I nodded again. “Or maybe no one who was left and knew could bring themselves to do it. It’s a pretty fucking horrible idea, after all.”

She shot me a weary look.

“It was a weapon, Kovacs. All weapons are horrible. You think targeting the Harlan family by blood is any worse than the nuclear blast they used against us at Matsue? Forty-five thousand people vaporised because there were Quellist safe houses in there somewhere. You want to talk about pretty fucking horrible? In New Hokkaido I saw whole towns levelled by flat-trajectory shelling from government forces. Political suspects executed in their hundreds with a blaster bolt through the stack. Is that any less horrible? Is the Qualgrist Protocol any less discriminating than the systems of economic oppression that dictate you’ll rot your feet in the belaweed farms or your lungs in the processing plants, scrabble for purchase on rotten rock and fall to your death trying to harvest ledgefruit, all because you were born poor.”

“You’re talking about conditions that haven’t existed for three hundred years,” I said mildly. “But that’s not the point. It’s not the Harlan family I feel bad about. It’s the poor fucks whose Black Brigade ancestors decided their political commitment at a cellular level generations before they were even born. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to make my own decisions about who I murder and why.” I held back a moment, then drove the blade home anyway. “And so, from what I’ve read, did Quellcrist Falconer.”

A kilometre of white-capped blue whipped past beneath us. Barely audible, the grav drive in the left-hand pod murmured to itself.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she whispered at last.

I shrugged. “You triggered this thing.”

“It was a Quellist weapon.” I thought I could hear an edge of desperation in her words. “It was all I had to work with. You think it’s worse than a conscript army? Worse than the clone-enhanced combat sleeves the Protectorate decants its soldiers into so they’ll kill without empathy or regret?”

“No. But I think as a concept it contradicts the words I will not ask you to fight, to live or to die for a cause you have not first understood and embraced of your own free will.”

“I know that!” Now it was clearly audible, a jagged flawline running through her voice. “Don’t you think I know that? But what choice did I have? I was alone. Hallucinating half the time, dreaming Oshima’s life and…” She shivered. “Other things. I was never sure when I’d next wake up and what I’d find around me when I did, not sure sometimes if I’d wake up again. I didn’t know how much time I had, sometimes, I didn’t even know if I was real. Do you have any idea what that’s like?”