Just a bottle of champagne.

I put it back and closed the refrigerator door.

I began to wonder if I had been unfair to Julia. Maybe she really did believe she'd made a mistake and wanted to put things right. Maybe she just wanted to show her gratitude. Maybe I was being too tough on her. Too unforgiving.

Because when you thought about it, what had she done that was suspicious or wrong? She'd been glad to see me, even if she was over the top. She'd accepted responsibility for the experiment, and she'd apologized for it. She'd immediately agreed to make the call to the Army. She'd agreed with my plan to kill the swarm in the comm room. She'd done everything she could do to show she supported me, and was on my side.

But I still was uneasy.

And of course there was the matter of Charley and his swarm. Ricky's idea that Charley had somehow been carrying the swarm inside his body, in his mouth or under his armpit or something, didn't make a lot of sense to me. Those swarms killed within seconds. So it left a question-how did the swarm get into the comm room with Charley? Did it get in from outside? Why hadn't it attacked Julia and Ricky and Vince?

I forgot about my shower.

I decided to go down to the utility room, and look around outside the comm room door. Maybe there was something I had missed. Julia had been talking a lot, interrupting my train of thought. Almost as if she hadn't wanted me to figure something out…

There I was again, being hard on Julia.

I went through the airlock, down the corridor, through another airlock. When you were tired, it was annoying to have that wind blowing on you. I came out into the utility area, and went toward the comm room door. I didn't notice anything.

I heard the sound of a clicking keyboard, and looked into the biology lab. Mae was there, at her workstation.

I said, "What are you doing?"

"Checking the video playback."

"I thought we couldn't do that, because Charley pulled the wires."

"That's what Ricky said. But it isn't true."

I started to come around the lab bench, to look over her shoulder. She held up her hand.

"Jack," she said. "Maybe you don't want to look at this."

"What? Why not?"

"It's, uh… maybe you don't want to deal with this. Not right now. Maybe tomorrow." But of course after that, I practically ran around the table to see what was on her monitor. And I stopped. What I saw on her screen was an image of an empty corridor. With a time code at the bottom of the picture. "Is this it?" I said. "Is this what I shouldn't deal with?"

"No." She turned in her chair. "Look, Jack, you have to go through all the security cameras in sequence, and each one only records ten frames a minute, so it's very difficult to be sure of what we're-"

"Just show me, Mae."

"I have to go back a bit…" She pressed the back button in the corner of the keyboard repeatedly. Like many new control systems, the Xymos system was modeled on Internet browser technology. You could go backward in work, retracing your steps. The frames jumped backward until she came to the place she wanted. Then she ran it forward, the security images jumping from one camera to the next in rapid succession. A corridor. The main plant. Another angle on the plant. An airlock. Another corridor. The utility room. A corridor. The kitchen. The lounge. The residence hallway. An exterior view, looking down at the floodlit desert. Corridor. The power room. The outside, ground level. Another corridor. I blinked. "How long have you been doing this?"

"About an hour."

"Jesus."

Next I saw a corridor. Ricky moving down it. Power station. Outside, looking down on Julia stepping into the floodlight. A corridor. Julia and Ricky together, embracing, and then a corridor, and"Wait," I said.

Mae hit a button. She looked at me, said nothing. She pressed another key, flicked the images forward slowly. She stopped on the camera that showed Ricky and Julia. "Ten frames."

The movement was blurred and jerky. Ricky and Julia moved toward each other. They embraced. There was a clear sense of ease, of familiarity between them. And then they kissed passionately.

"Aw, shit," I said, turning away from the screen. "Shit, shit, shit."

"I'm sorry, Jack," Mae said. "I don't know what to say."

I felt a wave of dizziness, almost as if I might collapse. I sat down on the table. I kept my body turned away from the screen. I just couldn't look. I took a deep breath. Mae was saying something more, but I didn't hear her words. I took another breath. I ran my hand through my hair.

I said, "Did you know about this?"

"No. Not until a few minutes ago."

"Did anybody?"

"No. We used to joke about it sometimes, that they had a relationship, but none of us believed it."

"Jesus." I ran my hand through my hair again. "Tell me the truth, Mae. I need to hear the truth. Did you know about this or not?"

"No, Jack. I didn't."

Silence. I took a breath. I tried to take stock of my feelings. "You know what's funny?" I said. "What's funny is that I've suspected this for a while now. I mean, I was pretty sure it was happening, I just didn't know who… I mean… Even though I expected it, it's still kind of a shock."

"I'm sure."

"I never would have figured Ricky," I said. "He's such a… I don't know… smarmy kind of guy. And he's not a big power guy. Somehow I would have thought she'd pick someone more important, I guess." As I said it, I remembered my conversation with Ellen after dinner. Are you so sure about Julia's style?

That was after I'd seen the guy in the car. The guy whose face I couldn't really make out…

Ellen: It's called denial, Jack.

"Jesus," I said, shaking my head. I felt angry, embarrassed, confused, furious. It kept changing every second.

Mae waited. She didn't move or speak. She was completely still. Finally she said, "Do you want to see any more?"

"Is there more?"

"Yes."

"I don't know if I, uh… No, I don't want to see any more."

"Maybe you better."

"No."

"I mean, it might make you feel better."

"I don't think so," I said. "I don't think I can take it."

She said, "It may not be what you think, Jack. At least, it may not be exactly what you think."

It's called denial, Jack.

"Sorry, Mae," I said, "but I don't want to pretend anymore. I saw it. I know what it is." I thought I'd be with Julia forever. I thought we loved the kids together, we had a family, a house, a life together. And Ricky had a new baby of his own. It just was weird. It didn't make sense to me. But then, things never turn out the way you think they will. I heard Mae typing quickly on the keyboard. I turned so I could see her, but not the screen. "What're you doing?"

"Trying to find Charley. See if I can track what happened to him over the last few hours." She continued typing. I took a breath. She was right. Whatever was going on in my personal life was already well advanced. There was nothing I could do about it, at least not right now. I turned all the way around and faced the screen.

"Okay," I said. "Let's look for Charley."

It was disorienting to watch the camera images flash by, repeating in sequence. People popped in and out of images. I saw Julia in the kitchen. The next time I saw her and Ricky in the kitchen. The refrigerator door was open, then shut. I saw Vince in the main plant room, then he popped out. I saw him in a corridor, then gone.

"I don't see Charley."

"Maybe he's still asleep," Mae said.

"Can you see in the bedrooms?"

"Yes, there are cameras there, but I'd have to change security cycle. Ordinary cycle doesn't go into the bedrooms."

"How big a deal is it to change the security cycle?"

"I'm not sure. This is really Ricky's area. The system here is pretty complicated. Ricky's the only one who really knows how to work it. Let's see if we find Charley in the regular cycle." So that's what we did, waiting to see if he appeared in any of the standard camera images. We searched for about ten minutes more. From time to time, I had to look away from the images, though it never seemed to bother Mae. But sure enough, we saw him in the residential hallway, walking down the corridor, rubbing his face. He'd just woken up. "Okay," Mae said. "We got him."