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“I think,” Duarte said, “it may be time I met this Captain Holden”

The man sat on the floor, his back to the wall of the cell His splayed legs and bright eyeshair As Duarte cauard—back and forth—until it settled on hihs, and looked down at the man who had caused somore than an old ice bucker with a little too much curiosity and too little impulse control

Duarte had known people like hiadflies The ones ere always sure they knew better than anyone else The truth was, they had their place Like anyone else, they could be apt tools if they ell suited to the task at hand

Here he had no qual his new senses Holden was an eneht to any privacy And the pattern

When he’d been a boy, Duarte had seen an optical illusion that changed one face into another as the viewer ca about the way the pattern of his thoughts moved that re that had been there and was now gone, but not without leaving the trail of its passage behind it Patterns inside patterns

“You’re Winston Duarte,” Holden said, snapping Duarte’s attention back to his

“Yes,” Duarte said “I am”

Holden pulled his knees up, rested his arhtened “What the fuck happened to you?”

It took Duarte a et I’ve been through soes Not everyone notices, but there have been some … I don’t know Shifts?”

“You’re using that shit on yourself?”

“I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot, Captain Let h Consul Duarte You and I have a shared interest, I understand, in the origins and function of the protoht?”

“You have to listen to s thatstation froot shut down”

“I read the report on that,” Duarte said “Even before I came here It was part of what inspired estured at his own body—“but all of it An e else”

That brought Holden to a stop The pattern around his head was shifting and vibrating like a hive of angry wasps Again, he had the sense of seeing the re in Holden’s mind Traces of another pattern There was a term for this, but …

“Palimpsest,” Duarte said aloud, then shook his head when Holden frowned “I was trying to reot it Palimpsest”