“No?”

“It’s also called blood sausage.”

“Ah. Yeah. Enough blood.”

He set a rectangular grill on the cooktop and turned on the fire. He peeled strips of bacon from the package and started the flame beneath a sauté pan. In seconds the bacon was sizzling, and both the familiar sound and aroma made Plath’s mouth water.

“Were you going to tell me?” he asked, once he had things organized and under way.

She stalled for a moment by sipping her coffee. She didn’t have to tell him. But he had possibly just saved her life.

“I was planning an armed attack. I was planning to kill people. I met with Stern, without you. I asked him for … and he said …” She sighed, lost momentarily. “I never really asked myself whether it was the right thing. I have this picture in my head.…” She let that sentence peter out, not willing, still, to tell him everything. Not the things that would make him despise her.

He nodded. “You started to suspect you’d been wired.” He sighed, turned the bacon, pushed the toast down, and used his spatula to keep the eggs from spreading out. “And you didn’t tell me because you thought I might be the one doing it.”

“It’s the world we’re in, isn’t it?” she asked.

He nodded. “It’s the world we’re in.”

“But it wasn’t you.” She took his hand, which after a few seconds he took back to press the spatula down on the bacon.

“Which leaves who?” he asked.

She glanced toward the door, wondering if anyone was on the other side listening. “Wilkes. Billy. Maybe even Vincent, maybe that affectless thing he’s doing is just camouflage. Or it’s someone else with BZRK, someone not from our group. We’re just a part of it, after all.”

“You’re sure it was a biot, not a nanobot?”

She played the memories back. “Not a hundred percent.” She tried out various values in her head. “Seventy percent sure. But if I’m planning on blowing up, um, attacking the Tulip … the Armstrongs wouldn’t be doing that; they wouldn’t be wiring me to kill them.”

He served the food onto two plates, and they sat at the counter and ate, side by side, leaning so that their shoulders would touch.

Finally Keats spoke. “If you were wired, why? I mean, what you’re pointing to are kind of, I don’t know, moral changes.”

“Have you noticed anything different with me?” she asked, afraid of the answer and covering it with transparently false nonchalance.

He thought it over while chewing bacon. “You’re questioning Lear and BZRK less. I mean, maybe it’s just that you’ve got more responsibility. But you used to be more suspicious, I guess. More critical.”

She thought about that. “Yeah, maybe so.

“I’ll help you look for wire.”

Plath hesitated and felt herself blush. She filled her mouth with egg. If she was still wrong, if somehow Keats was the person running the biot, or at least knew about it, then he would never find any wire. It could be a way to determine his loyalty. If he found—

She cut herself off in midthought as reality dawned: there was no way to determine loyalty. Ever. Keats might be loyal today and some nano creature of either side might be wiring him to switch sides tomorrow.

“It’s still inside me,” she said. “Maybe it’s trapped in my liver or whatever, but it’s still in me.” She nodded and wiped her mouth, then set her plate in the sink. “Yes,” she said decisively. “The aneurysm will keep. Help me look for wire. I want to know where it all is. And help me kill this thing, whatever and whoever it is.”

“And pull the wire?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t answer for so long that Keats thought she must not have heard him.

“And pull the wire?” he repeated, more insistently this time.

She shook her head. “Not yet, Noah.”

After that she wouldn’t look at him.

The other person making an interesting discovery was Imelda Suarez. Lieutenant Imelda Suarez, dammit. Hopefully there was an extra paycheck to come with that.

The Celadon, the mother ship, had dropped anchor six miles out from Cathexis Base, hundreds of miles from McMurdo. The ice was thick and crusty here, and no way the ship could edge up to the dock, not for another month at least. She had gone ashore in the Jade Monkey, running easily up onto the beach and roaring along until the LCAC found its home, a hangar and refit facility they all called the Blower Barn.

As soon as she’d done the inevitable paperwork, Suarez headed toward the Office—the administrative building. Things at Cathexis Base tended to be named simply, usually by function, but with an occasional touch of wit: the Blower Barn, the Chiller (a poorly heated dorm), the Toasty (the newer, warmer dorm), the Club, the Link (the satellite dishes), the Office.

In the center of the base, acting as a sort of central park, was a glass dome raised up on a skid-mounted platform. It was seldom transparent—condensation saw to that—but it clearly housed green, living things, ranging from small elm trees to tall grasses to irises and roses. But for the most part the Andalite Dome, or AD, as it was called for some obscure reason, was more practically planted with cabbages, broccoli, romaine lettuce, carrots, and onions.

The produce wasn’t anything like enough even to feed Cathexis Base, but it helped, and it was the place to go when you felt the ice start to close in on you.