“No.” She found a bottle and cracked it open, pinched up two glasses in her other hand. “We’re a goddamn bootstrap leverage outfit. And then some. Orr just has a datarat tunnel into FH’s clearance codes. Drink?”

“What is it?”

She looked at the bottle. “Don’t know. Whisky.”

I held out my hand for one of the glasses. “Tunnel like that’s got to cost in the first place.”

She shook her head. “Fringe benefits of deCom. We’re all wired better for crime than a fucking Envoy. Got electronic intrusion gear up the ass.”

She handed me the glass and poured for both of us. The neck of the bottle made a single tiny clink in the quiet of the room each time it touched down. “Orr’s been out on the town for the last thirty-six hours, whoring and shooting chemicals on nothing but credit and enka payment promises. Same thing every time we ship out. Views it as an art form, I reckon. Cheers.”

“Cheers.” It was a very rough whisky. “Uhh. You been crewing with him long?”

She gave me an odd look. “Long enough. Why?”

“Sorry, force of habit. I used to get paid to soak up local information.” I raised the glass again. “Here’s to a safe return, then.”

“That’s considered bad luck.” She didn’t lift her own glass. “You really have been away, haven’t you.”

“For a while.”

“Mind talking about it?”

“Not if we sit down.”

The furniture was cheap, not even automould. I lowered myself carefully into a lounger. The wound in my side seemed to be healing, to the extent that synth flesh ever did.

“So.” She seated herself opposite me and pushed her hair away from her face. A couple of the thicker strands flexed and crackled faintly at the intrusion. “How long you been gone?”

“About thirty years, give or take.”

“Pre-beard, huh?”

Sudden bitterness. “Before this heavy stuff, yeah. But I’ve seen the same thing in a lot of other places. Sharya. Latimer. Parts of Adoracion.”

“Oh. Catch those names.”

I shrugged. “It’s where I’ve been.”

Behind Sylvie, an interior door unfolded crankily and a slight, cocky looking woman wandered yawning into the room, wrapped in a lightweight black polalloy skinsuit half unseamed. She put her head on one side as she spotted me and came to lean on the back of Sylvie’s lounger, scrutinising me with unapologetic curiosity. There were kanji characters shaved into her stubble length hair.

“Got company?”

“Glad to see you got those viewfinder upgrades at last.”

“Shut up.” She flicked idly at the other woman’s hair with hard-lacquered fingernails, grinning when the tresses crackled and shifted away from the touch.

“Who is this? Bit late for shore-leave romances, isn’t it?”