Ellison clicked on a different program, opened the file, and set the in and out points. He plugged in the earbuds and passed them to Moreland, who sat down again and shoved them aggressively into his ears, still smiling horribly. There was no telling what this music would do to the country’s Secretary of Defense, but it didn’t seem likely that the man would emerge with his mind intact. As far as Ellison was concerned, the most remarkable thing about young Dorian wasn’t that he was still alive; it was that he was even partly sane. Ellison’s thick brown hand hung over the keys. Arrogant as Secretary Moreland was, hitting Play was clearly unethical. No one, Ellison thought, deserved that.

“I thought I made myself clear. I’ve had enough of your self-indulgent, crackpot bull—”

Ellison’s finger snapped down, hard.

The room became deeply quiet. The woman in burgundy walked forward and gently spread both palms on the screen, then leaned close so that her cheek rested in the image’s center. Now the mermaid’s fins flowed again and again through her outstretched fingers. Everyone else turned to stare at Secretary Moreland. A sloppy, vacuous grin spread across his face, his jowls swayed, and a thread of drool spilled over his chin. He bobbed slightly in his chair and then let out a kind of shrill, ecstatic whimpering.

An almost subliminal flutter of music leaked from the earbuds. It was so quiet that they all felt it rather than heard it: a soft sonic mist that moistened their fingertips, altered the patterns of their breathing. Ben Ellison felt an urge to do something, but he couldn’t be sure what that something was. Vaguely he thought that the unbearable pressure swelling inside him might be relieved if he licked the walls, or took that young man’s head in his hands and planted bites as soft as kisses all over his cheeks, or dug out his own eyes so that the light could shine straight into his brain . . .

At the twenty-eighth second Secretary Moreland suddenly stood up. The cord for the earphones wasn’t long enough and they popped out of his head and thudded onto the conference table. The music drifted a bit louder then stopped. Ellison felt a whirl of unspeakable promises passing through him: promises of sensual pleasure and power and tenderness. They were all so close, so ready to burst in his mouth like grapes.

“Secretary Moreland?” The gray man’s voice was pitched so high that Ellison didn’t recognize it at first. Ellison thought the man might be trying to sing opera, and he made a confused effort to smile encouragingly. Beauty was universal, immediate, cataclysmic; of course the man should sing if he felt like it.