“No, Miss Ascencio is correct, as far as she goes. That is the recommended course for the mild stages. I’m afraid she is beyond that now, though.”

“What’ll you give her?”

“Corticosteroid hormones. Perhaps chloroquine. I want to stress that these are not cures. They offer only symptomatic relief.”

“What does cure it?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, hell! There’s got to be—”

“No, Nigel,” she said. “There doesn’t have to be anything.”

“Mr. Walmsley, we are dealing with a potentially fatal disease here. Some specialists attribute the rise of lupus to specific pollutants such as lead or sulfur or nitrogen compounds in auto exhausts, but we truly do not know its cause. Or cure.”

Nigel noticed that he was clenching the chair arms. He sat back and put his hands in his lap. “Very well.”

“Miss Ascencio’s condition is not acute. I must warn you, however, that the subacute or chronic stage of this disease has been getting shorter and shorter as its frequency among the population increases. There are cases in which the disease persists but is not ultimately fatal.”

“And—?” she said.

“Other cases sometimes go to completion within a year. But that is not an average. The course of the illness is totally unpredictable.” He leaned forward earnestly to emphasize the point.

“Simply take the drugs and wait, is that what you advise?” Alexandria said.

“We will keep close track of your progress,” Hufman said, glancing at Nigel. “I assure you of that. Any flareup we can probably control with more powerful agents.”

“What is it that kills people, then?” she said. “Spread to the organs. Or worse, interception of the connective tissue in the nervous system.”

“If that happens—” Nigel began.

“We often don’t know right away. Occasionally there are early convulsions. Sometimes a psychosis develops, but that is rare. The clinical spectrum of this disease is broad.”

Nigel sat and listened with pressed lips as the man went on, Alexandria with her hands folded neatly, the man’s voice droning in the soft air with facts and theories, his broad forefinger occasionally tapping Alexandria’s file to reinforce a point, his sentences paraded out to display a new facet of systemic lupus bloody erythematosus, more lockjawed Latinisms, words converging like a pack of erudite wolves to devour some new snippet of causation, diagnosis, remission, exacerbation. Nigel took it all, numbly, sensing a dim tremor within his chest that went unnamed.

During the drive home he concentrated. Traffic was always thin since the demise of the private automobile, and the broad avenues of Pasadena seemed an infinite plane over which they skated with Newtonian skill. He played the game of his youth, when everyone drove but fuel was excruciatingly short. He watched the lights flick yellow red green and timed his approach, seeking the path of minimum energy. It was best to glide the last third of a block, letting road friction and the gentle brushing wind slow them until the red popped over to green. If his timing was off he would down-shift to third, then second, storing the kinetic life that he envisioned as a precious fluid moving within the car, poured into temporary bottles somewhere between engine and axle. Making a turn, he would wait until the last moment before shifting, hoping to stretch the green time, then slapping the stick forward as his leg pumped the clutch, bringing the turgid car to a humming peak, tires howling slightly with expended energy. They arced into a new linear path, vectoring on the Pasadena grid toward the hills. Thus he played again the game of his youth, lines creasing his face.

“You can’t accept it, can you, Nigel?” she said in the long silence.

“What?”

She reached over and caressed his forearm, fluffing up the blond hair. Her own gesture; no other woman had ever touched him that way. “Ease into it,” she said.

He let the silence between them grow as several blocks of neon consumer gumbo passed, the sandwich parlors pooled in wan yellow.

“I’ll try. But sometimes, I… I’ll try.”

Something blazed ahead. As they approached they could make out a large bonfire in a ruined field, flames licking at the cup of darkening sky. Figures moved against the lemon flickering.

“New Sons,” he said.

“Slow,” she said. He lifted his foot and she studied the fire.

“Why is it round?” she murmured.

“It’s an annular flame. One of their symbols.”

“The secret center. Godhood in every person.”

“I suppose.”

Several figures turned from the playing flames and waved their arms toward the car, beckoning.

“They pile their scrap wood in a circle, leaving the center clear. One pair is left there when they light it. For the duration of the fire they are free. Nothing can reach them. They can dance or—”

“How do you know all this?” he said.

“Someone told me.”

A tall woman detached herself from the weaving line of figures and moved toward the street, toward their car. She was the focus of multiple, shifting shadows.

Nigel shifted into first and they surged away into the dim and desiccated night.

“Freedom at the center,” he murmured. “License for public rutting, I’ll wager.”

“So I’ve heard,” she said mildly.

When they let themselves into the apartment, Shirley was lying on the couch, reading. “You’re late,” she said sleepily.

Nigel explained about the car, about Dr. Hufman, and then it all came out in a rush, Alexandria and Nigel alternating in the telling. Lupus. Sore wrists. Connective tissue. Chloroquine. Swelling joints.

Shirley got up wordlessly and embraced each of them. Nigel chattered on for a bit, filling the room with busy, comfortable sound. Into the darting talk Alexandria inserted a mention of supper and their attention deflected to the practicalities of the meal. Nigel offered to do up some simple chopped vegetables in the wok. Rummaging through the refrigerator revealed a total absence of meat. Alexandria volunteered to walk down the two blocks to a grocery store and, without debating the issue, slipped out. Nigel was busy with an array of celery and onions on the chopping block as the door closed behind her and Shirley was washing spinach, snapping off the stems as she went.

At once a silence descended between them.

“It’s serious, isn’t it?” she said. He looked up. Shirley’s dark eyebrows were compressed downward, forming long ridges beneath her towering stack of black hair.

“I gather so.” He went back to chopping. Then, suddenly: “Shit! I wish I knew, really knew.”

“Hufman doesn’t sound very sympathetic.”

“He isn’t. I don’t think he intended to be. He simply told us the bloody facts in that flat voice of his.”

“It takes a while,” she said softly, “to come to terms with facts.”

He rapped the block with the cleaver, scattering onion cuttings. “Right.”

“What do you think we ought to do?”

“Do?” He stopped, puzzled. “Wait. Go on, I suppose.” Shirley nodded. She rolled up the sleeves of her shimmering blue dress, bunching it above the elbows. She handed him the spinach in aligned stacks, ready for cutting. “I think you ought to travel,” she said.

“Eh? What for?”

“To take her mind off it. And yours.”

“Don’t you think her usual, settled routine is more the thing?”

“That’s just the point.” Shirley said abruptly, an edge to her voice. “You two are stuck here because you don’t want to leave your work at JPL—”

“And she doesn’t either,” he said evenly. “She has a career.”

“Damn it!” She threw down a wad of spinach. “She could be dead in a year! Don’t you think she realizes that? Even if you don’t?”

“I realize it,” he said stiffly.

“Then act like it!”

“How?”

Shirley’s mood changed abruptly. “If you become more flexible, Nigel, she will, too. You’re so absorbed in that damned laboratory, those rockets, you can’t see it.” Her lips parted slightly, puckering outward infinitesimally. “I love you both, but you’re so fucking blind.”