Clarke was suddenly advocating noninterference. "Ken, we're two people."

"One person. I'm doing this solo."

"Doing what, exactly? If there's a rogue in CSIRA, let CSIRA handle him. There has to be some way to get a message overseas."

"I intend to, assuming we can access an overseas line. But I have doubts that it will do any good."

"We can transmit from Phocoena."

Lubin shook his head. "We know there's at least one rogue at large. We don't know how many others he might be working with. There's no guarantee that any message routed through a WestHem node would even get through, even—" he glanced at the conflagration across the water— "before this."

"So we move offshore. We could drive across the ocean and hand-deliver the memo ourselves if we—"

"And if it did," he continued, "unsubstantiated claims that a CSIRA 'lawbreaker was even capable of going rogue will be treated with extreme skepticism in a world where the existence of Spartacus is not widely known."

"Ken—"

"By the time we convinced them to take us seriously, and by the time that overseas forces had mustered a response, Desjardins would have escaped. The man is far from stupid."

"So let him escape. As long as he isn't blocking Seppuku any more, what harm can he do?"

She was dead wrong, of course. There was no end to the harm Desjardins could do in the course of abandoning the board. He might even cause Lubin to fail in his mission—and there was no way in hell he was going to permit that.

Ken Lubin had never been much for introspection. He had to wonder, though, if Clarke's doubts might not have a grain of truth to them. It would be so much easier to simply make the call and stand back. And yet—the desire to inflict violence had grown almost irresistible, and The Rules were only as strong as the person who made them. So far Lubin had more or less remained true to his code, minor lapses like Phong notwithstanding. But in the face of this new outrage, he didn't know how much civilization was left in him.

He was royally pissed, and he really needed to take it out on someone. Perhaps, at least, he could choose a target who actually had it coming.

Fleas

She could barely remember a time when she hadn't bled.