She walked back to their boat. Stumped down the gang-plank. It was distressing to feel this way for an enemy, to lose an enemy to this kind of disaster. “Who am I going to hate now?” she cried to Michel.

“Well,” Michel said, shocked. Then, in a comforting tone: “I’m sure you’ll think of someone.”

Maya laughed shortly, and Michel cracked a brief smile. Then he shrugged, looking grave. He less than any of them had been lulled by the treatment. Immortal stories in mortal flesh, he had always insisted. He was downright morbid about it. And here another illustration of his point.

“So the all-too-human got hers at last,” he said.

“She was an idiot with all those risks, she was asking for it.”

“She didn’t believe in it.”

Maya nodded. No doubt true. Few believed in death anymore, especially the young, who never had, even before the days of the treatment. And now less than ever. But believe in it or not, it was touching down more and more, mostly of course among the superelderly. New diseases, or old diseases returned, or else a rapid holistic collapse with no apparent cause— this last had killed Helmut Bronski and Derek Hastings in recent years, people Maya had met, if not known well. Now an accident had struck someone so much younger than they were that it made no sense, fit no pattern but youthful recklessness. An accident. Random chance.

“Do you still want to get Peter to come?” Michel asked, from out of a whole different realm of thought. What was this, realpolitik from Michel? Ah— he was trying to distract her. She almost laughed again.

“Let’s still get in touch with him,” she said. “See if he might come.” But this was only to reassure Michel; her heart was not in it.

That was the beginning of the string of deaths.

3

But she didn’t know that then. Then, it was only the end of their canal journey.