Stephanie Love is as Love Does by Liobhan All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.   ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sarah Greene wasn’t as happy as she thought she’d be. Her best friend was getting married and here she was moping around the Wellington Arch in South West London, having strayed here on her meandering way from the Hyde Park Corner tube station to Barb’s flat near Belgrave Square. She wasn’t bothered about the time, since she was entirely too early to knock on Barb’s door, which would send her esteemed hostess into a panic lest everyone arrive too soon, so she’d been strolling about playing at being a tourist. And here was a tourist attraction. Christ! but it was bloody huge from close up. It didn’t look half so big driving by on the road. As sculpture, she couldn’t tell if it was meant to be phallic or the reverse, since it was very tall, but you could walk through it. Well, theoretically; just now it was closed off by elaborate bronze gates. If it were a penis, it was afflicted with severe hypospadias. If a vulva, complete with lacy metal hymen, it had a very prominent clitoris. Said organelle appeared to be a winged angel flying down from the sky like Batman, jumping feet first into a chariot drawn by four horses, which wasn’t a bad analogy, at least on her better days. She laughed aloud. Since this was London, she got a few sidelong glances, but she was dressed too nicely to be a terrorist, and she didn’t look like she was crazy, or at least she hoped that she didn’t, so almost everyone assumed that she was talking on a cellphone with an earpiece. Perfectly normal. She spent a moment wondering exactly when talking to yourself transitioned from being a symptom of mental illness to a show of ostentation, and then to normalcy.

Idly, she mulled over the notion of paying to see the exhibits, or even taking the lift to the top so as to peer out over Hyde Park, but then dismissed the idea as too touristy by half. To fully savour the kitsch gestalt, she’d need a pal to share it with, and her best pal was unlikely to be available for quite a while. ‘Bugger all!’ With a sour taste in her mouth, she set off to find a tea room she vaguely remembered seeing on Montrose Place, over toward Belgrave Square, fairly close to being on the way.

The walk was very pleasant, once she’d crossed Grosvenor Place, and she always enjoyed looking up at the old Georgian and Victorian façades, with their pedimented columns and usually shabby detailing. As with Wellington Arch itself, and so many monuments and buildings around London, public and private, the grand architectural plans had usually run into an accountant with a sharp pen who’d lined through any ‘extravagances,’ replacing these wasteful expenditures with thrifty empty niches where sculpture was meant to be, and sending the expensive marble and metal for public statuary off to the tilers and plumbers where it could be put to better use as floors and fixtures. ‘And very sensible too,’ she thought to herself. ‘Why wait for future archæologists to loot our buildings when we can loot them much more economically ourselves? Just look at all the trouble the Greeks have had over the Elgin marbles, prudently rescued from the ignorant Athenians so they could be properly appreciated by educated Englishmen, as God intended. If they’d had the wit to spend their money on public latrines instead of art, those same latrines would still be gracing the hills of Athens.’

And so, through alternating observations and reflections, she came to the shop she’d remembered. She should have remembered more accurately.

In the event, she didn’t like the look of the place. Even from the street, she could see a large telly screen alive with some sort of sport, and a crowd of animated customers, almost all of them male, going through an elaborate sinusoidal pantomime of elation and rage, standing up and sitting down again, depending on which way the ball was moving. She tried not to imagine the noise level inside, but failed, which quite put her off the idea of a relaxing cuppa. Not only that, but it advertised itself as an ‘Old English,’ tea room, thank God without any extraneous Ye’s or dangling e’s, but still, one had standards.

She decided to walk on over to the square itself and sit under the trees, maybe look at old Columbus pointing off to the New World, or Simón Bolívar looking statesmanlike, and contemplate the fleeting nature of fame. Of all the people who’ve ever lived over the long æons of human existence, so few left any visible presence, except perhaps in their descendants, while so very many have gone down to dust unremarked and unremembered. Why these particular men picked out from amongst multitudes?

Almost forgotten too all the wild country that used to be here, the pastures, streams, broad fields, and woods, all buried by centuries of tidying up. The Westbourne River was just a little to the west, once free and open, but now penned into culverts and pipes, well underground and invisible, except for a shrouded glimpse of the huge black iron pipe through Sloane Square tube station and the fossilised Serpentine, itself now fed by an underground spring and bypassed by the river itself, since the river had become so polluted and unfit for any human use — much less swimming — that the tidy lake had to be tidied again by cutting it off from the living waters that had originally formed and fed it.

‘Why is it we so often muck things up instead of caring for them,’ she asked herself rhetorically. ‘It isn’t as if we’d saved any money by it. To save the expense of burying the drains, we wound up turning whole damned rivers into hidden sewers, poisoning the local fish we now have to replace through hauling them from half a world away and making whole neighbourhoods into depraved jokes and mockeries, like Knightsbridge and Bayswater, the open bridge and clean water now only the empty ghosts of memories passed down by people long dead. Feh!’

Her cellphone rang twice and then picked up through her earpiece. “Hello?” she said, then belatedly realised that she was proving her own point from earlier. Here she was seemingly talking to herself, but only a few older people were looking askance.

“Sarah! Hi, it’s Stephanie.”

“Hi, sweetie, what’s up?”

“What are you wearing? I’m still trying to decide.”

“The Comme des Garçons outfit I found at Dover Street Market last month, with my Prada court shoes, nothing too posh, as it’s just for the afternoon, but nice anyway.”

“Oh good, then. In that case, I’ll wear my Philip Lim with the Jimmy Choo spikes. I had a few alternate outfits in mind if we were too much alike, as I didn’t want to look like one of the Chalet School Triplets.”

Sarah was doubtful. “They are both green, though. Will that work?”

Stephanie wasn’t bothered at all. “I can’t help that. Green looks good on me, as it does you, and they’re completely different in style, as well as not being nearly the same shade of green. It will be perfect; just coördinated enough to show we’re allies but not similar enough to make us look like boring dweebs who work for the same secret organisation.”

Sarah blinked. “But, Stephanie, we do work for the same organisation.”

“Well, yes, but we’re by no means boring. We’re entirely too refined and clever to be henchmen.”

“Henchmen?” Stephanie had lost her completely.

She sighed in evident exasperation. “You know, the nameless drones in the matching jump suits who work for the villains in the Double-naught-seven films, and then always wind up slaughtered in messy ways. You’d think they’d learn.”

“Well, they wouldn’t do, would they?” Sarah observed dryly. “They always die. It’s hard to draw a lasting lesson from dying.”

“Well, unless reïncarnation is real.”

“That too. But in that case, why aren’t we all quite clever and working for world peace or something?”

“Erm, well, that does seem a weakness in the theory, I have to admit, but since they’re evil, they’d always come back as henchmen and die all over again, so that would be their karmic burden working.”

“If you say so. I think it’s puerile Manichæism.”

Stephanie was silent for a moment. “So you don’t believe in evil henchmen?”

“No,” Sarah said firmly. “I think almost all people, perhaps excepting sociopaths, try to work toward what they perceive as good, even if their efforts yield evil results as viewed by others.”

Stephanie was silent for a longer moment. “So the Shoah, for example….”

“Even the Nazis thought, sincerely, I think, that they were doing the world a favour by systematically murdering ‘inferior races’ and ‘defectives,’ even when it hampered their efforts to win the war, or at least bring it to less painful resolution. I think it qualified as a collective mania, in a psychiatric sense, but it was founded in the pseudo-science of eugenics. I imagine most of the world’s worst mischief has been done by, or on behalf of, people who ‘meant well.’ ”

“If perhaps short-sighted.” Stephanie said gloomily.

“Well, aren’t we all? Speaking of which, aren’t we forgetting that you’re getting dressed and into a cab?”

“Bugger! I am, aren’t I? I’m ringing off now.”

“I’m right next to the square, so I’ll sit here for an hour or so, then jog off to Barb’s flat. With luck, we’ll meet outside or in the hall, so you won’t have to walk in late on your own. You can blame me.”

“I won’t be quite that long, I don’t think. I can do my makeup in the cab.”

“But you have to call a cab, and the cabs might all be booked at this time of day.”

“Always the cynic, right, Sarah?”

She laughed, which was delightful. “That’s why I’m such a good project manager, Steph. I always allow for the contingencies, and we’re still talking….”

“Oh! Right! Ringing off then.”

The connection hung for a moment in silence, then her earpiece beeped its recognition of the network closing handshake. Sarah looked for a gap in the traffic around the square, then crossed over the road and in under the dark rustling shade, suddenly surrounded by the looming crowd of trees and the cool fragrance of living green.

She inhaled slowly, then held her breath, and sighed.

The nearest bench was vacant, and more than welcome. She sat down and leaned back into the park, closing her eyes as she drew in a deep breath.

—««-»»—

Sarah was startled into awareness of her surroundings, suddenly aware that her phone was ringing, had already switched over to her headset and Stephanie was saying something. “What’s that?”

“Sarah? Can you hear me? Do we have a bad connexion?”

She was still trying to clear her head, which felt awfully muzzy for the middle of the afternoon. “I’m here. I’m sorry. I just lost you for a bit.” She had a moment of panic. “Where are you, are you here already?”

“I’m in the cab, on the A4 and headed your way.” She paused for a moment. “Still at least twenty minutes to go I’d say.”

Relief washed over her. “Oh, that’s all right, then. I’m almost there, so I’ll catch you up right outside. We’ve still plenty of time.” She stood up and started walking, briskly now.

“I’ll see you soon then. TTFN.” Stephanie disconnected.

For half a moment, Sarah fought a crazy impulse to ring back, but then set her jaw with a grim determination to cover the last few blocks in record time, just in case.

—««-»»—

Finally she turned the corner and saw Barb’s building across the street, so she slowed down, reasoning that Stephanie couldn’t possibly have arrived yet, but not particularly anxious to meet anyone at the door. She picked a shady spot and stood sentry, awaiting the advent of Stephanie’s cab. Just down the street, she saw someone familiar to her, although just to say hello. ‘Nickerson,’ she thought. ‘Ned Nickerson, a financial wiz of some kind.’ Did consulting too, as far as she remembered and it looked like he was squiring around a client, American, from the look of him. American tailoring was almost unmistakable.

The client looked a little peevish, with a florid complexion and a heaviness to his belly that spoke of a few too many pints with too little exercise. He was arguing with his host about something as they walked up to the door of what must be Ned’s humble abode, and Ned must be doing rather well for himself to find himself at home in Barb’s neighbourhood. She couldn’t afford the rents and rates, in any case. They went inside, the client gesticulating with some vigour, but she dismissed the pair of them from her mind the moment she saw the door shut behind them.

As she tarried, still waiting for Stephanie, she saw… Deirdre, newly seconded from the San Francisco office, drive up and park right in front, obviously unaware that most of the area, including the spot she’d chosen, offered parking by permit only. Deirdre grabbed her coat and packages and ran up the stair, puzzling for a bit at the door, perhaps wondering whether this was the right portico in a row of similar openings, but then went through. Smiling, in no particular haste, Sarah walked up the pavement, crossed the street, walked up to the door, and then went through.

Deirdre had evidently gone up the stairs by then, so she approached the man behind the desk. “Look here. I’m Sarah Greene, an analyst and manager at the selfsame firm at which Barbara Stephens is employed. An employee of ours has just run upstairs and she’s obviously confused about the parking spaces. She’s an American, you know, and having rather a hard time of it. Could I prevail upon you to see if you have a guest pass available?” She smiled. “I’d hate for her to come down and find a wheel clamped.”

He looked at her with an air of dour suspicion. “And how am I to know she’s who you say she is, or whether you’re not after such a thing your own self?”

From the sound of the man, he wasn’t long away from the north of Scotland, and he looked the part as well, very sturdy indeed, with a nice square jaw. She didn’t say a word, but just stood there, appraising, then nodded.

She pulled her purse from her bag and dug through to find her Oyster Card, which she flourished before his eyes like a talisman. “Like most sensible people in London,” she said. “I don’t even own a car. She, as I said, is an American and simply had to have one on hire. I’m quite sure she’s talked to you, so you bloody well know where she’s from as well as I do.”

He grinned, not at all abashed. “That’s true. She’s a Yank all right, but today’s a Sunday, so she needn’t have one in any case.” He smiled, somewhat boyishly, as if he’d just said something quite clever.

Sarah rolled her eyes. ‘Bloody men!’ “So you were just winding me up then?”

He had the grace to look very slightly chagrined. “Yes, I have to confess that I was, and I apologise. You were quite properly concerned for your employee, which is highly commendable, and wanted to help, which is more so. Unfortunately, there’s actually no such thing as a guest pass, at least not one that can be handed around. They’re issued to individual vehicles and drivers by the local councils, and using another’s permit is a serious offence.”

Sarah blinked. ‘Who knew?’ she thought, then said, “Well, I wasn’t to know then, was I? I’ve never paid them much attention, never having had the occasion to need one.”

“No, you weren’t to know at all. The parking scheme is meant to discourage car ownership, and it obviously worked quite well in your own case, as well as my own. I travel by bus and the underground as well, or ride my bike, which is usually quicker, but I try to avoid it during rainy weather.”

Sarah was sympathetic. “Too cold and wet?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Too dangerous. Drivers can’t see you with their windscreens steamed up, not that many of them are all that observant at the best of times, and it’s just a short trip to kingdom come.”

It took her half a second to suss out what this esoteric metaphor implied before she replied, “I suppose it is. I’ve never had the nerve to ride in town, although I used to love riding as a girl. Less imagination, one supposes, or a heightened belief in one’s childish invulnerability.”

“Perfectly proper.” He nodded, smugly confident, as men often are. “As a child, especially, one’s reach should always exceed one’s grasp.”

Sarah arched one eyebrow, “How à propos.”

He grinned again, quite pleased with himself. “It is, isn’t it?”

“Well, as delightful as all this sparkling repartée might be, I should be getting myself outside again.”

“You’re waiting for Stephanie Rosen, then?”

Sarah turned back from the door slightly. She said, “I suppose you know everything?”

“Of course. It’s my job to direct all the wandering lost ones, so Ms Stephens told me all the essential details, so that I might interpret garbled destinations like the Oracle at Delphi.”

“You got that part wrong, my lad.” She smirked. “The Oracles at Delphi were always female, and always spoke under the influence of poisonous and probably psychedelic subterranean gases, sometimes so intoxicated as to risk death. The women who held the position were often remarkably literate, a rarity in Ancient Greece, and held considerable power, even within a male-dominated society. The priests of Apollo who replaced the original all-female Temple priestesses were secondary figures, although they may have had something to do with casting the raw prophesies into mysterious and misleading riddles set in perfect Greek hexameter.”

“Oh.” He looked ever so slightly disheartened, but only for an instant. “Well, as she seems to have been a woman, I’m glad enough to be the lesser light.” He smiled brightly, blithely untroubled by any hint of doubt or trepidation, the perfect man.

Sarah smiled in gracious benediction. “Exactly. Mind you remember it and you’ll get on in life.” She turned and went back through the door and out into the soft light of the waning afternoon.

—««-»»—

For some reason, she felt refreshed and filled with energy, as if the sun on her skin was charging her with something intangible, like electricity but more subtle. The fine hairs didn’t stand up straight from her arms, but she could feel her blood speeding up, the rhythmic, almost unnoticeable waves of pressure rushing through her and into her legs and the tips of her fingers. Her hands felt… strong, potent, capable of any task. For the second time today, she laughed out loud, but there was no one to hear, so she flung her arms wide and laughed again, rejoicing in the Sun, and the Earth, and everything living.

She closed her eyes again, but not to shut out the world, to pay closer attention. The white noise of distant traffic interspersed with the faint toots of horns, some brief, almost hesitant, some prolonged and angry, a few birds chirping about some fine point of territories and borders, the sound of someone’s radio drifting by, snatched by the wind into scraps and tatters of music, unrecognisable but familiar, the sound track of life in the city.

Sarah couldn’t say how long she’d stood there, soaking in the sun and urban ambiance, when she heard the inimitable diesel rumble of a TX4 black cab pull up to the kerb and stop. She opened her eyes to see Stephanie collecting her purse and wrap as the cab door opened and she stepped out onto the pavement.

Sarah smiled.

Stephanie paid the cabbie and turned, first blinking in the light, then smiling as she saw Sarah. “Hi, sweetie! Been waiting long?”

She shrugged. “Not so much. I just found out that the permit parking signs don’t apply on Sundays, and chatted up the doorman when I chased Deirdre inside after observing her parking her hire car directly in front of such a sign. She’d vanished up the stairs by then, of course, but the bloke in charge fancies himself quite the wit, and let me natter on for a bit before he finally let me know that I needn’t have bothered.”

“That must be Gordon, then.” She nodded sagely. “The other one’s as dull as toast.”

“You know him, then?” Sarah was mildly astonished.

“Only vaguely. Barb’s been keeping an eye on him for me.”

“Oh? Is he of interest to the firm?”

“Barb thinks so, and from what she’s said of him, he does sound quite the catch.”

“Anything in particular?”

“He did quite well at uni…, Swansea, I think, then Imperial for his research degree. He’s in some sort of combined programme with the departments of earth sciences and mechanical engineering; synergy they call it these days, something about process engineering and the ‘deep œcology’ of industrial production, whatever that means in the real world.”

“And about time, too. We can’t just carry on the way we have been forever.”

Stephanie was visibly surprised that Sarah seemed au courant with the issue. “So you understand what it means?”

“Well, it’s more my field than yours, but it’s been the subject of many learned papers of late, evidently soon to include one authored, or co-authored, by Barb’s cheeky Scots doorman. It makes a deal of sense he’s at Imperial, as they have large efforts in place to improve sustainable energy production technologies as well as putting in the research on basic œcological and energy sciences, from understanding our symbiotic relationship with the bacteria in our gut to using nanotechnology and/or biological mechanisms to improve oil extraction and fractionation processes.”

Stephanie nodded her head slowly. “I begin to see why Barb is interested. He’d be of immense value in assessing opportunities similar to this AxSys thingie coming up, for example, and I’m quite sure we’ll see more like them in coming years.”

“AxSys?” she asked.

“AxSys Engineering, an American start-up with some sort of new bacteria-mediated oil field technology to improve extraction and distillation efficiency, just as you say. Barb and I have been looking at the business case for the most part, and their CFO is here in London making the rounds at the urging of their first investors, who are rather more than displeased over the rapidity with which their initial funding has been burned through with no product out the door and no customers in the offing.”

Sarah laughed, then said, “Let me guess — gold plumbing in the corporate loo?”

She smirked and gave her a sidelong glance with one arched brow. “That too, more or less, but the first thing the three principals did, from the reports we’ve had, was to put in orders for one bespoke Lamborghini Murciélago, one ‘classic’ Boxster S Porsche, and one Maserati GranTourismo, the exact model numbers and specifications of which I’m sure any one of the twit trio could rattle off from memory. Lads one and all. Moved the firm into fancy digs as well, the better to impress the cleaning staff, since they had not then and still don’t have any actual customers, nor a working product. They’ve a cracking tournament carom billiards table, as well as a similar pocket billiards table, and a dozen electronic arcade games to while away the time between mocha lattes and caffè macchiatos from their custom espresso bar.”

“Typical blokes,” Sarah said, pursing her lips in prim disdain. “Spent the household money on drinks at the pub before attending to the messy details either of earning more or arranging meals for the children. I imagine they’ve spent a tidy sum on private boxes in local sport venues as well, ostensibly to impress the clients who will soon be arriving in their thousands, possibly in chartered tour coaches, as the local air carriers will be overbooked.”

Stephanie took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Exactly. Now let’s go talk to Barb’s bright shiny new penny. We’ve still a few minutes before I’m supposed to arrive, and I suddenly feel a desire to know more about this ‘deep œcology.’ ”

Linking arms, they walked across to the stairs and up the few steps to the door.

—««-»»—

Gordon smiled warmly as they came through. “Ms Rosen, I presume, and her concerned friend.”

Stephanie looked at him with some amusement. “Concerned?”

He blinked slowly, and then gazed at Stephanie as if she’d failed to notice an elephant lounging about in the hall. “Quite. She took time to look after the American who’d come in before her, a stranger in town, and then went out to watch after you. No one else did, and there are plenty up there who might have, if they’d thought to do so; therefore concerned.”

Stephanie was surprised by his words, to say the least, and taken aback. “You’re quite right, of course, but it’s rather perspicacious of you to notice on such short acquaintance. But why are any of the other guests at fault?”

He smiled again, with no apparent rancor. “Because she’s an American, presumably new to London and suddenly driving on what for her would be the wrong side of the road in one of the largest and most confusing cities in the world; the fact that she’d be likely to have a harrowing time of it should have occurred to someone in advance. I’m sure this was an oversight, but I would have thought that some person in charge would have delegated someone to help her become comfortable before throwing her to the wolves.”

Stephanie noticed the mild rebuke, and coloured slightly, then accepted her own culpability for at least part of Deirdre’s problems, since it had been her responsibility to see her set right, when it came down to it. “Then it’s my fault entirely, as she reports to me.”

He nodded, acknowledging her guilt but then grimaced slightly. “But also mine in part, Ms Rosen,” he admitted. “Although I’d had no idea of her situation when she walked in, she was in obvious distress, which I now understand, and was rather shirty with me, for which I didn’t make sufficient allowance, and thus I blame myself for not doing as much as I should have done to make her feel at home here. It’s part of my job, in a way, in addition to attending to security and shepherding tradesmen needing access. As John Fletcher said, ‘Of all the forms of wisdom, hindsight is by general consent the least merciful, the most unforgiving.’ Please express my own deep regret when you see her.”

“I’ll be certain to,” Stephanie assured him, “as well as my own. I should have arranged a better introduction to the city.”

“Thank you.” He glanced at his cell phone to see the time. “You’re not due upstairs for another fifteen minutes, if you’re trying to follow Ms Stephens’ prescribed protocol.”

Sarah smiled. “We’d best do, or Barb will have to adjust her schedule, which might precipitate the collapse of the Universe into a gigantic black hole.”

He smiled as well, but said, “She’s not nearly so bad as all that. I quite like working for her, as she has a lively interest in science and the world as a whole.”

“I’m pleased to hear you say that, Gordon, as I’ve heard good things about you as well and they seem justified, as you’ve managed to instantly discern the source of at least part of Deirdre’s unhappiness and suggest what might well have been a prudent hedge against the worst of it. Not to put too fine a point on it, what makes you so clever?”

He laughed with slight modesty. “Let’s say that my job here entails looking at people. It’s broadened my horizons and powers of observation somewhat. On my better days, I feel a certain kinship with Sherlock Holmes. On my bad days, I barely manage an indifferent Dr Watson.” He grinned.

Stephanie found herself quite taken with this young man. He had a ready wit at least, and seemed not to possess the truculence one saw in so many young men these days. “Would you mind talking about some of your scientific observations? I understand your studies have taken you into something called ‘deep œcology.’ Is that anything like the Gaia Hypothesis?”

He moved his head from side to side. “No, or only indirectly, in that some of the same general sorts of people have been interested in it. The Gaia Hypothesis, actually a theory now, since there has been experimental confirmation of several of its predictions, usually considers that the Earth is a single giant organism, but this idea has several weaknesses in my own opinion. Many of these flaws have been at least partially addressed by Dr Lynn Margulis, a prominent scientist who has done considerable work on the theoretical underpinnings of the theory and is a little more cautious than James Lovelock, whose original statements were, let’s say, overly… enthusiastic, and generated considerable opposition amongst mainstream scientists.”

“Really?” Stephanie observed rhetorically. “I actually haven’t paid much attention, as the first approximations that came to my attention seemed clearly untenable.”

“Quite,” he agreed. “Many of his early pronouncements were at least naïf, to be perfectly charitable, but were undoubtedly influenced by the general anti-Establishment zeitgeist of the Seventies, which had seen the dramatic rise of environmentalism, and Gaia was perhaps less a dogma than a startling rhetorical point, meant to break out of the old scientific paradigms, which were famously narrow and isolated, rather than to form the basis of a new religion. Aside from the obvious teleological problem, a serious objection is that all living organisms have a strong tendency toward homeostasis, maintaining an internal environment that hovers around ‘set points,’ but there are few, if any, actual set points in the history of the Earth.”

“What we see instead,” he continued, “as Dr Margulis correctly observed, is a tendency toward homeorhesis, a dynamical system which returns to a long-term trajectory, but which may vary widely over time before settling into local pockets or trends of relative stability, during which extravagances the entirety of the biosphere may be essentially replaced with new species better suited to the conditions of a particular era. So we have cold Earth periods and hot Earth periods; periods in which there was an oxidising atmosphere and other periods in which there was a reducing atmosphere. At least some Gaia apologists tend to explain away these wild excursions as mere variations on the central theme, which almost always seems to be the type of comfortable biosphere in which we humans play a major role.”

Sarah interjected, “It does seem to share a type of inchoate precept of Special Creation with less scientific ideas.”

“Indeed,” he said. “The choice of the Greek Goddess Gaia as the central meme is perhaps a clue. My own work is far less anthropocentric and involves no overt New Age spirituality, and indeed takes into account that ‘life’ in the form of humanity is now acting to destabilise the global climate in a manner which may lead to at least short-term climate instability and global extinctions.”

“But surely these are only possibilities.” Stephanie was moderately annoyed. She’d heard and dismissed most of these arguments many times before.

He raised an eyebrow and shrugged with manly eloquence. “Perhaps. Life is uncertain, but there are some wagers too risky to be undertaken by any sane individual or society. How much money, for example, would have to be offered in a game of Russian Roulette to induce any of us to take a flyer?”

Sarah considered the question for only an instant before she said, “For me, the riches of Crœsus would not suffice. Life is precious, where money is only valuable.”

Stephanie added, “Nicely put. Value can only be assigned by someone living, and so the fairness of bet presupposes that one will survive, which is not necessarily the case. One wagers the whole world against a paltry sum, whatever the amount might be. One’s mathematical expectation is always infinitesimal and therefore almost entirely unfair.”

“And yet,” Sarah said, critiquing her comment directly, “we are all of us, all of humanity, being asked to undertake a precisely equivalent wager based on the notion that anything else would be ‘too expensive’ for the firms and governments directly involved.”

“But the trouble is, the ‘too dear’ argument assumes that the interests of other people don’t matter.”

“Which becomes a problem only if liability is limited,” Gordon added, “since it encourages businesses and governments to offload as much cost as possible onto the commons through risky activities, whilst a sane liability regime would hold irresponsible governments and the officers and shareholders of imprudent businesses to personal account, thereby internalising the potential risks, which would make these sorts of boondoggles untenable for any sensible minister or executive.”

“Heads, they win; tails, we lose.” Sarah nodded, focusing more of her attention on him.

He noticed, and straightened his shoulders slightly. “Precisely. We’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to preserve the notion of limited liability, a fantastic delusion ultimately founded in the explicitly religious ‘Divine Right of Kings,’ even in cases of clear malfeasance, to the extent that ordinary citizens are now made to bear the burden of cleaning up the messes made through the collusion of greedy politicians and irresponsible corporations — and their officers and shareholders — are left in possession of gains which seem in retrospect to have been unfairly obtained.”

“And this ‘Divine Right’ is what led to the modern concept of sovereign immunity?” Sarah asked, openly curious. She touched her hair.

“Yes,” he said, nodding, smiling. “There’s no other reasonable justification, and it’s this vicious legal theory that allows sovereign nations to inflict incredible damage to innocent human beings, even murder them, destroy their homes, forests, and agricultural lands, and escape all liability for their actions. It’s the same idea that allows sovereign nations to offer grants of impunity to private citizens, the modern equivalent to letters of marque and reprisal, to offer shelter and comfort to pirates and thugs, to violate every tenet of common decency and humanity, and then say, ‘Who, me?’ when called to account.”

“But surely nations have inherent rights to exclusive self-determination!” Stephanie objected, by now becoming irritated by the little chat-up she saw unfolding before her eyes.

They both turned toward her, then Sarah asked, po-faced, “Why any more than ordinary people? The modern nation state is a conception that appears to share quite a bit with the comic book superhero, the avenging agent (or is that angel?) of capital J ‘Justice’ empowered to swoop into any situation and ‘set things right.’ But far too many times it becomes obvious that righteous morality looks quite a bit like simple avarice, and the ends of ‘justice’ unpleasantly more similar to venal self-interest than not.”

“But what,” Stephanie asked peevishly, looking straight at Gordon, “does all this fascinating political theory have to do with your so-called deep œcology?”

This time, Gordon answered, “Because we’re surrounded with it, anywhere we go in the world. Just to the east of us is Buckingham Palace, a profound symbol of corporate ownership of a large portion of England, Scotland, Wales, and bits and pieces else, if no longer the world, with an entire system of irrelevant property rights and perquisites dependent upon that selfsame divine grant of authority, which cascades in ever-diminishing trickles of false autonomy down through Princes, Nobles, and the various Estates to the meanest owner of a tiny cottage. Deep œcology tells us that we’re all part of an undifferentiated whole, not a single organism, but an intricate organic system that ignores man-made boundaries entirely, that informs all our individual actions with universal scope, so that what we do, what any of us do, touches upon and affects the lives of everything else that lives. There are no real hierarchies, but only complex networks of dependencies that we usually refuse to see and rarely acknowledge. That’s why we collectively refuse to do anything about global warming, pollution, the depletion of the ozone layer, overfishing, and a thousand other ills that afflict the Earth and may eventually destroy us. We’re like children who refuse to share their toys. God, we say, or one of his or her various agents or avatars, gave some of us this or that to play with, and if we want to bang it on the counter and break it, so what? It’s ours.”

Stephanie pursed her lips and set her jaw. “And what gives you the particular right to decide what’s what?”

“Nothing at all. We’re none of us completely free of it, if we stop to think. My own family, the Sinclairs of Caithess and Orkney, are descended from people who derived their ‘legitimacy’ from their association with William the Conqueror, who exercised his divine right to educate the English and Scots about their proper relationship to their Norman French ‘betters’ with the edge of a sword. My position in the world, which is fairly modest by UK standards, but astonishingly affluent by world norms, depends in large part upon the murder, rape, and pillage perpetrated by my ancestors. Like every other life form on Earth, we’ve survived. We’re all of us sinners, and descended from sinners, but we have the ability to improve, or some of us do. What’s the phrase they send home on school reports? ‘Plays well with others?’ It’s not how we’re born, grasping and selfish all, but how we grow up that counts, and it’s time for more of us to grow up.”

Stephanie was trying to be tolerant, but this line of reasoning didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “That’s all well and good, but we’re just a financial firm, and by no means the largest. We’re in no position to meddle in affairs of state, however unfair these arrangements may be.”

Sarah demurred, shaking her head. “I disagree, Stephanie. There are a lot of threads coming together on this, from Gaia theory — in any of its many forms — to ecofeminist analysis of systems of exploitation and oppression, to environmental activism, to new theories of the firm, to populist disaffection with the increasing disparity of wealth and outcomes in every nation, including the Western democracies, all of which are acting, slowly thank heavens, to undermine the position of commercial enterprise within the legal framework, and for which potential change, perhaps even upheaval, we should be preparing as a matter of prudence and due diligence.”

“Exactly!” Gordon cried. He had the bit in his teeth now, and was running with it. “It doesn’t matter in the end if any of us believe in any particular portion of any of these pessimistic scenarios of global doom, or jaundiced appraisals of the continued existence of the current business regime, because many people do believe in them, and are working mightily to overthrow the present scheme of things, and to lay low the powerful entities hitherto in charge. ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men,’ as Shakespeare said, ‘which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.’ ”

Stephanie was unmoved, and said, “Very shrewd, but you’ll observe, I’m sure, that Brutus seems to have missed his own particular tide, and died through assisted suicide in the very next act. However noble Brutus may have been, and however wicked and self-serving his enemies, I feel no particular desire to emulate him.”

“Nor do I,” he said. “It’s becoming quite clear, however, that a large proportion of the Global South are being callously steered toward death, and this is insupportable in today’s world. The weapons of resistance and destruction are widely available, and some of the nations which will be disadvantaged are nuclear powers.”

Gordon and Sarah were smiling at each other again, a very bad sign. “What do you mean, ‘steered toward death’ and why is any of this our responsibility?” Stephanie asked grimly, trying to steer the conversation back to include herself as a participant rather than an audience.

Gordon glanced at Stephanie for the briefest of moments and said, continuing his now obvious flirtation with Sarah, “I mean that decisions are being made to cast aside entire populations in the near future. Nations are experiencing water shortages, food shortages, and chronic deprivation whilst their corrupt leaders are selling the land the inhabitants need to produce food, the water they need to drink, and the resources they need to improve their standard of living to foreigners, who are expropriating hedges against global climate change even as they deny that it exists.”

Stephanie didn’t know anything about this; she had trouble enough keeping up with the tiny sliver of the world she was charged with. “How on Earth are they doing that?”

Sarah answered smugly, “Through long-term contracts for essential resources, through military and economic intimidation, and through the funding of private armies whose mission is to terrorise local populations and keep the resources, and profits, flowing. Like the right-wing ‘death squads’ in Argentina, for example, or similar armed factions in Liberia.”

Gordon added, nodding, “Just look at any modern ‘conflict zone’ and you’ll see some commercial interest at the bottom of it, from the ‘blood diamonds’ of Angola, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere which funded more than a million deaths, the petroleum of Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria, Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, which has cost perhaps five million human lives, and countless locations around the so-called Third World. No matter where you look, you’ll find armed militias and corruption, not necessarily in that order, vying to control the enormous rents from these activities.”

“But how is that the fault of commercial interests?” Stephanie objected, a bit peevish, and she couldn’t exactly understand why. She was getting married, and Sarah had every right to flirt, even if he was far too young for her, and her still on the rebound from her divorce less than a year past.

Gordon didn’t even bother to glance toward Stephanie this time, his eyes focused on Sarah like a cat eyes a fluttering bird. If he’d had a tail, it would be twitching. “Because the rent-seeking behaviour and criminality of these groups are either aided or abetted by these enterprises through direct sponsorship, or through immoral commerce with murderers, thieves, and even illegitimate state actors which helps to fund their actions.”

“But today,” he said, “firms which use these tactics, or trade with groups who use them, are being targeted financially where international law fell short. For example, the US has recently reïnstated a claim by South African victims of the former racist regime against businesses such as IBM, Daimler, Ford, and General Motors, which sold police gear, military weapons systems, and other questionable items to the then government which were used to oppress non-white segments of the South African population. The new government in Pretoria are supporting the suit, despite the fact that it may harm relations with firms which are still very important to their success in the world, because of the moral issues involved.”

Sarah looked as if he’d just handed her a bouquet of roses. “And for the first time since the Nazi collaborator reparations, most of which were tardy and inadequate, businesses are being held to account for their actions, bringing morality in through the back door, as it were, to what classical economics considers a ‘value-free’ arrangement.” Sarah grinned at this, as if it were welcome news.

Stephanie half-expected the two of them to begin dancing around the room and ‘high-fiving’ each other, they shared such obvious glee at the prospect of universal chaos and destruction. She tried once more to regain the focus. She was interviewing, albeit informally, a prospective employee, not running a bloody dating service! “Hang on, you two! Before you link arms and start singing L’Internationale with fists raised high, I want to know how this affects us in the real world, and how we can turn this neo-socialist idealism into profit for our clients.”

For the first time in some moments, at least since they’d come through to the lobby, Sarah looked straight at her, as solid and as real as the frothy fantasies of pink and white and lace she’d been experiencing these past few weeks had seemed airy and insubstantial. For an instant Stephanie felt joined once more to the Earth, her feet planted firmly in its soil, rooted.

Sarah spoke. “We have to start from where we are, Stephanie,” she said in naked earnest. “And if not now, when? More than a hundred years ago, a Black man said in the very heart of the Segregationist American South, ‘A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal: “Water, water. We die of thirst.” The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time, the signal, “Water, send us water!” went up from the distressed vessel. And was answered: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A third and fourth signal for water was answered: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River’, its banks so widely-spaced at river mouth as to lie beyond the horizon. We none of us see over our horizons, so we don’t know what lies around us, but we have to take a stab at whatever we can reach lest we perish from lack of initiative. The sailors in the story had given up hope, and so refused to take even the simplest initiatives, but ordinary curiosity and minimal experiment would have shown them a way out of their predicament. We have to cast down our buckets where we are. We’re lost, so we don’t know where a better place might be, or what the best strategy is. We’re in trouble. We have to cast down that bucket and keep hoping. We can’t give up.”

Then Stephanie watched as Sarah turned to look at Gordon, smiling expectantly, as if his response were vital. The lights dimmed slightly, as the oxygen went away from the room.

Gordon basked in Sarah’s regard. “In short,” he said, nodding, “we don’t know exactly what the future will look like, or how we’ll be able to pass through this onrushing crisis safely, if we are able to pass through at all, but we have the good luck to have scientists in many fields calling out advice, engineers in many fields fashioning ropes and buckets, and good agreement between them, so we know the fresh, life-giving water is there beneath us, just out of easy reach. Our challenge is an engineering one, not one of pure discovery.”

“As I understand it then,” Stephanie said, angry for some reason she couldn’t articulate, the muscles in her jaw and neck tensed, her shoulders shrouded in a mantle of empty heat and a hint of pain, “you don’t believe the situation is hopeless, but that there are, or could be, technological solutions that could extricate us from our current situation, whatever that condition might be.”

Gordon, of course, was blithely unaware of her anger. “Yes and no. I don’t possess sufficient scientific hubris that I imagine miraculous new science-fictionish sources of power sufficient to move mountains and alter the courses of the planets, like E.E. Smith did in Skylark of Space, but I do expect that modern science and technology will help us to see our way forward in a manner which minimises damage to both the Earth and to human societies.”

“Look here,” she said impatiently. “I see quite a bit of talk about damage to the entire Earth in the popular press, but isn’t that just as unlikely as the orbit-shifting science fiction you’ve just rubbished?”

“Not quite,” he said. “Humans are part of the biosphere, and have been for the best part of a million years. The last book Charles Darwin published had the daunting title, ‘The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms with Observations on Their Habits,’ which was, perhaps surprisingly, a best seller. It discussed the role of common earthworms in creating the English countryside, and by extension, the ‘dirt’ that covers almost all the useful bits of land on the surface of the Earth. Similar analyses have found the origins of our breathable atmosphere in the workings of living things, without which none of us would be alive, and countless other biological cycles which create the environment in which we live and are sustained. We are living things, at least as clever as earthworms, and thus have the power to change the world.”

“Which we have done,” Sarah chimed in, “through our feckless exploitation of forests and fossil fuels. Early human cultures existed in rough homeostasis with their energy consumption, with the vast majority of their energy budget comprised of direct solar production, either in food or in combustible plant materials used for cooking and heating. Stored solar energy sources such as petroleum or coal were tertiary at best, and limited by the crude technology available in human history to essentially sustainable levels.”

Stephanie glared at the two of them. “Bloody hell! I feel like I’ve walked into a music hall where I’m the panto villain. All I need is the catastrophe chorus waltzing in carolling Marvin Gaye’s Mercy Mercy Me to make it all complete. Am I to be the Snow Queen?”

Sarah’s dark eyes flashed fire. “Stephanie, please don’t take it personally. We’ve all of us merrily burned through the stored solar energy reserves of hundreds of millions of years in the space of a few centuries, a violation of homeostasis, since it will take at least another few hundred millions of years to replace them. At the same time, we’ve taken a hundred million year’s worth of carbon sequestration, itself responsible for the slow climate change that’s made our modern lifestyle possible, and thrown it back into the atmosphere, a perfectly brilliant strategy to turn the world topsy-turvy. It only remains to see if we’ll survive.”

“But that’s just the point, Sarah! No one believes that survival is the issue, but whether we can drive around in Chelsea tractors or must needs make do with bicycles and shank’s pony. And even that controversy most people see as a capricious and unfair imposition on ordinary people whilst the posh set fly around the world in private jets burning forty-two thousand litres of kerosene to flit off for an afternoon in Bora Bora, and then another forty-two thousand flitting back again.”

“Don’t you see, Stephanie?” Sarah pleaded, looking straight at her again. “That’s just another way of saying the same thing. We’ve been re-arranging the world to suit the ‘posh set,’ as you’ve termed them, for the past few centuries, possibly millennia, and it’s all starting to catch up with us. The global financial meltdown and the global meltdown in the arctic regions are two sides of the same coin.”

Intrigued, despite her dudgeon, Stephanie asked, “What do you mean by that? Surely they’re two separate processes.”

“Not really,” Sarah said. “Just as Keynes insisted, every free market is inherently unstable, including our rapacious exploitation of the global commons, now largely privatised or despoiled, and requires intervention and regulation to prevent dangerous extravagance. Like any other marketplace, the preservation of a productive Earth requires a careful stewardship which is sadly absent in the real world.”

“So you’re saying that Malthusian limits are inherent in the marketplace as well as the commons?”

“Yes. Just as the commons inevitably collapse when they are misused, because individuals may act selfishly to maximise their own immediate profits if communal rules are inadequately enforced, or if the community itself is disrupted, any marketplace can be gamed to produce anomalous results. Because the potential payouts are so enormous, freeholders, or those with unlimited licence, can’t be trusted to act either in the interest of the marketplace or in the invisible stake held by future generations, because they may net hundreds of millions of pounds for one risky transaction, even though communal prosperity is thereby gutted. Just as population increase is exponential, greed grows without limit. The selfish interests of individuals thus fail to coïncide with the global stakeholders, since short-term profits may make rentiers or their custodians incredibly wealthy and thus immune from the outcomes of their own actions. It doesn’t matter so much if you poison the well if you don’t plan to drink from it. Since dosh is fungible, the profits from one predatory raid on market resources may fuel another, with the resulting despoliation affecting entire economies.”

Stephanie thought about this for a while, then said, “All well and good then, Sarah, but how does this affect our own bottom line? If we’re to sell this idea to the directors, and I needn’t remind you that the firm is largely owned by Yanks, we have to show how this affects us, I’m very sorry to say, in the short term.”

“That’s easy,” she said. “Firstly, the strong possibility exists for drastic changes in the regulatory and taxation regimes of the Western democracies which would disproportionately affect financial institutions and non-manufacturing capitalists. Simultaneously, there’s a very real danger of a global recession, perhaps even a depression, which would place enormous pressures on every country in the world to allow, or even encourage, inflation, which would lower the overall debt by devaluing currencies. In both cases, firms holding debt would be left holding the bag, so a reasonable short-term investment strategy might be to move from debt to equity, either in land and property or in the means of production and rents on production.”

Stephanie nodded. “I see. Since the firm’s current holdings are largely in corporate bonds and other long-term debt, we’d be extremely vulnerable to any currency devaluation, so the problem lies in how likely this scenario appears to be.” She paused to think, then levelled a probing glance at Sarah’s, one eyebrow raised. “The business press seems to believe that the recovery is well under way, so what indications do you see to the contrary?”

“Business press… feh!” Sarah said, sneering. “ Cheerleaders more like it. They were saying the same thing as the crash went well into economic catastrophe, and have been claiming to see light at the end of the tunnel ever since. The facts are that the ‘press’ are in bed with the speculators, for the most part, and their forecasts aren’t even as trustworthy as those of the touts at the track regarding the dogs since the legs don’t usually pretend to be other than what they are.”

“But surely analysis is worth something,” Stephanie said reasonably.“ It’s what we bring to the table, after all.”

“It is,” Sarah acknowledged, “but the utility of business analysis is growing ever more uncertain as the complexity of the systems within which business is conducted grows exponentially. We can no longer look at a company’s books without taking into account the nation states, laws, cultures, and environments within which the company operates. We now have publicists — and the business press which depends on them — coördinating ‘spin’ to their mutual benefit, with the guaranteed ‘takeaway’ from every investment-oriented story that one should place a wager somewhere. But the market itself is asymptotically approaching a pure drunkard’s walk, the excursions of which are inherently unpredictable.”

“Surely that’s an exaggeration!” Stephanie exclaimed.

“You’re right, of course,” Sarah admitted, “but the rhetorical point is ‘truthy,’ in that there is comparatively little ‘open outcry’ in today’s markets, so that most opinions about the workings of the market are impervious to fact, whether that opinion is formed after careful study and due diligence or sifted from the gossip of the scandal sheets. So many of the most significant trades are made electronically today, either without full disclosure, in total secrecy, or using channels subject to manipulation and fraud, with essential information deliberately hidden from investors or obfuscated by insider trading and/or corruption. It used to be that a trader might gain an advantage through knowing that people in Vladivostok loved treacle whilst the people who made the stuff in Jamaica thought it was nearly worthless, except for making rum, but the people who make treacle these days know the market price for treacle in every city around the world and could seek the best prices on their own account, if that were possible. So the traders seek to maintain their profit margins through a multiplicity of conspiracies in restraint of trade, price-fixing, false reportage, bribery of public officials, cartels, consortiums, and even criminal gangs as a last resort.”

“That’s very interesting, Sarah. You’re saying, essentially, that the various stock markets are anti-competitive at heart?”

“Not completely,” she admitted, “but in large measure. The total value of the world economy is somewhere around thirty-six trillion US dollars, but the derivatives market, which is largely unregulated, or poorly regulated, accounts for seven hundred and ninety-one trillion dollars, eleven times the size of the entire tangible economy, so any real economic activity is dwarfed by a gargantuan shadow economy which is essentially a distributed gambling operation with few, if any, real controls or oversight, a phantom marketplace, accessible primarily to the extremely wealthy and to large institutions, which attempts to convert assets, that is, investments, into pure cash flow.”

Stephanie began to see what she was driving toward, and said, with growing excitement, “So the various stock markets around the world, and especially the options markets, might be viewed as casinos, or perhaps parimutual betting shops, in which legalised gambling occurs?”

“Yes! and also as quasi cartels, since trading in certain types of asset is artificially limited, allowing privileged intermediaries to take a percentage of every transaction, although the transaction itself is theoretically ‘untrammelled.’ ”

Stephanie nodded. “Then the derivatives market might be seen as a quasi-legal method of influencing stock values, since wagers placed in the shadow marketplace can affect the prices in the real world of commerce.”

“Exactly! And because these transactions are essentially wagers, the ‘investors’ are actually just punters, who have a relative freedom to separate their wagers from their ability to pay off on losses, which leads in turn to wild fluctuations in both the odds and the prices, as well as the exposure of more-or-less legitimate businesses to the risk of general financial instability….”

“Which brought down Lehman Brothers and many more, then managed to rope in the general public to pay off losses on bets they’d never made.” Stephanie was beginning to get a little excited, since she was seeing her way clear to make money — or at least avoid losing it — from Sarah’s insight, and happened to notice that Gordon had dropped out of the conversation as well, and was staring at both of them now, out of his depth and out of the running in one packet. She smiled.

“QED,” Sarah said smugly, her eyes focused on Stephanie, as they should do.

Which caused Stephanie to smile more broadly. “Absolutely brilliant, Sarah!” She made a show of looking at her cellphone for the time. “And isn’t it time we were walking up? It’s just gone five.” She tucked her bag more firmly under her arm and she was ready.

Sarah grabbed her parcels and bag and said, “Bugger! We’ll be late, won’t we? Barb will be fretting by now.” She turned toward the stairs and started up.

Stephanie followed close behind.

—««-»»—

Ascending the stairs at last, Stephanie vented her long-repressed irritation with a quietly hissed, “Bloody hell, Sarah! What were you on about back there? For a while it looked like you were going to shag him under the accommodation desk, which gives a whole new meaning to the term.”

“Oh, please, Steph,” Sarah whispered, rolling her eyes with a little moue. “I was just flirting a bit. I felt I owed it to myself after putting up with that silly wanker I married for a year and a half. It was fun having him on for a bit. You know he’s far too young to hold my interest for long.” She looked thoughtful for a second, and then added, “Although he might be amusing for a week or two. He’s very fit.”

Stephanie chided her, “He’s also too young to be safe for that sort of casual dalliance, especially if he turns up at the firm one of these days. I told you that Barb was interested in him, and wouldn’t it just serve you right to have a drooling boy stopping down the hall in a month or two.”

Sarah set her jaw. “I’m not a fool, Stephanie, and you’re not my mother.”

Stephanie paused on the stair and held out her hand to touch Sarah’s shoulder. “I know, Sarah, and I’m sorry. I was probably just jealous because he so obviously fancied you. He is very fit, when all is said and done.” She grinned and gave her friend an exaggerated wink and leer.

Sarah mimed scandalised horror, throwing up both hands as if to push the idea of carnal interest away from them both, “Steph! Such a shande! And you an almost married woman!”

“Well,” she drawled, in a very bad American accent, “as Dolly Parton once wisely observed, ‘I may be married, but I ain’t dead, and I ain’t blind.’ Words to live by.”

Sarah laughed and rolled her eyes in a suggestive manner. She said, “Honi soit, qui mal y pense.”

“Indeed!” Stephanie proclaimed with a modest air of virtue marred only by a suggestive wriggle and roll of her hips. “A lady is always discreet.”

“Hear, hear!” Sarah mimed applause, and then continued, “Get with the programme, Stephanie! Showers are supposed to be a little raunchy, and if we can’t let our hair down a little and have some fun, what’s the point of them? No one that I know of is that starved for entertainment that they look forward to playing party games, nor do good wishes and thoughtful gifts require an admiring audience.”

—««-»»—

Standing before Barb’s door, they both paused for a moment, glancing sidelong at each other, before Sarah said, “Show time,” and grinned.

Stephanie nodded, smiling at her friend. “One for all, and all for one, eh? Amazons forever! and Destiny awaits!” She knocked briskly on the door.

Which was opened by Mique, fetchingly attired in a girlish version of her usual work outfit of dungarees and plaid shirt, with a really nice indigo blouse complementing fuschia shortalls with embroidered bib and braces. “Ladies! You’re just on time!”

Stephanie’s eyes widened. “Hi, Mique! You clean up nicely.” She looked her up and down appraisingly. “To what do we owe this honour?”

She laughed and said, “I do own other clothes, Steph, I just choose not to wear them to the office where they’ll only become soiled when I wind up crawling through the cellar to run a cable, or climb out on the roof to perform magical incantations whilst dancing around our satlink antenna.”

Sarah raised one eyebrow sceptically. “I thought those dances had to be done in the nude, Mique.” Then she smiled.

She grinned back to both of them, magnanimous in her technical prowess. “Shhh! Don’t say it so loudly. I have trouble enough with kibitzers as it is. If word got out about the real secrets of my trade, I’d have a perpetual entourage trailing after me and you brainy lot would never get any work done.”

“Bloody hell, Mique! You’d have them following you around if you just wore more outfits like this one in to work. You have hidden depths, girl, hidden depths.”

“Not so fast, Stephanie,” she admonished her with mock severity. “I’m quite selective about my entourage, although the two of you would of course be very welcome. But one must needs keep the riffraff at bay. It would diminish my sublime and mystic powers if profane minds were allowed to observe.”

“Not to worry, Mique,” Sarah reassured her. “We’ll keep your secrets, and tear any interlopers limb from limb if they press too close or spy. I’m sure I have a thyrsos laying about somewhere.”

“As well you might, Sarah. You’ll need it tonight.” On that mysterious note, she beckoned them through the door.

Copyright © 2009 Liobhan — All Rights Reserved Worldwide

This story may not be reposted on any other site.

Tooltips: Quite a lot of background information for this story is contained in ‘tooltips,’ explanatory text which can be accessed by ‘hovering’ over a word or phrase with your mouse or other pointing device cursor. It’s quite likely that tooltips are broken in your browser, since they’re more or less broken in every major browser, which is a shame, since they offer an unobtrusive version of hypertext that can be taken advantage of without requiring one to exit the current page or to follow a link.

In some browsers, the ‘tooltip’ text will be truncated, badly formatted, or both, and may be absent altogether. Without looking at the source code, it may be difficult to figure out exactly what’s going on. As a rather elegant workaround, Terry Volkirch has coded a little JavaScript programme which forces tooltips to be displayed in their entirety but, for technical reasons, this code cannot be used on this site. As a workaround for the workaround, I'm working on creating an offsite location which can be linked to each of the stories in Spin Cycle, and which allows the use of Terry’s code.

I’ll let you know when this is ready.