At last I hit on a major-looking site. “THE PUISSANT ORDER OF HOLY MARY QUEEN OF VIRGINS — About Us — Information — Contact Us — Site Map — Genealogy Resources …” The URL showed it was based in Italy.

I dug into the link, and found myself facing a WELCOME screen. The wallpaper behind the lettering and icons was the face of the Madonna, taken from a medieval painting I didn’t recognize, a beautiful, sad, impossibly young visage. Beside her was a kind of corporate logo, a twist of chrome: it might have been an extended infinity symbol, or an outline of two fish face to face. The background colors were pale blue and white, colors I had always associated with my mother’s statues of the Virgin, and, just looking at the screen I felt oddly rested, oddly at home. As did, no doubt, every other Catholic boy logging on from around the world.

I poked around in the site. There were plenty of smiling female faces and beautiful old buildings. It was a busy design, I thought with my software professional’s eye, but it seemed to be comprehensive, with language options in English (the default), Italian, Spanish, French, German, and even Japanese, Chinese, and some Arabic tongues.

The order, it seemed, was an ancient Catholic grouping based in Rome itself. They were making money by offering a subscription genealogy service — something like the famous Mormon site, to which they had links, but if anything more comprehensive. Since I was calling from a UK address I was offered a range of British-focused resources, including a deeds database spanning from 1400 to 1900, five hundred maps of the UK, Ireland, and Europe, a charter of baronial pedigrees that went as deep as the thirteenth century, and information from censuses up to the end of the twentieth century. There was even a Titanic passenger list. They had 350 million names indexed and cross-referenced over five hundred years, boasted the pop-ups.

I skimmed through most of this stuff, wondering what it had to do with my father. As far as I know he had never been much interested in family trees — and certainly, if he had been paying a thousand quid a month for these services, he hadn’t had anything to show for it.

But then my eye was caught by a user ID in the contact line: casella24. My mother’s maiden name had been Casella.

I fired off a quick email, telling casella24 of my father’s death, and asking for details of his contacts with the order. Always assuming I had the right place.

I finished my coffee, logged off, and made my way back to work.

At the end of the afternoon Vivian took me out for the drink she had promised.

We made our way to a bar just off Liverpool Street. Called the Sphinx, the place had been made over several times during my working life in London. Now it was done out in faux brickwork painted a dull yellow, and specialized in acrid Egyptian coffee. It actually had loose sand scattered on the floor. But somehow the atmosphere worked.

Over the long bar was a series of TV screens. Most of them were tuned to music and sports, and somewhere a tinkling pop song was playing. But one screen carried a news channel. The newsreader was a girl with an achingly beautiful face, and over her shoulder was an image I recognized: it was the glistening tetrahedron that had been found in the Kuiper Belt. Evidently the Anomaly was still news, even days after my conversation with Peter. I felt vaguely surprised to see it again. The association brought back unwelcome memories of Manchester.

Vivian ordered a glass of house white and sipped it slowly. She asked me about the funeral. I tried to tell her something of my feelings of dislocation.

“Midlife crisis,” she said immediately. “Welcome to the twenty-first century.”

“I always looked forward to the twenty-first century. I just didn’t plan on being old in it. I mean, look at these arseholes …”

The gathering in the bar was a typical London noncommunity. There were some small groups at the tables scattered over the sandy floor, but an awful lot of people were alone, at the tables or the bar or walking across the floor — alone, that is, save for their cell phones, which they worked persistently.

“So young, and so fucking arrogant, as if they own the place. They walk around as if London were built yesterday, a playground just for them. And look at the way they thumb away at those damn phones.” I mimicked texting. “Another few years and kids will be born that are all giant thumbs and no brains, hopping around on knuckle joints.”

“You’re ranting, George,” Vivian said with her usual even good humor. “Maybe you’re right about the phones, though. It is an odd way to live, isn’t it, to ignore the people physically with you while contacting friends who might be hundreds of miles away? You’d think the new technology would bring us together. Instead it seems to be pushing us apart.”

That was why I’d always liked talking to Vivian. I didn’t know anybody else who would make such observations.

She was a solid-framed woman who wore business suits that were crumpled enough to show she didn’t take herself too seriously. She looked healthy; I knew she used a gym, and as a mother of two small daughters her home life must be active enough. Her hair was close-cropped over a broad face, with a small flattish nose and pale brown eyes. She had no cheeks, no chin, and would never have been called beautiful save by a lover, but in the frankness and humor of her gaze I had always known I was in the presence of a solid, grounded personality. To put it another way she was one of the few human beings to have slipped through Hyf’s recruitment filter.

I said, “My father never had a cell phone. Didn’t need one, he said, even though I tried to give him one for emergencies. You know, in case he fell … Didn’t have a computer, either. Enjoyed his DVD, though.”

“He wasn’t a Luddite like you, then,” she said.

“No. He was just selective.”

She sloshed her wine around her glass. “My parents died a few years back. Ten years ago, actually.”

“How?”

“Car accident. It was a mess to sort out, as they’d gone together. Their wills were out of date … Well. I think I know how your sister feels. I wanted to just run from the whole thing. But oddly, it wasn’t such a bad time in the end. People come together, you know.”

I tapped my thumbnail against the bottle’s foil label. “You’re not counseling me, are you, Viv?”

“No. Just telling you how I felt.”

“But it was different. You were younger. I feel — shit, I suddenly feel old. It’s as if now he’s gone, the lid is off my generation, antiquity-wise. Do you know what I mean?”

She laughed. “So what do you want to do?”

I snorted. “What can I do? I’m trapped.”

“By what?”

“By my routine. The choices I’ve made, good or bad, that have landed me here. By the way I’ve slowed down.” I slapped my belly. “By this. The way I get out of breath, and ache in the mornings. Even the way I get pissed on a couple of bottles of beer at lunchtime. I’m trapped by myself.”

“There are always choices, George.” She put her glass down on the table and leaned toward me, rumpled, kindly, earnest. “I wasn’t counseling you before, but I am now. I think you need to reconnect. I went back to face what had happened to Mum and Dad.”

“I did go back.”

“Well, I think you need more. Take some time off. I bet you’re owed some vacation. And you wouldn’t be missed for a while,” she said dryly. “Maybe you ought to talk to — uh—”

“Linda?” My ex-wife. We’d divorced before I’d come to work for Hyf; Vivian had never met her. “Don’t think so.”

“She’s going to know you better than anybody else. Or go see your sister in Texas.”