"Damn," sighs Miles. "Well, hopefully not late enough for them to send any form of security after me."

"Hopefully. We'll go up to the party the same way you got in originally and I'll let you out in some unobserved nook, anyway, you could cover for a few minutes by pretending to have been unable to find them within the space of the roof."

"Thanks for the ride, by the way."

He shhs and stays shhd.

Once they're in the lift tube quite alone, she says, "It's convenient that all the bubbles are white this week. Well, conducive to stealth, anyway, I suppose it helps all sides."

"Convenient because...? I know nothing about the social standards of bubble colours," says Miles. "Is it customary to keep to a consistent hue or set of hues? Is it noticeable and obnoxious to match someone else's, or difficult to pick something relatively generic and anonymous?"

"There are conflicting standards and ladies fuss at each other about them when there's nothing else to do. Some people have favorite color patterns - it's usually a shift over some period of time between two or three colors, not a static one. Some coordinate with their clothes, or choose hour to hour at random or based on obscure criteria. People vary in how much they care about being matched. Usually I just slide between robin's egg blue and turquoise every four seconds and people know it's me; someone could copy me, I suppose, but I wouldn't care unless they were going to further lengths to impersonate me."

"I see. And I suppose those electronic signatures everyone keeps talking about would serve to resolve identity disputes, at least once somebody had a scanner pointed at them."

"Yes. The bubbles aren't actually principally intended for identity concealment, but everyone's polite enough about them that they do it anyway."

"What are they principally intended for? Personal defense...? Seems a little extreme. But then, I suppose if I had a sociological excuse to bubble around in a personal force-shield most of the time, I might take advantage."

"Mm," says Miles, having nothing more insightful to offer.

Here is the top of the building. She floats out of the lift tube, to a nook, makes sure no one's looking, and then says, "Till next time," in a low voice and lets the bubble down.

Miles hops off her armrest, scurries out of bubble-range, and bows.

She smiles a little - and rebubbles, and bobs out of the nook.

Ivan looks inquisitively at his cousin.