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Lynch.”
    Cole wasn’t surprised. Johnny usually worked on business in late afternoon and early evening, rising while the sun was still up so he could make phone calls before the omnis’ working day ended.
    Mina and Nell sat down again. Cole lowered himself onto the broad arm of one of the overstuffed chairs.
    “It is good to see you, Cole,” Nell said. “How have you been?”
    “Good.” Cole liked Nell; she was frank and matter-of-fact. The only thing she seemed to change about herself over the years was the style of her glasses. He remembered the thick horn-rims, which had given way to big buglike plastic frames, which turned to wire rims, and which now seemed to be a sort of tortoiseshell.
    “Traveled out of the country?” Mina asked.
    “Not lately. I was in Toronto back in the midnineties, but that’s about it.” Cole turned to ask Sandor how Gordon had come about, how the change had happened, but Mina continued.
    “Toronto’s beautiful in the summer. I’m assuming you went in summer—as I recall, you don’t like snow.”
    “Not much, no. You’re right—I left when it started getting cold.” He waited a moment, but she seemed to have finished that line of conversation and he turned back to Sandor. “So, how did it happen?”
    “How did what—oh. That.”
    “Yes, that.”
    Sandor shook his head. “It was most regrettable.”
    “But what happened?”
    “Ah.” Sandor looked embarrassed. “Well, you know. Long story.”
    “I’d like to hear,” Cole told him, although he knew he’d have to keep reining Sandor in and calling him back to the subject in order to get the story out. Sandor loved to talk.
    “Well,” he began, “I was in Missouri, of all places. It should have been nothing out of the ordinary. I was at one of the colleges, you know.”
    “So what went wrong?” Cole asked. He preferred college campuses himself. They had well-fed students wandering around at all hours and populations that changed constantly. “Were you in the dorms?”
    “No, no, nothing like that. I was just getting settled in. I had checked into one of those cut-rate hotels—you know, the places where the relatives come to stay for football games and such. Look at you, so serious, trying to see where I made my mistake. But I tell you, it was just bad luck.”
    “You had checked in…,” Cole prodded.
    “Yes. I put my bag in the room, and then I walked toa bar across the street from the college. It was a sad day when they raised the drinking age, my friend. There was a time when a bar near a campus was full of drunken kids. Now, half of them drop out or graduate before they have even a chance to get shit faced in a public place.” Sandor shook his head, sorry for the unwillingly sober teenagers of America.
    “Go on.”
    “But you know me. Charming fellow that I am, I managed to get enough to hold me for a night or two. So I was feeling good and had time on my hands, and since it was early, I thought I would look around and see how the campus was laid out.”
    Cole nodded. Again, this was what he would have done.
    “The hotel was across a small park from the main campus. The usual sort of thing—a playground, a creek, trees. And on the other side of the park, the college. It was a good night to be outside—sometimes I don’t understand why the omnis don’t roam at night. They always hurry like little insects from their cars to the store to the bar to the apartment, little bugs scurrying for shelter. Don’t they ever take time to look up at the stars, to wonder?”
    “They’re afraid, Sandor. Go on with your story.”
    “Ah, yes. I went into the park, and there was a path that led down to the creek, to a small bridge that crossed it. And from there, up to the parking lot by the dorms and the English building and so on. I walked around the campus and looked at the place. They had very nice fountains. One by the architecture building was especially nice; it looked like a pyramid with