—Do you ever get out much to… well, up to the Outer Level?

(A long pause in which the older operative stares quite openly, as several changes flow across her features—amusement, pity, concern— until the younger one speaks again.) I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be—

—(Abruptly) I’m supposed to tell you, eventually, as part of the briefing.

—Tell me what?

—Just as I was told once. We hand it on, one generation to the next. (There is no piece of business plausible enough for her to find refuge in. We sense that this has not yet become routine for her. Out of decency now, she tries to speak quietly, if not gently.) We all go up to the Outer Level, young man. Some immediately, others not for a while. But sooner or later everyone out here has to go Epidermal. No exceptions.

—Has to—

—I’m sorry.

—But isn’t it… I thought it was only a—well, a level. A place you’d visit. Isn’t it…?

—Outlandish scenery, oh yes so did I—unusual formations, a peep into the Outer Radiance. But it’s all of us, you see. Millions of us, changed to interface, to horn, and no feeling, and silence.

—Oh, God. (A pause in which he tries to take it in—then, in panic, pushes it back:) No—how can you say that—you can’t feel the memory? the tug… we’re in exile, we do have a home! (Silence from the other.) Back there! Not up at the interface. Back in the CNS!

—(Quietly) It’s been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home—only the millions of last moments… no more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments.

She crosses the complex room dense with its supple hides, lemon-rubbed teak, rising snarls of incense, bright optical hardware, faded Central Asian rugs in gold and scarlet, hanging open-ribbed wrought-ironwork, a long, long downstage cross, eating an orange, section by acid section, as she goes, the faille gown flowing beautifully, its elaborate sleeves falling from very broadened shoulders till tightly gathered into long button-strung cuffs all in some nameless earth tone—a hedge-green, a clay-brown, a touch of oxidation, a breath of the autumnal—the light from the street lamps comes in through philodendron stalks and fingered leaves arrested in a grasp at the last straining away of sunset, falls a tranquil yellow across the cut-steel buckles at her insteps and streaks on along the flanks and down the tall heels of her patent shoes, so polished as to seem of no color at all past such mild citrus light where it touches them, and they refuse it, as if it were a masochist’s kiss. Behind her steps the carpet relaxes ceilingward, sole and heel-shapes disappearing visibly slow out of the wool pile. A single rocket explosion comes thudding across the city, from far east of here, east by southeast. The light along her shoes flows and checks like afternoon traffic. She pauses, reminded of something: the military frock trembling, silk filling-yarns shivering by crowded thousands as the chilly light slides over and off and touching again their unprotected backs. The smells of burning musk and sandalwood, of leather and spilled whisky, thicken in the room.