Fift took the screen, spread it open. In one body, Shria sat down next to zir, watching; in the other, ve walked over to the tool rack and started pulling down tools, one by one, and rehanging them in a different order. “Hurry up, okay?” ve said.

Fift poked at a couple of zir agents, the specialized ones for evaluating banking-history, and they sluggishly stumbled out of privacy-sleep. There was nothing particularly complicated here. A few cases with disgruntled customers needed zir resolution, though nothing came close to requiring formal adjudication. A staff member who’d been depressed had ultimately unraveled completely, requiring two months’ worth of revisions to the emotional valences of certain transactions (mostly in Politigus’s favor). In a couple of places, Fift could drop exotic algorithms in for standard ones, benefiting the shop. It was easy work: Mother Pip had heuristics, rules, and practices for all these cases, and had required Fift to unaugmentedly memorize them zirself. Fift had chafed at that, but it helped now, when zir agents kept drowsing off.

It was good that the work was easy, because ze couldn’t help being aware of Shria next to zir on the couch, looking at zir, then away, vir long, muscled body loose and tense at the same time.

“Done yet?” Shria said.

Fift swallowed. “I’m done.” Ze put the screen aside and turned to Shria. Fift took a deep breath. “Look, you . . . went to a lot of trouble to arrange this, right? You wanted to tell me something. You . . . you’ve got a secret.”

In the body next to Fift, vir hands entwined, vir legs swinging back and forth, Shria shrugged. In the standing body, a tool in each hand, ve said. “Well . . . yes. Sure. More than one! Don’t you have any secrets, Fift?”

Fift flushed. “Of course.”

“Everybody does!” Shria said. “A trillion people walking around on the feed, acting their parts for the whole world to watch . . . and every one of them is stuffed full of secrets! Did you ever think about that?”

“No,” Fift said, “not really.”

“Well, I do!” Ve hung up the pair of tools and started pacing across the floor.

“So now,” Fift said, zir heart beating, “we get to tell those secrets?”

In the drowsy warmth of the bed, Fift was safe, nestled in blankets, restless, alone, lonely. In the dappled green light of the garden, blades cut into the green flesh of the vines: slow and thorough work, almost dreamlike. Here, though, in the lab, everything was new and gleaming, and Fift was acutely awake.

Shria cracked a grin. “If you want to! We’ll start small and work up. I mean, I won’t grill you about the Long Conversation right away . . .”

Fift’s gut tightened. “You’d . . . you’d want to know about . . . I mean . . .”