“It’s an old Russian saying, nothing to worry about.” He decided to put a brave face on the situation. It might be his last few minutes on the planet, but he was determined to go out with his middle finger firmly extended in salute. “We’re not exactly set up for visitors here, but you can have my chair.”

“Your colleague, Doctor Ekanobi, is not here?”

“No. She went—I sent her—home. She was working all night and I thought it best.”

“I will sit at her desk, if you have no objections.” Oshicora moved the wheeled chair aside and sat on the very front of it. His attention was drawn, like Chain’s before him, to the handwritten equations. He lifted the top sheet up and examined it carefully. “It seems strange, anachronistic even,” he said, “that in this modern world there is still a place for pen, ink and paper.”

“Computers can only do so much,” said Petrovitch. “They can still only do what we tell them to do.”

“So very true,” mused Oshicora. He put the piece of paper down on the pile, exactly where he’d found it. “Your work progresses well?”

Petrovitch looked down at his own desk, at the lines of script that had fallen from his nib. “This isn’t my work. I’m just helping out.”

“You are a very talented man,” said Oshicora. “Which is rare enough. You are also compassionate. The two qualities combine to make you an attractive prospect to a certain young woman of our mutual acquaintance.”

It wasn’t about tipping Sorenson off. It was about Sonja. Petrovitch’s sense of relief was like being picked up by an ocean wave: cold, clear, irresistible. He even laughed.

“I have no feelings one way or another toward your daughter, Oshicora-san, romantic or otherwise.”

“She kissed you,” he said.

“She caught me off-guard. I didn’t know she was going to do that until she did it.”

“She is impulsive. Naïve and impulsive. I do my best to protect her without damaging her further.” Oshicora looked pensive, before restoring his mask of equanimity. “May I explain?”

“Only if you don’t have to kill me later. Otherwise, I’d rather not know.”

“I do not wish you dead, Petrovitch-san. Many years ago, I met an English teacher in Tokyo. English, in both senses: she was English, back when there was an England to come from, and she taught English. She was charming, exotic, very different from the Japanese girls I knew. We became close. We married. We did all the things that married people do.”

“I get the picture,” said Petrovitch, looking away embarrassed.