He shifted in his seat and felt a thick manila envelope slide out of his lap and to the deck with a solid thunk that almost woke up Tavistock Prowse. Tav had been sitting across from him for the entire duration of the flight, and had been sleeping for the last half hour—prostrate from jet lag. He was a bulky man, not especially tall, but constructed like a wrestler. The bald spot on the back of his head, which had been faintly visible even when he’d been in college, had expanded mercilessly, leaving just a monklike fringe of close-cropped hair around the back of his bullet-shaped head. Perhaps to draw attention away from it, he wore glasses with massive black frames. At one point a serious weight lifter, he had softened and spread in the last decade, and even more so since Zero. It was strange in a way to see him unconscious, for he never seemed to stop moving.