"I know. I heard them."
"He's good at the analytical ones. The personal ones—"
"He answers them accurately," Tav said. "He just needs more time with them." "Yes." A pause. "He needed more time with the question about what Elias was like."
Tav held the look.
"Yes," he said. "That one required some care."
Alistair looked up from the sketchbook. Not with the drawing look — with the real one.
"Thank you," he said. "For—" "For how you were with him. The other day."
"He asked me a direct question," Tav said. "I answered it."
"You answered it the right way." He held the look. "Not everyone would have."
Tav thought about the question. Lucien had asked: what was it like, from the outside, watching it develop? Watching us. He'd been asking about the monitoring data, about what the surveillance had seen. He'd wanted to know what it looked like from outside — the thing he'd built his archive around, the attachment that was at the center of everything.
Tav had thought about it carefully and then answered accurately.
He had said it looked like two people choosing each other. Not being placed in proximity and developing attachment. Choosing. The choosing was visible in the data. Whatever the Protocol was designed to produce, what it produced in this case was two people making a decision.
Lucien had been quiet for a long time.
Then he'd said: that's what Elias had said. That it was a choice, not a consequence. That the Protocol gave them proximity and they chose everything else.
Tav had held this.
Then he'd said: he was right.
"It was accurate," Tav said.
"Yes," Alistair said. "That's why it was the right way." He returned to the sketchbook. "The rain is going to continue. The sofa is comfortable. The testimony documents are available for further review."
He looked up briefly. "Or you could just sit."
Tav watched him.
"Just sit," Alistair repeated. "Without the documents. Without assessing the testimony. Just — be in the room."
Tav watched the document.
He put it on the arm of the sofa.
He was in the room.
The rain on the windows. The fire. The drawing. a place that was, for this brief period, genuinely home.
"Better," Alistair said.
"Yes," Tav said.
• • •
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
— LUCIEN — On the seventh morning, they received the signal.
