She headed for her office, which was in the corner overlooking the lake. En route, she passed by the smaller of their two conference rooms. Sitting in a ragged semicircle with their backs to her were some half a dozen people who she guessed were young, based on their clothing, posture, and body types. Addressing them was Marcus Hobbs, a foundation executive who among other things looked after the summer intern program. Formerly this had been informal and ad hoc to a degree that, as Marcus had pointed out, actually put the foundation at some risk of lawsuits, or at least bad publicity. He’d tidied things up and instituted regular procedures for publicizing it, collecting and evaluating applications, screening applicants, and keeping track of metrics. So, the half-dozen kids sitting in that room were not just a random assortment of nephews, neighbors, and friends of friends, but the survivors of a selection process that had commenced the day after last year’s crop of interns had gone back to school.

Without even checking her calendar, Zula knew that most of today was blocked out for interviews with these candidates. Since the foundation had already made its choices and gone to the expense of bringing these people to Seattle, the interviews were largely symbolic. But that did not mean that they were unimportant.

The third of those interviews—the last thing on her calendar before lunch—turned out to be with her daughter. This was a surprise.

Sophia was wearing a hoodie and jeans, which explained why Zula hadn’t recognized her from behind while walking past the conference room. Sophia had turned on her glasses’ VEIL functionality. Conceivably, Marcus might have recognized her when she had arrived at the Foundation earlier that morning, but Marcus and Sophia had probably never been in the same room together and there was no particular reason why he would have known her.

Zula had reviewed this anonymous candidate’s application more than once over the last several months, and given it a final once-over before she had walked into her office, but it didn’t have a name associated with it. Only a PURDAH. Which wasn’t unusual. Marcus had, in fact, made it almost mandatory. Concealing names, genders, and the like behind a PURDAH was a way to reduce the possibility that candidates would benefit from positive, or suffer from negative, discrimination. So Zula had noted a few points of similarity between this applicant and her daughter, but was nonetheless surprised when Sophia walked into her office, pulled the hood back from her head, took off her glasses, and sat down.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, baby.”

After that, neither said anything for a minute. Sophia looked out the window at the view over the Olympics and gave Zula time to sort it out in her head. Then she asked: “Did you know? Or at least suspect?”

“No,” Zula said. Raising her voice a notch, she added, “I guess I sort of imagined that if you wanted to work here over the summer, you’d just tell me and we would work something out.”