“In that case, the lock checks the altered image for authorization and then allows it past.”

“And there’s no way to get a fake access?” I said.

He was looking at the screen irritatedly, as if I was the one who’d set Frankenstein in motion. “Sit,” he said. Clint sat.

“Stay,” I said.

Vincent glared at me. “What movie did you say this was for?”

“A remake,” I said, looking over at the door. Heada was coming in. “Maybe I’ll just stay with the wipe,” I said, and ducked off toward the stairs.

“I still don’t see why you insist on doing it by hand,” he called after me. “There’s no point. I’ve got a search-and-destroy program—”

I skidded upstairs and punched in the override, cursing myself for locking the door in the first place, opened it, got in bed, remembered the door was supposed to be locked, locked it, and flung myself back on the bed.

Hurrying had not been a good idea. My head had started to pound like the drums in the Latin number in Tea for Two.

I closed my eyes and waited for Heada, but it must not have been her in the doorway, or else she had gotten waylaid by Vincent and his dancing dolls. I called up Three Sailors and a Girl, but all the “next, please” ’s made me faintly seasick. I closed my eyes, waiting for the queasiness to pass, and then opened them again and tried to come up with a theory that didn’t belong in a movie.

Alis couldn’t have bluescreened herself in like Gene Kelly’s mouse. She didn’t know anything about comps — she’d been taking Basic CG 101 last fall when I got her class schedule out of Heada. And even if she had somehow mastered melds and shading and rotoscoping, she still didn’t have the accesses.

Maybe she’d gotten somebody to help her. But who? The undergrad hackates didn’t have accesses either, and Vincent wouldn’t have understood why she insisted on doing it by hand.

So it had to be a paste-up. And why not? Maybe Alis had finally realized dancing in the movies was impossible, or maybe Mayer’d promised to find her a dancing teacher if she’d pop his boss. She wouldn’t be the first face to come to Hollywood and end up on a casting couch.

But if that were the case, she wouldn’t have looked like she did. I called up On the Town again and peered at it through my headache. Alis leaped lightly around the Empire State Building, animated and happy. I turned it off and tried to sleep.

If it was a paste-up, she wouldn’t have had that focused, intent look. Vincent, programs or no programs, could never have captured that smile.

Slow pan from comp screen to clock, showing 11:05, and back to screen. Shot of sailors dancing. Slow pan to clock, showing 3:45.

Somewhere in the middle of the night it occurred to me that there was another reason Mayer couldn’t have done a paste-up of Alis. The best reason of all: Heada didn’t know about it.

She knew everything, every bit and piece of popsy, every studio move, every takeover rumor. There wasn’t anything that got by her. If Alis had given in to Mayer, Heada would have known about it before it happened. And reported it to me, as if it was what I wanted to hear.

And wasn’t it? I had told Alis she couldn’t have what she wanted, that dancing in the movies was impossible, and it was a paste-up or nothing, and everybody likes to be proved right, don’t they?

Especially if they are right. You can’t just walk through a movie screen like Mia Farrow in The Purple Rose of Cairo and take Virginia Gibson’s place. You can’t just walk through a looking glass like Charlotte Henry and find yourself dancing with Fred Astaire.

Even if that’s what it looks like you’re doing. It’s a trick of lighting, that’s all, and makeup, and too much liquor, too much klieg; and the only cure for that was to follow Heada’s orders, piss, drink lots of water, try to sleep.

“Three Sailors and a Girl,” I said, and waited for the trick to be revealed.

Slow pan from comp screen to clock, showing 4:58, and back to screen. Shot of sailors dancing. Slow pan to clock, showing 7:22.

“Feeling better?” Heada said. She was sitting on the bed, holding a glass of water. “I told you ridigaine was rough.”

“Yeah,” I said, closing my eyes against the glare from the glass.

“Drink this,” she said, and stuck a straw in my mouth. “How’s the craving? Bad?”

I didn’t want to drink anything, including water. “No.”

“You sure?” she said suspiciously.

“I’m sure,” I said. I opened my eyes again, and when that went okay, I tried to sit up. “What took you so long?”

“After I found Funny Face, I went and talked to one of the ILMGM execs. You were right about it’s not being Mayer. He’s sworn off popsy. He’s trying to convince Arthurton he’s straight and narrow.”

She stuck the straw under my nose again. “I talked to one of the hackates, too. He says there’s no way to get liveaction stuff onto the fibe-op source without studio access. He says there are all kinds of securities and privacies and encryptions. He says there are so many, nobody, not even the best hackates, can get past them.”

“I know,” I said, leaning my head back against the wall. “It’s impossible.”

“Do you feel good enough to look at the disk?”

I didn’t, and there was no point, but Heada put it in and we watched Fred dance circles around Audrey Hepburn and Paris.

The ridigaine was good for something, anyway. Fred was doing a series of swing turns, his feet tapping easily, carelessly, his arms extended, but there wasn’t a quiver of a flash or even a soft-focus. My head still ached, but the drumming was gone, replaced by a bleak silence that felt like the aftermath of a flash and had its sharp clarity, its certainty.

I was certain Alis wouldn’t have danced in this movie, with its modern dance and its duets, carefully choreographed by Fred to make Audrey Hepburn look like a better dancer than she was. Certain that when Virginia Gibson appeared, she’d be Virginia Gibson, who looked a lot like Alis.

And certain that when I called up On the Town and Tea for Two and Singin’ in the Rain, it would still be Alis, no matter how secure the fibe-op loops, no matter how impossible.

Virginia Gibson came on in a gaggle of Hollywood’s idea of fashion designers. “You don’t see her, do you?” Heada said anxiously.

“No,” I said, watching Fred.

“This Virginia Gibson person really does look a lot like Alis,” Heada said. “Do you want to try Seven Brides for Seven Brothers again, just to make sure?”

“I’m sure,” I said.

“Good,” she said, standing up briskly. “Now, the main thing now that you’re clean is to keep busy so you won’t think about the craving, and anyway, you need to catch up on Mayer’s list before he gets back, and I was thinking maybe I could help you. I’ve been watching a lot of movies, and I could tell you which ones have AS’s in them and where it is. The Color Purple has a roadhouse scene where—”

“Heada,” I said.

“And after you finish the list, maybe you and I could get Mayer to assign us a real remake. I mean, now that we’re both clean. You said one time I’d make a great location assistant, and I’ve been watching a lot of movies. We’d make a great team. You could do the CGs—”

“I need you to do something for me,” I said. “There was an ILMGM exec who used to come to the parties who was always using time travel as a line. I need you to find out his name.”

“Time travel?” Heada said blankly.

“He said they were this close to discovering time travel,” I said. “He kept talking about parallel timefeeds.”

“You said it wasn’t her in Funny Face,” she said slowly.

“He kept talking about doing a remake of Time After Time.”