"You know, I think maybe Ken understands more than we give him credit for. I don't think he meant to be insensitive before. He's on our side."

"He is very strange. He is not here for the same reason we are."

"And what reason is that?" Clarke asks.

"They put us here because this is where we belong," Nakata says, almost whispering. "With Ken, I think—they just didn't dare put him anywhere else."

* * *

Brander's on his way downstairs when she gets back to the lounge. "How's Alice?"

"Dreaming," Clarke says. "She's okay."

"None of us are okay," Brander says. "Borrowed time all around, you ask me."

She grunts. "Where's Ken?"

"He left. He's never coming back."

"What?"

"He went over. Like Fischer."

"Bullshit. Ken's not like Fischer. He's the farthest thing from Fischer."

"We know that." Brander jerks a thumb at the ceiling. "Theydon't. He went over. That's the story he wants us to sell upstairs, anyway."

"Why?"

"You think that motherfucker told me? I agreed to play along for now, but I don't mind telling you I'm getting a bit tired of his bullshit." Brander climbs down a rung, looks back. "I'm heading back out myself. Gonna check out the carousel. I think some serious observations are in order."

"Want some company?"

Brander shrugs. "Sure."

"Actually," Clarke remarks, "just company doesn't cut it any more, does it? Maybe we'd better be, what's the word—"

"Allies," Brander says.

She nods. "Allies."

Quarantine

Quarantine

Bubble

For a week now, Yves Scanlon's world had measured five meters by eight. In all that time he had not seen another living soul.

There were plenty of ghosts, though. Faces passed across his workstation, full of cheerful concern about his comfort, his diet, whether the latest gastrointestinal tap had made him uncomfortable. There were poltergeists, too. Sometimes they possessed the medical teleoperator that hung from the ceiling, made it dance and stab and steal slivers of flesh from Scanlon's body. They spoke with many voices, but rarely said anything of substance.

"It's probably nothing, Dr. Scanlon," the teleop said once, a talking exoskeleton. "Just a preliminary report from Rand/Washington, some new pathogen on the rift... probably benign..."

Or, in a pleasant female voice: "You're obviously in exc— good health, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about. Still, you know how careful we have to be these days, even acne would mutate into a plague if we let it, heh heh heh— now we just another two c.c.'s..."

After a few days Scanlon had stopped asking.