Neither of them talked for a while. The mother had coaxed her kid back into the stroller and was speeding down toward the Marina. The parrots had stopped munching and were just flying back and forth between the cherry tree and a couple other big trees flanking a massive Edwardian town house, screaming in midair. Once or twice, they flew right over Laurence’s head, green plumage extended like a salute.

“I guess I’m curious,” Laurence said. “Do you have an ethical framework? I mean beyond that one rule they kept mentioning. How do you know what to do?” He spoke carefully, because this was obviously kind of an intense conversation for Patricia—she was averting her gaze now.

“Umm,” Patricia said, raising her shoulders so her breasts lifted up inside her white T-shirt. “I mean, sometimes I’m following instructions, from Kawashima or Ernesto, and I trust them. But also … I can’t just turn everyone into turtles, I have to go with the situation. And … see those parrots?” She gestured at the candy-apple birds, which were back at their tasty cherry tree after making a few tours of the parklet.

“Yeah, of course.” Laurence watched the red spots on their heads bopping around. They seemed to be taunting anybody who might want to cage them.

“I can understand what they’re saying. Mostly, they’re pissed at their friend in the middle, who keeps almost getting eaten by hawks because he’s too dumb to stay high up. And those crows over there, too. I can understand what they’re all saying, right now.”

“Wow.” Laurence hadn’t even noticed the crows on the power line nearby, watching them intently. “So you can understand them all? All the time?”

“It takes a certain amount of concentration. But yes.”

“Can all the magic people do that, like Kawashima and Taylor?”

“Maybe, if they really need to. If they make a big effort. Not most of the time. Different people have different weird quirks.”

“And doesn’t it drive you nuts, to hear animals talking all the time?”

“Not really. I guess I’m just used to it. Most of the time, I tune it out, the same way you tune out all the people talking around you. But at the same time, I always have in the back of my mind the idea of, what would the crows think? Crows are really smart.”

The crows seemed to be having some kind of intense political debate, cawing and filibustering. One of them shook its wings, almost like a wet dog.