That stopped me. “Grieving what?”

“What do you think? The fact that every member of her team died in Drava.”

“That’s crabshit. She wasn’t in contact with them when they died. The net was down.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” The woman in front of me drew a deep breath. Her voice lowered and paced out to explanatory calm. “The net was down, she couldn’t access it. She has told me this. But the receiving system stored every moment of their dying, and if she opens the wrong doors down there, it all comes screaming out. She’s in shock from the exposure to it. She knows that, and as long as it lasts she’s staying where it’s safe.”

“She told you that?”

We were eye to eye, a scant half metre of seawind between us. “Yes, she told me that.”

“I don’t fucking believe you.”

She kept my gaze for a long moment, then turned away. Shrugged.

“What you believe is your own business, Kovacs. From what Brasil told me, you’re just looking for easy targets to take your existential rage out on. That’s always easier than a constructive attempt at change isn’t it?”

“Oh, fuck off! You’re going to hand me that tired old shit? Constructive change? Is that what the Unsettlement was? Constructive? Is that what tearing New Hok apart was supposed to be?”

“No, it wasn’t.” For the first time, I saw pain in the face before me. Her voice had shifted from matter-of-fact to weary, and hearing it, then, I almost believed in her. Almost. She gripped the gantry rail tightly in both hands and shook her head. “None of it was supposed to be like that. But we had no choice. We had to force a political change, globally. Against massive repression. There was no way they’d give up the position they had without a fight. You think I’m happy it turned out that way?”

“Then,” I said evenly. “You should have planned it better.”

“Yeah? Well, you weren’t there.”

Silence.

I thought for a moment she’d leave then, seek more politically friendly company, but she didn’t. The retort, the faint edge of contempt in it, fell away behind us and Angelfire Flirt flew on across the wrinkled surface of the sea at almost-aircraft speeds. Carrying, it dawned on me drearily, the legend home to the faithful. The hero into history. In a few years they’d write songs about this vessel, about this voyage south.

But not about this conversation.

That at least dredged the edges of a smile to my mouth.

“Yeah, now you tell me what’s so fucking funny,” the woman at my side said sourly.

I shook my head. “Just wondering why you prefer talking to me to hanging with your neoQuellist worshippers.”

“Maybe I like a challenge. Maybe I don’t enjoy choral approval.”