Greg Bear - Mariposa

Low on cash after his exorbitant tip, he had paid the second escort service in advance-three hundred dollars-using one of three credit cards registered to Robert Sangstrom.

Robert Sangstrom had recently flown from Dubai to Los Angeles-just after Nathaniel Trace skipped out of the unscheduled meeting at the Ziggurat.

Nathaniel could see everything so clearly now.

The next stage of the game was inevitable, and there was scant time to prepare.

Late in the morning, while waiting for the second prostitute to show, he used an old computer in the attic apartment, once rented to students attending Long Beach State. Routing through a skeleton server in Bangladesh, he employed a former Talos student's log-in code for the Survival Education Group-not a heavily secured site-to study online manuals on self-defense and close-in combat. The manuals were part of a mandatory Talos training program.

In the army, he had not done well in martial arts. Talos had tried again to persuade him-and the rest of the Turing group-that everyone must know how to fight hand-to-hand in several different ways. All seven had flunked, but the manuals were clearly illustrated and quite good.

His entire body began to imagine the situations described and depicted. His head hurt again, and then his arms, his legs, his back.

Muscles tensed and relaxed.

He stood and lifted his arms. He could feel the burn-and a weird sense of anger directed at his faltering will. Physical training was a lengthy, focused process involving coordination between brain, nerves, muscles. But Nathaniel was now aware that learning also sacrificed conservative elements-parts of his body that did not wish to learn, that actively objected to learning; perhaps because the learning process would lead to these habits, tissues, neural partnerships and accommodations, being phased out.

Learning was like revolution, and the body hated change.

Aches, throbs, twinges, sharp jabs-all became a sign of success, as long as he didn't get lost in the cycle of regrowth, retraining. Like a horse spurred by its rider until it joyously ran itself to death-or leaped over a cliff.

He closed his eyes and controlled the endorphin rush; otherwise they would wash over him and leave him groggy.

Still, the prostitute did not show.

Lunch consisted of a half cup of shortening, a bowl of pasta without sauce, two candy bars, and a long slug of Gatorade. On that diet he did not piss purple, but for half an hour, he smelled terrible.

Something like ketosis, he suspected.

After thirty minutes and what passed for digestion, he tried out some basic physical moves-bracing, angling, kicking, striking. He would have to be careful not to injure himself. The body already felt too confident.

Mistakenly judging that weeks of intense training had passed, it knew it was ready. In reality, his body learned different things at different rates, The connection between sight-learning, text-learning, and actual physical action was unpredictable. He would not know how much he had absorbed, or how effectively, until the kick-in moment, triggered by real physical stress.

Danger to life and limb.

The prostitute was now two hours late. That was interesting, but not irritating. He could completely control his sense of passing time.

He had put on an exercise suit, black with red trim. Tight clothing bothered him. He preferred going naked, though for some reason did not like looking in mirrors. What he saw seemed inadequate compared to how he felt. His body had too much shape, its proportions were too fixed.

Intellect-the rules of the game-would have to make up for what he now lacked: social instinct, behavioral boundaries. A couple of days ago, he had been worried that everything he had ever been-all his memories, possibly even his physical form-would be erased and his life would become a blank tablet in the hands of an idiot with a big piece of chalk.

But the memories remained. He did not turn into a pile of mush. He just lacked perspective on what to do with what he had, and certainly how to feel about it.

Take Rebecca Rose, for example.

He had risked his life to find her in the collapsed convention center-and not just to make sure Plover's information reached its intended destination.

He had anonymously checked on her in the hospital.

Why?

Three hours late.

More than interesting; intriguing. The first woman had been spot on time.

He sat in on the back porch, face bathed in sunny warmth, eyes closed, muscles twitching.

When dog legs twitch, we think they're dreaming of chasing rabbits. What if they're actually dreaming of being in a big number in a Busby Berkley musical?

Who would ever know?

The doorbell rang.

Nathaniel opened his eyes, got up from the chair, returned to the kitchen, pushed through the swinging door into the dining room, and crossed the maple floor around the heavy oak table. He smiled at the shushing sound his slippered feet made on the wood, and how that was silenced by the oriental carpet in the entry, behind the old Craftsman front door with the three crackle glaze windows.

He unlatched the brass viewport. A woman in her early thirties stood outside, squinting at the afternnon glow over the surrounding houses, filtered through the trees: the famous golden hour.

She was attractive enough, with regular features-but other than that, nothing like the first.

He closed the viewport and took a deep breath.

All wrong.

Looking back at prostitutes he had been with in his youthful Army days and in France, Russia, and in Dubai-again, in full color and full motion, like playing back a video-he saw them frayed like tattered velveteen rabbits, hard-used, eyes haunted, subjected to the worst that men had to offer and too often left out, left behind. They had made themselves into closeted sweatshops of poorly manufactured lust, painted over, shaved, and discouraged. Some had decent acting skills, but the bloom was off their rose and they knew it; they knew their clocks were running out.

The woman waiting on the other side of the door dressed the part but had clear, sure eyes and a quality of skin-pellucid freshness rather than powdered pallor.

More than likely, Nathaniel guessed-though he would not call it guessing-she was ex-military, sleek and confident and fit. He compared her with the woman who had been part of the group in the Ziggurat-on the security camera, requesting entrance to his condo. Likely the same. Talos was expending huge resources to find him.

Nathaniel's next test would be to stay alive for more than a few more minutes.

The day before, he had walked around the yard visually mapping the neighboring houses, counting the windows, the doors-and now they lit up in his mind's eye. He saw the house and its environs as if in an isometric projection.

He shaped avenues of escape.

In the ten seconds since ringing the doorbell, the woman had grown restless. He could see her by listening to her movements.

With a rueful smile, he suggested to the new masters of his body that superpowers would be cool-true X-ray vision, the ears of a bat, the nose of a dog. But nothing against the laws of physics had arrived with the relaxing of his prior limitations.

No avoiding a fight. Here it was.

Nathaniel opened the door. The woman swung her head to look at him but held her body sideways like a fencer-keeping a line of fire open.

Someone was drawing a bead from across the street.

"Mr. Sangstrom?" she asked.

She had killed before. She was used to killing.

"That's me," he said, and opened the screen door.

They were roughly of a height, to his advantage. He kept his center axis aligned with hers to discourage an easy shot.

"I've never done this sort of thing," he said.