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protest; the AI answered what he assumed was her objection to the word, never guessing that what really pained her was the fact that he had known more than she did about Cohen’s work for ALEF.
    “Well, I won’t argue semantics,” he went on. “Cohen was sent outthere to put down a wild AI outbreak at the Navy shipyards. That’s what I heard, anyway. Putting down wild AI outbreaks seems to be ALEF’s main line of business these days. Not that they admit that. It’s always an exceptional circumstance, or an unprecedented crisis, or a one-time exception to the general rule of autonomy.” He snorted sarcastically. “We live in exceptional times, haven’t you noticed?”
    “You’re talking about AIs policing other AIs? ALEF putting down wild AI outbreaks for UNSec under the Controlled Tech Treaties? But what did Cohen have to do with that?”
    “He was one of the largest ALEF constituents. And the oldest, of course. They didn’t do anything he wasn’t involved in.”
    “But I can’t believe he would have gone along with—”
    “Cohen was very loyal. And not always to the nicest people.”
    Li raised an eyebrow. “You’re telling
me
that?”
    “I didn’t mean to say—well, you know.” He sounded stricken. “And for the record,
I
think you’re very nice. And so did Cohen.”
    She’d been suppressing a chuckle at Router/​Decomposer’s confusion, but now she laughed out loud. “You must have an unusual definition of the word. Anyway, tell me about New Allegheny.”
    “There’s nothing to tell. That’s really all I know. Except what everyone knows. It’s the gateway planet to the Drift. They’re discovering new FTL routes daily. New planets weekly. And surprise, surprise, the UN Security Council just officially declared it a Trusteeship. Oh, you hadn’t heard about that? I suppose not. The news broke yesterday. It would have been after you talked to the lawyer.”
    “Does that mean they’re deploying Peacekeepers?”
    “Yep. And they’ve locked down the Bose-Einstein relays and cut off civilian traffic. If you really do want to go out and investigate Cohen’s suicide you’re going to have a damn hard time getting there.”
    “Holy Mother of God,” Li breathed. “Cohen dies out there and within hours UNSec has locked down FTL transport and put the planet under military control? You think that’s a coincidence?”
    “I know what you’re getting at, Catherine. But I don’t think it necessarily follows that Helen Nguyen is involved.”
    The name lay between them like an unexploded bomb. Their lastencounter with Helen Nguyen had cost Li her hand and disrupted Cohen’s internal networks so badly that Router/​Decomposer had decided that the uncertain life of a meta-Emergent was more inviting than staying on inside Cohen’s older and far more stable personality architecture. But the Israeli debacle had only been blowback for their original and unforgivable betrayal. In her last job for Nguyen, Li had been sent to her own home planet to defuse a miners’ strike—and she’d ended up siding with the miners and shutting down the only known source of the Bose-Einstein crystals that powered the UN’s FTL transport grid. The damage she had done was still rippling out across UN space, crashing relay stations and turning once-viable colonies into doomed island outposts. Nguyen would never be done punishing Li for that betrayal—or wreaking vengeance on Cohen for having led her to it.
    “Can I ask you something?” Router/​Decomposer said.
    “What?”
    “Well … Cohen had a different router back then, but … I always got the sense that Nguyen hated him even before Compson’s World.”
    Li sporked up a mouthful of mediocre mac and cheese. It was cafeteria food at its worst—tasteless enough to make her instinctively tweak her VR inputs before she remembered that she’d taken the trouble to come see Router/​Decomposer in person today. “Well,” she said finally, “Cohen always