She pressed her lips together. She couldn’t tell him anything more: she’d promised Sagara she wouldn’t, and they’d all agreed not to speak of the nightmares, the contagious nature of them, the strange and spreading symptoms—lest they implant themselves in others. That he knew about the sleepwalking was already dangerous enough: the rest of it was anathema, at least for now. Fulbreech looked into her face and said, “You look white as a sheet. You haven’t slept or eaten, have you?”

She was almost charmed by his old-fashioned Earth talk. She did feel like a sheet: white and flat and thin. As if she were stretched out, translucent—parts of her wearing away and fraying, like old thread. No, she could tell him nothing, she decided. In a circuitous way it felt like her way of protecting him. From Sagara, from the nightmares. From knowledge that could only stand to harm him. Now she knew a little of what he’d felt, when she’d stormed in asking what was in the utility rooms.

In another way it also felt like her method of getting payback—of leveling the field between them. He’d kept things from her, so it was all right if she did the same to him. Why did she feel that way—that she had to have some advantage over him, hidden knowledge, as he’d had over her? It couldn’t be healthy, thinking always in those terms: advantages, leverages, trump cards. Getting even. But she couldn’t help it. She had to guard herself. As much as she wanted to rely on him, on his warm solidity, she still felt that puckering of strange and breathless danger whenever she was with him.

Park shook her head. Fulbreech peered at her closely and said, “Let’s eat, then. You look like you could do with some sustenance.”

“It will have to be fast,” she found herself saying. But she smiled, despite herself, and even took his proffered arm. METIS slid the door shut behind them as they walked away.

“How do you sleep at night?” Park asked as they headed up the tunnel to Deck A. She found herself thinking that Fulbreech could have been the perfect control experiment, if only he hadn’t been exposed to any strange, exotic samples. Because if he hadn’t experienced any nightmares, then . . .

Fulbreech looked perturbed by the question. “Pardon?”

Park broke out of her thoughts. “Sleeping,” she repeated. “Are you finding it difficult to adjust to the schedule on Eos? Have you experienced any irregularities in your sleep patterns?”

“Oh,” Fulbreech said. He scratched his neck. “No, I’m sleeping fine, I suppose. Sometimes I get nosebleeds, but that’s common for me with changes in the atmosphere.”

A mundane answer, but Park thought she sensed a little nervousness in his posture, although not an outright lie. What was Fulbreech hiding now?

“How are you sleeping?” he asked then.