Art saw this, of course, and began to look worried. And one day after work he brought over Ursula and Vlad. The four of them had dinner together in her apartment, Art cooking. Nadia enjoyed her old friends’ company; they were in town on business, but getting them over for dinner there had been Art’s idea, and a good one. He was a sweet man, Nadia thought as she watched him moving about the kitchen. Canny diplomat as guileless simpleton, or vice versa. Like a benign Frank. Or a mix of Frank’s skill and Arkady’s happiness. She laughed at herself, always thinking of people in terms of the First Hundred— as if everyone was somehow a recombination of the traits of that original family. It was a bad habit of hers.

Vlad and Art were talking about Ann. Sax had apparently called Vlad from the shuttle rocket on its return to Mars, shaken by a conversation with Ann. He was wondering if Vlad and Ursula would consider offering Ann the same brain plasticity treatment that they had given him after his stroke.

“Ann would never do it,” Ursula said.

“I’m glad she won’t,” Vlad said. “That would be too much. Her brain wasn’t injured. We don’t know what that treatment would do in a healthy brain. And you should only undertake what you can understand, unless you are desperate.”

“Maybe Ann is desperate,” Nadia said.

“No. Sax is desperate.” Vlad smiled briefly. “He wants a different Ann before he gets back.”

Ursula said to him, “You didn’t want Sax to try that treatment either.”

“It’s true. I wouldn’t have done it to myself. But Sax is a bold man. An impulsive man.” Now Vlad looked at Nadia: “We should stick to things like your finger, Nadia. Now that we can fix.”

Surprised, Nadia said, “What’s wrong with it?”

They laughed at her. “The one that’s missing!” Ursula said. “We could grow it back, if you wanted.”

“Ka,” Nadia exclaimed. She sat back, looked at her thin left hand, the stump of the missing little finger. “Well. I don’t need it, really.”

They laughed again. “You could have fooled us,” Ursula said. “You’re always complaining about it when you’re working.”

“I am?”

They all nodded.

“It’ll help your swimming,” Ursula said.

“I don’t swim much anymore.”

“Maybe you stopped because of your hand.”

Nadia stared at it again. “Ka. I don’t know what to say. Are you sure it will work?”

“It might grow into an entire other hand,” Art suggested. “Then into another Nadia. You’ll be a Siamese twin.”

Nadia pushed him sideways in his chair. Ursula was shaking her head. “No no. We’ve done it for some other amputees already, and a great number of experimental animals. Hands, arms, legs. We learned it from frogs. Quite wonderful, really. The cells differentiate just like the first time the finger grew.”