“Of course, I’m not stupid,” Alexandria said irritably. “Perhaps it takes a few days to settle in. To have an effect,” he said with false lightness.
“Maybe.”
“You may feel better after you’ve had a bite. What about the birani?”
“Not in the mood for that.”
“Ah. Their curries are always sound. Why don’t we share one, medium hot?”
“Okay.” She sat back in her chair and rolled her head lazily from side to side. “I need to unwind. Order me a beer, would you? Lacanta.”
In the layered air, heavy with incense, she seemed to hover at a dreamy distance. Two days had passed since he’d spotted the Snark and he hadn’t told her yet. He decided this was the right moment; it would distract her from the ache in her joints.
He caught a waiter’s eye and placed their order. They were cloistered near the back of the restaurant, sheltered by a clicking curtain of glass beads, unlikely to be overheard. He spoke softly, scarcely above the buzz of casual conversation provided by the other diners.
She was excited by the news and peppered him with questions. The past two days had revealed nothing new, but he described in detail the work he’d done in organizing the systematic search for further traces of the Snark. He was partway through an involved explanation when he noticed that her interest had waned. She toyed with her food, sipped some amber beer. She glanced at diners as they entered and left.
He paused and dug away at the mountain of curry before him, added condiments, experimented with two chutneys. After a polite silence she changed the subject. “I, I’ve been thinking about something Shirley said, Nigel.”
“What’s that?”
“Dr. Hufman recommended rest as well as these pills. Shirley thinks the best rest is absence from the day-today.” She gazed at him pensively.
“A vacation, you mean?”
“Yes, and short trips here and there. Outings.”
“This Snark thing is going to snarl up my time pretty—”
“I know that. I wanted to get in my bid first.”
He smiled affecionately. “Of course. No reason we can’t nip down to Baja, take in a few things.”
“I have a lot of travel credit built up. We can fly anywhere in the world on American.”
“I’m surprised you want to give up a great deal of time, with these negotiations going on.”
“They can spare me now and again.”
As she said it the expression altered around her brown eyes, her mouth turned subtly downward and he saw suddenly into her, into a bleak and anxious center.
It was late when they left the restaurant. Some of the more stylish stores were still open. Two police in riot jackets checked their faxcodes and then passed down the street. The two women stopped most of the people they met, taking them into the orange pools beneath the well-spaced street lamps and demanding identification. One woman stood at a safe distance with stun-club drawn while the other dialed through to Central, checking the ferrite verimatrix in the faxcodes. Nigel was not looking when, a short distance away, a woman suddenly bolted away from the police and dashed into a department store. The man with her tried to run, too, but a policewoman forced him to the ground. The other policewoman drew a pistol and ran into the store. The man yelled something, protesting. The woman rapped him with her stunclub and his face whitened. He slumped forward. Muffled shots came from inside the department store.
Their bus arrived. Nigel climbed on.
Alexandria stood still, hand raised halfway to her face. The man was trying to get to his knees. He rasped out a few words. Her lips curled back in distaste and she started to say something. Nigel called her name. She hesitated. “Alexandria!”
He reached down toward her. She climbed the steps numbly, legs stiff. She sat down next to him as the bus doors wheezed shut. She breathed deeply.
“Forget it,” Nigel said. “That’s the way it is.”
The bus hummed into motion. They glided past the man on the sidewalk. The policewoman’s knee was in his back and he stared glassily at the broken paving. All the details were quite clear in the faintly orange light.
Before Lubkin could finish his drawling sentence Nigel was out of his chair, pacing.
“You’re damned right I object to it,” Nigel said. “It’s the most stupid bloody—”
“Look, Nigel, I sympathize with you completely. You and I are scientists, after all.”
Nigel thought sourly that he could quite easily marshal a good argument against that statement alone, at least in Lubkin’s case. But he let it ride.
“We don’t like this secrecy business,” Lubkin went on. He chose his words carefully. “However. At the same time. I can understand the need for tight security in this matter.”
“For how long?” Nigel said sharply.
“Long?” Lubkin hesitated. Nigel guessed that the rhythm of his prepared speech was broken. “I really don’t know,” the other man said lamely. “Perhaps for the indefinite future, although”—he speeded up, to cut off Nigel’s reaction—“we may be speaking of a mere matter of days. You understand.”
“Who says?”
“What?”
“Who has the say in this?”
“Well, the Director, of course, he was the first. He thought we should go through military channels as well as civilian.”
Nigel ceased pacing and sat down. Lubkin’s office was illuminated only around his desk, the corners gloomy. To Nigel’s mind’s eye the effect of the pooled light was to frame him and Lubkin as though in a prizefighter’s ring, two antagonists pitted across Lubkin’s oaken desk. Nigel hunched forward, elbows on knees, and stared at the other man’s puffy face.
“Why in hell is the goddamned Air Force—”
