"Your mother blamed the smile on your father. He blamed her. There's something deathly about it."

"I think we ought to adjust."

"She thought she'd have to enroll you in special counseling."

Chin had advanced degrees in mathematics and economics and was only a kid, still, with a gutterpunk stripe in his hair, a moody beet-root red.

The two men talked and made decisions. These were Eric's decisions, which Chin entered resentfully in his hand organizer and then synched with the system. The car was moving. Eric watched himself on the oval screen below the spycam, running his thumb along his chinline. The car stopped and moved and he realized queerly that he'd just placed his thumb on his chinline, a second or two after he'd seen it on-screen.

"Where is Shiner?"

"On his way to the airport."

"Why do we still have airports? Why are they called airports?"

"I know I can't answer these questions without losing your respect," Chin said.

"Shiner told me our network is secure."

"Then it is."

"Safe from penetration."

"He's the best there is at finding holes."

"Then why am I seeing things that haven't happened yet?

The floor of the limousine was Carrara marble, from the quarries where Michelangelo stood half a millennium ago, touching the tip of his finger to the starry white stone.

He looked at Chin, adrift in his jump seat, lost in rambling thought.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-two. What? Twenty-two."

"You look younger. I was always younger than anyone around me. One day it began to change."

"I don't feel younger. I feel located totally nowhere. I think I'm ready to quit, basically, the business."

"Put a stick of gum in your mouth and try not to chew it. For someone your age, with your gifts, there's only one thing in the world worth pursuing professionally and intellectually. What is it, Michael? The interaction between technology and capital. The inseparability."