Desjardins had learned to read the numbers, after a fashion. Everything looked in order. Of course, it was nice to have independent confirmation: the door in front of him was opening, and none of the others were slamming shut.

He stepped into the boardroom.

Three people were arrayed at the far end of the conference table. Lertzman sat in his usual seat at the head; to his left was a short blond woman Desjardins hadn't seen before. Which meant nothing, of course—he didn't know most of the people in admin.

To the blonde's left, another woman. Desjardins didn't know her either. She looked back at him through eyes that literally glittered —tactical contacts. She was only partly in the room. The rest of her was watching whatever overlays those lenses served up. At the edges of her mouth and around her mercurial eyes, faint lines and a slight droop to the right eyelid; otherwise the face was a pale and featureless sketch, a CaucAsian wash. Her dark hair grayed at the temples, a discoloration that seemed to spread infinitesimally as he watched.

The corpse from N'AmPac. Had to be.

Lertzman rose expectantly. The blonde started to follow his lead; halfway out of her chair she glanced at N'AmPac. N'AmPac did not stand. The blonde hesitated, wavered, sat back down. Lertzman cleared his throat and followed suit, waving Desjardins to a seat opposite the two women.

"This is Patricia Rowan," Lertzman said. When, after a few moments, it became obvious that nobody was going to introduce the blonde, Desjardins said, "Sorry to keep you waiting."

"On the contrary," Rowan said softly; she sounded tired. "I'm sorry to drag you back here on your down time. Unfortunately, I'm only in town for a few hours." She tapped commands into a control pad on the table in front of her. Tiny lights scrolled across her eyes. "So. The famous Achilles Desjardins. Savior of the Med."

"I just did the stats," he said. "And they only—postponed the inevitable for a few months."

"Don't sell yourself short," the corpse said. "Mean event resolution thirty-six point eight minutes. That's excellent."

Desjardins acknowledged with a nod.

"The metabase," Rowan continued. "Plagues. Brushfires. Traffic flow. And even setting the Mediterranean aside for the moment, I'm told your projections helped a lot in keeping the Gulf Stream going. A few people have you beat in Maelstrom, certainly, but you've got the edge in biocontainment, economics, industrial ecology—"

Desjardins smiled to himself. Typical old-school: she actually thought she was ticking off a list of different subjects.

"At any rate," the corpse continued, "You seem to be the best local candidate for what we have in mind. We're taking you off your normal rotation and putting you onto a special project, with Dr. Lertzman's approval of course."

"I think we could probably spare him," Lertzman said, embracing the pretense that his opinion mattered. "In fact, after today I imagine Achilles would probably want to leave Maelstrom behind for a while."