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reckoning—some of the gates move from diurn to diurn—but my netlink knows where I’m going and throws up a firefly for me. It takes us about a third of a kilosec to walk there in companionable silence. I’m still trying to work out whether I can trust Kay, but I’m already sure I like her.
    The tapas place is open plan, ancient cast-iron chairs and tables on a grassy deck beneath a dome under a pink sky streaked with clouds of carbon monoxide that scud across a cracked basalt wilderness. The sun is very bright and very small, and if the dome vanished, we’d probablyfreeze to death before the atmosphere poisoned us. Kay glances at the ornamental archway surrounding the T-gate, overgrowth with ivy, and picks a table close to it. “Anything wrong?” I ask.
    â€œIt reminds me of home.” She looks as if she’s bitten a durian fruit while expecting a mango. “Sorry. I’ll try to ignore it.”
    â€œI didn’t mean to—”
    â€œI know you didn’t.” A small, wry, smile. “Maybe I didn’t erase enough.”
    â€œI’m worried that I erased too much,” I say before I can stop myself. Then Frita, one of the two proprietor/cook/designers wanders over, and we’re lost for a while in praise of his latest creations, and of course we have to sample the fruits of the first production run and make an elaborate business of reviewing them while Erci stands by strumming his mandolin and looking proud.
    â€œErased too much,” Kay prods me.
    â€œYes.” I push my plate away. “I don’t know for sure. My old self left me a long, somewhat vague letter. Written and serialized, not an experiential; it was encoded in a way he knew I’d remember how to decrypt, he was very careful about that. Anyway, he hinted about all sorts of dark things. He knew too much, rambled on about how he’d worked for a Power and done bad things until his coworkers forced him into excision and rehab. And it was a thorough job of assisted forgetting they did on me. I mean, for all I know I might be a war criminal or something. I’ve completely lost over a gigasecond, and the stuff before then is full of holes—I don’t remember anything about what my vocation was, or what I did during the censorship, or any friends or family, or anything like that.”
    â€œThat’s awful.” Kay rests a slim hand atop each of mine and peers at me across the wreckage of a remarkably good aubergine-and-garlic casserole.
    â€œBut that’s not all.” I glance at her wineglass, sitting empty beside the carafe. “Another refill?”
    â€œMy pleasure.” She refills my glass and raises it to my lips while taking a sip from her own without releasing my hands. I smile as I swallow,and she smiles back. Maybe there’s something to be said for her hexapedal body plan, although I’d be nervous about doing it to myself—she must have had some pretty extensive spinal modifications to coordinate all those limbs with such unconscious grace. “Go on?”
    â€œThere are hints.” I swallow. “Pretty blatant ones. He warned me to be on my guard against old enemies—the kind who wouldn’t be content with a simple duel to the death.”
    â€œWhat are we talking about?” She looks concerned.
    â€œIdentity theft, backup corruption.” I shrug. “Or . . . I don’t know. I mean, I don’t remember. Either my old self was totally paranoid, or he was involved in something extremely dirty and opted to take the radical retirement package. If it’s the latter, I could be in really deep trouble. I lost so much that I don’t know how the sort of people he was involved with behave, or why. I’ve been doing some reading, history and so on, but that’s not the same as being there.” I swallow again, my mouth dry, because at this point she might very well stand up and walk out