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Geeo was in when I got back. "Not open to the public at the moment, miss."

I heard the clatter of another line opening and requesting someone to take a message. Mezo was out, probably delivering a message, leaving only Geeo and Renna in the office. "I... I..."

Geeo turned back to Renna and shouted, "Where IS Famir? You said he'd be back in a minute!"

There went my opportunity to stay quiet. "Geeo, I am Famir."

He turned to me and stared blankly. I clarified, "Renna's stuck in her body for a while, and we wanted to test out other options..."

"You went out delivering a message like THAT? We have a professional image to maintain."

I looked down to myself. "Yes, in retrospect it..."

"Don't have time for your excuses. Take that message, now." He tapped out on his line that he was ready to resume.

I took an encrypted business message for Trans-Bank. By the time I was done, Mezo was back and I was able to pass it off. No sooner than I was done, a new call came in, so it seemed like the entire city was abuzz with the emergency. That was somewhat of an illusion, as the others were mainly taking down one long encrypted message, split in two parts, being taken down by Renna and Geeo. Mezo and I were handling everything else.

"What are you anyway?" - Geeo was done, apparently.

<Hold.> "Don't know."

"There was one of those in the news a few months back. Accused of killing her lover's wife."

"Ah." <Resume from 'n3iv5'.>

The code came streaming in. Geeo talked right over it, and I tried to ignore him. "But I've heard she probably didn't. You don't expect that sort of thing from a whore."

<Hold.> I turned to face him. "I'm trying to take a message. Can it wait?"

He turned and left me.

I was halfway through building the message checks when he started hovering over me again. I carefully noted the current state of the check, and turned. "Yes?"

"You smell quite bad. We can't have you up front like this. Go home and wash up, and get dressed properly, before... that happens." I looked to the entrance and two businessmen were rushing in. One, I recognized as Mr. Nipur (seriously, he demanded a 'Mr.'), an always-well-dressed fox with a banana business and various other enterprises. Geeo went to take care of them, and I finished the checks.

Mezo was waiting for me. As I jotted down the last few bits, he said, "How long have you been working here?"

"A while."

Geeo - "Famir!"

When I looked to him, Mezo backed off, saying, "Whoa, dude. What's up with that?", while Geeo was saying, "Please take Mr. Nipur's message."

I was quite curious what was so urgent for Nipur, and a bit annoyed with Mezo. Turning my back on him, I got up to greet Mr. Nipur with a handshake, as he always expected. Instead, he simply stood, perplexed. Standing with my hand sticking out was awkward, so I stopped offering it. "Sir, shall we begin?"

He shook his head for a moment - clearly thinking of something else - then nodded and said, "Why, yes."

As always, he stood behind me rather than sit in the chair offered. I cleared the line and waited for him to start. "I would like a live conversation with a Golden Arch correspondent in Tengo. We arranged to meet now." He waited a moment for me to open the connection.

I did not, instead commenting, "Sir, Is it possible to break it up into an exchange of several discrete messages? Live conversations are very slow, so I appreciate your coming in at night to do them, but tonight is quite busy."

"Really, at this time of night?" I was a bit relieved he didn't flaunt his usual willingness to spend large amounts on his messages by trying to outbid the other customers.

"Yes, sir. There has been an... unexpected glut of traffic."

"Really? What about?"

"Our messages are sent in confidence. Moreover, my information is liable to be so incomplete as to be worse than useless."

"Well, let's ask ahead. It may be over."

Reluctantly, I opened the line to Tengo. Indeed, there was a noticeable wait before a very impatient <You have Tengo line 14.> came in. I didn't recognize the style.

I felt a little silly, but continued, <Requesting live conversation with Golden Arch correspondent.>

A pause of a few seconds. I imagined them laughing before refusing. <GA corr on line now.> "Wow! We have a line."

"See? Not that bad. So, say: Niol, how was the week? Did the new methods help?"

After conveying this a reply came in fairly promptly - "I'm trying, sir. The new methods are hard. I had to get a math tutor."

"Really? It's just multiplication and division. Just multiplication and division." The repeated phrase irritated me, but I sent it literally since I was hardly the limiting factor on the speed of the conversation.

"Yes, but what do you multiply? What do you divide?" It was sent as a repeated form - just the thing I hadn't managed to do just a moment before. It occurred to me that the correspondent might be the telegrapher. If Tengo had a huge number of lines and was limited by telegraphers, then this kind of made sense. Still, it felt wrong.

"You divide the number of defective bunches in a lot by the number of bunches in a lot..." I took the time to define some abbreviations and sent. It paid off as Nipur continued to describe a very canny method of estimating the quality of a load of bananas from a relatively small sampling.

Somewhere in there, he put his hand on my shoulder. I didn't notice at first, until it tickled my head-fronds. I took my off-hand and removed his hand from my shoulder without stopping sending or otherwise mentioning it.

When he began walking Niol through the successive averages method of calculating a square root, I had almost forgotten about his hand. His businesslike demeanor had subsided and he was gesturing (fortunately, not attempting to convey specific information with his gestures). It boggled me that we hadn't been kicked off the line - was the emergency not over? The expense and waste was all too unsurprising given Nipur, but this was more than I had ever seen before.

I suddenly stopped. "Sir, that's not how you converge on the square root. You do the subtraction the other way."

"It's wonderful you caught that. I am seeing whether Niol notices." He patted me on the shoulder condescendingly. I gritted my teeth and sent the incorrect math.

As it turned out, Niol took a little while to notice, and we had to go back through the whole thing over again. Niol spent a little while thinking, leaving a dead line - and Nipur began giving me a shoulder rub. "Please do not do that."

He didn't stop. "You're so tense."

This was true, but what he was doing wasn't helping at all. "Stop", I reiterated. When he didn't, I stood up and moved around the table. Nipur remained in place, he was so surprised.

Niol sent something, and I missed it because I was so out of position. "Sir. Can I just convey your message and not be your worry ball?"

"But I'm not worried - you are!"

"And that is not your problem!"

Geeo came over. "What's going on? Why aren't you taking that down?"

"He would not let go of me."

Geeo turned to Nipur. "'She' is married." What difference should that make?

Nipur seemed to accept that, so I sat and asked Niol to go back and repeat.

I ignored the sound of rain as the door opened and Nipur's wife came in. "Oh here you are!" She was harder to ignore; she went on, "Oh, your hands are so clammy, and they smell like..." She drifted off.

An unbelievable pain engulfed my fronds. I screamed "Gaah!" for several seconds, twitching. My scream halted short as I started gasping for breath.

The burning didn't exactly get better, but I focused on it less as I felt sick everywhere. I slipped out of the chair and knelt on the floor.

Nipur's wife scoffed, "Get up and quit the drama. It was just a puff of perfume. It's the least I could do for your stench."

I threw up, in quantity and at length.

I found that Mezo was holding my fronds up out of the pool of vomit. He was screaming, "That's where she breathes! Look at this! Think she can fake that?"

<Mr. Nipur? Is the line alive?>

"She's obviously breathing just fine with her mouth.", Nipur pointed out.

"You call that fine?"

Geeo cut in, "Mezo, calm down. They couldn't have known."

I can only imagine what was going on up there between those two.

<They want the line, so I guess I'm signing off. Speak to you later sir.>

Mezo turned to me, and asked, "Hey. Are you any better, or do I go get a doctor?"

I took a moment. "I don't know. I guess..." I really don't know how bad I am, do I?

I looked up and saw Renna rush in. She looked across the room, trying to figure out what had happened.

"I'll be okay, thanks. Maybe I should just get some air." I got up and headed out; Renna followed.

It was pouring, and I stepped out right into it. Relief flooded through me as the harsh chemical was flushed away. Renna waited under the eave. "I'm sorry. I was in the bathroom." She waited as I soaked. I didn't bother replying, since she was right where it was loudest - I could hear her, barely, but there was no way she could hear me.

Nipur and his wife exited; she erected an umbrella, and he held it over them as they moved off. Renna glanced back in. "I'm sorry again - I need to send something. Are you okay?"

I spluched my way over to her, and said "Much better. I'm going in myself."

We walked in, hand in hand. Geeo was taking a message, and Mezo was mopping up the floor. Kuni bustled in past us with a well-wrapped packet tucked under his raincoat. "Got the response. 5 segments."

He handed one to Mezo, one to Renna, and claimed one for himself. I went over to grab one, but he blocked me. "Yeah, I know you're one of us, but whoever you are, you're too damned wet to touch this."

"Ah, right." I looked for something dry. Towel. Right. I went to the washroom and dried my arms. That should be good enough.

Upon my return, Kuni handed over one of the segments. "Here you go, Famir."

"How did you work it out?"

"Would Jenya or Ben go to the mens' room?"

I nodded, and got to work, contacting Tengo again.

<You have Tengo line 1. What happened over there? A hurricane? You all dropped connections at the same time.> This was someone I didn't know. I kind of recognized the style, but didn't know their name.

<Nipur's wife used chemical weaponry on me.>

<Not funny. You're not going to just drop the line again are you?>

<Certainly not, and I was not trying to be funny. I have a message. Official response from our general exec to yours, part 4 of 5. Do I need to list the whole header or are we good?>

<I understand. Proceed.>

Of course, it was encrypted, a random-seeming slog. We did periodic checks, and, irritatingly, they kept on not matching. I had to slow down further. When we got to the end, I waited while they decrypted, and the result I dreaded returned - the code's internal checks didn't match.

<Begin afresh.>

<We did get matching checks on all sections.> (<Begin afresh.>) <That's really unlikely unless the message is correct.>

<Just start over.>

<It's far more likely that the message is wrong.>

<Start. Over.>

So, I started over. I tapped out very deliberately, and yet still the consistency checks sometimes didn't match up. Gah. What's wrong with this guy? How did he get line one anyway?

I slipped up from frustration. <Halt. Resume from recent 'AVHU'>, I tapped out.

<No recent 'AVHU'>

What? I just sent it ten seconds ago! Didn't you hear that?

<From the last section, then?>

<Wait. Re-checking.>

A minute later, Geeo saw me appearing to be done and said, "New message for you."

"No, I'm waiting for a check. I don't know what he's re-checking, but he's taking a long time about it."

"Make sure the line's still open."

"Pretty sure it is - had no trouble on that front. The last thing I want to do is distract him. He keeps messing up the checks, and when we got to the end, somehow the code didn't come through. It must be that the message was coded wrong."

"Or he could be faking the checks, or you could have both made the same error generating them."

"No. We've both double-checked, and only he's had any changes. And he wouldn't know what to fake the check into, since I never told him what he was trying to match to."

"Maybe he found an error and corrected it. We do it all the time."

"But not on encrypted messages!"

"Of course we do! Decrypt it, reach a point it stops working, adjust the feed so it starts making sense again..."

"But..." It occurred to me that it was possible that he was decrypting it as it came in, and sometimes he was generating his checks against the decrypted text? Hmm. "No. He told me to start over when we reached the end instead of redoing a bad section."

"So?"

I did not have any idea where he was failing to connect the dots, so I had no idea what to say. It was almost a relief when the nonsensical reply came in, <Check verified. No 'AVHU' in recent segment.>

<The 'AVHU' wasn't in a segment that we checked yet. It was in the current, not-yet-checked segment.> Plus, I suggested we forget the AVHU and go back to the beginning of the segment. We would have already been past it by now.

<We checked it last time.>

I felt minor elation - <Then we just found our bad segment. Let's redo this one from the start.>

<Very well. Segment 15 start.>

What? <No, segment 14. Aha! Maybe you just have the segments out of order?>

<Maybe you're skipping segments. I'm tired of putting up with your unclear style, your...> I didn't hear the rest because I angrily responded - not that he was liable to be able to hear it as he was tapping as well - <That doesn't even make sense! If I skipped a segment, you'd be behind me, not ahead of me!>

Geeo said, "Famir, this is your second outburst tonight. Looks like you're on edge."

Second? Oh, right. "Maybe so." If so, for good reason.

"Stay professional."

I got back on the line and tried. Eventually, Renna offered to take over, and I accepted. I was very tired, and still not feeling entirely well. Simply sitting still in soaked clothing hadn't been doing me any good either. Things had slowed down for the time being, so I went home to change into something less outrageous.

When I got there, though, I did not feel like going back. I peeled off the sari, barely unpinned it and hung it to dry, and flopped down on the bed, with my hand over my own, coiled-up body.