She jerked her head, signaling me away from the guests, over to the rail. “I’ve been pestering Rubicon for permission ever since you asked me. They’ve given me no sense whatsoever that they intend to grant it. If I had to wager, I’d say I won’t hear from Ken about this at all, and when you follow up, he’ll say we hit some kind of snag with patient confidentiality—’It’s out of our hands,’ something like that. But here’s the thing.”

She checked again to make sure Sample was out of earshot.

“I’ve found a subject who’s willing to go on the record with you.”

“That’s great news.”

“There’s only one downside.”

“What?”

“He’s in Mimico. That’s California.” Dr. Kriss sucked the soda straw.

I said the magazine wouldn’t mind sending me.

“It’s up to you,” she said. “That’s the best I can do, for the time being.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Okay,” she said, “then do me a favor? Despite what Ken told you, Rubicon won’t be happy if they know I helped coax a subject to talk. So just be careful. If you don’t have to, maybe don’t mention how you got in touch with him, okay?”

“Sure.”

Maxime passed by, trailing smoke, and we fell silent. He nodded at Dr. Kriss, and after he’d gone a little distance, she rolled her eyes and pretended to gag on a finger.

“Who is he, anyway?” I said.

“Ken invited him. I don’t know any of these people, Whitney. They’re moneymen, not scientists. To them, the solution is just a product. It could be Prozac, Viagra, some new breast implant, it doesn’t matter.”

“It didn’t sound like your report persuaded him.”

“The French are nowhere when you need them,” she said with a playful smile.

“Do you think he’s wrong to want your raw data?”

“It’s not about right or wrong. The data is proprietary—I don’t have a say in who sees it. If it were up to me, you know, science would be completely open, but that’s not the world we live in.”

We stared into the ravine under Wigwam Deck. The crowd was thinning, and Dr. Kriss said she still had a long night ahead of her, hopping from suite to suite at the Antlers.

“The military is very interested in the work we’re doing,” she said, “and Ken is trying to secure its funding. There’s a lot of money headed in that direction right now.”

I repeated what she’d said on the rooftop in Retreat: “War is good for medicine.”

“That’s the hope.”

Once again I felt easy in Dr. Kriss’s company, our arms touching as we leaned on the rail. But I had a job to do. I didn’t know when I’d see her again.