“This is the Fox,” Linda Fox said.

McVane switched the video to holo, and a cube formed in which Linda Fox smiled at him. Meanwhile, the drums spun at furious speed, getting hour upon hour into his permanent possession.

“You are with the Fox,” she said, “and the Fox is with you.” She pinned him with her gaze, the hard, bright eyes. The diamond face, feral and wise, feral and true; this is the Fox speaking to you. He smiled back.

“Hi, Fox,” he said.

Sometime later he called the sick girl in the next dome. It took her an amazingly long time to respond to his signal, and as he sat noting the signal register on his own board he thought, Is she finished? Or did they come and forcibly evacuate her?

His microscreen showed vague colors. Visual static, nothing more. And then there she was.

“Did I wake you up?” he asked. She seemed so slowed down, so torpid. Perhaps, he thought, she’s sedated.

“No. I was shooting myself in the ass.”

“What?” he said, startled.

“Chemotherapy,” Rybus said. “I’m not doing too well.”

“I just now taped a terrific Linda Fox concert; I’ll be broadcasting it in the next few days. It’ll cheer you up.”

“It’s too bad we’re stuck in these domes. I wish we could visit one another. The food man was just here. In fact, he brought me my medication. It’s effective, but it makes me throw up.”

McVane thought, I wish I hadn’t called.

“Is there any way you could visit me?” Rybus asked.

“I have no portable air, none at all.”

“I have,” Rybus said.

In panic, he said, “But if you’re sick—”

“I can make it over to your dome.”

“What about your station? What if data come in that—”

“I’ve got a beeper I can bring with me.”

Presently he said, “Okay.”

“It would mean a lot to me, someone to sit with for a little while. The food man stays like half an hour, but that’s as long as he can. You know what he told me? There’s been an outbreak of a form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis on CY30 VI. It must be a virus. This whole condition is a virus. Christ, I’d hate to have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This is like the Mariana form.”

“Is it contagious?”

She did not directly answer. Instead she said, “What I have can be cured.” Obviously she wanted to reassure him. “If the virus is around… I won’t come over; it’s okay.” She nodded and reached to shut off her transmitter. “I’m going to lie down,” she said, “and get more sleep. With this you’re supposed to sleep as much as you can. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Goodbye.”

“Come over,” he said.

Brightening, she said, “Thank you.”

“But be sure you bring your beeper. I have a hunch a lot of telemetric confirms are going to—”

“Oh, fuck the telemetric confirms!” Rybus said, with venom. “I’m so sick of being stuck in this goddam dome! Aren’t you going buggy sitting around watching tape drums turn and little meters and gauges and shit?”

“I think you should go back home,” he said.

“No,” she said, more calmly. “I’m going to follow exactly the M.E.D. instructions for my chemotherapy and beat this fucking M.S. I’m not going home. I’ll come over and fix your dinner. I’m a good cook. My mother was Italian and my father is Chicano so I spice everything I fix, except you can’t get spices out here. But I figured out how to beat that with different synthetics. I’ve been experimenting.”

“In this concert I’m going to be broadcasting,” McVane said, “the Fox does a version of Dowland’s ‘Shall I Sue.’ ”

“A song about litigation?”

“No. ‘Sue’ in the sense of to pay court to or woo. In matters of love.” And then he realized that she was putting him on.

“Do you want to know what I think of the Fox?” Rybus asked. “Recycled sentimentality, which is the worst kind of sentimentality; it isn’t even original. And she looks like her face is on upside down. She has a mean mouth.”

“I like her,” he said stiffly; he felt himself becoming mad, really mad. I’m supposed to help you? he asked himself. Run the risk of catching what you have so you can insult the Fox?

“I’ll fix you beef stroganoff with parsley noodles,” Rybus said.

“I’m doing fine,” he said.

Hesitating, she said in a low, faltering voice, “Then you don’t want me to come over?”

“I—” he said.

“I’m very frightened, Mr. McVane,” Rybus said. “Fifteen minutes from now, I’m going to be throwing up from the IV Neurotoxite. But I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to give up my dome and I don’t want to be by myself. I’m sorry if I offended you. It’s just that to me the Fox is a joke. I won’t say anything more; I promise.”

“Do you have the—” He amended what he intended to say. “Are you sure it won’t be too much for you, fixing dinner?”

“I’m stronger now than I will be,” she said. “I’ll be getting weaker for a long time.”

“How long?”

“There’s no way to tell.”

He thought, You are going to die. He knew it and she knew it. They did not have to talk about it. The complicity of silence was there, the agreement. A dying girl wants to cook me a dinner, he thought. A dinner I don’t want to eat. I’ve got to say no to her. I’ve got to keep her out of my dome. The insistence of the weak, he thought. Their dreadful power. It is so much easier to throw a body block against the strong!

“Thank you,” he said. “I’d like it very much if we had dinner together. But make sure you keep radio contact with me on your way over here—so I’ll know you’re okay. Promise?”

“Well, sure,” she said. “Otherwise”—she smiled—“they’d find me a century from now, frozen with pots, pans, and food, as well as synthetic spices. You do have portable air, don’t you?

“No, I really don’t,” he said.

And knew that his lie was palpable to her.

The meal smelled good and tasted good, but halfway through Rybus excused herself and made her way unsteadily from the matrix of the dome—his dome—into the bathroom. He tried not to listen; he arranged it with his percept system not to hear and with his cognition not to know. In the bathroom the girl, violently sick, cried out and he gritted his teeth and pushed his plate away and then all at once he got up and set in motion his in-dome audio system; he played an early album of the Fox.

“Do you by any chance have some milk?” Rybus asked, standing at the bathroom door, her face pale.

Silently, he got her a glass of milk, or what passed for milk on their planet.

“I have antiemetics,” Rybus said as she held the glass of milk, “but I didn’t remember to bring any with me. They’re back at my dome.”

“I could get them for you,” he said.

“You know what M.E.D. told me?” Her voice was heavy with indignation. “They said that this chemotherapy won’t make my hair fall out, but already it’s coming out in—”

“Okay,” he interrupted.

“Okay?”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“This is upsetting you,” Rybus said. “The meal is spoiled and you’re—I don’t know what. If I’d remembered to bring my antiemetics, I’d be able to keep from—” She became silent. “Next time I’ll bring them. I promise. This is one of the few albums of Fox that I like. She was really good then, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” he said tightly.

“Linda Box,” Rybus said.

“What?” he said.

“Linda the box. That’s what my sister and I used to call her.” She tried to smile.

“Please go back to your dome.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well—” She smoothed her hair, her hand shaking. “Will you come with me? I don’t think I can make it by myself right now. I’m really weak. I really am sick.”

He thought, You are taking me with you. That’s what this is. That is what is happening. You will not go alone; you will take my spirit with you. And you know. You know it as well as you know the name of the medication you are taking, and you hate me as you hate the medication, as you hate M.E.D. and your illness; it is all hate, for each and every thing under these two suns. I know you. I understand you. I see what is coming. In fact, it has begun.