Shit. The whole damned planet was practically empty, and everyone wanted to crowd up on my little hill.

“I could fire her,” Helena’s thoughts went on. “Slit her throat. No, there isn’t another decent backup singer within a dozen parsecs. Not with perfect tits. Damned perfect tits. Alex, there’s more to life than tits, isn’t there? After everything I’ve... but it isn’t Alex’s fault. He’s just this big simple...” The next thought wasn’t a single word, but a montage: man, child, baby, bumpkin, son, lover. And there were images too — Alex grinning, with spaghetti sauce dribbling down his chin; Alex looking up as Helena’s hand brushed hair from his eyes, Alex’s face looming close in a darkened room. Underneath was Helena’s soft fear that she was losing him, that she couldn’t compete with younger women, that she was growing old.

Suddenly, like Silk going <SPLINK>, her thoughts grew sharp and hard. “It’s Lyra who should know better,” she thought. “Hateful bitch.” And then Helena was walking toward me, planning how to browbeat and sweet-talk me into giving Alex up.

She’d taken a flashlight with her when she’d set out to look for Alex. Now she waited till the last moment to turn it on, hoping the sudden light would startle me. I stared up calmly as she shone it into my eyes.

“Hello, Lyra.”

I nodded. “Helena.”

“Doing some impromptu excavation?” she asked, making a show of looking at the freshly turned dirt.

“The search for knowledge never sleeps,” I answered.

She shone the light into the hole. It lit the unearthed box more distinctly than the starlight. I could see that one of the compartments was completely lined with sticky white powder from exploding Silk. The other compartment wasn’t as empty as I’d thought. Tiny bones littered the floor, with one skeleton intact enough to recognize as the remains of a Caprochian parrot.