“Gehenna was totally different. I mean, there were bodies everywhere you looked, so after a while they were just part of the scenery. It was more dangerous, I guess, with all the loonies and looters. But the corpses, they were like a dream landscape, a nightmare. They weren’t individuals; you didn’t see yourself becoming one of them.” They nodded, as if they hadn’t heard all this before. Turning points in life bring out the same old stories. Even among relativity pioneers.

This was the wrong place. It was becoming a fashionable hour for the rich and famous; the Four Seasons was filling up and getting loud with background chatter, people wanting to be noticed. We three, arguably the most-talked-about people here, definitely didn’t want to be noticed.

Our identities hadn’t been revealed, and wouldn’t be, as long as friends and relatives cooperated, until we were safely in orbit.

We took the Fifth Avenue and SoHo slidewalks back, less for the time saved than from a desire to be part of a crowd. We dawdled at the entrance and transfer point so my bodyguard could catch up. When we got to the condo door, I gave him the good-bye signal, stroking an eyebrow twice.

“Same old signal,” Dustin said as he palmed the night lock.

“Yeah. I’d change it if I thought someone might actually be after me. If somebody really wanted my ass, they’d have it by now.”

“So you’re wearing flared trousers for the look,” Elza said.

“Force of habit.” Once we were in the elevator, I pulled the ankle holster off.

“A .289,” she said. “Not with legal rounds, I hope.”

“Neuros.” I’d never fired one at a person, but they were impressive on a dummy. Smart round that finds an eye and blows a small shaped charge across the frontal lobes.

“Jesus,” Dustin said. “You got them where?”

I laughed, thumbing the door open. “Jesus had nothing to do with it.”

“Boys and toys.” Elza went by me, flopped down on the couch, and slipped her shoes off. “So I get to take an extra seven kilos of clothes?”

“Only sexy ones,” Dustin said.

“I don’t have seven kilos of the kind you like. That’d be about a hundred outfits.”

I sat in the easy chair and picked up the balalaika and plucked an arpeggio.

“Say you’re not taking the banjo?” Dustin said, with hope in his voice.

“No. I’ll be in my sixties when we get back. Take it up seriously then, as a retirement project.”

Elza laughed. “You’ll retire about a year after you’re dead.”

I had a sudden impulse to throw the instrument against the wall, just to do something unpredictable. Instead, I set it gently against the bookcase. “I don’t know. In a way, this is early retirement. Cleaned out my desk to embark on a new life of travel and adventure.”

“Or stay in one room for thirteen years, trying not to go mad,” Dustin said.

“There is that. I wonder whether they’ve packed enough straitjackets.”