He shook his head vehemently. “Nah, that was politics. Eishundo was a Drava co-operative, set up in the eighties, typical Quiet Quellist types except I don’t think they ever made any big secret of the fact. Would have been shut down probably, but everyone knew they made the best sport sleeves on the planet and they ended up supplying half the brats in the First Families.”

“Handy for them.”

“Yeah, well. Like I said, there was nothing to touch them.” The enthusiasm leached from his face. “Then, with the Unsettlement, they declared for the Quellists. Harlan family never forgave them for that. When it was over they blacklisted everyone who’d ever worked for Eishundo, even executed a few of the senior biotech guys as traitors and terrorists. Providing arms to the enemy, all that tired line of shit. Plus, with the way things turned out at Drava, they were pretty fucked anyway. Man, I can’t believe you’re sitting there wearing that thing. It’s a fucking piece of history, Tak.”

“Well, that’s good to know.”

“You sure you don’t want to—”

“Sell it to you? Thanks, no, I’ll—.”

“Surf, man. You sure you don’t want to surf? Take the plank out and get wet? Find out what you can do in that thing?”

I shook my head. “I’ll just live with the suspense.”

He looked at me curiously for a while. Then he nodded and went back to watching the sea. You could feel the way just watching it did something for him. Balanced out the fever he’d set raging inside himself. I tried, a little grimly, not to feel envy.

“So maybe some other time,” he said quietly. “When you’re not carrying so much.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” It wasn’t any other time I could usefully imagine, unless he was talking about the past, and I couldn’t see any way to get back there.

He seemed to want to talk.

“You never did this stuff at all, did you? Even back in Newpest?”

I shrugged. “I know how to fall off a plank, if that’s what you mean. Did the local beaches for a couple of summers when I was a kid. Then I started hanging out with a crew and they were strictly subaqua. You know how it goes.”

He nodded, maybe remembering his own Newpest youth. Maybe remembering the last time we’d had this conversation, but I wouldn’t count on it. The last time we’d talked about it was fifty-odd years ago, and if you don’t have Envoy recall, that’s a long time and a lot of conversations past.

“Fucking stupid,” he muttered. “Who’d you run with?”

“Reef Warriors. Hirata chapter, mostly. Dive Free, Die Free. Leave the Scum on the Surface. We would have cut up guys like you as soon as look at you back then. What about you?”