He saw my expression. “Thought I’d shake up the troops,” he said. “I saw your name on the list … what, that storage allocation thing with Smith?”

“That’s right.” I was a little irked; I hadn’t discussed it with him because I did want to be punctilious about going through channels, and not just to make Purcell happy. I didn’t want to present myself to I.C.E. as “the supervisor’s wife,” expecting special consideration.

“Probably wasting your time. Sandor has a couple of hundred people in line ahead of you.”

At the mention of his name, Sandor Seven looked up sharply; small bald black man with a long face and no eyebrows. “You’re the Cabinet woman?”

“Marianne O’Hara.”

He looked at John. “You know her?”

“All too well. You might as well give in.” Thanks a lot, John.

“Come to my desk.” I followed him across the room to a drafting table surmounted by a display screen two meters square. “I haven’t looked at the details of your proposition. I wanted to first be sure that we understand each other. That you understand exactly what you are asking.”

“Fair enough.”

He slid a keyboard out from under the table and tapped a few keys. A complex exploded diagram of ’Home’s interior appeared on the screen. A list unrolled in the upper left-hand corner, titled “Location Referents,” giving numbers from (1.) Agriculture to (47.) Workshops: General. He highlighted (5.) Education and (6.) Entertainment with blue and green; patches of those colors appeared all over the ship.

“These are the spaces that you and Mr. Smith control. So to speak.”

“That’s interesting. You can see how spread out they are.”

“Yes. Not for no reason, of course. Your proposal had to do with storage space.”

“Office space, too. Smith and I are practically at opposite ends of the ship. Yet Education and Entertainment share many of the same supplies. Our people are always running back and forth unnecessarily.”

“Perhaps not unnecessarily.”

“I’d be willing to give up my place in Uchūden and move back here with Tom, with Smith.”

“Very nice of you.” He leaned back in his chair and swiveled around, looking at me over steepled fingers. His face screwed up into a wrinkled prunish mask of concentration. He really could have used eyebrows. “Dr. O’Hara, do you know what moment of inertia is?”

“No. Never heard of it.”

“It has to do with the way things spin. Like an ice skater, you know? She goes around with her arms out, spinning at a certain rate.” He held his arms out and pulled them in slowly. “Then she brings them in and spins much faster.”

“Conservation of angular momentum,” I said, not completely helpless.