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portable latrine have been shoved up against the rear end. His room comes with a gel mattress cot, fresh biolum strips on the walls, and no windows. No problem, there’s nothing to look at anyway.
    He tosses his duffel bag on the cot and sits down. This is it, home for the next six weeks. Then, he promises himself, it’s over. This is his last job. It’s time to call it quits. For real, this time. He’s done enough penance for two lifetimes.

4
    A SERPENT IN THE GRASS
    F ola watches the butterfly turn into a ghost. One moment it’s indigo, the next pale white. The wings quiver to a stop and the butterfly—translucent now as melting snow—hangs motionless a few centimeters from the saffron petals of a chalice-shaped flower.
    A sketchy face appears on the underside of one wing. The image, an old hand-animated cartoon character, grins at her. She can’t remember the name of the duck. Taffy. Duffy. Something like that.
    Fola reaches out a hand. But before she can touch the face, the data packet the butterfly represents disintegrates into virtual air. Ditto the flower and a nearby bumblebee, fat with recombinant instruction sets.
    Fola blinks, frowns, then queries Ephraim. No answer. She tries her information agent. “Pheidoh?”
    Nothing. Her IA has dropped offline. A first; the information agent is nothing if not dutiful.
    Unnerved, she signs out of the ribozone. The virtuality collapses and the datawindow image of the garden on the inside of her eyescreens is replaced by an in-vivo view of airless rock and ice.
    Her stomach lurches at the foreshortened horizon of the asteroid and steep-walled canyon outside the window of the cliff-face arcology. She’s never been good with heights. Plus, the image of the duck is still tattooed to her retinas. Where had that come from?
    “Ephraim? Pheidoh?”
    Still no response. Great. Now what?
    Fola cranes her head back, searching for the team of molectricians she’s assisting. She spots the three-person tuplet next to the carbyne-frame vault that supports the lush topiary of circuitree branches, parasol palms, and clumped bananopy leaves that are part of the budding warm-blooded ecotecture.
    She opens a comlink to the team. “Is everything okay?”
    Liam is the first to respond. All puffed up, full of goofy sarcasm and the snide, jug-eared attitude he tries to pass off as humor. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
    From the moment she arrived on Mymercia, he’s given her a bad time. First, about being a Performance Evaluation, Enhancement, and Validation specialist—what he calls his pet PEEV. Second, about the time she spent as a Jesuette. Never mind that it was against her will. He can’t resist teasing her. Nun for me. Nun right now, thanks. Nun too soon. Nun of your business. Silly jokes like that. Playful. He’s like a schoolboy with a crush. Pretty soon he’ll pull her hair. Still, it’s good to hear his voice. She’s not totally cut off.
    “What seems to be the problem?” Ingrid demands, terse. Unlike Liam, the team’s leader is all business.
    Fola squirms under Ingrid’s annoyance. “There seems to be some kind of glitch in the infostream.”
    “What kind of glitch?”
    “I’m not sure. Data loss maybe, or a transmission error. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
    “Everything looks fine to me,” Ingrid says, impatient to finish with the array of biolum panels they’re wiring to the arcology’s main power grid. The job is taking longer than expected. There’s a circuit relay problem she’s been unable to isolate.
    Fola pinches the tip of her tongue between pursed lips. “I just thought I’d check. That’s all.”
    Ingrid doesn’t say anything. No surprise. What’s weird is that Liam is quiet. Normally he jumps right in. She always has to cut him off to keep him from pestering her. Not only that, they’ve stopped all work. She can see them pointing and gesticulating at each other in confusion.
    “What’s going on?” she says.
    Silence.
    “Hello?”