We had decided to travel separately to the aircraft docks. Allison had worked out a route that avoided heavily populated neighborhoods, and she left the suite before corridor illumination had ramped up to full daylight. The plan was that I would wait a few minutes before I followed, keeping some physical distance between us and lulling any suspicions the Coryphaeus might have begun to harbor.

But soon after Allison left there was an alert from the door. I opened it to find Oscar outside, smiling nervously. He said, “May I come in?” And I had to say yes.

Back on Earth—Earth the way it had been when I was growing up—I had heard about species of fish that lit up under the sea: bioluminescence, it was called. There was something like that in the way I saw Oscar’s face through my Network-enhanced perception: a soft glow of euphoria, tempered by flashes of fatigue and suppressed doubt and, under all that, an indigo pulse of suspicion, regular as a heartbeat.

I was, of course, just as transparent to him. It was mood-reading, not mind-reading, but he could still catch me in a lie. I hoped any emotional turmoil I couldn’t hide would look like a natural reaction to the crisis.

Oscar said, “Is Treya here?”

“No. I don’t know when she’ll be back.”

“I’m sorry. I want to issue an invitation—to both of you. Please, come to my home, Mr. Findley. Come and bring Treya. My family is there.” He was radiating a bright but shallow sincerity, the way a woodstove radiates heat. “Five hundred years of history is reaching a climax. You shouldn’t be alone when it happens.”

“Thank you, Oscar, but no.”

He gave me a penetrating stare. “It’s too bad you didn’t make the decision to join the Network sooner. You’re very close, but I think you still fail to understand how lucky you are, how lucky we all are, to be alive at this moment of history.”

“I do understand,” I said. “And I appreciate the offer. But I’d rather face it alone.”

That was a lie. Worse, it was a mistake. He knew it was a lie. His suspicion flared. He said, “May I talk to you, just for a little while?”

So I had to ask him to come in, to sit down. While he gathered his thoughts I reminded myself that I couldn’t fool him (or the Coryphaeus) with an outright falsehood—it had been stupid to try. The best I could do was to tell the truth, selectively.