“The wife,” he said, tilting his head toward the back of the house. Sandra could see a pretty woman in a red blouse and black leather skirt. “She with my partner.”

“Does she have an alibi?”

“Kinda,” said Darryl. “She an assistant manager at the Scotiabank at Finch and Yonge, but one of the tellers called in sick, so she worked the counter all day. Hundreds of people saw her.”

“What’s ‘kinda’ about that?”

“I think it a professional hit,” Darryl said. “No hesitation marks. Scancam show no prints. Security camera disk gone, too.”

Sandra nodded, then glanced back at the woman in red and black. “Could be a jealous wife who arranged it, though,” she said.

“Maybe,” said Darryl, looking sidelong at the corpse. “I just glad my wife like me.”

Control, the unmodified simulacrum, dreamed.

Nighttime. A blanket of clouds overhead, but with the stars somehow shining through. A giant tree, gnarled and old — maybe an oak, maybe a maple; it seemed to have both kinds of leaves. Its roots had been exposed on one side by erosion — as if it had weathered a massive storm or flash flood. A ball of woody tendrils was visible, soil clinging to them. The whole tree seemed precarious, in danger of tipping over.

Peter climbed the tree, hands grabbing branches, hoisting himself higher and higher. Beneath him, Cathy climbed as well, wind blowing her skirt up around her.

And below, far below, a … beast of some sort. A lion, perhaps. It reared up on its hind legs, rampant, the forelegs leaning against the tree. Even though it was night, Peter could see the color of the lion’s coat. It wasn’t quite the tawny shade he’d expected. Instead, it was more of a blond.

Suddenly, the tree was shaking. The lion was humping it.

The branches shook wildly. Peter climbed higher. Below, Cathy was stretching toward another branch, but it was too far. Much too far. The tree shook again and she tumbled downward .

In theory, nine o’clock was official starting time at Doowap Advertising. In practice, that meant that a little after nine people began thinking about actually getting down to work.

As usual, Cathy Hobson arrived around 8:50. But instead of the standard joking around as people sipped their coffee, today everything seemed somber. She moved through the open-plan office to her cubicle and saw that Shannon, the woman who worked next to her, had been crying. “What’s wrong?” said Cathy.

Shannon looked up, her eyes red. She sniffled. “Did you hear about Hans?”

Cathy shook her head.

“He’s dead,” said Shannon, and began crying again.

Jonas, the one Cathy’s husband called the pseu-dointellectual, was passing by. “What happened?” asked Cathy.

Jonas ran a hand through his greasy hair. “Hans was murdered.”

“Murdered!”

“Uh-huh. An intruder, it seems.”

Toby Bailey moved closer, apparently sensing that this cluster of workers was the interesting one to be with — someone hadn’t yet heard the story. “That’s right,” he said. “You know he didn’t show up for work yesterday? Well, Nancy Caulfield got a call late last night from his — I was going to say wife, but I guess the word is ‘widow,’ now. Anyway, it was in this morning’s Sun, as well. Service is on Thursday; everybody gets time off to go, if they want.”

“Was it robbery?” asked Cathy.

Jonas shook his head. “The newspaper said the cops had ruled out robbery as a motive. Nothing taken, apparently. And” — Jonas’s face showed an uncharacteristic degree of animation — “according to unnamed sources, the body was mutilated.”

“Oh, God,” said Cathy, stunned. “How?”

“Well, the police are refusing to comment on the mutilation.” Jonas adopted that knowing air that irritated Peter so. “Even if they were willing to speak about it, I suspect they’d keep the details secret so that they could weed out any false confessions.”

Cathy shook her head. “Mutilated,” she said again, the word sounding foreign to her.

Ambrotos, the immortal simulacrum, dreamed.

Peter walked. There was something unusual about his footfalls, though. They were softened, somehow. Not like walking on grass or mud. More like the rubberized surface of a tennis court. Just a hint of give as each foot came down in turn; an ever-so-slight springiness added to his step.

He glanced down. The surface was light blue. He looked around. The material he was on was gently curved, falling away in all directions. There was no sky. Just a void, a nothingness, a colorless emptiness, an absence of anything. He continued to walk slowly across the slightly resilient, curving surface.

Suddenly he caught sight of Cathy in the distance, waving at him.

She was wearing her old navy blue University of Toronto jacket. Spelled out on one sleeve was “9T5,” her graduating year; on the other, “CHEM.” Peter saw now that this wasn’t the Cathy of today, but rather Cathy as he’d first known her: younger, her heart-shaped face free of lines, her ebony hair halfway down her back. Peter looked down again. He had on stone-washed blue jeans — the kind of clothes he hadn’t worn for twenty years.

He began to walk toward her, and she toward him. With each step, her clothes and hairstyle changed, and after every dozen paces or so it was clear that she had aged a little more. Peter felt a beard erupting from his face, and then disappearing, a bad experiment abandoned, and, as he walked further, he felt a coolness on the top of his head as he began to lose his hair. But after a few more paces, Peter realized that all changes in him, at least, had stopped. His hair thinned no farther, his body did not hunch over, his joints continued to work with ease and smoothness.

They walked and walked, but soon Peter realized that they were not getting closer to each other. Indeed, they were growing farther and farther apart.

The ground between them was expanding. The rubbery blueness was growing bigger and bigger. Peter began to run, and so did Cathy. But it did no good. They were on the surface of a great balloon that was inflating. With each passing moment its surface area increased and the distance between them grew.