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beers, mix martinis. The jobs are easy to find.” He shrugged. As though all my training, all my field experience in Company work meant nothing.
    I steadied my voice. I was caught between rage and knowing that if I throttled Howell I’d be back in the cell. Slowly, unbound now, I got off the bed. Howell steadied me. I felt woozy from the drugs, from inactivity. “I cannot put this more plainly. I am going to find my wife. My child.”
    “You are going to follow orders, or you will regret it, Mr. Capra.”
    “You can’t keep me—”
    “If you break parole you will be back in prison, facing charges ranging from money laundering to treason. Any proof of your innocence will be eliminated and you will be prosecuted.” It was a nasty bit of leverage. Anger colored his voice and I shut up so I could hear the deal.
    The rest of my life hinged on what he offered.
    “You hunker down, you don’t let yourself get bored, and you don’t go to the press, you don’t go to your friends in the Company—not that you have any left. Not everyone knows that your name has been cleared. You let us look for Lucy and you don’t get in our way.”
    “So what am I now? Worthless?”
    For the first time I saw in that horrible flinch in his eyes what I had never seen in the past months: pity. “How are you worth anything to us, Sam? You either knew she was a traitor, and did nothing, which makes you pure evil inthe Company’s eyes; or you didn’t know she was a traitor. And that makes you a pure fool.”
    I looked at him and then I looked at the spotless tile floor. We were back to his original question to me. After all my pain.
    “You’ll recuperate here, gain your strength before we send you out into the world. You lost a bit too much weight,” Howell said. “Let’s go see what clothes we have to fit you. Then I’ll take you downstairs.” He got up and opened the cold beer for me. He handed me the icy bottle. “We’ve made all your favorites. Spicy corn soup, salad with blue cheese, roast beef with horseradish, mashed potatoes, asparagus, key lime pie, coffee. Doesn’t that dinner sound good?”
    My mouth watered, to my shame. I hoped the food would taste like ashes. “It sounds like a last supper.”
    Now Howell risked another very slight smile. “Just do as we ask.”
    “And forgive the months you made me suffer?”
    “Let’s all just pretend it didn’t happen.”
    “It didn’t
happen
? God.”
    They needed me out in the world. Why?
    “There are clothes for you in the closet. I’ll ask the nurse to get you all disconnected, if you like, and I’ll let you get dressed.”
    I started to pull off the medical sensor glued to my chest.
    “I do have one question for you, Sam,” he said.
    I left the sensors alone. “What?”
    “
Novem Soles
.” He said the words so softly I wasn’t sure I heard.
    “What?”
    “Have you heard that term before?”
    “
Novem Soles
? Sounds Latin.
Novem
is ‘nine,’ what is
Soles
?”
    “Suns. Nine suns. Did Lucy ever use those words with you, ever mention them?”
    This wasn’t a casual question. I stopped and I considered. He watched me. “No. What does it mean?” It sounded silly. But the Company gave computer-selected codes to every job, operation, or project, and this sounded like one of those code names. Nine suns? It meant nothing to me.
    He studied me, and I wondered if the sensors on my chest were being monitored to see if I was lying. Howell smiled. “It means let’s go eat that good dinner.”
    He went to the door and the nurse came in. She removed the catheter and the sensors and put the IV on a trolley. She helped me into a robe. I was weak and now starving, and I shuddered at the thought of accepting these bastards’ kindnesses. Food on a plate. Edible food, not the slop they’d given me. I’d eat it. I needed my strength.
    I stood up from the bed. Howell offered a steadying arm and I shook it away. Fine, I would take their food and their clothes and their