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disappeared.
    â€œYeah. Maybe,” she says noncommittally.
    Hope she gets some.
    *   *   *
    In Beebe Station the comm cubby was a pipe-infested closet, barely big enough for two. Atlantis’s nerve center is palatial, a twilit grotto bejeweled by readouts and tangled luminous topographies. Tactical maps rotate miraculously in midair or glow from screens painted on the bulkheads. The miracle is not so much the technology that renders these extravagances. The miracle is that Atlantis contains such an obscene surplus of empty space, to be wasted on nothing more than moving light. A cabin would have done as well. A few couches with workpads and tactical contacts could have contained infinite intelligence, bounded in a nutshell. But no. A whole ocean stands on their heads, and these corpses squander volume as if sea level were two steps down the hall.
    Even in exile, they just don’t get it.
    Right now the cavern’s fairly empty. Lubin and a few techs cluster at a nearby panel, cleaning up the latest downloads. The place will be full by the time they finish. Corpses gravitate to news of the world like flies to shit.
    For now, though, it’s just Lubin’s crowd and Patricia Rowan, over on the far side of the compartment. Cryptic information streams across her contacts, turns her eyes into bright points of mercury. Light from a holo display catches the silver streaking her hair; that and the eyes give her the aspect of some subtle hologram in her own right.
    Clarke approaches her. “Airlock Four’s blocked off.”
    â€œThey’re scrubbing it down. Everything between there and the infirmary. Jerry’s orders.”
    â€œWhat for?”
    â€œYou know perfectly well. You saw Erickson.”
    â€œOh, come on. One lousy fish bite and Jerry thinks—”
    â€œShe’s not sure of anything yet. She’s just being careful.” A pause, then: “You should have warned us, Lenie.”
    â€œWarned you?”
    â€œThat Erickson might be vectoring β ehemoth. You left all of us exposed. If there was even a chance…”
    But there’s not, Clarke wants to rail. There’s not. You chose this place because βehemoth could never get here, not in a thousand years. I saw the maps, I traced out the currents with my own fingers. It’s not βehemoth. It’s not .
    It can’t be.
    Instead she says, “It’s a big ocean, Pat. Lots of nasty predators with big pointy teeth. They didn’t all get that way because of β ehemoth.”
    â€œThis far down, they did. You know the energetics as well as I do. You were at Channer, Lenie. You knew what to look for.”
    Clarke jerks her thumb toward Lubin. “Ken was at Channer too, remember? You shitting on him like this?”
    â€œKen didn’t deliberately spread that damn bug across a whole continent to pay back the world for his unhappy childhood.” The silver eyes fix Clarke in a hard stare. “Ken was on our side.”
    Clarke doesn’t speak for a moment. Finally, very slowly: “Are you saying I deliberately —”
    â€œI’m not accusing you of anything. But it looks bad. Jerry’s livid about this, and she won’t be the only one. You’re the Meltdown Madonna, for god’s sake! You were willing to write off the whole world to get your revenge on us.”
    â€œIf I wanted you dead,” Clarke says evenly— If I still wanted you dead, some inner editor amends—“you would be. Years ago. All I had to do was stand aside.”
    â€œOf course that’s—”
    Clarke cuts her off: “I protected you. When the others were arguing about whether to punch holes in the hull or just cut your power and let you suffocate— I was the one who held them back. You’re alive because of me.”
    The corpse shakes her head. “Lenie, that doesn’t matter .”
    â€œIt damn well should.”
    â€œWhy?