“She’s a horrible mess, like the rest of them, populating this Vault with frightened or frightening Mems who can’t be trusted and then forgetting about them. And that’s the point, isn’t it?” she scoffed. “To be rid of them even if the world isn’t. Sometimes I wish he’d never begun any of this.”

When I caught her eye, she smiled through her ribbons of tears and held my face in one of her clammy hands. In her sigh was a conclusion, like a mother who has been overwhelmed in front of her child and then calms herself, for their sake. That she had been a mother and couldn’t remember made the affection all the more wrenching.

“But he’ll put it right.” She nodded as though I’d insisted. “He won’t let her back inside without a fight.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Professor is seeking an injunction on the basis of Dolores’s impaired mental state, to keep her from extracting any more memories,” Harvey explained. He stood beside my bed, his hands behind his back, his posture more resembling a guard than a Banker.

Camille gave an exasperated exhale and chuckled, taking my hand again. “Courtrooms and injunctions and attorneys. It’ll be the death of him. He’s in the courthouse as much as he’s on campus these days.”

“Why is he there so often?” I asked, unsure whether to be pleased with such efforts on my behalf or whether to be ashamed of what I was costing him.

“Oh, if it isn’t what’s to be done with those awful, angry Mems, it’s the Dowager Keepsakes.” She waved her hand above her head as though dispersing a cloud of Ettie’s smoke, and I wished Harvey had been anywhere but close enough to hear. The walls of my dormitory would have laughed at me for thinking all the Professor’s fight was for my benefit. “It’s always something, isn’t it?”

Before I could ask anything more, Harvey stepped closer and my voice evaporated.

“For now, Walter Extract No. 17 is confined to his dormitory,” he said. “You won’t see him again.”

“Oh, Dolores, I’m so glad you’re all right.” Camille laid her head against my chest, covering my monogram, and I pressed my cheek into her soft hair.

“I am, I promise. And now you’ve worn yourself out. Please go home and rest.”

“I couldn’t.”

“I’m all right now,” I insisted. I could not consider everything I’d heard and maintain the appropriate levity to keep Camille’s worries at bay, nor would Harvey speak freely in her presence. “We’ll visit again.”