“What’s this?”

“Catholics,” said Ortega, lip curling. “Old-time religious sect.”

“Yeah? Never heard of them.”

“No. You wouldn’t have. They don’t believe you can digitise a human being without losing the soul.”

“Not a widespread faith then.”

“Just on Earth,” she said sourly. “I think the Vatican—that’s their central church—financed a couple of cryoships to Starfall and Latimer—”

“I’ve been to Latimer, I never ran into anything like this.”

“The ships only left at the turn of the century, Kovacs. They won’t get there for a couple more decades yet.”

We skirted the gathering, and a young woman with her hair pulled severely back thrust a leaflet at me. The gesture was so abrupt that it tripped my sleeve’s unsettled reflexes and I made a blocking motion before I got it under control. Hard-eyed, the woman stood with the leaflet out and I took it with a placating smile.

“They have no right,” the woman said.

“Oh, I agree…”

“Only the Lord our God can save your soul.”

“I—” But by this time Kristin Ortega was steering me firmly away, one hand on my arm, in a manner that suggested a lot of practice. I shook her off politely but equally firmly.

“Are we in some kind of hurry?”

“I think we both have better things to do, yes,” she said, tight lipped, looking back to where her colleagues were engaged in fending off leaflets of their own.

“I might have wanted to talk to her.”

“Yeah? Looked to me like you wanted to throat-chop her.”

“That’s just the sleeve. I think it had some neurachem conditioning way back when, and she tripped it. You know, most people lie down for a few hours after downloading. I’m a little on edge.”

I stared at the leaflet in my hands. CAN A MACHINE SAVE YOUR SOUL? it demanded of me rhetorically. The word ‘machine’ had been printed in script designed to resemble an archaic computer display. ‘Soul’ was in flowing stereographic letters that danced all over the page. I turned over for the answer.