Table of Contents

Introduction

by Neil Clarke

The Last Judgment

by James Patrick Kelly

Vladimir Chong Chooses to Die

by Lavie Tidhar

Extracurricular Activities

by Yoon Ha Lee

About the Artist and Authors

Introduction

Neil Clarke

Welcome to our November 2020 issue!

Volume five in my The Best Science Fiction of the Year series was published at the end of October. I’m really happy to see the series continuing and to have the book out in the world, but the first thing I normally do when a new book arrives is set aside two copies, one for my parents and another, signed, for my cousin. As I mentioned in last month’s editorial, Johnny passed away in late September. What I didn’t mention was that while he was in the hospital, he was asking for a copy of that book. I cobbled together a copy from my master files and loaded it onto a Kindle I had sitting around, but he never got the chance to read it.

I have a feeling this will be a year of moments like that, particularly with the holidays coming up. I want to find some way to honor his memory and passing along books (recalling what he did for me) might be a good course of action. Perhaps a school somewhere. I’ve used Donors Choose (donorschoose.org) to support school-based science fiction projects in the past. Perhaps I can find something there. You might want to check them out as well. It’s never a bad idea to support teachers that use SF in the classroom.

Until next time,

-Neil

The Last Judgment

James Patrick Kelly

1

I was pedaling toward lunch when my sidekick chirped. I pulled up and straddled the bike with one foot on the curb. There was no visual on the screen but some granny with a raspy voice announced that she was Maude Descano and needed to see me right away. I probably shouldn’t have laughed. The only Maude Descano I’d ever heard of was so connected downtown that the City Mothers took turns mowing her lawn. I do my best for my clients but I’m a realist. Why would the Maude Descano be calling a private detective when she had Deputy Chief Little singing harmony for her? It was a question worth asking, so I did.

Whoever this granny was, she decided to get huffy. “I don’t discuss my affairs over the phone,” she said.

She would have to be a fossil if she remembered phones; their time was over before the devils disappeared all the men. “Fair enough.” I said. “I’m just on my way to lunch, so maybe we can get together this afternoon. Say two o’clock? Where can we meet?”

“Make it now or don’t bother, Ms. Hardaway. 122 Fairview.”

My play then should have been to tell her to get cocked and cut the connection, except that Fairview ran through a neighborhood where even the sewers were lined with gold. Given her manners and that address, maybe she was the Maude Descano. If for no other reason than I might get to swipe an ashtray or spill something on her sofa, I decided not to bite back.

“Do you hear knocking on your front door?” I said. “That’s me. Open up.”

122 Fairview was the kind of Mock Tudor mansion that would have given Henry VIII nightmares. Its steep roof was covered in bright terra cotta and the walls were a hodgepodge of herringbone brickwork and stucco the color of smokers’ teeth. Someone had painted the half timbers blue—probably a bot. I’ve never quite understood why bots love to paint things; they don’t have the color sense that God gave to shrimp. The windows on the first floor had heavy iron casements and diamond-shaped leaded panes. Anyone looking out of them would see a world that was pinched and dark. An accurate view, but depressing as hell. If it were my place, I would’ve busted a chair through those windows to let in some light.

As I chained my bike to the wrought iron fence that surrounded the mansion and its vast lawn, a shadow blocked the sun. A flock of devils, a dozen, maybe twenty, headed downtown. We’d been seeing a lot of them lately. One of the local devils, Eller, had called a meeting to discuss something called the Index of Human Dysfunction. As if they would know; the devils were what was wrong with us. A cobblestone drive wandered toward the portico of the Descano place but was in no hurry to get there. Your average jane walking that drive would have plenty of time to think about the quality she was visiting, maybe get watery knees at the prospect of meeting so much money. I spent the time deciding what a flock of devils should be called. A damnation of devils? A pollution? Too bad that crows already had locked up murder for their group identity. I passed beds of pastel impatiens and a boxwood hedge and then a stand of half a dozen peach trees, branches laden with ripe fruit that nobody seemed to want. There was already a scatter of drops in the grass, some rotting into gray-green fuzz. I stepped off the drive and smooshed one underfoot. It felt like the right thing to do.

A bot opened the one of the grated doors. “Is this one making the acquaintance of Fay Hardaway?”

“Not if I can help it.” I don’t chitchat with strange bots. “I’m here for Maude Descano.”

“Please enter and become comfortable.” He stepped aside and I brushed by him.

The reception hall was opulent and knew it. The floors were polished green marble veined in white, the wainscoting looked to be mahogany and the central staircase was wide enough for a Fourth of July parade. On one wall hung a rose-colored tapestry of a unicorn eyeballing some medieval jane dressed in living room curtains. On the other was an enormous mirror in a gilt frame. Next to it was a mahogany gun cabinet with a glass display. That stopped me.

There had been a lot of gun play immediately after the men disappeared. Suicides, riots, robbery—the Crazy Time. The City Mothers had been melting them down into Peace Statues ever since; even the cops didn’t carry. I’d seen guns in museums but didn’t know much about them. Men’s stuff, cocked. I counted three rifles—or maybe they were shotguns—and maybe half a dozen handguns hanging barrel down off brass mounts.

“Are these legal?”

“Collectors’ items are permitted in the absence of bullets,” said the bot to my back. “It is regrettable that Ms. Descano is making herself available to another person at present. She expresses the fullness of true apology and hopes you will take nutrition while you wait. Would that please Ms. Hardaway?”

“Oh, I get it.” I put a snarl in my voice, although I knew it would bounce off the bot. “Her time is precious and mine is cheap.”

“Your discontent is not unexpected. May this one add personal regret to that of Ms. Descano? You may wish to know that this one is her valet, called Kirby.”

“Does valet outrank butler?”

“There are a diversity of duties which must be often completed.”

I thought about leaving, but I’d come a long way. “You said something about lunch?”

The bot mentioned a handful of cold dishes: a carrot and orange mousse, ostrich liver pate, neartrout sushi rolls and curried asparagus soup. They all sounded better than the 29¢ combo meal I’d been planning to grab at McDonald’s. “Or this one could drizzle hot salmon gel over a spinach salad,” said the bot. “Perhaps a veal chop?”

“Can I eat off the good china?”

“The Spode or the Wedgewood?”

2

The bot left me in the library. Maybe the size of it was intended to intimidate, although I doubted the granny had actually read many of the obsolete books. The room smelled of furniture polish and elderly carpet and paper going foxy at the edges. It was hard to see much in the gray light that squeezed through the two leaded windows, but busy shelves marched out of sight up the walls, accessed by four rolling ladders. The weight of all those dead ideas might have crushed someone who cared about the world before the devils, but that someone wasn’t me. There was one haven in the library from the collection; a walk-in fireplace that was practically a room in itself. It had dark wooden panels sculptured to look like bolts of cloth and benches at either end that faced each other. A dusty pile of birch logs perched on andirons in the firebox.

I sat on one of the benches and waited. The bot had called the walk-in fireplace an inglenook, and I rolled the word round in my mouth, getting the feel of it. I decided I liked it, not that I’d have much use for it. The baby’s bedroom in the apartment where Sharifa and I lived would have fit inside this particular inglenook.

The bot returned, wheeling a tray. On it was bowl of fresh asparagus soup and a couple of sushi rolls. I made short work of them and sat back. I suppose I could have gotten up to inventory Descano’s taste in literature, but that was what I was expected to do. So I lit a cigarette instead, thinking maybe that would make the ashtray I wanted to steal magically appear. When it didn’t, I ashed onto the logs. Maude Descano came through the door just as I was flipping the cigarette butt into the fireplace.

She was a frail old bird, round in the body but with stork legs and a long and saggy neck. The skin of her face had turned the corner on pale and was headed for blue. The mouth and chin had sunk over the years away from the prominent nose and sharp brown eyes had retreated into mascara hollows. Her green kimono was decorated with golden phoenix birds, coils of purple cord, and bands of flowers. She closed the door and doddered toward the inglenook, maybe a step and a half ahead of the undertaker.

“Business not so good, missy?” Her voice was thin as lace. “I just have to call and you come running?”

I let that pass. The only sound in the room was the shuffling of her silk slippers.

“And then you let me keep you waiting,” she said at last. “Made it easy for me to put you in your place.”

“I’ll make a note of that.” I drew a checkmark in the air. “When this granny says hurry, come slow.” I laid my sidekick on the bench next to me but didn’t set it to record. “I came because I wanted to see the arrogant old bitch who they all talk about downtown. But they’ve overestimated you, Maude. Making me snap over here and then keeping me waiting was a weak move—a cliché. You can probably read about it in half the books you’ve got stacked in this funeral parlor. You can’t put me in any damn place, because I don’t give a shit about you. I ate soup and smoked a cigarette and now we’re talking. That’s what’s happened so far.”

“Attitude.” She settled on the bench opposite me.

“Yeah. A bit frayed at the cuffs, but it still fits.” I rested my hand on the sidekick. “I’m going to record now if we’re doing business. If not, thanks for lunch.”

“Cigarettes?” She nodded at me. “I’ll take one.”

I set the sidekick to record, crossed in front of the fireplace and shook a cigarette from the pack. “You know they sell these on every street corner.”

“Kirby doesn’t let me smoke.”

I lit it for her. “You let your bots tell you what to do?”

“Doctors tell me what to do.” She inhaled and held it in. Her eyes got distant for a moment. “Kirby knows who’s in charge.” She sighed and smoke curled from her nostrils. “You’re killing yourself with these things, missy.”

“A lot of people kill themselves—it’s the national pastime, or haven’t you heard? I’m just on the installment plan.” I dropped the pack in her lap. “Keep it.” I settled back onto my bench.

She smoked. I watched her.

“Know anything about art?” she said finally.

“Not much. We were studying it in the fifth grade when my school got burned down.”

She blew smoke at me. “Bad luck to have to grow up back then.” She leaned over and ground the cigarette butt against the hearth. “Were you born before or after?”

“After.”

She scuffed a sandal against the floor. “So all you’ve ever known is craziness.”

“Craziness?” Grannies do love their cock nostalgia; it makes my skin crawl. “I’ve heard that men were pretty much unhinged, Maude. Rape. War. Genocide.”

“There was that.” She made a dismissive gesture. “And they liked to be on top, not that they were any good at it. But we had two hundred thousand years to get used to living with men. Hard to get used to being by ourselves overnight. Or in four decades.”

I hadn’t biked across town for a history lesson. Especially a chapter that the devils had written. I hated the devils. “So what about art?”

“Heard of a painter named Hieronymus Bosch?”

“Sounds like a virus.” I glanced down at my sidekick, which had already completed the search. The screen showed a sketch of old man in a floppy hat. His skin was as wrinkled as bark. “That really his name?”

She shook her head. “Jheronimus or maybe Jeroen. Brits mangled it into Hieronymus, which we’re stuck with. Last name was van Aken but he signed his paintings Bosch after his hometown, ‘s-Hertogenbosch. That’s in Holland. He was born around 1450, died in 1518. Painted on wood, lots of his best work is lost. Only twenty-seven undisputed paintings and nine drawings.”

“So he’s rare. And valuable?”

“Priceless.”

That was one word I had never believed in. Everything has a price; the trick is getting to the negotiation. “And he painted what?”

“Some saints. Sinners mostly. He was religious, saw damnation all around him. Demons and monsters and hellfire. They called him “the maker of devils.”

I crunched that for a moment. Some people claimed that our devils—the aliens who disappeared the men—must have scouted earth before. They said that all those images of biblical devils were based on historical encounters with our all-too-real aliens. Maybe Bosch had just been painting what he’d seen. “Sounds like a man for our times. So what about him?”

“My late husband . . . ”

“Wait.” I said. “You were married? Just how old are you, Maude?”

“Married and had a daughter the old-fashioned way.” She gave me a silent laugh that showed me more than I wanted to see of her gums. “The old sperm and egg trick. What, does that shock you, missy?”

I grimaced. “Better you than me.”

“My husband’s name was Nicky.” Maude Descano licked her lips. “He liked to think of himself as an art collector. Whenever he came into money, he’d head off to one of those flossy auction houses like Southeby’s or Christie’s to buy himself a present. A Diego Rivera and a Bakota helmet mask and then a Richard Lethem. Some minor Dalis. Roman coins. Three Ansel Adams prints of Yosemite. He bought that Ryder over there, except it turned out to be a forgery.” She pointed at a tiny painting that was all dark smudges. “Just five months before Nicky had the heart attack, he found a Bosch. It had been hacked off a lost painting on wood called The Last Judgment. Provenance is a little cloudy. Maybe it only came from Bosch’s workshop. But Nicky liked to tell people it was the real deal.” She paused. “It’s been stolen.”

3

“Last time I saw it was Tuesday.” She heaved herself off the bench. Her slippers whispered across the library floor. She flicked a light switch and an overhead spot lit an empty expanse of wall between bookshelves. “Noticed this yesterday.”

I came up behind her. Two pan head screws stuck out from the wallboard about fifteen centimeters apart; a thread of dust dangled from one of them.

“What kind of security do you have here?”

“Just Kirby.”

I snorted. We lean too much on the damn bots; sometimes I think this is their world now and we’re just renting. “Doesn’t pay to cut corners, Maude.” Brown paint on the wall had faded; there was a dark coffee-colored shadow, maybe thirty centimeters by twenty, where the little painting had been. “It must have been hanging a long time.”

“Fifty-some years.”

I pointed at the bronze bracket the size of a cash card on the floor. “That fell off of what?”

“The Bosch was attached to the wall with Ryman hangers screwed into the frame. It’s called a keeper. Hides the hangers and the screws and secures the mount.”

“I’m guessing there would have been two of them? Where’s the other?”

“You’re the detective.”

I let that pass. “Could be fingerprints on it.”

“Sure.” She was frowning. “But who cares? I know who stole it.”

“Then call the cops,” I said. “You bought them, might as well pull them out of the drawer.”

“If it comes to that, I just might.”

She was pissing me off with her games. I waited for her to go on but she gave me nothing. Maybe she was waiting for me to play twenty questions with her. Maybe she thought it would make her look smart.

“Excuse me, Maude,” I said, “but now that the mystery is solved, is there anything else I can do for you? Mow the laundry? Wash the lawn? Otherwise I should be going.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She sniffed. “As I said, I had a daughter. Her name was Renata. She died two years ago.” Her face was stone. “Killed herself, if you must know. Like you said, the national pastime.”

I didn’t say I was sorry; I don’t think she would have heard me.

“Her daughter’s name is Anne. She’ll have the Bosch, or she’ll know where it is.”

“Your grand-daughter stole it? You know this how?”

“She was here Tuesday, the last time I saw the painting. She said she needed money. When I wouldn’t give it to her, she got angry, called me names and stormed out.”

“What did she want the money for?”

“She wouldn’t say, but I think she wanted to use it to run away from me.” The granny tugged at the belt of her kimono. “Which is why I didn’t give it to her. She’s a troubled girl, very much like her mother.”

“How much was she asking for?”

“Six thousand dollars.”

I could tell she wanted me to think about that, so I did. I considered what six large could buy. A house with a lawn. A college education. Or a dozen PIs like me. “Has she asked for money before?”

“Often.”

“Have you given it to her?”

“Sometimes, but never more than a couple of hundred.”

I pulled my sidekick out and took pictures of the library and the space where the painting had hung. I blew a quickseal onto the bracket and put it in my pocket. I examined the library door. It was paneled and heavy, made of a dark wood, mahogany by the look of it. The brass doorknob had a double cylinder key lock; you needed the key not only to get in but also to get out. If it had been locked, getting into the library would have been a problem for anyone but a pro. Somehow I didn’t think Maude’s grand-daughter was in the business.

“I’ll need a pix of the painting.”

“See Kirby.”

“And what does your bot have to say about all of this?”

“Nothing. He reports no knowledge of what happened here.”

“Not much in the way of security, is he?” I pulled a book off the shelf at random. “Say, is there anything else here worth stealing?” It was The Great Gatsby, bound in leather. “I might take a crack at you myself, Maude. Seems like easy enough work.” I opened it to the title page. Copyright 2011—before the devils. “So she lets herself into your house and this room. She pries a painting on a chunk of wood from the wall, knocks some of the hardware off, and skips out again without either you or the bot hearing a damn thing?” Saying it out loud didn’t improve her story much. “Do you know how much you’re going to have to pay me to believe that?”

“Two hundred now.” She pointed a finger at me. “And another two when you bring it to me.” Her arm shook. “I want that Bosch, missy.”

It was triple my usual fee for what would be a straightforward extraction, if the case were as simple as she said. But it wasn’t, and we both knew it. That was why the pay was so good.

“Why?”

“Why?” She looked puzzled, as if I’d asked her to explain air. “What kind of question is that? Because it’s mine.”

“You like it? Your favorite thing in this antique store?”

She sniffed. “Not particularly.” She watched me judge her, but my good opinion wasn’t part of our deal. “There’s a principle involved here. A principle of ownership.”

“So when I get it for you, what happens to the granddaughter?” I blew the dust off The Great Gatsby and gave it to her. “You throw her to the law?”

“Absolutely not. Anne is all the family I have.” She looked weary, as if she were feeling not only the weight of the book but of her enormous library, as if she were trying to bear up under the burden of the entire mansion and all the money that had built it. “If you bring that painting back, it was never stolen.”

“I don’t know, Maude. I’ve never had much luck changing the past.”

She smiled at me, her teeth long and yellow and fierce against her thin gums. “You’d be surprised at how easy it can be.”

4

I grilled the bot, but he was no help. “This one is regrettably uninformed in that matter.” I didn’t believe him, but I couldn’t see an easy way to knock him off his story. When I discovered whatever it was that Descano was keeping from me, I would shake him until his sensors rattled.

Why don’t I trust bots? Because the devils made them. The grannies were crazy with grief and rage for years after the disappearance. Everything stopped. Lots of it burned. I grew up in that world of pain; I watched girls starve, their moms kill themselves. But giving us bots did not make up for what the devils took away. Still doesn’t. Sure, bots keep the lights on, crops growing, and shelves stocked. They bury us when we die. There wouldn’t be any damn economy without them, even though we’re doing more for ourselves every day. But the devils never gave us the owner’s manual for their bots. Supposedly they can’t lie, but the truths they tell are often impossible to decipher. The bots bow and scrape but everyone knows that they have their own agenda.

Which is doing the devils’ work. I hated the devils.

The bot shot me a pix of the Bosch and a vid of Anne Descano. She’d been living with Maude up until a few months ago. He had a list of recent addresses for her but couldn’t say whether it was complete. Apparently she was skipping, so there was no guarantee she’d be at any of them. He gave me a call for her too, Anne@Idlewood03284, but said it always went to her message and that she never called back. So the fluff was playing hard to find. I suppose if I had to perch on the family tree next to Maude Descano, I would too. I didn’t thank the bot and I didn’t say goodbye; he was blathering something about his truest hopes for timely success when I closed the door behind me.

I paused on the portico to check my sidekick and saw that Maude had already transferred the two hundred dollar retainer. That would make Sharifa happy. I’d been working a lot lately, but mostly for small beer and peanuts. If I could clear this case without having to ransack every skiphouse in the city, I could afford to take some time off. Maybe bring the family down to Williamshead or Salt Bay.

I opened the vid and got my first look at Anne Descano. She wasn’t a fluff at all but a tommy with a brown crewcut and big shoulders and an extra helping of muscle. She was wearing a Will Ill tee shirt, baggy pants and black tanker boots. Either she was binding the hell out of her breasts or had had the double mastectomy. The vid showed her at a picnic that appeared to be in the backyard of the Descano mansion; she was throwing a football to some other tommy while a group of bored janes and grannies watched from a picnic table.

As I biked back to my office, I thought about how I was going to take the painting away from her if she decided not to play nice. I’ve gone up against some rough company, but this tommy looked like she could snap me in two and pick her teeth with the short end. So best be careful, Fay. And smart. It wasn’t a bad plan, except that if I really were interested in being careful and smart, I would have taken up accounting.

I locked the bike to a rack in front of 35 Market Street and climbed the three stories to Hardaway Investigative Services. I share the third floor with Crazy Martha, who is smarter than me and more careful. She is an accountant. My office is just two dull rooms, done in Early Yard Sale style. I’d decorated it so I would have an incentive to spend as little time there as possible. I opened the sidekick, created a new folder on the desktop and shot everything I had on the case into it. I poured myself a drink from the office bottle and made some voice notes about my meeting with Maude Descano.

I thought mapping Anne’s skiphouses might be a good place to start. Maybe I could tease out some kind of pattern. But I couldn’t. She had skipped to eleven different addresses around the city that the bot had known about, and there had no doubt been more. Some she lived at for a day or two, others for weeks. She had crashed in all kinds of unowned buildings in all kinds of neighborhoods: ranches and bungalows, Spanish and craftsman style houses, two apartments and even Unit 32 of the Holiday Inn on Great Randolph Street. The only good news was that she had come back to several of them, which meant that if only I could be in eleven places at once, I might have a chance of catching up with her before Christmas.

I ran the vid again, and then, since I had to get Aissa in half an hour, I played a hunch. I tried the call that the bot had given me. As predicted, I got Anne’s message. She had one of those rumbling, hormone-soaked voices that live in the basement next to the furnace. “Hi, this is Andy. I’m here but I’m avoiding someone I don’t like. Leave me a message and if I don’t call back, it’s you.”

So Anne was an Andy now. It seemed we had attitude in common.

“Andy,” I said, “this is Fay@Market.03284. You don’t know me, but I saw you throwing a football around the other day and I was wondering if you’d be interested in trying out for a flag football team, the Bad Grills? We play in the West Side League. It’s not a big commitment, two evening practices a week and a game every other Sunday during the season. Think about it, okay? We could use a stud like you. That’s Fay@Market.03284. Thanks.”

It was a weak move, but it was the only one I had handy. Maude’s bot was claiming that AndyAnne didn’t pay attention to her messages. Maybe, but it cost money to keep a call live, and the one thing I knew for sure was that Andy Descano was looking for money. Could be that it was just Maude and her bot who were getting the freeze. And if Andy checked, she would find that the Bad Grills were in West Side. Sharifa had been their number three receiver and number one defensive back before she’d had Aissa; we still went to Bad Grill games once in a while.

Then I put the case to bed for the night. Sharifa and I were working moms and it was my turn to pick up the kid at daycare.

Aissa was almost two years old and I was still trying on motherhood to see if it fit. Sharifa was her birth mother. Me, I had gotten scrubbed the first and only time I’d been seeded. Sharifa had wanted us to have my baby; the abortion nearly busted us up. But the thing was, I couldn’t see then how I could be a PI and a parent at the same time. And the idea that the aliens who had done for all the men were planting an embryo in me without my asking . . . well, it filled me with stony rage. No kid needs a mom that angry. When Sharifa got seeded with Aissa, though, things were different. I was different. Maybe I’m a better person now. Or not as good a detective.

I locked my bike onto the rail of our front porch and trotted the three blocks to our local Precious Life Center. The bots had retrofitted several storefronts into a single space with big display windows so that passers-by could peer in and be reassured that womankind still had a future. No expense had been spared; the city always approved the budget of the Department of Youth Protection and Development.

PLCs used to make me itch. They didn’t exist when I was born, three years after the disappearance. When I was a kid, life was not particularly precious. When the devils first made contact, the population of the world was 7.3 billion. On the next Tuesday, it was 3.7. The grannies claimed that the men popped like soap bubbles—no muss, no fuss, no dust to dust. Estimates are that almost a billion women killed themselves or had died in accidents or riots or of starvation in the Crazy Years immediately after the disappearance. Decades later, we are still killing ourselves. Too many of my cases are about women who have decided to check out of this cocked world—often with no warning signs. Whenever I saw a mother and a daughter together in a Precious Life Center, I couldn’t help but worry that the mom was about to fold and maybe take the kid with her.

Even though the staff kept it spotless, our PLC always smelled of curdling milk and baby oil. Peg Skovlar saw me come in and held a finger to her lips. I slipped off my joggers and padded across the toddler room. She pointed at Aissa, who was sitting in a nest of floor pillows with a board book about baby animals on her lap and a stack of others beside her.

“Ducky do quack-ack-ack,” she said and turned the page. “Mee-yow, kitty.” Another page. “Doggie. Doggie do it.” Another. “Monkey. Hoo-hoo-hoo.”

“They don’t usually read to themselves at this age,” Peg whispered. “You’ve got a smart girl there, Fay.”

“Takes after her mother.” I knew what Peg wanted me to feel, but I wasn’t ever going to be that kind of parent. Yes, I would always be there to pick up my little mop-headed miracle whenever she fell, point her in the right direction and teach her everything I knew about the road we were on. But love her? No. When you love someone, you must give them a bit of your truest self, and I had nothing but damage to offer this beautiful little creature. Sharifa could love her. I would protect her.

Although she was only halfway through the book, Aissa shut it abruptly and pushed it impatiently off her lap. “Maybe more book?” she said to herself.

“No more books, Aissa,” I said, “Time to go home.”

“Mommy Fay!” The way her face lit up melted my bones. I dropped to my knees to hug her. “Mommy Fay comes.” She launched herself at me, scattering the books in every direction and I stooped to catch her embrace. “Maybe bye-bye?” Everything was “maybe” with her these days.

“Soon,” I said. “But first we have to pick up the books for Peg. You don’t want to leave a mess.”

“No mess, okay.” She bounced against my hip.

5

“Agin eggy.” Aissa waved her spoon in command.

Most of her supper was on the floor around her high chair, “More egg please,” I said. “Can you say egg?”

“Peas.” She grinned and offered me the spoon. “Maybe eggy agin peas?”

Sharifa said eggy all the time, but if my cop pals ever heard me saying eggy, I’d have to move to Saskatchewan.

Aissa shrieked in delight when Sharifa came home and, as usual, the two of them flew into a hug. I watched from the kitchen pass-through, feeling the distance between me and them stretch. Aissa wriggled as her mother planted kisses on her forehead.

I was damn sure that no one had ever been that glad to see me. It wasn’t that I had a problem with the bond that my wife and our kid shared. I just had to get used to the idea that I had been pushed back to second in line with my lover.

Supper was the arroz con pollo casserole that Sharifa had made on her last day off. She did the cooking because I never really learned. I was mostly schooled on the street and home ec was not part of the curriculum. Sharifa told me about her patients at the ICU. Head trauma, heart attack, kidney failure. The Williams granny came off the ventilator and was moved to the second floor. I described my chat with Maude Descano. Sharifa was more interested in Descano’s house than the new case. She actually moaned when I told her about the asparagus soup. Sharifa loves asparagus, but they’re hideously expensive out of season. I promised I’d buy her a bunch with some of the two hundred dollars I’d got as a retainer. Meanwhile Aissa whirled around the apartment, climbed onto our laps, crawled under the table, ate two bites of chicky, clattered saucepan covers out of the kitchen drawer, drank from her sippy cup, and chattered non-stop in no particular language at all.

My sidekick chirped while Sharifa was giving Aissa her bath. The screen was blank but a jane with a squeaky voice said, “Is this Fay@Market.03284?”

“Speaking.”

“You’re looking for Andy Descano?”

“Sure.”

There was a moment of silence, as if the caller were waiting for me to make the next move. I let her wait. It was her call.

“How did you get this number?” she said.

“Put Andy on.”

“He doesn’t want to play for your football team.”

He? I liked that. “Why not? The uniforms are really cute.”

She sniffed. “Is this about the old lady?”

“Look, Jane, I need to talk to Andy.” My sidekick displayed the list of skiphouses the bot had given me for Anne-now-Andy Descano. “Are you still at the place on Chestnut?” It was the one she-now-he had crashed at the most often. “I can be there in half an hour.”

“He’s not here.”

“What if we wait there together until he comes back? Who is this again?”

“Nobody.” She broke the connection.

I stared at my sidekick for a moment, hoping it would offer me a clue as to what I ought to do. If I went to the skip on Chestnut, there was no guarantee that anyone would be there when I arrived. But it was my first real lead.

The door to the bathroom was ajar and I peeked around it. Sharifa knelt beside the tub where Aissa ruled as queen of the bubble bath. Her subjects—dolphin, duck, whale, starfish, crab, shark, and seahorse—bobbed around her; a crown of suds dribbled down mats of her dark hair. “Mommy Fay, watch!” She scooped a plastic cup into the water then dumped it over her head, sputtering and laughing hysterically. “Rinseys!” She wiped suds from her eyes. “Aissa do rinseys.”

“You’re the brave one, Aissa,” I lifted my voice a half octave so she’d know how pleased I was. “Rinseys all by yourself. Such a big girl.”

While she preened, I caught Sharifa’s attention and twirled my index finger.

“Where?” she said.

“Out. Just got a call.”

“The Descano girl?”

I nodded. “Apparently she’s a he.”

“Do you have to?” She cocked her head to one side and let a smile steal across her face. “I was thinking of putting her to bed soon.”

I knew that smile; it used to keep me up nights.

Aissa was splashing in annoyance. “Maybe not bed! Not soon!”

“We like the water in the tub, Aissa.” I knew who was going to win this one, so I stooped to give Sharifa a kiss goodbye.

Her face was tight with disappointment. “I’ve got a twelve hour shift tomorrow,” she said. “Can’t wait up.”

“Sorry.” I brushed her cheek with my forefinger. “Married to our jobs. Bye, Aissa.” I blew her a kiss.

“Not bed.” Aissa was still negotiating. I left them to it. Sharifa was a doctor, I told myself, and a mommy. I was a PI. Missing each other was part of our deal.

6

Chestnut Avenue ran past Old Courthouse Square, which was busy on a warm July night. The City Mothers were sponsoring a concert: a bunch of grannies bleating oldies from before the disappearance. Music had skipped my generation; we’d been too busy trying to survive to learn the cello. But the sooner we kissed all that cock nostalgia goodbye and started writing tunes of our own, the saner I’d be. The crowd backed all the way to the Peace Statues of Rosalind Franklin and Daniel Ellsberg. I had to walk my bike past the lemonade stand and the carts with ice cream and sushi and hot dogs; the tommies and janes seemed more interested in the free food than the singing. We all looked up when the devil flapped over, streaking toward bot town. I lit a cigarette—Sharifa doesn’t let me smoke at home—and watched for Andy Descano as I passed through the crowd.

Beyond the square, Chestnut climbed into Foy’s Gardens. In the Crazy Time a series of fires had burned through its row houses and modest storefronts; there had been nobody to put them out. After came scavengers, who gnawed the charred bones of the neighborhood and scared off most of those still living there. For a while the only inhabitants were the few crazies who didn’t understand how everything had changed, but in the last few years it had become part of bot town.

Although depression and suicide continued to squeeze our shattered world, the population had stabilized at just over a billion, even as the number of bots continued to grow. Supposedly there was now one bot for every five women on earth. Most of them propped up our pretend economy, doing jobs we didn’t want to do. Recently they’d swarmed the parts of the city we had abandoned, rehabbing and rebuilding. Never mind that nobody wanted to live in bot town, in part because they’d always had some cocked ideas about architecture. Left to their own, they built nightmares: windows became mirrors, stairs climbed to dead ends. A favorite trick was to divide big spaces into a beehive of narrow closets. Then there were the rooms with stalactite ceilings or delicate glass floors. These had no doors, only portholes through which they could be admired. Bots loved sirens and wainscoting and open plumbing. Above all, they lived to paint: walls, floors, ceilings, doors, concrete, metal, wood, plastic, even trees and rocks. Chestnut Avenue sported zebra stripes in the 1200 block.

Sure, a bot would straighten what was crooked if you asked, but the next bot to come along would fold your floor plans into origami and then get busy. I could see that some human must have taken charge of 1217 Chestnut, which was sandwiched between a burnt out foundation and a rubble strewn lot. The skiphouse was a tasteful brown Victorian with a slate roof and a bay window the size of a buffalo. I could imagine living there with Sharifa and Aissa if it hadn’t been on the wrong side of nowhere with no shopping, no schools and no neighbors but bots and empty lots.

As I climbed the front steps, I could see the door was ajar. There was a newish sneaker in front of it with a dark spatter across white laces.

“Knock, knock,” I called. I slid into the hall, fists curled to stop the tingle in my fingertips. Even a detective who said eggy could smell trouble with this setup. “Who’s there?” I muttered to no one in particular. Rooms to either side were filled with dusk and not much else. To the right, a parlor and a couple of folding chairs aimed at a wall screen. To the left, a table made of a sheet of plywood and two sawhorses. There was a pizza box on it, some dirty paper plates. “Andy Descano?” Ahead, a hallway washed in shadow and a smudge of stairs. And bigger spatters. I was wishing I’d brought the air taser, wishing I’d stayed home with Sharifa, when I heard a door bang at the back of the house. Then I was running. It was dark and then dim as I burst into the kitchen. Something jerked on the other side of the screen door and fell up off the back steps. I tore the door open. The sleek torpedo of a body shot into the air, wings scooping air with a twenty foot span. I know what I saw and I know what I heard. An angry devil makes a sharp grating crow, like gears stripping. I watched the thing wheel overhead and flail for downtown. But I was pretty sure that nobody was going to believe me. We see devils all the time but they don’t come out to play with us very often. It’s about the only thing about them I’m grateful for.

I went back inside and snapped on the light. The kitchen had been just a blur as I raced though, but now I could see that whoever had been staying at the skiphouse had no talent for housekeeping. The sink was filled with mismatched pots, the windows were murky and the counters needed wiping down. The utensil drawer hung open. There were boxes of Cheerios, Ginger Nips, and Fruit Loops on top of the refrigerator. The body was slumped in front of it, head down, knees tucked under the torso, as if she were praying to breakfast. Her feet stuck out; one was bare. I rolled her over to see if she was alive. To see if she was Andy Descano.

She wasn’t.

No corpse is pretty, but this one was particularly hard on the eyes. The kid was slim, twenty-something, dressed like a tommy in camo pants, a chain link belt and a Yankettes tee shirt. There was some bruising on the right arm but it was the head that had gotten most of the killer’s attention. Blood was coming out of one ear; two ribbons of it trickled into the open mouth. The mouth was missing a couple of teeth and one eye had been punched shut. The other had rolled up in its socket, as if the poor girl had been looking to heaven for rescue—or at least relief. Apparently God didn’t deliver in this part of town.

She appeared to have been transitioning into a he. He’d had chest reconstruction; I didn’t check for bottom surgery. From the dark spidery mustache and sideburns, I guessed he was well into the hormone replacement. I didn’t know where to put this information quite yet. On the shelf next to the Descano kid, at least.

I would have to call the cops eventually, but since the dead tommy didn’t seem to be in any hurry, I went through the place turning on lights. The bathroom at the top of the stairs had a shower with no door. The toilet was dry because the supply pipe was just a stub, but there was plastic bucket filled with water beside it. Both bedrooms upstairs had mattresses on the floor. The first was empty. The one he’d been using had a sleeping bag decorated with rocket ships on it and a backpack beside it. I pulled on gloves and unpacked tee shirts, jeans, silky boxers, and white socks. At the bottom was a pair of lace-up military boots, size 7½, same as the lonely sneaker. Shampoo, toothbrush but no toothpaste, and one bent tampon in a side pocket; in the storm flap, a cheap multitool, a flashlight, and a dead sidekick with a cracked bezel. It wasn’t much to leave behind, not that a tommy in a skiphouse would be drawing up a will.

I was repacking the sorry lot of it when I heard a sidekick chirp. It wasn’t mine.

7

I made myself lighter than air as I floated downstairs, listening for a second chirp. There: a little muffled at the front of the house. I found it under the pizza box on the makeshift table, hit answer and said nothing. I was due for a miracle.

“We’re in.” It sounded like the Descano kid. “He’ll do the operation.”

I held the sidekick at arm’s length and dredged up an anonymous grunt to encourage him. “Hm?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

I tried another grunt. No miracle.

“Beetle?”

I let the silence stretch until it broke.

“Who is this?” he said.

“My name is Fay Hardaway, Andy.”

He thought that over. “Put Beetle on.”

“He can’t come to the phone,” I said. “He said I should pick up and take the message if Andy called. So, the operation is on Thursday?”

“What are you doing with my sidekick?”

“It was just where you left it.” I tried to sound amused, as in we do such silly things sometimes, don’t we? “Under the pizza box.”

“Put Beetle on.”

“Can’t. He . . . uh . . . we had a devil here, Andy. Things got kind of cocked.”

“A devil? Did it get the Bosch?”

“How should I know?” Game over. I might have laughed if there hadn’t been a dead tommy down the hall. “Beetle didn’t tell me where it was.”

Andy’s shout made the sidekick quack like one of Aissa’s ducks. “Who the hell are you?”

“Take it easy, Andy.” I said. “I’m a friend.”

“The hell you are.” He broke the connection.

“Be that way then,” I said to the silence. I wanted to feel good. All the stoplights had turned green on Hardaway Street and I was coasting downhill toward an easy two hundred bucks. Time to clear space for me in the Gumshoe Hall of Fame; I’d cracked the case in less than a day. The only problem was that it was covered in blood. That didn’t use to bother me so much. I wondered what being a mommy had cost me.

The hard part wasn’t finding the missing painting, now that I had a pretty good idea that it was on the premises. There aren’t many places to hide something in a skiphouse. It took me all of ten minutes before I found it tucked into a zip lock bag and buried in the box of Fruit Loops. How had the devil missed it? The clue was in a yellow starburst right on the front of box. Free Prize Inside.

I contemplated the hard part as I worked the painted rectangle of wood out of the bag. I knew Maude Descano would expect me to rewrite recent history so that the cops didn’t jam me or drop this killing on her golden doorstep. The Bosch was just a bit bigger than one of Maude’s books. I glanced at the image to make sure I had what Maude wanted. I was no art historian, but it seemed to me that old Jerome had been playing a joke on his patrons. The paint was brighter than in the pix Kirby had sent me, but it still had all the charm of a stain. The devil looked nothing like ours. It was naked and bent way over so that it grinned back at the viewer through its spread legs. Mooning us—no question about it. There was an arrow or something sticking out of its ass. Stupid cock tricks. The wings were outstretched, but they looked more like they belonged on a butterfly than a mass-murdering alien. As I slipped the thing back into the bag, I noticed it wasn’t in very good shape. A few flakes of tea-colored paint had lifted, but were not yet loose. I couldn’t see how this thing was worth getting dead over. Or why a devil might kill for it, if that was what had just happened.

I raced upstairs and finished repacking Beetle’s stuff. Then back to Andy’s sidekick in the pizza room. I brought the record of the last call up and then bumped our sidekicks, using my scrub app to make it go away. Sure any record could be retrieved, but the cops would need some serious data forensics to discover that there was anything missing in the first place. Then I searched Andy’s contact list for doctors. I found three and copied them but I was running out of time. The cops would wonder why I had taken so long to call this murder in. I ran to my bike and pumped like my hair was on fire. One block, two. I remembered a wall in front of the vacant library because some bot had painted the stones tomato red. I muscled a capstone aside, settled the block of wood into the space between it and the next course and pushed the cap back into place.

On the way back, I called Sharifa and tried to tell her as little as I could. Being out of breath helped. I said that I had the Bosch and that we were definitely taking a vacation as soon as she could get off work. I told her that I had found a dead tommy, that I didn’t know who he was and that the cops would be coming any minute. I told her I’d probably spend the night downtown telling my story twenty-seven times to stony faces. I asked if she could get Aissa to daycare. I told her I loved her. I left out the devil and the blood, but that was all right. Leaving stuff out was another part of our deal.

It was forty, maybe forty-five minutes since I had spotted the devil. I looked around the kitchen one last time, but really, what did I have to worry about? Sure I’d moved the body, tampered with evidence and lifted a clue that provided a motive for murder. But I got along with cops. Cops were some of my best friends. Why I was practically a cop myself, except for the badge, the paycheck and the selfless desire to serve and protect.

“I think,” I said to Beetle, “it’s time we had some law.”

He didn’t object. I lit a cigarette and stepped outside to wait.

8

For the next five hours I got passed up the chain of command as the bearer of bad news that nobody wanted to hear. A Detective Timms, whom I’d never met, took my statement at the crime scene then asked her partner, Lisa Agar, who used to walk a beat near my office, to escort me downtown. There I ran into Lieutenant Stevie Smick. She invited me to a tête-à-tête in a cozy windowless, concrete-block room, furnished with a table trimmed with gouges—or maybe teeth marks—three mismatched chairs and a coffee shelf with a half full pot and three mugs stolen from Goodfillers. There was no ashtray, so I dropped the dead butts on the floor. We chatted for a couple of hours. Stevie still blamed me for that riot at the Tin Shark, so we had a lot to catch up on. Later, Deputy Chief C. G. Little joined us, despite the inconvenient hour. She was a bulky woman, subtle as a hammer. Rumpled and up past her bedtime, she reminded me of what would happen to me if my story didn’t hold up.

I knew why I was barbequed and it wasn’t because of the murder of one Behita Berry, sometimes known as Beetle. It was because of the devil.

“Let’s go over this again,” said Stevie Smick. “I checked the weather. Sunset was 8:34. Your call came at 9:21. A lot of unexplained time, Hardaway.”

“Which I already explained. I was hired to find Anne Descano. I was told that she was staying in skiphouses, probably including this one. I decided to check it. I got there after sunset. When I found the body, I thought Descano might be connected, so I searched the house.”

“And went through the dead girl’s things.”

“And went through the dead girl’s things.” I turned both hands palm up on the battered table. “Which I told you. And you didn’t even have to ask.”

“And what about the sidekick?”

“It was dead. I didn’t have time to charge it.”

“Which one?”

“I only found one. I think we’ve rehearsed this part, Lieutenant. Five, no, six times now. My next line is Was there another?”

“You searched the house.” She sneered. “You should know.”

I tilted toward C. G., looking for sympathy. She gave me ice cold nothing. “How long had the girl been dead?” Stevie said

“Like I said, I’m no coroner. You want me to guess? Ten, maybe twenty minutes. How about half an hour?”

“And you arrived when?”

“Again, I wasn’t paying attention exactly. After sunset. Maybe eight forty-five. Eight-fifty.”

“Bullshit.”

C.G. Little stirred. She wasn’t playing good or bad cop, just bleak cop. “You just heard her tell you that sunset was 8:34,” she said. “You say you ID a devil at 8:50. Why don’t we believe you? It would have been dark by then.”

“It’s July 12th, or was when you brought me in, Chief.” I wanted her in the conversation. “Night takes its time in the summer. There was plenty of light.”

“Maybe it was a crow,” said Stevie.

“Yeah and maybe it was Mary Poppins.” I lit a cigarette and realized that I was down to two. I needed to start conserving; Stevie wasn’t about to let me step out to buy another pack. “Look, if I had left the devil out of this, then we’d all be snug in bed by now. Why would I want to spend half the night with you two?”

“What’s your devil’s motive for murder?” C. G. said. “This Behita Berry is nobody.”

I grinned at her. “Don’t know.” It was the first time that either of them had acknowledged that there might have been a devil.

“And why leave the body?” said Stevie. “It could just have disappeared her.”

The thought had occurred to me too. But devils did away with the men forty-some years ago. They don’t flap around disappearing people these days; the bots say it violates their code of wisdom. Apparently it’s okay to disappear a couple of billion men, but not a single inconvenient woman. I did witness a devil disappear someone once, but it was to prevent a murder. My murder, as a matter of fact. “I don’t say the devil killed her,” I said. “For all I know, it just stumbled into this mess. Same way I did.”

“But it ran. At least that’s your story.”

“Maybe it thought I was the killer, coming back.”

“Why?” said Stevie. “It could have just disappeared you if it got worried. Nobody would’ve known. Or cared.”

I’d been able to keep the anger in my pocket until then, but now it swelled up and started ripping seams. “I’ve got a wife and a kid,” I said. “And I’ve got friends. Some of them are even cops. Cops who don’t squeal when a devil pinches them.”

Stevie gave me a lizard look.

“That’s enough, Hardaway,” said C. G..

“No it isn’t, Chief. Maybe Lieutenant Smick slept through the part where the devils wiped three and a half billion people off the planet. And maybe she thinks it’s cute that there’s nothing we can do about that. But real cops don’t roll over for mass murderers.”

“You wouldn’t know a real cop if she sat on your face.”

“Smick, enough,” said C.G. wearily. “What’s next, hair pulling? Swiping her lunch money?”

Stevie squirmed on her chair. I gave the Chief a laugh to show her I was paying attention.

“I hate the devils,” said C.C., “and so does Lieutenant Smick. But that doesn’t make a saint out of you, Hardaway.”

Someone cracked the door open and murmured “Chief?”

“I’ll be right there.” C.G. glared at us. “You two kiss and make up while I’m gone.” She shut the door behind her.

“You got hot there, shamus,” said Stevie. “That’s not like you.”

“You play too rough, girl scout.”

She got up, and poured me a cup of coffee I didn’t want. “What do you expect?” She set it in front of me.

“I expect someone to believe me.”

She laughed. “What, the gag about not finding Descano’s sidekick? Pretty thin, Hardaway. You’re better than that. Come on, when did you get to the scene? Really?”

I dipped my finger into the coffee and licked it. “How do you drink this sludge?”

“We don’t.” She grinned. “We inflict it on the perps.” Then she lowered her voice and changed into the good cop. “Bot town has gone quiet on this one. At least, the Chestnut neighborhood has.”

“They didn’t see the devil?”

“Not only that, but they never saw Berry, Descano, or you. Usually bots come forward on these things, but I get the feeling that the circus could’ve paraded up Chestnut shooting skyrockets and they wouldn’t have noticed.”

“The bots are covering up? Why?”

“Maybe to protect your devil.” She knocked twice on the tabletop. “That’s about the only part of your story we believe. So why don’t you help me out now and tell me the rest?”

C.G. Little opened the door to the interrogation room. “Let’s go, Hardaway. You have visitors.”

I could tell Stevie didn’t like that. Who had the clout to interrupt a police interrogation?

9

Grete Sams was a large, round woman who had always had trouble buying clothes. She kept trying for swank when she was built for comfort. Her breasts and belly stretched her gray silk blouse, making the placket gap between buttons. Her metallic brocade skirt clung to her hips, betraying the outline of granny panties. She had limp curls the color of steel wool and there was a shadow of sweat on her sallow face, even though the air conditioning in the Chief’s office was blasting enough cold for a penguin convention. But appearance hadn’t kept her from getting elected Mayor three times in the last twenty years; it probably helped. She’d been able to convince voters that brains trumped style.

“I beg your pardon, Chief,” she said amiably, “but we were expecting Ms. Hardaway only. This officer would be . . . ?”

“Smick.” Stevie tried to look tough when she spotted the visitors, but her eyes went round as quarters. “Behita Berry is my homicide.”

“Of course.” The Mayor dismissed her with a wave of her meaty hand. “We have no intention of interfering with your investigation.”

“Then why are they here?” Stevie kept staring at the other two in the room.

“May I call you Fay?” Even though the cops were still with us, it was as if Mayor Sams had closed the door on them. “This is Storrow,” she said, indicated a dull gray bot. “And Seeren.” The devil was perched on the Chief’s crendenza, translucent wings outspread like some nightmare shore bird. It weighed in at maybe eleven or twelve kilos, and was sleek as a torpedo, ugly as rust. It turned and I could see my reflection in its compound eyes. There were a lot of me there and none of us looked happy. “Ms. Hardaway, I understand that you and Seeren are acquainted.”

Acquainted was one word for it. Seeren had hired me to find a certain Christer a couple of years ago, which I did. That made everybody happy except for a tough named Gratiana, who tried to stab me to death in my office. She was the one I’d seen get disappeared. Of course, it was all hushed up and no charges had ever been filed. Otherwise there might have been riots.

“Seeren recalls with bright satisfaction a previous employment,” said the bot. How the devils communicated with the bots was a mystery. All we knew was that the bots did all the talking for them. “Seeren considers that Fay Hardaway has demonstrated true superiority.”

“Does that mean I can use it as a reference?” I said it just to hear if my voice would squeak.

The devil opened its maw and made a sound like sucking the last drops of soda through a straw. The bot did not translate.

“Seeren has asked to meet with you in private, Fay,” said the Mayor. “Do you have any objection?”

“I do.” Stevie actually pushed past the Chief to get Sams’s attention. “She’s a material witness to a homicide. A devil is a person of interest. These two might be a threat to her safety.”

I couldn’t help but grin at that. I had gone up against Stevie many times and I doubt that she had ever lost sleep over my safety. But I let it pass; she was giving me time to think.

“Fay Hardaway has the alternative to leave at any time, should such be her intention,” said the bot. “Violence is to be deplored. It violates wisdom and thus has unwelcome effects.”

That didn’t cheer me up much. The devils were big on wisdom, only we had never figured out what they meant by it, other than it allowed them to kill half the population and rip the hearts out of the other half. But that wasn’t violent, no. Disappearing someone was about as violent as blowing out a candle.

“Chief,” said the Mayor, “I would think it’s up to Fay. Do you agree?”

This had to gall the cops; the devils were the worst criminals in history and they had the Mayor dancing on a stick. “Lieutenant,” said C. G. Little, her voice like sandpaper, “I think we have to take them at their word.” She rested a hand on Stevie’s shoulder.

Everyone but the devil looked at me now. It had turned to the window; I wondered what it could see in the dark. I was tempted to say thanks but no thanks, if only to spite Seeren. That was probably the smart move. But smart and I didn’t always get along.

“Sure,” I said. “I could use a break from Smick here. No offense, Lieutenant.”

As the Mayor closed the door on us, she said. “We’ll be right outside if you need us.”

I wondered which of us she was talking to.

10

I shivered.

Not because of the chill in the office, but because I was remembering when Seeren disappeared Gratiana. She had vanished with a surreal pop. There’d been a rush of air, as if the room had gasped in surprise. She wouldn’t have had time to suffer. Had she been killed or just sent someplace else—maybe the same place all the men had gone?

“Something is regrettable, Fay Hardaway?” said the bot.

“Been a long night.” I told myself then that I was done being scared. I was a PI; I washed my face with battery acid and picked my teeth with ten penny nails. I was mean as cancer. So why did I scuttle around the Chief’s desk and sit in her chair? To hide behind it, sure. Keep an obstacle between me and them. A weak move, but now I felt more like the self I needed to be. C. G. was making a statement with this desk; it was not quite as big as a bus. On it was a ship’s clock, a silver trophy cup filled with pens and pencils and a framed photo of a kid graduating from somewhere in a blue cap and gown. She looked like a travel-sized C. G. Little. I thought of the Chief as a mom changing diapers all those years ago. For some reason, that helped.

“Before you start,” I said, “I have to ask. Was Seeren the devil I saw at the murder scene?”

“No,” said the bot.

That stopped me. I was expecting a denial but bots never gave simple answers when complicated ones would do. They had made torturing English into an art form. “Well then, does Seeren know who that devil was?”

“No.”

“But there was a devil? Seeren admits that?”

“You asked a permission for one question and have now put three. One needs to remark, Fay Hardaway, that you alone were observer of these events. Seeren has no direct awareness of them.”

“But you’re here because of what happened to Behita Berry.”

The bot let that pass.

I took my sidekick out of my pocket, pressed record and placed it on the desk. “What’s this about then?”

“Seeren has intention to task you to make certain inquiries.”

“Lucky me.”

“You have a client, Maude Descano.”

“Look, I’m a private investigator.” I shook my last smoke out of the pack. “That means I like to keep my clients’ identities confidential if I can.” There was no ash tray so I spilled the pencils and pens out of the trophy cup.

“This information has already been disclosed.”

“To the cops maybe.” I lit up. “Not to you.”

“Seeren has a curiosity in the matter of Renata Descano.”

“Renata?” For a moment I thought the bot had misspoke. “You mean Anne.”

“The daughter of Maude Descano was Renata Descano.”

“She’s dead. What’s there to know?”

“There are regrettable inconsistencies in the circumstance of her death.”

“I heard it was suicide.” I tried to picture a woman like Maude having doubts about her daughter’s death, but I didn’t have that good an imagination. “Do you know different?”

“The purpose of your investigation would be to resolve all inconsistency.”

It was easy for bots to stonewall since they had no faces; the devil was busy doing its impression of a brick. “What does this have to do with the Berry murder?”

“This one has knowledge of your previous transaction with Seeren. Are the same terms of employment acceptable?”

I’d earned two thousand dollars the last time I had worked for the devil, which was six month’s income in a good year. That was five times what the old woman was paying. But there was too damned much money fluttering around the Descanos and their problems. My nose twitches when a client tries to perfume a rotten case with the scent of cash.

“What do you need me for anyway?” I blew smoke at them. “You’ve got the mayor sitting on your lap. Have her put the cops on this.”

“Seeren necessitates the true discretion that a Fay Hardaway can provide. Never police and never news.”

I ashed into the silver cup and considered how much freedom two thousand dollars could buy. I thought about a bigger apartment with a playroom, or at least a dishwasher. I thought about babysitters and dinners out and dancing. “I’m not saying no and I’m not saying yes. But if this is really a problem, I need to see some evidence. Or is Seeren playing some kind of hunch?”

My sidekick chirped; that didn’t take long. But I needed a chance to study what Seeren had sent before I made any moves.

“Okay, then.” I stubbed my last cigarette out. “I’ll sleep on it. Can I give my answer to George? Seeren knows him; he’s the bot in my building.”

Seeren flapped its wings as it launched off the credenza, then flapped twice more to regain balance on the landing. I felt the air move and caught a whiff of burning sugar. It wrapped itself in its wings and waddled toward the door. The bot Storrow regenerated its legs and arms and stumped after.

As they let themselves out, the Mayor let herself in. Alone. “You have unusual friends, Fay.” She shut the door behind her.

“They’re not my friends.” I carried the cup over to C. G.’s waste basket and emptied the ashes. “I hate the devils.”

“I don’t suppose you want to tell me what Seeren wants?”

I settled behind the desk and started putting pens and pencils back.

“No.” She was thoughtful. “I didn’t think so.” She sat on one of the wing chairs facing the desk. “We can keep this quiet, at least for a while. Not the murder, but what you saw. Would that help?”

“Help what?”

“Whatever it is that you’re trying to do.”

I laughed. “I’m just trying to stay sane in this cocked world. I try to do right if I can figure out what that is and every so often I help someone find something she’s lost.” I aimed a pencil at her. “Right now I’m trying to go home and sleep and see if any of this makes sense in the morning.” I dropped it into the cup. “What time is it?’

She glanced at a fossil wristwatch. “Three-seventeen.” Only grannies wear watches.

“Past my bedtime,” I said. “But try telling that to Lieutenant Smick.”

“C. G. Little claims I can trust you.”

“Nice of her, but she hardly knows me. What does Stevie say?”

“Apparently she has no use for PIs. She thinks you should have been a cop. We could see about that if you’d like.”

“No thanks. The uniform makes me look fat.”

She gave me a politician’s smile, then leaned forward. “Here’s what I’m trying to do, Fay. Word gets out that a devil is a suspect in a homicide—a brutal homicide—and the crazies and the Christers will howl, even though there’s nothing we can do. We can’t arrest a devil for this; it’s like trying to arrest a house fire. Or a tornado. But the old madness is still out there, so I’m trying to stop the riots before we write another damn chapter for Eller’s Index of Human Dysfunction. If that means I have to tell the world that you didn’t see what you saw, I’ll do it.” She pointed a finger at me, her expression grim as a grave. “And if I have to tell the Lieutenant to arrest you for being an accessory to murder, I’ll do that too. Because I don’t always have the luxury of doing what’s right. Do you understand me?”

I chewed on that but didn’t much like the taste. “Sure,” I said. “You’re saying I’m cocked.”

She shook her head. “I hate the devils too, but I doubt their wisdom will allow them to stand back and watch this city burn down. When one of them shows up here at three in the morning, I’m hoping that means they have some kind of plan.” She heaved herself out of the chair and looked like she aged a decade doing it. “Since we want that plan to work, we’re turning you loose. Do what you do, keep your mouth shut about what’s happened and let’s see how smart they really are.”

“How long do I have?”

“How the hell should I know?” She reached across the desk and shook my hand. “Until you smell smoke.”

11

Sharifa groaned and turned to me as I slipped under the sheet. “You okay?”

“Yep,” I lied.

“Time is it?”

I kissed her. “Half past tomorrow.”

“Love you. G’night.”

I expected to spend the rest of the night chasing the Descanos around in my head but the kiss of the pillow was too sweet. The next thing I knew, the bedroom was full of sunlight and July’s steamy breath. It was eight-thirty; Sharifa had managed to pack Aissa off to daycare and herself off to the hospital without waking me. There was half a pot in the coffee maker and cantaloupe in the fridge. I sat down with the file that Storrow had sent me. It contained three police reports, one each from Missing Persons, a Fifth Precinct detective named Alejandra Urrego and the coroner’s office.

Renata Descano would be forty-seven if she had been alive that bright summer morning. Just a few years older than me. She had worked a series of pretend jobs, none of which had stuck: selling toys and shoes and houseplants, grooming pets, waitressing. She had studied graphic design in college, which must have been nice for her. Not many janes our age had the time to go to college. I pegged her as a fluff snoozing through life on a bed of Mom’s money. She’d been seeded with Anne when she was twenty-two, but mothering apparently wasn’t in her skill set either; she and the daughter got along like garlic and oatmeal. Maude and nannies raised the kid—mostly nannies, if I knew Maude. Renata had moved out of the mansion on Fairview after a fight with Maude three months before she died. She took a studio apartment at 9th and Mayflower—quite a tumble from the Descano lifestyle. The upstairs neighbor reported she was quiet and didn’t seem to have visitors. Love life? Unknown. Maude had told Missing Persons that Renata’s last relationship had been with a doctor named Kalil Haddad, but that they had broken up a year before she moved out. That checked out. Renata had been unemployed at the time of her death, and as far as anyone knew, wasn’t looking for work. Nothing to follow up on there. The sheriff in Lincolnville fished her out of the river eleven days after Maude had reported her missing. Lincolnville was some twenty miles downstream. The coroner’s autopsy reported no external wounds although she had five broken ribs, one of which penetrated the aorta. Her liver, spleen and heart were lacerated. All indications were that she had jumped off one of the downtown bridges, most likely the Sanger, some two hundred feet above the river. Jumpers go from seventy miles an hour to zero on impact with the water—not good for the internal organs. Andy—then Anne—Descano had run away from home on the news of her mother’s death, but had returned three days later in time for the funeral. I didn’t see anything of much interest there either. I did see why Detective Urrego had dropped this one into the suicide file. Renata Descano was unemployed, living in a shabby walkup, had no lover or friends and was estranged from her family. There was no note, but that meant nothing. Less than a third of all suicides bother to explain themselves.

She died on June 4 and was the city’s one hundred and eighty-ninth suicide of the year.

I got up and thought about pouring myself another cup of coffee. Instead I went into the bathroom to look in the mirror for the superwoman Seeren and Mayor Sams were counting on to save the city. I couldn’t find her, but I did manage to brush my teeth.

I needed to get on my bike and retrieve the stolen Bosch before somebody found it, not that I thought anyone would. I needed to ask Maude about Renata’s death, not that I thought she’d have anything new to tell me. I needed a drink, but I’d promised Sharifa I would stop, which meant that nine-seventeen in the morning was too early to start. Instead I wandered into the living room and picked up Aissa’s toys.

Although from time to time we retired her playthings to the hall closet to keep from being overrrun, there were still more of them than we had bought. Maybe the devils were seeding them at night while we were asleep, and they were giving birth to the next generation under the couch. Aissa’s favorites were the Littlers, squat, round, non-toxic people exactly too big for her to swallow. She had enough of them to form a polyethylene commune: grannies, mommies, aunties, police, firefighters, doctors, nurses, mailcarriers, sailors, farmers, kids in every color and shape, as well as sheep, cows, horses, pigs, dogs, cats and, for some reason, giraffes and elephants. They lived at the Animal Friends Farm or the Family Fun House and commuted in the Move-o-matic Bus or a fleet of Gogo Cars. She also had a collection of electronic toys that beeped, burped, squawked, sang nursery rhymes and counted to ten in English, Spanish and Mandarin. I dragged a corn popper push toy like one I had as a kid into the corner next to her red wagon and pulled her two ladybug rolling treasure chests out onto the rug and started tossing stuff into them. I was sorting the plastic hammers, screwdrivers and saws of the Handy Ellie Tool Box from the fake stethoscope, blood pressure cuff and otoscope of the Debbie the Doctor Medical Kit, when I remembered that I had copied the names of three doctors from Andy Descano’s contacts the night before. I lunged into the kitchen for my sidekick.

Dr. Nicole Fuchs was a dermatologist.

Dr. Katherine Reed was a psychiatrist.

Dr. Kalil Haddad was an urologist who specialized in phalloplasty and sexual reassignment.

12

If the Mayor had not given her blessing to whatever it was I was supposed to be doing for Seeren, I might have waited a day or two to retrieve the Bosch. But I figured the cops would have orders to give me a good leaving alone. As it was I peddled past the hiding place and locked my bike to a tree in front of Joyce’s Convenience Store just up the street. I didn’t get to meet Joyce, but I did find a bot who sold me an overpriced ice cream sandwich for a nickel. I ate it sitting on the wall where the painting was. Birds sang, the sun shone. No passers-by stopped to chat, no bots pried, no nosy cops cruised past. A capstone just happened to slide out of place and a priceless art object just happened to find its way under my shirt. I folded the ice cream wrapper up, licked my fingers and sauntered casually back to the bike. I slipped the Bosch into the left saddlebag.

I was sweating by the time I reached the Descano mansion. I wondered if maybe I could convince Sharifa to let me spend a hundred of my retainer on a scooter as I rang the bell and waited. The bot Kirby took his time. The midday sun was a punishment. I knocked again. I waited, then pounded on the double doors. I was getting ready to call Maude on my sidekick when I heard fumbling inside.

I suppose I might have been more surprised if President Gliesman or the Christer Pope or Frosty the Snowgirl had opened the door. But as it was I almost fell out of my shoes when Andy Descano stood blinking at me from the gloomy interior of 122 Fairview.

“Hello, Andy,” I said. It’s hard to sound nonchalant when your voice crackles like Rice Krispies.

“D’I know you?” The light hit him so hard that he swayed.

“We chatted last night,” I said, “but you hung up before I could turn on the charm.”

The kid didn’t like that much. He glanced past me as if a SWAT team might be hiding in the marigolds or ninjas slithering across the manicured lawn. Then he grabbed my arm and pulled. Since it was one of the arms I needed, I followed it into the house.

The reception hall was stuffy as a bishop’s closet. The lights were out and it was dark when the doors closed. Just a smudge of afternoon sun oozed through leaded windows at the landing where the grand staircase reversed direction. It looked like something had tripped a circuit. I was just a sepia shadow in the big gilded mirror; Andy’s face a pale smudge.

“Beetle’s dead.” He’d been drinking; I could’ve bottled his breath and sold it in Old Courthouse Square for a nickel a nip.

“I guess he won’t need that operation after all.”

“Operation?” Andy was trying for cagey but looked to be a few working neurons short at the moment. “Don’ know what you talkin’ about.

“You remember. The one Dr. Haddad was going to do tomorrow.”

He folded into himself. “’S cocked.” He was sniffling. “’S all cocked up and my fault.” When he staggered against the wall, I caught him. There was a lot of him to catch.

“That’s okay, girl scout,” I said. “Where did you leave your drink?”

He took a vague swipe in my direction and almost pulled the two of us over. “Not a girl scout.”

“Okay then.” I aimed him down the hall. “Where’s Kirby?”

“You.” He peered at me. “You’re the detective.”

“Sure.” We were moving now, but then so were the tectonic plates.

“Did you find it?”

“I find all kinds of stuff.” I didn’t let him see my scowl. “Just now I’m looking for a bot.”

“Gone.” He flapped both hands and giggled. “Flew away.”

The kitchen was the size of a basketball court, a designer’s folly of stainless steel, teak, and hand-painted tile. There was a six burner gas stove, a microwave with more controls than a starship, and a refrigerator big enough to hide a body in. A wallscreen with the sound off played an old sitcom from before the disappearance, something about wacky aliens who weren’t devils and didn’t keep bots. Sleek chrome barstools with leather seats gathered around a semicircular bump in the quartz countertop. A bottle of Crown Royal waited there for Andy next to a whiskey glass in which ice cubes were dying. A silver inhaler had rolled to the edge of the counter. I loaded Andy onto a stool. He slid down but not off. When he fumbled for the inhaler, I swiped it away.

“What is this?” I said, holding it at arm’s length.

He smirked at me. “Manly drugs for a manly man.”

I sniffed but didn’t squeeze the trigger. “Bliss?” I said. “Sugarpop?”

“You know your toot, sister.” He managed to capture the glass before I slid the whiskey bottle out of reach.

“Don’ be like that.” He rattled the ice. “Pour yourself one too, detective.”

I carried the inhaler and the bottle to the far side of the kitchen, and then started opening cabinets. “Where’s Maude?”

“Don’ know. Napping? Shopping? Dead?”

There were brushed steel canisters with glass tops near the sink; they were filled with flour, sugar, ground coffee and loose tea. I found a French press in the cabinet above them, filled the beaker with water and put it in the microwave. Andy’s slouch deepened; pretty soon he was going to need a seatbelt.

The microwave timer chirped. I twisted the lid off the coffee canister. I scooped four spoonsful of rough grounds into the boiling water. Andy watched me stir it. The room filled with an aroma that was first nutty, then bitter and earthy but finally clean, cleaner than anything else in that unhappy house. I didn’t want to think of the things I might do for coffee like that.

“Why are you here, Andy?”

“I live here.”

“Not according to Maude.”

He let that pass. If it had been Dr. Kalil Haddad who had changed this kid’s sex, he must be a master sculptor of flesh. Andy Descano had been rebuilt for power; he could have found work picking up junk cars with his bare hands and tossing them onto trucks. His tight white tank top made it clear that he had had top surgery. Who knew what was underneath the baggy shorts? His feet were bare, showing toenails painted with purple glitter. His skin was thick and oily and he wore his brown hair short enough to show scalp. Maybe he was good looking or maybe he was just young and confident. It was hard to tell with his expression smeared by drugs and alcohol.

“Maude says you moved out. Hopping in and out of skiphouses.”

He glowered at me, breathing with his mouth open. I could hear the whiskey still rasping in his throat; his snoring would be no fun that night. “’Cause of Beetle,” he said at last.

“You were sweet on each other?”

“Loved him. Sure.”

“Is that why you stole the Bosch?” I poured him a coffee. “To pay for his operation?”

He shook his head, as if trying to clear it. “Yesterday was my birthday.”

“Happy birthday to you.” I saluted him with the cup. “Cream. Sugar?”

“Black.”

I passed it over.

“July 12.” When he wrapped his big hands around the cup, it disappeared. “I became a man exactly one year ago.

“Oh, is that what you are?”

He smiled, since obviously I hadn’t a clue.

“Not afraid of the devils?” I said.

“Nah.” He sipped. “They don’t get it. There’s more to being a man than chromosomes.” He eyed me over the rim of the cup. “Stop staring at that bottle and pour yourself a drink. You know you want one.”

I did, but I didn’t like that he could tell. I opened the cabinet where I had found the French press and pushed the whiskey onto the bottom shelf with a collection of pricey serving bowls and trays. Weak move, Fay. I closed the cabinet. This kid had me turned around. I decided that I had probably underestimated him; he was, after all, a Descano.

We heard shuffling upstairs and then a toilet flushed. It took the lady of the house about a week and a half to get downstairs.

13

Maude Descano wore a blue silk brocade kimono with sleeves down to her knees. She didn’t seem surprised to see me, but she didn’t seem pleased either.

“I see you’ve met my granddaughter.” She wriggled a hand out of its preposterous sleeve to open the refrigerator.

“Maude doesn’t understand about gender either,” said Andy. “But then she’s a granny.”

The granny produced a medicine bottle from under her sleeve, read the label and then shook it. “What don’t I understand?”

“Never mind, Nana. I think the detective found your Bosch.”

That didn’t surprise Maude either. “Is this true?” She opened a drawer and picked out a teaspoon.

Andy grinned at me; he was trying to write all my lines. “Sure,” I said. “I have it.”

“With you?” Maude poured something white and gluey onto the spoon.

“In a safe place.”

She dipped the spoon into her mouth and then grimaced. “It was in a safe place before.”

Both Descanos thought this was funny. I was starting to feel lighter than air; if they laughed in my direction I might blow out of the doorway and down into the dark hall. “Anne here made the job easy,” I said. “She told me where she’d hidden it, although it was kind of by accident.”

“Andy.” He let his irritation show. “My name is Andy.”

It was my turn to grin.

“I never hid it,” he said, “and never took it. Was all Beetle, all the time. Should’ve never showed him it. Never brought him to this dam’ house. Never, never, never.”

“Who is this person?” said Maude.

“A poor tommy named Behita Berry,” I said. “Andy’s favorite Beetle. He was in the middle of a sex change and I think they stole the Bosch to pay for it. Only he got dead last night.”

“You’re a damn fool,” The granny turned on the kid. “You and your friends can flay yourself to ribbons and you’ll never be men. There are no men.”

Andy’s fists curled but he said nothing. I wondered what I’d do if he went after Maude. What I could do.

“Do the police know?”

“About Berry, yes. That Andy’s connected, yes. This is a murder so they’ll have to talk to him. About the Bosch, no.” I leaned against the counter feeling like I was back in control. “Maybe I can tidy this up but you’ll have to help. Otherwise you’ll have the law here peeking under your beds and opening your medicine cabinets and there’s nothing your connections will be able to do.”

“Help how?”

“Start by telling me about Renata.”

They goggled at me as if I’d grown another nose.

“You remember Renata,” I said. “Someone’s daughter, someone else’s mom.”

“Leave her out of this.” Andy shot off his stool and seemed about to come across the counter at me.

“Shut up, Anne.” Maude pressed her hands flat against the front of her kimono. “What about Renata?” I could see the outline of her bony thighs.

“You had a fight. She moved out. She was so unhappy that she jumped off a bridge.” I watched both of them for reactions. “Unless someone pushed her.”

“Nobody pushed her.” All the air went out of Andy and he slumped back down, deflated. The suggestion only annoyed Maude.

“What did you fight about?” I said.

“She wanted a great deal of money,” said Maude. “I didn’t give it to her.”

“You seem to get that a lot, don’t you? Was this money for Kalil Haddad, by any chance?”

“How do you know about her?”

“Hire a PI and you’re going to give up secrets. Get used to it So she asked for money for her lover?”

“Renata just thought she was in love with her.”

“Him,” said Andy. “Kalil is a man, Maude.” He was going all dreamy and distant on us, as if he were seaside on another planet, where the ocean was Canadian whiskey and the atmosphere pure Bliss. “I’m a man.”

“She wanted me to set this quack up in practice to take advantage of people like poor Anne here. Confused people. Unhappy people. I told her no. She left me and then Haddad left her.”

“You threatened him,” said Andy. “You broke them up.”

“That’s just what Haddad says.”

“How do you know what he says?” I asked.

“Because my poor confused granddaughter went to Dr. Kalil Haddad and spent money I had given her for other purposes on an extensive program of self-mutilation. We do talk, you know. She’s not always like this.”

“You’ve had both surgeries, Andy?” I still needed him in the conversation.

“What?” He summoned up a sleepy leer. “Want to feel inside my shorts?”

“Why Haddad, Andy? Why chose him for the operation?”

“ ’Cause he’s the best.” He was nodding, but not at me. “Ask anyone. Ask this granny.”

“Maybe a thumb in Maude’s eye too?”

The question didn’t interest him.

“Of course she did it to hurt me.” said Maude.

“I did it to become who I am.” It sounded like something he had heard someone else say once.

“She can’t help herself sometimes,” Maude said. “But she knows I still love her.”

This might have been heartwarming to a family therapist, but I was a PI. “But you didn’t have enough money for Beetle to get cut too, so you stole the Bosch.”

“The operation doesn’t cost that much,” said Andy wearily. “He wanted me to steal it so we’d have enough pay for the procedure and then go away together while he was healing. Go away, he said, and stay away. I said no, be smart, sure, I can get all the money we’ll ever need, but a little at a time. Maude won’t care.” He folded his big arms on the counter and rested his head on them. “Maude loves me,” he muttered.

“You asked her for six thousand dollars. Not so little and all at once.”

“I was going to pay for the operation. He wouldn’t listen.” He spoke with his face turned away. “Doesn’t matter anymore.”

She came around the counter and rubbed his shoulders. “You’re tired, baby,” she murmured. “Go upstairs and lie down.” She waited for a response, but big Andy Descano didn’t stir.

“Go.”

He groaned when she pulled him upright, groaned again when he stood, eyelids drooping, face slack. She gave his ass a love pat and off he trundled, like a little girl the size of a post office who had stayed up past her bedtime.

Maude settled on a stool and wheeled around to face me. “She has issues, but no more than the rest of us.”

I thought she was either being too optimistic about the kid or way too hard on womankind. “You believe that about the friend stealing your Bosch?”

“Why not?”

“How was he going to cash in? Who’s the buyer?”

“How would I know?”

“Haddad, maybe?”

She shook her head.

“Andy says your bot is gone. What happened to him?”

Another head shake.

I pulled out my cigarettes. “Look, Maude, either we write our own story or the cops will tell it their way, with you and Andy featured.” I offered her a smoke but she waved me off. “It’s one thing when someone kills herself. That’s just weather to cops, what happens every day. Murder gets their attention. So who took the Bosch and why was Kirby covering it up?”

“Was he?”

“Sure. That’s why he’s gone.” I flicked my lighter and watched the cigarette catch. “Let’s say it was Andy—makes sense that Kirby would shield him, at least for a while. So our story is about loyalty, assuming that bots are capable of it. But if Beetle stole the Bosch . . . ” I watched smoke curl around my fingers. “ . . . well, maybe loyalty still plays. Andy convinces the bot not to say anything when he promises to confront Beetle and get your painting back. But then you hire me and everything gets more complicated.”

“Go on.”

“Go on where?” I looked for the ashtray that wasn’t there. “No matter how the story starts, it ends up with Beetle dead. Who killed him? The buyer? Who would buy it?”

“I’ve been wondering that myself,” said Maude, “ever since it went missing.”

“Turn it around.” I finally flicked ash into the sink. “Who knew that you had it? Or that it even existed?”

“I’ve hated the damn thing ever since Nicky bought it home. I most certainly did not show it off.” She considered. “Anne and Renata, obviously. Kirby. I don’t know who else. Nicky bought it from Sotheby’s, but that’s long gone. I suppose there could be records somewhere.”

“Haddad?”

“Possibly.”

I sucked smoke deep into my lungs and pretended to think. “How about the devils?”

“Why would you say that?”

“Why not?” I felt a twinge that might have been inspiration or maybe just a nicotine tremor. “Know any devils?”

“Know?” She made a lemon face. “I’ve met a couple.”

“Like who?”

“The local group. There’s Pej, that’s the one that Grete Sams meets with, I think Seeren gives the orders. Frems and Kopsie, I don’t know much about them. Eller claims it’s studying us.”

“The mayor told me she hates the devils.”

“She probably does. But she lives in the real world, not like Anne and all her tommy friends. This is their zoo, Hardaway. The devils are the keepers and we’re the specimens. The bots feed us and sweep up our shit.”

If that’s what Maude thought, it was no wonder her family went squirrelly. But then it was something I might have said before Sharifa and I had Aissa. “Have any of them ever been here, maybe seen the painting?”

“I threw a fundraiser last summer for the Hopewell Museum. Tents on the back lawn, catered brunch and the Frost String Quartet. The local devils came for the music and stayed for maybe an hour. Grete said it was a goodwill gesture, but they nearly spoiled the party. I didn’t see them go inside but the doors were open the whole time; people need to use the bathrooms. You see the devils being mixed up in this?”

“I don’t see anything unless it hits me in the face. But this helps, Maude.”

“You really have the Bosch? When will you bring it?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Then leave, I’m tired.” She dismissed me with an abrupt sweep of her hand. “I want this over with, Hardaway.”

“Me too,” I said. “Don’t bother to get up, I’ll let myself out.”

I couldn’t help it; I felt sorry for the Descanos. Anyone could see that Maude was hollowed out by age and disease and still she was spending whatever strength she had trying to protect Andy, who resented her. And what had it been like to grow up and change sexes with sad, absent Renata and steely, arrogant Maude as your two mothers? Mothers and daughters . . . I checked my sidekick and realized that I was going to be late getting Aissa. As I trotted through the house I imagined our daughter at Andy’s age. All grown up. Her chances for happiness would have to be better, assuming I could stay out of her way. I was probably more like Maude than I wanted to admit, but at least Aissa had Sharifa to give her what she needed, even if I couldn’t.

The reception hall was still dark and close. That bothered me; all the lights had been on in the kitchen. I found a triple switch and flipped all three. Nothing. I opened both the front doors wide to let some light and then peered through the glass front of the gun cabinet.

One of the handgun mounts was empty.

14

I pedaled into the heat of the afternoon as I sprinted across town to pick Aissa up. I still needed to get to the office to tell George that I would take the case and lock in Seeren’s retainer. But I also wanted to hear what the bot had to say about loyalty. I wasn’t sure it was something he’d talk about; we didn’t have that kind of relationship. Or any relationship, really. I didn’t hate bots like I hated the devils, but I tried to have as little to do with them as possible. Some people claimed to have bot friends and I’d seen Crazy Martha, the accountant down the hall from me, chatting George up. Then I remembered that I needed to brace Haddad. I pulled over, looked him up on my sidekick then hopped back on the bike.

“SR Services. This one is pleased to accept your call.”

A bot, of course. “Put Haddad on.”

“Regrettably the press of duty makes the doctor unavailable to take unsolicited calls during office hours. It would be a true honor for this one to deliver your message.”

“Okay then, tell him I’m a private investigator and I need to talk to him about Renata Descano’s death. Tell him there’s a problem with his story. Better do it right now, he might decide he’s available.”

“The doctor’s schedule is most eventful today. Indulge this one and I will make the inquiry.”

I was flying down the hill on Cabot Street when Haddad came on. His voice was so thin that it was barely able to stand up on its own.

“Say again?” I stopped on the sidewalk

“This is Haddad. Your name please?”

“It’s Fay Hardaway, but that means nothing to you. But my client’s name will.”

“It’s Maude Descano, isn’t it? What else does she want from me?”

“We need to talk, Doctor Haddad. The sooner the better, and not on a call.”

“I’m very busy.”

“You, me, and the undertaker. On the other hand, your patient Behita Berry isn’t doing anything at all today on account of he’s been murdered.”

Haddad’s voice lost weight. “Murdered?”

“Beaten to death. So cross him off the schedule for tomorrow. The cops will be happy to take his appointment. I’m thinking we should meet before that.”

“That’s terrible news.”

“It is. Does tonight work for you?”

There was a long silence. Maybe he was checking his calendar or maybe he was picking himself up off the floor. “Eight.”

“Where?”

“My office, Ms. Hardaway. As I said, I am very busy.” He broke the connection.

When I unlocked the door to my office, Aissa squirmed her hand out of mine, darted into my little reception room and started pawing through the tired books on the coffee table. She wasn’t interested in The Book of Art Volume 4: German and Spanish Art to 1900, or The Big Book of Famous Women, or Behind the Veil: The Christer Scam, or A Guide to the World’s Greatest Buildings. As soon as she found Heather Has Two Mommies she hurled herself onto the futon with it. “Read me, read me.”

“I told you, sweetie, I have to work first. You can read it to yourself, like at school. Later we can read together.” I went through the connecting door to my office.

George hadn’t been in his room off the lobby when we came in so I put my feet on the desk and called him on my sidekick.

“Hello Fay,” he said. “This one has anticipated your communication. Seeren has mentioned his bright desire to task you to an investigation. Has a decision been reached?”

“It has. Can you come up? I want to discuss something with you.”

“I will arrive forthwith. Do I notice your daughter’s voice?”

In the next room I could hear Aissa piping, “Mommy Jane. Mommy Kate.”

“Yeah, she’s here. Is that a problem?”

“It would give this one true pleasure to offer your child a token of familiarity.”

“Sure, whatever. But we’re only here for a few minutes, okay? I have to get her home for supper.”

I had tucked the Bosch under my shirt; I wasn’t about to leave it in my saddlebag on the street. I wasn’t sure exactly why I hadn’t given it to Maude when I’d had the chance. I suppose because it was my ticket to see her again if I needed to. And because it was a clue to Beetle’s murder that I didn’t understand yet. I unzipped the bag for another peek. This slab of oak hadn’t gotten any less ugly. The mud-colored devil still had an arrow sticking out of its ass. Touching edges only, I turned it sideways and upside down. If I’d gone to detective school, I might have had a microscope to slide it under, or at least a magnifying glass to examine it with, but I was a self-taught and self-appointed shamus. I was pushy and persistent and I made the rent by working cheap and by taking pretty much every case that walked through my door, as long as it didn’t involve Christers. Which meant that the only tool I had at hand was a pocketknife. I unfolded the thin blade, slid it under a paint chip the size of a toenail and lifted. The wood underneath was not blank as I expected. I could just glimpse a herringbone pattern in a smoky blue. I tried a bigger chip, but when I got the knife under it flipped off from the painting with a snick and landed tan side up on the desk. Damn. If this painting was really priceless, it just got discounted. But what I’d uncovered got my blood singing. It looked very much like the corner of a devil’s—one of our devil’s—compound eye. I scooped the chip with my blade, deposited it on the painting and sealed everything back in the plastic bag. I unlocked the middle drawer of my desk and tried to pull it out quietly, but Aissa has ears like a bat. She was through the door in an instant, Heather and her Mommies forgotten. “My yittles,” she said. “Mine.”

I put the bag away and locked the middle drawer. We kept a colony of Littlers in the bottom drawer, next to the office bottle of Johnnie Walker. I let her play with her toys while I opened the bar. She liked to huddle under my desk, I told her it was her cave. I listened to her bossing her collection of mommies and daughters and cows around, then slipped a plastic cup off the stack and poured myself a moment of peace, while I wondered what it meant that someone, maybe Bosch himself, had painted a crude joke over a real devil.

I was considering a refill when George appeared in the connecting door to the reception room. I nodded him in, dropped my hand under the desk and wriggled my fingers to get my daughter’s attention. “Aissa, George is here.”

“Botbot?” she said.

“The bot, yes.”

“Cookie?” she said. “Maybe cookie?”

“No, I don’t think that George has a cookie today. Or do you?”

“Regrettably not, but this one would be pleased to offer the child this,” he said. He extended one of the snaky appendages that served as arms and deposited a figurine on my desk. It was a Littler version of a bot, made of the same gleaming botstuff as George. “My intention is that you will find it appropriate and Aissa Ramirez will find it amusing.”

I picked it up, turned it over, passed it between my fingers. I thought maybe I should have an objection, but none came. Bots were as much a part of Aissa’s world as cows—more so.

“Aissa,” I said. “Look what George brought you.” I handed it down and then bent over to see her reaction.

“Botbot.” She snatched it from me and immediately introduced it to the other actors in her toddler soap opera.

“What do you say?”

“Denk you, Gorge.”

When I straightened up and saw George, I was momentarily disoriented, as if he were not the bot I knew or maybe I was another Fay Hardaway. I had just asked Aissa to thank a bot. If Crazy Martha or Abby the piano teacher had given the gift, I would now express my gratitude as well. But the words stuck to my tongue. “So,” I said instead, “you can tell Seeren that I’m already working the case.”

“Seeren looks forward to a speedy accomplishment.” As he spoke an icon flashed on my desktop and a lonely bank account had a thousand new friends.

I nodded and tapped it shut. “I need to ask you something.”

“My full attention is at your disposal.”

“A bot has gone missing. Name of Kirby, worked for Maude Descano.”

“Yes, such is most unusual.”

“You know about it?”

“This one is a deliberative agent in a distributed intelligence network. While not in continuous communication we are connected, all to all.”

“Any idea where he is?”

“At this time, his location is unavailable to the network. Kirby’s previous masters have been contacted but the query has not provided bright results.”

“Which would be who, exactly?”

“Kirby was most recently tasked to cooperate with Grete Sams. Prior to that he commenced a semiotic inventory of the Hopewell Museum. He was once created to support Eller, who is compiling the Index of All Human Dysfunction.”

I liked that, even though it pointed in three different directions. “Okay then, answer me this: Can a bot do something illegal?”

“Such illegal act is imbued with wisdom?”

That was what I was afraid he’d say. Wisdom. The devils kept preaching wisdom, although their idea of it was seriously cocked. Somehow it involved a potty mix of efficiency, values and having things turn out as planned. Of course, nobody was buying ethics from the devils. “Say I stole something. Would you turn me in?”

“While you are assisting Seeren in these matters, I would not.”

“What if I am not working for Seeren?”

“I would take actions appropriate to the circumstance.”

Which was no help; I knew this would be a mistake. “Suppose I asked you to kill someone? No, say a devil told you to.”

“Which individual am I to consider?”

“Anyone.”

“The statistical individual has no intrinsic value, or rather she has a value that approaches zero. That is, if the value of the human species is one, then the value of a non-specific individual is one divided by the current population.”

“One,” Aissa muttered. “One, two, free, foe.” She usually didn’t listen to bots because of the way they mangled the language.

“Thus, if the master’s request, or yours, did not contravene wisdom, I would perform as asked.”

“Just like that?”

“The wisdom would require complex calculation. For example, certain individuals contribute to the overall health of your species.”

“Really?” I said. “Just how did disappearing half of us contribute to the health of our species? Do we look healthy to you?”

“Poopy,” said Aissa and stuck her head out from under the desk. “Poopy, Mommy.”

She presented herself to be picked up. As I slipped my hands under her arms and boosted her onto the desktop, I could smell it. She stood there, preening for George. She took pride in her poops.

I kept a few emergency diapers and a packet of wipes in the bottom drawer behind the bottle. I laid Aissa down on the desk and unsnapped her onesie.

“That action was taken by the masters,” said George. “This one was not then in existence.”

“What action?” I pulled off the diaper and wiped Aissa down. I had lost track of the conversation.

“The purging to which you refer. We were deployed after it occurred to relieve the unplanned distress of your species.”

“Unplanned?” The back of my neck began to burn and if Aissa hadn’t been there I would have thrown something at George, like maybe my desk. “They didn’t see the Crazy Time coming?”

“The inexpectation was its persistence over many years.”

That’s what I got for trying to talk to bots. “Never mind,” I said. “You bots are just as guilty as devils.” I handed him the wad of diaper and wipe to dispose of. “Unless you disagree with what they did.”

“The available data at the time upheld the wisdom.”

I stared. “Are you saying there’s new data? That maybe this was all a big mistake?”

Trying to read a bot is like trying to read a washing machine. “There is always new data, Fay Hardaway.”

“Wait a minute.” Sharifa had been sweeping up the scatter of peas and macaroni around Aissa’s high chair. Now she turned to me. “You’re talking about Saint Kalil?”

“The Dr. Kalil Haddad who does sex change operations.” I scrubbed hardened cheese sauce out of the saucepan and then dipped it in the dishwater. “Nobody mentioned he’d been canonized.”

“He’s so ancient I thought he must be dead. I mean he had the surgeries to become a man way before the disappearance.”

“You know him?”

“I know of him.” She emptied the dustpan into the garbage. “I never met him myself; he left for private practice right before I did my residency. He worked in the ER at our hospital. They said he was a beast, that nobody human could clock all the hours he did.”

“Okay, so he was a hard worker. How does that make him a saint?”

“He got the name in the Crazy Time, when everything fell apart and the suicides were piling up in the morgue. They said he would spend days at a time at work, pulling women back from the edge. They trusted him because they thought he was a man, the last man. You know, because he looked and acted like one. It gave him a kind of power that the other docs didn’t have.”

“Great. So he’s a holy man who does miracles. He’s still the guy who broke up with Renata Descano.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. He’s got to be in his late eighties, maybe ninety.”

I dried my hands on the dishtowel. “What are you saying?” Sharifa was just within reach so I caught her by the waist. “Old folks don’t need sex?” I nuzzled her ear. “I’ve got news for you.”

“You’re not that old.” She giggled. “And you get your share, shamus.” She kissed me.

It was a good kiss. It had all of Sharifa’s style and some unexpected ambition. A kiss that could’ve gone places, given half a chance. But it was seven-thirty and I had an appointment with a saint at eight.

15

I had never met Renata Descano but I had seen pix and vids. She was about my size, maybe an inch taller and a bit bigger in the hips and bust—a girl who wouldn’t get blown over in a strong wind. But if she had actually enticed Dr. Kalil Haddad into her bed as alleged, she would have had to be very, very careful not to break him.

On tiptoes Haddad would have stood maybe five four and, if he had been naked and soaking wet, the water might have weighed more than he did. His skin was stretched tight and pale over high cheekbones but was wrinkled around the eyes and mouth. He had a full head of flyaway white hair but it was everywhere thin so that I could see his pink scalp. His step was wobbly and uncertain as he walked me from the reception room to his office, as if he wasn’t sure where to find the floor. However his gaze was bright, alert and disapproving as he settled behind his desk. “Tick-tick-tick, Ms. Hardaway. I still have patients waiting.”

I’d been trying to think up a clever line of patter, but I was shooting blanks so I just blurted something out. “I want to know why you’re talking to me. Because the way you caved this afternoon, I’m guessing you have something to hide.”

He was as astonished as I was. “And you want me to just come out and tell you what it is?”

“My wife said that they call you Saint Kalil down at Parkhurst. She’s a doctor there. Intensive care.”

“What’s her name?’

“Sharifa Ramirez.”

He leaned forward, tapped at his desktop and I saw Sharifa’s pix. “So your wife is Dr. Ramirez and she works in my old hospital. I’ve never heard of her.”

“A devil named Seeren hired me to look into Renata Descano’s suicide.”

“Seeren?”

“You know him?”

He leaned forward again and spoke to the desk. “Philip?”

A moment later his bot answered. “This one is listening, Kalil.”

“Send everybody in the waiting room home. Reschedule them; I’ll come in early tomorrow for anyone who can make a six o’clock call.”

“Yes, Kalil, is there any other service this one can accomplish for you?”

“Make sure I’m not disturbed. Thanks, Philip.”

“You are welcome, Kalil.”

Haddad wheeled his chair away from his desk across the floor to an antique sideboard. He opened the marquetry cupboard doors. “Do you know anything about Port, Ms. Hardaway?”

“No, I said, “but I’m willing to learn.”

“I have a very fine 2007 Quinta de Vargellas here.” He removed a dusty bottle and two crystal goblets. “If you would carry these over to the couch.”

“Renata Descano was a smart, wonderful and deeply unhappy woman.”

“Were you lovers?”

Haddad stared into his glass. “We loved each other, yes.” He glanced up and saw something in my expression that amused him. “This interests you?” He laughed. “Feel free to speculate on the prurient details. You won’t be hearing them from me.”

“Fair enough.” I hoped I wasn’t blushing; it would clash with my attitude. “But Maude didn’t approve.”

“Maude didn’t approve of anything that Renata did, which is why she accomplished so little.”

“Andy says she broke you up.”

“That boy has never understood his mother’s suicide.”

“And you do?”

“You ask if I had anything to hide? I do, but nothing illegal, only something I deeply regret. Have you ever heard of a spendthrift trust?”

I shook my head.

“Imagine a wealthy older woman falls ill, say to cancer.”

“We talking Maude here?”

Haddad waved a bony finger for silence. “She wants to leave her affairs in order and provide for the heirs, daughter and a granddaughter in this case, but she has no confidence in them. She creates spendthrift trusts, which disburse specific amounts of money each year, but prevent the heirs from accessing the principal. Usually such trusts are created for minors with the provision that they come into the full amount of money on some birthday, say twenty-first or thirty-fifth.”

“Renata had one of these?”

“Half a million in the trust, with a fifteen thousand dollar annual allowance. Access to the entire trust on her sixtieth birthday.”

I thought about my bicycle chained to a lamppost in front of Haddad’s office. I thought about my shabby four room apartment. “And that didn’t make her happy?” I thought about what money could and couldn’t buy.

“I’m not sure what would have made her happy. I never did.” His hand trembled when he brought the glass to his lips. “But she found a way to take control of her trust. She wrote her own will, left me a huge sum, and ended her life. My guilty secret is that I have spent almost all of her money on new genital reconstruction technology. I’ve developed a biomechanical prosthesis that grows directly to the nervous system. Full sensation—do you realize what that means?” He set the glass on the table in front of us. “But . . . ” He shook his head. “ . . . but had I known what she intended, I would have told her that I would turn the bequest down. I still feel awful when I imagine her on the bridge, thinking of how what she was doing would help me and the work here.”

“Maude says that she asked for money for you.”

“Maude . . . ” His mouth worked as if he were about to spit. “If she did, Renata never mentioned it to me.”

Maude Descano hovered in the room for a few moments and we contemplated her malign presence in silence.

“Then about your work here,” I said at last. “Andy Descano. Behita Berry.”

“My work.” Haddad smiled, thin lips tight against yellow teeth. “What I do is make men,” he said. “The best I can, at least, given the raw materials I have to work with. I try not to feel guilty when they don’t always turn out to be a credit to their gender. Andy, for example. I might not have agreed to metoidioplasty for him for if it had not been for his mother.”

I poured the old man a refill. “Why not?” The port had him talking.

“He was rushing things. He’d been in testosterone therapy for just eight months and had already had his mastectomy, hysterectomy and ovarectomy.” He flicked a finger against his glass and it rang. “I’ve known Andy for years. He’s impulsive, and even when he isn’t, he doesn’t always make the best decisions.”

“And this metoidioplasty involves what exactly?”

“Lifting the clitoral hood and detaching the ligament from the pubic bone. It allows the testosterone-primed tissues to extend. The head of the clitoris resembles an adolescent glans penis, but it’s small and not capable of penetration. That requires phalloplasty with my new prosthesis, which Andy had a few months later.” He raised the glass and toasted himself. “He had two very successful surgeries.”

“And Berry?”

“Him I did not know very well; he was a new patient. He’d been on T for several years and had developed some fine secondary characteristics—facial hair, muscle mass, a lovely larynx. Had the mastectomy and was prepped for bottom surgery.”

“It must be expensive.”

“Not at all.” Haddad looked insulted. “The whole point of my work is to make sex reassignment affordable to anyone who wants it. We have a sliding scale, but the typical charge for these procedures is just over five hundred dollars.”

“Was that what Berry was going to pay?”

“You’d have to ask Philip. I don’t get involved in billing.” He sipped his port and frowned. “I seem to remember something about Andy offering to help Beetle out.”

“All that cutting—you make it sound pretty simple.”

“Straightforward, yes. Most of these are outpatient procedures. Simple, not at all. Sex reassignment is not something to be taken lightly. It’s not a fashion statement and it’s not a way to rebel against the devils. It’s an expression of a man’s true self.”

“But you don’t really make them into men. All the men are dead.”

He stiffened and then set his glass on the table in front of us. “You, of all people, should understand that isn’t true.”

I stared. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Given who you are, I just thought you . . . ”

“You don’t know who I am,” I snapped and felt my hands curling into fists. “We just met.” I shoved them into my pants pockets.

A shadow darkened his face but then he surrendered. “All right then. You’re entitled to your opinion; certainly the devils believe there are no more men.” He wrapped his hand around the back of his neck and rubbed. I believed he was about to show me the door, but then thought better of it. “But if theywere really all dead, then I would be too. The devils confused biological sex with gender roles. They saw the Y chromosome as a switch which turns on a set of characteristics they called male. But the fact is that both genders share these characteristics. Maybe biological men were more territorial and aggressive on average. Maybe they did murder more often than women.” As he spoke it seemed to me that he got larger somehow; there was muscle in his voice, fury in his posture. “But that kind of gender essentialism gets us nowhere. Women can be territorial and aggressive and they damn well commit murder. The devils tried to extinguish traits they decided were harmful by disappearing an entire sex.” He shot off the couch and glared down at me. “But look around you and what do you see? They fucked up. Or what do we say these days? It’s cocked. Well excuse me, but that’s fucked up too.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“Then start, Ms. Hardaway. Start right now. I need all the help I can get putting this world back together.”

“And you don’t care if the devils find out?”

“The devils know.” He seemed surprised to hear himself shouting. He placed hands against head and stretched the wrinkled skin around his mouth tight. Then he let his arms fall to his sides. “They know what they did and they realize now that they were wrong to do it. Or at least Seeren and his faction have reconnected with wisdom. And even Eller’s foolish Index is only intended to justify themselves to themselves against their doubts. A vain attempt to recast history. Instead all it proves is that they’re aliens who got biological sex, gender identity, and gender roles all mixed up. When they disappeared the men, our species began to generate new men. I’m just helping those people become who they already are.” He leaned over to me. “You’re the detective.” He rested the feather of his hand on my elbow. “My god, why do you think you’re here?”

16

It wasn’t really a party and I didn’t exactly send out invitations, but I arrived at 122 Fairview in style, in a police car chauffeured by Stevie Smick. Seeren might have clout downtown, but he couldn’t keep the cops from getting their fingerprints all over my case. Stevie had agreed to wait outside as long as I kept my sidekick on record so she could monitor me. I could only hope this wasn’t going to be a problem. Standard procedure was to record all interactions with clients—mostly for my own protection. But it would be bad for business to present the law with a gift-wrapped basket of evidence against my own clients. I had George, the bot from my building, in tow as I climbed the front steps and rang the bell of the Descano mansion. This had not pleased Stevie. Cops and bots don’t get along, never have. After talking to Haddad, I was guessing that it might be a territorial thing.

I’d also asked some devils to stop by later.

Maude had promised that Andy would be home, so I was relieved when the double doors swung away and I saw him slouching in the entryway. He was wearing a Rebels’ football jersey, cutoff jeans and running shoes without socks. He had his hair combed, his face washed and he looked sober enough to teach kindergarten.

“What’s this?” He looked past me at the bot, as welcoming as barbed wire.

I brushed past him and noticed that the lights were on in the reception hall.

“Kirby back yet?” I turned my back to the gun cabinet and waved George in.

“No.”

“Found a replacement?”

“No.”

“Well then, let me introduce George. He comes with my top recommendation.”

“It gives this one bright pleasure to greet you, Andy Descano.”

He blocked George from coming any further into the house. “We don’t need a bot.”

“Really?” I said. “Who’ll do the washing up? The laundry? All that beautiful money to dust?”

“Anne, is that Hardaway?” Maude Descano paused at the top of the stairs, like some movie star making an entrance. The granny was wearing a raspberry rose shrug over a cream top and cuffed linen trousers. It was the first time I had seen her dressed. She started down to us, leaning heavily on the curved mahogany banister. We waited. It was a long wait.

“What is this bot doing here?” She glanced from me to Andy.

“I thought you could use some help around the place, Maude. At least until Kirby comes back.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We don’t need a bot.”

“That’s what I said.” Andy’s voice was low and rumbling. I think he was trying for brooding menace, but he just sounded sleepy.

“Did you hear that, George? They don’t need a bot. I must have been mistaken.”

“This one offers apologies, Maude Descano.” He took a step back and bowed. “No imposition was intended.”

“Why don’t you wait outside? This won’t be long.” I ushered him through the open doors, closed them and turned back to face the two women. “Shall we do this in the library?” I said.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, missy.” Maude looked suspicious, as if she thought I might have a damnation of devils in my pocket. “But don’t try to be clever with me. That’s not what I’m paying you for.”

“Oh, Maude, why spoil our last few moments together?” I breezed past them toward the library. Andy cursed, and for a moment I was sure that it wasn’t going to work, but then I heard them follow.

I settled in the inglenook and lit a cigarette. The Descanos sat together on the bench facing me.

“Have you got it?” said Maude.

I tapped the briefcase beside me. “You know, things would be so much simpler if Kirby were here.” I drew smoke into my lungs, then talked it at them. “When you hired me, Maude, you claimed Andy stole your painting. Andy’s story was that Beetle took it. Either way, Kirby had to have known. Your grandmother and I have discussed this part already, Andy, but it was after your bedtime. I just wanted to catch you up.”

“Just give us the damn painting, Hardaway. Are you worried about your fee?” Maude fumbled a sidekick from the pocket of her skirt, held it close to her face so she could see the screen and tapped it. “There.” Her sidekick chirped and a second later mine made the happiest sound on earth.

“Thanks,” I said, “but that doesn’t solve the problem of the buyer. I talked to Kalil Haddad and he said that Andy was going to help pay for the operation. It was only five hundred dollars, but I was under the impression that your grandson was hard up for cash.”

Andy was wary but Maude’s face crumpled. “You saw Haddad already?”

“Prompt service is my motto. I thought he might be the buyer, but after I got to know the old gent, I didn’t like him for it. So, not only did Andy know where Beetle and the Bosch were, but he probably knew who the buyer was. Yes?”

His stare was flinty.

“But what he didn’t know was the reason why Kirby had let them steal the Bosch. You thought it was out of loyalty to you, didn’t you, Andy? But it wasn’t; Kirby was playing for another team entirely.” When I flicked the butt of my cigarette into the fireplace, I could see the ones I’d smoked the other day were still there. These people really did need a new bot. “And here’s where having our bot friend around would make this case so much simpler. Because something went wrong. Maybe it was Maude hiring me, maybe it was something Beetle did, but Kirby decided he needed the Bosch. And then bad things happened to Behita Berry.”

My sidekick began to chirp; I talked over it.

“Was Kirby going to give it to the buyer or bring it back here? Do you know, Andy? No? But in any event, Kirby went out to the skiphouse on Chestnut. I don’t think he meant to kill Beetle, he just misjudged how much beating a woman can take. And then a devil showed up—what was that about?” I was losing their attention; I could tell they were distracted by the call on my sidekick. “Excuse me, I have to take this.”

It was George. “This one has accomplished the search. It is as you expected, Fay Hardaway. Exit to the back of the house by the water lily pool. There does not exist the possibility of data retrieval.”

“Thanks, George.” I clicked off and gave them my endgame smile. “So, while we’ve been chatting in here, I asked George do a little gardening.”

And then I was looking at the little gun in Andy Descano’s big hand. It was pointed at my chest. I didn’t like that much. But Andy wasn’t stupid, just young. Nobody here was stupid—I hoped.

“Anne.” Maude was horrorstruck.

“I’ve heard bullets are hard to get.” My voice was calm as an atheist’s Sunday morning. “How many did you buy, Andy?”

“Enough,” he said.

“Enough for me and the buyer too?” I raised both hands high over my head. “Who was it, Andy? The devil I saw that night? Or maybe all of the devils? That would take a lot of bullets, man.”

“You’re the detective.”

“I am.” I let my hands sink to shoulder level. “But Maude didn’t hire me to solve Beetle’s murder. She just wanted her painting back and you protected. I do have an idea about who it is because I know something about why the buyer wanted the Bosch.”

This interested him. “Let’s hear it.”

“Tell you what,” I said and let my hands drop. “That gun can’t weigh very much but I’ve heard that a bullet can be as heavy as a bus. A lot of consequences in a bullet. Why strain yourself? Just lower it for now. You can always shoot me after we chat.”

“Do it, Andy,” said Maude. I wondered if that was the first time she had ever used his new name. “Let’s hear what she has to say.” She was paler than ever; but she seemed to be gathering herself for whatever was coming.

Andy held the gun on his lap with the barrel pointed at the floor between my legs. “So?”

“So,” I said, “the painting that hung over there all these years was not painted on a blank slab of wood. Underneath it is another painting of another devil. One of the interstellar variety.”

“How do you know that?” said Maude.

I waved my hand carelessly and gave myself an alibi for vandalizing her artwork. “Beetle must have been in a hurry; he shoved it into a plastic bag and wasn’t very careful how he did it. When I checked to see what I had, some paint chips were loose. One fell off. You can see a devil’s eye staring through the gap in the surface painting. It’s one of ours.”

“Okay,” said Andy. “So?”

“So I say that points toward a devil or devils as being interested in ownership of this unique historical artifact. Then consider how Kirby came to work here.”

“He used to work in the Mayor’s office,” said Maude. “She sent him to us.”

“Why?”

She considered. “She claimed he was an improvement over the general run of bots. Better socialized. More discreet.”

“Just so. And before her, where did he work?”

Maude shrugged.

I shook a finger at her. “Important to get references before you hire in help, Maude.” Then I realized a mistake I had made at the very beginning of this case. “Wait a minute, what references did you check for me? How did you get my name?”

“I didn’t need references, she said. “Grete Sams recommended you.”

I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that at all.

“Go on,” said Andy. “Who did Kirby work for?”

Grete Sams had no reason to know who I was, much less to recommend me for a case like this. “The Hopewell Museum,” I said absently.

“And why should I care about that?” he said. The little gun stirred itself and looked around.

“Maybe you don’t.” There is nothing like mortal danger to focus the attention. “But the Mayor was right; Kirby was special. He wasn’t built to serve us like most bots. He was created by Eller to assist in compiling the Index of Human Dysfunction.”

The gun jumped at the mention of Eller and I knew that I had played Andy Descano once again for the information I needed. “So we agree on the buyer?” I said.

Andy nodded, his eyes bright with rage.

“A bullet isn’t the way to bring that devil bastard down. I have a feeling that some of his own kind might do the job for you. And come to think of it, you really don’t want to shoot me, either. For one thing, there’s a cop around the block monitoring us on my sidekick. For another, you really aren’t in that much trouble. With Maude’s connections, you’ll probably get off with just a fine for the bullets. Shooting the bot was destruction of property; I doubt the devils will bring charges, given the circumstances. Why don’t you put that gun up and we can all stroll out back and see how things look in the light of day?”

Andy Descano had bought a lot of bullets. Maybe he thought they would make him more of a man. I don’t know. I never got the chance to ask him.

The Decanos and I stood at the edge of the shallow grave, looking down at the bullet-riddled remains of the bot, Kirby, that the bot, George had uncovered. He had taken quite a few shots to the head. Stevie Smick was the first to join us; she relieved Andy of his gun but did not immediately arrest him. Seeren and Eller arrived soon after.

Stevie and I bracketed Andy as the devils approached the ruined bot. I could feel the kid’s muscles go hard as he coiled to launch himself at Eller.

“Don’t,” said Stevie. “Just don’t.”

“He did it.” Andy’s whisper seethed like water boiling. “It’s his fault.”

“The bot did it,” I said. “You got your revenge, kid. Don’t cock it up now.”

Eller’s wings twitched as it took in the mess it had made. Neither devil made any noises that we could hear and whatever passed between them, if anything, George didn’t translate. Then Eller launched itself with a whoosh that tore at our clothes and stirred the dirt next to Kirby’s grave. Andy wrenched himself out of our grip and lunged at the devil. Too late. He staggered around in impotent fury beneath Eller, screaming curses. It circled above us—just out of reach—as if unsure of where it wanted to go.

I paid no attention to either of them. I was watching Seeren. Because I had seen the devil disappear a woman once, I was hoping now that it would disappear Eller. I wanted to believe that the devils’ idea of wisdom was within shouting distance of our idea of justice. I wanted a finish to this case that I could take home and put on a shelf in my waiting room for everyone to see. But Seeren gave us nothing and finally Eller banked and climbed to the west, away from downtown.

Then, because he was stupid with grief and rage, or maybe just stupid, Andy turned and punched Seeren in the maw.

The devil was about the size of kindergartener, just over a meter tall, and Andy Descano could have arm-wrestled a backhoe. The blow flung Seeren off its spindly legs, spinning it backwards. Its wings churned and its bullet body twisted as it toppled into a bed of marigolds. It lay there, unmoving.

We froze, all of us, still life with shock. I don’t know about the others but there was a roaring in my ears, as if the earth had cracked or the sky had fallen. Had anyone ever killed a devil? Were they even alive? All I could think of was that Eller was missing a chance to add a chapter to the Index of Human Dysfunction. Then one of Seeren’s wings shivered and the bot George was helping the devil stand and I realized that even though Andy Descano was a headstrong fool, he had acted on an impulse that I and every woman alive shared. He was probably doomed for what he had just done, but he was also a hero. He seemed to realize this at the same moment I did, because he straightened, let his arms fall to his side and faced Seeren.

A crazy grin spread across his face; Maude was crying. “Been a while since you’ve seen a man?” he said.

I was certain that Seeren would disappear him on the spot. Only it didn’t happen. Instead a lawn sprinkler started up next door and the moment passed and we all remembered how to breathe. George steered the wobbly devil toward Stevie. “Seeren mentions the brightest of requests for transport, Lieutenant Stephanie Smick” he said. “It regrets lacking capacity to fly to any destination at this moment.”

Stevie was doubtful. “What about the kid?” She looked past the two of them to Andy Descano. “I should take him in, no?”

“Wisdom dictates that there is no history here,” said the bot. “Seeren tasks that person to continue in life.”

Andy looked vaguely disappointed, although he had no right to be. The devil might claim that nothing had just happened, but Andy had a story he could tell for the rest of his life. Maude clutched at his arm and turned him toward the house. Stevie and George and Seeren were already headed for the police car.

If they were letting it go, then I was too. These were aliens, after all, and we didn’t understand them any better than they understood us. I’d earned my fee, it was another hot afternoon in July and soon it would be time to pick my daughter up at the Precious Life Center. And there was the interest on Sharifa’s kiss that I meant to collect. And the rest of my life to live. But I had one last bit of business to take care of.

“Here.” I trotted after Maude and thrust the briefcase with the Bosch at her. “This is yours.”

17

I took Sharifa and Aissa to Salt Bay for a week. I built sand castles for Aissa to knock down and taught her how to put her head underwater and blow bubbles. She stayed up too late and ate too many popsicles and was as happy as any two-year-old had ever been, before or after the men disappeared. It was almost enough to make me forget about the Descanos and the devils and the Index of Human Dysfunction. Sharifa bought a new bathing suit and read a novel about a queen who married a dragon. We had asparagus twice that week and made love every afternoon while Aissa napped. I held myself to one lonely drink a night. Whenever Sharifa took Aissa to the playground I would spread my blanket on the beach and think.

Late in the week I told Sharifa about how Haddad had maybe implied that maybe I was really a man. She listened and then laughed and said that she’d love me no matter what equipment I came with. It didn’t matter to her. I knew she was only trying to be playful and make me lighten up, but it mattered to me too much. I thought if I was supposed to be a different gender, then did I have to rewrite the life I had been living all these years? I didn’t feel like a man, didn’t want to feel like one. I felt like me. But deep into the night as I spooned beside my beautiful wife, a snake inside my head twisted and tried to swallow its own tail. Maybe I was the way I was because I was really somebody else. If Haddad was right, then I was in denial. That meant that I couldn’t even trust my own thoughts.

Business was slow when I got back to the city. I briefly had a missing teen case, only she wasn’t very missing; she showed up the day after the mom hired me. I was sitting on a cushion of Seeren’s money, so I didn’t charge her. But I told Sharifa I was working the case so I could hide out in the office and keep Johnnie Walker company. I spent the time reading everything I could find about Hieronymus Bosch and studying his devils. None were ours. Bosch had painted at least three versions of The Last Judgment. One was in Vienna, another in Bruges. The third had been lost. A large fragment of this last piece had once been in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, but the museum had been burned during the Crazy Time. A smaller fragment now hung in Maude Descano’s library. All the The Last Judgments showed Jesus sorting the damned from the saved at the end of the world. Maybe being a P. I. was getting to me, but I had to agree with Bosch’s count: he painted twice as many sinners as saints. It was pretty to think that on Judgment Day we would find out if we’d lived right or wrong, but I was no Christer. All those stories about hell were just wind to me.

By then I’d wasted several days trying to drink something Maude Descano had said off my mind, so I finally gave up and called City Hall. I left my name with the Mayor’s appointments secretary on a Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday, I lost eighty-seven cents to myself playing solitaire. On Thursday I got a call from some jane who thought her girlfriend might be cheating on her. I biked all the way across town to talk to this person, only to find her screaming at the girlfriend, who was in the process of packing up and moving out. I decided that going back to the office to watch dust settle might give me a drinking problem so I was headed home when my sidekick chirped. Greta Sams had a cancellation at three-forty-five. She could give me fifteen minutes. Did I still want them?

A centerpiece of Mayor Grete Sams’s administration was the rehabilitation of City Hall. Built in 1872 in the French Second Empire style, it had once been on the National Register of Historic Places. It had been long abandoned and its three hundred and something rooms had been trashed by squatters and vagrants and women who were just plain angry. The Mayor had resisted calls to tear it down and instead had diverted scarce funds to save it. Although there must have been bots on the job, she made sure that the only workers that visitors saw were women. A trio of electricians lifted a tinkling chandelier into place in the lobby and the elevator was out of service because a carpenter was replacing the mirror built into the ceiling. The stairs to the Mayor’s office on the fifth floor smelled of sawdust and fresh paint and hope.

I arrived a few minutes before my appointment, expecting to be told that she was running behind and that I would have to wait. But the secretary greeted me as if I were the Queen of Arkansas and ushered me into the presence immediately.

“Fay Hardaway.” Grete Sams came around her desk and surprised me with a hug. “So glad you called. You’ve done wonders, I can’t thank you enough. And now we can visit.” She propelled me toward a seating area arranged in front of floor to ceiling windows. “What can I get you? Coffee?”

“No, thanks.” I settled into a leather chair that was as deep as the Grand Canyon.

“It’s after three.” On the coffee table in front of us was a tray laden with tumblers and crystal decanters. “Late enough for a taste?”

“I’m trying to cut back.”

She nodded as if she thought this was a good idea and settled on the couch opposite me.

I stared at her in silence and let the moment stretch. Sometimes that gets people talking. She just watched and waited me out.

“What do you know about me?” I said finally

“Let’s see.” She glanced up, as if reading my resume off the ceiling. “You’re a P. I. I’ve heard that you’re very good at what you do. I know . . . ”

“You heard that where?”

“I know . . . ” She waved the question off. “ . . . that you’re married to Dr. Sharifa Ramirez, who works in the Intensive Care Unit at Parkhurst. I know that you have a daughter, Alissa.”

“Aissa. Why did you give my name to Maude Descano?”

She sighed. “Because Seeren asked me to. Or his bot did.”

“Why?”

“Do I know why the devils do anything they do?” She shook her head, answering her own question. “Maybe it has plans for you. I understand you’ve met my friend Kalil Haddad?”

I leaned back into the depths of my chair. “Yeah.”

“You probably heard his theory that there are factions among the devils. That one of them now questions the wisdom of disappearing our men.” She stared at the decanter as if debating whether to pour herself a drink. “He also claims that there is debate about the way forward.” She decided in favor.

“Seeren and Eller.”

“Didn’t get along.” A decanter clinked against a glass; the pour filled the room with the fragrance of Scotch. “Did Seeren find out that Eller was after the painting? Maybe.” She took the smallest sip in history and set the glass on the table. Watching it wait there for her was exquisite torture. “Eller has removed to Germany by the way,” she said. “The devils in Stuttgart share his views, although I understand he has abandoned the Index of Human Dysfunction.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Why do you suppose the devil was interested in that painting?”

I told her what I had found underneath. “But what does it mean?”

“No idea. I’m sure Haddad would have a theory.” She was gazing out her windows. “Sometimes I think he has too many theories.”

“You called him your friend.”

“An ally, at any rate. He does good, but helping people one at a time doesn’t solve the real problem.”

“The real problem?”

“The devils and the bots stole the future.” She heaved herself off the couch and went to the near window. “Come see this view.” She stood with her back to me.

I humored her. We were looking east, toward the river and the three bridges, the Memorial, the 14th Street, and the Sanger, where Renata Decano had killed herself. Across the river was the snaggle-toothed skyline of the financial district. Two of the tallest towers were mostly empty, and the burnt out shell of the Wetherall was being torn down—another Sams project—but most of the others were occupied. I’d done insurance work for Prudential and Home Court. And beyond the towers was Fisher Park. Home.

“Your daughter, Aissa.” Grete Sams gazed down at her city. “How old?”

“Almost two.”

“Yours?”

“Hers.” Then I corrected myself. “Ours.”

“Of course. You’re forty-what?”

“Two.”

“You must have been seeded.”

“And got scraped.” The words were stones in my mouth.

“Same as me.” She shook her head. “Same.” We contemplated our childlessness for a moment. “We’re trapped, aren’t we? We want children, but not that way. Sometimes I think that’s the worst of what they’ve done. But it’s all bad. And it has to stop.” She looked at her watch and I wondered just how old she was. Only grannies wear watches. “Listen dear, I’ve got a four o’clock, so I’m kicking you out now. Just remember, this is going to be a great city again. Your kid is going to be proud of it someday. So take care of your family and I’ll take care of this as best I can . . . ” She gestured at the view. “ . . . and we’ll see what happens, okay?”

I was thinking about what Greta Sams had said as I stepped into the tumult of the Precious Life Center that afternoon. A whirlwind of toddlers was chasing around the center of the playroom, screaming with laughter. Some older kids were off in a corner flying dogs and princesses and cars around a plastic castle. A girl in a cat mask was dancing with one of the teachers to the tune of Push Pull Stand Still. If this cocked world that I was born into had to stop, who was going to stop it? Not me. Not Sharifa. Not Greta Sams or Stevie Smick or Kalil Haddad, no matter how hard he tried. We couldn’t do it—at least not by ourselves.

We would need these kids.

“Mommy Fay, Mommy Fay.” Aissa trundled up and hugged me around the legs so hard that I almost lost my balance. “Maybe bye-bye home peas?”

“Sure, sweetie,” I said. “Let’s go home.

Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April-May 2012.

Vladimir Chong Chooses to Die

Lavie Tidhar

The clinic was cool and calm, a pine-scented oasis in the heart of Central Station. Cool calm white walls. Cool calm air conditioning humming, coolly and calmly. Vladimir Chong hated it immediately. He did not find it soothing. He did not find it calming. It was a white room; it resembled too much the inside of his own head.

“Mr. Chong?” The nurse was a woman he recalled with exactness. Benevolence Jones, cousin of Miriam Jones who was his boy Boris’s childhood sweetheart. He remembered Benevolence as a child with thin woven dreadlocks and a wicked smile, a few years younger than his own boy, trailing after her cousin Miriam in adoration. Now she was a matronly woman in starched white and dreadlocks thicker and fewer. She smelled of soap. “The mortality consultant will see you now,” she said.

Vlad nodded. He got up. There was nothing wrong with his motor functions. He followed her to the consultant’s office. Vlad could remember with perfect recall hundreds of such offices. They always looked the same. They could have easily been the same room, with the same person sitting behind them. He was not afraid of death. He could remember death. His father, Weiwei, had died at home. Vlad could remember it several ways. He could remember his father’s own dying moment—broken sentences forming in the brain, the touch of the pillow hurting strangely, the look in his boy’s eyes, a sense of wonder, filling him, momentarily, then blackness, a slow encroachment that swallowed whatever last sentence he had meant to say.

He could remember it from his mother’s memories, though he seldom went into them, preferred to segment them separately, when he still could. She was sitting by the bed, not crying, then fetching tea, cookies, looking after the guests coming in and out, visiting the death bed of Weiwei. She spared time for her boy, for little Vlady, too, and her memories were all intermingled of the moment her husband died, her hand on Vlady’s short hair, her eyes on Weiwei who seemed to be struggling to say something then stopped, and was very still.

He could remember it his own way, though it was an early memory, and confused. Wetness. Lips moving like a fish’s, without sound. The smell of floor cleaner. Accidentally brushing against the cool metal leg of R. Brother Patch-It, the robo-priest, who stood by the bed and spoke the words of the Way of Robot, though Weiwei was not a practitioner of that, nor any other, religion.

“Mr. Chong?”

The mortality consultant was a tall thin North Tel Aviv Jew. “I’m Dr. Graff,” he said.

Vlad nodded politely. Dr. Graff gestured to a chair. “Please, sit down.”

Vlad sat, remembering like an echo, like reflections multiplying between two mirrors. A universe of Chongs sitting down at doctor’s offices throughout the years. His mother when she sat down and the doctor said, “I’m afraid the news are not good.” His father after a work injury when he had shattered his leg bones falling in his exoskeleton from the uncompleted fourth level of Central Station. Boris when he was five and his node was infected by a hostile malware virus with rudimentary intelligence. His sister’s boy’s eldest when they took him to the hospital in Tel Aviv, worried about his heart. And on and on, though none, yet, in a life termination clinic. He, Vlad, son of Weiwei, father of Boris, was the first of the line to visit one of those.

He’d been sitting in his flat when it happened. A moment of clarity. It felt like emerging out of a cold bright sea. When he was submerged in the sea he could see each individual drop of water, and each one was a disconnected memory, and it was drowning him. It was never meant to be this way.

Weiwei’s Curse, or Weiwei’s Folly, they called it. Vlad could remember Weiwei’s determination, his ambition, his human desire to be remembered, to continue to be a part of his family and their lives. He remembered the trip up the hill to the Old City of Jaffa, Weiwei cycling in the heat, parking the bicycle at last in the shade, against the cool old stones, and visiting the Oracle.

What manner of thing it was he didn’t know, this lineage of memory, infecting like a virus the Chongs as a whole. It was the Oracle’s doing, and she was not human, or mostly not. Joined, Bonded, she was as much Other as not, for all that she wore a human body.

It had served. In past times it had offered comfort, at times, remembering what others knew, what they had done. He remembered his father climbing into his exoskeleton, slowly climbing, like a crab, along the unfinished side of Central Station. Later he, too, worked on the building, two generations of Chongs it took to bring it to completion. Only to see his own son go up in the great elevators, a boy afraid of family, of sharing, a boy determined to escape, to follow a dream of the stars. He saw him climb up the elevators and to the great roof, saw him climb into the orbital flyer that took him to Gateway and, from there, to the Belt and Mars and beyond. But still the link persisted, even from afar, the memories travelling, slower than light, between the worlds. Vlad had missed his boy. Missed the work on the space port, the easy camaraderie with the others. Missed his wife whose memory still lived inside him, but whose name, like a cancer, had been eaten away.

He remembered the smell of her, the taste of her sweat and the swell of her belly, when they were both young and the streets of Central Station smelled of night-blooming jasmine and mutton fat. Remembered her with Boris holding her hand, at five years old, walking through the same old streets, with the space port, completed, rising ahead of them, a hand pointing at the stars.

Boris: “What is that, daddy?”

Vlad: “It’s Central Station, Boris.”

Boris, gesturing around him at the old streets, the rundown apartment blocks: “And this?”

“It’s Central Station.”

Boris, laughing. Vlad joining him and she smiled, the woman who was gone now, whose only ghost remained, whose name he no longer knew.

Looking back (but that was a thing he could no longer do) that should have given him warning. Her name disappeared, the way keys or socks do. Misplaced and, later, could not be found.

Slowly, inexorably, the links that bound together memory, like RNA, began to weaken and break.

“Mr. Chong?”

“Doctor. Yes.”

“Mr. Chong, we treat all our patients with complete confidentiality.”

“Of course.”

“We have a range of options available, of course—” the doctor coughed politely. “I am bound to ask you, however—before we go over them—have you made, or wish to make, any post-mortal arrangements?”

Vlad regarded the doctor for a moment. Silence had become a part of him in recent years. Slowly the memory boundaries tore and recall, like shards of hard glass, fragmented and shattered in his mind. More and more he found himself sitting, for hours or days, in his flat, rocking in the ancient chair Weiwei once brought home from the Jaffa flea market, in triumph, raising it above his head, this short, wiry Chinese man in this land of Arabs and Jews. Vlad had loved Weiwei. Now he hated him almost as much as he loved him. The ghost of Weiwei, his memory, still lived on in his ruined mind.

For hours, days, he sat in the rocking chair, examining memories like globes of light. Disconnected, he did not know how one related to the other, or whose the memory had been, his own or someone else’s. For hours and days, alone, in the silence like a dust.

Lucidity came and went without a pattern. Once he opened his eyes and breathed in and saw Boris crouching beside him, an older, thinner version of the boy who held his hand and looked up at the sky and asked questions. “Boris?” he said, surprise catching at the words. His mouth felt raw with disuse.

“Dad.”

“What . . . are you doing here?”

“I’ve been back a month, dad.”

“A month?” Pride, and hurt, made his throat constrict. “And you only now come to visit me?”

“I’ve been here,” Boris said, gently. “With you. Dad—”

But Vlad stopped him. “Why are you back?” he said. “You should have stayed in the Up and Out. There is nothing for you, now. Boris. You were always too big for your boots.”

“Dad—”

“Go away!” He almost shouted. Felt himself pleading. His fingers gripped the side arms of the ancient rocking chair. “Go, Boris. You don’t belong here anymore.”

“I came back because of you!” his son was shouting at him. “Look at you! Look at—”

Then that, too, became just another memory, detached, floating out of his reach. The next time he broke through the water Boris was gone and Vlad went downstairs and sat in the cafe with Ibrahim, the alte-zachen man, and played backgammon and drank coffee in the sun, and for a while everything was as it should be.

The next time he saw Boris he was not alone, but with Miriam, who Vlad saw, from time to time. “Boris!” he said, tears, unbidden, coming to his eyes. He hugged his boy, there, in the middle of the street.

“Dad . . . ” Boris was taller than him now, he realised with a start. “You’re feeling better?”

“I feel fine!” He held on to him tight, then released him. “You’ve grown,” he said.

“I’ve been away a long time,” Boris said.

“You’re thin. You should eat more.”

“Dad . . . ”

“Miriam,” Vlad said. Giddy. “Vlad,” she said. She put her hand, lightly, on his shoulder. “It’s good to see you.”

“You found him again,” he said.

“He . . . ” she hesitated. “We ran into each other,” she said.

“That’s good. That is good,” Vlad said. “Come. Let me buy you a drink. To celebrate.”

“Dad, I don’t think—”

“No one asks you to think!” Vlad snapped. “Come,” he said, more gently. “Come.”

They sat in the coffee shop. Vlad ordered a sheesha pipe, a bottle of arak. Three glasses. He poured. Hands steady. Central Station rising before them like a signpost for the future. For Vlad it was pointing the wrong way, it was a part of his past. “L’chaim,” he said. They raised their glasses and drank.

A moment of dislocation. Then he was in the flat again and the old robot, R. Patch-It, was standing there. “What are you doing here?” Vlad snapped. He remembered remembering; moving memories like cubes between his hands, hanging them in the air before him. Trying to make sense of how they fit each other, which came before which.

“I was looking after you,” the robot said. Vlad remembered the robot, through his own memories and through Weiwei’s. R. Patch-it, who doubled as a moyel, had circumcised Vlad as a baby, had performed the same service for Boris, when his time came. Old even before Weiwei came to this land as a young, poor migrant worker, all those years before.

“Leave me be,” Vlad said. Resented suddenly the interference. “Boris sent you,” he said. Not a question. “He is worried,” the robot said. “So am I, Vlad—”

“What makes you so much better?” Vlad said. “A robot. You’re an object. A piece of metal with an I-loop. What do you know of being alive?”

The robot didn’t answer. Later, Vlad realised he was not there, that the flat was empty, and had been empty for some time.

None of it would have bothered him so much if he could only remember her name.

“Post-mortal options?” he said, echoing the doctor.

“Yes, yes,” the doctor said. “There are several standard possibilities we really must discuss before we—”

“Such as?”

He could feel time slipping away. Urgency gripped him. A man should be allowed to determine the time of his going. To go in dignity. Even to make it this far in life was an achievement, something to celebrate. Very well.

“Very well,” he said.

“We could freeze you,” the doctor said.

“Freeze me.”

He felt robbed of willpower. Fought the memories crowding in on him. No one in the family had ever been frozen before.

“Freeze you until such time as you wish to be awakened,” Dr. Graff said. “A century or two?”

“I assume the costs are considerable.”

“It’s a standard contract,” Dr. Graff said. “Estate plus—”

“Yes,” Vlad said. “That is to say, no. What do you think will happen in one, or two, or five hundred years from now?”

“Often, patients are sick with incurable illnesses,” Dr. Graff said. “They hope for a cure. Others are time tourists, disillusioned with our era, wishing to seek out the new, the strange.”

“The future.”

“The future,” Dr. Graff agreed.

“I’ve seen the future,” Vlad said. “It’s the past I can’t get back to, Dr. Graff. There is too much of it and it’s broken and it exists only in my head. I don’t want to travel to the future.”

“There is also the possibility of freezing on board an Exodus ship,” the doctor said. “To travel beyond the Up and Out. You could be awakened on a new planet, a new world.”

Vlad smiled. “My boy,” he said, softly.

“Excuse me?”

“My boy, Boris. He’s a doctor too, you know.”

“Boris Chong? I remember him. We were colleagues together,” Dr. Graff said. “In the birthing clinics. A long time ago. He left for Mars, didn’t he?”

“He’s back,” Vlad said. “He was always a good boy.”

“I’ll be sure to look him up,” Dr. Graff said.

“I don’t want to go to the stars,” Vlad said. “Going away seldom changes what we are.”

“Indeed,” the doctor said. “Well, there is also of course the possibility of upload?”

“Existing as an I-loop simulation while the old body and mind die anyway?”

“Yes.”

“Doctor, I will live on as memory,” Vlad said. “That is something I cannot change. Every bit of me, everything that makes me what I am will survive so my grandchildren and my nephew’s children and all the ones born in Central Station and beyond, now and in the future, can recall through me all I have seen, if they so wish.” He smiled again. “Do you think they will be smarter? Do you think they will learn from my mistakes and not make their own?”

“No,” the doctor said.

“I am Weiwei’s son, and have Weiwei’s Folly in my mind and in my node. I am, already, memory, Dr. Graff. But memory is not me. Are we done with the preliminaries?”

“You could be cyborged.”

“My sister is over eighty percent cyborged now, Doctor,” Vlad said. “Missus Chong the Elder, they call her now. She belongs to the Church of Robot. One day she will be Translated, no doubt. But her path is not mine.”

“Then you are determined.”

“Yes.”

The doctor sighed, leaned back in his chair. “In that case,” he said, “we have a catalogue.” He rummaged in a desk drawer and returned with a printed book. A book! Vlad was delighted. He touched the paper, smelled it, and for a moment felt like a child again.

He leafed through it with inexpert fingers, savouring the tactile sensation. Page after page of cool, calm alternatives. “What’s this?” he said.

“Ah, yes. A popular choice,” Dr. Graff said. “Blood loss in a warm, scented bath. Soft music, candles. A bottle of wine. A pill beforehand to ensure there is no pain. A traditional choice.”

“Tradition is important,” Vlad said.

“Yes. Yes.”

But Vlad was leafing ahead. “This?” he said, with slight revulsion.

“Faux-murder, yes,” the doctor said. “Simulated. We cannot sanction humans for the purpose, of course. Nor a digital intelligence, obviously. But we have very life-like simulacra with a basic operating brain, nothing with consciousness, of course, of course. Some of our patients like the idea of a violent death. It is more . . . theatrical.”

“I notice one can sign off the recording rights?”

“Some people like to . . . watch. Yes. And some patients appreciate an audience. There is some financial compensation paid to one’s heirs in those circumstances—”

“Garish,” Vlad said.

“Quite, quite,” the doctor said.

“Vulgar.”

“That is, certainly, a valid view point, yes, y—”

Vlad was leafing further. “I never thought there were so many ways—” he said.

“So many,” the doctor said. “We, humans, are remarkably good at devising new ways to die.”

The doctor sat still as Vlad leafed through the rest of the catalogue. “You do not need to decide right away, of course,” the doctor said. “We do, in fact, advise a period of consideration before—”

“What if I wanted to do it immediately?” Vlad said.

“There is, of course, paperwork, a process—” the doctor said.

“But it is possible?”

“Of course. We have many of the basic options available right here, in the mortality rooms, complete with full post-mortal service and burial—”

“I’d like this,” Vlad said, tapping the page with his finger. The doctor leaned over. “This—oh,” he said. “Yes. Surprisingly popular. But not, of course, available, as it were”—he spread his arms in what might have been a shrug—“here. As it were.”

“Of course,” Vlad said.

“But we can arrange the travel, in full comfort, and accommodation beforehand—”

“Let’s do that.”

The doctor nodded. “Very well,” he said. “Let me call up the forms.”

When he next surfaced from that great glittery sea he saw faces, close by. Boris looked angry. Miriam, concerned.

“God damn it, dad.”

“Don’t swear at me, boy.”

“You went to a fucking suicide clinic?”

“I go where I want!”

They glared at each other. Miriam laid a hand on Boris’s shoulder. He looked at her. Looked at Boris. For a moment his face was the boy’s he had been. Hurt in his eyes. Incomprehension. Like when something bad happens. “Boris—”

“Dad—”

Vlad stood up. Stuck his face close to his boy’s. “Go away,” he said.

“No.”

“Boris, I’m your father and I’m telling you to—”

Boris pushed him. Vlad, shocked, fell back. Tottered. Held on to the chair and just stopped himself from falling on the floor. Heard Miriam’s sharp intake of breath. Miriam, horrified: “Boris, what did you—”

“Dad? Dad!”

“I’m fine,” Vlad said. Righted himself. Almost smiled. “Silly boy,” he said.

Boris, breathing hard. Vlad saw his hands, they were closed into fists. All that anger. Never helped anyone. Couldn’t help but feel for the boy. “Look,” he said. “Just—”

When he surfaced again Miriam was gone and Boris was sitting in a chair in the corner. The boy was asleep.

A good boy, Vlad thought. Came back. Worried for his old dad. Made him proud, really. A doctor. No children though. He would have liked grandchildren. A knock on the door. Boris blinking. The aug pulsing on his neck. Disgusting thing. “I’ll get that,” Vlad said. Went to the door.

The robot again. R. Patch-It. With Vlad’s sister in tow. He should have known. “Vladimir Mordechai Chong,” she said. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“Hello, Tamara.”

“Don’t hello me, Vlad.” She stepped inside and the robot followed. “Now what is this nonsense about you killing yourself?”

“For crying out loud, Tamara! Look at you.” Vlad felt some of his anger gathering. It had been a long time coming. He had had a long moment of emerging from the sea, the memories falling away like water. Enough time to go to the clinic and make the arrangements. Not enough time, it had turned out, to execute them before another relapse. It was becoming harder to break the surface. Soon, he knew, he would remain submerged in water for good. “You’re almost entirely a machine.”

“We’re all machines,” his sister said. “Are you proud because the parts that make you are biological? Soft, fallible, weak? You may as well be proud of learning to clean your bottom or tying your shoelaces, Vlad. You’re a machine, I’m a machine, and R. Brother Patch-It over there is a machine. When you’re gone, you’re gone. There’s no afterlife but the one we build ourselves.”

“The fabled robot heaven,” Vlad said. He felt tired. “Enough!” he said. “I appreciate what you are trying to do. All of you. Boris.”

“Yes, dad?”

“Come here.” It was strange, to see his boy and see this man, this almost stranger, that he had become. Something of Weiwei in him, though. Something of Vlad, too. “I can no longer remember your mother’s name,” he told him.

“What?”

“Boris, I spoke to the doctors. Weiwei’s Folly has spread through me. Nodal filaments filling up every available space. Invading my body. I am drowning under the weight of memories. They make no sense any more. I don’t know who I am because I can’t make them behave. Boris . . . ”

“Dad,” Boris said. Vlad raised his hand and touched the boy’s cheek. It was wet. He stroked it, gently. “I’m old, Boris. I’m old and I’m tired. I want to rest. I want to choose how I go, and I want to go with dignity, and with my mind intact. Is that so wrong?”

“No, dad. No, it’s not.”

“Don’t cry, Boris.”

“I’m not crying.”

“Good.”

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“I’m all right. You can let go, now.”

Vlad released him. Remembered the boy who asked him to walk with him, “Just to the next lamp post, dad.” They’d go in the dark towards that pool of light and, on reaching it, stop. Then the boy would say, “Just to the next lamp post, dad. I can go the rest on my own. Honest.”

On and on they went, following the trail of lights. On and on they went until they made it safely home.

One’s death should be a memorable occasion and, on this occasion, Vlad felt, everything really did go swimmingly.

They had departed by mini-bus from Central Station. Vlad sat in the front, enjoying the warmth of the sun, next to the driver. A small delegation sat in the back: Boris, and Miriam, Vlad’s sister Tamara, R. Patch-It, Ibrahim the alte-zachen man and Eliezer, the god artist, both of whom once, long ago, worked with Vlad in the construction site. Relatives came to say their good-byes, and the atmosphere was one almost of a party. Vlad hugged young Yan Chong, who was soon to marry his boyfriend, Youssou, got a kiss on the cheek from his sister’s friend Esther, who he had, once, almost had an affair with but, in the end, didn’t. He remembered it well, and it was strange to see her so old. In his mind she was still the beautiful young woman he once got drunk with at a shebeen, when his wife was away, somewhere, and they had come close to it but, in the end, they couldn’t do it. He remembered walking back home, alone, and the sense of relief he’d felt when he came in through the door. Boris was a boy then. He was asleep and Vlad came and sat by his side and stroked his hair. Then he went and made himself a cup of tea.

The mini-bus spread out solar panel wings and began to glide almost soundlessly down the old tarmac road. Neighbours, friends, and relatives waved and shouted good-byes. The bus turned left on Mount Zion and suddenly the old neighbourhood disappeared from view. It felt like leaving home, for that is what it was. It felt sad but it also felt like freedom.

They turned on Salameh and soon came to the interchange and onto the old highway to Jerusalem. The rest of the journey went smoothly, in quiet, the coastal plain giving way gradually to hills. Then they came to the Bab-el-Wad and rose sharply along the mountain road to Jerusalem.

It felt like a rollercoaster along the mountain road, with sharp inclines giving way to sudden drops. They circled the city without going in and drove along the circle road, between a Palestine on one side and an Israel on the other, though the two were often mixed up in such a way only the invisible digitals could keep them apart.

The change in geography was startling. Suddenly the mountains ended and they were dropping, and the desert began without warning. It was the strange thing about this country that had become Weiwei’s home, Vlad thought—how quickly and startlingly the landscape changed in so small a place. It was no wonder the Arabs and the Jews had fought over it for so long.

Dunes appeared, the land became a yellow place and camels rested by the side of the old road. Down, down, down they went, until they passed the sign for the ocean level and kept going, following the road to the lowest place on Earth. Soon they were travelling past the Dead Sea and the blue, calm water reflected the sky like a mirror. Bromine released from the sea filled the air, causing a soothing, calming effect on the human psyche.

Just beyond the Dead Sea the Arava desert opened up and here, at last, some two hours after setting off from Central Station, they arrived at their destination.

The Euthanasia Park sat on its own in a green oasis of calm. They drew at the gates and parked in the almost empty car park. Boris helped Vlad down from his seat. Outside it was hot, a dry hotness that soothed and comforted. Water sprinklers made their whoosh-whoosh-whoosh sound as they irrigated the manicured grass.

“Are you sure, dad?” Boris said.

Vlad just nodded. He took in a deep breath of air. The smell of water and freshly-cut grass. The smell of childhood.

Together they looked on the park. There, a swimming pool glinting blue, where one could drown in peace and tranquillity. There, a massive, needle-like tower rising into the sky, for the jumpers, those who wanted to go out with one great rush of air. And there, at last, the thing that they had travelled all this way for. The Urbonas Ride.

The Euthanasia Coaster.

Named after its designer, Julijonas Urbonas, it was a thing of marvel and beautiful engineering. It began with an enormous climb, rising to half a kilometer above the ground. Then the drop. A five hundred meter drop straight down that led to a series of three hundred and thirty degree loops one after the other in rapid succession. Vlad felt his heart beating faster just by looking at it. He remembered the first time he had climbed up the space port in his exoskeleton. He had perched up there, on Level Five of the unfinished building, and looked down, and felt as though the whole city, the whole world, were his.

He could already feel the memories crowding in on him. Demanding that he take them, hold them, examine them, search amongst them for her name, but it was missing. He hugged his son again, and kissed his sister. “You old fool,” she said. He shook hands with the robo-priest. Miriam, next. “Look after him,” Vlad said, gesturing at his son.

“I will.”

Then Eliezer, and Ibrahim. Two old men. “One day I’ll go on one of these,” Eliezer said. “What a rush.”

“Not me,” Ibrahim said. “It’s the sea for me. Only the sea.”

They kissed on the cheeks, hugged, one last time. Ibrahim brought out a bottle of arak. Eliezer had glasses. “We’ll drink to you,” Eliezer said.

“You do that.”

With that he left them. He was left alone. The park waited for him, the machines heeding his steps. He went up to the roller coaster and sat down in the car and put on the safety belt carefully around himself.

The car began to move. Slowly it climbed, and climbed, and climbed. The desert down below, the park reduced to a tiny square of green. The Dead Sea in the distance, as smooth as a mirror, and he could almost think he could see Lot’s wife, who had been turned into a pillar of salt.

The car reached the top and, for a moment, stayed there. It let him savour the moment. Taste the air on his tongue. And suddenly he remembered her name. It was Aliyah.

The car dropped.

Vlad felt the gravity crushing him down, taking the air from his lungs. His heart beat the fastest it had ever beat, the blood rushed to his face. The wind howled in his ears, against his face. He dropped and levelled and for a moment air rushed in and he cried out in exultation. The car shot away from the drop and onto the first of the loops, carrying him with it, shot like a bullet at three hundred and fifty-eight kilometers an hour. Vlad was propelled through loop after loop faster than he could think; until at last the enormous gravity, thus generated, claimed him.

Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 2014.

Extracurricular Activities

Yoon Ha Lee

When Shuos Jedao walked into his temporary quarters on Station Muru 5 and spotted the box, he assumed someone was attempting to assassinate him. It had happened before. Considering his first career, there was even a certain justice to it.

He ducked back around the doorway, although even with his reflexes, he would have been too late if it’d been a proper bomb. The air currents in the room would have wafted his biochemical signature to the box and caused it to trigger. Or someone could have set up the bomb to go off as soon as the door opened, regardless of who stepped in. Or something even less sophisticated.

Jedao retreated back down the hallway and waited one minute. Two. Nothing.

It could just be a package, he thought—paperwork that he had forgotten?—but old habits died hard.

He entered again and approached the desk, light-footed. The box, made of eye-searing green plastic, stood out against the bland earth tones of the walls and desk. It measured approximately half a meter in all directions. Its nearest face prominently displayed the gold seal that indicated that station security had cleared it. He didn’t trust it for a moment. Spoofing a seal wasn’t that difficult. He’d done it himself.

He inspected the box’s other visible sides without touching it, then spotted a letter pouch affixed to one side and froze. He recognized the handwriting. The address was written in spidery high language, while the name of the recipient—one Garach Jedao Shkan—was written both in the high language and his birth tongue, Shparoi, for good measure.

Oh, Mom, Jedao thought. No one else called him by that name anymore, not even the rest of his family. More important, how had his mother gotten his address? He’d just received his transfer orders last week, and he hadn’t written home about it because his mission was classified. He had no idea what his new general wanted him to do; she would tell him tomorrow morning when he reported in.

Jedao opened the box, which released a puff of cold air. Inside rested a tub labeled KEEP REFRIGERATED in both the high language and Shparoi. The tub itself contained a pale, waxy-looking solid substance. Is this what I think it is?

Time for the letter:

Hello, Jedao!

Congratulations on your promotion. I hope you enjoy your new command moth and that it has a more pronounceable name than the last one.

One: What promotion? Did she know something he didn’t? (Scratch that question. She always knew something he didn’t.) Two: Trust his mother to rate warmoths not by their armaments or the efficacy of their stardrives but by their names. Then again, she’d made no secret that she’d hoped he’d wind up a musician like his sire. It had not helped when he pointed out that when he attempted to sing in academy, his fellow cadets had threatened to dump grapefruit soup over his head.

Since I expect your eating options will be dismal, I have sent you goose fat rendered from the great-great-great-etc.-grandgosling of your pet goose when you were a child. (She was delicious, by the way.) Let me know if you run out and I’ll send more.

Love,

Mom

So the tub contained goose fat, after all. Jedao had never figured out why his mother sent food items when her idea of cooking was to gussy up instant noodles with an egg and some chopped green onions. All the cooking Jedao knew, he had learned either from his older brother or, on occasion, those of his mother’s research assistants who took pity on her kids.

What am I supposed to do with this? he wondered. As a cadet he could have based a prank around it. But as a warmoth commander he had standards to uphold.

More importantly, how could he compose a suitably filial letter of appreciation without, foxes forbid, encouraging her to escalate? (Baked goods: fine. Goose fat: less fine.) Especially when she wasn’t supposed to know he was here in the first place? Some people’s families sent them care packages of useful things, like liquor, pornography, or really nice cosmetics. Just his luck.

At least the mission gave him an excuse to delay writing back until his location was unclassified, even if she knew it anyway.

Jedao had heard a number of rumors about his new commanding officer, Brigadier General Kel Essier. Some of them, like the ones about her junior wife’s lovers, were none of his business. Others, like Essier’s taste in plum wine, weren’t relevant, but could come in handy if he needed to scare up a bribe someday. What had really caught his notice was her service record. She had fewer decorations than anyone else who’d served at her rank for a comparable period of time.

Either Essier was a political appointee—the Kel military denied the practice, but everyone knew better—or she was sitting on a cache of classified medals. Jedao had a number of those himself. (Did his mother know about those too?) Although Station Muru 5 was a secondary military base, Jedao had his suspicions about any “secondary” base that had a general in residence, even temporarily. That, or Essier was disgraced and Kel Command couldn’t think of anywhere else to dump her.

Jedao had a standard method for dealing with new commanders, which was to research them as if he planned to assassinate them. Needless to say, he never expressed it in those terms to his comrades.

He’d come up with two promising ways to get rid of Essier. First, she collected meditation foci made of staggeringly luxurious materials. One of her officers had let slip that her latest obsession was antique lacquerware. Planting a bomb or toxin in a collector-grade item wouldn’t be risky so much as expensive. He’d spent a couple hours last night brainstorming ways to steal one, just for the hell of it; lucky that he didn’t have to follow through.

The other method took advantage of the poorly planned location of the firing range on this level relative to the general’s office, and involved shooting her through several walls and a door with a high-powered rifle and burrower ammunition. Jedao hated burrower ammunition, not because it didn’t work but because it did. He had a lot of ugly scars on his torso from the time a burrower had almost killed him. That being said, he also believed in using the appropriate tool for the job.

No one had upgraded Muru 5 for the past few decades. Its computer grid ran on outdated hardware, making it easy for him to pull copies of all the maps he pleased. He’d also hacked into the security cameras long enough to check the layout of the general’s office. The setup made him despair of the architects who had designed the whole wretched thing. On top of that, Essier had set up her desk so a visitor would see it framed beautifully by the doorway, with her chair perfectly centered. Great for impressing visitors, less great for making yourself a difficult target. Then again, attending to Essier’s safety wasn’t his job.

Jedao showed up at Essier’s office seven minutes before the appointed time. “Whiskey?” said her aide.

If only, Jedao thought; he recognized it as one he couldn’t afford. “No, thank you,” he said with the appropriate amount of regret. He didn’t trust special treatment.

“Your loss,” said the aide. After another two minutes, she checked her slate. “Go on in. The general is waiting for you.”

As Jedao had predicted, General Essier sat dead center behind her desk, framed by the doorway and two statuettes on either side of the desk, gilded ash-hawks carved from onyx. Essier had dark skin and close-shaven hair, and the height and fine-spun bones of someone who had grown up in low gravity. The black-and-gold Kel uniform suited her. Her gloved hands rested on the desk in perfect symmetry. Jedao bet she looked great in propaganda videos.

Jedao saluted, fist to shoulder. “Commander Shuos Jedao reporting as ordered, sir.”

“Have a seat,” Essier said. He did. “You’re wondering why you don’t have a warmoth assignment yet.”

“The thought had crossed my mind, yes.”

Essier smiled. The smile was like the rest of her: beautiful and calculated and not a little deadly. “I have good news and bad news for you, Commander. The good news is that you’re due a promotion.”

Jedao’s first reaction was not gratitude or pride, but How did my mother—? Fortunately, a lifetime of How did my mother—? enabled him to keep his expression smooth and instead say, “And the bad news?”

“Is it true what they say about your battle record?”

This always came up. “You have my profile.”

“You’re good at winning.”

“I wasn’t under the impression that the Kel military found this objectionable, sir.”

“Quite right,” she said. “The situation is this. I have a mission in mind for you, but it will take advantage of your unique background.”

“Unique background” was a euphemism for We don’t have many commanders who can double as emergency special forces. Most Kel with training in special ops stayed in the infantry instead of seeking command in the space forces. Jedao made an inquiring noise.

“Perform well, and you’ll be given the fangmoth Sieve of Glass, which heads my third tactical group.”

A bribe, albeit one that might cause trouble. Essier had six tactical groups. A newly minted group tactical commander being assigned third instead of sixth? Had she had a problem with her former third-position commander?

“My former third took early retirement,” Essier said in answer to his unspoken question. “They were caught with a small collection of trophies.”

“Let me guess,” Jedao said. “Trophies taken from heretics.”

“Just so. Third tactical is badly shaken. Fourth has excellent rapport with her group and I don’t want to promote her out of it. But it’s an opportunity for you.”

“And the mission?”

Essier leaned back. “You attended Shuos Academy with Shuos Meng.”

“I did,” Jedao said. They’d gone by Zhei Meng as a cadet. “We’ve been in touch on and off.” Meng had joined a marriage some years back. Jedao had commissioned a painting of five foxes, one for each person in the marriage, and sent it along with his best wishes. Meng wrote regularly about their kids—they couldn’t be made to shut up about them—and Jedao sent gifts on cue, everything from hand-bound volumes of Kel jokes to fancy gardening tools. (At least they’d been sold to him as gardening tools. They looked suspiciously like they could double for heavy-duty surgical work.) “Why, what has Meng been up to?”

“Under the name Ahun Gerav, they’ve been in command of the merchanter Moonsweet Blossom.”

Jedao cocked an eyebrow at Essier. “That’s not a Shuos vessel.” It did, however, sound like an Andan one. The Andan faction liked naming their trademoths after flowers. “By ‘merchanter’ do you mean ‘spy’?”

“Yes,” Essier said with charming directness. “Twenty-six days ago, one of the Blossom’s crew sent a code red to Shuos Intelligence. This is all she was able to tell us.”

Essier retrieved a slate from within the desk and tilted it to show him a video. She needn’t have bothered with the visuals; the combination of poor lighting, camera jitter, and static made them impossible to interpret. The audio was little better: “...Blossom, code red to Overwatch...Gerav’s in...” Frustratingly, the static made the next few words unintelligible. “Du Station. You’d better—” The report of a gun, then another, then silence.

“Your task is to investigate the situation at Du Station in the Gwa Reality, and see if the crew and any of the intelligence they’ve gathered can be recovered. The Shuos heptarch suggested that you would be an ideal candidate for the mission. Kel Command was amenable.”

I just bet, Jedao thought. He had once worked directly under his heptarch, and while he’d been one of her better assassins, he didn’t miss those days. “Is this the only incident with the Gwa Reality that has taken place recently, or are there others?”

“The Gwa-an are approaching one of their regularly scheduled regime upheavals,” Essier said. “According to the diplomats, there’s a good chance that the next elected government will be less amenable to heptarchate interests. We want to go in, uncover what happened, and get out before things turn topsy-turvy.”

“All right,” Jedao said, “so taking a warmoth in would be inflammatory. What resources will I have instead?”

“Well, that’s the bad news,” Essier said, entirely too cheerfully. “Tell me, Commander, have you ever wanted to own a merchant troop?”

The troop consisted of eight trademoths, named Carp 1 to Carp 4, then Carp 7 to Carp 10. They occupied one of the station’s docking bays. Someone had painted each vessel with distended carp-figures in orange and white. It did not improve their appearance.

The usual commander of the troop introduced herself as Churioi Haval, not her real name. She was portly, had a squint, and wore gaudy gilt jewelry, all excellent ways to convince people that she was an ordinary merchant and not, say, Kel special ops. It hadn’t escaped his attention that she frowned ever so slightly when she spotted his sidearm, a Patterner 52, which wasn’t standard Kel issue. “You’re not bringing that, are you?” she said.

“No, I’d hate to lose it on the other side of the border,” Jedao said. “Besides, I don’t have a plausible explanation for why a boring communications tech is running around with a Shuos handgun.”

“I could always hold on to it for you.”

Jedao wondered if he’d ever get the Patterner back if he took her up on the offer. It hadn’t come cheap. “That’s kind of you, but I’ll have the station store it for me. By the way, what happened to Carp 5 and 6?”

“Beats me,” Haval said. “Before my time. The Gwa-an authorities have never hassled us about it. They’re already used to, paraphrase, ‘odd heptarchate numerological superstitions.’” She eyed Jedao critically, which made her look squintier. “Begging your pardon, but do you have undercover experience?”

What a refreshing question. Everyone knew the Shuos for their spies, saboteurs, and assassins, even though the analysts, administrators, and cryptologists did most of the real work. (One of his instructors had explained that “You will spend hours in front of a terminal developing posture problems” was far less effective at recruiting potential cadets than “Join the Shuos for an exciting future as a secret agent, assuming your classmates don’t kill you before you graduate.”) Most people who met Jedao assumed he’d killed an improbable number of people as Shuos infantry. Never mind that he’d been responsible for far more deaths since joining the regular military.

“You’d be surprised at the things I know how to do,” Jedao said.

“Well, I hope you’re good with cover identities,” Haval said. “No offense, but you have a distinctive name.”

That was a tactful way of saying that the Kel didn’t tolerate many Shuos line officers; most Shuos seconded to the Kel worked in Intelligence. Jedao had a reputation for, as one of his former aides had put it, being expendable enough to send into no-win situations but too stubborn to die. Jedao smiled at Haval and said, “I have a good memory.”

The rest of his crew also had civilian cover names. A tall, muscular man strolled up to them. Jedao surreptitiously admired him. The gold-mesh tattoo over the right side of his face contrasted handsomely with his dark skin. Too bad he was almost certainly Kel and therefore off-limits.

“This is Rhi Teshet,” Haval said. “When he isn’t watching horrible melodramas—”

“You have no sense of culture,” Teshet said.

“—he’s the lieutenant colonel in charge of our infantry.”

Damn. Definitely Kel, then, and in his chain of command, at that. “A pleasure, Colonel,” Jedao said.

Teshet’s returning smile was slow and wicked and completely unprofessional. “Get out of the habit of using ranks,” he said. “Just Teshet, please. I hear you like whiskey?”

Off-limits, Jedao reminded himself, despite the quickening of his pulse. Best to be direct. “I’d rather not get you in trouble.”

Haval was looking to the side with a where-have-I-seen-this-dance-before expression. Teshet laughed. “The fastest way to get us caught is to behave like you have the Kel code of conduct tattooed across your forehead. Whereas no one will suspect you of being a hotshot commander if you’re sleeping with one of your crew.”

“I don’t fuck people deadlier than I am, sorry,” Jedao said demurely.

“Wrong answer,” Haval said, still not looking at either of them. “Now he’s going to think of you as a challenge.”

“Also, I know your reputation,” Teshet said to Jedao. “Your kill count has got to be higher than mine by an order of magnitude.”

Jedao ignored that. “How often do you make trade runs into the Gwa Reality?”

“Two or three times a year,” Haval said. “The majority of the runs are to maintain the fiction. The question is, do you have a plan?”

He didn’t blame her for her skepticism. “Tell me again how much cargo space we have.”

Haval told him.

“We sometimes take approved cultural goods,” Teshet said, “in a data storage format negotiated during the Second Treaty of—”

“Don’t bore him,” Haval said. “The ‘trade’ is our job. He’s just here for the explode-y bits.”

“No, I’m interested,” Jedao said. “The Second Treaty of Mwe Enh, am I right?”

Haval blinked. “You have remarkably good pronunciation. Most people can’t manage the tones. Do you speak Tlen Gwa?”

“Regrettably not. I’m only fluent in four languages, and that’s not one of them.” Of the four, Shparoi was only spoken on his birth planet, making it useless for career purposes.

“If you have some Shuos notion of sneaking in a virus amid all the lectures on flower-arranging and the dueling tournament videos and the plays, forget it,” Teshet said. “Their operating systems are so different from ours that you’d have better luck getting a magpie and a turnip to have a baby.”

“Oh, not at all,” Jedao said. “How odd would it look if you brought in a shipment of goose fat?”

Haval’s mouth opened, closed.

Teshet said, “Excuse me?”

“Not literally goose fat,” Jedao conceded. “I don’t have enough for that and I don’t imagine the novelty would enable you to run a sufficient profit. I assume you have to at least appear to be trying to make a profit.”

“They like real profits even better,” Haval said.

Diverted, Teshet said, “You have goose fat? Whatever for?”

“Long story,” Jedao said. “But instead of goose fat, I’d like to run some of that variable-coefficient lubricant.”

Haval rubbed her chin. “I don’t think you could get approval to trade the formula or the associated manufacturing processes.”

“Not that,” Jedao said. “Actual canisters of lubricant. Is there someone in the Gwa Reality on the way to our luckless Shuos friend who might be willing to pay for it?”

Haval and Teshet exchanged baffled glances. Jedao could tell what they were thinking: Are we the victims of some weird bet our commander has going on the side? “There’s no need to get creative,” Haval said in a commendably diplomatic voice. “Cultural goods are quite reliable.”

You think this is creativity, Jedao thought. “It’s not that. Two battles ago, my fangmoth was almost blown in two because our antimissile defenses glitched. If we hadn’t used the lubricant as a stopgap sealant, we wouldn’t have made it.” That much was even true. “If you can’t offload all of it, I’ll find another use for it.”

“You do know you can’t cook with lubricant?” Teshet said. “Although I wonder if it’s good for—”

Haval stomped on his toe. “You already have plenty of the medically approved stuff,” she said crushingly, “no need to risk getting your private parts cemented into place.”

“Hey,” Teshet said, “you never know when you’ll need to improvise.”

Jedao was getting the impression that Essier had not assigned him the best of her undercover teams. Certainly they were the least disciplined Kel he’d run into in a while, but he supposed long periods undercover had made them more casual about regulations. No matter, he’d been dealt worse hands. “I’ve let you know what I want done, and I’ve already checked that the station has enough lubricant to supply us. Make it happen.”

“If you insist,” Haval said. “Meanwhile, don’t forget to get your immunizations.”

“Will do,” Jedao said, and strode off to Medical.

Jedao spent the first part of the voyage alternately learning basic Tlen Gwa, memorizing his cover identity, and studying up on the Gwa Reality. The Tlen Gwa course suffered some oddities. He couldn’t see the use of some of the vocabulary items, like the one for “navel.” But he couldn’t manage to unlearn it, either, so there it was, taking up space in his brain.

As for the cover identity, he’d had better ones, but he supposed the Kel could only do so much on short notice. He was now Arioi Sren, one of Haval’s distant cousins by marriage. He had three spouses, with whom he had quarreled recently over a point of interior decoration. “I don’t know anything about interior decoration,” Jedao had said, to which Haval retorted, “That’s probably what caused the argument.”

The documents had included loving photographs of the home in question, an apartment in a dome city floating in the upper reaches of a very pretty gas giant. Jedao had memorized the details before destroying them. While he couldn’t say how well the decor coordinated, he was good at layouts and kill zones. In any case, Sren was on “vacation” to escape the squabbling. Teshet had suggested that a guilt-inducing affair would round out the cover identity. Jedao said he’d think about it.

Jedao was using spray-on temporary skin, plus a high-collared shirt, to conceal multiple scars, including the wide one at the base of his neck. The temporary skin itched, which couldn’t be helped. He hoped no one would strip-search him, but in case someone did, he didn’t want to have to explain his old gunshot wounds. Teshet had also suggested that he stop shaving—the Kel disliked beards—but Jedao could only deal with so much itching.

The hardest part was not the daily skinseal regimen, but getting used to wearing civilian clothes. The Kel uniform included gloves, and Jedao felt exposed going around with naked hands. But keeping his gloves would have been a dead giveaway, so he’d just have to live with it.

The Gwa-an fascinated him most of all. Heptarchate diplomats called their realm the Gwa Reality. Linguists differed on just what the word rendered as “Reality” meant. The majority agreed that it referred to the Gwa-an belief that all dreams took place in the same noosphere, connecting the dreamers, and that even inanimate objects dreamed.

Gwa-an protocols permitted traders to dock at designated stations. Haval quizzed Jedao endlessly on the relevant etiquette. Most of it consisted of keeping his mouth shut and letting Haval talk, which suited him fine. While the Gwa-an provided interpreters, Haval said cultural differences were the real problem. “Above all,” she added, “if anyone challenges you to a duel, don’t. Just don’t. Look blank and plead ignorance.”

“Duel?” Jedao said, interested.

“I knew we were going to have to have this conversation,” Haval said glumly. “They don’t use swords, so get that idea out of your head.”

“I didn’t bring my dueling sword anyway, and Sren wouldn’t know how,” Jedao said. “Guns?”

“Oh no,” she said. “They use pathogens. Designer pathogens. Besides the fact that their duels can go on for years, I’ve never heard that you had a clue about genetic engineering.”

“No,” Jedao said, “that would be my mother.” Maybe next time he could suggest to Essier that his mother be sent in his place. His mother would adore the chance to talk shop. Of course, then he’d be out of a job. “Besides, I’d rather avoid bringing a plague back home.”

“They claim they have an excellent safety record.”

Of course they would. “How fast can they culture the things?”

“That was one of the things we were trying to gather data on.”

“If they’re good at diseasing up humans, they may be just as good at manufacturing critters that like to eat synthetics.”

“While true of their tech base in general,” Haval said, “they won’t have top-grade labs at Du Station.”

“Good to know,” Jedao said.

Jedao and Teshet also went over the intelligence on Du Station. “It’s nice that you’re taking a personal interest,” Teshet said, “but if you think we’re taking the place by storm, you’ve been watching too many dramas.”

“If Kel special forces aren’t up for it,” Jedao said, very dryly, “you could always send me. One of me won’t do much good, though.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Teshet said. “Essier would have my head if you got hurt. How many people have you assassinated?”

“Classified,” Jedao said.

Teshet gave a can’t-blame-me-for-trying shrug. “Not to say I wouldn’t love to see you in action, but it isn’t your job to run around doing the boring infantry work. How do you mean to get the crew out? Assuming they survived, which is a big if.”

Jedao tapped his slate and brought up the schematics for one of their cargo shuttles. “Five per trader,” he said musingly.

“Du Station won’t let us land the shuttles however we please.”

“Did I say anything about landing them?” Before Teshet could say anything further, Jedao added, “You might have to cross the hard way, with suits and webcord. How often have your people drilled that?”

“We’ve done plenty of extravehicular,” Teshet said, “but we’re going to need some form of cover.”

“I’m aware of that,” Jedao said. He brought up a calculator and did some figures. “That will do nicely.”

“Sren?”

Jedao grinned at Teshet. “I want those shuttles emptied out, everything but propulsion and navigation. Get rid of suits, seats, all of it.”

“Even life support?”

“Everything. And it’ll have to be done in the next seventeen days, so the Gwa-an can’t catch us at it.”

“What do we do with the innards?”

“Dump them. I’ll take full responsibility.”

Teshet’s eyes crinkled. “I knew I was going to like you.”

Uh-oh, Jedao thought, but he kept that to himself.

“What are you going to be doing?” Teshet asked.

“Going over the dossiers before we have to wipe them,” Jedao said. Meng’s in particular. He’d believed in Meng’s fundamental competence even back in academy, before they’d learned confidence in themselves. What had gone wrong?

Jedao had first met Shuos Meng (Zhei Meng, then) during an exercise at Shuos Academy. The instructor had assigned them to work together. Meng was chubby and had a vine-and-compass tattoo on the back of their left hand, identifying them as coming from a merchanter lineage.

That day, the class of twenty-nine cadets met not in the usual classroom but a windowless space with a metal table in the front and rows of two-person desks with benches that looked like they’d been scrubbed clean of graffiti multiple times. (“Wars come and go, but graffiti is forever,” as one of Jedao’s lovers liked to say.) Besides the door leading out into the hall, there were two other doors, neither of which had a sign indicating where they led. Tangles of pipes led up the walls and storage bins were piled beside them. Jedao had the impression that the room had been pressed into service at short notice.

Jedao and Meng sat at their assigned seats and hurriedly whispered introductions to each other while the instructor read off the rest of the pairs.

“Zhei Meng,” Jedao’s partner said. “I should warn you I barely passed the weapons qualifications. But I’m good with languages.” Then a quick grin: “And hacking. I figured you’d make a good partner.”

“Garach Jedao,” he said. “I can handle guns.” Understatement; he was third in the class in Weapons. And if Meng had, as they implied, shuffled the assignments, that meant they were one of the better hackers. “Why did you join up?”

“I want to have kids,” Meng said.

“Come again?”

“I want to marry into a rich lineage,” Meng said. “That means making myself more respectable. When the recruiters showed up, I said what the hell.”

The instructor smiled coolly at the two of them, and they shut up. She said, “If you’re here, it’s because you’ve indicated an interest in fieldwork. Like you, we want to find out if it’s something you have any aptitude for, and if not, what better use we can make of your skills.” You’d better have some skills went unsaid. “You may expect to be dropped off in the woods or some such nonsense. We don’t try to weed out first-years quite that early. No; this initial exercise will take place right here.”

The instructor’s smile widened. “There’s a photobomb in this room. It won’t cause any permanent damage, but if you don’t disarm it, you’re all going to be walking around wearing ridiculous dark lenses for a week. At least one cadet knows where the bomb is. If they keep its location a secret from the rest of you, they win. Of course, they’ll also go around with ridiculous dark lenses, but you can’t have everything. On the other hand, if someone can persuade that person to give up the secret, everyone wins. So to speak.”

The rows of cadets stared at her. Jedao leaned back in his chair and considered the situation. Like several others in the class, he had a riflery exam in three days and preferred to take it with undamaged vision.

“You have four hours,” the instructor said. “There’s one restroom.” She pointed to one of the doors. “I expect it to be in impeccable condition at the end of the four hours.” She put her slate down on the table at the head of the room. “Call me with this if you figure it out. Good luck.” With that, she walked out. The door whooshed shut behind her.

“We’re screwed,” Meng said. “Just because I’m in the top twenty on the leaderboard in Elite Thundersnake 900 doesn’t mean I could disarm real bombs if you yanked out my toenails.”

“Don’t give people ideas,” Jedao said. Meng didn’t appear to find the joke funny. “This is about people, not explosives.”

Two pairs of cadets had gotten up and were beginning a search of the room. A few were talking to each other in hushed, tense voices. Still others were looking around at their fellows with hard, suspicious eyes.

Meng said in Shparoi, “Do you know where the bomb is?”

Jedao blinked. He hadn’t expected anyone at the Academy to know his birth tongue. Of course, by speaking in an obscure low language, Meng was drawing attention to them. Jedao shook his head.

Meng looked around, hands bunching the fabric of their pants. “What do you recommend we do?”

In the high language, Jedao said, “You can do whatever you want.” He retrieved a deck of jeng-zai cards—he always had one in his pocket—and shuffled it. “Do you play?”

“You realize we’re being graded on this, right? Hell, they’ve got cameras on us. They’re watching the whole thing.”

“Exactly,” Jedao said. “I don’t see any point in panicking.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Meng said. They stood up, met the other cadets’ appraising stares, then sat down again. “Too bad hacking the instructor’s slate won’t get us anywhere. I doubt she left the answer key in an unencrypted file on it.”

Jedao gave Meng a quizzical look, wondering if there was anything more behind the remark—but no, Meng had put their chin in their hands and was brooding. If only you knew, Jedao thought, and dealt out a game of solitaire. It was going to be a very dull game, because he had stacked the deck, but he needed to focus on the people around him, not the game. The cards were just to give his hands something to do. He had considered taking up crochet, but thanks to an incident earlier in the term, crochet hooks, knitting needles, and fountain pens were no longer permitted in class. While this was a stupid restriction, considering that most of the cadets were learning unarmed combat, he wasn’t responsible for the administration’s foibles.

“Jedao,” Meng said, “maybe you’ve got high enough marks that you can blow off this exercise, but—”

Since I’m not blowing it off was unlikely to be believed, Jedao flipped over a card—three of Doors, just as he’d arranged—and smiled at Meng. So Meng had had their pick of partners and had chosen him? Well, he might as well do something to justify the other cadet’s faith in him. After all, despite their earlier remark, weapons weren’t the only things that Jedao was good at. “Do me a favor and we can get this sorted,” he said. “You want to win? I’ll show you winning.”

Now Jedao was attracting some of the hostile stares as well. Good. It took the heat off Meng, who didn’t seem to have a great tolerance for pressure. Stay out of wet work, he thought; but they could have that chat later. Or one of the instructors would.

Meng fidgeted; caught themselves. “Yeah?”

“Get me the slate.”

“You mean the instructor’s slate? You can’t possibly have figured it out already. Unless—” Meng’s eyes narrowed.

“Less thinking, more acting,” Jedao said, and got up to retrieve the slate himself.

A pair of cadets, a girl and a boy, blocked his way. “You know something,” said the girl. “Spill.” Jedao knew them from Analysis; the two were often paired there, too. The girl’s name was Noe Irin. The boy had five names and went by Veller. Jedao wondered if Veller wanted to join a faction so he could trim things down to a nice, compact, two-part name. Shuos Veller: much less of a mouthful. Then again, Jedao had a three-part name, also unusual, if less unwieldy, so he shouldn’t criticize.

“Just a hunch,” Jedao said.

Irin bared her teeth. “He always says it’s a hunch,” she said to no one in particular. “I hate that.”

“It was only twice,” Jedao said, which didn’t help his case. He backed away from the instructor’s desk and sat down, careful not to jostle the solitaire spread. “Take the slate apart. The photobomb’s there.”

Irin’s lip curled. “If this is one of your fucking clever tricks, Jay—”

Meng blinked at the nickname. “You two sleeping together, Jedao?” they asked, sotto voce.

Not sotto enough. “No,” Jedao and Irin said at the same time.

Veller ignored the byplay and went straight for the tablet, which he bent to without touching it. Jedao respected that. Veller had the physique of a tiger-wrestler (now there was someone he wouldn’t mind being caught in bed with), a broad face, and a habitually bland, dreamy expression. Jedao wasn’t fooled. Veller was almost as smart as Irin, had already been tracked into bomb disposal, and was less prone to flights of temper.

“Is there a tool closet in here?” Veller said. “I need a screwdriver.”

“You don’t carry your own anymore?” Jedao said.

“I told him he should,” Irin said, “but he said they were too similar to knitting needles. As if anyone in their right mind would knit with a pair of screwdrivers.”

“I think he meant that they’re stabby things that can be driven into people’s eyes,” Jedao said.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion, Jay.”

Jedao put his hands up in a conciliatory gesture and shut his mouth. He liked Irin and didn’t want to antagonize her any more than necessary. The last time they’d been paired together, they’d done quite well. She would come around; she just needed time to work through the implications of what the instructor had said. She was one of those people who preferred to think about things without being interrupted.

One of the other cadets wordlessly handed Veller a set of screwdrivers. Veller mumbled his thanks and got to work. The class watched, breathless.

“There,” Veller said at last. “See that there, all hooked in? Don’t know what the timer is, but there it is.”

“I find it very suspicious that you forfeited your chance to show up everyone else in this exercise,” Irin said to Jedao. “Is there anyone else who knew?”

“Irin,” Jedao said, “I don’t think the instructor told anyone where she’d left the photobomb. She just stuck it in the slate because that was the last place we’d look. The test was meant to reveal which of us would backstab the others, but honestly, that’s so counterproductive. I say we disarm the damn thing and skip to the end.”

Irin’s eyes crossed and her lips moved as she recited the instructor’s words under her breath. That was another thing Jedao liked about her. Irin had a great memory. Admittedly, that made it difficult to cheat her at cards, as he’d found out the hard way. He’d spent three hours doing her kitchen duties for her the one time he’d tried. He liked people who could beat him at cards. “It’s possible,” she said grudgingly after she’d reviewed the assignment’s instructions.

“Disarmed,” Veller said shortly after that. He pulled out the photobomb and left it on the desk, then set about reassembling the slate.

Jedao glanced over at Meng. For a moment, his partner’s expression had no anxiety in it, but a raptor’s intent focus. Interesting: What were they watching for?

“I hope I get a quiet posting at a desk somewhere,” Meng said.

“Then why’d you join up?” Irin said.

Jedao put his hand over Meng’s, even though he was sure that they had just lied. “Don’t mind her,” he said. “You’ll do fine.”

Meng nodded and smiled up at him.

Why do I have the feeling that I’m not remotely the most dangerous person in the room? Jedao thought. But he returned Meng’s smile, all the same. It never hurt to have allies.

A Gwa patrol ship greeted them as they neared Du Station. Haval had assured Jedao that this was standard practice and obligingly matched velocities.

Jedao listened in on Haval speaking with the Gwa authority, who spoke flawless high language. “They don’t call it ‘high language,’ of course,” Haval had explained to Jedao earlier. “They call it ‘mongrel language.’” Jedao had expressed that he didn’t care what they called it.

Haval didn’t trust Jedao to keep his mouth shut, so she’d stashed him in the business office with Teshet to keep an eye on him. Teshet had brought a wooden box that opened up to reveal an astonishing collection of jewelry. Jedao watched out of the corner of his eye as Teshet made himself comfortable in the largest chair, dumped the box’s contents on the desk, and began sorting it according to criteria known only to him.

Jedao was watching videos of the command center and the communications channel, and tried to concentrate on reading the authority’s body language, made difficult by her heavy zigzag cosmetics and the layers of robes that cloaked her figure. Meanwhile, Teshet put earrings, bracelets, and mysterious hooked and jeweled items in piles, and alternated helpful glosses of Gwa-an gestures with borderline insubordinate, not to say lewd, suggestions for things he could do with Jedao. Jedao was grateful that his ability to blush, like his ability to be tickled, had been burned out of him in Academy. Note to self: Suggest to General Essier that Teshet is wasted in special ops. Maybe reassign him to Recreation?

Jedao mentioned this to Teshet while Haval was discussing the cargo manifest with the authority. Teshet lowered his lashes and looked sideways at Jedao. “You don’t think I’m good at my job?” he asked.

“You have an excellent record,” Jedao said.

Teshet sighed, and his face became serious. “You’re used to regular Kel, I see.”

Jedao waited.

“I end up in a lot of situations where if people get the notion that I’m a Kel officer, I may end up locked up and tortured. While that could be fun in its own right, it makes career advancement difficult.”

“You could get a medal out of it.”

“Oh, is that how you got promoted so—”

Jedao held up his hand, and Teshet stopped. On the monitor, Haval was saying, in a greasy voice, “I’m glad to hear of your interest, madam. We would have been happy to start hauling the lubricant earlier, except we had to persuade our people that—”

The authority’s face grew even more imperturbable. “You had to figure out whom to bribe.”

“We understand there are fees—”

Jedao listened to Haval negotiating her bribe to the authority with half an ear. “Don’t tell me all that jewelry’s genuine?”

“The gems are mostly synthetics,” Teshet said. He held up a long earring with a rose quartz at the end. “No, this won’t do. I bought it for myself, but you’re too light-skinned for it to look good on you.”

“I’m wearing jewelry?”

“Unless you brought your own—scratch that, I bet everything you own is in red and gold.”

“Yes.” Red and gold were the Shuos faction colors.

Teshet tossed the rose quartz earring aside and selected a vivid emerald ear stud. “This will look nice on you.”

“I don’t get a say?”

“How much do you know about merchanter fashion trends out in this march?”

Jedao conceded the point.

The private line crackled to life. “You two still in there?” said Haval’s voice.

“Yes, what’s the issue?” Teshet said.

“They’re boarding us to check for contraband. You haven’t messed with the drugs cabinet, have you?”

Teshet made an affronted sound. “You thought I was going to get Sren high?”

“I don’t make assumptions when it comes to you, Teshet. Get the hell out of there.”

Teshet thrust the emerald ear stud and two bracelets at Jedao. “Put those on,” he said. “If anyone asks you where the third bracelet is, say you had to pawn it to make good on a gambling debt.”

Under other circumstances, Jedao would have found this offensive—he was good at gambling—but presumably Sren had different talents. As he put on the earring, he said, “What do I need to know about these drugs?”

Teshet was stuffing the rest of the jewelry back in the box. “Don’t look at me like that. They’re illegal both in the heptarchate and the Gwa Reality, but people run them anyway. They make useful cover. The Gwa-an search us for contraband, they find the contraband, they confiscate the contraband, we pay them a bribe to keep quiet about it, they go away happy.”

Impatient with Jedao fumbling with the clasp of the second bracelet, Teshet fastened it for him, then turned Jedao’s hand over and studied the scar at the base of his palm. “You should have skinsealed that one too, but never mind.”

“I’m bad at peeling vegetables?” Jedao suggested. Close enough to “knife fight,” right? And much easier to explain away than bullet scars.

“Are you two done?” Haval’s voice demanded.

“We’re coming, we’re coming,” Teshet said.

Jedao took up his post in the command center. Teshet himself disappeared in the direction of the airlock. Jedao wasn’t aware that anything had gone wrong until Haval returned to the command center, flanked by two personages in bright orange space suits. Both personages wielded guns of a type Jedao had never seen before, which made him irrationally happy. While most of his collection was at home with his mother, he relished adding new items. Teshet was nowhere in sight.

Haval’s pilot spoke before the intruders had a chance to say anything. “Commander, what’s going on?”

The broader of the two personages spoke in Tlen Gwa, then kicked Haval in the shin. “Guess what,” Haval said with a macabre grin. “Those aren’t the real authorities we ran into. They’re pirates.”

Oh, for the love of fox and hound, Jedao thought. In truth, he wasn’t surprised, just resigned. He never trusted it when an operation went too smoothly.

The broader personage spoke again. Haval sighed deeply, then said, “Hand over all weapons or they start shooting.”

Where’s Teshet? Jedao wondered. As if in answer, he heard a gunshot, then the ricochet. More gunshots. He was sure at least one of the shooters was Teshet or one of Teshet’s operatives: They carried Stinger 40s and he recognized the characteristic whine of the reports.

Presumably Teshet was occupied, which left matters here up to him. Some of Haval’s crew went armed. Jedao did not—they had agreed that Sren wouldn’t know how to use a gun—but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. While the other members of the crew set down their guns, Jedao flung himself at the narrower personage’s feet.

The pirates did not like this. But Jedao had always been blessed, or perhaps cursed, with extraordinarily quick reflexes. He dropped his weight on one arm and leg and kicked the narrow pirate’s feet from under them with the other leg. The narrow pirate discharged their gun. The bullet passed over Jedao and banged into one of the status displays, causing it to spark and sputter out. Haval yelped.

Jedao had already sprung back to his feet—damn the twinge in his knees, he should have that looked into—and twisted the gun out of the narrow pirate’s grip. The narrow pirate had the stunned expression that Jedao was used to seeing on people who did not deal with professionals very often. He shot them, but thanks to their loose-limbed flailing, the first bullet took them in the shoulder. The second one made an ugly hole in their forehead, and they dropped.

The broad pirate had more presence of mind, but chose the wrong target. Jedao smashed her wrist aside with the knife-edge of his hand just as she fired at Haval five times in rapid succession. Her hands trembled visibly. Four of the shots went wide. Haval had had the sense to duck, but Jedao smelled blood and suspected she’d been hit. Hopefully nowhere fatal.

Jedao shot the broad pirate in the side of the head just as she pivoted to target him next. Her pistol clattered to the floor as she dropped. By reflex he flung himself to the side in case it discharged, but it didn’t.

Once he had assured himself that both pirates were dead, he knelt at Haval’s side and checked the wound. She had been very lucky. The single bullet had gone through her side, missing the major organs. She started shouting at him for going up unarmed against people with guns.

“I’m getting the medical kit,” Jedao said, too loudly, to get her to shut up. His hands were utterly steady as he opened the cabinet containing the medical kit and brought it back to Haval, who at least had the good sense not to try to stand up.

Haval scowled, but accepted the painkiller tabs he handed her. She held still while he cut away her shirt and inspected the entry and exit wounds. At least the bullet wasn’t a burrower, or she wouldn’t have a lung anymore. He got to work with the sterilizer.

By the time Teshet and two other soldiers entered the command center, Jedao had sterilized and sealed the wounds. Teshet crossed the threshold with rapid strides. When Haval’s head came up, Teshet signed sharply for her to be quiet. Curious, Jedao also kept silent.

Teshet drew his combat knife, then knelt next to the larger corpse. With a deft stroke, he cut into the pirate’s neck, then yanked out a device and its wires. Blood dripped down and obscured the metal. He repeated the operation for the other corpse, then crushed both devices under his heel. “All right,” he said. “It should be safe to talk now.”

Jedao raised his eyebrows, inviting explanation.

“Not pirates,” Teshet said. “Those were Gwa-an special ops.”

Hmm. “Then odds are they were waiting for someone to show up to rescue the Moonsweet Blossom,” Jedao said.

“I don’t disagree.” Teshet glanced at Haval, then back at the corpses. “That wasn’t you, was it?”

Haval’s eyes were glazed, a side effect of the painkiller, but she wasn’t entirely out of it. “Idiot here risked his life. We could have handled it.”

“I wasn’t the one in danger,” Jedao said, remembering the pirates’ guns pointed at her. Haval might not be particularly respectful, as subordinates went, cover identity or not, but she was his subordinate, and he was responsible for her. To Teshet: “Your people?”

“Two down,” Teshet said grimly, and gave him the names. “They died bravely.”

“I’m sorry,” Jedao said; two more names to add to the long litany of those he’d lost. He was thinking about how to proceed, though. “The real Gwa-an patrols won’t be likely to know about this. It’s how I’d run the op—the fewer people who are aware of the truth, the better. I bet their orders are to take in any surviving ‘pirates’ for processing, and then the authorities will release and debrief the operatives from there. What do you normally do in case of actual pirates?”

“Report the incident,” Haval said. Her voice sounded thready. “Formal complaint if we’re feeling particularly annoying.”

“All right.” Jedao calmly began taking off the jewelry and his clothes. “That one’s about my size,” he said, nodding at the smaller of the two corpses. The suit would be tight across the shoulders, but that couldn’t be helped. “Congratulations, not two but three of your crew died heroically, but you captured a pirate in the process.”

Teshet made a wistful sound. “That temporary skin stuff obscures your musculature, you know.” But he helpfully began stripping the indicated corpse, then grabbed wipes to get rid of the blood on the suit.

“I’ll make it up to you some other time,” Jedao said recklessly. “Haval, make that formal complaint and demand that you want your captive tried appropriately. Since the nearest station is Du, that’ll get me inserted so I can investigate.”

“You’re just lucky some of the Gwa-an are as sallow as you are,” Haval said as Jedao changed clothes.

“I will be disappointed in you if you don’t have restraints,” Jedao said to Teshet.

Teshet’s eyes lit.

Jedao rummaged in the medical kit until he found the eye drops he was looking for. They were meant to counteract tear gas, but they had a side effect of pupil dilation, which was what interested him. It would help him feign concussion.

“We’re running short on time, so listen closely,” Jedao said. “Turn me over to the Gwa-an. Don’t worry about me; I can handle myself.”

“Je—Sren, I don’t care how much you’ve studied the station’s schematics, you’ll be outnumbered thousands to one on foreign territory.”

“Sometime over drinks I’ll tell you about the time I infiltrated a ring-city where I didn’t speak any of the local languages,” Jedao said. “Turn me in. I’ll locate the crew, spring them, and signal when I’m ready. You won’t be able to mistake it.”

Haval’s brow creased. Jedao kept speaking. “After you’ve done that, load all the shuttles full of lubricant canisters. Program the lubricant to go from zero-coefficient flow to harden completely in response to the radio signal. You’re going to put the shuttles on autopilot. When you see my signal, launch the shuttles’ contents toward the station’s turret levels. That should gum them up and buy us cover.”

“All our shuttles?” Haval said faintly.

“Haval,” Jedao said, “stop thinking about profit margins and repeat my orders back to me.”

She did.

“Splendid,” Jedao said. “Don’t disappoint me.”

The Gwa-an took Jedao into custody without comment. Jedao feigned concussion, saving him from having to sound coherent in a language he barely spoke. The Gwa-an official responsible for him looked concerned, which was considerate of him. Jedao hoped to avoid killing him or the guard. Only one guard, thankfully; they assumed he was too injured to be a threat.

The first thing Jedao noticed about the Gwa-an shuttle was how roomy it was, with wastefully widely spaced seats. He hadn’t noticed that the Gwa-an were, on average, that much larger than the heptarchate’s citizens. (Not that this said much. Both nations contained a staggering variety of ethnic groups and their associated phenotypes. Jedao himself was on the short side of average for a heptarchate manform.) At least being “concussed” meant he didn’t have to figure out how the hell the safety restraints worked, because while he could figure it out with enough fumbling, it would look damned suspicious that he didn’t already know. Instead, the official strapped him in while saying things in a soothing voice. The guard limited themselves to a scowl.

Instead of the smell of disinfectant that Jedao associated with shuttles, the Gwa-an shuttle was pervaded by a light, almost effervescent fragrance. He hoped it wasn’t intoxicating. Or rather, part of him hoped it was, because he didn’t often have good excuses to screw around with new and exciting recreational drugs, but it would impede his effectiveness. Maybe all Gwa-an disinfectants smelled this good? He should steal the formula. Voidmoth crews everywhere would thank him.

Even more unnervingly, the shuttle played music on the way to the station. At least, while it didn’t resemble any music he’d heard before, it had a recognizable beat and some sort of flute in it. From the others’ reactions, this was normal and possibly even boring. Too bad he was about as musical as a pair of boots.

The shuttle docked smoothly. Jedao affected not to know what was going on and allowed the official to chirp at him. Eventually a stretcher arrived and they put him on it. They emerged into the lights of the shuttle bay. Jedao’s temples twinged with the beginning of a headache. At least it meant the eye drops were still doing their job.

The journey to Du Station’s version of Medical took forever. Jedao was especially eager to escape based on what he’d learned of Gwa-an medical therapies, which involved too many genetically engineered critters for his comfort. (He had read up on the topic after Haval told him about the dueling.) He did consider that he could make his mother happy by stealing some pretty little microbes for her, but with his luck they’d turn his testicles inside out.

When the medic took him into an examination room, Jedao whipped up and felled her with a blow to the side of the neck. The guard was slow to react. Jedao grasped their throat and grappled with them, waiting the interminable seconds until they slumped, unconscious. He had a bad moment when he heard footsteps passing by. Luckily, the guard’s wheeze didn’t attract attention. Jedao wasn’t modest about his combat skills, but they wouldn’t save him if he was sufficiently outnumbered.

Too bad he couldn’t steal the guard’s uniform, but it wouldn’t fit him. So it would have to be the medic’s clothes. Good: the medic’s clothes were robes instead of something more form-fitting. Bad: even though the garments would fit him, more or less, they were in the style for women.

I will just have to improvise, Jedao thought. At least he’d kept up the habit of shaving, and the Gwa-an appeared to permit a variety of haircuts in all genders, so his short hair and bangs wouldn’t be too much of a problem. As long as he moved quickly and didn’t get stopped for conversation—

Jedao changed, then slipped out and took a few moments to observe how people walked and interacted so he could fit in more easily. The Gwa-an were terrible about eye contact and, interestingly for station-dwellers, preferred to keep each other at a distance. He could work with that.

His eyes still ached, since Du Station had abominably bright lighting, but he’d just have to prevent people from looking too closely at him. It helped that he had dark brown eyes to begin with, so the dilated pupils wouldn’t be obvious from a distance. He was walking briskly toward the lifts when he heard a raised voice. He kept walking. The voice called again, more insistently.

Damn. He turned around, hoping that someone hadn’t recognized his outfit from behind. A woman in extravagant layers of green, lilac, and pink spoke to him in strident tones. Jedao approached her rapidly, wincing at her voice, and hooked her into an embrace. Maybe he could take advantage of this yet.

“You’re not—” she began to say.

“I’m too busy,” he said over her, guessing at how best to deploy the Tlen Gwa phrases he knew. “I’ll see you for tea at thirteen. I like your coat.”

The woman’s face turned an ugly mottled red. “You like my what?” At least he thought he’d said “coat.” She stepped back from him, pulling what looked like a small perfume bottle from among her layers of clothes.

He tensed, not wanting to fight her in full view of passersby. She spritzed him with a moist vapor, then smiled coolly at him before spinning on her heel and walking away.

Shit. Just how fast-acting were Gwa-an duels, anyway? He missed the sensible kind with swords; his chances would have been much better. He hoped the symptoms wouldn’t be disabling, but then, the woman couldn’t possibly have had a chance to tailor the infectious agent to his system, and maybe the immunizations would keep him from falling over sick until he had found Meng and their crew.

How had he offended her, anyway? Had he gotten the word for “coat” wrong? Now that he thought about it, the word for “coat” differed from the word for “navel” only by its tones, and—hells and foxes, he’d messed up the tone sandhi, hadn’t he? He kept walking, hoping that she’d be content with getting him sick and wouldn’t call security on him.

At last he made it to the lifts. While stealing the medic’s uniform had also involved stealing their keycard, he preferred not to use it. Rather, he’d swapped the medic’s keycard for the loud woman’s. She had carried hers on a braided lanyard with a clip. It would do nicely if he had to garrote anyone in a hurry. The garrote wasn’t one of his specialties, but as his girlfriend the first year of Shuos Academy had always been telling him, it paid to keep your options open.

At least the lift’s controls were less perilous than figuring out how to correctly pronounce items of clothing. Jedao had by no means achieved reading fluency in Tlen Gwa, but the language had a wonderfully tidy writing system, with symbols representing syllables and odd little curlicue diacritics that changed what vowel you used. He had also theoretically memorized the numbers from 1 to 9,999. Fortunately, Du Station had fewer than 9,999 levels.

Two of the other people on the lift stared openly at Jedao. He fussed with his hair on the grounds that it would look like ordinary embarrassment and not Hello! I am a cross-dressing enemy agent, pleased to make your acquaintance. Come to that, Gwa-an women’s clothes were comfortable, and all the layers meant that he could, in principle, hide useful items like garrotes in them. He wondered if he could keep them as a souvenir. Start a fashion back home. He bet his mother would approve.

Intelligence had given him a good idea of where Meng and their crew might be held. At least, Jedao hoped that Du Station’s higher-ups hadn’t faked him out by stowing them in the lower-security cells as opposed to the top-security ones. He was betting a lot on the guess that the Gwa-an were still in the process of interrogating the group rather than executing them out of hand.

The layout wasn’t the hard part, but Jedao reflected on the mysteries of the Gwa Reality’s penal code. For example, prostitution was a major offense. They didn’t even fine the offenders, but sent them to remedial counseling, which surely cost the state money. In the heptarchate, they did the sensible thing by enforcing licenses for health and safety reasons and taxing the whole enterprise. On the other hand, the Gwa-an had a refreshingly casual attitude toward heresy. They believed that public debate about Poetics (their version of Doctrine) strengthened the polity. If you put forth that idea anywhere in the heptarchate, you could expect to get arrested.

So it was that Jedao headed for the cellblocks where one might find unlucky prostitutes and not the ones where overly enthusiastic heretics might be locked up overnight to cool off. He kept attracting horrified looks and wondered if he’d done something offensive with his hair. Was it wrong to part it on the left, and if so, why hadn’t Haval warned him? How many ways could you get hair wrong anyway?

The Gwa-an also had peculiarly humanitarian ideas about the surroundings that offenders should be kept in. Level 37, where he expected to find Meng, abounded with fountains. Not cursory fountains, but glorious cascading arches of silvery water interspersed with elongated humanoid statues in various uncomfortable-looking poses. Teshet had mentioned that this had to do with Gwa-an notions of ritual purity.

While “security” was one of the words that Jedao had memorized, he did not read Tlen Gwa especially quickly, which made figuring out the signs a chore. At least the Gwa-an believed in signs, a boon to foreign infiltrators everywhere. Fortunately, the Gwa-an hadn’t made a secret of the Security office’s location, even if getting to it was complicated by the fact that the fountains had been rearranged since the last available intel and he preferred not to show up soaking wet. The fountains themselves formed a labyrinth and, upon inspection, it appeared that different portions could be turned on or off to change the labyrinth’s twisty little passages.

Unfortunately, the water’s splashing also made it difficult to hear people coming, and he had decided that creeping about would not only slow him down, but make him look more conspicuous, especially with the issue of his hair (or whatever it was that made people stare at him with such affront). He rounded a corner and almost crashed into a sentinel, recognizable by Security’s spear-and-shield badge.

In retrospect, a simple collision might have worked out better. Instead, Jedao dropped immediately into a fighting stance, and the sentinel’s eyes narrowed. Dammit, Jedao thought, exasperated with himself. This is why my handlers preferred me doing the sniper bits rather than the infiltration bits. Since he’d blown the opportunity to bluff his way past the sentinel, he swept the man’s feet from under him and knocked him out. After the man was unconscious, Jedao stashed him behind one of the statues, taking care so the spray from the fountains wouldn’t interfere too much with his breathing. He had the distinct impression that “dead body” was much worse from a ritual purity standpoint than “merely unconscious,” if he had to negotiate with someone later.

He ran into no other sentinels on the way to the office, but as it so happened, a sentinel was leaving just as he got there. Jedao put on an expression he had learned from the scariest battlefield medic of his acquaintance back when he’d been a lowly infantry captain and marched straight up to Security. He didn’t need to be convincing for long, he just needed a moment’s hesitation.

By the time the sentinel figured out that the “medic” was anything but, Jedao had taken her gun and broken both her arms. “I want to talk to your leader,” he said, another of those useful canned phrases.

The sentinel left off swearing (he was sure it was swearing) and repeated the word for “leader” in an incredulous voice.

Whoops. Was he missing some connotational nuance? He tried the word for “superior officer,” to which the response was even more incredulous. Hey Mom, Jedao thought, you know how you always said I should join the diplomatic corps on account of my always talking my way out of trouble as a kid? Were you ever wrong. I am the worst diplomat ever. Admittedly, maybe starting off by breaking the woman’s arms was where he’d gone wrong, but the sentinel didn’t sound upset about that. The Gwa-an were very confusing people.

After a crescendo of agitation (hers) and desperate rummaging about for people nouns (his), it emerged that the term he wanted was the one for “head priest.” Which was something the language lessons ought to have noted. He planned on dropping in on whoever had written the course and having a spirited talk with them.

Just as well that the word for “why” was more straightforward. The sentinel wanted to know why he wanted to talk to the head priest. He wanted to know why someone who’d had both her arms broken was more concerned with propriety (his best guess) than alerting the rest of the station that they had an intruder. He had other matters to attend to, though. Too bad he couldn’t recruit her for her sangfroid, but that was outside his purview.

What convinced the sentinel to comply, in the end, was not the threat of more violence, which he imagined would have been futile. Instead, he mentioned that he’d left one of her comrades unconscious amid the fountains and the man would need medical care. He liked the woman’s concern for her fellow sentinel.

Jedao and the sentinel walked together to the head priest’s office. The head priest came out. She had an extremely elaborate coiffure, held in place by multiple hairpins featuring elongated figures like the statues. She froze when Jedao pointed the gun at her, then said several phrases in what sounded like different languages.

“Mongrel language,” Jedao said in Tlen Gwa, remembering what Haval had told him.

“What do you want?” the high priest said in awkward but comprehensible high language.

Jedao explained that he was here for Ahun Gerav, in case the priest only knew Meng by their cover name. “Release them and their crew, and this can end with minimal bloodshed.”

The priest wheezed. Jedao wondered if she was allergic to assassins. He’d never heard of such a thing, but he wasn’t under any illusions that he knew everything about Gwa-an immune systems. Then he realized she was laughing.

“Feel free to share,” Jedao said, very pleasantly. The sentinel was sweating.

The priest stopped laughing. “You’re too late,” she said. “You’re too late by thirteen years.”

Jedao did the math: eight years since he and Meng had graduated from Shuos Academy. Of course, the two of them had attended for the usual five years. “They’ve been a double agent since they were a cadet?”

The priest’s smile was just this side of smug.

Jedao knocked the sentinel unconscious and let her spill to the floor. The priest’s smile didn’t falter, which made him think less of her. Didn’t she care about her subordinate? If nothing else, he’d had a few concussions in his time (real ones), and they were no joke.

“The crew,” Jedao said.

“Gerav attempted to persuade them to turn coat as well,” the priest said. “When they were less than amenable, well—” She shrugged. “We had no further use for them.”

“I will not forgive this,” Jedao said. “Take me to Gerav.”

She shrugged. “Unfortunate for them,” she said. “But to be frank, I don’t value their life over my own.”

“How very pragmatic of you,” Jedao said.

She shut up and led the way.

Du Station had provided Meng with a luxurious suite by heptarchate standards. The head priest bowed with an ironic smile as she opened the door for Jedao. He shoved her in and scanned the room.

The first thing he noticed was the overwhelming smell of—what was that smell? Jedao had thought he had reasonably cosmopolitan tastes, but the platters with their stacks of thin-sliced meat drowned in rich gravies and sauces almost made him gag. Who needed that much meat in their diet? The suite’s occupant seemed to agree, judging by how little the meat had been touched. And why wasn’t the meat cut into decently small pieces so as to make for easy eating? The bowls of succulent fruit were either for show or the suite’s occupant disliked fruit, too. The flatbreads, on the other hand, had been torn into. One, not entirely eaten, rested on a meat platter and was dissolving into the gravy. Several different-sized bottles were partly empty, and once he adjusted to all the meat, he could also detect the sweet reek of wine.

Most fascinatingly, instead of chopsticks and spoons, the various plates and platters sported two-tined forks (Haval had explained to him about forks) and knives. Maybe this was how they trained assassins. Jedao liked knives, although not as much as he liked guns. He wondered if he could persuade the Kel to import the custom. It would make for some lively high tables.

Meng glided out, resplendent in brocade Gwa-an robes, then gaped. Jedao wasn’t making any attempt to hide his gun.

“Foxfucking hounds,” Meng slurred as they sat down heavily, “you. Is that really you, Jedao?”

“You know each other?” the priest said.

Jedao ignored her question, although he kept her in his peripheral vision in case he needed to kill her or knock her out. “You graduated from Shuos Academy with high marks,” Jedao said. “You even married rich the way you always talked about. Four beautiful kids. Why, Meng? Was it nothing more than a story?”

Meng reached for a fork. Jedao’s trigger finger shifted. Meng withdrew their hand.

“The Gwa-an paid stupendously well,” Meng said quietly. “It mattered a lot more, once. Of course, hiding the money was getting harder and harder. What good is money if you can’t spend it? And the Shuos were about to catch on anyway. So I had to run.”

“And your crew?”

Meng’s mouth twisted, but they met Jedao’s eyes steadfastly. “I didn’t want things to end the way they did.”

“Cold comfort to their families.”

“It’s done now,” Meng said, resigned. They looked at the largest platter of meat with sudden loathing. Jedao tensed, wondering if it was going to be flung at him, but all Meng did was shove it away from them. Some gravy slopped over the side.

Jedao smiled sardonically. “If you come home, you might at least get a decent bowl of rice instead of this weird bread stuff.”

“Jedao, if I come home they’ll torture me for high treason, unless our heptarch’s policies have changed drastically. You can’t stop me from killing myself.”

“Rather than going home?” Jedao shrugged. Meng probably did have a suicide fail-safe, although if they were serious they’d have used it already. He couldn’t imagine the Gwa-an would have neglected to provide them with one if the Shuos hadn’t.

Still, he wasn’t done. “If you do something so crass, I’m going to visit each one of your children personally. I’m going to take them out to a nice dinner with actual food that you eat with actual chopsticks and spoons. And I’m going to explain to them in exquisite detail how their Shuos parent is a traitor.”

Meng bit their lip.

More softly, Jedao said, “When did the happy family stop being a cover story and start being real?”

“I don’t know,” Meng said, wretched. “I can’t—do you know how my spouses would look at me if they found out that I’d been lying to them all this time? I wasn’t even particularly interested in other people’s kids when this all began. But watching them grow up—” They fell silent.

“I have to bring you back,” Jedao said. He remembered the staticky voice of the unnamed woman playing in Essier’s office, Meng’s crew, who’d tried and failed to get a warning out. She and her comrades deserved justice. But he also remembered all the gifts he’d sent to Meng’s children over the years, the occasional awkwardly written thank-you note. It wasn’t as if any good would be achieved by telling them the awful truth. “But I can pull a few strings. Make sure your family never finds out.”

Meng hesitated for a long moment. Then they nodded. “It’s fair. Better than fair.”

To the priest, Jedao said, “You’d better take us to the Moonsweet Blossom, assuming you haven’t disassembled it already.”

The priest’s mouth twisted. “You’re in luck,” she said.

Du Station had ensconced the Moonsweet Blossom in a bay on Level 62. The Gwa-an passed gawped at them. The priest sailed past without giving any explanations. Jedao wondered whether the issue was his hair or some other inexplicable Gwa-an cultural foible.

“I hope you can pilot while drunk,” Jedao said to Meng.

Meng drew themselves up to their full height. “I didn’t drink that much.”

Jedao had his doubts, but he would take his chances. “Get in.”

The priest’s sudden tension alerted him that she was about to try something. Jedao shoved Meng toward the trademoth, then grabbed the priest in an arm. What was the point of putting a priest in charge of security if the priest couldn’t fight?

Jedao said to her, “You’re going to instruct your underlings to get the hell out of our way and open the airlock so we can leave.”

“And why would I do that?” the priest said.

He reached up and snatched out half her hairpins. Too bad he didn’t have a third hand; his grip on the gun was precarious enough as it was. She growled, which he interpreted as Fuck you and all your little foxes. “I could get creative,” Jedao said.

“I was warned that the heptarchate was full of barbarians,” the priest said.

At least the incomprehensible Gwa-an fixation on hairstyles meant that he didn’t have to resort to more disagreeable threats, like shooting her subordinates in front of her. Given her reaction when he had knocked out the sentinel, he wasn’t convinced that would faze her anyway. He adjusted his grip on her and forced her to the floor.

“Give the order,” he said. “If you don’t play any tricks, you’ll even get the hairpins back without my shoving them through your eardrums.” They were very nice hairpins, despite the creepiness of the elongated humanoid figures, and he bet they were real gold.

Since he had her facing the floor, the priest couldn’t glare at him. The frustration in her voice was unmistakable, however. “As you require.” She started speaking in Tlen Gwa.

The workers in the area hurried to comply. Jedao had familiarized himself with the control systems of the airlock and was satisfied they weren’t doing anything underhanded. “Thank you,” he said, to which the priest hissed something venomous. He flung the hairpins away and let her go. She cried out at the sound of their clattering and scrambled after them with a devotion he reserved for weapons. Perhaps, to a Gwa-an priest, they were equivalent.

One of the workers, braver or more foolish than the others, reached for her own gun. Jedao shot her in the hand on the way up the hatch to the Moonsweet Blossom. It bought him enough time to get the rest of the way up the ramp and slam the hatch shut after him. Surely Meng couldn’t accuse him of showing off if they hadn’t seen the feat of marksmanship; and he hoped the worker would appreciate that he could just as easily have put a hole in her head.

The telltale rumble of the Blossom’s maneuver drive assured him that Meng, at least, was following directions. This boded well for Meng’s health. Jedao hurried forward, wondering how many more rounds the Gwa-an handgun contained, and started webbing himself into the gunner’s seat.

“You wouldn’t consider putting that thing away, would you?” Meng said. “It’s hard for me to think when I’m ready to piss myself.”

“If you think I’m the scariest person in your future, Meng, you haven’t been paying attention.”

“One, I don’t think you know yourself very well, and two, I liked you much better when we were on the same side.”

“I’m going to let you meditate on that second bit some other time. In the meantime, let’s get out of here.”

Meng swallowed. “They’ll shoot us down the moment we get clear of the doors, you know.”

“Just go, Meng. I’ve got friends. Or did you think I teleported onto this station?”

“At this point I wouldn’t put anything past you. Okay, you’re webbed in, I’m webbed in, here goes nothing.”

The maneuver drive grumbled as the Moonsweet Blossom blasted its way out of the bay. No one attempted to close the first set of doors on them. Jedao wondered if the priest was still scrabbling after her hairpins, or if it had to do with the more pragmatic desire to avoid costly repairs to the station.

The Moonsweet Blossom had few armaments, mostly intended for dealing with high-velocity debris, which was more of a danger than pirates if one kept to the better-policed trade routes. They wouldn’t do any good against Du Station’s defenses. As signals, on the other hand—

Using the lasers, Jedao flashed HERE WE COME in the merchanter signal code. With any luck, Haval was paying attention.

At this point, several things happened.

Haval kicked Teshet in the shin to get him to stop watching a mildly pornographic and not-very-well-acted drama about a famous courtesan from 192 years ago. (“It’s historical so it’s educational!” he protested. “One, we’ve got our signal, and two, I wish you would take care of your urgent needs in your own quarters,” Haval said.)

Carp 1 through Carp 4 and 7 through 10 launched all their shuttles. Said shuttles were, as Jedao had instructed, full of variable-coefficient lubricant programmed to its liquid form. The shuttles flew toward Du Station, then opened their holds and burned their retro thrusters for all they were worth. The lubricant, carried forward by momentum, continued toward Du Station’s turret levels.

Du Station recognized an attack when it saw one. However, its defenses consisted of a combination of high-powered lasers, which could only vaporize small portions of the lubricant and were useless for altering the momentum of quantities of the stuff, and railguns, whose projectiles punched through the mass without much effect. Once the lubricant had clogged up the defensive emplacements, Carp 1 transmitted an encrypted radio signal with the command that caused the lubricant to harden in place.

The Moonsweet Blossom linked up with Haval’s merchant troop. At this point, the Blossom only contained two people, trivial compared to the amount of mass it had been designed to haul. The merchant troop, of course, had just divested itself of its cargo. The nine heptarchate vessels proceeded to hightail it out of there at highly non-freighter accelerations.

Jedao and Meng swept the Moonsweet Blossom for bugs and other unwelcome devices, an exhausting but necessary task. Then, at what Jedao judged to be a safe distance from Du Station, he ordered Meng to slave it to Carp 1.

The Carp 1 and Moonsweet Blossom matched velocities, and Jedao and Meng made the crossing to the former. There was a bad moment when Jedao thought Meng was going to unhook their tether and drift off into the smothering dark rather than face their fate. But whatever temptations were running through their head, Meng resisted them.

Haval and Teshet greeted them on the Carp 1. After Jedao and Meng had shed the suits and checked them for needed repairs, Haval ushered them all into the business office. “I didn’t expect you to spring the trademoth as well as our Shuos friend,” Haval said.

Meng wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“What about the rest of the crew?” Teshet said.

“They didn’t make it,” Jedao said, and sneezed. He explained about Meng’s extracurricular activities over the past thirteen years. Then he sneezed again.

Haval grumbled under her breath. “Whatever the hell you did on Du, Sren, did it involve duels?”

“‘Sren’?” Meng said.

“You don’t think I came into the Gwa Reality under my own”—sneeze—“name, did you?” Jedao said. “Anyway, there might have been an incident...”

Meng groaned. “Just how good is your Tlen Gwa?”

“Sort of not, apparently,” Jedao said. “I really need to have a word with whoever wrote the Tlen Gwa course. I thought I was all right with languages at the basic phrase level, but was the proofreader asleep the day they approved it?”

Meng had the grace to look embarrassed. “I may have hacked it.”

“You what?”

“If I’d realized you’d be using it, I wouldn’t have bothered. Botching the language doesn’t seem to have slowed you down any.”

Wordlessly, Teshet handed Jedao a handkerchief. Jedao promptly sneezed into it. Maybe he’d be able to give his mother a gift of a petri dish with a lovely culture of Gwa-an germs, after all. He’d have to ask the medic about it later.

Teshet then produced a set of restraints from his pockets and gestured at Meng. Meng sighed deeply and submitted to being trussed up.

“Don’t look so disappointed,” Teshet said into Jedao’s ear. “I’ve another set just for you.” Then he and Meng marched off to the brig.

Haval cleared her throat. “Off to the medic with you,” she said to Jedao. “We’d better figure out why your vaccinations aren’t working and if everyone’s going to need to be quarantined.”

“Not arguing,” Jedao said meekly.

Some days later, Jedao was rewatching one of Teshet’s pornography dramas while in bed. At least, he thought it was pornography. The costuming made it difficult to tell, and the dialogue had made more sense when he was still running a fever.

The medic had kept him in isolation until they declared him no longer contagious. Whether due to this precaution or pure luck, no one else came down with the duel disease. They’d given him a clean bill of health this morning, but Haval had insisted that he rest a little longer.

The door opened. Jedao looked up in surprise.

Teshet entered with a fresh supply of handkerchiefs. “Well, Jedao, we’ll reenter heptarchate space in two days, high calendar. Any particular orders you want me to relay to Haval?” He obligingly handed over a slate so Jedao could look over Haval’s painstaking, not to say excruciatingly detailed, reports on their current status.

“Haval’s doing a fine job,” Jedao said, glad that his voice no longer came out as a croak. “I won’t get in her way.” He returned the slate to Teshet.

“Sounds good.” Teshet turned his back and departed. Jedao admired the view, wishing in spite of himself that the other man would linger.

Teshet returned half an hour later with two clear vials full of unidentified substances. “First or second?” he said, holding them up to the light one by one.

“I’m sorry,” Jedao said, “first or second what?”

“You look like you need cheering up,” Teshet said hopefully. “You want on top? You want me on top? I’m flexible.”

Jedao blinked, trying to parse this. “On top of wh—” Oh. “What’s in those vials?”

“You have your choice of variable-coefficient lubricant or goose fat,” Teshet said. “Assuming you were telling the truth when you said it was goose fat. And don’t yell at Haval for letting me into your refrigerator; I did it all on my own. I admit, I can’t tell the difference. As Haval will attest, I’m a dreadful cook, so I didn’t want to fry up some scallion pancakes just to taste the goose fat.”

Jedao’s mouth went dry, which had less to do with Teshet’s eccentric choice of lubricants than the fact that he had sat down on the edge of Jedao’s bed. “You don’t have anything more, ah, conventional?” He realized that was a mistake as soon as the words left his mouth; he’d essentially accepted Teshet’s proposition.

For the first time, Jedao glimpsed uncertainty in Teshet’s eyes. “We don’t have a lot of time before we’re back in heptarchate space and you have to go back to being a commander and I have to go back to being responsible,” he said softly. “Or as responsible as I ever get, anyway. Want to make the most of it? Because I get the impression that you don’t allow yourself much of a personal life.”

“Use the goose fat,” Jedao said, because as much as he liked Teshet, he did not relish the thought of being cemented to Teshet: It would distract Teshet from continuing to analyze his psyche, and, yes, the man was damnably attractive. What the hell, with any luck his mother was never, ever, ever hearing of this. (He could imagine the conversation now: “Garach Jedao Shkan, are you meaning to tell me you finally found a nice young man and you’re still not planning on settling down and providing me extra grandchildren?” And then she would send him more goose fat.)

Teshet brightened. “You won’t regret this,” he purred, and proceeded to help Jedao undress.

Originally published in Tor.com, February 15, 2017.

About the Artist and Authors

Ron Guyatt (ronguyatt.com)

Ron Guyatt is a self-taught artist and professionally-taught graphic designer from Toronto Canada. He attended George Brown College for Design Foundation where he completed with Honors and then followed with his three-year diploma in graphic design at George Brown College.

Inspired by Art Deco, film and science fiction he loves to design posters & create illustrations. His work as been featured in magazines such as Games TM, Level, and Playstation Magazine and worked with clients like EA, Digital Devolver and Bioware.

His Forever cover art is available for purchase as part of his space poster series at: fabledcreative.bigcartel.com/category/space-posters

James Patrick Kelly

James Patrick Kelly has won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. His latest project is King of the Dogs, Queen of the Cats, a short novel published in January 2020 by Subterranean Press. His most recent collections are The Promise of Space (Prime Books, 2018) and James Patrick Kelly, Master of Science Fiction (Centipede Press, 2-16). He has published over a hundred stories and his fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. With John Kessel he is co-editor of Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology, Kafkaesque: Stories Inspired by Franz Kafka, The Secret History Of Science Fiction, Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, and Rewired: The Post Cyberpunk Anthology. He writes a column on the internet for Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and recently retired from faculty of the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine where he taught for fifteen years.

Lavie Tidhar

Lavie Tidhar is the World Fantasy Award winning author of Osama (2011), Seiun nominated The Violent Century (2013), the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize winning A Man Lies Dreaming (2014), and the Campbell Award and Neukom Prize winning Central Station (2016), and Locus and Campbell award nominated Unholy Land (2018), in addition to many other works and several other awards. His latest novels By Force Alone (2020) and debut children’s novel Candy (2018 UK; as The Candy Mafia 2020 US). He is also the author of the comics mini-series Adler. New novel The Escapement is forthcoming in 2021, as is anthology The Best of World SF.

Yoon Ha Lee

Yoon Ha Lee’s debut novel, Ninefox Gambit, won the Locus Award for best first novel and was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Clarke awards; its sequels, Raven Stratagem and Revenant Gun, were also Hugo finalists. His children’s space opera, Dragon Pearl, was a New York Times bestseller and won the Locus Award for best YA novel. Lee’s short fiction has appeared in venues such as Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and more. Lee lives in Louisiana with his family and a very lazy cat, and has not yet been eaten by gators.

About Forever

Forever Magazine is edited by Neil Clarke and published monthly by Wyrm Publishing. Subscription information is available on our website at forever-magazine.com.

Neil Clarke (neil-clarke.com) is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine (clarkesworldmagazine.com), Forever Magazine; owner of Wyrm Publishing; and an eight-time Hugo Award Finalist for Best Editor (short form). His anthologies include Upgraded, Galactic Empires, More Human Than Human, The Final Frontier, Not One of Us, The Eagle has Landed, and the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. His most recent anthology, The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 5, was published by Night Shade Books in October. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two sons.

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