R ausch,” said the voice in Hollis Henry’s cell. “Node,” it said.

She turned on the bedside lamp, illuminating the previous evening’s empty can of Asahi Draft, from the Pink Dot, and her sticker-encrusted PowerBook, closed and sleeping. She envied it.

“Hello, Philip.” Node was her present employer, to the extent that she had one, and Philip Rausch her editor. They’d had one previous conversation, the one which had resulted in her flying to L.A. and checking into the Mondrian, but that had had much more to do with her financial situation than with any powers of persuasion on his part. Something in his intonation of the magazine’s name, just now, those audible italics, suggested something she knew she’d quickly tire of.

She heard Odile Richard’s robot bump lightly against something, from the direction of the bathroom.

“It’s three there,” he said. “Did I wake you?”

“No,” she lied.

Odile’s robot was made of Lego, white Lego exclusively, with some odd number of black-tired white plastic wheels underneath, and what she assumed were solar power cells screwed across its back. She could hear it moving patiently, however randomly, across the carpet of her room. Could you buy white-only Lego? It looked right at home here, where lots of things were white. Nice contrast with the Aegean-blue table legs.

“They’re ready to show you his best piece,” Rausch said.

“When?”

“Now. She’s waiting for you at her hotel. The Standard.”

Hollis knew the Standard. It was carpeted in royal-blue Astroturf. Whenever she went there she felt as though she were the oldest living thing in the building. There was a sort of giant terrarium, behind the registration desk, in which ethnically ambiguous bikini-girls sometimes lay as if sunning themselves, or studying large, profusely illustrated textbooks.