[There are cairns on a thousand worlds in the Empire where half-lives tick down like clocks. When Palamedes speaks of cracking open, that's what Paul remembers, vast caverns of stillness and death traced in the ghostly projection of a filmbook.

There are things that cannot be made safe; things that can only be contained and hidden away. The thought that rises like a drifting body in water is of a cold, small world husbanded by skull-painted acolytes, a thought he lets sink back into an abyss, as he always does.]

I'd be glad to try anything you come up with. [He reaches past Palamedes, picking up the bracelet by its links, the stone refracting slickly as it moves.] That's exactly the question, isn't it? Where does it come from, and where does it go? It's like the storms. There has to be a source.

We should give them some space. Come on.

[He straightens to standing, looking down at the them in question, who trills wetly, scuffling in the dirt with ragged fingers. The new bracelet gleams securely around a wrist, and he tries not to see a cuff.]

...I won't say no to your help, but- [He shakes his head, twining the bracelet around his fingers, stone still untouched.] -I wouldn't...I would not have you be complicit. If anything does go wrong, or if anyone objects - I started this alone. Anything that comes of it falls on me.