She smiled as she grabbed a handful of butter packets. “It’s a small town in north central Italy. My grandparents came from there. They’re gone, of course, but I’ve been back a few times. It’s a lovely place, a bit off the main tourist agenda.”

“Did your grandparents all have photographic memories, like yours?” Bacon and scrambled eggs. Toast. Dev thought fondly of his mother’s roti and dosas. With chutney.

She shook her head. “I can’t remember.”

He returned her grin. A little humor was a good thing. Anything that helped to mute the possibility of a forthcoming alien-generated apocalypse.

The Zimmers did not keep to themselves so much as shut out the rest of the team due to the technical nature of their conversation. Reed was immersed in both his food and his—to Dev anyway—incomprehensible music that thumped through his headphones.

So it was left to him and the genial Pavesi to engage in what passed at the table for ordinary breakfast banter. They spoke of their childhoods, their parents and grandparents. Dev expressed a wish to one day found his own research and development firm, with offices in DC and Bengaluru. Pavesi voiced thoughts of retiring early, perhaps early enough to get married and have a child.

“One only,” she told him as she sipped her coffee. “So I can spoil her rotten.”

“Does it have to be a ‘her’?” Dev asked.

“Yes.” For an instant, just for an instant, he saw something in her expression and a stiffening posture that had not been there before. It was as unexpected as it was unmistakable. “I’ve seen what men have done to this world. Mostly men, anyway. It will be a girl.”

He wanted to go there, to dig a little deeper, but decided against it. Now was not the time. Not today. Maybe tomorrow, he told himself. If there was a tomorrow.

What he wanted to do most of all was call his parents. It was strange, he mused. When he had ample time, when he was under no pressure, there always seemed to be something else to do. Something not necessarily more important, but that always took precedence. When they did talk, his mother would often nag him about not being married while his father would deplore his lack of visits, even though they lived not all that far away from DC in Jacksonville. He would do his best to soothe them, murmuring pleasant familial clichés over the phone, while reassuring them that he would come visit at the first real opportunity, and that he did indeed intend to marry when he could find the right girl, and no, mama, you can’t plan an arranged marriage for me just because it worked out for you and dad.