“-murdered by Huhsz zealots, you were brought up by your father in a… peripatetic existence, I think one might fairly say.”

“When we weren’t making a nuisance of ourselves at the homes of rich relations, it was equal parts casinos and courts; father had an obsession with screwing money out of one of them. Mostly they did it to him.”

“You had… various tutors-”

“Singularly lacking in a sense of humour, all of them.”

“-and what might most charitably be called a chequered school history.”

“A lot of those records really shouldn’t be trusted.”

“Yes, there is a quite remarkable disparity between the written reports and most of the associated computer files. Several of the institutions you attended seemed to feel there might be a causal link between this phenomenon and your uncharacteristic keenness for the subject of computing.”

“Coincidence; they couldn’t prove a thing.”

“Indeed, I don’t think I’ve heard of anybody suing a school yearbook before.”

“A matter of principle; family honour was at stake. And anyway, litigiousness runs in our family. Gorko issued a writ against his father for more pocket money when he was five and Geis has almost sued himself several times.”

“At your finishing schools in Claav you developed an interest in politics, and became… popular with the local young men.”

She shrugged. “I’d been a difficult child; I became an easy adolescent.!”

“To the surprise of everybody except, apparently yourself, you won entrance to the diplomatic faculty of the University of Yadayeypon, but left after two years, on the outbreak of the Five Per Cent War.”

“Another coincidence; the professor I was fucking to get good grades died on me and I couldn’t be bothered starting again from scratch.”

“You crewed on an anti-Tax cruiser operating out of TP 105, a moon of Roaval, then-along with a group of seven other junior officers-became one of the first humans for three hundred years to take the then newly re-released symbiovirus SNBv3. With you as leader, you and your fellow synchroneurobondees flew a squadron of single-seat modified excise clippers out of HomeAtLast, a military-commercial habitat stationed in near-Miykenns orbit, becoming the most successful squadron of the seventeen operating in the midsystem.”