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Fairhrim, preceded by the rattle of the Franklin diffractor, reentered the room. At first she noticed only the pantaloons, and asked, “Are you going scalloping?”

Then she saw her notebook and snatched it away.

“My merkin,” gasped Osric.

“Close your fly.”

“There’s no button,” said Osric. “Avert your eyes, lest your gaze grow lustful.”

Fairhrim, superbly unbothered by the cock dangling before her—offensivelyunbothered, if Osric was honest—produced an overlarge safety pin. “Here. This is a clinic, not a pissoir.”

Osric pinned himself shut with greatdélicatesse. “There aren’t buttons on any of these pantaloons, so take a note of that in our merkin.”

Fairhrim aimed the diffractor at Osric’s chest and latched its tentacles upon his person with, it seemed to him, unnecessary force.

Her disinterest in any of the goings-on in his fly crushed Osric to a spiritual pulp. Not that he wanted Fairhrim to look at his cock, necessarily; it was just the principle of the thing. She wasn’t charmed by him; she wasn’t frightened by him; she wasn’t seduced or intrigued by or remotely curious about anything to do with him. Who did she think she was? Her utter lack of interest killed him.

He hated her.

Fairhrim snapped at him to sit up, which Osric did, insofar as pulp can sit up. She faffed about with various silver instruments against the projected figure on the wall, measuring seith channels, intact and rotted, against her bright markers. Once again, she pulled out an irascible, twitching chart (Pt: U. Ganglion), which calmed down as she recorded her measurements. And once again, she ran a finger down Osric’s appendages (barring the most interesting one) and noted where his numbness began and ceased.

Her brows drawn into a frown, Fairhrim studied the documents before her. She turned off the diffractor, wiped the tentacles with a fresh dose of hlutoform, reattached them, and turned the machine back on. Her silver instruments came in for an encore of their clicking, snapping dance across the projected figure. Fairhrim passed her finger down Osric again, asking if he was quite certain that the numbness stopped just there, and not farther.

“Yes,” said Osric. “Why?”

“Mind you,” said Fairhrim to herself, “it’s hardly been a fortnight since our last measurements.”

“What’s the matter?”

“And we’re still well within normal parameters—though not withinyournormal parameters.”

“What parameters? What is it?”

Fairhrim, absorbed in the numbers before her, said nothing. She flew back to the diffractor, tapped at gauges, muttered that it was all in order,and yet…She returned to her notes, disarrayed, unquiet; her calmness was fragile. She pressed fingertips to her lips. Her eyes ran over and over the columns again and again.

Hope, unchecked, swelled in Osric’s breast. “Fairhrim, what is it?”

Once again, Osric measured time by doomed heartbeats until Fairhrim parted her lips. Her gaze, vivid with curiosity, met his. She took a breath. A hundred years passed. He waited, utterly at her mercy. He wished to kneel. He wished to gather her skirts into his fists and prostrate himself at her feet. Please, please, please.

“Your degeneration has, however briefly, slowed,” said Fairhrim. “At least, as measured with these instruments. I hesitate to saystopped, of course—though, technically, that would be correct. Come here—let me show you.”

She divested Osric of the diffractor’s sticky tentacles and waved him towards the worktop; he leaned over her shoulder; she ran through the numbers and gave explanations; she smelled of hlutoform and soap; the hope beat wild and thunderous in his chest; she told him to withhold celebrating, as there were many other factors to be accounted for; the numbers and columns swam into one another; she made intelligent observations; he listened and took in strictly none of it, because he was back on the silver sea, enraptured by the woman with the star-bright eyes, the only one who could heal him, the one who was saving his life.

“You and your brains,” he breathed. “You and all your pretty edges. You’re doing it.”

“I’ve just told you, there could be any number of explanations—”

“But this is good?”

“Yes. It’s also medically impossible. But it’s good.”

Again Osric was breathless and full hearted and swelling withadmiration. Fairhrim’s bare hand, chapped and dry, lay on the table next to his gloved one.

He brought it to his lips.

Fairhrim was startled, for once, into a gasp.

Osric pressed a gallant kiss into the back of her hand. He should have stopped there, but, like a besotted fool, he kissed smaller, revering ones across her knuckles.