Clarke clenched her teeth, suddenly angry. "I know about them. Nasty evolving code that lives in the Maelstrom and raises shit. Vengeance icon for a bunch of countries that hate your guts. And while we're on the subject, maybe you could explain how you came to be blundering around handing out derms and mercy-kills while the whole eastern hemisphere is trying to lob a cure for ßehemoth onto your head? Not being from Mars doesn't seem to have kept you all that up-to-speed on current events."

Ouellette watched her curiously for a moment. "There you go again."

"What?"

"Maelstrom. It's been years since I heard anyone use that word."

"So what? What difference does it make?"

"Come on, Laurie. You show up in the middle of nowhere, you hijack my van, neither of you is normal by any stretch of the imagination—I mean, of course I want to know where you came from."

Clarke's anger faded as suddenly as it had flared. "Sorry."

"In fact, given that I still seem to be some kind of honorary prisoner, you could even say you owe me an explanation."

"We were hiding," Clarke blurted out.

"Hiding." Ouellette didn't seem surprised. "Where is there to hide?"

"Nowhere, as it turns out. That's why we came back."

"Are you a corpse?" Ouellette asked.

"Do I look like one?"

"You look like some kind of deep-sea diver." She gestured at the vent on Clarke's chest. "Electrolysis intake, right?"

Clarke nodded.

"So I guess you've been underwater all this time. Huh." Ouellette shook her head. "I'd have guessed geosynch, myself."

"Why?"

"It was just one of the rumors going around. Back when the witch was just getting started, and the riots were taking off—this thread started growing, that a few hundred high-powered corpses had vanished off the face of the earth. I don't know how you'd ever prove something like that, nobody ever saw those people in the flesh anyway. They could've all been sims for all we knew. Anyway, you know how these things get around. The word was they'd all jumped offworld from Australia, and they were all nice and comfy up in geosynch watching the world come down."

"I'm not a corpse," Clarke said.

"But you work for them," Ouellette guessed.

"Who didn't?"

"I mean recently."

"Recently?" Clarke shook her head. "I think I can honestly say that neither Ken nor I—Christ!"

It jumped out from some hiding place under the dash, all segments and clicking mandibles. It clung to her knee with far too many jointed limbs, a grotesque hybrid of grasshopper and centipede the size of her little finger. Her hand came down of its own accord; the little creature splattered under her palm.

"Fuck," she breathed. "What was that?"

"Whatever it was, it wasn't doing you any harm."

"I've never seen anything like—" Clarke broke off, looked at the other woman. Ouellette actually looked pissed.