Mara was there before he could answer. She had moved the proof core and the archival pages into two separate bundles on the floor by the wall. A length of cable lay unspooled beside them. She had been busy, not waiting. Good. Of course she had not waited empty-handed. Her grip closed on his shoulder, hard enough to steady, not comfort. "Look at me. Are you here?"

He dragged air into scorched lungs and nodded once.

"How long?" he asked.

"Less than a minute." She searched his face, then the machine, then his face again. "You were gone for less than a minute and you look like you've come back from the bottom of a grave."

He sat back against the platform support because standing all at once was beyond him. His hands were shaking, and there was no use pretending otherwise. The red alarm bars slid over Mara's face and away again.

"What did you see?" she said.

He laughed once, without humor, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "The end of us, eventually. The end of all this. Not soon. So far ahead it breaks the mind. But real. The world old and thinning under a red sun. Then farther still. Bare stone. Cold. Almost no sea. Almost no life. Nothing left that could care who ruled whom."

Mara said nothing.