"Is it contagious?" Herb Asher said.

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

"Come over," he said.

Brightening, she said, "Thank you."

"But be sure you bring your beeper. I have a hunch a lot of telemetric confirms are going to--"

"Oh, fuck the telemetric confirms!" Rybys said, with venom. "I'm so sick of being stuck in this goddam dome! Aren't you going bugward sitting around watching tape-drums turn and little meters and gauges and shit?"

"I think you should go back home," he said. "To the Sol System."

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

Herb Asher said, "In this concert I'm going to be broadcasting, the Fox does a version of Dowland's 'Shall I Sue.'

"A song about litigation?"

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

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

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