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This is how much better Susannah's shot-in-the-head husband is: he went to a meeting with his publisher today. Now, all cards on the table, he did not fly himself down to the city, as he is fond of doing; Calyx sent someone up to Castle Rock. Eddie met him at Dud's, a terrible greasy hole of a bar which Eddie insists has the best burgers in town (no), and now they are snowed in, since at about ten am it decided to start snowing and shows no intention of stopping short of the next Superbowl.

This would be fine, and in fact slightly hilarious (she told him just to have the publisher over to the house), except no one has been doing any shopping. Eddie was supposed to bring her back one of those (nasty) burgers. Three hours ago.

Susannah has a bowl of chili (paid for with Mastercard, along with her tab) and an old-style Coke float. You can't get the ice cream anymore; and for that matter, in Eddie Toren's world, you can't get the Coke. Good deal, overall.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"You don't like sweets?" Susannah has a bite of ice cream; it's the odd half-melted slush you get only in a float. Glorious.

X shakes her head a little.

"I do not eat them much."

"Bad for your teeth," she says, although that does not seem to slow her down.

"My first husband," and that's a phrase she's never said before. She rallies. "My first husband had a serious sweet tooth. I suppose he'd always been that way, and then we passed some time in a place where sugar's considerably harder to come by. When we got back to 'civilization' he couldn't get enough."

X is silent for a moment, watching Susannah.

But she does not ask.

"Okay."

Beat.

"I have known people like that."

"I like a treat now and then," she says. "And I like Coke. I can't get it--I think I told you that, before?"

"Yes," X responds promptly. "You have Nozz-A-La."

Beat.

"I do not want to try it."

"Very wise," Susannah agrees. "How have you been?"

"I am okay."

Beat.

"SARAH has been hacked."

"That doesn't sound good," Susannah says, dubiously. "Who's Sarah?"

"She is a house."

Beat.

"She talks."

"So we're talking about hacking a computer, not with an axe," Susannah says, seeking clarity.

"Yes."

X's expression is impassive.

"She is upset."

"I bet," Susannah says; there's an aggressive neutrality in her tone.

Susannah does not like the idea of a talking house, but she's trying to keep an open mind.

X's eyes widen a little, and her shoulders stiffen.

Why, yes, she's wary.

"I do not understand."

"I've had bad luck with computers," is how Susannah chooses to put it. "At least, the kind smart enough to talk to you. But they were old, and not working the way they ought to."

"She's a friend of yours?"

X considers the answer to this, then nods. It is a little awkward.

"Yes."

Beat.

"You did not fight a robot."

It's kind of a question.

Blame Nimrod.

"A lot of robots," she says. "And a talking train."

"Oh."

Beat.

"But you did not die."

Or, apparently, get burned to a crisp.

X has strange standards.

"Not me," she says. "Benny Slightman and Margaret Eisenhart (http://community.livejournal.com/milliways_bar/18986913.html?thread=802120609#t802120609). And everyone who still lived in the city of Lud."

"Oh."

Beat.

"Okay."

She understands.

Silence falls.

"I do not know where Lud is."

"No place at all, these days," she says, but that's petty. "It was a city in another world--a great city once, like New York, but gone to seed pretty badly. The people there had gone rotten, mostly, living like savages; warring in little factions and sacrificing each other when the notion took them. But it was Blaine the Monorail that finished them off."

"Oh."

X doesn't know what else to say.

From Susannah's description, she is not sure that the loss of Lud is bad.

Beat.

"I am sorry."

They were alive; they had that. Where there's life, there's hope.

Then they weren't.

"Of course, Blaine had gone a few thousand years without a tune-up," she says, in a brittle tone of voice. "I s'pect your friend is different."

X is sitting very still, now.

"Yes."

Beat.

"She is like me."

An experiment, that is.

"A weapon?"