"If there really is a Maya?" I repeated. "Why do you think she might not exist?"

"I took a quick peek at the language database," he replied. "The world ‘maya’ appears in several human tongues; but in Sanskrit, it can be translated as ‘fleshly illusion.’ I find that thought-provoking, don’t you? Especially when we know our murderer uses androids."

Ouch.

We waited for the world-soul to send its messages. It wouldn’t take long to get a response — any woman who got an emergency beep on her wrist-implant would answer it pronto unless she was under anaesthetic. Or under a twenty-year-old stud with rock-hard dollies.

But I digress.

Night was falling faster now: a cold-looking night that would freeze puddles and frost the trees. One of our tiny moons, the fast one called Orange, floated gibbously above the Bonaventure skyline; its usual apricot color looked faded tonight, like a shrivelly yellow pea.

Three stories above us, Jupkur launched off his window ledge, gliding home for the evening. His breath steamed… which showed it really was cold, considering the coolish Oolom body temperature. I watched him disappear into the gathering darkness, his skin turning purple with the sky.

And me standing by the window. One hand against the un-glass, letting the nano-puppies lick me again. Bored with waxing poetic about the dusk and the moon, wanting to do something.

Tedious thing, waiting. Elusive thing, patience.

Mother used to make me say that prayer, "God grant me the serenity, etc." but I could only chant it through twice before getting the screamy-weamies. Then I’d bound out of the room and go for a run or something.

It wouldn’t look good if I ran out on a master proctor… especially with him sitting pond-placid on the edge of my desk, staring out at the twilight. And how much longer would we really have to wait? There could only be a few dozen women of the right age in Bonaventure. Half that number in the mining towns and outports. Maybe half again among travelers who’d recently used our sleeve. A hundred people? On that order.

And if none was Chappalar’s sweetheart? Now that Tic had planted ideas in my mind, I couldn’t help harking back over the past few days. Maya hadn’t shown up at Chappalar’s funeral, had she? And she hadn’t sent flowers or a card, or even a white stone in the Oolom tradition — I’d checked over the memorials at the burial service, and hadn’t seen anything from her.

Was she a robot spy, sent to watch him? Possibly: top-price teaser androids could fool lonely chumps into thinking the artificial was real… at least for a while. And duping an Oolom would be easier than fooling a Homo sap; Chappalar might dismiss glitches in the android’s programming as normal human idiosyncrasies. Why should he know how our species behaved when things got breathy?

If Maya was a robot… but then, what about the other proctors who got killed? Did they have robot spies watching them too?

No need. According to news reports, three of the proctors were killed in their homes, and another two in their offices — no inside information required to find any of them. The final two were attacked together as they waited to present a report to a parliamentary committee… a presentation that was publicized days in advance.

So: the killer/killers had no trouble finding seven of the eight dead proctors. The exception was Chappalar… whose schedule that morning was known only to me and Maya.

"Let’s check Chappalar’s office," I said suddenly. "See if we can find anything about this mystery woman."

"The police searched the place carefully," Tic answered. "So did I."

"But neither you nor the police were specifically looking for information about Maya. Were you?"

Tic frowned, then said, "True." He headed for the door.

MINDLESS MACHINE

Three of the four walls in the elevator were vidscreens, showing a panoramic view of the city around our office — what you’d see if the elevator were glass and the tree trunk transparent. Oolom architecture used that trick a lot: cramped enclosed spaces like elevator cabs were prettied up with airy visuals (not to mention wind sounds and artificial breeze) to make them seem wide-open to the world.

Standing back by the elevator door, Tic quietly gazed at the cityscape. He had good stillness — no slouching, no, fidgets, no sighs. Presence in the present.

I had plenty of time to watch him. (More devil-be-damned waiting.) Oolom elevators climb slug-slowly… only as fast as you can glide up a lazy air thermal. Their elevators go down a lot faster, matching the typical airspeed of an Oolom in landing descent.

This particular elevator had no lights of its own — just the glow of the stars and the dried-pea moon. From below came the subdued spill of streetlamps. There was also the glittery flicker of crocus-flies, already out of hibernation and flashing their tiny mating beacons: hoping to do the dance and get eggs laid before predators woke for spring… just as I hoped this clump-hole of an elevator would reach our stop before the blessed cream-blossoms opened next month…

In the twinkling quiet, Tic asked, "What did the Peacock Tail feel like?"

He hadn’t moved from that perfect stillness. Just a soft-voiced question in the dark.

"I never touched whatever it was," I told him. "It didn’t come that close to me."

"Not physically," Tic said. "What did it feel like emotionally?"

I shook my head, not knowing what he wanted to hear. "My emotions were running on a different track at the time: scared out of my skin that I’d get my face burned off."

"Even so," Tic said, "the Peacock was something new and surprising. The instant you saw it, didn’t you have a reaction? ‘Dear-dear, more trouble’… or maybe, ‘Hurrah, I’m saved.’ "

"Does it make a difference?" I asked.

"One never knows. What does the elevator feel like to you?"

"Like an elevator!"

"Just a mindless machine?"

I gave him a sour look. "Don’t tell me the elevator is smart like the windows."

Tic smiled. "You still remember the windows?"

"Sure."

"Then Xe likes you. Even if you insist on playing obtuse. What does the elevator feel like?"

"It’s tired," I answered, saying the first thing that came into my mind. "Feeling cruel overworked. In the old days, it had nearly nothing to do — the Ooloms didn’t use it much. But now that we’ve got three human proctors…"

Four.

"Sorry, four counting me, so now that we’ve got four human proctors…"

I stopped. Tic’s mouth hadn’t moved; so who said Four?

The world-soul?

The elevator?

"Yipe," I said. "Yipe, yipe, yipe."

"It’s a stimulating world once you hear the machines." Tic had a smug dollop of I-told-you-so in his voice. "If you insist on challenging the metaphors, an elevator can’t really feel tired, of course. It’s just due for maintenance… since it does have to work harder carrying you lead-weight humans several trips a day rather than delicately light Ooloms a few times a year. But when the elevator reports it’s wearing out, the world-soul represents that as being tired… at least in the minds of those who are properly attuned."

I groaned. "I’m picking up sob stories from an elevator."

"No. The world-soul is projecting information in a form you can easily grasp. Would you prefer a deluge of cold performance statistics? We’re both animals, Smallwood: social animals with abundant brain space evolved for analyzing emotions, and a scanty pittance for analyzing numbers. The world-soul likes to present data in a form our brains are best equipped to understand — that the elevator is deplorably fatigued from lugging around you human lardasses."

Who’re you calling a lardass, bone-boy? I came close to growling that. But for all I knew, Tic might ask the elevator what it thought… and I did not want to have this blasted machine tell me, Just between us, Faye, you could stand to lose a few kilos…