“I mean…” Patricia looked unbearably sad for a second, then she pushed ahead. “I guess I wound up playing a much bigger trick on you than just tricking you into giving up your ring, didn’t I? Even if I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. I became your lover and part of your life, and then I … well, you know what I did. And the antigravity machine that sent Priya away, the one that this ring was offered to save her from, became part of the doomsday machine that I wrecked. So I don’t need it anymore, because I wound up building a much bigger wheel around the smaller wheel. And I guess, in a way, this ring is tainted for me.”
She offered the ring again. Laurence still didn’t take it. “It wasn’t a doomsday machine,” he said.
“It wasn’t? Then what was it?”
“It’s a long story. Listen, I can’t be around people right now. It’s nothing personal.” He made a move to close the door, but her outstretched hand and his family heirloom were in the way.
“Why not? Are you having a weird feeling? Like that you’re coated with garbage that makes your skin crawl and you can’t recognize other people as belonging to the same species?”
“No. No! Why would you ask something like that?”
“Oh, uh. Nothing. It’s just, lately, whenever I hear someone say they can’t be around people, I start to worry that … it doesn’t matter.”
“It’s just that all my friends are on Seadonia, and I’m here on my own. And I’m still pretty broken up about what you did in Denver.”
“What are they all doing in Seadonia?”
“Mostly? Figuring out ways to kill you and your friends. Probably using ultrasonics, or some kind of antigravity beam, similar to what happened to Priya only more directional and portable. That’s my guess, anyway.”
“Oh. Thanks. That was easy.”
“What was easy?”
“They asked me to come here and see if I could find out what was going on at Seadonia. They figured you would know.”
“And you got it out of me.”
“Yep.”
“Because you’re so good at being a ‘Trickster.’”
Patricia looked down. She seemed less tough than she had a few minutes earlier. Then she looked up and it was Laurence who had a hard time looking at her. He remembered all of a sudden how she had described the Pathway to Infinity as a “doomsday machine.”
Neither of them could face the other without shame. Laurence had a feeling most adults he knew had gotten used to this feeling of mutual abashment. But it was new to him.
“But actually,” Patricia said, “I’m glad we got that stuff out of the way. About Seadonia. Because that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No. It was what they wanted me to talk to you about. But it wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“So what did you want to talk to me about?”
“I don’t know.” She just stood there and he could hear both their breathing and someone running, a few streets away. “I don’t know. Nothing. Nothing, I guess.” She pushed the black box at him. “So do you want your ring back or not?”
“I can’t, I just can’t. I can’t take anything from you, even if it used to belong to me.”
She put the ring back in her pocket. She looked more beautiful than ever. His heart was in tatters. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what? What do you think you have to be sorry for?”
“Ernesto says I betrayed my lover—meaning you—and I have to come to terms with that. Even if you were building a doomsday machine, it doesn’t change that fact.”
“It wasn’t a doomsday machine,” Laurence said again.
He looked at the Caddy nestled in her hand and forearm, providing meager illumination to the dark world as it woke up. The Caddy was purring, probably syncing with the one in Laurence’s bedroom, and checking for real-time updates from the nearest server. How much of Peregrine was in the Caddies and how much was in some secure facilities hidden around the world where the Caddies drew their updates from? Why had Peregrine warned him obliquely that Patricia was on her way? With not enough time to make a break for it, but enough time to freak out?
They just stood there, neither of them talking at all, until the streetlights came back on. The sudden lurch from pitch darkness to yellow brightness felt like the sun had popped up all at once—except the light was weaker and there was no warmth. They were both jolted out of their mutual reverie.
“Okay,” Patricia said. “Take care of yourself. Hard times are coming. Harder times, I mean. I’ll see you around.”
“No,” Laurence said. “You won’t.”