Vincent had caught a glimpse of Burnofsky then, through the waiter’s eye, as the brilliant drunk and addict—and God knew what else—slid into one of the many alcoves, there to await the pipe.

It had been fascinating to Vincent. Burnofsky was a genius. Not the sort of man one thought of wasting hours in drug-induced fever dreams. And inevitably perhaps Vincent wondered whether the drug could give him what he had never experienced: pleasure.

Vincent had come no closer to Burnofsky then. And he had very nearly lost his biot when the waiter decided on a sudden trip to Mexico with some friends.

The disadvantage of the biot: unlike the nanobot, the biot had to be retrieved.

Vincent paid for the organic Thai rub and the green chilis he’d picked up. A few spicy things, not so that he would enjoy the food he made, but so that he could at least acknowledge it.

Something.

He’d been twelve when he was diagnosed with the anhedonia. Anhedonia commonly had a psychiatric cause, usually drugs. So they thought then, anyway, and so his mortified parents had assumed. Little Michael using so many drugs he’d lost the capacity for pleasure, oh my God, what have we done to cause this?

It was a long two years of virtual house arrest before they got around to taking a look at possible physical causes. Then they found the lesions on his nucleus accumbens as well as the inadequate production of dopamine.

Vincent stepped out of the direct neon and fluorescent glare and into the cold night, holding his little plastic bag. He had happened across the shop while trailing Burnofsky many months ago. He’d continued to shop here; it was a very well-appointed store. But he had also become fascinated by the China Bone, by what it represented: a need for pleasure so terrible it drove people to self-destruction.

His actual mission was at a hotel bar just a block away. That’s where he would find the woman.

Anya Violet. Not her birth name. She had been born Anya Ulyanov. Russian. When her father had moved the family from Samara to New York, he’d changed the surname to something a wee bit less … problematic. Ulyanov had been the original surname of Lenin. A lot of weight to carry around, that name. So. Bye-bye Ulyanov, hello Violet, which at first had been pronounced Wee-o-lett. Now Violet. Like violent without the “n.”

Anya’s mother had always liked the flowers. Violets.

Dr. Anya Violet, current employment in a secret section of McLure Industries. Even her friends and family didn’t know that her work was with biots. Vincent did only because BZRK had long had full access to McLure’s secure computers.

Who the hell was Lear that he’d been able to get such total support from Grey McLure? And how many times had Vincent asked himself that question? And how many times had he stopped himself from pursuing it, because while Lear might be anyone and had become a nearly mythical creature, Caligula was very real, and Vincent had a definite impression that if he ever did penetrate Lear’s secret, Caligula would stab, shoot, garrote, drown, or otherwise end Vincent’s life.

That was Caligula’s … contribution … to the cause.

Vincent thought of the note he had appended to his report. “I am not Scipio.”

Scipio was the Roman general who had finally destroyed Carthage.

Would Lear accept this push back? Would he or she allow Vincent to refuse Carthage commands in the future? Or would Lear know that in the end Vincent would do what Lear needed him to do?

Tonight would be the third time Vincent accidentally ran into Anya at this bar. Anya lived nearby. Vincent didn’t, but he had an apartment a block away that looked exactly as if he lived in it. In case.

The hotel was not fashionable. It was dark and smelled like soy sauce and peanut oil. The bar was even darker, but it smelled of beer and fried wontons. There were just four small tables and an equal number of stools at the bar, and no one was there but Anya.

Vincent saw her before she saw him. He noted with quiet satisfaction that she had dressed for the occasion. This was their first planned meeting. Well, the first that Anya knew to be planned. A date. Previously she’d worn the comfortable work-casual clothing she wore in her lab. Previously she’d come here for her after-shift drink precisely because there was zero chance of being hit on and she could just have a fruity drink or two and chill, relax, mellow, slough off the brain-draining activity that defined her work.

That had changed when she met Vincent. For one thing Vincent was an attractive younger man. Anya was ten years older than Vincent. Anya was lovely. Tall, with near-perfect legs and just a little poochy-pooch at her waist that hardly anyone would notice, and her skin still looked very good, and so did her reddish-brown—do they call that auburn?—hair.

A good face. A face with character, which in this case meant that she had the echo of eastern invasions from the steppes.

And Vincent. Ah, once he confessed to the whole anhedonia thing there wasn’t a woman worth her tight skirt and her generous display of cleavage and the expensive scent steaming from her neck who wasn’t interested.

Unable to experience pleasure.

We’ll see about that.

That’s what they thought. And he would find a way to explain that he still knew how to give pleasure. That was game, set, and match, as one might say if one were talking about tennis.

Anya’s working theory was that Vincent had probably dated nothing but bimbos his own age or younger. All very pretty, no doubt, but what did a girl that age really know?

“Vincent!” Anya said, lighting up, swiveling on her stool so that he would catch just a bit more inner thigh than was strictly necessary. Kiss kiss, cheek cheek, all very New York. But Vincent slid back just a bit slower than he might and let his cheek linger a little too long, and yeah, she responded.