“That’s all right. How are you doing?”

“Not so well. How about you?”

“Terrible,” Swan confessed, feeling guilty; the last thing she wanted was to add to Mqaret’s load somehow. But there was no point in lying at a time like this. And he merely nodded anyway, distracted by his own thoughts. He was just barely there, she saw. The cubes on his desk contained representations of proteins, the bright false colors tangled beyond all hope of untangling. He had been trying to work.

“It must be hard to work,” she said.

“Yes, well.”

After a blank silence, she said, “Do you know what happened to her?”

He shook his head quickly, as if this was an irrelevance. “She was a hundred and ninety-one.”

“I know, but still…”

“Still what? We break, Swan. Sooner or later, at some point we break.”

“I just wondered why.”

“No. There is no why.”

“Or how, then…”

He shook his head again. “It can be anything. In this case, an aneurysm in a crucial part of the brain. But there are so many ways. The amazing thing is that we stay alive in the first place.”

Swan sat on the edge of the desk. “I know. But, so… what will you do now?”

“Work.”

“But you just said…”

He glanced at her from out of his cave. “I didn’t say it wasn’t any use. That wouldn’t be right. First of all, Alex and I had seventy years together. And we met when I was a hundred and thirty. So there’s that. And then also, the work is interesting to me, just as a puzzle. It’s a very big puzzle. Too big, in fact.” And then he stopped and couldn’t go on for a while. Swan put a hand to his shoulder. He put his face in his hands. Swan sat there beside him and kept her mouth shut. He rubbed his eyes hard, held her hand.

“There’ll be no conquering death,” he said at last. “It’s too big. Too much the natural course of things. The second law of thermodynamics, basically. We can only hope to forestall it. Push it back. That should be enough. I don’t know why it isn’t.”

“Because it only makes it worse!” Swan complained. “The longer you live, the worse it gets!”

He shook his head, wiped his eyes again. “I don’t think that’s right.” He blew out a long breath. “It’s always bad. It’s the people still alive who feel it, though, and so…” He shrugged. “I think what you’re saying is that now it seems like some kind of mistake. Someone dies, we say why. Shouldn’t there have been a way to stop it. And sometimes there is. But…”

“It issome kind of mistake!” Swan declared. “Reality made a mistake, and now you’re fixing it!” She gestured at the screens and cubes. “Right?”

He laughed and cried at the same time. “Right!” he said, sniffing and wiping his face. “It’s stupid. What hubris. I mean, fixing reality.”

“But it’s good,” Swan said. “You know it is. It got you seventy years with Alex. And it passes the time.”

“It’s true.” He heaved a big sigh, looked up at her. “But—things won’t be the same without her.”

Swan felt the desolation of this truth wash through her. Alex had been her friend, protector, teacher, step-grandmother, surrogate mother, all that—but also, a way to laugh. A source of joy. Now her absence created a cold feeling, a killer of emotions, leaving only the blankness that was desolation. Sheer dumb sentience. Here I am. This is reality. No one escapes it. Can’t go on, must go on; they never got past that moment.

So on they went.

There was a knock at the lab’s outer door. “Come in,” Mqaret called a little sharply.

The door opened, and in the entry stood a small—very attractive in the way smalls often were—aged, slender, with a neat blond ponytail and a casual blue jacket—about waist high to Swan or Mqaret, and looking up at them like a langur or marmoset.

“Hello, Jean,” Mqaret said. “Swan, this is Jean Genette, from the asteroids, who was here as part of the conference. Jean was a close friend of Alex’s, and is an investigator for the league out there, and as such has some questions for us. I said you might be dropping by.”

The small nodded to Swan, hand on heart. “My most sincere condolences on your loss. I’ve come not only to say that, but to tell you that quite a few of us are worried, because Alex was central to some of our most important projects, and her death was so unexpected. We want to make sure these projects go forward, and to be frank, some of us are anxious to be sure that her death was a matter of natural causes.”

“I assured Jean that it was,” Mqaret told Swan, seeing the look on her face.

Genette did not look completely convinced by this reassurance. “Did Alex ever mention anything to you concerning enemies, threats—danger of any kind?” the small asked Swan.

“No,” Swan said, trying to remember. “She wasn’t that kind of person. I mean, she was always very positive. Confident that things were going to work out.”

“I know. It’s so true. But that’s why you might remember if she had ever said anything out of keeping with her usual optimism.”

“No. I can’t remember anything like that.”

“Did she leave you any kind of will or trust? Or a message? Something to be opened in the event of her death?”

“No.”

“We did have a trust,” Mqaret said, shaking his head. “It doesn’t have anything unusual in it.”

“Would you mind if I had a look around her study?”

Alex had kept her study in a room at the far end of Mqaret’s lab, and now Mqaret nodded and led the little inspector down the hall to it. Swan trailed behind them, surprised that Genette had known of Alex’s study, surprised Mqaret would be so quick to show it, surprised and upset by this notion of enemies, of “natural causes” and its implied opposite. Alex’s death, investigated by some kind of police person? She couldn’t grasp it.

While she sat in the doorway trying to figure out what it could mean, trying to come to grips with it, Genette made a thorough search of Alex’s office, opening drawers, downloading files, sweeping a fat wand over every surface and object. Mqaret watched it all impassively.

Finally the little inspector was done, and stood before Swan regarding her with a curious look. As Swan was sitting on the floor, they were about eye level. The inspector appeared on the verge of another question, but in the end did not say it. Finally: “If you recall anything you think might help me, I would appreciate you telling me.”

“Of course,” Swan said uneasily.

The inspector then thanked them and left.

What was that about?” Swan asked Mqaret.

“I don’t know,” Mqaret said. He too was upset, Swan saw. “I know that Alex had a hand in a lot of things. She’s been one of the leaders in the Mondragon Accord from the beginning, and they have a lot of enemies out there. I know she’s been worried about some system problems, but she didn’t give me any details.” He gestured at the lab. “She knew I wouldn’t be that interested.” A hard grimace. “That I had my own problems. We didn’t talk about our work all that much.”

“But—” Swan started, and didn’t know how to go on. “I mean—enemies? Alex?”

Mqaret sighed. “I don’t know. The stakes could be considered high, in some of these matters. There are forces opposed to the Mondragon, you know that.”

“But still.”

“I know.” After a pause: “ Didshe leave you anything?”

“No! Why should she? I mean, she wasn’t expecting to die.”

“Few people are. But if she had concerns about secrecy, or the safety of certain information, I can see how she might think you would be a kind of refuge.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, couldn’t she have put something into your qube without telling you?”

“No. Pauline is a closed system.” Swan tapped behind her right ear. “I mostly keep her turned off these days. And Alex wouldn’t do that anyway. She wouldn’t talk to Pauline without asking me first, I’m sure of it.”