“More power to them.” Sandra’s sympathies were entirely with the demonstrators. The environmentalists wanted to ban the import of fossil fuels from beyond the Arch of the Hypotheticals, in an attempt to keep global warming under five degrees Celsius. Sufficient unto the planet are the carbon resources thereof, they believed, and to Sandra it was ridiculously obvious that they were right. As far as she could tell, the exploitation of the vast oil reserves under the Equatorian desert was a disaster in progress, enabling a mad prosperity purchased at the price of redoubled CO2 emissions. The generation that had grown up in the wake of the Spin wanted cheap gas and boom times and no cavilling voices at the table, and the whole world was (or would be) paying the piper.

Bose said, “I’m not sure having an activist crushed by a freight train would be absolutely helpful. You got the document I sent?”

“Yes,” she said, wondering how to proceed.

“You read it?”

“Yes. Officer Bose—”

“You can just call me Bose. My friends do.”

“Okay, but look, I still don’t know what you want from me. Do you honestly believe Orrin Mather wrote the text you sent me?”

“I know, it hardly seems plausible. Even Orrin is a reluctant to take credit for it.”

“I asked him about that. He told me he wrote it down, but he wasn’t sure he actually wrote it. As if somebody dictated it to him. Which I guess would explain a few things. Anyway, what do you want from me exactly? Literary criticism? Because I’m not much of a science fiction fan.”

“There’s more to the document than what you’ve seen. I’m hoping I can send you another batch of pages today and maybe we can get together face-to-face, like say lunch tomorrow, to talk about the details.”

Was she willing to take another step into this strangeness? Oddly, she discovered she was. Put it down to curiosity. And maybe compassion for the bashful child-man she had discovered in Orrin Mather. And the fact that she had found Bose to be reasonably pleasant company. She told him he could send along more pages but she felt compelled to add, “There’s a complication you ought to know about. I’m not Orrin’s case physician anymore. My boss turned him over to a trainee.”

Now it was Bose’s turn to pause. Sandra tried to make out the chanting in the background. Something-something our children’s children. “Well, damn,” Bose said.

“And I doubt my boss would be willing to take you into his confidence, no offense. He’s—”

“You’re talking about Congreve? People at HPD say he’s a bureaucratic prick.”

“No comment.”

“Okay … but you still have access to Orrin?”

“I can talk to him, if that’s what you mean. What I don’t have is any kind of decision-making authority.”