“When the time comes, right, Finch?”

“Sure, Wyte,” Finch said. “When the time comes.”

“You’ll know what to do.” The voice, once so deep and gravelly, had changed since Finch had first met Wyte. Become soft and liquid, lighter yet thicker.

“I’ll know what to do.”

The ritual conversation.

Ritual had a purpose. Ritual cordoned off fear. Ritual made the abnormal ordinary. The memory hole beside each of the desks. The deep green vein running the length of Wyte’s arm. Pushing up ridgelike against the fabric of Wyte’s long sleeve. Like the green carpet leading back to the curtains and what lay beyond.

Finch took his gun from its holster. Recoiled from the touch of the grip.

“For Truff’s sake,” Finch said. Laid it on his desk with a squelch.

The gun had been issued by the gray caps. Dark green exoskeleton, soft interior. Its guts stained his hand. Reloading didn’t seem like an option. It had been seeping a lot lately.

“I wonder if it’s dying on me,” Finch said. To Wyte, who sat at the desk to his left.

Should I have been feeding it?

Wyte grunted. Reflexively writing up reports on nothing in particular. Lost husbands. Unidentifiable corpses. Vandalism. Finch had cases, too, but nothing that couldn’t wait.

“Hate these things,” he said, again to Wyte. Again, to indifference.

Heard Blakely muttering to Gustat: “… they’re saying that we’re addicted to a special mushroom that grows out of our brains.” Gustat chuckled but it wasn’t funny. Rumors could get a detective killed by some desperate citizen. Any excuse that didn’t slip through the fingers.

Finch rummaged in a drawer. Found a worn handkerchief. It predated the war. He’d gotten it from an expensive clothing store farther up the boulevard. Didn’t know why he kept it. Luck? Grimacing, he picked up the gun with the handkerchief. Shoved the thing into a space under his desk. Next to the box with the ceremonial sword his father had given him. Brought back from the Kalif’s empire twenty years before. Wrapped in cloth. Finch could always get to it in a pinch. Made him feel perversely safer knowing it was there. In its gleaming scabbard.

“I’d rather get shot than use that gun,” Finch said, too loud. Not sure if he meant it.

Gustat and Blakely, joined at the hip, looked up, glared. Both had a flushed look. Like they’d been drinking.

“Shut up, Finch,” Blakely said.

“Yeah, shut up,” Gustat echoed. Fiercely.

This caused Dapple to bring a case file so close to his eyes it hid his face. Dapple was the worst of them. He’d been an artist once. Landscape painter. Watercolors. Popular with the tourists. No market for that now. No landscapes to speak of that you could spend hours painting without taking a bullet for your troubles. Sure to become a druggie, or a creature of the gray caps in his cringing way. At least Gustat and Blakely, even though they annoyed Finch, still had their wits about them.