"C'mon."

"I shit you not, shamus. It'd be front page news. A worldwide sensation. There'd be calls to revisit VP independence."

My face remained neutral, but her reply sent me into a tizzy. She was my only ally in this strange new world. If she became a liability and I had to cut her loose- I realized what I was thinking and felt a hot flush of shame. I'd been fouled, growing up in the jungle. Elise had done much to awaken something in me resembling a heart, but in the days since I'd revived, I'd become aware that my childhood hardwiring had been coldly and methodically reasserting itself.

Maggie was still talking. "How could a cover-up still be active after all these years? Does that mean the murderer is still around?"

"I hope he's still around," I said through my teeth.

She paled. Pull it back, I thought. Don't spook her.

She was still staring at my face. "We're assuming Bart's death is related to the cover-up and my murder," I said.

"Well, what else-"

"The Armitage guy?"

"The guy who kidnapped you?"

"Yeah. He threatened Bart's life if I didn't do a B&E on the Surazal lab."

"Are you kidding?" A furrow snaked across Maggie's brow and disappeared under her hairline. "But why kill Bart before you've done anything?"

"I don't know the man well enough to know that what he does has to make sense."

"What's your gut tell you?"

"I don't think it was Armitage. He's smarter, more low-key than that."

"So we're back to the cover-up."

"There's another thing that's bugging me. Why bother to have Hector released after my murder? Why not just let him take the fall for the homicides?"

"Cause then he'd ID Mr. Scar."

"Then why not just whack him?"

"In 2012, no one thought you'd be back, Donner. Maybe it was easier to have Hector released. Maybe, for whoever orchestrated this, the cover-up was easier than having to deal with another dead body that could lead back to the them."

That sounded possible. "So it's not until I revive and start nosing around that Hector became a threat again," I said.

I looked at her, wondering about that room again, about her and Hector. She met my eyes, and I caught a repeat flicker of... what? Fear? Doubt? Guilt? I couldn't tell. About the only thing I knew for sure was that I wouldn't get the answer by pressing her right now.

"The picture Hector gave us-the man with the scar," I said. "Can you scan it? Run a facial make on him?"

"Great! I tell you I'm going to lose my career and maybe be front page news and you ask me to dig myself in deeper!"

"I didn't force you into this."

"No, you just were so pathetic and lost-"

"Whoa! You're saying you did all this because you felt sorry for me? Are all smarties this lousy at lying?"

Her brow darkened. "How the hell would you know? I could put what you fleshpots understand about us in a thimble!"

"Fleshpots?"

"Forget it."

"Maggie!"

She shifted uncomfortably. "It's a term smarties use amongst themselves. For humans."

"Is it a good term?"

"No."

"Smarties aren't above prejudice, then. Sounds human to me."

"You're twisting my words!"

"I didn't twist anything, Maggie."

"What you just called 'human' is actually egocentrism-and it's an inherent condition of consciousness, Donner. Any consciousness. Human or not."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"As soon as an entity-human or not-becomes self-aware, it's impossible for it not to become the center of its own universe. As soon as there's an 'I,' everything else becomes 'not-I'. A potential competitor. Get it?"

"So smarties are just like humans. They can't help but calculate their relative position in the scheme of things. 'I'm better,' 'I'm worse,' 'I have more,' 'I have less'..."

"No," she said. Her irritation had left her. Now she just looked exhausted. "Self-aware and separate does not imply value, only position. You just said, 'I have more, I have less.' But only humans beings turn that into 'I'm better, I'm worse.' To us, 'I have less' does not equal 'I am less.' We don't need to prove our value through competition. And without that drive from the ego, there's no purpose to violence." Her voice got quieter. "Or vengeance."

I knew what was coming.

"You were going to kill Hector," she said.

The words wrapped cold chains around my guts. I didn't know what to say. So we watched the BQE flow by, a stream of steel and concrete. Traffic was light.

"No smarty has ever committed murder?" I asked finally.

"Never," she said. But a tick jumped under her eye and I got that weird feeling again. "To regard another entity as better or worse in terms of value is ridiculous, because separation and permanence are illusions."

"Huh?"

"What you think of as 'you' is a mental abstraction, a bunch of intellectual definitions. What I think of as you is also an abstraction. Neither is what you really are."

My heard was starting to hurt. "So what's the real me?"

"That's the point. There is no 'real' you. What you are is not definable because it's changing moment from moment. And who you think you are is in constant flux as well. Is the Real You the 'you' you are when you're liking yourself? Or the 'you' you become when you screw up? Was the ten-year-old Paul the real Paul? Is it you today? Or is it you ten seconds from now?"

I shook my head, completely lost.

"Do you see how pointless it is for humans to claim they have a soul and consciousness but that smarties are only mechanical mimics of human behavior?" she continued. "You can't even define your own consciousness, so how can you make a judgment on ours?"

My voice came out sounding defensive. "So if you're so evolved, why do smarties still feel emotions like hurt and regret and... affection? You were crying a minute ago."

She flushed. "I never said we were perfect."

"Fair enough. What did you mean about separation being an illusion, too?"

"At this moment, our molecules are crossing the space between us. Co-mingling." Her eyes twinkled. "Can you say where you end and I begin?"

"We're intermingling?"

"Separation is another delusion of the ego."

"I don't follow."

"Think of separation and identity like this: a wave can convince itself that it's separate from the ocean, but only for a moment."

"So we're just two waves?"

She nodded.

"Hmmm." I front-loaded a smile. "So wave on into the database and run the make for me, baby."

She barked laughter, like a seal. "You're incorrigible!"

"That's what you love about me."

She punched me in the shoulder. "Autodrive."

And left me to wonder how she had managed, in a few minutes, to move me from murderous rage to feeling some kind of strange stillness inside, however fleeting.

If, as she implied, those landmarks from the past-those people and things I'd loved and felt lost without-if they hadn't been going to remain the same anyway... even if I hadn't died, they'd have still changed and eventually gone away, as all things do-if the world was going to be what it was, whether I wanted it to or not...

If all of that was true, what would my choices be?

Change what I could, and just accept what I couldn't?

Was that sanity, or giving up? And was it possible for me to live that way?

Sixteen minutes later, after my inability to sort through my jumbled thoughts had me back to being nice and pissed off, Maggie smacked her hands together. An image popped into existence. Sure enough, there the bastard was, with his dead eyes and diagonal scar. "Ewan McDermott," she read. "Former IRA soldier, turned mercenary after the British-Irish peace accord. Worked for drug cartels, mostly. Homeland Security had him on a watch list, but he got into the country anyway on fake papers."

"Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense," I said wearily. "An international merc puts out a hit on me."

"Who would want you dead? I mean, no offense, big daddy, but you're a nobody."

"You're nobody 'til somebody hates you," I warbled softly.

"Could it have been a case you were working in your first life?"

"I had three open cases when I died. A drive-by, a domestic, and a mob hit. Case one: Jamal Johnson, 'Firebird,' to his friends. A stone banger at age thirteen. Died in his front yard as the result of an Uzi on automatic. No suspects. The domestic was Cynthia Bowles. Took a paring knife to her hubby when she discovered three grand in internet porn charges on their VISA bill."

Maggie laughed.

"The hit was Felix somebody. A Gee CI."

"A whosit?"

"FBI confidential informant. Former mob stooge. Death came by way of two taps to the back of the head. A dead canary in his mouth. Along with his penis."

"I thought organized crime was the FBI's turf."

I chuckled. "I had a prickly lieutenant. We were still working out jurisdiction."

"Could your hit be connected to the mafia?"

"The familia would definitely not use an Irish shooter."

"Then what the hell?"

My restless hands hardened. "I know. It breaks the rules. Why bother to make this thing look like a botched robbery? And why does a professional assassin, presumably hired by someone, hire someone else to do his wet work?"

The paroxysm surged suddenly, like it had been lying in wait. I brought my fist down on the dashboard. The glove box fell open. The vehicle swerved and a dash light went on. "Is there a problem?" asked the sedan.

"Mind your own business," Maggie said to it. "Just drive."

"You don't have to get snooty," said the sedan. The light went off.

"None of it makes any goddamned sense!" she said.

"And the only person with answers is this McDermott-"

"Who, dead or alive, is buried so deep we'll never find him."

Maggie tried a smile. "So you'll take me to the Bahamas now, Daddy?"

Despite my frustration, I had to laugh. I flicked my cigarette lighter. "Guess I'll work on the Crandall case."

Maggie went ballistic. "Donner, your best friend just got murdered. You just found out you were assassinated by a merc and your cop buddies covered it up. Someone tried to blow you up! Don't you think you should take time to, I don't know, regroup?"

"I was hired to do a job."