Blues stood frozen in the middle of the room with his hands clenched at his sides, staring up at the figures in the doorway. Up until now, he'd only seen Judith via her netscreen camera, and only from the neck up. She was taller than he'd expected, paler, and thinner too—she had a look of defeated but lingering frailty. Her frizzled grey hair, pulled back into a messy ponytail, put her soft and gentle face into stark relief. As if to offset the ghostliness of her features, she wore a bright yellow scarf around her neck. Yuichi, standing beside her, was a little shorter in stature—young, slender, full of life, and wearing a fitted suit.
"Well, we made it," Judith said with a contented sigh. "And it looks like not a moment too soon. I bet your other one year old doesn't throw tantrums of this caliber, Yuichi."
"Whoa." As Yuichi stepped into the room, his shoes crunched against broken glass. At last his eyes settled on the remains of the shattered coffee jar, surrounded by bits of black detritus, and he looked up at Blues with a wry smile. "I don't like that brand either," he said.
It took a few seconds for Blues to realize what Yuichi had meant, but it was better late than never. Feeling a little more at ease, he laughed.
"Oh, there it is." Judith clutched Yuichi by the arm. "It's different than I imagined. Even better. How wonderful."
Mr. Harada, still holding his fistful of keys, peeked his head into the room in dismay. "He trashed the place," he said. "That netscreen was expensive, you know."
"Sorry about that," said Judith, although she didn't look particularly sorry. "Tell Takayama he can send us the bill.
"Anyway, Yu, he already knows me, perhaps more than he would like—but the two of you haven't been acquainted yet. Go on and introduce yourself, would you?"
"All right," said Yuichi. "Hi, Blues." He bowed, and clasped Blues's hand in a firm shake. "I'm Yuichi Nishikawa, and under Dr. Light's tutelage I programmed your memory consolidation systems. And I've heard I did a pretty good job at it..." There was a pregnant pause. "...Which is why I'm never going to borrow money from you."
Yuichi leaned in close, his hand still grasping Blues's. He seemed to be expecting something. After a few moments, he shrank back looking a bit sheepish.
"No good, eh?" he said. "I suppose you don't have much experience with money, do you?"
Blues shook his head.
"Well, it was a good try," said Judith. She gave Blues a wink. "Just you wait. We'll get another laugh out of you yet."
Blues stared up at them, flummoxed. A nagging voice in the back of his mind told him he ought to be angry with them, or at least suspicious of their motives. But here in the flesh, their smiles were disarming, and he liked the feeling of being fawned and fussed over. Confused though he was, he was glad to see them.
"Dr. Sorensen," he said, "why are you here?"
"I was wondering when you'd ask." She drew closer, and for the first time Blues detected the smell of perfume. "Yuichi and I met up in Tokyo this morning, and traveled here together—and we couldn't wait 'till this evening to meet you. It was quite an ordeal getting Nurtech to let us in, but a call from our lawyer finally did the trick. The contract says we're not allowed to be present for your tests today—as if you might be a counting horse or something—but you're not being tested right now, are you?" She looked down at her watch. "We have thirty eight minutes left., so let's use our time wisely. Well, first things first."
With a bittersweet smile, she leaned down and enveloped him in her arms. "Oh, I've waited so long to do this," she said.
It was a strange mix of new sensations: the sudden closeness of their bodies, Judith`s hands around him, the heady scent of her perfume, his head cradled under her chin, and something fleshy and soft pressed against his face—which he later realized was one of her breasts.
After a few moments, she reached down to where his hands were hanging at his sides and moved them up to her back. He realized, with a suddden pang of embarrassment, that this was called a "hug," and that he ought to have reciprocated sooner.
"That`s better, isn`t it?" She let out a good-natured laugh. "Well, you don`t get much of this at home, do you? Those two you`ve fallen in with—they`re just a couple of brains that forget they have bodies attached. But I know Tom is doing his best. He loves you, even though it doesn`t always come naturally to him to show it."
Her words made him gasp. In response, Judith gave him an affirming rub on the back.
"Dr. Sorensen," he said, "there's so much I want to know. Why I'm here, and what Nurtech wants with me..." He remembered she and Yuichi had said it was his birthday, and with a shudder realized he'd been here unconscious for nearly a week. He wriggled out of Judith's arms and took a step back. "What they did with me while I was out... I don't like being taken places without my consent..."
Judith looked him squarely in the eye, and her face had become solemn. "We've had to keep you in the dark about a lot of things," she said, and glanced over her shoulder at Mr. Harada standing watch at the door. She lowered her voice to a near-whisper. "Listen. We got you into this mess, and we're going to get you out of it. But you have to trust us." Then she reached out and cradled his face in her hands, and her eyes grew wide. "Trust us."
Feeling he had no other choice, Blues nodded.
With a weak smile, Judith put a gentle hand over his stomach. "I'm sorry about this power core issue, Blues. It was our mistake—and it's caused you a lot of worry and pain. But we're ready now to start building you a new one. And we have some good news: according to Tom's most recent calculations, your rate of decline is slower than we feared.
"We have something in common, you and I: I too was ill, but I got a second wind—and so will you."
"Can you fix my core in time?" said Blues. "I mean, before March. If you can't, Nurtech's going to try, and Dr. Wily said... well, I'm not sure what he meant, but..."
"Yes, Tom told me what he said." Judith let out an exasperated sigh. "Albert's behavior lately has been... erratic, to say the least. We don't understand it... it's like he's trying to scare you. He's always enjoyed making jokes at your expense, and perhaps he thinks it's funny, but now he's gone too far." She took a deep breath. "Tom and I... well, we've had enough. Now that Albert's part in your testing is finished, we think it'd be better if he didn't come around as much anymore."
Blues first reacted to this news with a sense of relief—but it was immediately followed by a vague unease, and finally the urge to protest.
"But if you don't finish before March, then..."
"We're going to finish before March, even without Albert's help." Judith gave him a forceful nod, and he knew that she considered the matter closed.
He opened his mouth to object, but just then he remembered something else he wanted to ask. "Who's Takayama?" he said.
"Oh, him? He's the company's financial director. And he also happens to be the subject of another longstanding scientific investigation of ours." Her expression lightened, and deep creases appeared at the corners of her eyes. "We've concluded that you're human enough, but even after decades of careful observation, we still can't decide whether he is."
He smiled.
Judith placed her hands on his shoulders. "Anyway, we said we'd get you out of this room, didn't we? This isn't your kind of place." She cast a quick glance down at her watch. "We still have some time. Come on, Blues. Let's go outside for some fresh air."
Yuichi kicked at one of the demolished magazines on the floor. "There's nothing good to read here, anyway," he said.
Blues laughed.
Escorted by Mr. Harada and two other guards, they ventured out into the parking lot. The enormity of the snow took Blues by surprise. The path from the door to the pavement was flanked by walls of white as tall as he was, and he had the dizzying impression of everything around him looking the same. For the moment the snow had stopped, but the clouds were heavy with the promise of more to come later.
"This is a new record for Shizuoka," Judith said. "Unusual. It's been snowing nonstop, Tom said, since the morning you... well, since a week ago."
Going outside hadn't been part of the original plan of the day, so Dr. Light hadn't sent his coat along with him—but Yuichi had removed his own jacket and handed it to him without a second thought. "It's nothing," he said. "I'm from up north, and I'm used to much worse than this." Blues continued to shiver, and Judith reached out and touched him on the elbow. "Are you still cold, dear?" she said.
He nodded. Judith pulled off his tie, rolled it up, and asked him to put it in his pocket. Then she removed the bright yellow scarf from her neck and wrapped it around his. It was soft, and smelled faintly of flowers. He looked downward and fingered at the seams.
"Thanks," he said.
"Well, you need something bright and cheery to counter your name, don't you?" She gave him a self-satisfied smile. "Why don't you keep it? It's not my color, anyway... makes me look washed out... especially since... Oh, nevermind."
Blues smiled. Just then, a novel thought entered his head. "Dr. Sorensen, Mr. Nishikawa," he said, "do you have a netphone? I want to take a picture here, with you."
Judith's eyes widened a little. "You do?" she said. "Well, all right. Of course. Mr. Harada, could you please...?"
It was the first time Blues had asked anyone to take his photograph. As Judith and Yuichi pressed in close on either side of him, and they all looked toward Mr. Harada holding the netphone, he found himself smiling a genuine smile—but it was tinged with a sincere feeling of malice. Although he really liked these people, he admitted to himself that he was angry, and wanted them to know it—if not now, then at least at some distant point in the future.
He was aware of how the photo would look to their eyes: the squat brutalism of Nurtech's laboratory looming behind them, the sardonic smile on his face, and the context which the two of them would know all too well.
He had a perfect memory, and no need to keep mementos. He wanted to take that picture not so that he would remember that day—but so that they would never be allowed to forget.
They spent a few more minutes breathing the crisp air. Blues noticed Judith glancing down at her watch at regular intervals, although he didn't know why. At one point, she steered him by the elbow toward one section of the curb and stared off into the distance. Yuichi and Mr. Harada followed silently behind.
"Here," she said. "The mountains look different from this angle, don't you think?"
Blues wasn't sure what he was supposed to be looking for. "Actually," he said, "I don't think..."
"It's almost time to go in," said Yuichi, looking a bit mystified, and Mr. Harada gestured across the parking lot toward the door.
"No. We still have two minutes left," Judith said, squinting her eyes at the horizon. "More or less."
Two minutes came and passed. The parking lot was silent and still except for the occasional crunch of snow under their shifting feet.
At last, Judith let out a trembling sigh. "Well, let`s go in," she said.
Blues stared up at her furrowed brow, wondering why she looked so disappointed.
"Is something wrong, Dr. Sorensen?" he said.
She shook her head and smiled, but her eyes were glassy. "No, nothing," she answered, and put her arm around his shoulder. "Well, Blues, it`s time for you to finish up your tests—then we`ll take you home, get started on that new power core of yours, and let you get on with your life. That doesn`t sound so bad, does it?"
"No... it doesn`t," he said.
Under Mr. Harada's watch, they led him inside. Another pair of security guards waited in silence as they stomped bits of ice from their snow-crusted shoes. Judith, her hair still wild from the wind, told the guards to wait, then stooped down and embraced Blues one more time. When she'd finally pulled herself away, Yuichi leaned in, gave him an exuberant handshake, and wished him good luck. With the yellow scarf still wrapped around his neck, Blues turned and followed the guards down the hallway. He was only a little afraid—that is, until he looked back and saw Judith's silhouette, black against the gray January sun, press herself against the wall with her face in her hands, and Yuichi, looking hesitant and confused, reaching out to console her.
It would be many years before Blues would learn the reason for Judith`s strange behavior: the car that was supposed to arrive at Nurtech's parking lot at the preappointed time, but didn't, into which she would have shoved Blues before leaping in herself.
She had thought of everything, even the man she`d paid to sit in the back seat and assist her, if necessary, in forcing Blues into shutdown mode. There was the large suitcase in the trunk into which they would have folded him, and the second getaway car waiting beside the road to receive them on the way to the airport. There was the money which had been slipped into all the right pockets at Nurtech`s security gate and at airports on either side of the world.
And then there was Dr. Light's part in the plan: he was waiting at home with his netphone in hand for Judith`s message that Blues was safe, and that he could now destroy the prize that Nurtech had been promised under contract. Tom had steeled himself for the consequences of their betrayal, which included the near-guarantee of a jail sentence. After the long wait for the day, at last, when he would be free to join Judith on the other side of the world, they would have spent the time necessary to design Blues's new core the way they wanted—they knew all along, as well as Nurtech did, that it couldn`t be done within two months.
And what about Yuichi? He knew nothing and would have been left behind at the curb—he had a young family, after all.
It was a shot in the dark. Judith`s plan was the best they could manage now, but it had a glaring flaw: if one link in the chain went missing, the whole thing would come apart. Neither she, nor Tom, would ever know where the collapse originated: one missed message somewhere, or one participant who`d gotten cold feet. But come apart it did—and although it would have been spectacular in its execution, in failure it manifested as nothing more than the silence of a snow-filled parking lot.
And so Blues remained fixed on his current trajectory, unaware how far Tom and Judith had been willing to go, in the eleventh hour, to push him off of it.
One conspicuous element missing from the plan was Albert. He'd been deliberately left out, but even if he'd known, he wouldn't have cared: he already had a plan of of his own.
The guards led Blues through an unfamiliar corridor, and as they turned a corner he spied Morita and Ogata talking in low tones with a man in a suit.
"Take him in," said the man, and pointed to a nearby door.
So in he was pulled. When the guards had left, and Blues had heard the key turning in the outside lock, he found himself alone in a room bisected by a long glass wall. There was a pair of speakers mounted in two corners, and a camera which aimed down from the ceiling at the spot where he assumed he was supposed to sit. Wanting to stay out of its glare for as long as he could, he lingered instead in a corner.
He looked up at the clock on the wall and waited. Five minutes passed, then ten. A minor ache in his stomach grew, climaxed, and then subsided. Finally, Morita peeked her head in through the door on the opposite side of the glass, looking a little frazzled.
"Um, sorry about this," she said. "Remember Mr. Ando?... of course you do. Well, after he met you this morning, he said he was going out for a cigarette and never came back. The guys at the front security gate said they saw him drive away. It seems he got a bit spooked."
"Bet you never realized you were so scary, did you?" called the disembodied voice of Ogata from behind her.
"...No, I didn't," Blues said.
"Ando was supposed to talk with you this afternoon," said Morita, "but Nurtech's asked Ogata and me to fill in for him, and we need time to prepare. Not to mention... we've decided to make a few last-minute changes to the next test. Do you need anything while you wait?"
"A magazine to read, perhaps?" Ogata said. "Oh, right, we heard you destroyed them all."
Blues laughed.
"Morita, did we get that on...?" There was a pause, after which Ogata emerged from behind the door in a huff. "Damn it, kid, get in front of the camera before you laugh or do anything interesting, all right? I'd like to leave here on time today. Ever heard of jet lag before? Nice scarf, by the way.
"Anyway, see those speakers up there?" He pointed to the two corners of the room on his side of the wall. "We just got someone to rig them up during the lunch hour, and we haven't tried them out yet. So if you'll just bear with us..." He turned toward the open door. "It's that button, Mr. Harada. Okay, here we go... Turn it up a little more... More..."
Blues heard a gentle violin melody, faint at first but gradually increasing in volume, which he recognized as the "Largo" of Vivaldi's "Winter." He raised his head.
"All right, it looks like we're in business." Ogata peered at Blues with a lopsided smile. "Actually, now that I think of it, according to Dr. Light's notes you prefer the Romantics. Want me to put on something different?"
"No," said Blues, as a feeling of gratitude settled over him. "This is fine."
"Oh, and what about...?" Morita vanished into the hallway. Blues heard her voice speaking to someone outside the room, but the words were drowned out by the music. Moments later, the door on Blues's side opened. Mr. Harada came in holding Blues's generator, which he set down promptly on the floor before leaving.
Astonished, Blues bent down and scooped it up into his arms. Immediately, he felt some of his anxiety dissipate.
"So that's what a robot's security blanket looks like," said Ogata with a wistful smile.
They left and closed the door behind them, but the music continued to play. Still out of the camera's range, Blues lay down on the floor with the generator nestled under his arm, wrapped in Judith's scarf and the warmth of the music, and closed his eyes.
"Thank you," he said to an empty room.
They returned a few minutes later and seated themselves in two plastic chairs in front of the wall.
"Thanks for waiting," Morita said. She pointed to the empty chair on Blues's side. "Come and join us."
Hesitantly, Blues pushed himself to his feet. With his eyes up at the camera, and still clutching his generator to his chest, he wandered toward the chair and sat down.
"First, I think we need to explain ourselves." Morita cleared her throat. "This morning, we studied your bodily movements, your sensation and perception... fairly straightforward stuff. The afternoon session was supposed to belong to Ando, and he was supposed to get to the heart of the matter—your feelings. He'd planned to elicit some emotional responses from you, and he had the freedom to do that however he liked. Not all of his methods would have been in accordance with the ethical standards of his profession, and not all of your responses would have been positive—which is why there's a glass wall between us.
"When Ogata and I were asked to fill in for Ando, our first impulse was to follow his original plan. But on second thought, we realized that some of his ideas lacked... imagination... especially related to a certain kind of emotional response in particular..."
"By the way," said Ogata, "if we have to pretend to be your shrinks all afternoon—not saying you need one, of course—then we're going to do it right. The first step, if I understand it correctly, is to make the client comfortable, isn't it?" He turned to Mr. Harada standing in the doorway, and nodded. Mr. Harada turned and left the room, and moments later Blues heard a mechanical humming that was barely audible. Blues didn't realize what had happened until he noticed Morita pointing upwards—and he followed her eyes to the camera, whose lens was now closed and red blinking light had gone dark.
Blues stared at Morita and Ogata in amazement. "You mean," he said, "you don't need..."
"No, we don't," said Ogata. "We're not going to review the contents of this session later. Not since our minds have already been made up anyway."
"Well, let's press on," Morita said. "There are many possible ways this phase of the test could have unfolded." She cast her eyes up toward the ceiling, blinking rapidly. "But we realized that, since we have complete power over you while you're here, this would be a test of our humanity as much as it is of yours.
"Perhaps the way we've chosen to proceed won't be as effective as what Ando had in mind... But, absent any hard evidence to the contrary, we'd prefer to err on the side of kindness..."
She signaled to Mr. Harada, who in turn leaned out the door and signaled to someone unseen in the hallway. The door on Blues's side of the room opened and in came two security guards, each hauling a heavy canvas bag. They set the bags on the floor at his feet and retreated; Blues stared downward, a little afraid, and excited, by the prospect of what was inside.
"Go on," said Ogata. "Take a look."
Blues leaned down and opened one of the bags, and his hand brushed against tightly-bound paper. Immediately, he knew what it was. He yanked out one of the objects and flipped greedily through the pages. He saw a procession of colorful and stylized images: the maple tree in the garden, a sugi in the forest, a pair of crows perched on the wall, hydragneas, the quiet living room illuminated by the andon lamp at night, the side of Dr. Light's face drawn from memory, looking lost in thought... his own face as it appeared in the bathroom mirror...
"This... this is..."
"During the lunch hour, we found these sitting in a cardboard box in the library, and figured they had to be yours," said Ogata. "We asked Takayama about them—he was a little steamed that we'd been poking around in there—but in the end he admitted the company doesn't need them anymore. Anyway, we thought you'd appreciate getting them back."
"Your pictures are beautiful, you know," said Morita. "They show a good sense of perspective and shading."
"They do?" Blues felt the odd sensation of his throat closing up. "Thank you. Yes, I do appreciate..."
He found himself suddenly unable to speak. He heard a gentle pattering sound and noticed a drop of liquid had fallen onto one of the open pages, smudging the shaded outline of a leaf. By impulse he looked up toward the ceiling, suspecting a leak, and it was only after a second drop had fallen that he reached up, touched his eyes, and realized they were wet.
Through his blurred vision, he saw Morita and Ogata staring at him with awestruck faces. Then they seemed to come back to themselves, and they self-consciously looked away.
Morita rose to her feet and hurried toward Mr. Harada at the door. "Let me cross over to his side," she said.
"I'm afraid I can't do that," said Mr. Harada, and held up his arms.
"But he's all alone over there. He has no one to..."
"Since his outburst during lunch, it seems he's earned a... reputation, and the company has become concerned about liability. You're not to have any physical contact for the rest of the day."
"That's ridiculous," Morita said, looking flustered. "How dare you tell me I can't... It's unnatural... I've got a kid of my own, you know."
"Morita," Ogata said, and hunched over with his chin in his hands. "That's no kid."
Blues was unable to see her reaction, but he felt the weight of her silence. He put his sketchbook down on the floor and wiped at his eyes.
A few quiet minutes passed. Blues raised his head and saw the two scientists staring at him with looks of sympathy.
"Well," he said, "what's next?"
Ogata let out a long sigh. "As far as we're concerned, your assessment is finished," he said. "There's nothing more we need you to do. But... we've got to fill the next couple of hours up with something. We can play anything you like through those speakers up there... or..."
Morita smiled. "...Perhaps, if you don't mind, you could tell us a little about your art."
They spent the rest of the afternoon in comfortable conversation. With the camera shut off, and the impression that he'd passed his assessment already a given, Blues felt happy just to be in the moment. For the first time that day, he allowed himself to be excited about being in a new place, meeting new people—something he'd long wished for the opportunity to do—and for just a short while he even forgot that the door behind him was locked from the outside.
He told them about his love for playing the piano, the various kinds of birds he saw in the garden, and the fond sights and smells of Dr. Light's house—and he was surprised that they were interested in everything he said, despite the fact that his realm of experience was so small. As the time passed, he found himself divulging more than he'd thought he would: the way he suspected Dr. Light sometimes let him win at cards, the terror he'd felt during last summer's earthquake, and how he was asked to hide in his bedroom once a month when the gardeners came over to tend to Dr. Light's trees, and peeked out at them through the tiniest crack between the curtains.
They, in turn, told him about their lives, but stuck mostly to the topics of their work and their chidren. Ogata entertained him with stories about living abroad in America, and Blues, his imagination on fire, felt the unbridled pull of a newfound wanderlust. Once in a while the pain in his stomach flared, and he cringed—and each time, Morita glanced back at Mr. Harada with a look that was almost hateful.
Toward the end of their allotted time together, Blues noticed that their mood began to falter. They cast questioning looks at each other, and glanced over their shoulders at the door. Finally, they nodded in unison, ever so slightly—and all of a sudden Ogata grabbed at his chest and gasped for air.
"Mr. Harada!" Morita jumped to her feet. "Quick. There's something wrong with him."
Blues rushed forward to the wall, not knowing what was happening. Ogata slumped forward in his chair, taking deep, wheezing breaths. Mr. Harada ran up behind him.
"I'm having... an asthma attack," Ogata said at last. "My inhaler... it's in the break room... next to my wallet... Hurry..."
Mr. Harada turned and dashed out of the room. As soon as he had disappeared, Ogata began to breathe normally again. He rose to his feet, and he and Morita drew near to the wall.
"Now that he's gone," Ogata said, with urgency in his voice, "there's something we need to talk about with you, Blues... in private."
"This is important," said Morita, and pressed her lips together. "The reason we were poking around in the library in the first place is because we were looking for information about... well... Do you have any idea why Nurtech commissioned Dr. Light and his team to create you?"
The fear in her eyes startled Blues, and he turned to Ogata—only to find Ogata locked in the same look of unease.
"I... was hoping someone here could tell me that," Blues said, and crossed his arms.
Morita cast an anxious glance at Ogata and shook her head. "Nurtech is planning to profit from you, or from the technology that made you. So, how are they going to do it?"
"Haven't your creators told you anything?" said Ogata. "Or, maybe, there's something you've overheard?"
"Well, I..." Blues hesitated, but Ogata stepped forward and banged his palm against the glass.
"Come on, kid," he said with a nervous look back toward the door. "If you have something to say, you'd better spit it out. We don't have much time."
"Dr. Wily once said that why I'm here is the 'dreaded question.'" Blues said, afraid to stop talking. "They've kept it a secret from me all my life... so I can only guess it must be something terrible. That's all I know, I swear."
Ogata cast another anxious glance backwards. "We'd better get to the point, kid. The point is that we're going to fail you, and we hope you don't take it personally."
Blues stared up at Ogata, unable to believe what he had just heard. "But, don't you think..."
"Listen, Blues." Ogata drew closer and heaved a sigh. "You know Nurtech has asked Morita and I whether we think you could pass for human. Well, you pass. But we don't want to give the company our 'yea' verdict—not if it amounts to a tacit endorsement of..." He took a towel out of his pocket and wiped a few beads of sweat from his forehead. "Well, we'd like to know exactly what it is we'd be endorsing first.
"What I'm saying is, we're concerned about the ethics of this whole thing."
"We came here today for curiosity's sake more than anything else," said Morita. "Also, we did it out of respect for Dr. Light, whom we've both admired for a long time. It turns out we were blindsided by what our visit here was going to mean.
"We don't have a clue what's really going on in that artificial brain of yours." Morita forced a smile. "We only know how your behavior affected us, and affect us it did.
"The two of us, we've made our careers in the hard sciences, and most of the time our work is far removed from the messy world of human feelings—but..." She turned to Ogata, who seemed to have something he wanted to say. "Well, go on."
Ogata cleared his throat. "Some of the private projects I've worked on over in Pittsburgh... it's not nice stuff: weapons to be used in wars, technology designed to kill people... Usually, it doesn't mean anything more to me than a kind of logic puzzle to be solved and a paycheck at the end of it. We humans will find ways to justify almost anything, you know... Still, I have my limits..."
"Me too." Morita fixed her gaze on Blues. "But it's so easy for us humans to forget our better natures when there's something to be gained..."
"One hard truth about the world," said Ogata, "is that the weak get devoured. That's why we have laws to protect children, women, minorities..." He glanced up toward the direction of the camera on Blues's side of the room and became visibly agitated. "But there are no laws—not yet, anyway—to protect someone like you."
"What we're saying is that they're going to exploit you," said Morita. "Be careful, and keep your eyes open... to the extent, at least, that you have any control over these matters... We think Ando ran off not because he was frightened of you, but because he realized these people are dangerous..."
Just then the door on Blues's side of the room opened. Two guards came through, took him by the arms, and pulled him back from the glass partition.
"Time to go," one of them said.
"No—wait..." Blues lunged back toward the wall, where Morita and Ogata looked on helplessly with their palms pressed against the glass—but the guards overpowered him, lifted him off his feet, and hurried him toward the door.
As he was being carried backwards, a guard entered the other side of the room and herded Morita and Ogata away—they looked back with fear in their eyes—and for just a moment, a pang of empathy for their fate made Blues forget all about his own troubles. He remembered the tabloid reporter accosted by Dr. Light last spring, and the discussion about how Takayama would most likely procure the man's silence—and he wondered how far the company would go to earn the "yea verdict" that the two scientists were determined to deny them.
The next few minutes passed by in a daze. When Blues had lost the will to resist, the guards set him down on the floor to walk by himself, and he followed them into an empty staff room where Judith and Yuichi were waiting. Someone entered behind him carrying his sketchbooks and generator.
Judith got up and wrapped her arms around him, but he noticed that her shoulders were sagging, and her grip was weak.
"It's over," she said. "As soon as we hear the result, Yuichi and I can take you home."
She was one of the last people on earth he wanted to see just then: like Dr. Light, an obfuscator masked by love and kindness—but her embrace felt good, and in spite of himself he leaned in and pressed his face deeper into her chest. Suddenly she let out a gasp, took a step backwards, and looked down at her blouse, where two small water stains had formed.
"Dr. Sorensen," Yuichi said. "Is that...?"
"Blues," she said, came in close, and scrutinized his face. It was then that he noticed his eyes were wet.
"Blues, you're—oh, my God!"
They sat next to each other in silence, motionless except for the movement of one of their heads turning up every so often toward the clock on the wall. As they waited, a shallow wave of pain came to Blues and crested. Yuichi noticed him wincing and reached out to squeeze his hand, but Judith, her arms crossed, oblivious for the moment, continued to stare ahead at nothing.
Blues was still disturbed by the change that had come over her when they had gone outside, and he stared up at her face hoping to see something that would give him any insight into her feelings. When she realized he was looking at her, however, she straightened, relaxed her shoulders, and put on an accommodating smile.
There was a knock at the door, and a Nurtech employee called Judith out into the hallway. She returned minutes later with the same wide-eyed stare, and although she continued to smile, when she spoke her voice sounded defeated rather than victorious.
"You passed," she said to Blues. "Apparently, with flying colors."
The "counting horse" mentioned by Judith at the beginning of this chapter is a reference to Clever Hans. Clever Hans indeed was "clever"-carefully attuned to the body language of his trainer-but he was no mathemetician.