“See,” she said, voice turned slightly shrill. “You lust after her like all the others. You give in to her cheap sensual tricks and—”

“Oh, please. For my money, Mitzi Harlan’s a stupid, superficial little trollop, but you know what? At least she lives her life as if it belongs to her. Instead of abasing herself at the feet of any fucking baboon who can grow a beard and some external genitalia.”

“Are you calling my husband a—”

“No.” I swung on her. It seemed I didn’t have it cranked down after all.

My hands shot out and grasped her by the shoulders. “No, I’m calling you a gutless betrayer of your sex. I can see your husband’s angle, he’s a man, he’s got everything to gain from this crabshit. But you! You’ve thrown away centuries of political struggle and scientific advance so you can sit in the dark and mutter your superstitions of unworth to yourself. You’ll let your life, the most precious thing you have, be stolen from you hour by hour and day by day as long as you can eke out the existence your males will let you have. And then, when you finally die, and I hope it’s soon, sister, I really do, then at the last you’ll spite your own potential and shirk the final power we’ve won for ourselves to come back and try again. You’ll do all of this because of your fucking faith, and if that child in your belly is female, then you’ll condemn her to the same fucking thing.”

Then there was a hand on my arm.

“Hey, man.” It was one of the deComs, backed up by the entrepreneur’s bodyguard. He looked scared but determined. “That’s enough. Leave her alone.”

I looked at his fingers, where they hung on my elbow. I wondered briefly about breaking them, locking out the arm behind them and—

A memory flared to life inside me. My father shaking my mother by the shoulders like a belaweed rack that wouldn’t come loose of its mooring, screaming abuse and whisky fumes into her face. Seven years old, I’d gone for his arm and tried to tug it away.

He’d clouted me almost absently that time, across the room and into a corner. Gone back to her.

I unlocked my hands from the woman’s shoulders. Shook off the deCom’s grip. Mentally shook myself by the throat.

“Now back off, man.”

“Sure,” I said it quietly. “Like I said, sister, ‘s a free world. Got nothing to do with me.”