“Ah, but you never liked it in the first place, did you? I remember last time you were here, when Mari tried to sell you on that batch of HHF we had. You always were a little puritanical on the subject.”

“I just never saw the point of making myself ill for fun. Thought as a trained medic, you’d be at least that smart too.”

“I’ll remind you of that next time we’re sharing a bad tetrameth comedown. Or a single-malt hangover.”

“It’s not the same.”

“You’re right.” He nodded sagely. “That chemical shit is Stone-Age stuff. I ran Hun Home flu against a spec-inhibited immune system for ten years and all I got was buzz and some really cool delirium dreams. Real waveclimbers. No headaches, no major organ damage, not even a runny nose once the inhibitors and the virus meshed. Tell me one drug you could do that with.”

“Is that what you’re running these days? HHF?”

He shook his head. “Not for a long time. Virginia got us some Adoracion custom a while back. Engineered spinal-fever complex. Man, you should see my dreams now. Sometimes I wake up screaming.”

“I’m happy for you.”

For a while, we both watched the figures in the water. A couple of times Brasil grunted and pointed out something in the way one of the surfers moved. None of it meant very much to me. Once he applauded softly as someone wiped out, but when I glanced at him, there was no apparent mockery in his face.

A little later he asked me again, gesturing at the pegged board.

“You sure you don’t want to try out? Take my plank? Man, that mothballed shit you’re wearing looks practically made for it. Odd for military custom, come to think of it. Kind of light.” He prodded idly at my shoulder with a couple of fingers. “In fact I’d say that’s near-perfect sports sleeve trim you’re carrying. What’s the label?”

“Ah, some defunct bunch, never heard of them before. Eishundo.”

“Eishundo?”

I glanced at him, surprised. “Yeah, Eishundo Organics. You know them?”

“Fuck, yeah.” He scooted back in the sand and stared at me. “Tak, that’s a design classic you’re wearing. They only ever built the one series, and it was a century ahead of its time at least. Stuff no one had ever tried before. Gekko grip, recabled muscle structure, autonomic survival systems like you wouldn’t believe.”

“No, I would.”

He wasn’t listening. “Flexibility and endurance through the roof, reflex wiring you don’t start to see again until Harkany got started back in the early three hundreds. Man, they just don’t build them like that any more.”

“They certainly don’t. They went bust, didn’t they?”