"Simplicity?" Ram Kikura asked.

"Simplicity, please," he affirmed. She dimmed the lights on everything but themselves and erased the spheres from the decor.

They had first met when he had inquired into the licensing process for creating a child. He had been interested mostly in a personality meld between himself and someone unspecified. This had been thirty years ago, when Ram Kikura was just beginning her practice. She had advised him on the procedures. Permission was easy enough to obtain for a corporeal homorph of his standing. But he had not carried it to the point of making a formal request. She had gathered that Olmy was more interested in the theory than the practice.

One thing had led to another. She had pursued him—with some elegance and no small persistence—and he had acquiesced, allowing himself to be seduced in a hidden corner of Central City's forested, zero-g Wald.

Olmy's work often took him far afield for years at a time, and what they had together, to most observers, would have seemed transitory, an on-and-off thing. Indeed, she had had relationships since, none permanent, even though it was once again the fashion to have relationships for ten years or longer.

Whenever Olmy had returned, she had somehow managed to be free of commitments. They never pressured each other. What existed between them was a relaxed, but by no means trivial sensation of comfort and a high level of mutual interest. Each genuinely enjoyed hearing about the other's work and wondering where future tasks would take them. They were, after all, corporeal and usefully employed; theirs was a position of considerable privilege. Of the ninety million citizens in the Axis City, corporeal or in City Memory, only fifteen million had important work to do, and of those, only three million worked more than a tenth of their living hours.

"You seem to enjoy the task already," Olmy said.

"It's my perverse nature. This is by far the oddest thing I've found you associated with. . . . It's positively momentous."

"It could be of staggering importance," he said out loud, his tone mock-sepulchral.

"No more picting?"

"No, let's think and talk this through slowly."

"Fine," she said. "You wish me to be her advocate. How much of an advocate do you think she'll need?"

"You can imagine," Olmy said. "She's a complete innocent. She'll need complete social and psychological adjusting. She'll need protection. When her status is revealed—which is inevitable, I think, whatever the President and Presiding Minister wish—there will be a sensation."

"You're putting it mildly," she said. She ordered wine brought to them, and three static-controlled liquid spheres drifted into their light. She handed Olmy a straw and they sipped. "You've seen Earth yourself?"

He nodded. "I went down the bore hole with the Frant on my second day in the Thistledown. I didn't think remotes would convince me quite as much as seeing with my own eyes."