“Hey, it’s not all bad.” Sniper’s smile sagged like a stroke victim’s. “Proves what a good job I’m doing seducing the fans. Better than polling data.”

Ockham had no smiles. “You have forty-seven minutes, Cato. Check everything: the box, skin, blood…”

“I know my job.” From a braver man the words might have sounded sharp.

“Forty-seven minutes,” Ockham repeated.

Sniper’s eyes narrowed. “¿What’s the rush?”

“I’ve called a house vote. We need to finish before Japan hits rush hour.”

“¿A vote on what?”

“The possibility of disobeying orders.”

I shall spare you the details of Cato’s findings, or lack thereof; you know the skills of Sniper’s captors. Instead we follow Ockham, who spends those forty-seven minutes pacing the bash’house’s Spartan trophy hall as the rest of the bash’ assembles. I call it Spartan, not just because their true vocation is too secret to add awards and trophies to their walls, but because they find no shame in its bare simplicity: what would a true Spartan care for trophies? As the fallen of Thermopylae care only that Sparta knows they died obedient, so, if Ockham had his way, his hall would stand bare but for one inscription: “We are O.S.”

“A quorum of bash’members having been reached,” Ockham began, “at 23:14 UT, 18:14 local time, I hereby commence this meeting of O.S.”

Picture them convened around Mukta, her fresh-waxed hull reflecting the evening ocean, which is in turn reflected by the glass-ringed mountainside of Cielo de Pájaros. Five bash’mates sit on the ring of sofas: Lesley first, sketching invisible doodles across Sniper with her fingertips as it shelters in her lap. The hermaphrodite has rubber exercise balls in its hands, exertion freeing its muscles fiber by fiber, while its face tries to show nothing. Thisbe Saneer sits next to Sniper, her black hair loose, her landscape boots clicking as she hides her thoughts behind her tea. One set-set has crawled onto the couch for the occasion, Sidney or Eureka, though the two set-sets are hard to tell apart, faces and hair erased by so much apparatus; the other stays on duty in another room, watching the cars prepare for dinnertime to dawn on the Pacific rim. Last, fidgety by the window, sits one of the Typer twins, just one, for so fierce is the enmity between the pair that when one speaks up the second is not only obliged to contradict but to condemn all who do not follow suit, so, tired of war within the house, Ockham decreed that only one twin may attend such meetings. And Cato? Where is our poor Mad Science Teacher? He attends too, reader, by the lab door, huddled in the whiteness of his coat like a rabbit in its winter fluff. But, from where you sit, you cannot see him, for, gazing out through Mukta’s mirrored windshield, you can see the couches and ocean window, but not the side doors, nor Ockham, who stalks around the car, impatient as a wolf. Yes, reader, you are here too, inside Mukta, or rather you watch through the eyes of someone hidden within, our witness for this secret conference, spying from inside the ancient car.