Wetherall and I descended from the lifthouse and crossed the flat, our shoes crunching the packed salt. The temperature must have dropped thirty degrees-it was Wetherall weather. Tonight the extra dose of nosegays made the big stink smell like the fruitcake cookies Aunt Lindsay makes for Bastille Day. A kilometer away, Pile A was a dark silhouette against the star-filled sky. The outcropping of jewels glinted at the top. One of the s.h.i.tdogs circled the base, and in the distance I saw another lumbering toward the mountains.

I still wasn't sure why I'd agreed to leave Laputa for some after-dinner jewel-viewing. Perhaps I didn't want to admit how much Nguyen's abrupt departure had dashed some obscure hopes in me. At least in the dark I didn't have to look at Wetherall looking at me.

I stopped to glance up. There were billions of stars, one for every dollar of Wetherall's hideous fortune. The Milky Way flowed like a silver river across the sky. Off in the distance, the Pile A jewel outcropping gave off minor reflections in a hundred colors. I felt small.

"It's a big universe," said Wetherall. "One time my mother and I-we were living Telluride, I must've been ten or eleven. The sky was full of stars, like tonight, and for the first time I realized-they were here a million years ago and they'll be here a million years from now."

He looked up into the night. I caught his scent as I walked beside him. He smelled like tears.

I felt sorry for him. d.a.m.n those nosegays-what I wanted to feel was irritation. I wanted to tell him, of course you're mortal, bud. What you're talking about is the human condition, not some problem only you have.

I didn't say anything. After a moment he spoke again.

"So where did the s.h.i.tdogs come from, Liz?"

"Howard at Cambridge speculates they come from a planet orbiting a star of spectral type B. He bases this on their skin color, and that third eyelid they have."

"That's a pretty elaborate structure to build on a foundation of air."

"You should know about building structures on air."

He laughed. His face was a white smear in the darkness, his eyes two shadows. He stood quite close. For some reason my heart was racing. He leaned forward, then suddenly pointed over my shoulder. "d.a.m.n media leeches! Quick, follow me."

I turned and saw jeep lights sweeping by.

Before I could say a word Wetherall dashed off toward a pile of rubble a few hundred meters away. I stayed put and watched the jeep pull up to Laputa's stairs. Murk Janglish got out and took the steps two at a time.

I went to tell Wetherall. The debris was tailings piled up at the entrance to a s.h.i.tdog tunnel. The hole gaped black as a tar pit, six meters across. I couldn't find Wetherall among the heaps of salt and rock. "Oh mogul!" I called. "Here mogul, mogul, mogul. There's a good mogul."

"Shhhhh!" he hissed. His arm appeared from behind one of the nearer piles, waving me toward him. "They'll hear you."

"Don't worry. It's only your lawyer."

"Murk? What's he doing out here at this time of night?"

"Subpoenaing snakes? How should I know?"

"Come here for a second." He was standing at the edge of the tunnel. "How deep do you suppose this thing goes?"

"You've read my reports. We've sent drones down as far as six kilometers, but there's no reason the dogs can't go deeper. For all we know they cruise the mantle."

Wetherall tossed a pebble into the pit. It was a long few seconds before it hit and rattled. "And what are the chances a s.h.i.tdog is going to pop out of this hole and eat us?"

"The s.h.i.tdogs don't inhabit these tunnels, and don't revisit them after they've dug them. The average length of a tunnel is six point three kilometers, average depth two point five. The walls are covered with excreta chemically similar to the pile excretions, which forms a mastic to reinforce the tunnel against . . .. What's so funny?"

I could see his smile in the darkness. "You are so serious about your work."

It was past time to tell him about the change in the s.h.i.tdogs' behavior. I evaded. "At least I care about something besides money."

"Money? Me? You've got the wrong idea about me, Liz. I'm just the goose that lays the golden eggs. I don't bother with what happens afterward. It's people like Murk who sit on the nest."

"Watch out-you might trip over that metaphor." I turned and started walking away.

"I didn't mean to make fun of you." He caught up to me. "Nguyen's right about us being alike, you know. When I look at you I see myself with an academic veneer. Those jewels speak to me, Liz, in a way nothing else ever has. The problem is that I don't understand them-yet. I don't expect that the jewels are going to hand me the secrets of the universe." I tried to get away from him, but he matched my stride. "I'm not even sure that once I do understand them, I'll be able to explain. But I am certain I'll be surprised."

He got in front of me, made me stop. "I like being surprised," he said. "You surprise me."

"Right," I said. "And I didn't even sign the waiver."

He shook his head. "There aren't many people as strong as you are," he said. "Two hundred and thirty-eight billion dollars is like a black hole. It can crush the life out of everything that comes near it."

Me, strong? I had some trouble catching my breath. I thought I knew what was coming next, and I wasn't sure I wanted to hear it.

"What do you think of me, Liz?"

"I don't know," I lied. "I think you're rich."

"Is that good or bad?"

A part of me wanted him to like me. And I didn't want to hurt his feelings. Then I remembered the way he'd brushed me off for some bimbo in a motel room. Maybe it was the wine, the night, his self-absorbtion, but I couldn't take it any more. "I don't understand you, Wetherall. Good or bad? I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if you would grow up and do something with your money. But what do you do? You buy a company so you can eat ice cream all day long. You hide behind avatars. You wear disguises. You play with your la.s.so. You sleep with supermodels. You hire people so that you can deal with them only on your own terms. You build a huge toy house, float it someplace as far away from human contact as you can manage, take drugs to scramble your senses so you can ignore the stink of the pile of s.h.i.t you're hovering above, and stare at the pretty jewels. Is that the best you can come up with?"

Wetherall didn't say anything. The silence stretched. Suddenly I wished he'd get mad, tear into me, tell me off for my perpetual smart mouth. He just stood there.

"Let's go back," he said. "I'm tired."

I felt as churned up as if he'd a.s.saulted me. "I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know what's gotten into me tonight."

"Too many nosegays."

"Maybe. I've said too much."

We walked in silence back to Laputa. Later, I lay awake trying to figure out why I had unloaded on him so mercilessly.

The next morning Wetherall was gone. No farewells, no nothing. His avatars called several times in the days that followed, but none of them brought up our starlight stroll in the desert. I tried to justify what I had said-he had asked me, hadn't he?-and concentrated on my work.

The pattern of the three dark s.h.i.tpiles on the white Stateline salt flats struck some obscure chord in my mind. I ran schematics of all five s.h.i.tdog sites through my computer, trying to isolate some algorithm common to all of them. Surely all this was not without some meaning.

Meantime, construction on Queen Jolly Freeze continued.

Three or four nights later, I was staring in a trance at recent pix of the Pile A jewel cl.u.s.ter when Nguyen stopped by my room. "Knock, knock," he said, standing in my doorway. He had a winebell of Pommery & Greno tucked under an arm, two gla.s.ses in hand.

"If this is a joke," I said, "go away. If not, come in and open that."

He set the gla.s.ses on my desk. Self conscious about my woolgathering, I touched a key and the image on the screen was replaced by a graph of pile growth rates at each of the five s.h.i.tdog sites. Stateline had shot well into the lead. Nguyen raised an eyebrow-he knew I still hadn't reported the change to Wetherall.

But he didn't speak of it. "Have you noticed what nosegays do to champagne?" He opened it and filled my gla.s.s halfway, finishing with an absurd flourish.

I took the gla.s.s from him.

"What does it smell like to you?" he said.

I sniffed. "Shoe polish?"

"Not unpleasant, but probably not worth sixty dollars a bell either." He shrugged. "Smell is not something many architects bother with, you know. It's hard to design for, though every building has its own peculiar odor. A castle smells different from a gra.s.s shack. Laputa smells nothing like Monticello. I have a colleague, Utrini, who installs olfactors in every room that he builds. He claims a scent palette in the thousands." Nguyen paused. "What do we smell like to them?" He gestured out the window. "The s.h.i.tdogs?"

"I don't know that they have a sense of smell," I said. "But if they do, the fact that they've created such an intense odor source and stay so close to it is suggestive."

"Maybe they think we stink?"

I touched my gla.s.s to his. "One man's champagne is another man's cod liver oil."

His grin was fleeting. "We're uncomfortable with scent," he said, "because it reminds us that we're animals. That's why we tend to repress all but a few more or less pleasant aromas. We don't like to admit how powerful smell is in our lives." He fell silent for a moment, considering. I refilled his gla.s.s. "I've spent more time thinking about smell in past few days than I have my entire life."

I wondered if he were flirting with me. "What's this all about, Nguyen?"

He gave me an odd, detached smile. "Have you considered the potential of nosegays as an aphrodisiac?"

"Now you sound like Wetherall." I felt my cheeks flush. All those bubbles in the champagne.

"You shouldn't believe everything you see on America, America. You've met the man. Did he strike you as any kind of ladykiller?"

"No," I said, "but then, we have no interest in each other."

"Ah, but that's my point exactly. For instance, I have no romantic intentions toward you, Liz. Whatsoever."

"You say the sweetest things, Nguyen."

"I'm not trying to insult you," he said. "I think you're charming and intelligent. I hope that I've earned some small measure of your friendship. But without going into grisly details, let's just say that you're not my type."

"I see. And why is it important I know this all of a sudden?"

Nguyen tugged at the cuff of his shirt. "I'm finding that nosegays stimulate my libido in a very unwelcome way."

I just stared.

"It's nothing I can't control. But every so often when I catch your scent I feel . . . eroticized. Very unprofessional, but there it is. I just wanted you to know why, the other night at dinner, I had to leave so abruptly, for example. I wouldn't want you to think I was being rude."

I knew now my cheeks were burning. "And you think this has something to do with nosegays?"

He nodded. "I'm quite sure. I take it you haven't noticed any similar reactions?"

I shook my head.

"Then you are lucky." Again he raised his eyebrow, as if I wasn't quite getting the message. "Or perhaps it is only the male of the species."

"What if I switched soaps?" I said. "Or tried some kind of perfume? Would that help?"

"No," he said wistfully. "I believe that would make it worse."

Nguyen left half a bell of champagne behind. I finished it for him without really intending to. I was dumbfounded by his confession. I turned it over and over, like a chipmunk with a long, lost acorn. Was it a come-on?

Finally I reached for the phone and punched in a call to Wisconsin. Aunt Lindsay answered. Her hair was done up in orange cornrows-a new style for her, but then she changed styles just about every other semester. "Liz!" she said. "I'm so glad you called! Send me some money."

"You may think that's a joke, Aunt Lindsay, but he's paying me enough that I could buy your house."

"You couldn't afford the waterproofing." She peered into the camera. "What's the matter, dear?"

I told her all about Wetherall, the walk on the salt flats, my fit of brutal honesty at the moment he'd expressed a liking for me. And then Nguyen's bizarre revelation. "How could Nguyen be well within the bounds of what I consider my type when I'm not even remotely close to his? I drive one man away from me in terror while the other fights manfully to master his perverse attraction to me. What's wrong with me?"

"Absolutely nothing."

"But what does Nguyen mean when he says he feels 'eroticized?' What grisly details? When he looks at me it's like my recurring nightmare where I walk into cla.s.s naked and have to teach Kardashev's system for cla.s.sifying extraterrestrials to hormone-soaked college boys."

"There is no other sort of college boy. Listen, does this Mr. O'Hara cross his legs when he's sitting near you? Does he stand with his torso canted forward at an angle of four to seven degrees?"

"I have no idea," I told her.

"How about the billionaire?"

"He seldom sits still long enough for me to a.n.a.lyze his kinesics."

"Maybe you should try. You seem confused about him."

"He's a confusing person."

"He didn't try to use that smart la.s.so on you, did he? Sometimes those rope boys don't know when to stop."

"Aunt Lindsay, please. I don't know why I got myself mixed up in this! My life was predictable. I was a respected professional in a stable environment. Now I'm on the net with madmen like Thorp, chasing lunatics like Wetherall across the salt flats, playing guessing games with egomaniacs like O'Hara. I've got a doctorate in exobiology!"

"You've always put too much store in the Ph.D., Elizabeth. That s.k.a.n.ky Dr. Matthewson from your department called here the other day, asking odd questions about the sofa in the faculty lounge. It that really the 'stable environment' you're interested in? You've been in universities long enough to recognize that ninety percent of everything is bulls.h.i.t. 'Piled higher and deeper.'"

I guess I should have known better than to seek my aunt's opinion on normal behavior. "But what should I do?"

"As long as you make sure you are getting enough anti-oxidants," Aunt Lindsay said, "you should do your best to enjoy every minute of it."

It was still dark when Nguyen woke me by pounding on my door. My head was pounding, too. "Murk wants to speak with you. He's very upset. Wetherall is missing."

"Nguyen, it's five-thirty-three in the morning."