“Yeah, you’re always so fucking driven, aren’t you? If it’s not the Envoys or the neoQuells, it’s some fucking private revenge scheme. You know, Tak, it isn’t really my business, but someone needs to tell you this and looks like I get the job. You need to stop and smell the weed, man. Remember that you’re living.” He put his sunlenses back on and jerked his head towards the terminal. “Alright, come on then. Machine coffee, why not. It’ll be a novelty.”

Back in the cool, we sat at a table near glass panels that gave a view out onto the harbour. Half a dozen other spectators sat in the same area with their associated baggage, waiting. A wasted-looking man in rags was doing the rounds among them, holding out a tray for credit chips and a hard luck story for anyone who was interested. Most weren’t. There was a faint odour of cheap antibacterial in the air that I hadn’t noticed before. The cleaning robots must have been by.

The coffee was grim.

“See,” said Segesvar, setting his aside with an exaggerated scowl. “I should have your legs broken just for making me drink that.”

“You could try.”

For a moment, our eyes locked. He shrugged.

“It was a joke, Tak. You’re losing your sense of humour.”

“Yeah, I’m putting a thirty per cent surcharge on it.” I sipped at my own coffee, expressionless. “Used to be my friends could get it for nothing, but times change.”

He let that lie for a moment, then cocked his head and looked me in the eye again.

“You think I’m treating you unfairly?”

“I think you’re conveniently forgetful of the real meaning behind the words you saved my ass back there, man.”

Segesvar nodded as if he’d expected no less. He looked down at the table between us.

“That is an old debt,” he said quietly. “And a questionable one.”

“You didn’t think so at the time.”

It was too far back to summon easily to mind. Back before the Envoy conditioning went in, back where things get blurred with the passing decades. Most of all, I remembered the stink in the alley. Alkaline precipitates from the belaweed processing plant and dumped oil from the hydraulic systems on the compression tanks. The meth dealer’s curses and the glint of the long bottleback gaff as he slashed it through the damp air towards me. The others were gone, their youthful thug enthusiasm for the robbery evaporating in swift terror as that honed steel hook came out and ripped open Radul Segesvar’s leg from kneecap to thigh. Gone yelling and sprinting away into the night like exorcised sprites, leaving Radul dragging himself one yelping metre at a time along the alley after them, leaving me, sixteen years old, facing the steel with empty hands.