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of duty on my part not to help out.”
    “That’s the spirit.”
    “Tell you what. Yes. You can have your Marines. You can also have a gunboat for them to tag along with you in.”
    “That’s very generous of you,” said Handler.
    “I’ll even throw in Eydís Sigursdottir. Can’t spare her, really, but you’ll need a decent junior officer to run the show, and she’s the best.”
    “I’m fine with that,” Dev said, sounding more eager than he intended.
    “Just make sure it’s worthwhile. Don’t make me look a fool. I’d hate that, and so would you.”
    Maddox hoisted the bottle of double moonshine and refilled Dev’s glass and his own one more time.
    Dev would have liked to refuse, because the buzz from the booze was beginning to turn nasty. The room had started to reel and his tongue had gone numb. His host form, after all, had never ingested alcohol before. Its physiology was as pure and untainted as a newborn baby’s, its liver a stranger to all intoxicants. And this particular liquor was so strong, even a hardened drinker would have had difficulty metabolising it.
    Nonetheless he slugged the shot down in one go, both to seal the deal with Maddox and to prove he had guts.
    Next instant, he proved he had guts in another way, by bending double and puking copiously on the floor, much to Maddox’s amusement.
    When he straightened up, he found he was hopelessly lightheaded. The room was growing grey and distant around him, and Maddox’s booming laughter had begun to echo as though they were in a cavern.
    Don’t pass out , Dev told himself. Whatever you do, don’t –

 
    10
     
     
    H E CAME TO aboard the Reckless Abandon , sprawled indecorously on a bunk in one of the cabins.
    He felt awful.
    No, that was an understatement. He would have loved to feel awful. Awful was a condition he aspired to.
    He felt truly abysmal. Wretched. A half-dead wreck of a man. A bag of pain and ghastliness. His every nerve ending jagged and raw. His muscles so many chunks of suppurating rotten meat. His bones broken twigs.
    Just raising his head off the bunk was like wrestling a grizzly bear, an act that was not only a huge, self-lacerating effort, but utterly futile and guaranteed to end in defeat.
    For a while all he could do was lie there and moan self-pityingly.
    The jetboat was in motion, which did nothing to alleviate his suffering. It leapt and bounced across the water, heaving him up and down as gleefully as a cat persecuting a mouse.
    Even dying was preferable to this – and Dev, who had once felt his body being torn to ribbons by coilgun rounds, knew a bit about dying.
    The phrase Never again tolled in his mind like a bell. He always seemed to forget that every time he was installed in a host form he was starting over from scratch. His personal history, including a tolerance to alcohol accrued over a lifetime, meant nothing to a virgin, vat-grown body. In that disjuncture between what he remembered about himself and what he currently was, trouble lay.
    Finally, through the pulsating haze that fogged his vision, he noticed that someone had done him the courtesy of leaving a packet of Blitz-Go beside the bunk. He no doubt had Handler to thank for that. He fumbled for the packet and popped a couple of the hangover-remedy pills from their blisters. Then he helped himself to a third one. Well in excess of the recommended dose, but screw it.
    He dry-swallowed the three pills and waited patiently for them to take effect. Soon enough, specially designed enzymes were coursing round his body, breaking down the acetaldehyde build-up and negating acidosis. He dared to sit upright and, when he could manage that without feeling that he was going to pass out again, to stand.
    A bleary, brittle Dev climbed the companionway that led to the Reckless Abandon ’s main deck. From there he bravely tackled the ladder up to the flybridge, only losing his footing twice.
    Handler, at the helm, gave him a commiserative smile.
    “You poor