We worked the canvasynth raft back from one edge of the hatchway and warm, stale air gusted through into the chute. I laughed with sheer involuntary pleasure at the feel of it. Lazlo nodded sourly.

“Yeah, enjoy. Some of us are going back in the fucking water now.”

Sylvie squeezed through and I was about to follow, when the wincefish tugged at my arm. I turned back. He hesitated.

“Las? Come on, man, we’re running out of time.”

“You.” He lifted a warning finger. “I’m trusting you, Micky. You look after her. You keep her safe ‘til we can get to you. ‘til she’s back online.”

“Alright.”

“I’m trusting you,” he repeated.

Then he turned, unlatched his hold on the hatch and was sliding rapidly down the curve of the launcher chute. As he disappeared at the bottom, I heard a faint whoop come floating back up.

I stared after him for what seemed like far too long, then turned and forced my way irritably through the canvasynth barrier between myself and my newly acquired responsibilities.

The memory rolled back over me.

In the bubblefab—

“You. Help me. Help me!”

Her eyes pin me. Muscles of her face taut with desperation, mouth slightly open.

It’s a sight that sends a deep and unlooked-for sense of arousal bubbling through my guts. She’s thrown back the sleeping bag and leaned across to grab at me, and in the low light from the muffled illuminum lamp, under the reaching arm, I can see the slumped mounds her breasts make across her chest. It isn’t the first time I’ve seen her like this—the Slipins don’t suffer from coyness and after a month of close quarters camping across the Uncleared, I could probably draw most of them naked from memory—but something about Sylvie’s face and posture is suddenly deeply sexual.

“Touch me.” The voice that is not hers rasps and prickles the hairs on my neck erect. “Tell me you’re fucking real.”

“Sylvie, you’re not—”

Her hand shifts, from my arm to my face.

“I think I know you,” she says wonderingly. “Black Brigade elect, right. Tetsu battalion. Odisej? Ogawa?”

The Japanese she’s using is archaic, centuries out of date. I fight down the ghost of a shiver and stay in Amanglic. “Sylvie, listen to me—”

“Your name’s Sylvie?” Face racked with doubt. She shifts languages to meet me.

“I don’t remember, I, it’s, I can’t—”

“Sylvie.”

“Yeah, Sylvie.”

“No,” I say through lips that feel numb. Your name’s Sylvie.”

“No.” There’s a sudden panic in her now. “My name’s. My name’s. They call me, they called me, they—”