He came trudging up out of the surf with the board slung under one arm, body stripped to shorts, scar tissue and spray-on ankle boots, raking the sea out of his hair with his free hand. I lifted an arm in greeting and he broke into a jog towards where I sat in the sand. No mean feat after the hours he’d had in the water. When he reached me, he was barely breathing heavily.

I squinted up at him in the sun. “Looks like fun.”

“Try?” He touched the surfboard, angled it towards me. Surfers don’t do that, not with a board they’ve owned any longer than a couple of days. And this one looked older than the sleeve that was carrying it.

Jack Soul Brasil. Even here on Vchira Beach, there was no one else much like him.

“Thanks, I’ll pass.”

He shrugged, dug the board into the sand and flopped down beside me.

Water sprang off him in droplets. “Suit yourself. Good swell out there today. Nothing too scary.”

“Must be dull for you.”

A broad grin. “Well that’s the trap, isn’t it.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, it is.” He gestured out to sea. “Get in the water, you do every wave for what it’s worth. Lose that, you might as well go back to Newpest. Leave Vchira for good.”

I nodded. “Get many like that?”

“The burnouts? Yeah, some. But leaving’s okay. It’s the ones who stay on that hurt to look at.”

I glanced at the scar tissue on his chest.

“You’re such a sensitive guy, Jack.”

He smiled out at the sea. “Trying to be.”

“That why you won’t do the clone thing, huh? Wear every sleeve for what it’s worth?”

“Learn every sleeve for what it’s worth,” he corrected me gently. “Yeah. Plus you wouldn’t believe what clone storage costs these days, even in Newpest.”

“Doesn’t seem to bother Ado or Tres.”

He grinned again. “Mari’s got an inheritance to spend. You know what her real name is, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I remember. And Tres?”

“Sierra knows people in the trade. When the rest of us packed in the Bug stuff, she went on contracting for the haiduci for a while. She’s owed some favours up in Newpest.”

He shivered slightly, let it run up to a shudder that twitched his shoulders. Sneezed suddenly.

“Still doing that shit, I see. Is that why Ado’s so thin?”

He looked at me oddly. “Ado’s thin because she wants to be thin. How she goes about it is her business, wouldn’t you say?”

I shrugged. “Sure. I’m just curious. I figured you guys would have got bored with self-infection by now.”