Presented with the perfect entree – a grilled-cheese sandwich made with square bread lacking an arched crust, cut into four square pieces – complimented by rectangular steak fries with blunt ends, dill pickles that Dylan trimmed into rectangular sticks, and thick slices of beefsteak tomatoes that had also been trimmed into squares, Shep ate contentedly.

Although Shep used his fingers to pick up not just the sandwich, fries, and pickles, but also the remodeled tomatoes, Dylan made no effort to remind him of the rules of fork usage. There were proper times and places to reinforce table manners, and there was this time and place, where it made sense just to be thankful that they were alive and together and able to share a meal in peace.

They occupied a booth by a window, though Shep disliked sitting where he could be 'looked at by people inside and people out.' These plate-glass windows were so heavily tinted against the glare of the desert sun that from the outside, in daylight, little of the interior could be seen.

Besides, the only booths in the establishment were along the windows, and the regular tables were so closely set that Shep would have quickly become agitated when the growing lunch crowd pressed in around him. The booth offered structural barriers that provided a welcome degree of privacy, and following his recent chastisement, Shep was in a flexible mood.

Psychic imprints on menus and utensils squirmed under Dylan's touch, but he discovered that he continued to get better at being able to suppress his awareness of them.

Dylan and Jilly chatted inanely about inconsequential things, like favorite movies, as though Hollywood-produced entertainments could possibly have serious relevance to them now that they had been set apart from the rest of humanity and were most likely by the hour traveling further beyond ordinary human experience.

Soon, when movie talk began to seem not merely insignificant but bizarre, evidence of epic denial, Jilly started to bring them back to their dilemma. Referring to the convoluted chain of logic with which Dylan had gotten his brother to accept that folding out of or into a public place was as taboo as peeing on old ladies' shoes, she said, 'That was brilliant out there.'

'Brilliant?' He shook his head in disagreement. 'It was mean.'

'No. Don't beat yourself up.'

'In part it was mean. I hate that, but I've gotten pretty good at it when I have to be.'

'The point needed to be made,' she said. 'And quickly.'

'Don't make excuses for me. I might enjoy it too much, and start making them for myself.'

'Grim doesn't look good on you, O'Conner. I like you better when you're irrationally optimistic.'

He smiled. 'I like me better that way, too.'

After finishing the last bite of a club sandwich and washing it down with a swallow of Coors, she sighed and said, 'Nanomachines, nanocomputers… if all those little buggers are busy making me so much smarter, why do I still have trouble getting my mind around the whole concept?'

'They aren't necessarily making us smarter. Just different. Not all change is for the better. By the way, Proctor found it awkward to keep talking about nanomachines controlled by nanocomputers, so he invented a new word to describe those two things when they're combined. Nanobots. A combination of nano and robots.'

'A cute name doesn't make them any less scary.' She frowned, rubbed the back of her neck as if working a chill out of it. 'Deja vu all over again. Nanobots. That rings a bell. And back in the room, you seemed to expect me to know more about this. Why?'

'The piece I called up for you to read on the laptop, the one I condensed for you instead… it was a transcript of an hour-long interview that Proctor did on your favorite radio program.'

'Parish Lantern?'

'Proctor's been on the show three times in five years, the third time for two hours. It figures you might've heard him once, anyway.'

Jilly brooded about this development for a moment and clearly didn't like the implications. 'Maybe I'd better start worrying more about Earth's magnetic pole shifting, and about brain leeches from an alternate reality, for that matter.'

Outside, a vehicle pulled off the street, into the parking lot, and raced past the restaurant at such imprudent speed that Dylan's attention was drawn by the roar of its engine and by the flash of its passage. A black Suburban. The rack of four spotlights fixed to the roof above the windshield didn't come as a standard accessory with every Suburban sold.

Jilly saw it, too. 'No. How could they find us?'

'Maybe we should've changed plates again after what happened at the restaurant in Safford.'

The SUV braked to a stop in front of the motel office, next door to the coffee shop.

'Maybe that little weasel, Skipper, at the service station suspected something.'

'Maybe a hundred things.'

Dylan faced the motel, but Jilly was sitting with her back to the action. Or to some of it. She pointed, tapping one index finger against the window. 'Dylan. Across the street.'

Through the tinted window, through the heat snakes writhing up from the sun-baked pavement, he saw another black Suburban in front of the motel that stood on the far side of the street.

Finishing the last bite of his lunch, Shep said, 'Shep wants cake.'

From his angle of view, even with his face close to the window, Dylan wasn't able to see the entire Suburban now that it had parked in front of the registration office. Half the vehicle remained in his line of sight, however, and he watched two men get out of the driver's side. Dressed in lightweight, light-colored clothes suitable for a desert resort, they looked like golfers headed for an afternoon on the links: unusually big golfers; unusually big, tough-looking golfers.

'Please,' Shep remembered to say. 'Cake please.'

Dylan was accustomed to being one of the biggest guys in just about any room, but the two hulks who got out of the driver's side of the Suburban looked as if they had spent the morning in a rodeo ring, tossing cowboys in the air and goring them. They disappeared around the car, heading toward the motel office.

'Let's go,' he said, sliding out of the booth, rising to his feet.

Jilly got up at once, but Shep didn't move. Head bowed, staring at his clean plate, he said, 'Cake please.'

Even if served in a wedge instead of a square, the single curved end of a piece of cake could be flattened easily. Otherwise, a wedge was satisfyingly angular, not curvy, not shapey. Shep loved cake.

'We'll get cake,' Dylan lied. 'But first we're going to the men's room, buddy.'

'Pee?' Shep asked.

'Pee,' Dylan confirmed quietly, determined to avoid making a scene.

'Shep doesn't need to pee.'

Fire laws and a need to receive deliveries guaranteed the existence of a back door; but no doubt they would have to go through the kitchen to reach it, a route that would assure too much commotion even if they were permitted to take it. They dared not leave by the front door, for fear of being spotted by the faux golfers. Only one exit remained.

'You may not get another chance for a while, buddy. Better go now,' Dylan explained.

'No pee.'

Their waitress arrived. 'Will that be everything?'

'Cake,' said Shep.

'Could we have menus to look at the desserts?' Dylan asked.

'Cake.'

'I thought you were leaving,' the waitress said.

'Just going to the men's room,' Jilly assured her. When the waitress frowned, Jilly added, 'The men's and the ladies'.'

'Cake.'

Withdrawing their lunch ticket from a pocket of her apron, the waitress said, 'We have some wonderful cakes.' She extracted a pencil from her elaborately piled and pinned red hair. 'Toasted-coconut, Black Forest, lemon, and lemon-walnut.'