“Well… that’s not the kind of thing I’m going to chew you out about, I mean, I work for Lindsay Warren, for God’s sake, I’m going to hell in a Hummer.”

“Well, thanks,” I said. “That’s it.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” I said. “What’s happening with Ix Ruinas?”

“Sorry,” she said, “that’s a fourth question.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, come on, we’re adults, and, you know, we’re leveling with each other.”

“Sorry.”

“Okay, let’s each agree to add a question.”

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you the answer if you come back to work for us.”

“On what?”

“On Neo-Teo. It’ll be the art-and-life-and-everything work of the next century. It’ll be fucking Rome.”

“Well, that’s great,” I said-I didn’t want to say, “Yeah, but the Warren Corporation makes Caligula look like Heidi,” or some other forcedly snippy thing-“but you’re the artist, designer, whatever, I’m just a code monkey-”

“No, seriously, we really want you on the team.”

“Doing what?”

“Like, getting the imagineering and architecture into tune with the Game, more in tune with the new calendar…”

“What new calendar?” Have you been studying?” I meant studying the Game.

“Yeah.”

“Great.”

“But we are already missing your expertise. And it’ll be fun to work with you. I like you.”

“Oh. Thanks. Well, I like you.”

Her body sort of constricted and extended. “Hmm,” she said. “Maybe we’re getting into feelings here.”

“Yeah, I have a little trouble with, you know, feelings whoo whoo whoo feelings.”

“Everybody has trouble with feelings.”

“I guess.”

“But, like I say, I do feel very fond of you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That’s great, I, feel fond of you.” Hell. I really did, and it was cramping my act. I guess the takeaway is when you’re planning to betray, destroy, and murder somebody and her child, bonding is not a good idea. Damn. It and I and everything all felt dark, evil, and not as inevitable as I’d “So let’s hang out together and do this project.”

“Thanks, but still, no, I don’t have time, I mean, it’d take a lot of time.”

“It’ll take an hour a day, what’s the problem?”

“I mean, I just don’t feel like doing it.” Except I was realizing that I did kind of feel like doing it. Or at least I was realizing that being here felt good. No, worse than that. I was realizing that I wanted to see what Max looked like in his little Dick Cheney costume, I wanted to see how the next Bond movie would turn out, I wanted to see whether she was right about that orgasm thing, I wanted to settle down in some gated compound and wake up with Marena every morning and go out together to feed the turkeys and water the soybeans and pull the corpses off the electric fence. Hell. Maybe these people really weren’t so bad, I thought. Maybe even a nontrivial fraction of people everywhere weren’t so bad, maybe people in the future would adapt themselves to be even less bad. Maybe I hadn’t been weighing the decency fraction heavily enough, maybe I was wrong, maybe I’d made a mistake, I mean, with the EOE, maybe I had to stop it, maybe “Jed. You said you don’t have time to do it. Not that you don’t want to do it. Which is it?”

“It’s, uh, the latter.”

“Bullfuckingshitfuckbullcrapfuckingshit.”

I thought. I was sure I hadn’t touched my nose or rubbed my ears or any of that stuff. Had I looked toward the door? Maybe she could spot microexpressions. Maybe that’s how she got to be such a big deal in the competitive, high-stakes world of the international entertainment industry. I mean, besides talent. She could walk into a meeting and “Okay, why don’t you have time to do it?” she asked. “What’s going to happen?”

“Sorry, you’re out of questions-”

“Fuck the three questions.”

“ You came up with the three questions.”

“Then fuck me and the three questions, I’m asking you, as one concerned adult to another.” She bounced up, walked to a built-in bookcase on the south wall, and dug a pack of Camel shorts out of their hiding place behind a copy of Autodesk Maya 9 Fundamentals.

“Okay, fine. Nothing’s going to happen.” Wow, I thought, she’s feeling some real angst. Of course, one realizes that nobody ever really quits, but in her case, and with Max in the house “Again I call bullshit,” she said. She lit a cigarette with an old blue-enamel Decoish desk lighter, came back around, sat down, pushed the Go board aside, and set down a big, heavy glass cigar ashtray in its place.

Pause. She pulled in a long, luxurious drag, vaporizing a full inch. Despite everything else, you could feel the satisfaction of long-denied addiction.

Damn it. I’d thought the Q-and-A was over, and I’d been thinking about something else-well, honestly I’d been wondering again what kind of name Octy was besides Roman/Shakespearean/Peakean-and then she’d come in and zapped me.

“Something’s going to-” she started to say.

Pause. “What?” I asked.

“Oh, God-”

“-you mean you don’t have time to waste, ” she said. “You’re sick, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Yes, you are, you’re like, terminally Pythian or something.”

“What’s that?”

“We’ve got to fix this. Lindsay’ll pay the bill whether you’ve quit or not.” The words came out bunched together.

“Marena, come on, stop. I’m not sick.”

“Really? Well, something’s wrong.”

“I’m just not feeling top-tip, uh, tup-”

“You’ve like, seen that you’re going to get sick, in the Game.”

“Um… well…”

“ Fuck, I knew it. Hell.” She bounced up and around the Go board and touched my brow with the back of her hand. “Yeah, you feel a little squeamy. And your pupils are dilated, they’re, like, like ripe olives, how much of the stuff are you on, right now?”

“Not too much, just the regular dose. It’s nothing, it’s like an espresso. Well, like nine espressos. Uh, — si.”

“I want to get Dr. Lisuarte on it right now.”

“No, I-”

“Why not? They made this mess, let’s get them to clean it up.”

“Look, sweetie, I don’t want them messing with me any more right now, okay?”

“So who’s going to deal with it?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m handling it.”

“Handle what? What is it? A brain tumor?”

“No-”

“Fibrous lungs? Blood press-oh, my God, you’re a hemophiliac. You’re going to have a little stroke and it’s going to wipe you out. Right? Shit.”

“Look, however you’re figuring out-well, I’m not sick. Ask me if I’m sick.”

“Are you sick?”

“No.”

She watched me for a few seconds.

“Okay,” she said. Evidently, however she was reading me, she’d decided that last bit was the truth. “So, if you don’t have time, but you’re not worried about, about, uh, your own death, then… oh, hell.”

I know I said that her face didn’t show things, but maybe I was just getting in a little ethnic slur there, because now something in her face did change, slowly but very noticeably, even to me. It showed fear, and it showed it unmistakably.

“It’s me, isn’t it?”

“No,” I said, “It’s-”

“ I’m sick. It’s that EVC thing again. How long do I have?”

“It’s definitely not you. Honest injun.”

She looked at me. She looked at me some more. One thing we auties and pseudoauties don’t do too much, and which normals do way too much for our taste, is that normals fucking look at you.

“Okay, fine. So what is it, did you see something in the Game?”

“Nothing unusual. If I had you’d know about it.”

Pause. As before, she looked at me and I looked back.

“So, so, what are you saying? You do know how you’re going to die, we’ve established that. Right?” She took another drag.

“Well, uh-kind of, but it’s a discouraging topic, let’s talk about something-”

“How? How are you going to die?”

“I’m not going to tell you. I’m done.”

“Okay, when? When are you going to die?”