“I guess I wouldn’t know.”

It’s been a long time since our first conversation, when I hinted I wasn’t really from the Rurals. He gave me fruit then, too, but I hadn’t hesitated to eat it. I have no reason not to trust him, but panic washes from my head down just the same. My heart and skin are reacting like he’s Adra, like I’m in danger. I picture that little piece of Nelline’s ghost in my chest, roughing up my ribs because I’m talking to the enemy.

    He looks sideways quickly, twice. Most of us wear cuffs or carry fobs, but Bosch has one of the few ocular ports. They say it allows all of your messages and news and research to come up instantly on the side of your vision. Messages are cleared by looking left, and notifications are shut down by closing your eyes for five seconds. They also say the first wave was an utter failure, that you have to use eyedrops every four hours or you’ll want to rip the whole thing out…but probably not to his face.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, like it’s not his garden.

“Meeting you, of course.”

“You…you left the note?”

“Well, not me personally. But yes, I had it left.”

His face is lined in that soft and perpetual smile that makes him look like a puppy even though he’s the smartest man in the city. So different from Adra, but not different enough for this to feel like anything but talking to a ghost. It’s too much. I look away from him and for the first time notice we are the only ones in the garden.

“Where is everyone?”

“In other parts of the park. The paths leading to this area were redirected due to maintenance,” he says.

“Maintenance?”

“Maintenance…” He waves his hand, as if to remove the meaning of the word, so much an emperor there is no excuse for me not having seen it before. “It’s almost always code for something else, you know.”

I nod like I understand, even though I don’t. I’m out of my depth. I hold up the apple. “I prefer the red.”

“I had to guess. You didn’t leave enough skin for the cameras to pick it up. I figured I’d bring you a new one before you attempted to swallow the core.”

“I like to finish what I start,” I say.

    “Do you?”

From anyone else it would be some kind of sexual innuendo and I’d be disappointed in Adam but not surprised. But his tone is charmless and menacing, and it penetrates the dreamlike encounter. I remember all at once who he is, who I am, and that I’m not behaving like someone who doesn’t know he’s the son of Nik Senior.

I move slightly away from him. “Why did you summon me here?”

“Summon?” he says.

Fuck. Summon is what emperors do. I should have said invite. I’m blending him with Adra again.

He’s staring at the bench, at the new space I’ve put between us. “Don’t be afraid of me.”

Easier said, and all that.

“Why am I here?”

“I wanted to make sure you weren’t her,” he says. “Two of you came back.”

“But you said, ‘I know what happened on 175.’ What did you mean?”

He doesn’t speak, but I can wait him out. I begin on my second apple. The first taste is always too much. He must be decades out of Ashtown to think anyone from there would prefer the green. Sourness isn’t a novelty back home; it’s in all the fruit we grow, the price we pay for our little bit of sweet. This apple just tastes like Ashtown’s best efforts. But it’s still free food, and I’m still me, so I keep eating.

“Do you know I’m the only one who sits here? This bench is always unused.”

This is not an answer to my question, but I play along.

“Really? But it’s the only one in the shade.”

“For that to have value you’d have to know the sun can be dangerous. No one here does.”

“…But you do?”

He takes time answering. I see him swallow twice before he finally nods. His confirmation puts me on edge. I am no one, nothing, why tell me this? Nelline’s ghost is screaming in my chest and the sour in my mouth is nesting like a rock in my stomach.

    “I suspect you learned my name on Earth 175, but I’ll ask you not to say it.”

“I’m not going to blackmail you.”

He smiles. “But you thought about it.”

“Only for, maybe, a second.”

He laughs loud and clear. “God, you remind me of home. I look forward to working with you more closely.”

“This is about a promotion?”

It can’t be, not really. He would have just come to my office, or had me come up to his. He didn’t need to leave a cryptic note, or empty out a public garden, if this is just about a job.

He tilts his head. There is a famous picture from over a decade ago—it originally ran on the front of a news projection but now a version of it is blown up in the lobby of Eldridge—of a twentysomething Adam Bosch at the moment they figured out the frequency to send an animal to another world. The picture was taken right before the sequence was discovered, and it captured the genius at work just before his breakthrough. He is giving me the same look now that he gave the problem of worlds.

“This area of 175 is going through a leadership transition, and it wasn’t before you got there.” He turns, stretching his arm along the back of the bench but not touching me.

“Does that matter?”

“It does.” His smile, at last, has wavered. “I summoned you here because you killed me.”

* * *

ALL THE WORDS I could say crowd at the front of my mouth until only the smallest can squeeze through.

“No. Yes. What? You…yes.”

    His next laugh is loud enough to echo off his house. He laughs like Nik Nik, utterly unconcerned about disturbing others. I’d envisioned many reactions to him finding out I killed Adra, but glee was not on my list.

“Jean’s always said you weren’t the killing kind, but he doesn’t know Ashtown stock like I do. Your bonus will be on your next check, but I was hoping you’d be interested in more work like that.”

“I’m not Ash stock,” I say, but then the rest catches up with me. “Bonus?”

“Yes, the bonus.”

“My bonus…for killing you.”

Things are connecting too slowly, and I keep looking at him, waiting for the world to coalesce into something that makes sense.

“It’s more than generous. We would have gotten to him eventually, but 175 was always so paranoid. You’ve saved me a lot of hassle.”

Why hasn’t everyone else figured out how to traverse? Or have they?

No…they haven’t.

Why not?

Nelline would have gotten it right off, but it’s taken me this long. What better way to stop an invention from being made again than by killing every version of the man who invented it? Even if that man is yourself?

The sour taste in my mouth now is all bile and no apple. I let the fruit slide from my hand and roll into the grass.

“Do you feel it? When they die, do you feel it in your chest?”

His mouth opens, then closes. “Of course not,” he says, but he has to look away first.

“How many of you are left?”

“About two dozen.”

Three times what I have.

He’s uncomfortable with my responses, obviously not in line with what he remembers from “Ashtown stock.” I’ve played this meeting badly, but he’s played it worse.

    “You don’t need to decide right away,” he says. “Think it over.”

I stand up too quickly. It looks like I’m running away…because I am.

“I’ve got a meeting with Jean.” This is true. Jean just doesn’t know it yet.

“Wait,” he says, and I have to.

He stands and I try to look impatient, not disgusted or terrified.

“Take care. I pay close attention to those who carry my secrets.”

It’s not a threat, but it is. I should never have come here. There’s no record of this meeting except the paper. I could disappear right now. I was safer when he thought I was just opportunistic and conscienceless. If he knows I’m horrified I become a liability, because people with morals do illogical things. I need to be Ashtown in his eyes.

When I open my mouth, it feels like Nelline is speaking.

“You get me that bonus, and I’ll be quiet as the river.”

He smiles wider now, because geniuses like it when things make sense, I guess.

“I’ll personally make sure it’s on your next check.”

“Appreciate it,” I say, all teeth, making a polite threat of my own.