“So maybe the world did end and we just didn’t notice.”

“Well, that’s not exactly-”

“Or else the Bush administration covered it up.”

“Well, then we wouldn’t be making that speculation, though.” She didn’t answer, but she did look at me as though she was interested. “Actually, there are a lot of ways the world could end and nobody’d notice.”

“You mean like if it happened too fast?”

“Yeah.”

“How would that work?” she asked.

“Oh, you know, strangelets, earth-core perturbations, remote atom, atomic events from like naked singularities or whatever, um…”

“Well, that’d suck.”

“I don’t know, I don’t think most people wouldn’t even mind.”

“You mean if they didn’t understand what was happening?”

“No, I mean, even in advance, people wouldn’t-I mean, look, half of them are at least wannabe suicidal anyway. They just don’t want to deal with a lot of nooses and razor blades and guns and wreckage and starvation and fire and plague and stuff.” I half noticed that we’d gotten into dangerous conversational territory, but, as so often, I didn’t shut up. “They just don’t want to see that shot of the top of the Empire State Building poking out of the water.”

“Well, maybe. Still, that’s only half of them.”

“And the other half are just too dumb to be suicidal.”

“Okay, but everybody dying is a bigger deal because then nothing means anything.”

“You mean like it does now?”

“Well…”

“I mean, I wouldn’t go that far, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I mean, mean. You know, mean…”

“So anyway you think that’s just, that’s the boy of it,” she said. “Like, those pilots died happy.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“God, you’re so butch.”

Huh? I thought. “Wow. Thanks,” I said. “I wish I’d known that in high school.”

“And it’s like you don’t even know it. Which makes it that much eroticker.”

I mumbled something so incoherent I couldn’t understand it myself.

“I can’t get over how healthy you look,” she said. “You’re like, ruddy.”

“Rutty?”

“Have you been working out?”

“Oh… I don’t know…” I guess she’s right, actually, I thought. Ever since I’d knocked over that first domino this afternoon-despite the occasional twang of guilt, and even despite some trepanation, I mean, trepidation, or, let’s admit, fear-I’d felt this sort of… I guess, warmth. Hmm. Well, Jed, that’s the evolutionary psychology of it. Chicks always dig guys who’ve killed a few people. Or, evidently, guys who are about to kill a whole lot of people. It gives a dude a glow, like the third month of pregnancy.

Marena flopped mustelinely onto her side. “Okay, questies. What if I started making out with you right now?”

“Uh, well, I’d certainly reciprocate, for sure, I’d-”

“Don’t do me any favors-”

“No, I’m flattered, I mean-”

“Maybe I should get out my toy chest. You should see the thingy I just got.”

“Is it like, an orgasmatron?”

“Kind of. It’ll keep you going for, well, for a while.”

“Going, like, what?”

“Well, not quite climaxing.”

“Darn.”

“Still, that’s on the way.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. In the future, everyone will be able to sustain an orgasm for fifteen minutes.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. The very near future. So get ready.” She raised herself up in kind of upward-facing-dog position, stretched her head out on her long neck, and kissed me. I reciprocated. What if Max Sleeks in? I wondered. Better bar the door, Katie. Well, maybe he’s used to such things. Hot mama.

“Call A-sub-three,” she said. Pause. “Hi. Get me a half hour, okay? Yeah, Happy Rapture. Bye. Sorry.” She got my head in her hands. Whoa. What seemed like a hundred and eight fingernails swarmed over my doubly naked scalp, and I saw as well as felt schools of that silver glitter that fireworks makers call drizzle effects. I try to take my hat off indoors, but it’s a struggle, especially now after my head got shaved for the downloadings, and it was about the most gloves-offly intimate thing she could do, like she was slicing off my pants with bandage scissors. Wow, we’re making out, I thought, like I was back in fifth grade. Now one of her other hands was fumbling with my groin area.

“How about you fuck me like it’s still the end of the world?”

“Uh, mmm,” I said. Okay, I thought, one last time, it’s probably a good idea-but then at the same moment I thought how maybe I couldn’t deal with it, and/or, more importantly, it was feeling like Jed junior wouldn’t be able to deal with it. As they can, he could tell I was afraid of something. Chill out, I thought. No fear. Fear is the woody-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total erectile obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see the path where it has gone past on its path. And I will see that where the fear has gone there will be only a trail of tiny fearprints in the sands of the Erg. And only I will remain, picking grains of erg-sand out of my inner eye, like one whose water is frothy with liban and who has forgotten the ilm of his axolotls, one who Can it, Muad’Jed. Get a grip. I got a grip on her head, but it didn’t help. Marena came up for air.

“You’re distracted,” she said.

“No, I’m… I’m, I’m, I’m a simple soul today, I’m-”

“No, your sacral chakra’s off-line. You’re up to something.”

“No,” I said, “I’m just, you know, preoccu-”

“No, I think you’re feeling distrustful.”

“Well…”

“Okay, fine,” she said. She pushed both of the buttons down halfway, stopping both clocks, and resettled herself in a lotosish position. “Look, tell you what, I’ll give you three Truth or Deaths.”

“Sorry?”

“You ask me anything, any one thing at a time, and I’ll tell you the absolute truth, and then I get to ask you and et sequels.”

“Sequentes,” I said.

“Right. Boy, you’re really on a Latin kick.”

“Well, I’m a Latin American.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s the death part?” I asked.

“You have to tell the truth, like, whole and nothing but. Or else drink hemlock.”

“Is that a real game?”

“So I’ll come totally clean if you will. Okay? Pinkie swear.”

“Okay.” We swore. Her pinkie nearly ripped mine off its metacarpal capitulum.

“You start. Ask me whatevs.”

“Okay. You set me up, right?”

“In what way?” she asked. She didn’t hesitate. She was a cool customer.

“All the time when I was explaining to you about the colored directions and whatever else about the Sacrifice Game and whatever, you actually knew all about it.”

“No, I did not-I didn’t know all that stuff, in fact I still don’t understand it, in-”

“But like, when I-the first time I came to your office, you guys already wanted to reel me in, right? Taro’d said I’d want to see the Codex and you used that to bait me. Right?”

“Well, there’s some truth to that, but you weren’t the only-I mean, we looked up at least four others of Taro’s students from when he was in New Haven and interviewed all of them.”

“But when I begged you to send me you’d already decided to.”

“No, not entirely.”

“But you thought I’d be better at it, I mean, instead of Tony Sic, to zap back to Mayaland, but you figured I’d get spooked unless I thought I was convincing you to let me do it. Right?”

“We hadn’t decided between you and Tony yet.”

“But you thought I should do it and not Sic. You were being really deceptive.”

“Well, okay, I’ll say-but, I mean, come on. Would you say you’re a very trusting person?”

“Uh, no.”

“If you’d thought we had any-you wouldn’t have gotten near us. Right?”

“Well, maybe I… I guess not.” Any what? I wondered. Nefarious designs, I guess. Let it go.

“So I’ll say yes, but now you’re glad anyway, right?” Finally, she succeeded in severing the fingernail’s last attachment with her left canine tooth.