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too much into shock.
    â€œThat was a dirty trick,” Miranda said to me.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I said. “Look at her. What are her chances of getting a decent client list on her own?”
    â€œNot to her,” Miranda said. “To me. Now I’m going to have to add babysitting to my list of things to do.”
    â€œShe’ll be fine,” I said. “And anyway, I thought you liked her.”
    â€œI do like her,” Miranda said. “And she will be fine. Eventually.” She put her face closer to mine. “But in the short term, I might as well be a crossing guard, for all the hand-holding I’m going to do. Now, I’m off to get your water bottle.” She walked out of the office.
    I was going to have to get her a raise very soon.
    Â 
    I knocked on the conference room door. It was unoccupied. I entered the conference room with the water bottle and the dolly, closed the door, and locked it behind me.

    â€œYou have got to be kidding,” Joshua said.
    Joshua had slipped back into the aquarium, which stayed in the conference room after our meeting was done. My job had been to find an unobtrusive way to get him from the conference room to my place. Carl wouldn’t tell me how he had gotten Joshua into the building unnoticed, and he wasn’t giving me any tips on how to get him out. Think of it as your first challenge, he said. Were I palming off the first known extraterrestrial on a subordinate to take care of, I think I’d be a little more concerned.
    â€œWe give you three hours to come up with something, and this is the best you can do,” Joshua said. “I’m not scared yet, but I’m getting there.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. “I had to improvise.” I wheeled the bottle over and sat it next to the tank. I had figured that a five-gallon water bottle would be big enough to fit Joshua in. Now I wasn’t so sure.
    Neither was he. He extended a tendril out of the aquarium and sent it down into the bottle and waved it around, as if to check it for roominess. “How long will it take to get to your place?” he said.
    â€œProbably an hour, maybe more,” I said. “I live in La Canada. The 405 will be jammed up, but once we get over to the 210, it should be pretty quick. Is it going to be a problem?”
    â€œNot at all,” Joshua said. “Who doesn’t enjoy being crammed into a five-gallon plastic bottle for an hour?”
    â€œYou don’t have to stay in the bottle once we get to the car,” I said. “Once we’re out of here, you can spread out.” This wrinkle in the plan was as new to me as it was to him. I had assumed he’d stay in the bottle the whole trip. But my car upholstery was a small price to pay for interplanetary peace. I’d
just have to remember to get one of those little pine tree air fresheners.
    â€œThanks, but no thanks,” Joshua said. “The conversation where you try to explain to a highway patrolman why you have forty pounds of gelatin in your passenger seat is one I think we’d both rather avoid.”
    I laughed. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sort of amazed you know what a highway patrolman is.”
    â€œWhy?” Joshua said. “You’ve been beaming CHiPs into space for decades.” He wiggled his tendril again, and then sighed. He must have picked that up purely as a sonic affectation because he had no lungs from which to exhale. “All right, here I go,” he said, and started putting himself into the bottle.
    He came dangerously close to filling up the bottle. In the last few seconds, a thought popped into my skull: I’m going to need another bottle. It didn’t occur to me to question the logic of that thought. He was gelatinous, he should be able to divide up. It became academic when he topped out about three millimeters from the top of the mouth of the