"If it degrades that fast then why am I still in quarantine?"

"Hey, I didn't say it was harmless. Just said it might have turned into something else. Or maybe it is harmless. Maybe you just pissed off someone upstairs."

Scanlon winced. "The people upstairs like me just fine. What are you looking for, anyway?"

"Pyranosal RNA."

"I'm, I'm not sure I remember what that is."

"No reason you should. It's been out of fashion for three and a half billion years."

"No shit."

"Don't you wish." The probe withdrew. "It was all the rage in primordial times, until—"

"Excuse me," said Patricia Rowan's voice.

Scanlon glanced automatically over to the workstation. She wasn't there. The voice was coming from behind the curtain.

"Ah. Company. I've got what I came for, anyway." The arm swung around and neatly inserted the soiled probe into a dumbwaiter. By the time Scanlon had his pants back up the teleop had folded into neutral.

"See you tomorrow," said the poltergeist, and fled. The teleop's lights went out.

She was here.

Right in the next room.

Vindication was at hand.

Scanlon took a breath and pulled back the curtain.

* * *

Patricia Rowan stood in shadow on the other side. Her eyes glittered with faint mercury: almost vampire eyes, but diluted. Translucent, not opaque.

Her contacts, of course. Scanlon had tried a similar pair once. They linked into a weak RF signal from your watch, scrolled images across your field of view at a virtual range of forty centimeters. Patricia Rowan saw Scanlon and smiled. Whatever else she saw through those magical lenses, he could only guess.

"Dr. Scanlon," she said. "It's good to see you again."

He smiled back. "I'm glad you came by. We have a lot to talk about—"

Rowan nodded, opened her mouth.

"—and although your döpplegangers are perfectly adequate for normal conversation, they tend to lose a lot of the nuances—"

Closed it again.

"—especially given the kind of information you seem to be interested in."

Rowan hesitated a moment. "Yes. Of course. We, um, we need your insights, Dr. Scanlon." Yes. Good. Of course. "Your report on Beebe was quite, well, interesting, but things have changed somewhat since you filed it."

He nodded thoughtfully. "In what way?"

"Lubin's gone, for one thing."

"Gone?"

"Disappeared. Dead, perhaps, although apparently there's no signal from his deadman. Or possibly just— regressed, like Fischer."

"I see. And have you learned whether anyone at the other stations has gone over?" It was one of the predictions he'd made in his report.

Her eyes, rippling silver, seemed to stare at a point just beside his left shoulder. "We can't really say. Certainly we've had some losses, but rifters tend not to be very forthcoming with details. As we expected, of course."

"Yes, of course." Scanlon tried on a contemplative look. "So Lubin's gone. Not surprising. He was definitely closest to the edge. In fact, if I remember I predicted—"

"Probably just as well," Rowan murmured.