We seemed to be alone in the house. Conroy said, “Take a seat, please. Can I offer you anything?” She moved toward a small beverage dispenser in a corner of the room. I glanced at the machine, and declined. It was a twenty-thousand-dollar synthesizer model – essentially a scaled-up pharm; it could have served anything from orange juice to a cocktail of neuroactive amines. Its presence on Stateless surprised me – I hadn’t been allowed to bring my own out-of-date pharm here – but not having memorized the schedules to the UN resolution, I wasn’t sure what technology was prohibited universally, and what was banned only from Australian exports.

Conroy sat opposite me, composed, but thoughtful for a moment. Then she said, “Akili Kuwale is a very dear friend of mine, and a wonderful person, but ve’s something of a loose canon.” She smiled disarmingly. “I can’t imagine what impression you have of us, after ve led you on with all that cloak-and-dagger nonsense.” She glanced at my notepad again, meaningfully. “I suppose our insistence on strict privacy doesn’t help matters, either – but there’s nothing sinister about that, I assure you. You must appreciate the power of the media to take a group of people, and their ideas, and distort the representation of both to suit … any number of agendas.” I started to reply – to concede the point, actually – but she cut me off. “I’m not trying to libel your profession, but we’ve seen it happen so many times, to other groups, that you shouldn’t be surprised if we treat it as an inevitable consequence of going public.

“So we’ve made the difficult choice, for the sake of autonomy, to refuse to be represented by outsiders at all. We don’t wish to be portrayed to the world at large: fairly or unfairly, sympathetically or otherwise. And if we have no public image whatsoever, the problem of distortion vanishes. We are who we are.”

I said, “And yet, you’ve asked me here.”

Conroy nodded, regretfully. “Wasting your time, and risking making things even worse. But what choice did we have? Akili stirred your curiosity, and we could hardly expect you to let the matter drop. So … I’m willing to discuss our ideas with you directly – rather than leaving you to track down and piece together a lot of unreliable hearsay from third parties. But it must, all, be off the record.”

I shifted in my seat. “You don’t want me drawing any more attention to you by asking questions of the wrong people – so you’ll answer them yourself, just to shut me up?”

I’d expected this blunt appraisal to be met with wounded denials and a barrage of euphemisms – but Conroy replied calmly, “That’s right.”