“My doctor, who was an old friend, gave me pills for grief and advised me to continue business as usual. That was when you were in my economic theory seminar. Every time you opened your mouth, you reminded me of her. It became very hard to go to class.”

“I’m sorry. You could have—”

“Maybe you knew her? She called herself Margaret Haskel.”

“Yes. We had a swimming class together the year before she … I didn’t know she was your daughter.”

“She didn’t broadcast it.” In fact, we hardly ever spoke. We did look similar in face and freckles and red hair, but nobody in a nude swimming class would have mistaken us for one another. She had a perfect voluptuous figure. I could have held a frankfurter in front of me and passed for a boy. We didn’t seem to have much in common.

I remembered the strange feeling when I saw her name on the list of casualties. It wasn’t sadness; I hadn’t known her that well. But I’d never known anyone before who had died. It made me feel oddly important.

“So yes, I’ve been following your career since then. For twelve years your successes have been a constant small irritant. I always have to think of Margaret and what she might have done. Not rational.” He put his hand on mine, unexpectedly, cold. “That’s how they make pearls, though.” He squeezed. “Put an irritant into an ugly old bivalve.”

He started pacing. “Number two. You have accumulated far too much influence and visibility for a woman your age. Not just the demographic selection work you did on Start-up, though that certainly made you ubiquitous. That book you wrote made you a kind of celebrity in New New, and celebrity has its negative side.”

“I wasn’t exactly lusting for fame. I wanted the book to be published anonymously.”

“I know. A pretty gesture, but pointless. Anybody who didn’t know who you were by then would have to have been asleep all the years following the war.” The book, Three Earths, was about my rather eventful school “year” on Earth, cut short by the war, and the two disaster-ridden return missions I participated in. It was just my diary with some of the stupidities and libels edited out.

“I wouldn’t even go on the Hammond show to publicize it.”

“I know that, too. Annoying, isn’t it?”

“Oh no; it’s flattering. An actual O’Hara-ologist.”

“Only Sandra and your husbands and wife know as much about you.” He left out my cybernetic sister. Prime knows a lot of things I would never tell a flesh human. “Someone who didn’t have access to your psychological profile might think that you were unfit to be a leader, because of your obvious ambitious nature.”