The look on the face of Corvallis Kawasaki during the moment that it took for the bits to reach him, for him to react to Sophia’s being in the room, and for new bits to come back and refresh the screen, was very much like what she imagined John and Dodge had looked like as they shone their flashlights around their father’s bomb shelter. Partly it was a childish unguardedness that she’d only seen on his face at Dodge’s funeral and at his and Maeve’s wedding at the moment she had come up the aisle. But added to that was fascination. She could tell—something ineffable about the postures and expressions of Solly, Enoch, and C-plus told her—that they had been on the call for a while. That they had scheduled it for well before the start time that they had divulged to her. And that much she was able to confirm later simply by looking at Solly’s calendar, which she and other students had access to. They’d been on for a whole hour before Sophia had been told to show up. And they’d been talking about stuff that had put C-plus into a very unusual frame of mind indeed, and they’d been talking about it in Latin.

At another time in her life she would not have been able to get it out of her mind. She’d have gone into Nancy Drew mode. As it was, she had a senior project to finish and a presentation to make. So she reluctantly filed it away as a matter she would have to ask C-plus about the next time they were together.

And so a week later Sophia presented, addressing Solly and two other faculty members. This time, C-plus and Enoch were absent. For the purpose of this presentation was to get the university to sign off, and those two didn’t work for the university.