Pierre misses the next bit, because someone has just goosed him on the left buttock. He starts and half turns to see Su Ang looking past him at the throne, a lady-in-waiting for the queen. She wears an apricot dress with tight sleeves and a bodice that bares everything above her nipples. There's a fortune in pearls roped into her hair. As he notices her, she winks at him.

Pierre freezes the scene, decoupling them from reality, and she faces him. “Are we alone now?” she asks.

“Guess so. You want to talk about something?” he asks, heat rising in his cheeks. The noise around them is a random susurrus of machine-generated crowd scenery, the people motionless as their shared reality thread proceeds independently of the rest of the universe.

“Of course!” She smiles at him and shrugs. The effect on her chest is remarkable — those period bodices could give a skeleton a cleavage — and she winks at him again. “Oh, Pierre.” She smiles. “So easily distracted!” She snaps her fingers, and her clothing cycles through Afghani burqua, nudity, trouser suit, then back to court finery. Her grin is the only constant.

[…]

“Not now,” he says. “Let's go back.”

“Okay.” She nods, then turns away, steps behind him with a swish of skirts, and he unfreezes time again as they snap back into place within the larger universe.