Glasshouse

And if do somehow manage to survive, I'll be a prisoner here for the next three unenhanced lifetimes.

I have mixed emotions. When I went into combat before—what I remember of it—I didn't worry about dying. But I wasn't human, then. I was a regiment of tanks. The only way I could die would be if our side lost the entire war.

But I've got Sam, now. The thought of Sam's being in danger makes me cringe. The thought of both of us being at the mercy of the YFH cabal makes me a different kind of uneasy. Bend the neck, surrender, and it will be fine : That's the echo of her personal choice coming back to haunt me. I rejected her, didn't I? But she's part of me. Indivisible, inescapable. I can never escape from the knowledge that I surrendered—

Sa

These aren't good thoughts to be thinking. They're downright morbid, and I can live without them—but they won't leave me alone, so as I walk I try to fight back by swinging my bag and whistling a jolly tune. And I try to look at myself from the outside as I go. Here's a jolly librarian, outwardly a young woman in a summer dress, shoulder bag in hand, whistling as she walks home from a day at work. Invert the picture, though, and you see a dream-haunted ex-soldier, clutching a kitbag containing a machine pistol, slinking back to her billet for a final time before the—

Look, just stop, why don't you?

That's better.

When I get home, I stash the bag in the kitchen. The TV is going in the living room, so I shed my shoes and pad through.

"Sam."

He's on the sofa, curled up opposite the flickering screen as usual. He's holding a metal canister of beer. He glances at me as I come in.

"Sam." I join him on the sofa. After a moment I realize that he's not really watching the TV. Instead, his eyes are on the patio outside the glass doors at the end of the room. He breathes slowly, evenly, his chest rising and falling steadily. "Sam."

His eyes flicker toward me, and a moment later the corners of his mouth edge upward. "Been working late?"

"I walked." I pull my feet up. The soft cushions of the sofa swallow them. I lean sideways against him, letting my head fall against his shoulder. "I wanted to feel . . ."

"Co

"Yes, that's it, exactly." I can feel his pulse, and his breathing is profound, a stirring in the roots of my world. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too." A hand touches my cheek, moves up to brush hair back from my forehead.

At moments like this I hate being an unreconstructed human—an island of thinking jelly trapped in a bony carapace, endless milliseconds away from its lovers, forced to squeeze every meaning through a low-bandwidth speech cha

"I'm ru

"Me too," Throwing caution to the wind: "Is that part of your problem? With being . . . this?"

"It's too close." He swallows. "To what they wanted me to be."

I don't ask who "they" were. "Do you want to escape? To leave the polity?"

He's silent for a long while. "I don't think so," he says eventually. "Because I'd have to go back to being what I want not to be, if that makes sense to you. Kay was a disguise, Reeve, a mask. A hollow woman. Not a real person."

I snuggle closer to him. "I know you wanted to grow into her."

"Do you?" He raises an eyebrow.

"Look, why do you think I'm here?"

"Point." He looks momentarily rueful. "Do you want to leave?"

We're not really talking about staying or leaving, this is understood, but what he really means by that—"I thought I did," I admit, toying with the buttons on the front of his shirt. "Then Dr. Hanta sorted me out, and I realized that what I really wanted was somewhere to heal, somewhere to be me. Community. Peace." I get my hand inside his shirt, and his breath acquires a little hoarse edge that makes me squeeze my thighs together. "Love." I pause. "Not necessarily her way, mind you." His hand is stroking my hair. His other hand—"Do that some more."

"I'm afraid, Reeve."

"That makes two of us."

Later: "I want what you described."

I gasp. "Makes two. Of us. Oh."

"Love."

And we continue our conversation without words, using a language that no abhuman watcher AI can interpret—a language of touch and caress, as old as the human species. What we tell each other is simple. Don't be afraid, I love you. We say it urgently and emphatically, bodies shouting our mute encouragement. And in the dark of the night, when we reach for each other, I dare myself to admit that it might work out all right in the end.

We aren't bound to fail.

Are we?

BREAKFAST is an affair of quiet desperation. Over the coffee and toast I clear my throat and begin a carefully pla

"Really?" He looks up, worry lines crisscrossing his forehead.

I nod vigorously. "I can't go to Church without them, it wouldn't be decent." Decent is one of those keywords the watchers monitor. Gloves aren't actually a dress code infraction, but they're a good excuse.

"Okay, I suppose I'll have to come with you," he says, with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man facing the airlock. "We need to leave soon, don't we?"

"Yes, I'd better get my bag," I say.

"I have a new waistcoat to wear."

I raise an eyebrow. His clothing sense is even more artificial than my own. "It's upstairs," he explains. For a moment I think he's going to say something more, something compromising, but he manages to bottle it up in time. My stomach squirms queasily. "Take care, darling."

"Nothing can possibly go wrong," he says with studied irony. He rises and heads for the staircase to our bedroom. (Our bedroom. No more lonely nights.) My heart seems to catch an extra beat. Then it's time to clear up the detritus, put the plates in the dishwasher, and get my shoes on.

When Sam comes downstairs, he's dressed for Church—with a many-pocketed vest under his suit jacket, and, in his hand, the briefcase we packed yesterday. "Let's, uh, go," he says, and casts me a wan grin.