Ricketts licked his lips. "Prob'ly not. Don't even really know what it's for. I mean, I could tweak it all right, but it'd just be like random changes."

"But you're saying you can code."

"Well, yeah. Kinda."

"Out there in the wilds. Poking around in the ruins. You learned to code."

"No more'n anyone else." He seemed honestly confused. "What, you think the claves took all our watches and stuff before they hived up? You think we don't have electricity or something?"

Of course there'd be power sources. Left-over Ballard Stacks, private windmills, the photoelectric paint that kept those stupid billboards hawking neutriceuts and fashion accessories into the middle of the apocalypse itself. But that hardly meant—

"You can code," she murmured, incredulous even as she remembered the programming tips she'd seen on public television.

"You can't grow a little code here and there, you can forget about using your watch 'cept for time and bulls. How'd you think I found you guys, you think GPS fixes itself when worms and Shredders get in there?"

He was breathing fast and shallow, as if the effort of so many words had winded him. But he was proud, too, Clarke could tell. Feral Kid On Last Legs Impresses Exotic Older Woman.

And she was impressed, despite herself.

Ricketts could code.

She showed him her Cohen board. Curled up in his cage he tapped his own headset, arm wobbling with the effort. He frowned, apparently taken aback by his own weakness.

"So pipe it through," he said after a moment

She shook her head. "No wireless. Too risky. It might get out."

He looked at her knowingly. "Lenie?"

"I think they call it a—a shredder."

He nodded. "Shredders, Lenies, Madonnas. Same thing."

"It keeps crashing."

"Well, yeah. That's what they do."

"It couldn't have been crashing the OS, that was read-only. It was crashing itself."

He managed a half-shrug.

"But why would it do that? I've seen them run a lot longer than five seconds out in the wild. Do you think, maybe—?"

"Sure," he said. "I can take a look. But you gotta do something too."

"What's that?"

"Take those stupid things outta your eyes."

Reflexively, she stepped back. "Why?"

"I just wanna see them. Your eyes."

What are you so afraid of? she asked herself. Do you think he'll see the truth in there?

But of course she was much better than that. Better than he was, anyway: she forced herself to disarm, and afterwards—looking straight into her naked eyes—he didn't seem to see a thing he didn't want to.

"You should leave them like that. It's almost like you're beautiful."

"No it isn't." She dialed down the membrane and pushed the board through: Ricketts fumbled it; the contraption dropped onto the pallet beside him, the iso membrane sealing seamlessly in its wake. Clarke cranked its surface tension back to maximum while Ricketts, embarrassed by his own clumsiness, studied the board with feigned intensity.