I climbed. The sweeper station shrank to the proportions of a child’s toy. The sea took on the texture of hammered grey metal welded to a tilting horizon. Sylvie was a dot facing north, then too small to make out at all. Maybe she wasn’t there any more. The girders around me lost any resemblance to the crane they had once been. The cold dawn light darkened to a flickery silver that danced in patterns on the metal that seemed maddeningly familiar. I didn’t seem to be tiring at all.

I stopped looking down.

FORTY

So?” she asked finally.

I stared out of the window at Vchira Beach and the glitter of sunlight on the waves beyond. Both beach and water were beginning to fill up with tiny human figures intent on enjoying the weather. The offices of Dzurinda Tudjman Sklep were eminently environment-proofed, but you could almost feel the building heat, almost hear the rising chatter and squall of tourism that accompanied it. I hadn’t spoken to anyone since I came out of the construct.

“So you were right.” I spared a sideways glance for the woman wearing Sylvie Oshima’s body, then went back to looking at the sea. The hangover was back in place, worse it seemed. “She’s not coming out. She’s fallen back on childhood Renouncer crabshit to cope with the grief, and she’s staying in there.”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah.” I left the window alone, turned back to Tres and Vidaura. “We’re finished here.”

Nobody talked on the way back to the skimmer. We shouldered our way through brightly-garbed crowds, working against the flow in silence. A lot of the time, our faces opened passage for us—you could see it in the expressions of people stepping hurriedly aside. But in the sunny warmth and enthusiasm to get to the water, not everyone was running even a surface level of attention. Sierra Tres scowled as her leg took clouts from garishly-coloured plastic beach implements, badly carried, but either drugs or focus kept her mouth clamped shut over any pain she suffered. No one wanted to create a memorable scene. Only once she turned to look at a particularly clumsy offender, and he practically ran away.

Hey guys. The thought ran sourly through me. Don’t you recognise your political heroes when you see them? We’re coming to liberate you all.

At Sunshine Fun Jetties, the pilot was lying on the sloping flank of the skimmer, soaking up the sun like everybody else. He sat up blinking as we came aboard.

“That was quick. You want to get back already?”

Sierra Tres glanced ostentatiously around at the bright plastic everywhere in view.

“You see any reason to hang about?”