“I assured the Bankers it was nearly hopeless,” the Professor explained. “But they were intrigued by the unusual nature of the Mems and couldn’t be dissuaded.”

“You see, you’re not the only one who laughs in the face of reason.”

“I’ll admit,” he said. “It’s a relief to have company in that. And more than a relief to have my concerns settled.”

He must have meant that his suit against Dolores had been resolved, even if neither it nor the matter of what to do with Mems like Walter No. 17 had gone the Professor’s way. He said he wouldn’t be in court again, that the proceedings had stopped for good and there was nothing more to do. Perhaps that warranted relief, no matter the outcome. An equally disappointing judgment had quickly followed with regard to the Dowager Keepsakes. Though the Bankers had hoped to continue studying the three together, investigating whether their trio would continue to defy Mem expectancy because of their proximity to one another and in extraction, the court had not ruled in their favor. The Keepsakes were property, individual inheritances to the dowager’s three children, each of whom could do with their Mem as they pleased.

“It seems no one outside the Vault is prepared to call into question what a Mem can be. There is no judge in this city prepared to set a precedent by distinguishing one Mem from another, as I’d hoped they would have done with you.”

“You mean with Walter’s Mem.”

“No,” he said. “It isn’t something I could have spoken of until now. Even the night I asked you, my hope was too fragile to say aloud why I wanted you to extract a Mem of your own.”

I wanted to ask what had changed between that night and now; his spirits seemed unreasonably high for all the refusals he had faced.

“But you were right, after all. Or anyway, it wouldn’t have been as simple as I imagined to separate you from this place and from the others, in the eyes of the law.”

“We cannot be real people while we have a Source,” I told him gently, wishing I’d put the words in that order sooner and had told the same to Harvey. To my confusion, he’d been away all day, another Banker taking over his rounds, and by the time he returned, it would likely be too late. “And there is no escaping that Mems belong to their Sources and no one else.”