“I’m confident this will work out,” Crystalclear said. He’d dropped his hand, raised it a bit when I looked at him to look into his, er, crystals, while he spoke.

“People thuck thometimeth,” Ratcatcher said. “You’ll have to fight to get them to lithten.”

“Will you do this with us?” I asked her.

“Bad dreamth, and then I die.”

“Complicated dreams,” I told her. “Not always bad. We’re polluting the well, so that maybe we pollute what their idea of ‘bad’ is. Maximizing connections between us, digging into old relationships, capes we’ve known who passed, so we can pollute them as well. If nothing else about this works, maybe we change things for the next civilization these aliens run into.”

“How many of the dreamth will be bad? Thome? A lot? Perthenth?”

“More than fifty percent,” I told Ratcatcher. “Beyond that… I imagine it’ll be like any ordinary dreams you have.”

“Tho… ninety-nine perthent bad.”

Typhlosis blinked, and one of her irises was mid-flip when she did it, so her eyelid bulged around the protrusion. Her expression was sad.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I told Ratcatcher.

“I’m allowed to thay no?”

“Yeah,” I said, and I felt sad saying it.

“There’th nobody to look after my ratth if I go,” she said.

“We have contacts, staff,” Crystalclear said. “We could send someone around to your place.”

“They’ll wonder where I went,” she said, hugging her arms to her chest. She was wearing a dusty sweatshirt, carrying equipment. I wondered if she’d been doing search and rescue.

“The plan is that we each… go,” Crystalclear said. “We spread out, to get better coverage. We sleep for a bit, and then, um—”

“We croak,” Ratcatcher said.

Crystalclear looked uncomfortable at that. “Point is, I’m going to go out to the Norfair area. A bit north of there, it’s where I stayed after arriving in Gimel. I’ve got family out there in the old tent city. I don’t know if smells or familiar voices will get through… but… yeah. We could take you to wherever you’ve got your pets.”

I swallowed.

“No familiar voiceth for me,” Ratcatcher said. “I have no friendth. Jutht my rathth.”

“I consider you a friend,” Crystalclear said.

I saw her draw in a deep breath and sigh.

Rain’s arm scraped against the wall as he shifted posture. Crystalclear half-turned his head.

“You don’t have to stay, Antares. Just, uh, give me what you have to give me.”

Crystalclear extended his hand, his face not turned quite my direction. I looked at it. It didn’t waver.

“Unless you aren’t comfortable,” he told me.

“I have to be. I’m the one who pushed for this,” I said.

I reached out and gave his hand a squeeze.

“I can thee it,” Ratcatcher said. “Tiny movementh of tinier hairth, all over your hand, your fathe.”

Crystalclear nodded.