Marathe & Steeply, betrayal (pp. 94–95)

The purest statement of espionage as infinite regress: the pretenses stacked until neither observer nor pretender can find the floor. And the narration refuses to help — Marathe's laugh, the text says, "had this misfortune to sound false and overhearty, whether or not sincere." Not "was false"; the sincerity is undecidable even from inside the head we're riding. Steeply's answer to Marathe's tripling is only "would it be quadrupling," and the counting itself becomes the point: once concealment goes recursive there is no coordinate for the real, and the book locates its spies in exactly that vertigo.