kiss on
the hollow of her collarbone. She shies away and drops her cheek to her
shoulder, shielding the affected area.

"I'm not --" she starts. "The moment's passed, OK? Why don't we just cuddle,
OK?"

12.

Art was at his desk at O'Malley House the next day when Fede knocked on his
door. Fede was bearing a small translucent gift-bag made of some cunning
combination of rough handmade paper and slick polymer. Art looked up from his
comm and waved at the door.

Fede came in and put the parcel on Art's desk. Art looked askance at Fede, and
Fede just waved at the bag with a go-ahead gesture. Art felt for the catch that
would open the bag without tearing the materials, couldn't find it immediately,
and reflexively fired up his comm and started to make notes on how a revised
version of the bag could provide visual cues showing how to open it. Fede caught
him at it and they traded grins.

Art probed the bag's orifice a while longer, then happened upon the release. The
bag sighed apart, falling in three petals, and revealed its payload: a small,
leather-worked box with a simple brass catch. Art flipped the catch and eased
the box open. Inside, in a fitted foam cavity, was a gray lump of stone.

"It's an axe-head," Fede said. "It's 200,000 years old."

Art lifted it out of the box carefully and turned it about, admiring the clean
tool marks from its shaping. It had heft and brutal simplicity, and a thin spot
where a handle must have been lashed once upon a time. Art ran his fingertips
over the smooth tool marks, over the tapered business end, where the stone had
been painstakingly flaked into an edge. It was perfect.

Now that he was holding it, it was so obviously an axe, so clearly an axe. It
needed no instruction. It explained itself. I am an axe. Hit things with me. Art
couldn't think of a single means by which it could be improved.

"Fede," he said, "Fede, this is incredible --"

"I figured we needed to bury the hatchet, huh?"

"God, that's awful. Here's a tip: When you give a gift like this, just leave
humor out of it, OK? You don't have the knack." Art slapped him on the shoulder
to show him he was kidding, and reverently returned the axe to its cavity. "That
is really one hell of a gift, Fede. Thank you."

Fede stuck his hand out. Art shook it, and some of the week's tension melted
away.

"Now, you're going to buy me lunch," Fede said.

"Deal."

They toddled off to Picadilly and grabbed seats at the coun