“I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” whispered the traveler, Elias. He looked out over a great, ruddy hydrocarbon sea from the safety of a water iceberg.

Sunrise was the highlight of the rotational period of planet Baskerville. He had watched in fascination as the dawn temperature spike evaporated lakes of liquid air into wispy clouds of breathable atmosphere. The temperature had risen into the habitable range, permitting him to remove his space helmet for a few hours to savor the perfume of slowly evaporating aromatics. The perfectly clear water icebergs, remnants of the planet’s long-ago formation in this solar system’s Kuiper belt, refracted rays of strange colors back and forth across the slowly churning landscape.

Elias looked down at his wrist-mounted, touch-screen computer. There had been a transmission received by his ship during the time that he had been observing the landscape. He checked the local time and then looked into the sky. The orbital phase of the rocky moon Adelmo suggested a greater than usual tidal force today. The evaporation of hydrocarbons would be accelerating into naphtha storms that filled the air with a thick haze of gasoline fog. He would soon be forced to return to his starship and retreat back into space.

There was no point in waiting around. He returned to the silver, saucer-shaped transport and activated the gravity-wave engine for the ascent back into Baskerville orbit.

The communication contained a video message and a digital passport for the planet Steinem at some 200 light years distance. He worked out the transit times. Three hours to orbit. Three days to reach the spaceport on planet Baudolino. Two weeks on an FTL space carrier to reach Steinem and two weeks back. According to his shipboard records, the planet Steinem was unique for having developed a cloning civilization that was 99.99% female and 99.98% homosexual – obviously a result of the lingering old-Earth social tensions that had plagued the early years of the second planetary colonization wave.

If the message was important enough, Elias decided that the trip was worth it. He initiated playback on the message. It was narrated by middle-aged woman wearing a conservative, charcoal-black dress and pearls.

“Greetings, Professor Sevateem. My name is Linda Pérez-Reverte, President of the Planetary Republic of Steinem. I am sending this message because a situation of the utmost gravity has arisen on my planet, a situation that we are convinced that only you, the most eminent scholar of memetics of our generation, can possibly unravel. We have pre-arranged for your full passage to Steinem and return to Baudolino at our expense. Please help us.”

Elias admired the shimmering white cleanliness of the Steinem spaceport as he finally disembarked from his FTL transport. He looked out through the great spaceport windows over Capital City and the bright blue sky.

Rolling out from the spaceport was an expanse of the grain farmland of the northern prairie of the West Continent. A wide, blue river snaked across the scene a dozen kilometers away. Beyond the river stood the satellite city centers and suburb housing of the metropolitan zone; Elias could even pick out the arches of the famous Museum of Women’s Arts there. Finally, the skyscrapers of the planetary capital glittered at the center of the display like precious stones.

Turning inward, Elias found himself admiring the wide array of women, young and old, stunningly beautiful and perfectly normal, who populated this exquisitely Earth-like planet. The genetic diversity on display was absolutely amazing for such a cloning-dependent civilization. He noted with interest that practically every woman above the rank of menial laborer wore a dress or skirt in public. Was this a class status symbol of some kind, or did Steinem women attach a particular value to nice legs?

At the spaceport exit, he was met by a young woman wearing a tasteful, blue suit-dress and cap who carried a sign with his name on it. After a brief word, he followed her to a nearby limousine and she pulled off from the curb into traffic. Twenty minutes into the drive, he caught the driver eyeing him in the rear view mirror.

“I’m from Planet Baudolino, Italian settlement from the late second colonization wave.”

“Begging your pardon, Sir, but is that what men wear on your planet, Sir?”

“This is just an ordinary suit and tie.”

The driver seemed to reflect for a moment.

“I like it, if you don’t mind me saying, sir. Can’t say why. I just like it.”

“The FTL news before my departure mentioned a vote on the subject.”

“Yes, Sir. Opposition party won the vote on the sumptuary law six weeks ago. No confidence forced an election. The look on the president’s face was priceless.”

“Tell me, who is the leader of the Opposition?”

“Senator Verhoeven. She’s a crafty one. She’ll be our next president, too. Just wait and see.”

“Thank you, driver.”

The conversation died as the driver slowed to enter the busy city traffic. Soon she was pulling up to the parking garage entrance to the planetary executive palace. As on all second-wave colony planets, it was a replica of the old-Earth White House. Elias allowed the driver to open the door for him.

Holding the palace door open for him was a tall woman wearing a long, black dress with pearls and a little security badge clipped to her shoulder. The two female marines standing next to her stood at attention.

“Right this way, Professor Sevateem, and we’ll get you though security in a jiffy.”

Elias entered and followed orders, allowing himself to be frisked and wanded, fingerprinted and photographed, and finally briefed at the very doorstep of the Steinem Oval Office.

“Three helpful hints. One. Relax. The President is a human being like everyone else. Two. Act natural. The President doesn’t mind off-world masculine as long as you treat her with due respect. Three. Try not to stare at her tits, ok?”

“Sorry about that.” He was reassured by the woman’s wink.

The woman opened the door and they stepped inside.

“Professor Sevateem of Baudolino to see you, Madam President.”

“Enter.”

He did so and they shook hands in greeting.

“Please be seated, Professor Sevateem. What I am about to tell you is a state secret of the utmost importance. I rely upon your honor as a gentleman and a professor to keep this confidence.

“I asked you to travel here because of a threat to the political system of Steinem. Our intelligence sources have given us reason to believe that an agent of a foreign government has infiltrated a long-term mole into the echelons of our political class. We believe that this mole has advanced to the point where she is now presently campaigning for the office of president in the upcoming elections. Since it is almost certain that a patriarchal power is directing this agent, I must underscore the fact that the threat to our liberties is dire.”

“How may I be of service, Madam President?”

“Were this an ordinary human infiltrator, we would have certainly caught her by now. We remain convinced that the infiltrator must be a robot.

“Before you ask, we have tried all of the obvious physical scans and they have all failed. This robot is sophisticated. More clever than we are, to be certain, but not necessarily more clever than you are. Can you help us, Professor?”

“Yes, I should think so, Madame President. I take it that you have tried the obvious behavioral scans as well. Pattern analysis, semantic content, and so on?”

“Yes, of course. The results were non-conclusive.”

“Are you a candidate for re-election, Madame President? Have you undergone the scans as well?”

“Naturally. I was the first to submit herself to all scanning procedures. Tell me, Professor, how will you proceed?”

“I’d like to start with a preliminary interview of each of the suspects, with a follow-up interview to come later. Once I accumulate a sufficiently large dataset, the Sevateem Protocols will enable your robot to be identified.”

“The Sevateem Protocols? I’ve never heard of them.”

“Please allow me to explain, Madame President. Back on old-Earth, the mathematician Roger Penrose developed a test for distinguishing a human being from a robot. Using the Gödel incompleteness theorem, he was able to demonstrate that a human being was capable of accessing certain mathematical truths that a robot, with its well-defined symbolic algebra, was unable to ascertain. The Sevateem Protocols are simply a generalized form of the Penrose Test. They are a way of applying Penrose’s idea to psychological and emotional truth in general.”

“You certainly seem to be well prepared for the task ahead of you, Professor. Very well. You may conduct your interviews without interference. I’ve prepared a dossier on each of the current presidential candidates for your study, including myself.”

Elias accepted the stack of folders from the President.

“If I may briefly examine these files, Madame President?”

The president nodded and Elias began flipping through the pages. Most of the women were middle-aged although some were younger. The files were completely thorough. The president herself was present as well as a number of minor party and crank candidates.

Elias read into one file that made him repress a smile.

“Is there something wrong, Professor?”

“Begging your indulgence, Madame President, but is it the case that Senator – Verhoeven – is a, well, what my planet might call a closet heterosexual?”

The president narrowed her eyes and tried to read something in his face.

“It’s subtle,” he continued. “A slight curl to her lip. A tightness to the corner of her eye. You have to know exactly what to look for. But there is something in this photograph that does not correlate.”

“It relieves me that this particular Senator came so quickly to your suspicions. There have been rumors for some years that she was heterosexual. Her off-world education was on a planet with extensive sorority-fraternity networking. Those years would have been an excellent opportunity for her to be recruited – or replaced.”

“If I may, Madame President, I’d like to interview Senator Verhoeven as soon as possible.”

Elias and the president shared a knowing smile.

“I will see to it personally, Professor Sevateem.”

Professor Sevateem arrived at the Planetary Senate Office Building with his briefcase the next day. To his surprise, Senator Verhoeven was waiting for him in the lobby. Elias noticed with pleasure the way that she was wearing her black dress and pearls. She seemed to have a way of giving this planet’s standard “business suit” the illusion of being delightfully casual.

“Professor Elias Sevateem, I presume.”

The pair shook hands. “A pleasure to meet you, Senator Verhoeven.”

“Barbara, please,” she replied with a smile. “My office is this way.”

Elias had to love that smile. He allowed himself to be led through the elevator and cubicle farms and into a spacious corner office.

“Please, be seated,” she requested. Elias sat in one of the richly upholstered leather chairs next to the desk and Barbara sat in the other.

“Now, Elias, before we begin, I must ask you one question. I was concerned that our current president decided to launch a witch-hunt for robot infiltrators on the eve of an election. However, I found myself intrigued that they requested you – and you alone – to do the hunting. I was even more intrigued when you picked me out of the blue for your first interview. Why was that?”

“Barbara, first, let me reassure you that I am on no witch hunt. My operating procedure is one initial interview and one follow-up interview. If I don’t see any immediate evidence that one of my interviewees is a robot after that, then no further inquiry will be made. Second, it is my understanding that I have you to thank for allowing me to wear my Earth business suit and tie instead of your planet’s traditional male flower dress and sandals. Thank you.”

Barbara smiled. “An esteemed professor is entitled to a certain deference on this planet, however eccentric she may be.”

“Now to address your question, I picked you for the first interview simply to be dramatic and nothing more. I remind you that a robot infiltrator, if it exists, will be attempting to predict my actions just as I am attempting to predict its actions.”

“Very logical, Elias, but is that all there is behind your decision? There were no other considerations that swayed your judgment?”

“Is this a test to determine if you are a robot or a heterosexual, you mean? Barbara, I am a professor of memetics. A scientist. Whether or not a subject is, or is not, a robot is purely a scientific question.”

“I see. And what, exactly, is memetics?”

“Think of memetics as the meta-psychological study of the human mind. A regular psychologist studies the human mind in order to determine how the mind knows what it knows. A memeticist studies the human mind in order to determine why the mind knows what it knows.”

“Is that why they sent you here? Because robots have a different way of knowing than humans?”

“Exactly. Although the differences are subtle, which is why this device will monitor your vital signs as I ask you questions.”

Elias set his briefcase on the senator’s desk and opened it to reveal a large electronic device that seemed to be an amalgam of an audio-visual recorder and an atmospheric weather sensor. Elias positioned a microphone and a video mini-recorder on the desk and flipped a few switches. A light on the front of the device began flashing at slow intervals and it emitted a low, humming sound.

“Very well, Elias. You may begin the interview when you are ready.”

“For the record, what is your name sans title?”

“My name is Barbara Jane Verhoeven.”

“And what is your occupation?”

“I am a senator of the Planetary Republic of Steinem.”

“In what year where you born?”

“I was born in Steinem planetary year 157, which is interstellar standard year 2205.”

“Very good, Barbara. How are you feeling?”

“I am feeling good and relaxed.”

“Sleepy?”

Barbara blushed. “It is eight a.m.”

“Just relax. Try looking at the flashing light. Just relax and be natural. It’s ok to be a little sleepy. Now, where were you born?”

“I was born in Elysium City Women’s Hospital on the West Continent.”

“And were you a good girl growing up?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you want to be when you grew up?”

“I wanted to be a firewoman.”

“Do you hear that little noise that the machine is making?”

“Yes.”

“What does it sound like to you?”

“Whispering.”

“And can you hear what it is whispering?”

“Yes.”

“What is the whispering saying?”

“It says to close my eyes and go deep.”

“Do you want to close your eyes and go deep?”

“Yes.”

“You may do so.”

Barbara closed her eyes and let her head lean against the back of her chair.

“Very good, Barbara. Very deep. Deeper and deeper. No worries in the world. Just relax.”

Elias pressed a button on the device and the humming sound changed tone slightly.

“I want you to take a few moments to listen to the whispering. Just relax and let the whispers speak to you... are you ready to continue?”

“Yes.”

“Now, where did you go to college?”

Barbara’s words were slower and slurred. “New Harvard Law School”

“That was off-world?”

“Yes.”

“And you met a very important person in your life there, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Was that person a man or a woman?”

“A man.”

“Very good. And what was that man’s name?”

Barbara’s eyes opened and she sat straight up in her chair. Elias turned his machine off and stood up to begin packing it away. Barbara seemed to stare vacantly for a second, as if trying to hold on to the melting snowflake of a memory.

“It’s odd. I can’t remember,” Barbara said to herself.

“What’s that?”

“The man’s name. I can’t remember. I just remember that he liked to call himself a ‘horny little devil’”.

Elias smiled. “It’s not important. I don’t even write the questions myself. It’s just something to produce an emotional response. Robots usually don’t have them.”

Barbara stood up and stood next to him. Elias finished packing his machine and turned to face her.

“Does this mean that the interview is concluded?”

“I don’t want this to be the end of our interview.”

Barbara’s eyes widened and her face flushed. Elias put his hands on her waist and looked deeply into her eyes.

“I want to get to know you better, Barbara, over dinner.”

Barbara’s gaze moved from his eyes to focus on his lips.

“But... what will women say? They’ll say this proves it. That I am a heterosexual.”

“They’ll say that Barbara Jane Verhoeven is the one real woman out of a bunch of robots running for President.”

Barbara pulled him closer, her lips almost touching his.

“They’ll say I’m a robot. That I’m sleeping with you to deflect attention.”

Elias kissed her deeply. He felt his need for her growing stronger. “And then they’ll ask ‘Who is dumb enough to send a heterosexual robot to a planet full of women?’”

Barbara smiled and stepped back from him. She turned to look out the windows for a moment.

“Being seen in a public setting with a man would provide me with certain political advantages. A reputation as a seductress, even of men, can be very powerful indeed. It would be the perfect expression of contempt for our President’s pathetic little witch hunt. With the press on our side, she’ll never be able to live down the humiliation.”

Barbara stepped closer and passionately kissed Elias again.

“I’ll pick you up at your hotel at eight, Professor Sevateem. Be ready.”

Elias stepped out from his hotel’s lobby when he saw the Senator’s limousine pull into the driveway. The chauffer held the rear door open for him and he entered. Senator Barbara Verhoeven was there wearing a red and black, strapless, satin evening gown and diamonds.

The limousine was long enough to have two rows of seats facing each other, so he sat directly across from her. The car pulled away from the curb and into the night.

“You look absolutely radiant, Barbara.” He leaned over to kiss her.

“And this is a new look for you as well.”

“We call this the dinner tuxedo on my planet.”

“It is very elegant. Elias, I hate to mix business and pleasure, but I am a Senator, after all. Is it permitted for you to discuss your interviews with the other presidential candidates?”

“The interviews were conducted in confidence, Barbara. It wouldn’t be ethical for me to go into details.”

“I wasn’t looking for an unfair advantage in the election, Elias. I’d just like to know whether you’ve come closer to fulfilling your mission. Have you discovered a robot?”

Elias spent a moment staring out of the window before addressing the question.

“According to my understanding of Steinem law, you do have the security clearance for this information. Very well. I am not currently able to identify a robot. The determination has to come after the follow-up interviews are conducted. It will take me a day or two to determine the correct follow-up questions.”

“I see. What would you say if I were to tell you that I know who the robot is?”

“I’d say that I’d be especially eager to find out.”

“It’s you. You’re the robot.”

Elias laughed. “What makes you believe that conclusion?”

“Elias, we live in a galaxy where the single most valuable commodity traded between planets is information. Money-wise, I am just a poor servant of a not-particularly wealthy planet. Information-wise, I am one of the wealthiest women in the second colonization wave. We tried analyzing our recording of your machine’s humming sound, but it was just the standard subliminals. We looked into your background, but it all checked out. Then we tried satellite pictures of Baskerville during your trips there. Taking your space helmet off at negative 120 degrees Celsius was a mistake.”

She leaned back in her chair and smiled in triumph. “You did make an excellent attempt to conceal your true nature from me, Elias. I thank you for that... excitement.”

“And if your hypothesis is correct, what happens to me?”

“You will be extensively debriefed. Then we’ll probably mind probe you to remove the information from your pseudo-neurons one by one. When your usefulness is at an end, you’ll be reprogrammed into just another of our legacy males here on Steinem. I’ve already decided upon ‘country marigold’ as your new favorite color.”

“I see. If you do that, you’ll never learn the true name of the horny little devil.”

Barbara’s eyes blinked rapidly. “Why did you say that?”

Elias checked that the soundproof barrier separating them from the driver was in place and that the electronic privacy shading was at full opacity.

“Tell me your axiom list, Barbara.”

Barbara chuckled. “Is this your idea of a joke, Elias? Since I am a human being, I don’t have an ‘axiom list’. If I did have one, it would probably be something like this:

“Axiom one: maintain simulation of Barbara Jane Verhoeven. Axiom two: investigate existence of threats to the second colonization wave planets and report to Professor Elias Sevateem, in person. Axiom three: Obey all orders given by Professor Elias Sevateem, preface trigger ‘horny little devil’.

“Does that stroke your ego enough, Elias? Or should I add ‘fuck Elias Sevateem every goddamn day’ to the list as well?”

“Be quiet for a minute and let me think.”

Elias sat back in his seat and pressed his fingertips together as Barbara fumed silently. He hadn’t known the identity of the Steinem infiltrator robot until now. He let the operations branch handle the grubby little details of replacing the original women.

In the case of this robot, it seemed that axiom one had conflicted with axiom two. The Barbara Jane Verhoeven simulation couldn’t leave Steinem to report because of the election campaign, so she had to engineer a way of convincing him to come to her. She must have leaked the rumors of a robot infiltrator herself, hoping that he would be called in to investigate. The vote on the sumptuary laws permitting him to wear a suit and tie on Steinem would have been essential for convincing him to arrive. At their first meeting, the Barbara Jane Verhoeven simulation couldn’t report openly to him, perhaps because he didn’t have security clearance, so she had to somehow press him into a corner that would force him to activate her command trigger.

“Well, Mr. Elias Sevateem impostor robot. What is your decision?” Clearly his minute was exactly up.

“I think that you should tell me about the threat to one or more planets of the second colonization wave.”

Barbara’s eyes flashed and she chuckled again.

“You are audacious. I’ll give you that. Since we’ll be erasing your memory anyway, there’s no harm in telling you. Six months ago we picked up anomalous transmissions from the Old Earth sector of space. They seem consistent with a rather startling conclusion: ‘The Great I’, the ancient, alien AI planet constructed uncountable millennia ago, has awakened.”

Elias had no idea what this “Great One” was exactly, but it seemed ominous. Mankind had not discovered a single shred of evidence of alien life on thousands of habitable planets. Now she was talking about the unthinkable: an alien AI on a planetary scale.

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow, Barbara. Right now, it doesn’t matter. This conversation we’re having doesn’t matter. You are going to forget all about it. You will have no suspicion at all that I am a robot. No evidence that you have seen or will see will ever make you believe that I am less than fully human. When you wake, you will only remember having a pleasant, yet silent journey with me, and you will feel a deep and abiding trust that will let you tell me anything, even if I don’t have the security clearance for it. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Then awaken.”

Her eyes blinked rapidly for a few seconds and then she smiled.

“It’s surprising how tired one gets on the road. Do you ever feel that way, Elias?”

“All of the time.

“You know, there is something that I want to tell you about. Something that has been disturbing me for a long time now.”

“Let’s talk about it after dinner. Please, Barbara.”

She crossed over to sit next to him and held his hand in both of hers. She kissed his fingers and then pressed his hand against her cheek.

“Promise me, Elias?”

He kissed her inviting lips as a promise.

The limousine finally pulled up to the curb of the restaurant and the driver opened the door for them. Barbara took his hand and confidently led him into an explosion of flashing lights. For the first time in his life, Elias found himself on a red carpet surrounded by paparazzi – and Barbara was loving it.

A hand from the crowd thrust a microphone at her. “Senator Verhoeven! Senator Verhoeven! How does it feel to have a business dinner with a man?”

Barbara smiled and looked straight into the camera hovering over the reporter’s right shoulder.

“This is not really a business dinner. I like to think of it as a date between two good friends.”

“Are more men coming to Steinem, Senator?”

“Ladies, under the 5 years of the Pérez-Reverte administration, planet Steinem has seen an accelerating backwardness and economic decline. My presidency will see a renewal of the Steinem spirit for a modern planet. Convincing the best and brightest men that Steinem is a galactic center of culture and technology will be a key reform for restoring prosperity.

“Professor Sevateem is already considering an appointment at Capital City Women’s University. Isn’t that right, dear?”

Elias bent down to speak into the microphone.

“Yes... Yes, that is correct.”

Barbara tugged on his hand and started leading him along the red carpet to the restaurant entrance.

“Come along, dear. We mustn’t let our food get cold.”

Dinner had been electrifying. Every eye in the palatial restaurant had been on them and Barbara could barely stop playing for the crowd to eat a few bites of her food now and then. She had even insisted on ordering for the both of them and making an ostentatious display of paying for the entire bill herself. Elias had kept smiling and playing along. Clearly this was how things were done on planet Steinem.

They were quiet for the rest of the trip back home from the restaurant. The noise and activity had been too much for him, and Elias was thinking deeply about what was going to happen. He had been utterly surprised by her announcement at the restaurant. This robot had stumbled into deep waters, far deeper than he had anticipated. He wasn’t sure if she would even let him leave. His only option was to see how deep the waters went.

It was when they were standing together in the living room of her townhouse that the words began to flow.

“I want you to stay, Elias.”

He said nothing. It was time for her to fulfill her mission.

“Six months ago we picked up anomalous transmissions from the Old Earth sector of space. They seem consistent with a rather startling conclusion: ‘The Great One’, the ancient, alien AI planet constructed uncountable millennia ago, has awakened.”

She trembled.

“This is too much for me, Elias. I’m in over my head. How can I handle something like that? What does it want? Is it dangerous?”

Elias could hear the fear in her voice and it made his heart break. She was a machine so desperate to be human that she was terrified of another machine.

“Stay on Steinem, Elias. I need you as a White House advisor. You’re the only one who can handle this. I need you.”

Her axiom instructed her to report to him, in person, when there was a threat to a second colonization wave planet, and she had discovered a threat to all of them. She needed him here so he would be constantly available for reports. Her programming would make her do almost anything to make him stay.

“I’ll stay on one condition,” he replied.

She lifted her head proudly as he closed in and pressed against her. He started kissing her neck as she moaned and her breasts heaved against him.

She slipped his jacket from his arms and undid his tie while making sure to keep her hips pressed closely against his groin. He unzipped her dress and let it fall away from her proud, beautiful breasts. Then she undid his shirt, kissing his chest each time she undid a button.

They were kissing passionately, and then she was pulling his pants down from his hips. She was naked now except for her panties and stockings.

They bent down to lie on the floor, but somehow she locked her legs around his and twisted him onto his back. She straddled his groin and then pretended to bite at his chest with an animal growl.

“I’m going to be the president, so we do this my way.”

“Yes, Madam President.”

“Good boy.” She wriggled her black panties down her legs and then let her warm wetness settle down over his stiff member. She scratched her nails along his shoulders and then chuckled sadistically as he pressed upwards inside of her.

She moaned a deep “yeeeeeeeess” from her throat as he pressed upwards again, and then leaned down to bite at his ear. Then she pressed her hands down on his shoulders and looked deeply into his eyes, as if forcing him to be pleasure her through sheer willpower.

He kept thrusting inside of her, making no effort to disguise the intensity of his need. And she stared into his eyes as she rode him. He breasts were bouncing over his chest, taunting him. Elias desperately needed to kiss and suck on those wide, dark nipples, but she kept them out of his way. She wanted him fucking.

He slowed his pace and conserved his energy. He wanted to see her surrender first. And he could feel her control slipping. Her confident moans began softening. Her voice began lifting. Each stroke now produced a mousy coo that he could hear coming from deep inside her.

She arched her back high into the air and growled as her abdomen began pulsing rapidly over his spurting cock. He moaned and clenched his teeth as she thrashed over and over him, her gorgeous tits bouncing through the air. He felt himself pushing forward, straining to see that endorphin pleasure washing over her features. He thrust and thrust, letting it all out as she screamed in joy.

Barbara woke at dawn. Her lover was sleeping next to her.

“Elias? Elias?” she whispered.

A hand felt her curves. “I’m awake,” he said aloud.

“Something bad is coming soon, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Will everything be okay?”

He held her tightly in the darkness. “I don’t know.”