Only a few hours later, she came instantly awake, realizing she needed to reexamine her seminal article—the one she had yet to write, which she had found in the third chamber library. With some apprehension—the data service, in the four times she had resorted to it, had not always provided what she needed—she got out of the oval bed and donned her lavender robe, tying the belt as she walked through the dimly lit living room.

"Data, City Memory," she said. An armillary sphere appeared before her, its bands glowing red and gold. Two circlets, one above the other and twice the diameter, followed, a replacement for the antiquated question mark.

"Access to article by Patricia Luisa Vasquez. . . Oh, Lord, I've forgotten the exact title and date. Do you need them?"

Complicated picts flashed until she deactivated them and requested spoken language only. "Do you wish to see a complete list of the short works of Patricia Luisa Vasquez?" the data service voice asked.

"Yes," she said, again touched by the prickling spookiness of what she was doing.

Roman alphabet listings appeared before her as if on an extensive sheet of white paper. About midway through the list appeared, Theory of n-Spatial Geodesics as Applied to Newtonian Physics with a Special Discourse on p-Simplon World Lines.

"That's it," she said. "Display."

She reread the paper carefully and drummed the fingers of her free hand on the edge of the seat. "It's brilliant, she said grimly, "and it's wrong." It might have been an influential paper, but it was obvious to her now that it was an early and primitive work. "Please display the list again."

The service obliged and she picked out a later piece and requested that it be displayed.

The old and familiar symbol of the spiked ball appeared. "Interdicted," the voice said.

She chose another, feeling her anger rise. "Interdicted."

And another, toward the end of the list, written when she was—would be—about sixty-eight. "Interdicted."

"Why are my papers interdicted?" she asked angrily.

The spiked ball was the only reply.

"Why is this service being censored?" She suddenly experienced the neck-itching realization she was no longer alone in the room. "Olmy? Lights up." The room brightened. No answer.

She stood up and looked around slowly, her whole back tensing.

Then she saw the intruder, hovering near the ceiling, a gray baseball-sized roundness with a face in the middle. For a moment, she did nothing but return the face's scrutiny. It seemed masculine, with small dark Asiatic eyes and a pug nose. Its expression was hardly menacing; if anything, it was intensely curious.

She backed up against the wall. The face did not move, but its eyes followed her closely.

"Who are you?" she asked. Symbols appeared around the room, incomprehensible to her. "I don't pict," she said. "Please, what are you doing here?"