There's more than sufficient excuse. The recent armistice is thin and brittle; it's in little danger of shattering completely in the face of this new, common threat, but countless tiny cracks and punctures require constant attention. Suddenly the corpses have leverage, expertise that mere machinery cannot duplicate; the rifters are not especially happy with the new assertiveness of their one-time prisoners. Impossible Lake must be swept for bugs, the local seabed for eyes and detonators. For now there truly is no safe place—and if Lenie Clarke were not busy packing for the trip back, her eyes would be needed for perimeter patrol. Dozens of corpses died in the latest insurrection; there's hardly time to comfort all the next of kin.

And yet, Alyx's mother died in her arms mere days ago, and though the pace of preparation has not slowed in all that time, Lenie Clarke still feels like the lowest sort of coward for having put it off this long.

She thumbs the buzzer in the corridor. "Lex?"

"Come in."

Alyx is sitting on her bed, practicing her fingering. She puts the flute aside as Lenie closes the hatch behind her. She isn't crying: she's either still in shock, or a victim of superadolescent self-control. Clarke sees herself at fifteen, before remembering: her memories of that time are all lies.

Her heart goes out to the girl anyway. She wants to scoop Alyx up in her arms and hold her into the next millennium. She wants to say she's been there, she knows what it's like; and that's even true, in a fractured kind of way. She's lost friends and lovers to violence. She even lost her mother—to tularemia—although the GA stripped that memory out of her head along with all the others. But she knows it's not the same. Alyx's mother died in a war, and Lenie Clarke fought on the other side. Clarke doesn't know that Alyx would welcome an embrace under these conditions.

So she sits beside her on the bed, and rests one hand on the girl's thigh—ready to withdraw at the slightest flinch—and tries to think of some words, any words, that won't turn into clichés when spoken aloud.

She's still trying when Alyx says, "Did she say anything? Before she died?"

"She—" Clarke shakes her head. "No. Not really," she finishes, hating herself.

Alyx nods and stares at the floor.

"They say you're going too," she says after a while. "With him."

Clarke nods.

"Don't."

Clarke takes a deep breath beside her. "Alyx, you—oh God, Alyx, I'm so sorr—"

"Why do you have to go?" Alyx turns and stares at her with hard, bright eyes that reveal far too much for comfort. "What are you going to do up there anyway?"

"We have to find out who's tracking us. We can't just wait for them to start shooting."

"Why are so sure that's what they're going to do? Maybe they just want to talk, or something."