“Yeah, logically. This is a religion you’re talking about. Renouncers make no more fucking sense than the Beards when it comes down to it.”

“So they’re not in favour?”

“Opinion,” she said with mock delicacy, “is divided on the matter. The aspirant hardliners don’t like it, they don’t like anything that roots construct systems firmly to physical being. The preparant wing of the faith just want to play nice with everyone. They say any virtuality interface is, as you say, a step on the road. They don’t expect Upload to come in their lifetime anyway, we’re all just handmaidens to the process.”

“So which are your folks?”

Sylvie shifted her body on the lounger again, frowned and gave Jadwiga another shove to make space.

“Used to be moderate preps, that’s the faith I grew up in. The last couple of decades though, with the Beards and the whole anti-stack thing, a lot of moderates are turning into hardline asps. My mother probably went that way, she was always the seriously pious one.” She shrugged. “No idea really. Haven’t been home in years.”

“Like that, huh?”

“Yeah, like that. There’s no fucking point. All they’d do is try and marry me off to some eligible local.” She snorted with laughter. “As if that’s going to happen while I’m carrying this stuff.”

I propped myself up a little, groggy with the drugs. “What stuff?”

“This.” She tugged at a handful of hair. “This fucking stuff.”

It crackled quietly around her grasp, tried to writhe away like thousands of tiny snakes. Under the crinkled black and silver mass of it, the thicker cords moved stealthily, like muscles under skin.

DeCom command datatech.

I’d seen a few like her before—a prototype variant back on Latimer, where the core of the new Martian machine interface industry was boiling into R&D overdrive. A couple more used as minesweepers in the Hun Home system. It never takes long for the military to bastardise cutting edge technology for their own use. Makes sense. As often as not, they’re the ones paying for the R&D anyway.