* * *
—
At the reception that night, someone tapped her shoulder, and when she turned around it was Aretta, her publicist from the Atlantic Republic.
“Aretta!” she said. “What are you doing in Paris?”
“I’m off work,” Aretta said, “but one of my best friends works for your French publisher and she got us tickets for the reception, so I thought I’d say hi.”
“It’s good to see you here,” Olive said, and meant it, but someone was pulling her away to speak to a group of sponsors and booksellers, so for a while afterward Olive stood in a circle of people who wanted to know when her next book was coming out and whether she was enjoying France and where her family was.
“You must have a very kind husband,” a woman said, “to look after your daughter while you do this.”
“What do you mean?” Olive asked, but of course she knew what the woman meant.
“Well, he’s looking after your daughter, while you do this,” the woman said.
“Forgive me,” Olive said, “I fear there’s a problem with my translator bot. I thought you said he was kind to care for his own child.” As she turned away, she realized that she was grinding her teeth. She looked for Aretta but couldn’t find her.
* * *
—
The next four hotel rooms were beige, blue, beige again, then mostly white, but all four had silk flowers in a vase on the desk.
* * *
—
“What’s it like?” the interviewer asked. It was difficult to stop thinking about the woman in Paris, but Olive was trying. Keep moving. Olive and the interviewer were onstage in Tallinn. The lights were very hot.
“What do you mean?” It was a strange opening question.
“What’s it like writing such a successful book? What’s it like being Olive Llewellyn?”
“Oh. It’s surreal, actually. I wrote three books that no one noticed, no distribution beyond the moon colonies, and then… it’s like slipping into a parallel universe,” Olive said. “When I published Marienbad, I somehow fell into a bizarre upside-down world where people actually read my work. It’s extraordinary. I hope I never get used to it.”
* * *
—
The driver who took Olive to her hotel that night had a beautiful voice and sang an old jazz song as he drove. Olive opened the hovercraft window and closed her eyes in order to live more completely in the music, cool air in her face, and for several minutes she was perfectly happy.
* * *
—
“It’s amazing how time slows when I’m traveling,” Olive said, on the phone to Dion. She was lying on her back on the floor of another hotel room, staring up at the ceiling. The bed would have been more comfortable, but her back hurt and the hard floor was helping. “I feel like I’ve been on the road for six months. I’m not sure how it’s still November.”
“It’s been three weeks.”
“Like I said.”
There was silence on the line.
“Look,” Olive said, “the thing is, it’s possible to be grateful for extraordinary circumstances and simultaneously long to be with the people you love.”
She felt a softening between them before he spoke. “I know, love,” Dion said gently. “We miss you too.”
“I’ve been thinking about your project,” she said. “Why a university would need an underground passageway to police headquarters and—”
But Dion’s device was ringing. “I’m sorry,” he said, “it’s my boss. Talk soon?”
“Talk soon.”
* * *
—
She’d been on an airship crossing the Atlantic when the answer to the puzzle came to her.
Research teams had been working on time travel for decades, both on Earth and in the colonies. In that context, a university for the study of physics, with an underground passageway to the police headquarters and countless literal back doors into government, made perfect sense. What is time travel if not a security problem?
* * *
—
She kept searching for the song the driver in Tallinn had been singing, but she couldn’t find it. The lyrics evaded her. She kept entering search terms into her device （love + rain + death + money + lyrics + song） and getting nowhere.
* * *
—
In Lyon, at a festival dedicated to mystery fiction, Olive’s French publicist brought her to a media room where the interviewer, a woman who worked for a magazine, was programming an array of hologram cameras. “Olive,” the interviewer said, “I love your work.”