

“Yeah, this sleeve. I got what you might call lucky. Belonged to some rayhunter captain got busted for hooking out of a First Families marine estate. Good solid sleeve, well looked after. Some useful seagoing software racked in, and some weird instinctive shit for weather. Sort of painted a career for me all on its own. I got a loan on a boat, made some money. Got a bigger boat, made some more. Got the ‘duct. Got a woman back in Newpest now. Couple of kids I’m watching grow up.”

I raised my glass without irony. “Congratulations.”

“Yeah, well, like I said. I got lucky.”

“And you’re telling me this because?”

He leaned forward on the table and looked at me. “You know why I’m telling you this.”

I quelled a grin. It wasn’t his fault, he didn’t know. He was doing his best.

“Alright, Ari. Tell you what, I’ll lay off your cargo. I’ll mend my ways, give up piracy and start a family. Thanks for the tip.”

He shook his head. “Not telling you anything you don’t already know, sam. Just reminding you, is all. This life is like the sea. There’s a three-moon tidal slop running out there and if you let it, it’ll tear you apart from everyone and everything you ever cared about.”

He was right, of course.

As a messenger, he was also a little late.

Evening caught up with the Haiduci’s Daughter on her westward curve a couple of hours later. The sun split like a cracked egg either side of a rising

Hotei and reddish light soaked out across the horizon in both directions.

The low rise of Kossuth’s gulf coastline painted a thick black base for the picture. High above, thin cloud cover glowed like a shovel full of heated coins.

I avoided the forward decks, where the rest of the passengers had gathered to watch the sunset—I doubted I’d be welcome among them given my various performances today. Instead I worked my way back along one of the freight gantries, found a ladder and climbed it to the top of the pod. There was a narrow walkway there and I settled cross-legged onto its scant breadth.