“I wasn’t able to get a straight response out of you before. Will you tell me that you’ll keep your distance from her? Contrive to stay out of her way, much as she’s doing the same?”

The words hurt.

Amy nodded. “Yes. But if she calls, I’ll go to her. And I reserve the right to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye? Amy—”

“Listen. Listen! I’m not going to kill myself. You can have the mental fitness people check. But I might leave. Go to another Earth. I’ll see if they can find a replacement to check Riley’s work before I go, I won’t do it suddenly. But I’ve been thinking it might be better if I go. Nobody here seems to believe in me, but there are places where they could use my help. It’ll be far from Victoria.”

“That would be an admirable direction to go.”

Amy’s expression twisted a bit as she shook her head. She fixed her hair some, then turned to go. Admirable directions and all. She could have spat, she was so pissed. She’d wanted—

She stopped, and she turned around. The woman was walking toward the elevators.

“Jessica,” Amy said.

Jessica turned.

A pretty good distance separated them. Her voice barely carried all of the way.

“Do you know why I wanted to convince you as badly as I did, that I’m a good person?”

Jessica, post-flinch, didn’t rebut that last part. “I have only inklings. My connection to Victoria, I imagine.”

“You’re me, Jessica.”

“I’m sorry?” Jessica approached a few feet.

“Maybe it’s crass to say this—” ‘Crass’ would be a Marquis-ism, as the finger tap had been a Carol-ism. “—but when I shook your hand, I got a sense of you. I know how tired you are. The hours you’re putting in. I know you haven’t had a sexual partner in recent memory—”

Jessica stiffened, “That’s a line crossed, Amy. An uncomfortable and inappropriate one.”

“I know the tension in your shoulders. I know how your eyes are so fatigued you probably can’t read the print above the elevators. I know that you have a sense of awareness of yourself, the hum of your own body, the nimbus of feelings you’re not aware of… I tend to think of it as the soul, even though it isn’t. Yours is weary.”

“I consider this a violation,” Jessica said.