I sigh. “I’m not, Sarah. I think it’s great how things have worked out for you. It’s just, I don’t know, thinking of you writing biocode. Instead of stealing it.” She smiled again, her default expression for the whole conversation, but this time it was edged with pain.

“People can change,” she says. “You should try it.”

There’s an awkward pause.

“Maybe I will.”

And another.

“Look, I should really be getting back. Josef probably didn’t—”

“Wo, come on.” I gesture at our empty glasses, standing alone and apart on the scarred mirrorwood. There was a time we’d never willingly have left a bar like this one without littering the table top with drained tumblers and one-shot pipes.

“Have you no self respect, woman? Stay for one more.”

So she does, but it doesn’t really ease the awkwardness between us. And when she’s finished her drink again, she gets up and kisses me on both cheeks and leaves me sitting there.

And I never see her again.

“Sachilowska?” Virginia Vidaura frowned in search of the memory. “Tall, right? Stupid hairstyle, like that, over one eye? Yeah. Think you brought her along to a party once, when Yaros and I were still living in that place on Ukai street.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“So she went off to the North arm, and you joined the Little Blue Bugs again what, to spite her?”

Like the sunlight and the cheap metal fittings of the coffee terrace around us, the question glinted too brightly. I looked away from it, out to sea. It didn’t work for me the way it seemed to for Brasil.

“It wasn’t like that, Virginia. I was already plugged in with you guys by the time I saw her. I didn’t even know she’d got out. Last I heard, when I got back from Earth, she was serving the full sentence. She was a cop killer, after all.”

“So were you.”

“Yeah, well that’s Earth money and UN influence for you.”

“Okay,” Vidaura prodded at her coffee canister and frowned again. It hadn’t been very good. “So you got out of storage at different times, and lost each other in the differential. That’s sad, but it happens all the time.”

Behind the sound of the waves, I heard Japaridze again.

There’s a three-moon tidal slop running out there and if you let it, it’ll tear you apart from everyone and everything you ever cared about.

“Yeah, that’s right. It happens all the time.” I turned back to face her across the filtered cool of the screen-shaded table. “But I didn’t lose her in the differential, Virginia. I let her go. I let her go with that piece of shit, Josef, and I just walked away.”