Glasshouse

I drop the oven door shut and zap the book for fifteen seconds. Then I push a button on the breadboard I've taped to the side of the oven. No lights come on. There's nothing talking in the death cell, so it looks like I've effectively crisped any critters riding the book's spine. Well, we'll see when I take it back to the library, won't we? If Fiore singles me out in Church the day after tomorrow, I'll know I was wrong, but sneaking a dirty book out of the library for an evening isn't in the same league as stealing the keys to—

The plaster of paris! Mentally, I kick myself. I nearly forgot it. I tip the right amount into an empty yoghurt pot with shaky hands, then measure in a beaker of water and stir the mass with a teaspoon until it begins to get so hot that I have to juggle it from hand to hand.

Ten minutes pass, and I line a baking tray with moist whitish goop (gypsum, hydrated calcium sulphate). Hoping that it has cooled enough, I press both sides of the soap bar into it a couple of times. I have a tense moment worrying about the soap's softening and melting, and I make the first impression too early, while the plaster's so soft and damp that it sticks to the soap, but in the end I think I've probably got enough to work with. So I cover the tray with a piece of cheesecloth and go inside. It's nearly ten o'clock, I'm hungry and exhausted, tomorrow is my day off, and I am going to have to go in to work anyway to visit Janis and make sure she's all right. But next time Fiore visits the repository, I'm going to be ready to sneak in right after he's left. And then we'll see what he's hiding down there . . .

10. State

SUNDAY dawns, cool and mellow. I groan and try not to pull the bedclothes over my head. By one of those quirks of scheduling, yesterday was a workday for me, tomorrow is another, and I'm feeling hammered by the prospect of two eleven-hour days. I'm not looking forward to spending half my day off in forced proximity to score whores like Jen and Angel, but I manage to force myself out of bed and rescue my Sunday outfit from the pile growing on the chair at the end of the room. (I need to take a trip to the dry-cleaners soon, and spend some time down in the basement washing the stuff I can do at home. More drudgery on my day off. Does it ever stop?)

Downstairs, I find Sam laboriously spooning cornflakes into a bowl of milk. He looks preoccupied. My stomach is tight with anxiety, but I force myself to put a pan of water on the burner and carefully lower a couple of eggs into it. I need to make myself eat: My appetite isn't good, and with the exercise regime I'm keeping up, I could start burning muscle tissue very easily. I glance inward at my mostly silent netlink to check my cohort's scores for the week. As usual, I'm nearly the bottom-ranked female in the group. Only Cass is doing worse, and I feel a familiar stab of anxiety. I'm nearly sure she isn't Kay, but I can't help feeling for her. She has to put up with that swine Mick, after all. Then my stomach does another flip-flop as I remember something I have to do before we go.

"Sam."

He glances up from his bowl. "Yes?"

"Today. Don't be surprised if—if—" I can't say it.

He puts his spoon down and looks out the window. "It's a nice day." He frowns. "What's bugging you? Is it Church?"

I manage to nod.

His eyes go glassy for a moment. Checking his scores, I guess. Then he nods. "You didn't get any penalties, did you?"

"No. But I'm afraid I—" I shake my head, unable to continue.

"They're going to single you out," he says, evenly and slowly.

"That's it." I nod. "I've just got a feeling, is all."

"Let them." He looks angry, and for a moment I feel frightened, then I realize that for a wonder it isn't me—he's angry at the idea that Fiore might have a go at me in Church, indignant at the possibility that the congregation might go along with it. Resentful. "We'll walk out."

"No, Sam." The water is boiling—I check the clock, then switch on the toaster. Boiled eggs and toast, that's how far my culinary skills have come. "If you do that, it'll make you a target, too. If we're both targets . . ."

"I don't care." He meets my gaze evenly, with no sign of the reticence that's been dogging him for the past month. "I made a decision. I'm not going to stand by and let them pick us off one by one. We've both made mistakes, but you're the one who's most at risk in here. I haven't been fair to you and I, I"—he stumbles for a moment—"I wish things had turned out differently." He looks down at his bowl and murmurs something I can't quite make out.

"Sam?" I sit down. "Sam. You can't take on the whole polity on your own." He looks sad. Sad? Why?

"I know." He looks at me. "But I feel so helpless!"

Sad and angry. I stand up and walk over to the burner, turn the heat right down. The eggs are bumping against the bottom of the pan. The toaster is ticking. "We should have thought of that before we agreed to be locked up in this prison," I say. I feel like screaming. With my extra-heavy memory erasure—which I have a sneaking suspicion exceeded anything my earlier self, the one who wrote me the letter and then forgot about it, was expecting—I'm half-surprised I got here in the first place. Certainly if I'd known Kay was going to dither, then pull out, I'd probably have chosen to stay with her and the good life, assassins or no.

"Prison." He chuckles bitterly. "That's a good description for it. I wish there was some way to escape."

"Go ask the Bishop; maybe he'll let you out early for bad behavior." I pop the toast, butter it, then scoop both eggs out of the water and onto my plate. "I wish."

"How about we walk to Church today?" Sam suggests hesitantly, as I'm finishing breakfast. "It's about two kilometers. That sounds a long way, but—"

"It also sounds like a good idea to me," I say, before he can talk himself out of it. "I'll wear my work shoes."

"Good. I'll meet you down here in ten minutes." He brushes against me on his way out of the kitchen, and I startle, but he doesn't seem to notice. Something's going on inside his head, and not being able to open up and ask is frustrating.

Two kilometers is a nice morning walk, and Sam lets me hold his hand as we stroll along the quiet avenues beneath trees suddenly exploding with green and blue-black leaves. We have to walk through three tu

The Church service starts out anticlimactic for me, but probably not for anyone else. After leading the congregation into a tub-thumping rendition of "First We Take Manhattan," Fiore launches into a longperoration on the nature of obedience, crime, our place in society, and our duties to one another.

"Is it not true that we were placed here to enjoy the benefits of civilization and to raise a great society for the betterment of our children and the achievement of a morally pure state?" he thunders from the pulpit, eyes focused glassily on an infinity that lurks just behind the back wall. "And to this end, isn't it the case that our social order, being the earthly antecedent of a Platonic ideal society, must be defended so that it has room to mature and bear the fruit of utopia?" A real tub-thumper , I realize uneasily. I wonder where he's going? People are shuffling in the row behind me; I'm not the only one with a guilty conscience.

"This being the case, can we admit to our society one who violates its cardinal rules? Must we forebear from criticizing the sins out of consideration for the sensibilities of the si