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it pokes right back. There's a limit to how much his agents can tell him about her – European privacy laws are draconian by American standards – but he knows the essentials. Two parents who are still together, father a petty politician in some town council down in the vicinity of Toulouse. Went to the right ecole. The obligatory year spent bumming around the Confederacion at government expense, learning how other people live – a new kind of empire building, in place of the 20th century's conscription and jackboot wanderjahr. No weblog or personal site that his agents can find. She joined Arianespace right out of the Polytechnique and has been management track ever since: Korou, Manhattan Island, Paris. 'You've never been married, I take it.'

She chuckles. 'Time is too short! I am still young.' She picks up a forkful of food, and adds quietly.

'Besides, the government would insist on paying.'

'Ah.' Manfred tucks into his bowl thoughtfully. With the birth rate declining across Europe, the EC

bureaucracy is worried; the old EU started subsidizing babies, a new generation of carers, a decade ago, and it still hasn't dented the problem. All it's done is alienate the brightest women of childbearing age. Soon they'll have to look to the east for a solution, importing a new generation of citizens – unless the long-promised aging hacks prove workable, or cheap AI comes along.

'Do you have a hotel?' Annette asks suddenly.

'In Paris?' Manfred is startled: 'Not yet.'

'You must come home with me, then.' She looks at him quizzically.

'I'm not sure I – ' He catches her expression. 'What is it?'

'Oh, nothing. My friend Henri, he says I take in strays too easily. But you are not a stray. I think you can look after yourself. Besides, it is the Friday today. Come with me, and I will file your press release for the Company to read. Tell me, do you dance? You look as if you need a wild week ending, to help forget your troubles!'

* * *

Annette drives a steamroller seduction through Manfred's plans for the weekend. He intended to find a hotel, file a press release, then spend some time researching the corporate funding structure of Parents for Traditional Children and the dimensionality of confidence variation on the reputation exchanges – then head for Rome.

Instead, Annette drags him back to her apartment, a large studio flat tucked away behind an alley in the Marais. She sits him at the breakfast bar while she tidies away his luggage, then makes him close his eyes and swallow two dubious-tasting capsules. Next, she pours them each a tall glass of freezing-cold Aqvavit that tastes exactly like Polish rye bread. When they finish it, she just about rips his clothes off. Manfred is startled to discover that he has a crowbar-stiff erection; since the last blazing row with Pamela, he'd vaguely assumed he was no longer interested in sex. Instead, they end up naked on the sofa, surrounded by discarded clothing – Annette is very conservative, preferring the naked penetrative fuck of the last century to the more sophisticated fetishes of the present day.

Afterward, he's even more surprised to discover that he's still tumescent. 'The capsules?' he asks.

She sprawls a well-muscled but thin thigh across him, then reaches down to grab his penis. Squeezes it.

'Yes,' she admits. 'You need much special help to unwind, I think.' Another squeeze. 'Crystal meth and a traditional phosphodiesterase inhibitor.' He grabs one of her small breasts, feeling very brutish and primitive.

Naked. He's not sure Pamela ever let him see her fully naked: She thought skin was more sexy when it was covered.

Annette squeezes him again, and he stiffens. 'More!'

By the time they finish, he's aching, and she shows him how to use the bidet. Everything is crystal clear, and her touch is electrifying. While she showers, he sits on the toilet seat lid and rants about Turing-completeness as an attribute of company law, about cellular automata and the blind knapsack problem, about his work on solving the Communist Central Planning problem using a network of interlocking unmanned companies. About the impending market adjustment in integrity, the sinister resurrection of the recording music industry, and the still-pressing need to dismantle Mars.

When she steps out of the shower, he tells her that he loves her. She kisses him and slides his glasses and earpieces off his head so that he's really naked, sits on his lap, and fucks his brains out again, and whispers in his ear that she loves him and wants to be his manager. Then she leads him into her bedroom and tells him exactly what she wants him to wear, and she puts on her own clothes, and she gives him a mirror with some white powder on it to sniff. When she's got him dolled up they go out for a night of really serious clubbing, Annette in a tuxedo and Manfred in a blond wig, red silk off-the-shoulder gown, and high heels. Sometime in the early hours, exhausted and resting his head on her shoulder during the last tango in a BDSM club in the Rue Ste-Anne, he realizes that it really is possible to be in lust with someone other than Pamela.

* * *

Aineko wakes Manfred by repeatedly head-butting him above the left eye. He groans, and as he tries to open his eyes, he finds that his mouth tastes like a dead trout, his skin feels greasy with make-up, and his head is pounding. There's a banging noise somewhere. Aineko meows urgently. He sits up, feeling unaccustomed silk underwear rubbing against incredibly sore skin – he's fully dressed, just sprawled out on the sofa. Snores emanate from the bedroom; the banging is coming from the front door. Someone wants to come in. Shit. He rubs his head, stands up, and nearly falls flat on his face: He hasn't even taken those ridiculous high heels off. How much did I drink last night? he wonders. His glasses are on the breakfast bar; he pulls them on and is besieged by an urgent flurry of ideas demanding attention. He straightens his wig, picks up his skirts, and trips across to the door with a sinking feeling. Luckily his publicly traded reputation is strictly technical.

He unlocks the door. 'Who is it?' he asks in English. By way of reply somebody shoves the door in, hard.

Manfred falls back against the wall, winded. His glasses stop working, sidelook displays filling with multicolored static.

Two men charge in, identically dressed in jeans and leather jackets. They're wearing gloves and occlusive face masks, and one of them points a small and very menacing ID card at Manfred. A self-propelled gun hovers in the doorway, watching everything. 'Where is he?'

'Who?' gasps Manfred, breathless and terrified.

'Macx.' The other intruder steps into the living room quickly, pans around, ducks through the bathroom door. Aineko flops as limp as a dishrag in front of the sofa. The intruder checks out the bedroom: There's a brief scream, cut off short.

'I don't know – who?' Manfred is choking with fear.

The other intruder ducks out of the bedroom, waves a hand dismissively.

'We are sorry to have bothered you,' the man with the card says stiffly. He replaced it in his jacket pocket.

'If you should see Manfred Macx, tell him that the Copyright Control Association of America advises him to cease and desist from his attempt to assist music thieves and other degenerate mongrel secondhander enemies of Objectivism. Reputations only of use to those alive to own them. Goodbye.'

The two copyright gangsters disappear through the door, leaving Manfred to shake his head dizzily while his glasses reboot. It takes him a moment to register the scream from the bedroom. 'Fuck – Annette! '

She appears in the open doorway, holding a sheet around her waist, looking angry and confused. 'Annette!'

he calls. She looks around, sees him, and begins to laugh shakily. 'Annette!' He crosses over to her. 'You're okay,'

he says. 'You're okay.'

'You too.' She hugs him, and she's shaking. Then she holds him at arm's length. 'My, what a pretty picture!'

'They wanted me,' he says, and his teeth are chattering. ' Why?'

She looks up at him seriously. 'You must bathe. Then have coffee. We are not at home, oui?'