Ann shook her head, smiled to herself. She crossed the room with an expression he couldn’t read, and held his arms in her two hands, and leaned forward and kissed his cheek gently. When she pulled back, one of her hands continued to clutch his left arm, sliding down to the wrist. She was staring right into him, and her grip was like metal. Sax was speechless again, although he very much wanted to speak. But there was nothing to say, or too much, he couldn’t even tell which it was; his tongue was again paralyzed. That hand on his wrist; it was more incapacitating than any glare or cutting remark had ever been.

A wave seemed to pass through her, and she became somewhat more the Ann he knew, looking at him suspiciously, then with alarm. “Everyone’s okay?”

“Yes yes,” Sax said. “I mean— you heard about Michel?”

“Yes.” Her mouth tightened, for a second she became the black Ann of his dreams. Then another wave passed through her, and she was this new stranger, still clutching his wrist as if trying to snip his hand off. “But now you’re just here to see me.”

“Yes. I wanted to”— he searched wildly for a finish to the sentence— “. . . to talk! Yes— to, to, to, to, to ask you some questions. I’m having some trouble with my memory. I wondered if I, if we could travel up here, and talk. Hike”— he gulped—”or climb. You could show me some of the caldera?”

She was smiling. Again it was some other Ann. “You can climb with me if you want.”

“I’m not a climber.”

“We’ll go up an easy route. Up Wang’s Gully, and over the great circle to north circle, I’ve wanted to get up there while it’s still summer anyway.”

“It’s Ls 200, actually. But I mean, it sounds good.” His heart was beating at about 150 beats a minute.

• • •

Ann had all the equipment they needed, it turned out. The next morning, as they were suiting up, she said to him, “Here, take that off.” Pointing at his wristpad.

“Oh dear,” Sax said. “I— isn’t it really part of the suit’s system?”

It was, but she shook her head. “The suit is autonomous.”

“Semiautonomous, I hope.”

She smiled. “Yes. But no wristpad is necessary. Look— that thing connects you to the whole world. It’s your manacle to spacetime. Today let’s just be in Wang’s Gully. It will be enough.”