“Then it could be something the mimints have evolved. A virus to trigger recognition routines in a human brain, makes you think you’re seeing or hearing something you already know. Each individual it hits would assign an appropriate fragment to fit.”

“That doesn’t sound very likely. It’s not like the mimints have had much human interaction to work off recently. Mecsek’s only been in place what, three years?”

“Four.” A faint smile. “Micky, the mimints were designed to kill humans. That’s what they were for originally, three hundred years ago. There’s no telling if some piece of viral weaponry built along those lines has survived this long, maybe even sharpened itself a bit.”

“Have you ever come across anything like that?”

“No. But that doesn’t mean it’s not out there.”

“Or in here.”

“Or in here,” she agreed shortly. She wanted me gone.

“Or it could just be another personality-casing bomb.”

“It could be.”

“Yeah.” I looked around one more time. “Well. How do I get out of here?”

“The crane.” For a moment she came back to me. Her eyes switched in from the north and met mine. She nodded upward to where a steel ladder disappeared into the laced girderwork of the machine. “You just keep climbing up.”

Great.

“You take care of yourself, Sylvie.”

“I will.”

She kissed me briefly on the mouth. I nodded, clapped her on the shoulder and backed away a couple of steps. Then I turned for the ladder, laid hands on the cold metal of the rungs and started climbing.

It seemed solid enough. It beat ripwing infested seacliff and the underside of Martian architecture, anyway.

I was a couple of dozen metres into the girders when her voice floated up to join me.

“Hey, Micky.”

I peered downward. She was standing inside the crane’s base, staring up at me. Her hands were cupped around her mouth. I unfastened one hand carefully and waved.

“Yeah?”

“Just remembered. Grigori Ishii. We learned about him in school.”

“Learned what about him in school?”

She spread her arms.

“No idea, sorry. Who remembers shit like that?”

“Right.”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

Good question. Envoy caution seemed like the obvious answer. But stubborn mistrust came in a close second. A refusal. I wasn’t buying the glorious return of Quell at the cut rates Koi and the Bugs seemed prepared to accept.

“Maybe I will.”

“Well.” An arm lifted in farewell. “Scan up, Micky. Keep climbing, don’t look down.”

“Yeah,” I yelled it down. “You too, Sylvie.”