“I got that, Howard.”

“Jason, the Pseudocephalopod has no concept of withholding information from another because it’s never known another. It’s the only one of its kind. There’s no need to coerce anything, any more than you coerce a book to let you read it. We simply had to synthesize an algorithm that translated the information stored in this Ganglion.”

“Had. You’ve already done it?”

“We’ve been preparing for this moment for years.”

“Did it know where it came from?” I had come to see Howard from curiosity, but after Pinchon made me walk the plank, a half-hope had formed in a selfish corner of my mind. If Howard’s prisoner didn’t possess the navigational information we needed, we couldn’t end the war soon. If the war wasn’t ending, Pinchon might not send me to the glue factory. Perversely, during the entire drive down from New York, I had hoped the Ganglion would prove to be a bust.

Howard grinned. “Absolutely! Last night we deciphered a sequence of twenty-six jumps that lead from Weichsel to the homeworld system. Simple, really. We’re just tidying up now.”

“Great.” It was. In fact, it was the greatest news of the war. Somehow, I couldn’t get as excited as I should have been.

Behind Howard, Spooks had lined up to get their pictures taken standing in front of the Ganglion. Some hammed it up, holding a magazineless pistol, presumably borrowed from the corporal in coveralls, and snarling. Most smiled, whooped, and pumped fists overhead.

Howard said, “Want to get your picture taken with the Ganglion? Before the war ends?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got another stop to make.”

Fort Meade, like many military reservations, is big enough, and has enough excess, mothballed, built-out space, that it hosts activities in addition to those connected with its primary mission. Often, those activities are temporary, pending completion of permanent facilities.

The temporary location of the three-year-old Human Union Military Academy was in a sixty-year-old complex four miles from Spook Castle.

HUMA’s commandant lived in a government-provided house on the temporary academy grounds, like a university president. I parked at the curb, lifted a package the size of a Kleenex cube off the seat beside me, then carried it to the front door and rang the bell. As I waited, I looked around. The place was more bungalow than house, walled in peeling stucco, with a roof of cracked red tile and a dropcloth-sized lawn baked to steel wool by summer.

I thought it was the most beautiful home I had ever seen.

Clack.

The door’s deadbolt rattled, then the door swung inward, squealing on unoiled hinges.

MIMI’S MOUTH DROPPED OPEN, and her brown eyes widened in her perfect face. A towel turbaned her head, and she stood barefooted in a gray sweatsuit. “I thought you were flying down. Tonight.”

“Pinchon finished with me early. Evidently my ’Puter’s not connected to the net, or I would have let you know.”

Her breath hissed out. “You can rent a temporary for five bucks, Jason.” She shook her head while she fiddled with the towel that wrapped it. “You’re an inconsiderate child.”

After three years, this wasn’t how I had imagined this moment.

It was hot on her front step. “Can I come in?”

She stared at me, then stood aside. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I love being commandant. But a cadet got caught cheating on an exam today. Another one broke her back on the obstacle course. And we’re over budget for the quarter.”

She closed the door behind us and walked me into her living room. Framed citations and flat photographs of uniformed crews and long-mothballed vessels cluttered the walls, along with the kinds of parquet-framed mirrors and gilt-threaded tapestries that look memorable in port bazaar stalls but tawdry forever after. Amid a career’s flotsam, a worn green sofa angled in front of the dark hologen. She flopped on the sofa, then tugged the sweatpants on her thighs like they were mainsails. “And look at this. I wanted to look beautiful for you. But no, you-” Her officerial lip quivered.

I sat beside her and lifted her chin with my finger. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life.”

Her eyes widened as she blinked back tears. “You’re serious. You’re such an idiot.”

I set the wooden box in her lap.

“What is it?”

I shrugged.

She raised the lid, plucked out a translucent snowball of a rock, and turned it in her fingers, so the facets inside caught the light. She squinted and frowned. “Is this a Weichselan diamond?”

“Blue white, with a one-hundred-six-carat perfect core, if it’s cut right, they tell me. You could say I picked it up cheap, but the freight was murder.”

She smiled. Then her face creased into panic and she stiffened.

I threw my palm up. “The jewelers said it’s suitable to be set as a pendant. A major piece suitable for evening wear.” The jewelers had also said it was too big for a ring, but clarifying it that way would have made the moment even more awkward.

Mimi relaxed and held the diamond near her throat as she turned her head left, then right, and watched her reflection in the mirror on the far wall.

She returned the jewel to its box, smiling at me. “You might not be an idiot.”

Mimi unwrapped the towel from around her head, then curled around until she faced me, on her knees on the sofa, and leaned toward me and breathed in my ear. “I missed you, Jason.”

A diamond may be a girl’s best friend, but it is also a boon companion to a man who might not be an idiot.

Four hours later, I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling of Mimi’s bedroom. Her head lay on my bare chest, and her finger traced the scar-tissue line where my regrown arm joined my shoulder. “Your arm works fine. Everything works fine.”

Military homecomings are blisteringly awkward in so many ways. But once physical contact occurs, mutual hormonal autodrive kicks in for a while. I kissed her hair and knew that the right thing to do was to savor the moment, to say nothing.

Therefore, I said, “Pinchon fired me.”

Her finger continued to trace across my chest as she whispered, “Huh? It sounded like you said-”

“I did. My Relief and Retirement ceremony’s in ninety days.”

She sat up straight and shook her head, which made everything else shake delightfully. “No. Doesn’t that idiot know there’s a war on?”

“Not for long, there isn’t. Howard’s already got a fix on the homeworld. The weaponized-Cavorite project is down to just troubleshooting.”

“You’re going to fight the retirement mandate.”

“I was, I guess.” I shook my head. “But I dunno. You’re here. I could be here.”

The panic crossed her face again, and she looked toward her kitchen. “I was gonna do a rack of lamb, but… I could scramble some eggs. I input for a guest, so the house ordered extra.”

“Sure. That would be fine.”

Twenty minutes later we sat at her kitchen table, me in underwear and Mimi in a silk robe. I pushed eggs around my plate with a fork.

She leaned forward. “Are they all right? I don’t cook much.”

“They’re great. It’s the chives. I’m allergic.”

“I didn’t know.”

She ate one bite, then said, “Jason, I put in for a command.”

“Another ship? That would take years.”

“Not a keel-up command. I told them I’d take any rust bucket that opened up.”

“You just said you loved this job. And in your letters you said that you loved-”

“I do. I think.” She turned away as she stabbed her finger back at my plate. “But, hell, I can’t even make eggs for you right!”

“That’s a small thing. The kind of thing people in love learn about each other when they spend time together.”

“Oh, really? What about the big things? When you take the retirement gut-punch, I’m there for you. But they put me out to pasture as a schoolmaster and you don’t give a shit! All you do is complain about my cooking!”