“Furnish food,” I repeated, idiotically. “Food…”

“We planted it in a controlled and shielded ecosphere of fifty ecologically diverse acres,” Carmela continued, her hands jammed into the pockets of her lab coat, “and within three months it had wiped out every other plant in the ecosphere. It’s so well fitted to thrive that it outcompeted everything else. Humans and some mammals can digest it; other animals cannot. The other plant eaters all starved, including so many larval insects that the insect population disappeared. The amphibian, reptile, and bird populations went with them, then the carnivorous mammals. Our computers figure that, given the right wind conditions, this grass would take about eighteen months to be the only thing left on Earth, give or take a few huge trees with extensive root systems that weren’t quite done dying.”

The grass rustled softly behind its triple shield. I felt something on my shoulders. Carmela’s hands. She turned my chair to face her, then immediately lifted her hands.

“You see, Mr. Arlen, we don’t think Huevos Verdes is evil. Not at all. We know Ms. Sharifi and her fellow SuperSleepless believe not only in the good of their research but in the good of the rest of us. We know she believes in the United States, as defined in the Constitution, as the best possible political arrangement in an imperfect world. Just as Leisha Camden did before her. I’ve always been a great admirer of Ms. Camden. But the Constitution works because it has so many checks and balances to restrain power.”

She licked her lips. The gesture wasn’t sexual; she was in such deadly earnest that I could feel her whole body dry and tense with strain.

“Checks and balances to restrain power. Yes. But there are no checks on Huevos Verdes. No restraints. No balances, because the rest of us simply can’t do what SuperSleepless can do. Unless they do it first. Then some of us could copy some of the tech, maybe, and adapt it. Some of us like the people who worked here”

I said nothing. The deadly, food-rich grass rustled.

“I can’t tell what you’re thinking, Mr. Arlen. And I can’t tell you what to think. But I — we — just wanted you to see all sides of the situation, with the hope you’ll think about what you’ve seen, and talk about it with Huevos Verdes. That’s all. The agents will take you back to Seattle now.”

I said, “What will happen to this grass?”

“We’ll destroy it with radiation. Tomorrow. Not so much as a strand of DNA will be left, and none of the records, either. It only existed this long so we could show it to Ms. Sharifi, or, failing that, to you.”

She led me back to the elevator, and I watched her body, taut with unhappiness and hope, walk gracefully between the narrow white walls.

Just before the elevator door opened I said to her, or maybe to all three of them, “You can’t stop technological progress. You can slow it down, but it always comes anyway.”

Carmela Clemente-Rice said, “Only two nuclear bombs have ever been dropped on Earth as an act of wartime aggression. The science was there, but the applications were left unused. By cooperation or restraint or fear or force — the applications were stopped.” She held out her hand. It was damp and clammy, but something electric ran from her touch to mine. The navy-blue eyes beseeched me.

Just as if / held actual power over what Huevos Verdes did.

“Good-bye, Mr. Arlen.”

“Good-bye, Dr. Clemente-Rice.”

The agents, good as their word, returned me to my hotel room in Seattle. I sat down to wait to see who would arrive from Huevos Verdes, and how long it would take.

It was Jonathan Markowitz, at five in the morning. I’d had three hours’ sleep. Jonathan was perfect. His tone was civil and interested. He asked about everything I’d seen, and I described everything to him. He asked a lot of other questions: Did I experience any temperature changes, no matter how slight, at any point in the corridor? Did I ever smell anything like cinammon? Did the light have a greenish tinge? Did anyone ever touch me? He didn’t argue against anything Carmela Rice-Clemente had told me. He treated me like a member of the team whose loyalty was unquestioned, but who might have been tampered with in ways I couldn’t understand. He was perfect.

And all the while I could feel the shapes he made in my mind, and the picture: a man lifting heavy rocks, the rocks mindless and sullen gray.

As Jonathan left, I said brutally, “They should have sent Nick. Not you. Nick doesn’t bother to hide it.”

Jonathan looked at me steadily. For a minute he said nothing, and I wondered what impossibly complex and subtle strings formed in that Super brain. Then he smiled wearily. “I know. But Nick was busy.”

“When can I see Miranda? Has she left Washington yet for East Oleanta?”

“I don’t know, Drew,” he said, and the shapes in my mind exploded, spattering the lattice with red.

“You don’t know if she’s left, or you don’t know when I can see her? Why not, Jon? Because I’m tainted now? Because you don’t know what Carmela Rice-Clemente might have done to me when she put her palms on my shoulders, or when I shook her hand? Or because you can’t control what I’m really thinking about the project?”

Jonathan said quietly, “It was my impression you’d accepted not seeing Miri. Without too much regret.”

That stopped me.

Jonathan went on, “You have an important role, Drew. We need you. We don’t. . . The computer projects a steeply rising curve in the general social breakdown, due to the unexpected duragem situation. We have to accelerate the project. Kevorkel’s equations. Mitochondrial regression. DiLazial urban engineer-ing.”

And that was how my anger ended. In a bunch of words from SuperSleepless shorthand. I didn’t understand the words, and didn’t understand how they went together, and didn’t understand why I was being told them. I couldn’t answer, and so I stood there, mute and bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, while Jonathan quietly left.

Did he say words from his string because he thought they were so basic that even the Liver Sleeper Drew, him, would understand? Or did they just slip out because Jonathan was upset, too? Or did he say them because he knew I wouldn’t understand, and what better way to put me in my place?

I’m going to own Sanctuary, me, someday.

You! A stupid bayou rat! Whap.

I had to sleep. My concert was in less than five hours. I rolled into bed, still in my clothes, and tried to sleep.

# * #

On the way to the Seattle KingDome, the aircar broke down.

We had left the enclave and were above the Liver city, which from the air looked like a lot of small Liver towns, organized in blocks around cafes and warehouses and lodge buildings. The Senator Gilbert Tory Bridewell KingDome was twenty years old; somebody had told me it was named for some historical site. It sat well outside the enclave, of course, a huge foamcast hemisphere with a shielded landing pad that now we might not reach.

The car bucked, back to front, and listed to the left. An ocean liner rolling, a toxic dump swelling in sickly pink bubbles. My stomach rose.

“Jesus H. Christ,” the driver said, and began punching in override codes. I didn’t know how much he could actually do; aircars are robomachinery. But maybe he did know about it. He was a donkey.

The car rolled, and I fell against the left door. My powerchair, folded into traveling size, slammed against me. The car gave a little buck and I thought I’m going to die.

Warm blood-red shapes filled my mind. And the lattice disappeared.

“Christ Christ Christ,” the driver said, punching frantically. The car bucked again, then righted. I closed my eyes. The lattice in my mind disappeared. // wasn’t there.

“Okay okay okay,” the driver said in a different voice, and the car limped down onto the landing pad.