Contents

Flops by Michael Mersault

The Barcadian Wild by Tim Akers

Monsters in Our Midst by Wen Spencer

Window on Samovar by D.J. Butler

See the Fairville Oddity! by David Afsharirad

Man on the Moon by Elaine Midcoh

Trouble Is My Business by Mike Kupari

Dark Angel by David Carrico

On Cultivating a Chosen One by Christopher Baxter

The Bloody Dentist by Jacob Holo

Fire-breathing Dragon by Dan Koboldt

Xmas at ESL1 by Wil McCarthy

Contents

- Flops by Michael Mersault

- The Barcadian Wild by Tim Akers

- Monsters in Our Midst by Wen Spencer

- Window on Samovar by D.J. Butler

- See the Fairville Oddity! by David Afsharirad

- Man on the Moon by Elaine Midcoh

- Trouble Is My Business by Mike Kupari

- Dark Angel by David Carrico

- On Cultivating a Chosen One by Christopher Baxter

- The Bloody Dentist by Jacob Holo

- Fire-breathing Dragon by Dan Koboldt

- Xmas at ESL1 by Wil McCarthy

Baen Books

Free Stories 2022

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

“Flops” © 2022 by Michael Mersault

“The Barcadian Wild” © 2022 by Tim Akers

“Monsters in Our Midst” © 2022 by Wen Spencer

“Window on Samovar” © 2022 by D.J. Butler

“See the Fairville Oddity!” © 2022 by David Afsharirad

“Man on the Moon” © 2022 by Elaine Midcoh

“Trouble Is My Business” © 2022 by Mike Kupari

“Dark Angel” © 2022 by David Carrico

“On Cultivating a Chosen One” © 2022 by Christopher Baxter

“The Bloody Dentist” © 2022 by Jacob Holo

“Fire-breathing Dragon” © 2022 by Dan Koboldt

“Xmas at ESL1” © 2022 by Wil McCarthy

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

Electronic Version by Baen Books

www.baen.com

Flops

Michael Mersault

Inga held Karl’s little right hand with her left, while Mitzi gripped the fringe of Inga’s stained and rumpled shirt, trailing along, her eyes wide, a finger in her mouth. Fluffy, threadbare Flops had its long ears tied in a loop, slung comfortably over her shoulder. The three of them (and Flops) followed in their father’s sour wake, his long legs jerking with each stride of his unsteady progress. He was coming down now, Inga knew, and she wanted Mitzi and Karl safely ensconced in the Foundling dayschool before he became uncontrollably volatile. She would remain with her two little siblings, of course. At ten standard years of age, surviving the slums of Battersea’s Port City, she did not require the protection of charity-minded Vested Citizens, though the juice and crackers they provided made for a welcome breakfast.

To the east, the muted roar of an interface lighter lifting from the spaceport barely drew Inga’s attention, and her father did not even spare a glance. Lighters and orbit-capable execujets represented common scenery for the residents of Battersea’s largest municipality, even for those residents dwelling in the lowest slums.

At the next intersection Inga followed the accelerating progress of her father around the corner, his growing need driving him from that lowest slum to a merely weary-looking quarter. At times, when his blood chemistry attained a rare equilibrium, Inga’s father might dispense acid comments aimed at the demi-cits populating their regulated domicile across from the Foundling School, but now they were spared such tedium. He left Inga and her siblings with the other ragged children awaiting the volunteer Inga called “Slow Top,” to open the doors, mumbling something incomprehensible as he careened off down the lane, an invisible string dragging him forward, his cheap sword rattling at each step.

Little Mitzi looked up at Inga and placed a moist hand on Inga’s wrist, tapping out a short message in the silent code Inga had devised: Hungry.

“I know, Button,” Inga said in a low voice, smoothing Mitzi’s blonde locks. “It won’t be but a minute.” Karl frowned up at Inga as she spoke, then resumed eyeing the other urchins all waiting outside the battered metal door of the Foundling School. Inga took the moment to address Karl’s morning hair also, never giving a thought to her own blonde disarray, her wrinkled ill-fitting clothes, or a livid bruise adorning her upper arm. The tattered shape of Flops almost covered the bruise anyway.

Like all the waiting urchins, Inga and her siblings bore the black wristbands of Vested Citizens that they would one day exchange for the sword, if they lived so long.

As Inga’s eyes flicked about the perimeter, she saw idling demi-cits sipping from steaming mugs while they stood about the apron of their domicile across the lane. She did not need the absence of a sword at their hips to identify a demi-cit. Their well-fed ambivalence combined with something of a dismissive, cynical air to clearly delineate them from any Vested Citizen, rich or poor. Despite her father’s scathing estimation of demi-cits, Inga saw their tidy attire, their neat little apartments and evident leisure, and wondered if the “liberty” of a Vested Citizen might be overrated.

A rattle and scrape of the school’s metal door set all the urchins in sudden motion, pushing forward eagerly, but Inga held Karl and Mitzi back, staring into the open door. Two tall, unfamiliar figures stood well back in the simple schoolroom behind Slow Top. Inga gripped her siblings firmly, tapping out: Wait. Strangers.

She took in the strangers’ essence in a flash: Wealth. Then she measured the two figures in detail, seeing the fine, sober clothing, well-worn swords and sidearms belted in the comfortable ease of long practice, the curve of toned muscle. Lastly, Inga studied their faces, shifting the plastic eyes of Flops toward them.

The woman seemed quite old to Inga’s eyes, though her dark hair showed little gray and her solemn visage bore few lines. The expression shared on both strangers’ faces revealed their identity to Inga’s perceptive gaze as clearly as if their Family name was stamped on their foreheads. Her caution eased with the certainty of her identification, but she also observed that these two wealthy interlopers recognized her on sight, and this kept Inga’s vigilance simmering. Citizens of their lofty status should have no knowledge of her, even if they did share half a surname with Inga and her siblings.

Stay close, Inga tapped onto Karl and Mitzi, releasing them to follow the others as she eased into the dreary little schoolroom. Her right hand drifted to caress that shard of jagged metal, lovingly sharpened to perfection, tape-wrapped to fit her small fist and concealed for instant use. Flops slid down her arm, and she untied the long ears without looking down.

Slow Top looked over at Inga with his do-good smile in place, and began dispensing snacks to each waif as the two fancy strangers gazed on without expression.

Inga knew a good many things on a wide range of topics. She knew Battersea didn’t amount to much as a planet in the Myriad Worlds Imperium, and she knew Port City couldn’t compare to primary cities on a dozen other worlds. She obtained her information from scores of books, and forgot little that she ever read, but she particularly prided herself in her knowledge of Battersea’s preeminent Family, the Great House of Sinclair-Maru.

Her initial interest in the Sinclair-Maru began because of that double-barreled name, and because of her own father’s absurd brag one afternoon three years earlier. On that day Inga had spotted the Sinclair-Maru crest emblazoned upon a dozen cargo transports en route to the space port. “Maru,” Inga had blurted, pointing at the stylized characters. “That’s our name.”

Generally, Inga learned to regret impulsive observations in the presence of her father, but on that particular day, his response sparked only curiosity in Inga. “Damned right it’s your name, scut! And don’t you go and forget it. They weren’t shit until the Maru clan—our people, you understand?—until the Maru clan taught them all our secrets. And now? And now? We’re practically their gods-damned cousins. They live on the biggest estate you’ll ever see, and where do we live?” The remainder of his commentary that day comprised curses regarding the Sinclair-Maru lack of generosity, but that had been enough to launch Inga Maru’s own research.

It turned out his account of the family connection fell far short of accuracy, which did not surprise Inga at all. Her father was a drug-addled fool, on top of his regular preoccupation as a small fountain of vice. But she discovered he hadn’t been as completely wrong as usual. The great Sinclair-Maru clan really was founded (way back around 5670 or so) by Inga’s own ancestor, Mia Maru—a sort of great aunt—and a fellow named Devlin Sinclair. They were a House dedicated to their adherence to the Honor Code—the same Code all Vested Citizens supposedly followed.

After learning of this ancient connection, Inga couldn’t help noticing the irregular appearance of the Sinclair-Maru on the fringes of her dreary world as they dashed importantly from place to place. The contrast between their world and hers provided food for formless ambition, but she also came to recognize a particular characteristic all members of that esteemed Family seemed to share, though she couldn’t readily describe it, even if she had anyone to describe it to. Aside from a visible tendency toward athletic builds, all Sinclair-Maru appeared to carry a sort of wall of stillness she could perceive beneath their businesslike exterior. That stillness now jumped out to Inga as she continued to observe the two strangers through her eyelashes, keeping them in sight even as she guarded Mitzi and Karl’s snacks from the other street rats, smelly old Flops held to her skinny chest.

When the last crumb of soy cracker disappeared, and the last slurp of juice trickled into greedy lips, the children shuffled to their worn little cubicles for their individual lesson programs, but Slow Top stepped up to Inga with a smile.

“Inga Maru, right?” he asked in his over-polished voice, even stooping down to put his face near Inga’s level. This performance was clearly for the benefit of his two guests. She might call him Slow Top, despite his real name, but he wasn’t so slow as to forget her name.

“Yes.” Her eyes shifted from Slow Top to the two Sinclair-Maru observing nearby.

“Of course you are,” Slow Top agreed with enthusiasm. “Say, Inga, you see we’ve got guests here today—”

“Yes,” Inga said, looking directly at the two. “The Sinclair-Maru.”

That got a response. The woman’s eyebrows raised marginally, and Inga perceived an odd flicker in those dark eyes. Shaper implants. Of course, a wealthy Family would supply its members with those expensive implanted modules. Inga knew the implants provided something called a User Interface inside your eyes or brain or something. They could access Nets, communicate and do other neat stuff all within the privacy of their own skull. She wanted a Shaper implant of her own, in her fantasies at least.

Slow Top glanced back at his guests, chuckling with an embarrassed air, “Well, uh, Inga, they’d like to speak with you, if that’s acceptable.” Slow Top indicated his dumpy desk and two bordering chairs in the corner.

Inga’s abiding curse, even raised in such a slum, by such a man as her father, remained curiosity. She shrugged. “Okay.” What could the Sinclair-Maru want to talk to her about?

The Sinclair-Maru woman went to the desk, ignoring the chairs, sitting on the edge of the desktop, her hand resting lightly on her thighs. Inga observed the thickness of the woman’s wrists, the image calling to her mind heavyworlders she sometimes saw. It communicated an impression of strength to her mind, adding to the suggestion of the woman’s solidity.

Inga settled on a chair where she could keep Mitzi and Karl’s cubicles on the periphery of her vision, Flops pulled tight to her belly, her dirty little shoes barely scraping the floor. The Sinclair-Maru man leaned back against the wall, his face expressionless, his long legs crossed, palms casually cupping his sword hilt and pistol grip.

For a time the woman seemed to wait for Inga to speak, but Inga sat quiet, her feet swinging idly, her attention shifting from Mitzi and Karl across the room, to the somber woman and back. For some reason, the tattered form of Flops—or perhaps its beady plastic stare—seemed to bother the Sinclair-Maru woman, her gaze shifting downward to Flops in Inga’s lap, her expression revealing some hint of uncertainty to Inga’s perception.

Inga won the stand-off, the woman breaking the silence, but her words created only confusion. “Tell me, Miss Maru, do you forget anything at all?”

What kind of question was that?

“Course,” Inga said. “Everyone forgets things.”

“Really? What kind of things do you forget?”

What kind of things did she forget? What kind of things could she never forget? As the question spawned these thoughts, Inga felt the flash of raw agony where memories of a mother lingered, refusing to be forgotten. She shook her head, swallowing, but she did not speak.

The woman waited a spell before saying, “I am Bess . . . Bess Sinclair-Maru, as you said. You know your family and ours were once intertwined, don’t you?”

Inga nodded and looked down. “Yes. Back four hundred years or whatever.” She shrugged. “What do you want?”

Bess smiled a little. “Put in my place, am I? Very well, then, plain dealing it will be.” She placed her palms together and measured Inga again. “My family may have a purpose for you—a job, you might say.”

Inga stared. She knew all too much about certain slum transactions: an impoverished parent—always a Vested Citizen—lost a child, and gained a fortune, all in one night.

But Bess went on, oblivious of Inga’s sudden suspicion. “You remember some weeks ago, an extensive battery of tests in this very room—of course you remember, of all people.” Bess smiled again. “You displayed . . . unique capabilities, and that is how you came to our attention.”

Yes, Inga remembered that day; the first interesting challenge she’d ever experienced in this place. Her sudden misgivings began to evaporate. Those tests bore no connection to the sort of slum exchange Inga knew and feared, but they bore no connection to any rationale she understood either. “What job could I do? I’m ten.”

Bess nodded. “Training would occupy some years until your first majority. Then, if you choose, your real work for us would begin.”

Inga could scarcely comprehend such a concept, her mind spinning with the enormity of it all. Bess would invest most of a decade in Inga’s training for some job? What job could she possibly do that would be worth such an investment? Could it possibly be?

A moment later insurmountable barriers emerged to extinguish her first hope of escaping the slum—of escaping him—she had ever known. The tyrannical bastard who slowly destroyed her could not be so easily shed, and only Inga stood between that inevitable destruction and Mitzi and Karl. Inga unconsciously pulled Flops more tightly to her chest as hope sprang up, only to wither away at the first harsh touch of reality, leaving a cold void within her.

This woman, Bess, seemed to read some ghost of Inga’s emotional rise and fall. Her eyes searched Inga’s face. “You are interested, but . . .?” Bess said.

Inga looked to the side, seeing the older street rats sneaking glances from their cubicles, curious about the fancy strangers and Inga. She turned her eyes back to Bess. “I can’t leave.”

The perplexed expression Bess wore, slowly gave way to something else. Bess seemed to nod to herself as she began. “We know more about you than you might think, Miss Maru.” Inga felt a twinge of nausea at what secret knowledge Bess might hold. No other person should know the darkness of Inga’s personal hell, but as Bess continued, Inga breathed more easily.

“You may have noticed how extensive those tests were. We measured not only reasoning and memory, but personality traits, psychological characteristics. The results can be very revealing.” Bess paused. “It is clear you possess a unique . . . let’s call it a protective inclination.”

This all meant nothing to Inga, solving nothing: mere words. She looked off at the nosey urchins all wondering what these rich people wanted with Inga. Inga wondered the same thing.

“That inclination, combined with other qualities, is valuable to us,” Bess continued. “The question is, what developed such a powerful motivation within you? Who do you protect, Miss Maru? Not your father, surely?”

Inga’s lip curled. “No.”

“So who?” Bess said, then followed the direction of Inga’s unconscious glance. Mitzi sat at her grubby little cubicle, a finger in her mouth as she traced colorful animals upon the learning screen with her other hand, unmindful of their regard.

Bess mused a moment, turning back. “I see,” but she did not seem surprised. How much did Bess really know?

Inga looked down at her swinging shoes so she would not reveal any more, Flops pulled beneath her chin, its unblinking eyes fixed upon Bess.

Bess began again. “The Battersea Youth Academy is a fine school not so far from here . . . If your brother and sister were accepted at the academy, their future—”

“No.” Inga shook her head. Without Inga to protect them, even failing them as she had so many times—no fancy school would preserve them, even if the bastard allowed it.

The silence stretched out, only broken by the scuffing sound of Inga’s shoes slowly swinging, the standing Sinclair-Maru man remaining as quiet as the tomb. At last Bess said, “While your siblings are fine children, they don’t possess the qualities we need. Only you possess what we need. I’m not sure what we can offer to . . . settle your concerns..”

Need.

Inga heard Bess use that word, and looked up. Where there was need, there was power. Inga’s key survival skills centered upon that simple reality: the ability to manipulate, to steer those more powerful than her by their needs, their fears. With that power animating her, Inga spoke: “If you—if you take them away . . . someplace safe, someplace far away . . . I’ll go wherever you want.”

“Your siblings?” Bess said, and Inga nodded, looking down. “And if we did bring this about, you would undergo the training we require? Follow strict orders?”

“Yes,” Inga said. It would be worth anything—everything.

Bess pursed her lips, nodding to herself. “Very well,” she said glancing over to her silent companion. “Message her father to set terms. We will see how willing he is.”

Inga sat bolt upright. “What? Don’t talk to him.” Were they such fools?

“We must, child,” Bess smiled. “It is the law.”

Inga shook her head. The law . . . in this dirty world animated by lawlessness. “Don’t . . . You don’t understand.” Inga hated the shaking in her voice as she spoke, but some note of her desperation seemed to resonate.

“Here.” Bess motioned to her companion, and he passed a small stack of gleaming credit chits. Bess held them in her lined, brown hand as she looked at Inga. “I’m sure your father is a cash-oriented sort, so bring this as a token of our . . . seriousness. Now won’t that settle all to your satisfaction?”

It decidedly would not settle all to Inga’s satisfaction, but she only nodded, looking at the credit chits, wondering at the naïveté of the Sinclair-Maru. Bess reached out and dropped the chits in Inga’s palm, the delightful clacking sound of each chit elevating Inga’s mood. Five twenty-credit chits! And Inga had never held more than a half-credit stamp of her own before.

Some intuition caused Inga to glance to her left just in time to catch that sneak-cheat Stevey getting an eyeful of her new largesse—an error that would inevitably create problems.

Bess Sinclair-Maru stood, her silent companion joining her. “There are a few technicalities to be addressed, but I feel comfortable you will be joining us soon, Miss Maru.”

Inga shook her head. They did not know her father . . . but then again, they were the Sinclair-Maru, and they had just dropped a hundred credits in the palm of a ten-year-old. “I—I hope so,” Inga said, standing and tucking Flops under her arm, its duties concluded.

The Sinclair-Maru drew aside to confer briefly with Slow Top before departing, never looking back.

The remaining hours in the Foundling School passed in a dreamy, unreal state for Inga. She could not yet accept even the chance that she could be free, Mitzi and Karl finally safe. But they were not safe yet, and she had been a witness to her father’s brutal guile too many times for any comfort.

Stevey, the rat, made it clear he had seen too much, eye-mugging Inga for the remainder of the day. By himself the little beast represented no great threat, but Inga recalled an older, larger brother cut from a similar cloth, and she scented hazard in the wings.

As Slow Top prepared to close up for the day and send the urchins back to the tender embraces of whatever slum derelicts parented them, Inga hovered about the man, chatting childishly. When Stevey and the others cleared out, she broke off her babble abruptly, turning to her siblings.

“Karl, Mitzi,” Inga called. “Let’s go.” She paused only a moment to secret four of the credit chits in a hidden pocket she had constructed in the scabrous belly of Flops. She tied the long ears together once again and thrust the loop well up her arm. Flops comprised a treasure in more ways than one, now more than ever. Taking Mitzi and Karl each by a hand, Inga stepped out and looked westward toward the slum, toward home. In the distance she descried the smarmy figure of Stevey, peering out from a side alley. That decided it.

“This way,” Inga said, turning resolutely east, toward the abodes of the wealthy, or at least the well fed.

Where going? Karl tapped out on Inga’s wrist, his expression revealing fear and curiosity at the unprecedented change.

“We are going to eat,” Inga said. “Real food. Loads of it.”

By the first cross street, Inga clearly perceived the immediate improvement in their surroundings. Like the slum, nearly every figure in sight wore the short dueling sword of the Vested Citizen, yet none of them lay sprawled in the gutter or slouched against a wall, scratching the endless itch.

Karl stared at everything suspiciously, but Mitzi trooped along, her eyes wide, her head turning about, finger in her mouth. Posh skimcars glided by, glossy dumb-mechs trotted along behind their owners, and everything, everything looked clean. Inga felt the twenty-credit chit in her pocket and just hoped all this might be their world soon.

The restaurant Inga selected admitted the three children, but a demi-cit servitor frowned down at them until Inga negligently produced the credit chit, tossing it in her hand as if she possessed dozens of them. A moment later they sat at a spotless table, a sparkling napkin roll at each place, Mitzi’s nose up, scenting the spice-laden air like a forest creature on the hunt. It had been some hours since the paltry juice and crackers.

Inga looked at the menu holo rising in the center of the table, noting the prices with relief. She had never set foot in such a place before, and it seemed at first they might charge anything at all for a meal. The prices were shocking, but within the realm of her new funds.

“Pick anything you want. I’ve got plenty of money.”

Karl worked slowly and carefully to read each delicious description on the menu, while Mitzi popped the finger from her mouth and reached it out to the delectable pictures on the holographic menu. She chirped in surprise when her selection illuminated. Inga smiled with delight; this moment, at least, would be theirs.

They feasted as greatly as their shrunken stomachs allowed, and Inga waited until they picked at their leftovers to speak. “Those strangers gave me the money,” Inga said, suddenly buoyed up with calories and sugar. “They—they want me to work for them.”

Mitzi’s contented expression disappeared, and she reached out a sticky hand to clutch Inga’s arm. Going? she tapped out, looking up fearfully.

“Not unless we all go, Button,” Inga said, and that seemed all there was to be said.

Inga gathered the fragments of their meals and wrapped them in napkins, cramming them in pockets and sleeves, even receiving a few credits of change from the expended twenty-chit. They might enjoy another meal or two from the leftovers, and save Inga an argument and a beating later.

The westward walk, step after step, slowly consumed any optimism Inga possessed. As they left the bright, clean world of civility and order behind, reality began to reassert its grimy weight.

Inga thought Stevey and his cronies would surely have abandoned their vigil by now, but as the light of Battersea’s sun fell behind the western sprawl, Inga saw indistinct figures emerge from an alleyway—three of them, with Stevey in the lead. Her mouth went dry. Her instinct to run could not be obeyed. Karl might keep up, but burdened with Mitzi, there was no escape. “Hold tight to my shirt, Button,” Inga said, freeing her right hand from Mitzi’s grasp.

What was the name of Stevey’s brother again? Gabe? Yes, Gabe. He stood tall, a head above Inga at least, and he wore the knowing expression all the street rat boys received at a particular age.

“Inga, that’s your name, right?” Gabe said without preamble, sauntering out to block their path, Stevey and one of his smarmy little mates in his train. His voice carried almost the man-sound to it, except for a break and squawk toward the end of the sentence.

Inga stopped still, her heart beating fast, her breath coming short. “Yes,” she said. “Inga Maru.” She instinctively sought some lever, some purchase to manipulate . . . fear and need. What did Gabe fear? What did he need?

Gabe inclined his head and Inga saw a gleam of cheap holo lenses on his eyes. Few of the slum’s denizens possessed the funds for Shaper implants, but equally few, except children, would advertise their shameful poverty by sporting holo lenses. For Inga, Gabe’s lenses merely increased the difficulty in reading Gabe’s variable moods.

“Inga bloody Maru,” Gabe said. “The fancy nobs gave you something today, didn’t they, Inga Maru?”

Inga’s mind raced, pulled by the gentle tugs of Mitzi’s hand on her shirt tail. “Y-yes,” Inga said. “They’re my cousins. I’m—I’m going to work for them.”

Gabe’s expression changed, his smirk fading into a frown. “Get out. Cousins? I don’t see it.”

“Sinclair-Maru,” Inga said with emphasis. “Cousins.”

“Ask about the money, Gabe,” Stevey said from one side, his eyes sweeping over Inga, seeing the bulge of leftover food protruding from her pockets.

Gabe glanced at Stevey. “Shut up.” He turned back to Inga. “What about the coin, Inga damned Maru? Let’s see that then.”

Inga shrugged, striving for nonchalance. “Spent it.”

“What?” Gabe demanded, looking from Inga to Stevey.

“She’s lying, Gabe,” Stevey said in a pleading tone. “There was a stack! Couldna’ spent it all.”

Inga began edging around her assailants as casually as she could, tapping on Karl’s hand. Take Mitzi. Walk.

Karl obeyed at once, still clinging to his misplaced faith in Inga’s infallibility.

“My cousins bought us loads of food,” Inga said. “See?” Inga kept edging beyond them as she scrounged out a crammed, greasy napkin, the ostentatious restaurant logo plain to see in the half-light.

Gabe reached out fast, catching hold of Inga’s left wrist, his lips twisted with the cruelty that bent his soul. “Hold up, scut.” His free hand groped over Inga, jerking the bundled food out of her pockets. His practiced fingers discovered the change chits from her meal. “What’s this now?” He looked at the small coinage resting in his palm, pocketing it. “Where’s the rest, huh?”

Inga writhed in Gabe’s crushing grip. “That’s all! That’s all!” she cried, but his hand continued pressing, searching, roving over her, stoking her shame and revulsion until Inga struck out in sick desperation. Instead of soft, sensitive eyes, Inga’s clawed fingers struck Gabe’s holo lenses, her flashing knee hammering Gabe’s interposed thigh, rather than his stones.

Gabe snarled, sinking his fist in Inga’s belly, doubling her over. Inga vomited on the walkway, her expensive meal cast up as she struggled to breathe. She had no time nor thought to check on Karl’s flight as her right hand blindly fumbled.

She felt a tug at her shoulder as Gabe grabbed at Flops. “Ugly damned toy. What’s the score, huh?”

Gabe’s knee hovered before Inga’s streaming eyes, and she desperately looped her right hand out, fast and hard, sinking her needle-pointed shank deep in Gabe’s thigh. She clearly recalled the human anatomy chart, the junction of muscles and tendons her crude blade now intersected. Before Gabe could even screech, Inga ripped her blade out, visualizing each fiber of sinew as she severed them.

Inga fell back, scrambling as Gabe toppled, screaming, his two idiot mates flapping uselessly. Wiping her mouth and straightening to her feet, Inga chanced a glance, seeing Karl and Mitzi still far too close, staring with wide eyes. With her jagged blade dripping red, Inga backed toward her siblings, her focus on her three assailants. “Keep—keep walking, Karl,” Inga gasped, coughing. “Hold Karl’s hand, Button. I’m—I’m okay.”

After retreating a stone’s throw, it was clear Stevey and Gabe had too much on their hands to effect a pursuit. A pool of dark blood gathered around Gabe’s fallen figure, and Inga idly wondered if her little blade had pierced the femoral artery. She rather hoped so.

After assuring Flops remained securely cinched in place, and taking a moment to stow her sticky blade, Inga quietly led the way back to the dismal tenement they called home, her gut aching from navel to throat.

Unfortunately, her father awaited them.

At the first glimpse of his grinding, champing jaw and enraged eyes, Inga knew the worst combination awaited them. His body visibly quivered, burning with the cocktail of street chemicals that owned him body and soul, and fresh suspicions clawed his twisted mind.

Go to bed. Plug ears. Inga urgently tapped on Mitzi and Karl.

As they stepped up to the door, he wrenched it open. “You!” he snarled at Inga, snatching her by her bruised shoulder, jerking her forward. Karl and Mitzi trooped silently by, their heads down as they shuffled into the small closet that served as a bedroom for all three siblings.

“What did you say to them? What lies did you say?” her father shouted, shaking her, his face alive with suspicion.

“What do you mean?” Inga managed to say. Clearly the Sinclair-Maru offer was received and predictably distrusted.

He lashed out, slapping her mouth. It wasn’t so hard a blow as she had known, but blood started from her lips. Inga glared up at him. “Don’t wreck the merchandise,” she said. His shaking hand rose for another blow and she stared, waiting. He released her, pacing around the filthy little room, his hands waving about.

Inga took the opportunity to pull Flops free and untangle the long ears, dipping into the hidden pocket for the four remaining chits. She settled Flops on the dirty table, beady eyes watching all, and turned back, wiping the blood from her mouth.

“What’s their game?” He tugged at his loose garish shirt. “You said something . . . some lie . . . I know it. Don’t trust those . . . gods-damned nobs. I’m not a bloody demi-cit!”

No, Inga thought, demi-cits are allowed only limited access to intoxicants. He could never surrender full citizenship, demote to demi-cit and accept the stipend, the lodging, the medical care . . . and only four ounces of alcohol per day.

Need and fear. Fear and need.

Inga knew the levers of her father’s demons all too well, but how to maneuver him now to the advantage of Karl and Mitzi?

Fear first . . . and what did he fear? Exposure, and any interruption of his chemical supply.

“I don’t want to go far away,” Inga said, laying it on just thick enough.

Her father stopped pacing and stared at her, swaying from foot to foot as his jaw continued working. “So far? What’re you saying?”

She couldn’t be sure what the Sinclair-Maru had said, so she took another chance. “Battersea’s all I know. I don’t want to go offworld to some stupid outpost.”

“Offworld? They said that?” He continued swaying back and forth as his hands writhed fitfully, but the expression on his face seemed to contain a veiled slyness that turned Inga’s stomach.

“I told them,” Inga said, “plenty of kids are better than me, but they think since we’re sort of related, I could keep their secrets way out there.”

His face reddened. “Plenty of kids? Are you stupid? If they say you’re something, you don’t argue! Trying to jam my deal or something?” He uttered a string of poisonous curses centered on Inga’s lack of wit as she hung her head, exulting internally.

“But I said you’d throw their dirty money in their face!” Inga said. She held out her hand with the shiny credit chits in a row. “You’ll throw their money in their—”

“What the hell?” he demanded, snatching the money from her hand and examining the chits in the yellowish light. “They gave you this?”

“But I don’t want to go offworld,” Inga said.

“Shut up. Do what you’re told and shut up.” He stepped up to Inga and straightened her rumpled shirt. “They fetch you day after tomorrow, and you’ll—you’ll go with them if I say so.”

“And—and Mitzi and Karl—”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” The sly curve appeared on his lips. “They think they’re getting the whole set. Once they pay up for you, they’ll learn I’m no god-damned demi-cit. No pushover.” He shook the credits in his hand and moved toward the door. “Wash your face. You smell like puke.”

Inga saw him dragged by his appetites, hurrying out the door, his scuffling steps retreating away, and she was alone.

After just a moment, she stepped into the shallow closet and looked down on Mitzi and Karl sprawled in their communal pile of dirty blankets. Mitzi lay sleeping with full-bellied contentment, one finger in her mouth, one finger jammed in her ear. Karl frowned in his sleep, beads of perspiration dotting his brow.

Inga eased the closet door shut and settled onto the floor, pain rising from her bruised belly to join the sting of her split lips. With him gone, and her poor little angels peacefully sleeping, Inga wrapped her arms across her meager ribs and stifled a sob, rocking as she gasped. She allowed herself these few moments of weakness, but no more.

When the tears abated, she wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and stood. In a moment she stood before the flat plastic eyes of Flops, the only witness, her silent ally. She grabbed Flops by one tall ear and carried the cloth creature along as she painfully scaled a dusty shelf up to the low ceiling. With her head, Inga pushed the loose panel up, clambering into the dark recess above.

Inga’s little handlight illuminated her tiny workshop and collection of unlikely treasures: tools salvaged from the rubbish or “borrowed,” a couple of actual wood-fiber books, a woman’s colorful, fragrant scarf, and a small selection of old memory kernels, each cryptically labeled by Inga’s own hand. Here she had refined her weapons. Here she had also rebuilt a few key electronic items. Inga dropped her blood-crusted shank, grabbed up the kernels and audio earpieces and crawled over to a vent on the outer wall, pushing it open. This created her private balcony to the world, her redoubt.

She looked out, well above the street level, glancing down at the small foot traffic of human derelicts, then looked through a notch in the buildings to the east, toward the spaceport even as a larger vessel lifted. The glow of the ship’s drive painted the night sky in golden hues as important people went to faraway places, doing important things. Was it a Sinclair-Maru vessel?

Inga tugged at Flops, looking down, feeling about the squishy torso with a probing finger until she triggered the catch and revealed the patched and taped old vid-capture device she had painstakingly repaired. Perched in her elevated fastness, the night’s cool breeze on her face, Inga activated the device, playing back the events of her day, in fast succession, seeing every moment Flops had recorded. When she saw Bess Sinclair-Maru appear on the screen, Inga slowed the feed, savoring each word, “. . . Only you possess what we need . . .”

Only you.

Inga believed it. Bess Sinclair-Maru intended to rescue Mitzi and Karl, and Inga encompassed the price of that freedom.

But, in the end, would he let them out of his grasp? Or would he try to retain Mitzi and Karl as insurance for Inga’s silence?

Could she risk this one great opportunity for all of them on the unreliable word of the bastard? Of course not, but Inga's meager tools of manipulation could not be trusted either. They were subtle powers that generally produced results over time, and now she required the fast outcome of aggressive action. Aggressive action . . .

More than once, Inga had researched common substances that one might add to her father's food or drink, which would then end the abuse all in a single night, and that sort of action rose before her scheming eyes yet again. But the consequences of such a step might be even worse than their current torment, separated from her siblings, grilled by Imperial gendarmes. That image horrified her. She could only reject such a solution as she had rejected it a dozen times before.

Must she then rely upon the good nature, the decency of her father, a man wholly possessed by whichever fleeting appetite had its claws in him?

Inga bit her lip, thinking back through years of violence and degradation. He as much as said he already thought of some way to defraud the Sinclair-Maru, get paid and yet retain his three little liabilities. Of all people, he would chance a Sinclair-Maru dueling sword through his vitals just to . . . Inga nearly stopped breathing. A Sinclair-Maru dueling sword.

Her mind suddenly looked upon a new path, a new weapon. She would turn her manipulation upon the Sinclair-Maru instead. She reached down, fumbling through the memory kernels to that one she had nearly cast out any number of times, the kernel she prayed no one would ever see.

What sacrifice would she withhold for Mitzi and Karl? Her life? Her self-respect? Her pride.

She withheld nothing.

Inga held that small kernel in her palm, recalling with nausea and shame what it contained. With shaking hands, she placed the poisoned kernel in the vid-capture, tucking it back within Flops. The truth it revealed would push the Sinclair-Maru and their honor to a point they could not ignore.

Just two days, and their day of liberation would dawn. The Sinclair-Maru would collect them, and at the key moment Inga would finally destroy the destroyer.

The tools of Inga’s conquest?

The swords of the honor-bound Sinclair-Maru.

And Flops.

* * *

Although born in the northwestern United States, Michael Mersault spent his formative years in a series of magical locales, including expat communities in the Middle East, a secretive air base in the Arizona desert, and an Alaskan fishing village. These endless hours of travel prompted an enduring love for books that continues unabated.

At times in his adult years, he has dabbled in kickboxing, competitive marksmanship, and international business ventures. He now lives as a semi-recluse back in the northwest, where he fluctuates between the paths of a confirmed technophile and a neo-Luddite.

“Flops” is set in the world of his Baen Books debut novel The Deep Man.

The Barcadian Wild

Tim Akers

Our taxi rattled to a halt in front of a bar on the outskirts of civilization. Cornfields stretched in every direction, giving the place the look of an island in a sea of golden grain. The building was an old barn, repurposed and expanded for maximum debauchery, with terraced porches leading from the loft, and a wrap around porch that was already filled with merrymakers, huddling under the warmth of propane heat lamps, their rosy fingers wrapped around flagons of beer. Lights and laughter rolled out of the tall windows, the interior obscured by flickering neon signs advertising various beers. A single banner ran across the front of the building. It read, in four-foot-tall letters, The Barcadian Wild. The BAR was written in bright red, in case the casual reader failed to understand how clever the proprietor was being.

“This doesn’t look very anomalous,” Chesa said from the front seat. “Seems like a pretty normal party to me.”

“Wait till you get inside,” Matthew said. He was the only one of us to have pulled this duty before. Chesa and I were still raw recruits in the world of Knight Watch. “It gets pretty weird pretty fast. But it’s a good party!”

The Wild was more than a good party. It was a disaster waiting to happen, a roving debauchery populated entirely by creatures of legend and myth, held once a year in compliance with the Accords that regulated all mythic/mundane interactions. Inside we would find fauns, nymphs, jotun, fair folk, and druids. But from the outside, it was just a dive bar. It was our job to keep it that way.

“We are not here for the party. We are here to make sure the party doesn’t destroy the fabric of reality,” I answered. My face was pressed against the back window, not because I was trying to see, but because that was the only way to wedge a man in plate armor into the back of a Toyota Prius. “Hey, can someone maybe let me out?”

“You’re on your own, man. I’m a healer, not a contortionist.” Saint Matthew patted me on the head, then opened the other door and stepped out. Chesa joined him, wedging her ash wood long bow out past my head, decorative leaves scraping against my armor. The driver just stared at me.

“Right, yes, of course! Sorry to be such an inconvenience!” Reaching around blindly, I eventually found the door handle and fumbled at it clumsily. It eventually came loose in my hand and fell off the door with a thunk. I stared at it in resignation. Things always break around me, especially since I joined Knight Watch. The cab, which had somehow managed to carry us all the way here, was literally coming apart in my hands. “Uh . . . little help?”

Chesa rolled her eyes, then yanked the door open from the outside. I tumbled out, trying to keep the rattle of my armor to an absolute minimum, even as I went to one knee in the gravel driveway of the bar. I reached out for Chesa’s hand, but she just sniffed and turned her attention back to the neon lights. She was leaning against her bow, legs crossed and pretty eyes sparkling. She was in full battle elf princess mode, from scale mail battle skirt to glittering tiara-helm. Between her pointy ears, my plate mail, and Matthew’s glowing eyes, the three of us made quite a scene. Full credit to the taxi driver, he hadn’t said anything about it. Maybe reality was doing its illusion trick and making us look normal. Or maybe this guy had just seen some shit.

“Thanks, guys,” I muttered as I slowly clambered to my feet. I walked around to the hatchback and retrieved my sword and shield. The sword was nothing special, just three feet of razor-sharp steel, and a pommel heavy enough to crush skulls, all contained in an embossed leather sheath worked with dragon heads and Celtic knotting. Pretty normal hero kit. But the shield? The shield was pure magic. With it, I could stand against any foe and come out the other side in one piece. I slung them both over one shoulder, then slammed the trunk shut.

“I think I must have fallen asleep,” Matthew said, stretching. His back cracked like a string of firecrackers. Matthew wore the traditional white vestments of his class, but also faded jeans and a pair of Ray-Bans that barely contained the diamond bright glow of his eyes.

He had a silver goblet in one hand, which made me nervous. We were under strict orders from our boss, Esther MacRae, not to drink anything at the Wild. I cleared my throat and asked about the cup.

“I know the rules,” Matthew said. He clapped me on the shoulder as he walked past, strolling toward the bar. “What Esther means is ‘Don’t drink anything the fair folk offer you.’ But there are monks in there. I didn’t come all this way to watch someone else drink the dark stout of God.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. And tequila, I hope. God makes tequila, right?” Chesa asked. She and the saint headed into the bar. I was about to follow when the cab driver called out.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Someone gonna pay me?”

“Right,” I said, turning around. “Currency. Something I . . . totally have. Around here. Somewhere.” I patted my belt and the folds of my chainmail, finally producing a small leather bag. That was a bad sign. Before we left headquarters, Esther had given me a mundane wallet filled with crisp twenty-dollar bills. But my particular magic had transformed it into this, a leather bag that clinked when I shook it. I opened the drawstrings and peered down at the glittering contents.

“Do you accept gold coins?”

##    ##

The cabbie left with a glamorous amount of gold. Trouble was, I wasn’t sure what the exchange rate was between magically transmuted dollar bills and fake gold coins. When he got far enough away from us for the coin to revert to its mundane form it would hopefully be enough to cover the trip. And the repair of the handle. And a tip. Hopefully.

Walking up the steps to the front porch, I couldn’t help but notice that in our high quality Ren Faire garb, we stuck out like sore thumbs. Small groups clustered around each of the standing tables on the wraparound porch, and loitered on the terrace that overlooked the cornfields. It was a mixed crowd. Leather-clad bikers, tie-dyed hippies, microbrew bros, and what looked like a clade of feral suburban dads all watched us with growing amusement.

“Are we sure this is the right place?” I asked.

“This is it. You can’t feel the weird in the air?” Matthew asked. I shrugged.

“Maybe we’re the weird in the air? This just looks like a bar in a cornfield.”

“And that doesn’t strike you as weird?” Matthew asked. He ambled toward the front door. A hulking bouncer glared at us.

“Dude, have you even been to the Midwest?” I asked.

“Sorry, folks,” the bouncer said, holding out one beefy hand. He was wearing a tight black shirt and oil-stained jeans that barely contained his muscular thighs. “Private event.”

“I think you’ll find we’re on the guest list,” I said, praying that there really was a guest list, and that we really were on it. “Under Knight Watch.”

He looked me up and down, then snorted. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

My heart dropped. Chesa nudged me forward, which really took a lot of force, considering my mail. I cleared my throat. “Knight? With a K?”

The bouncer just stared at me. Chesa sighed dramatically. There’s something about your ex-girlfriend sighing dramatically that puts the steel in your blood. I crossed my arms and tilted my chin back.

“It doesn’t feel like you checked your list,” I said. “In fact, I’m not sure you even have a list.”

“Oh, there’s a list. It reads No Nerds in Funny Costumes.” He thumped a finger against my chest, rocking me back. “Ex marks the spot.”

“Funny costumes? Is this funny?” I drew my sword in one smooth motion, driving the bouncer backward with the pommel before bringing the pointy end around to menace his rippling pecs. “Do you want to check your list again?”

The bouncer’s nostrils flared, and he changed. Unfortunately, he got bigger, and meaner, and more likely to try to kick my ass instead of letting me inside. Horns sprouted from his forehead, running in ridges down the middle of his bald head, and his eyes turned the red of freshly spilled blood. His fingers sprouted well manicured black claws, and a leathery tail flapped out from under his jeans, swaying menacingly across the porch.

“I will tear your candy ass limb from limb,” he snarled, his voice a low, sulphurous rumble. “And then I will feed the parts to the hounds of hell!”

“So, yeah,” Matthew said quietly. “We’re in the right place.”

“Ashok’Belah!” The call came from the terrace overhead. “Behave, you foul-blooded imp! Those are Esther’s people!”

“They smell like fear,” Ashok’Belah growled. I hazarded a glance overhead, but only caught a glimpse of a green vest and curly beard before the guardian demon flinched toward me, drawing my attention back to the sword pointed firmly at his chest. The bouncer turned inhuman monster snarled. His mouth was a thorny tangle of mismatched fangs. “This one especially.”

“You want to try me, hellboy?” I tapped the sword against his chest. The sharp point parted his shirt and drew blood from the gnarled skin underneath. “We’ll see who’s scared when you’re bleeding out on the floor.”

“Enough! Both of you!” A hairy man with a luxurious beard and wearing a green felt vest barreled out of the front door. He was short and slightly crooked, but his arms bulged with muscle, and his skin had the weathered look of a farmer. He wore a white dress shirt, stained at the hem, the open collar barely containing the rusty curls of his chest hair. A pair of golden wire rim glasses perched over his forehead, nearly lost in the mad tangle of his locks. The vest looked cheap, like it had been pieced together from a dozen threadbare hand-me-downs. He planted himself between us and shoved the demon bouncer back. Then he turned to me, looking me up and down before continuing. “Now, who are you exactly? I was expecting Esther, or at least Clarence.”

“Clarence retired,” I said. “Esther’s out looking for his replacement, along with the rest of the team. Don’t worry, you’re in good hands.”

“Extremely young hands,” the man said. “It’s just the two of you?”

“Three,” Chesa said. “I’m Chesa. Elven warrior princess, archer, and general bad ass. You’ve already met John. He’ll need to know where your bathrooms are. And this . . .” She looked around, but there was no sign of the saint. “Um. Matthew?”

“Oh, you brought the priest. Great.” The man’s reaction didn’t inspire confidence, but he sniffed and extended a hand. “I’m Cornelius Cornellus Cornmanson, the host of the Wild. Let’s get you the dollar tour.”

I shook his hand, one solid pump that nearly broke my hand, then he turned and dove back into the bar. When we hesitated, Cornelius returned with a furious look on his face.

“Well come on! I have debauchery to manage! Drunken revelry doesn’t just happen, you know!”

Chesa and I shared a worried look, then plunged into the bar.

##    ##

The Barcadian Wild was madness. Pretty on-brand, considering the name and the reason we were here. Cornelius dragged us through crowds of drunken revelers dressed in a mix of modern clothes and fantasy accoutrements. A group of girls dancing in the corner sported velvety deer horns, peeking out of their brightly dyed hair, and high heels that looked suspiciously like hooves. At the bar, which stretched right down the middle of the room, an enormous man in a Viking helmet talked with a skinny woman wearing nothing but tightly bound cloth strips and a lot of gold jewelry. The twang of country music from the jukebox mingled with pan flutes and Gregorian chants. It was pandemonium, in the truest sense of that word.

The Wild wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding its true nature. Hence the bouncer, I suppose.

“So what exactly did Esther tell you about this gig?” Cornelius shouted over his shoulder as he plowed through the crowds. A very tiny old man with a carrot for a nose glared at us as we muscled past. I struggled to keep up with our hairy host.

“We’re here to make sure you don’t break anything. Reality, for example,” I said.

“Yes, yes, your precious reality. So boring. We’ve been doing this for centuries without a real problem before you lot came along, and we’ll be doing it centuries after you’re all dead. Nothing personal.”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” I said. “Whole reason I took this job was to escape reality.”

“And yet you still dress like that,” Cornelius said with a sniff. “At least your friend has some style.”

“Aw, thanks,” Chesa said with a curtsy.

Cornelius pulled up short, right in the middle of the room. His path took us through the middle of a circle of wafer-thin women in draping, black attire who were playing some kind of game with tarot cards and small chips of dark iron, inscribed with runes. They gave us the very definition of the evil eye, then edged toward the back of the room, muttering to themselves.

“So this is the main level. Bar, couches, foosball tables,” Cornelius said. “Sidhe love their foosball. Back there’s the kitchen, which you should avoid at all costs, and those are the bathrooms,” he continued, pointing. “Over there’s the balcony, and then the stairs to the second floor. Any questions?”

That’s when I noticed two things. First, the deeper we got into the bar, the more our tour guide was changing from a hairy host to something mythic. And second, he wasn’t wearing any pants. I had mistakenly assumed the glossy material covering his legs was leather, or perhaps distressed suede, but now I saw that it was just hair. A lot of hair. And while his shirt tails provided some coverage, they didn’t provide enough.

“Oh God!” I shouted.

“I’ll take that as a no. Well, feel free to mingle. I’m sure Esther gave you some instructions about what to drink. You have my complete assurance that nothing in this bar . . .” His eyes drifted to the mummy and her companion, then to the dryads in the corner. He cleared his throat. “You know, just stick to water. And American beer, if the water’s too strong. And stay away from the buffet. Esther didn’t pay for the buffet.”

“I thought you were paying us to provide security?” I asked.

“Pay you? Hades, no! Your presence at my hootenanny is entirely against my will,” Cornelius said. “Esther made some very specific threats about shutting us down and giving us cubicle jobs in Ohio if we didn’t comply. Try to not ruin the fun, will ya?”

With that, our hirsute and pantless host disappeared into the crowd. I turned to Chesa.

“So, I guess we should set up a patrol schedule? Maybe try to find our healer?”

“I like the idea of splitting up,” she said.

“Great. I’ll take the main level and—”

But Chesa was already gone. She pushed through the crowd to the main bar, ordered something from a talking bear, then danced away, swinging a shot glass over her head. I sighed.

“Valkyrie has left the party,” I muttered to myself. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll just do this myself. Tank with no healer and no DPS. What could go wrong?”

##    ##

I wandered the main level, staying away from the coven of card-flipping witches we had displaced earlier, before taking a turn on the second floor. The only light on this level came from an array of what I would call Christmas trees, though these had a distinctly pagan air about them. The balconies were crowded with inebriated fair folk, most of whom were disturbingly tall, even by elven standards. My sword clunked against the railing and thumped into more than one shapely thigh as I made my way around the second level. The elves watched me with open disdain. They sipped a sparkling, golden ambrosia out of leaf-shaped glasses, dispensed from a crystalline fountain growing in the corner.

“Any of you see a priest wander through? Blue jeans? Glowing eyes?” I asked. Exquisite backs were turned toward me, demure conversation continuing as if I hadn’t deigned to speak to them. “Of course. Sorry to disturb the elysian ideal.”

I nudged my way past, scraping my plate mail against the railing, since they couldn’t be bothered to move. I was nearly past when a familiar voice reached me from beyond the clutch of elves.

Saint Matthew sat in the middle of a crowd of brown-robed monks, their tonsures shiny in the Christmas lights, gathered around an improbably large barrel and nursing ornate ceramic steins. Matthew had his silver goblet pressed against the tap and was pouring something dark and foamy, talking the whole time.

“He was moving like a greased jackrabbit in heat! You’ve never seen anyone move that fast! Zoom! Zip!” Matthew said. He emphasized this by jerking his goblet around, spilling his beer and drawing frowns from some members of his audience. The rest seemed willing to laugh at anything. “And then the blessing wore out. Boom! Dead stop! His face was the color of stewed beets, and he was quivering, and he let out this shriek. Brothers, you’ve never heard . . .” Matthew took a drink, and our eyes met over the rim of his goblet. The Saint choked a little, then resumed his story a little louder, as though he hoped to blot out what had come before. “You’ve never heard such a heroic war cry! So masculine!”

But I already knew this story, because it was about me, on one of my first missions. Matthew had cast a speed spell on me, without telling me that the air wouldn’t get out of my way as I raced around the battlefield. It wasn’t until the blessing ended that the pain reached my brain. I was left with the kind of sunburn usually reserved for Irish nudists. And the cry I let out was far from heroic.

“Well, that’s not a very good story,” one of the monks grumbled. “I was expecting something a little more . . . humiliating.”

“Sorry to disappoint, Brother Bernard. But I have the privilege of working with nothing but heroes, who do heroic things. Speaking of which,” Matthew gestured broadly in my direction. “Here is my faithful companion, Sir John of Rast. Sir John, please meet the Brothers of the Stout.”

The monks turned bulbous, red-nosed faces in my direction, lifting steins and muttering blessings in my direction.

“Brothers. Never thought I’d meet a bunch of monks in a place like this.”

“Presbyterians,” one of them muttered, then the whole group turned their attention back to the barrel. I motioned for Matthew to join me, which he did only reluctantly.

“This isn’t the job,” I whispered. “We’re supposed to be keeping this place from dipping into the Unreal.”

“I’m doing my part. Draining the monks of their vital resources, without which they can’t . . .” he gestured helplessly. “You know. Screw things up.”

“You’re getting drunk on thick beer and telling embarrassing stories about your team,” I said.

“Honestly, just about you. You make great story material.”

“Gods, can you be serious for a minute? Esther gave us this job because she trusted us. It’s my first lead, and I’ll be damned if I screw it up.”

“She gave us this job because it’s almost impossible to screw up, and she had more important things to do,” Matthew said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Try to relax, Rast. It’s a party. Have a beer.”

He returned to his circle of monks. Blushing, I turned around and shoved my way through the whispering elves, upsetting their fountain of ambrosia on my way past and drawing some very precisely enunciated curses in my wake. I nearly made it to the bannister when Chesa’s laugh rang through my nerves. I turned around.

My ex-girlfriend was draped over an elven prince in the corner of the balcony. He leaned down (a long way) and whispered into her ear, prompting another peal of laughter. She accepted a refill of glittering wine from the jug he was carrying, then drank deeply.

“That’s it! I’m supposed to be the careless one around here,” I said, shoving my way through the High Council of Perfect Cheekbones. Chesa saw me coming and rolled her eyes. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Mingling with my people,” she said. The elf on her arm bowed slightly.

“The Lady Chesa informed us of her mythic identity. You can imagine our joy at meeting the true queen of all elfdom,” he said. “It is only proper that we fete her as she so rightly deserves.”

“Uh huh,” I said. “Chesa, we’re supposed to be doing a job here.”

“This is why no one invited you to the keggers, John.” Staring me down, she accepted another pour from the prince’s delicate jug. “Wherever there is joy, you find a way of killing it.”

“Spoken like royalty,” the elf prince said.

Rather than punch him in the face, which probably would have violated the terms of my employment, I stomped down the stairs and got as far from Chesa’s pretty eyes as I could manage. That turned out to be the other side of the bar. The beartender loomed over me, nimbly drying a glass in his massive paws.

“Get you something to drink?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” I said. “Someone has to be responsible.”

“That never really works,” he said, setting the glass on the bar. He reached behind him and produced a bottle, then poured two fingers of something warm and brown.

“I’m not supposed to drink anything the fair folk offer,” I said.

“I’m a bear. And this is whiskey,” he said, pushing it forward. “You look like you could use a drink.”

He was right on all three counts. I threw the shot down the back of my throat, grimacing as it burned its way down my throat.

“Oh, gods, that’s awful,” I said.

“That’s how you know it’s whiskey. Fae drinks all taste like honeyed moonlight, or silver breezes, or some such bullshit.” He poured another shot, then got a glass for himself. “If this doesn’t fix whatever’s wrong with you, we’ll give vodka a try.”

##    ##

I woke up to the smell of burning wood and my own piss. My mouth tasted like dirt, and every inch of my body felt like it had been drained of blood and replaced with lighter fluid. There was a low groan that sounded like the unwillingly risen dead. No, wait, that was me. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was as dry as sandpaper. The room spun around me, but I slowly got to one knee, then the other, then tottered to a standing position. Leaning against the tile wall, I took stock of my surroundings.

The room was dark. The smell of smoke was getting more urgent, and now that I’d stopped moaning I could hear the sounds of breaking glass and driving pipes and the steady, urgent bassline of a thousand drums. All I could remember was that the bear had, eventually, switched us to vodka. I also remembered stumbling in the direction of the bathroom at some point. Explained the smell of piss.

I felt along the cool tile wall until I found a door. It was locked. A thin line of flickering light shone under the sill. I got down on my hands and knees and peered through.

The hallway was a riot of wildlife. Vines crawled between the cracked floorboards and dripped down the walls. A rabbit with a jaunty beret hopped into view, twitched its nose at me, then bounced away. Faun hooves scampered past. Laughter, high pitched and mad, echoed in the distance.

“This feels like the sort of thing we were meant to prevent,” I said. “Chesa! Matthew!” No answer. I got to my feet. “Well, I can’t exactly accuse them of lying down on the job, can I?”

I felt around in the dark until I found my sword and shield. Thankfully I hadn’t left them at the bar. A couple whacks with my armored shoulder splintered the door and sent me stumbling into the hallway.

The lights were blindingly bright, and the effort of breaking open the door sent my blood throbbing through my head. I squinted into the main bar. Things had changed. The tables had been rearranged at a fundamental level, and lay in wreckage across the dance floor. The Christmas lights from upstairs now hung from the rafters, tangled with discarded clothing, broken chairs, and a collection of wicker crosses bound with hair. The bar itself looked like it had been hit by a tornado, leaving nothing but empty bottles and lipstick-stained glasses in its wake. Grass and vines poked through the floorboards and from the windowsills, as though they had grown there naturally. But nothing about this was natural, or mundane.

A familiar groan rose from the bulwark of ruined tables. I kicked a few aside until I uncovered the beartender’s huddled form. Some of his fur had been tied into ponytails, each one held in place by a little pink bow, while the rest stood up in sticky spikes. Honey, I hoped. I nudged him with my toe. He sat up with a start, then grabbed his head and slowly lay back down and resumed moaning.

“Too much whiskey?” I asked.

“I wish. Gods, Cornie knows how to throw a party. Everything was fine until the pipes started. Oh, gods, the pipes . . .”

“Yeah, I think they’re still calling.” The back hallway was heavy with foliage. It looked like a garden path, lined with bowers and buzzing with insects. I could barely make out the door that led to the back patio. Hefting my sword and slinging my shield over my shoulder, I headed in that direction. “You sleep it off, bear friend. I’ll take care of this.”

The air was heavy with pollen and the sweet smell of honeysuckle. Blotchy lichen covered the back door, and the handle was pitted with rust. The whole mechanism came apart in my hand. The hinges gave way, and the door settled to the ground, then fell outward, landing with a thump. I stood there, still holding the handle.

The back patio was a liminal space. Long narrow trellises wrapped with fairy lights hung high over comfortable couches, each one warmed by crackling fire pits. Here the feral suburban dads roamed, mingling easily with bikers (in leather) and bikers (in spandex) and sports fans in a motley of jerseys. Now, though, I caught glimpses of their true natures. A horn beneath an undercut, or leaves growing from eyebrows, or pointed teeth flashing before they dipped into an IPA the color of pine tar. The crowds stared at me in silent stupor Or maybe they were just really, really drunk. As one, they turned back to their murmured conversations and dark beers.

“Where’s Cornelius?” I demanded. No response, not even the twitch of an eyebrow or blink of an eye. “Where are my friends!”

Still not getting an answer, I ran up to the nearest table and forcefully inserted myself into the conversation. A pair of fox-faced ladies and a man who looked every inch the accountant except for the goat ears sprouting from his head went out of their way to ignore me. I grabbed the accountant’s beer hand and pushed it onto the table.

“Where are my friends?” I asked again. Without looking at me, he picked up his beer with his other hand and continued drinking. A wisp of the conversation occurring between the fox women reached my ears. It didn’t make any sense. “What did you say?”

“Dragon bone and ivory throne,” she said. “Two stones for an altar. Sky is my witness, and the blood of an elven queen.”

“Three blades for sunset dancing,” the other fox lady said. “Dwarven made beneath the rock. Ocean is my refuge, and the blood of a frightened teen.”

“This is a lot of blood talk,” I said. “Do you think we could get back to—”

The accountant’s hand wrapped through the hair on the back of my head. He pulled me close. His breath smelled like cheap beer and damp moss.

“Wicker man for a god,” he whispered. “Oaken rod for a scepter. The forest is my kingdom, and the blood of a holy monk.”

I tore away from his grip, leaving a few strands of my hair twisted in his clawed fingers. The trio turned back to their drinks and their chanted conversation. Other voices joined them from the crowd, quiet at first but increasingly loud.

“A Queen, a Priest, a Knight,” the crowd intoned. “Dark beer for my sins. The flame is my sword, thirsty for the blood of the watch.”

“Okay, that sounds really . . . specific,” I said. I drew my sword and slipped my shield onto my arm. “Chesa! Matthew! Where are you guys?”

Then my eyes fell on my quarry, and my friends, all at once.

The backyard was dominated by a thirty-foot-tall wicker man, woven through with floral garlands and freshly cut vines. Firewood lay at the feet of the effigy, and a circle of kerosene torches surrounded the structure. A group of cloaked figures waited by the torches, swaying slowly to the sound of their own chanting. The air felt heavy with ritual and malice. The trilling of pipes floated from the surrounding cornfields, though I could see no musicians.

Chesa was bound in the heart of the wicker man, tied and gagged. She glared at me. I was familiar with this glare. It meant something along the lines of “Where have you been, you lazy bastard, I’m about to die here.” I saw it a lot. More, since we joined Knight Watch.

I shoved my way through the last remnants of the crowd and leapt off the porch. My feet came down in a puddle. The whole back yard was churned mud. It looked like three consecutive music festivals had gone off without a bathroom break.

“Okay, party’s over!” I shouted. The circle of robed figures continued their ritual. I marched up to the closest one and ripped back his hood. Golden hair and chiseled cheekbones glared down at me. Chesa’s beau. Of course.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, fancy boy?” I asked. He jerked his robes back into place and turned to face me. The rest of his cohort swept their hoods back dramatically. I counted eight. Long odds, but that’s why I was here.

“This pretender to our crown must be put in her place,” he said, gesturing back at Chesa. “We will not be ruled by a child. And you are too late to save her.”

“It’s never too late to ruin a party,” I said, moving into a defensive stance.

“Gellglorigrandellion, be done with this mortal, that we may return to the ritual,” the elf woman at his side said.

“Gladly,” Jelly said. He swept his robe open and drew the longest, thinnest, fanciest sword I had ever seen. The other elves rolled their eyes and moved out of the way.

“I’m not getting killed by a guy named Jelly Dandelion. Bring it!” I shouted.

I brought my shield up to meet Jelly’s strike, a lightning-fast flurry of jabs that sang a staccato song on the face of my shield. His form was frustrating; there was no strength in his attacks, but the wicked point of his sword promised blood if he could get past my defenses. When I lunged forward, Jelly simply danced back and laughed.

“You fight like a butcher. There is no elegance to your bladework. Come back in a thousand years, when you have had a chance to practice.”

“Sounds great. Just let Chesa go and we’ll try this again in a thousand years.”

“Afraid not.” Jelly presented his sword. “Typical mortal. Has to be taught a lesson.”

He came at me again, sword high, feet shuffling through the mud. I set my stance and caught the blade, but he reversed his thrust and swung down instead. The tip of the blade caught my shin, digging through the steel of my greave. I cut down at his exposed arm, but he fell back too quickly. My sword buried itself in the mud. Dirt spattered Jelly Dandelion’s silk pants. He glared down at the mess with disdain.

“Clearly I should have worn my brawling with peasants pants,” he said, flicking at the speckled mud with his finely manicured hand. “Gods, you’re hardly worth the trouble.”

“Really? I think that looks good on you,” I said. “Have some more.”

I dug my boot in the mud and kicked it at the elf. It landed squarely in his face, drawing a gasp from the surrounding elves. Jelly Dandelion quivered with rage. I charged in before he could recover from this affront to his fanciness.

Jelly Dandelion slid to the side, but I triggered my shield’s magical transformation, turning the kite into a Grecian figure of eight, whipping it out to clip his knee. He stumbled back, silk slipper sliding ingloriously in the muck, before I hammered his sword aside and kicked him squarely in the belly. The gangly elf folded like an origami crane, landing hard in the mud. That fancy sword slipped out of his delicate hands. I gave the hilt a kick, then stepped on his knuckles and buried them in the grime. He screamed in frustration.

“Thorn-Rose Menagerie!” he shouted. “Dispose of this mortal!”

The other eight elves sniffed, then threw their cloaks onto the wicker man and drew a variety of very beautiful, very deadly swords.

“Oh, hey, one second. I thought I just had to beat this guy, and then we could just . . . call it even? Maybe?”

“I’m delighted to say that that is not how this works,” Jelly Dandelion said smugly.

“And I’m delighted to say you’re about to get your pretty face beaten to a pulp.” Brother Brendan and his band of rosy cheeked monks pushed out of the crowd to flank me. They were armed only with half-full steins and their meaty knuckles. “You’ve been disgracing this festival for too long, with your fancy wines and your spit buckets and your . . . your . . . cheekbones!”

The rest of the monks yelled their support. The line of elves looked wary, but then Jelly Dandelion spat mud and ordered them forward. Brendan shook his stein over his head and yelled “Get ‘em, lads!” and the two sides surged together in a crash of ceramic mugs and thorn-etched blades. Elven grace and monkish joviality quickly disappeared into a squirming mass of mud-streaked limbs, bloody lips, and spilled beer. I hovered at the edge of the melee, unsure if I should join the fight or simply stay out of the way.

“Hey, man,” Matthew said, strolling out of the crowd. “Monk fight, huh?”

“Monk fight,” I said. “Does this always happen?”

“When the beer runs out. Hey, what’s Chesa doing in that burning statue?”

The roar of flame and wave of heat hit me at the same time. Chesa let out a little shriek and squirmed against her bonds.

“Ches!” I plowed through the muddy melee and reached the base of the burning wicker man just as the flames reached Chesa’s feet. She curled into a ball, holding herself out of the fire with ab-strength and the ropes that held her arms. She was too high up for me to reach, and the flames were too hot for me to climb through. I had to think of something else. Something clever.

“Matthew! Remember the first time we met, and you filled that glass of water over and over again?”

“That’s what you remember about the first time we met? I thought it’d be the dragon. Or the janitors. Or—”

“Focus! Can you do that with anything?” I asked.

“Oh, no man. Just water. We leave wine to the big guy.”

“I mean . . .” I rubbed my face in frustration. “Can you fill anything with water?”

“Oh. Oh! Sure, yeah, I can do that.”

“Awesome.” I held my arms out. “Fill my armor.”

Matthew looked confused for a second, then his face lit up. Literally. His magic manifested with glowing skin and an uncanny brightness in his eyes. A second later, water poured down my back, over my chest, and into my pants. It streamed between the joints of my armor and bubbled out around my gorget.

“Oh my GOD that is so cold.” My head swam in shock for a second, but then Chesa’s screams reached me again. Sword and shield went into the mud as I stumbled to the wicker man. Plate armor is heavy. Plate armor filled with ice cold water is heavier. Still, I heaved my way up the wicker man, water turning to steam as it splashed against the burning effigy, immediately replaced with a new torrent of freezing water from Matthew’s magic. Steam and smoke surrounded me. Heat from the flame baked my face and singed my fingers, even as water poured out of every inch of my body.

“Running low on juice!” Matthew yelled.

“I’m going as fast as I can!”

“Go faster!”

My hand came down on steel, and I looked up to see Chesa staring at me. I wrapped my arms around her waist, wrenching her free of her wicker cage

“John, no, I’m—”

“You’re getting saved!” I shouted, then pitched backward.

We tumbled backward down the statue, my hands and legs too numb to hold me up, and slammed into the widening pool of muddy water at the wicker man’s base. I lay there for a long second, until water came up around my face and covered my mouth. Sputtering, I sat up.

“Matthew?”

“Yeah, man?”

“You can stop now.”

“Cool,” he said, and went dark. Chesa spit out a mouthful of mud, then dragged me to the edge of the pool.

“Next time?” she said. “We don’t drink anything. Okay?”

“Sounds good.” I got to my feet and looked around.

Whatever spell had ensnared the crowd seemed to have passed. The fight in the mud was petering out, with elves helping monks to their feet, and monks sitting happily in the filth, draining the last dregs from their steins. The beartender appeared from inside and started collecting glasses. The bikers (spandex) tucked their rabbit ears into their helmets and filed into the parking lot. The feral dads grumbled about football and ordered another round.

“That was last call,” the bear said.

“What happened to Cornelius?” I asked. “Isn’t he supposed to be in charge of this place?”

“I think elf dude turned him into a toad or something,” Chesa said.

“It was a tadpole. Last year it was a newt,” Matthew said. “He needs to learn some new tricks.”

“Last year? This has happened before?”

“This is pretty much how it goes every year. Minus the burning effigy. We’ll have to lodge a complaint about that one,” he said. “You okay, Chesa?”

“I had just gotten out of my bonds when this idiot grabbed me and did a header, so yeah, other than ruining a perfectly good cuirass and getting mud in my follicles, I’m great!” She rolled her eyes at me, then stormed toward the bar.

“Wait, how is this my fault? I climbed a burning pile of wood to rescue—”

“Whatever!” she shouted over her shoulder before disappearing inside.

Something green and tadpole-ish squirmed against my foot. I bent down and scooped it up in both hands. The tadpole had a shock of red hair on top of its head. Its slimy body shivered and grew heavier. I tossed him in the air, and our host materialized midair, to come down with a splash in the mud.

“Well, that was nearly a complete disaster. Next year we should do this in the desert. What do you think? Djinn-themed, with tents, a bunch of pillows.” Cornelius stood up carefully, brushing mud from his patchwork vest. “Anywhere there isn’t mud.”

“Aren’t you going to do something about those elves?” I asked.

“Well, they’re certainly going to have to pay for all this damage,” he said. Then he clapped his hands together and turned to face the crowd still milling about on the patio.

“Okay folks!” Cornelius yelled. “Party’s over. You don’t have to go to hell, but you can’t stay here.”

* * *

Tim Akers grew up in rural North Carolina, the last in a long line of Scottish bankers, newspaper editors, and tourist trap barons. He moved to Chicago to pursue his passion for apocalyptic winters, tornadic summers, and traffic. He stayed for the hot dogs. “The Barcadian Wild” is set in his Knight Watch series, which includes the novels Knight Watch and the forthcoming Valhellions.

Monsters in Our Midst

Wen Spencer

The station manager of WQED, Dmitri Vassiliev, was very hands off when it came to his top television show, Pittsburgh Backyard & Garden. He normally didn’t check up on its producer, Jane Kryskill unless the show’s host Hal Rogers had shot someone or caught them on fire. During the last twenty-four hours, Jane and her team had set an Elfhome Interdimensional Agency guard on fire, aided in the escape of an tengu prisoner, and rampaged through downtown Pittsburgh with a chain-fed autocannon. They’d killed six giant monsters terrorizing the city, but reduced the first floor of the EIA downtown offices to rubble.

Thus, it was not surprising that Dmitri called Jane and her men in for a meeting.

They sat staring at each other in complete silence as Dmitri did hand gestures that seemed to indicate he was sorting through possible openings and rejecting them. Jane had threatened to hit the first person on her team that spoke, so both hosts were unnaturally silent, waiting for the lines to be drawn.

“Please tell me that you at least filmed it,” Dmitri meant reducing the EIA offices to rubble.

“You told me to get footage,” Jane said. “We got footage.”

“Of the hospital?” Dmitri meant setting the guard on fire and the prisoner escaping.

“Nothing was usable at the hospital.” She meant that they’d deleted all video related to their visit to the hospital.

“I see.” Dmitri said.

Jane listed out the reason they weren’t dead at the hands of the elves or in the EIA prison. “Nigel and Hal studied the film and determined that the monsters had subtle variations in coloration and size that normally indicate an animal’s sex. Males are usually more colorful. Females are often larger. We believe there were three of each sex. We found a nest at Sandcastle. It means there are probably two nests that we need to find and burn before hundreds of those monsters are spawned. We have at maximum six to ten days from the time that the eggs were laid.”

She didn’t add that they knew that there had only been six of the beasts. Her baby sister Boo had watched the oni commander Kajo release the monsters into the river while she was his prisoner. No one could know that her team had rescued Boo from the Sandcastle fish hatchery, leastlest the news trickled back to Kajo.

Dmitri studied them for another minute in silence. He nearly spoke several times, opening his hands as he thought of something, closing them again as he decided not to mention it. He finally leaned back. “I probably don’t need to say this—I’m sure you’re well aware of your situation. You are walking on a very fine line. The Viceroy is grateful for your help toward finding his bride. The elves are glad you killed the monsters. Maynard is the type of man that shoulders the responsibility of giving you carte blanche when he asked for your help. If you lose the support of any one of those parties, you’re going down in flames. You have crossed the line that I’m willing to extend this station’s protection to you. If you go down, you go down alone. I can’t stick my neck out for you and keep the rest of my employees safe.”

“Yes, I’m fully aware of that.” Jane wanted Dmitri to protect the innocent employees of the station. It made her feel less guilty about endangering them. She said nothing more, committing to nothing. She didn’t want to make promises that she probably would need to break later. Nor did she want to add fuel to the fire.

Jane knew that it basically boiled down to how much Dmitri trusted her. He hadn’t even glanced at any of the men yet. He didn’t know Nigel or Taggart, who had arrived on Elfhome just days before. He knew Hal all too well. Dmitri saw the big picture. He put Jane onto the job because he knew how much rode on Jane’s team getting results. He knew that there would probably be collateral damage because there normally was. It was the nature of the beast, as Jane’s mother would say. Did he trust Jane enough to stay out of her way?

Things would get awkward if Dmitri completely pulled the station’s support. He could take the production trucks, the cameras, and the right to say they were filming for a television show. He had to know, though, that he wouldn’t actually be able to stop Jane now that she made up her mind.

They sat for another minute, measured out by the ticking clock on the wall.

Dmitri glanced one by one at the men sitting beside Jane in silence. He kept his face poker blank, so there was very little to judge what he was thinking. He flicked over Nigel quickly. Narrowed his eyes at Taggart. He considered Hal the longest with a slight crease to his brow that could have been. Hal had gotten two black eyes from his battle with a strangle vine in what now seemed a lifetime ago. The bruising had faded to the point where heavy makeup could conceal the worst of the damage. They were using the damage to Hal’s face as an excuse not to be filming Pittsburgh Backyard & Garden.

“I won’t insult you by telling you to be more careful,” Dmitri finally said. “Just try to be more discreet.”

He flicked his hand, indicating that they were free to go.

#

It had gone better than Jane had hoped. She herded her crews out of Dmitri’s office before someone (meaning Hal or Nigel) said something stupid.

“I will disavow of any knowledge of your actions,” Hal said once the door was safely closed behind them. “Good luck, Jane. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds.”

Jane pointed at Hal. “You better not have booby-trapped his office.”

“What?” Hal looked guilty and edged away from her. “No. Thought about it. Didn’t have any explosives on hand.”

Dmitri opened his office door. “Jane. I need to talk to you privately.”

Usually such private conversations allowed Dmitri to call the host of his best show all sorts of insulting names without crushing Hal’s weirdly fragile ego.

Jane pointed toward accounting. “Hal, take them to accounting and do something about their cash problem.” The network idiots on Earth had assumed that the Chased by Monsters team could use a credit card to cover their expenses. Most of Pittsburgh didn’t take off-world credit cards, leaving the team without proper finances. It would get Hal out of her hair without fear of him causing too much damage to the offices. “Be charming!”

Dmitri tapped on his desk for a minute and then cautiously said, “I just got off the phone with legal.”

The mind boggled over what legal may have talked to him about. They’d left a wide path of destruction behind them the day before.

“And?” Jane asked.

“You and Hal seemed to have bonded with the network crew. Normally this would delight me to no end because it makes my job easier. I’m concerned, though, that they might be taking advantage of you. You don’t have a lot of experience with men like them.”

The legal department had told Dmitri about her and Taggart getting married.

“I told legal to keep that private,” Jane said.

“You scare legal,” Dmitri said. “But they consider you part of our family. They’re concerned that you don’t know how to handle a situation that can’t be solved without a weapon.”

“I asked Taggart to marry me, not the other way around.”

Dmitri pressed his hands together and pursed his lips, obviously cautiously and carefully picking his words. “It is possible to manipulate a person into believing something is their idea.”

“I know.” She couldn’t have ridden herd on Hal for six years without witnessing it in action. The man could talk most people into anything. It was why she’d sent Hal to accounting. She controlled the kneejerk angry response that wanted to snarl out. This was Dmitri. He’d given her a job fresh out of high school, believed in her when she decided to take the show in a different direction, given her free rein once she proved that she could produce quality work, and always cleaned up Hal’s messes when she lost control of him. With his premature silver hair and leadership style, he’d always struck her as a father figure despite the fact he would have been approximately fifteen when she was born.

She’d talked to legal because she wanted to make sure her research was correct. If she married Taggart, he would be considered a Pittsburgh resident and could come and go without needing to jump through hoops for a visa. She didn’t want to be married to a man stuck in another universe.

Had Taggart manipulated her? She replayed the key conversations over. No.

“Taggart isn’t intimidated by me,” Jane said. “I find that very appealing.”

“I see.” Dmitri tapped on the desk for another minute. “It’s obvious that Hal doesn’t know yet. Please, let me know when you decide to tell him.”

He was afraid that Hal would self-destruct when he found out. Considering Hal’s love of explosives, this could be a very bad thing for the station.

“I will.” Jane promised.

#

According to Nigel and Hal, a male catfish built a nest in shallow water out of pebbles. It invited the female in to lay her eggs, then chased her out to fertilize and guard over them until they hatched. Somewhere in three rivers fed by countless streams were two nests.

They had a narrow, six-day window to find them.

The talk of “fertilized eggs” reminded Jane that she had no birth control. She hadn’t been out on a date since high school. Sooner or later, she wanted the chance to test the chemistry between her and Taggart. They hadn’t gotten beyond kissing as her house was overflowing with family and friends.

Taggart had lost part of his luggage just before driving to Pittsburgh and never replaced its contents. It meant that there was a high probability that he didn’t have any contraceptives on hand either.

The problem was how to get birth control without Hal finding out. She couldn’t just drop Hal at his apartment and go shopping. Their very public downtown fight might have made them a target with the oni. For the time being, all the men needed her watching their backs. It would mean, though, Hal watching her shopping cart. He knew full well that she wasn’t dating anyone prior to the Chased by Monsters’ crew arriving in Pittsburgh. He was smart enough to connect the dots.

The problem with living on the Rim, she couldn’t just slip out in the middle of the night and grab something quick. The only twenty-four-hour store in Pittsburgh was the Oakland Giant Eagle. The largest store of the Earth-based chain, the Oakland supermarket was geared toward college students that seemingly never slept and had a great love of ramen noodles. It would take her over an hour to drive from her house, buy what she needed and drive back.

She could send Hal and Nigel to Wollerton Hardware while she and Taggart went to the South Side Giant Eagle Supermarket. It would be nice to have a mature conversation on contraception options with the selection right in front of them. The two naturalists could buy equipment for the nest hunt. In theory, they’d be safe while she crossed the street to buy groceries.

She needed Wollerton’s to be still standing when she was done shopping. The hardware store was a sponsor of PB&G.

It left the choice of letting Taggart pick out the contraception alone or her deciding what they used when they hit that point.

She sent Taggart to Wollerton’s. As an extra measure of safety, she called Aaron Wollerton and warned him of Hal’s presence.

#

She grabbed a cart and headed into the Giant Eagle. The store had been restocked after Shutdown and the initial rush of shoppers was over. Perishable imported foods like bananas were sold out but there were still mounds of potatoes, apples and onions. Local tomatoes, sweet corn, zucchini and non-perishable vegetables from Easternlands took the place of the sold out Earth goods.

A young couple with that European flair stood puzzling over the purple gourd-like diki. New arrivals. Their fascination with the vegetable made Jane consider a possible segment for Chased by Monsters. Not a full episode—that would never fly—but certainly could be used to lengthen a short piece on some elusive animal. The whole point of marrying Taggart was to make sure that the film team wasn’t sent back to Earth without enough footage for an entire season.

That and he was the sexiest man she’d ever met.

Hal was handsome. He needed to be for network television. Sexy? Was there ever a time she thought he was sexy? She wasn’t sure: the only lasting memory from the first few months included lots of vomit and fire extinguishers.

She found the feminine product section. She loaded up for her period and then considered the birth control section, which was frightening close to the pregnancy tests. There were a lot more choices than she thought there would be.

How was she going to tell Hal that she was getting married to someone else? It still boggled her that she even needed to tell him. They’d never dated. Never kissed. Never held hands. When they’d met, Hal had been a drunken mess. She’d gotten the job because he’d run his production assistant over with a golf cart. He set fire to himself that first day. The rest of the week had gone nearly as bad. It was obvious that he needed her to do a drastic intervention to save his life. She found him a new, safer, cleaner place to live, one that was far away from any bar or liquor store. She used the move to steal all his booze. She stole the alternator out of his car so he couldn’t drink and drive. Twice she’d handcuffed him in her bathroom to dry out. She rode herd on him nearly every waking hour, taking him to family events so she could keep an eye on him. It was a long, tedious, trying year but in the end, all worth it.

Hal loved her. She didn’t feel the same way. She’d saved his life and probably his sanity. It had been a job for her. One she enjoyed most of the times. Other times, she struggled not to drown him in some convenient puddle. She was fond of Hal like a younger brother, even though he was nearly a decade older than her.

Would he self-destruct? Had he gotten stronger than he had been? Judging by Dmitri’s reaction, no one thought so.

She knew him best but she hadn’t realized how much he loved her until Taggart pointed it out. Hal never hit on her, at least, to the point that she knew he was. Maybe there been some kind of ninja-mode flirting going on?

“Jane?”

She looked up from the box of condoms that she’d been studying to find her mother standing beside her. “Mom! What are you doing here?”

“Shopping. What you doing here?”

Jane controlled the urge to put the fling the box over her shoulder. “Shopping.” She dropped the condoms into her cart as calmly as she could manage.

Her mother’s eyes widen. “Jane! How wonderful!”

Jane blushed. She should have expected that reaction. Her mother raised her to believe she had the right to control her own body. Sex equaled a boyfriend which equaled possible son-in-law which meant future grandchildren.

“Taggart?” Her mother asked. “Or is there someone new?”

“Yes, Taggart.” Jane winced as she realized while they had a six to ten-day window on the namazu nests, they had equally narrow window for an elaborate Kryskill wedding. Every day she let go by, the more annoyed her mother would be with her for jeopardizing a lifetime of expectations. Jane may be one of seven children, but it would be the bride’s family that planned her five brothers’ weddings. All the years that Boo had been missing, Jane had been her mother’s one shot at going hog wild on planning.

“Mom. You can’t tell Hal.” Jane needed to get that in first, let it sink in, before popping the news. “I need to be the one that tells him.”

“Of course, he’s been in love with you since the first time he met you,” her mother said.

How did Jane miss this? “And you didn’t say anything?”

“If the chemistry was there, wild horses couldn’t keep you apart. I can see the sparks flying between you and Taggart. I’m so happy for you.”

“Mom. I asked Taggart to marry me.”

For a minute, her mother’s eyes only went wide with surprise. Then she turned away, hands over her face.

“Mom?”

“I’m so happy.” Her mother said, or at least, that was what Jane thought her mother said, since her hands muffled the words.

“So, why do you have your hands over your face?” Jane said.

“Because I don’t want you to see me crying!”

They stood in front of the shelves of sexual products, pretending her mother wasn’t weeping in joy.

Just in case someone else who knew Jane would come walking by, Jane nudged her cart down the aisle toward the vitamin section. “I need to be the one that tells Hal, so don’t tell anyone who might talk to him—like your sons.”

“Oh, Jane, how am I supposed to plan a wedding without telling—wait—have you set a date?”

“Before the Shutdown in September. We’ll need a few days to file the paperwork after the ceremony. I don’t know the date at the moment. We’re kind of in a middle of something important.”

Her mother pulled out her phone to check the calendar. “Oh, Jane, less than two months to plan a wedding! We’re going to have to get the invitations out next week. There’s barely time to get them printed!”

“I wasn’t planning on invitations. We need to find these nests . . .”

“You will have invitations. This will be a proper wedding. I’ll take care of everything. There will be two Saturdays before the Shutdown in September. The sixth and the thirteenth.”

Jane knew better than to suggest that they pick a day other than Saturday. “The thirteenth.”

Her mom came to a full stop. “Oh, Jane, what about his parents? They won’t be able to be here for the wedding! He’ll have to wait until the August Shutdown to tell them and you’re getting married before the September one!”

Did Taggart have parents? Brothers or sisters? She wasn’t even sure how to pronounce his first name. “It can’t be helped. We’ll film it. We can send them a copy of the video.”

“I need to go to the printers today. I’ll get their names off the Internet. I’ll have to make sure we can use the church. I don’t know what we’ll do if we can’t—but I’ll work it out. You can wear my dress. Who is going to be your maid of honor?”

“I—I—I don’t know, Mom!” Jane started her cart toward the check-out line. “We just decided this last night. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t seem that important. We’re at war.”

“The human race will always be a war, somewhere or other. People will die. Babies will be born. Life plows on. You need to stop and say ‘this day is mine’ or every precious moment will be eaten up.”

Her parents had gotten married on an army base just days before her father was deployed the first time. It might be the reason her mother was so determined that Jane had an elaborate wedding.

“Brandy is probably my best girlfriend.” Jane remembered that she’d lied to Brandy last time she saw her. “If she’s still talking to me. Give me a few days.”

They stood in the check-out line as her mother cycled through a long list of choices. Color of cummerbunds: red. Type of flower: roses. Wedding party-size: small as possible.

“If I have all my brothers as part of the wedding party, I’ll have to find five girls to be bridesmaids. Six. Nigel is going to be best man. I don’t have that many close girlfriends. I’d end up inviting someone I barely know to be part of my wedding to keep numbers even. That would be stupid. I don’t want to do it.”

“You could use your cousins Julia, Cora, Ina and Rachel.”

“I would still need two more girls if Brandy is pissed off at me.”

“Well, you could have—oh. Oh! What are we going to do about Boo and Joey?”

“I could elope” would get her into trouble. “It’s two months. We’ll figure something out. Maybe we can just invite family.”

Her mother look so torn that it hurt Jane to look at her. Her mother had spent twenty-six years dreaming of Jane’s wedding. It was always supposed to be a huge celebration of everyone they knew—friends, family, neighbors and co-workers.

Her mother would kill to protect Boo. It would crush Boo to be excluded from something as important as a wedding.

“We’ll figure it out,” Jane said. “We could dye her hair black and introduce her as Taggart’s niece. I don’t know. We’ll figure it out. Just don’t tell anyone yet.”

“I’m going to have to tell the printer and Father Cunningham.”

Jane pinched the bridge of her nose. “Just make sure the Barkers don’t find out, or the whole city will know by dinner time.”

#

Only later did Jane remember that she needed to find a bride for Nigel too. She made a note to ask her mom to play matchmaker.

#

Aaron Wollerton had sold Hal an entire crate of dynamite. At discount. “You’re going to blow those monsters out of the water and save the city. I’m happy to do my part. Sorry about the fishfinder thing. People don’t fish that way here.”

Jane eyed the crate. Maybe she should wait on telling Hal about her getting married until after they needed to fling around lit sticks of dynamite. She handed out sandwiches she’d picked up at Giant Eagle’s deli. “What’s a fishfinder?”

“A mythical piece of equipment here in Pittsburgh,” Hal lovingly caressed the side of the dynamite crate. “Along with most other advanced technology.”

“Thank you!” Nigel accepted the sandwich that she handed him. “A fishfinder is an instrument used to locate fish underwater. It pulses sound through the water and reads the reflection to determine what the sound echoed off of. Fishermen use it to locate schools of fish, but it also can be used to find underwater debris, like shipwrecks. The more sophisticated versions can distinguish between fish and vegetation. We were hoping we could use one to find the nest.”

Aaron spread his hands helplessly. “With the jumpfish and river sharks, most people don’t go near the water. Some of the foragers work the streams that are too shallow for the bigger fish. They normally use a combination of fly fishing and fish traps.”

“Catfish do spawn in shallow water,” Nigel said.

“What is this?” Taggart held out his sandwich. He’d taken a bite out of it. “Ham?”

“Chipped ham and cheese,” Jane said.

“Chipped chopped ham is a local thing,” Hal added. “It’s luncheon meat made from chopped ham and spices ground together and then pressed into a loaf. The deli cuts it thin as possible. You’ll get addicted to it eventually.”

Nigel took a bite and made appreciative noises. “We need to do a ‘Food of Pittsburgh’ and cover all the different types of food. Do you think we could film at an enclave?”

“Possibly.” Jane tried to corral them back on track. “How are we going to find the nests? If they’re under water, we’re not going to be able to see the eggs. Not unless they nested in very shallow streams.”

“Magic?” Aaron said.

“What?” Both production crews asked.

“Elves have magic,” Aaron said. “Why don’t you see if you can find an elf who can use magic to see under the water?”

#

Contrary to what most newcomers believed, anyone could cast magic. Most elves had a number of utilitarian spells that they knew written down in well-guarded books. Her brother Geoffrey had spent his teen years talking the elves into teaching him their common day spells. The elves were as intrigued by his youth as he was with their magic. One of his teachers marked his height on the wall every time he came to visit, exclaiming at his “impossibly fast” growth.

Geoffrey started a furniture making business after he graduated from high school. He was the first, and so far the only human in Pittsburgh crafting ironwood. He took over an abandoned warehouse at the edge of McKees Rocks so that he could take delivery of massive ironwood logs either by road, or river, or train. It was only a few blocks from Tinker’s salvage yard and John Montana’s gas station. Lathes, saws, drills, lumber and endless sawdust filled the big warehouse. Pieces of furniture in various stages of completion were scattered everywhere.

“Oh, this is brilliant!” Nigel cried. “Simply smashing! We must do at segment on this!”

“Paired with what?” Jane asked since they couldn’t fill a full hour with carpentry. Maybe they could cover other elf crafts like pottery and weaving. They could ask Geoffrey’s best friend, Carl Moser, if they could invade his artist commune. Moser had set up his place like an enclave and had attracted several young elves to live with him and his lover, Briar Rose.

“Ironwoods and Black Willows!” Hal suggested as a pairing.

Jane didn’t want to tangle with a Black Willow with anything short of a tank or a missile launcher. “If the oni throw one at the city, then, maybe.”

“It would be good for your little brother!” Hal said. “Think of it as a TV commercial played on an Earth Network—for free!”

It would be good for Geoffrey.

They found her little brother in his office, asleep at his desk, buried under paperwork. Geoffrey had gone from Harry Potter T-shirts to full out elvish style. He wore a beautiful shirt of handwoven blue silk shot with lines of smoke gray, handmade carpenter pants made of denim and ironwood rivets, the lace-up knee high boots favored by the laedin-caste hunters, and a blue ribbon braided through his honey-gold hair. There were dark rings under his eyes. Jane had never seen him look so exhausted.

“What’s wrong?” Jane asked after waking him.

“Oh, it’s just I’ve been going non-stop since Shutdown.” He yawned, stretched, and shuffled to a coffee maker. “I’ve been working with the bunnies. Usagi and her crew. The newest bunny, Widget, the girl who hacked the surveillance cameras for us during the fight? She was helping me set up my books on the computer instead of doing them by hand. That got me talking business with Usagi.”

Geoffrey paused to yawn again and pour a cup of coffee. “Usagi is like some kind of business wizard. She got a MBA from Wharton, which is like the best business school on Earth. She set me up with this upscale furniture gallery in New York City, walked me through all the EIA export paperwork, the taxes forms, and lined me up with a reliable shipping company. We set this freaking ridiculous price on that big canopy bed that I made on spec, more money that I’ve seen in my life. I thought she was crazy, but Usagi kept saying that state-side, rich people spend like crazy on custom work. I got a call during Shutdown. Tinker’s marriage to Windwolf triggered a sudden craze and they wanted another bed, rush order. It took us six months to make that bed and they want a second one by September Shutdown. They called back a few hours later and ordered two more. They’ve already sold the one in the store to the first customer that walked in the door and the one that they’d ordered earlier. The additional two were because they figured that the beds will go like hotcakes.”

“Oh, that’s terrific!” Jane said.

“Yeah, good news is I’m freaking rich! Bad news is I’ve got to get three beds out in half the time it took me to make one. Between killing the monsters and working here, I’m ready to go down face first. What are you doing here? Is something wrong with Boo?”

“We need help finding the namazu underwater nests.” Jane explained how the naturalist believed that the monsters followed the catfish spawning patterns based on the nest that they found at Sandcastle. “Do you know any spells that work under water? Or know someone that can cast the spell?”

Geoffrey winced. “No, I don’t know anything like that. I’ve learned a handful of scry spells but they mostly find things like lei lines and the location of specific marked items. Like you can put a mark on a piece of paper, and then later pinpoint where that piece of paper is within the city. Or the dau mark like the one that Windwolf put on Tinker. Normally you should be able to track the person wearing it. I’m not sure how the oni are blocking that.” He frowned a moment. “Actually, you might ask Yumiko. The tengu might know more about magic than I do.”

“Could you do magic?” Nigel asked shyly. “We’ve heard so much about it, but we haven’t actually seen a spell cast. I don’t think anyone ever filmed someone casting magic before.”

Geoffrey looked to Jane to see if she allowed it.

Jane nodded. “Okay, let’s set up a shoot. I’ll see if I can get hold of Yumiko.”

#

Yumiko answered the phone with a cautious single word. “Yes?”

“Do you know anyone that can pinpoint fish eggs under water?” Jane said.

Yumiko snorted. “Maybe.”

Jane waited to see if the female elaborated. She didn’t. Obviously Yumiko didn’t trust cell phones conversations to stay private. Jane wondered if the tengu knew that the phones were being monitored by the oni. “I need help finding the eggs before they can hatch.”

“I’ll come to you.” Yumiko hung up without asking where Jane was.

Was the tengu watching her?

It wouldn’t be too hard to keep an eye on her team; they were driving around in the big Chased by Monsters production truck with the logo painted on the side. One could not get more obvious.

Tooloo was standing next to the CBM truck with a chicken. The old elf was wearing a gown of fairy silk, high top tennis shoes, and a red ribbon to hold her very long, very white hair in a loose braid. The chicken was a large gaudy rooster on a leash. Both elf and chicken were eyeing the CBM logo closely, cocking their heads back and forth as if puzzled by it.

Jane’s big elfhound, Chesty, had been trailing behind her. When he saw the roosters, he huffed with annoyance and hid behind Jane. He had a thing about roosters—they were short-tempered homicidal idiots that he wasn’t allowed to kill.

“Hi.” Jane knew Tooloo mostly by reputation and a handful of visits to her store to buy honey, milk and eggs. The elf (or half-elf, rumors conflicted to her nature) was known to be quirky to the point of possibly insane. She was, however, harmless, a potential fan of Hal Rogers (she rented DVDs, so she most likely owned a television) and possible source for information on the oni. “Can I help you?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Tooloo reached out and traced the jagged teeth of the logo.

The rooster noticed Chesty. It ruffled up. “Bok caw!” It strained on its leash, trying to reach the bear-size dog, clucking loudly. “Bok caw!”

“Have you ever played poker with a child?” Tooloo ignored the angry chicken.

“Yes,” Jane said slowly. It was not the direction she thought the conversation was going to go. She shifted to block the rooster. “I have five younger brothers.”

“Then you know playing with a child is always annoying. They don’t understand that the cards are just part of the game. They don’t have the maturity to grasp the hidden, unwritten side. They think everyone will play by the rules that they were taught and nothing else. They don’t realize people will lie to win. And most importantly, they don’t know how to keep their joy and sorrow hidden.”

“Yeah, I know.” No holds barred poker was the game of choice when her extended family gathered. Her cousins were ruthless. Her younger brothers had a baptism of fire when it came to developing a poker face.

Tooloo shook her head, continuing the odd conversation as if Jane hadn’t replied. “Oh the tears when they realized that you bluffed and made them fold with a pair of kings when you’re holding nothing. The eyes well up, the lip quivers, and then the name calling. Trickster.”

The rooster clucked loudly. “Bok caw.”

“Cheater,” Tooloo said.

“Bok caw,” the rooster clucked.

“Swindler.”

“Bok caw.”

“Liar,” Tooloo said.

“Bok caw!”

Chesty whimpered as if the insults were thrown at him.

Jane pinched the bridge of her nose. This was utterly surreal. Why was Tooloo telling her this? (Why did she have a rooster on a leash?) Jane had sat through the described meltdowns often when her brothers were young. It was a phase they all went through. Lying, though, was the gravest sin to elves. It would hit an elf hard to be called a liar. “They grow out of it. They forgive you.”

“Only if you’re careful never to take anything too dear to them,” Tooloo said.

Was that some kind of veiled warning? “Can I help you with something?”

“Perhaps,” Tooloo said again. “A few days ago, another player suddenly sat down at the table. A child. Clutching tight to her handful of cards. I didn’t see her coming. A first for me. I suspect things will not end well for her. I wonder if she’ll hate me for the loss of her cards.”

“You could let her win.” When her brothers were very young, Jane played without bluffing so they’d learn the basic rules. It made the game more a thing of luck than skill.

“It’s a cutthroat game,” Tooloo whispered. “The stakes are high. I have no idea how well she plays.” The elf reached out to run a finger over the Chased by Monsters logo. “So little in poker depends on the cards. It’s tiny things. Do you keep your cards well hidden? Can you keep count of the cards in play? Do you know when the person across from you is lying? Do you know how to misdirect attention away from you? Can you abandon all that you put at stake to guard what you have left?”

Jane wondered if they were talking about a literal card game or a figurative one. They were speaking English. Jane wasn’t misunderstanding the basic sentences, but everything Tooloo said could have a second meaning. Nigel had said that Lemon-Lime were two little girls. Chased by Monsters arrived in Pittsburgh just days ago, armed with the monster call and knowledge from the twins. If they were talking about a figurative game, then Lemon-Lime might be Tooloo’s “new player.” What side was Tooloo on? Unlike all the other elves in Pittsburgh, she wasn’t part of a large extended household. Tooloo lived alone without any elves or humans to call family.

“Do you want something?” Jane asked.

“Bok caw!” The rooster clucked.

Tooloo laughed. “If you live long enough, it all becomes a little hazy on the edges. What were you doing? Why was it all so important? You’re left standing in the kitchen, wondering what it is you planned. You open the fridge and stand there looking in, hoping that something jars your memory.”

The elf was bluffing now; Jane was sure of it. The dodge was a misdirection without lying.

Tooloo stared into Jane’s eyes as if looking into the very heart of her. This elf had sought Jane out, wanting to know something. The question was: what? Which side Jane was on? The fight with the namazu would have made that obvious. Lemon-Lime’s identity? Jane didn’t know it. What Jane planned to do next? Fight to the last breath in her body.

Tooloo’s lips upturned ever so slightly in what might have been a smile. “As you stand there, in cold blast of the fridge, yesterday’s leftover staring back at you, there’s this flash of memory. A touch of a hand. The brush of skin. The warmth beside when you sleep. It’s all you have left of someone that you loved with every fiber of your being—and you’ve nearly forgotten that too. Revenge is cold because all the warmth in your life has been stolen.”

“Bok caw!” The rooster clucked.

“Who did they take from you?”

“Myself.” Tooloo gave a slight tug on the leash, making the rooster squawk. The two turned and strutted away.

What the hell? Jane stared after them.

“Keep your cards close to your chest, my little storm fury!” Tooloo called before turning the corner.

Chesty grumbled at the indignation of having to be nice to insane fowl now that the rooster was out of sight.

“You ready, Jane?” Taggart asked through the headset.

She turned her mic on. “Yeah, almost. Give me a second.”

She unlocked the CBM production truck and let Chesty in. She glanced one last time at where Tooloo had vanished. What the hell was that all about? She replayed the conversation. Did Tooloo really mean that some secret spy skullduggery involving Nigel and the twins, or was she simply crazy as a loon talking about a weekly poker game? Except for the bit about the refrigerator and leftovers, certainly there wasn’t anything that didn’t fit into a conversation about a child sitting in on a high stakes card game.

“I don’t have time for this,” she muttered.

“What?” Taggart asked.

“Nothing.” She climbed into the truck and flicked on the monitors.

In Geoffrey’s workshop, Hal was tied to a chair while her brother showed off his tools sharpened by magic. When was Hal going to learn that her family meant it when they said “don’t touch?” Seriously, this was one of the reasons she didn’t find him sexy.

She clicked on her mic. “Hal is still in frame, Taggart.”

“Jane!” Hal whined as Taggart shifted slightly.

She felt a stab of guilt. He really was good natured about the casual abuse. She would feel guiltier if she didn’t know him so well. It was for his best interest to be contained. Last time they were here, he nearly cut the toes of his left foot off. “Shush, or I’ll have him gag you too. Light levels are good. Let’s roll.”

“Ironwood is an amazing and beautiful wood.” Nigel stood in front of a “speakeasy” door of ironwood that Geoffrey started out making. It was popular with the elves and humans alike as it echoed the spyhole-style used at the enclaves. “Just look at this. Isn’t it beautiful? It has a very straight, even grain with a fine texture and high natural luster. It seems nearly luminescent since it reflects so much light. The very core, the heartwood, looks like polished gold. This is a truly amazing material. Wood hardness is measured via the Janka hardness test. It’s the pounds of force required to imbed a small steel ball into the wood to half the ball’s diameter. The hardest wood on Earth is Quebracho, which is from the Spanish term ‘quebrar hacha,’ which literally means ‘axe breaker.’ Ironwood is ten times the hardness of Quebracho. Because of that, it is amazingly difficult to work with. The only way to craft it into amazing pieces like this,” Nigel shifted to show off an elaborately carved headboard of a king-sized bed, “is to use magic.”

He took a few steps, sweeping his hand to take in the cavernous workshop. “I’m here at the marvelous Gryffin Doors, a custom furniture maker that specializes in ironwood. It is the only human-owned company that does so on two worlds. This amazing young man, Geoffrey Kryskill, is the wizard behind all the magic.”

Geoffrey blushed and looked younger than his twenty-two years. “Thank you, Nigel.”

“Please, can you explain the process of turning those massive trees into something like this?”

“Um.” Geoffrey looked boggled for a moment, and then plowed into the subject. “Felling the trees is managed by the EIA. We’re only allowed to harvest a small number to protect the forests around Pittsburgh. They can’t be cut down with chainsaws. It dulls the blades too fast. Some idiots use dynamite but that’s a total waste of wood. They destroy a quarter of the tree trying to bring it down. I think that’s the real reason the EIA controls the cutting, to keep people from blowing up a half dozen trees to get the same amount you get carefully logging one or two trees with magic. The virgin forest is dangerous, but when you clear out the ironwoods, it gets deadly. Soil erosion aside, you get more strangle vines, Black Willows, steel spinners, so forth and so on. Everyone loses when you lay waste to the trees. It’s in Pittsburgh’s best interest to protect the forest. Sorry, I’m ranting. I’m tired and it’s a trigger for me. Nothing pisses me off than to find some newcomer idiot has blasted a big hole in the forest and then just let the trees lie there because they can’t cut them up into logs small enough to move.”

“You use a spell to cut the tree down.” Nigel gently steered the interview back to the main subject.

“Yes. The spell is called taelikiatae or to strike with wind. You slice away bark on opposite sides of the tree—just like you’d notch a tree with a chainsaw—and draw the spell on the side of the wood underneath.”

“I imagine it’s difficult to peel the bark off one of these trees.”

Geoffrey nodded and sipped his coffee. “Its insanely hard to do without the right tools. It’s the main reason people just blast the trees down with dynamite. You can’t buy the tools nor will anyone give them to you. You have to make them yourself.”

“Why won’t they sell them?” Nigel said.

“Um,” Geoffrey studied the ceiling as he tried to figure out a way to answer. “It’s hard to explain the mindset. It’s kind of like the ‘give a man a fish’ vs ‘teach a man to fish.’ Tool grade edges last for one tree. Only ejae have lasting edges and only the sekasha are allowed to carry those. So you cut down one tree and then you need to use spells to sharpen the blades of your tools. That includes the blade on your saw mill, jigsaw, hand planers, every tool that you use. If you can’t make the tools in the first place, it’s useless to sell you a tool.”

“You can’t use conventional tools at all?” Nigel asked.

“Well—you could—maybe. I got a high-grade steel blade with solid tungsten carbide tips on my Peterson portable sawmill. It will stay sharp for two years or more because I use it only on oak and walnut. If I tried to use it on ironwood, it would be dull by the end of the day, and the day after that I’d burn out my motor. I’d need a dozen blades or more that I could have in constant rotation to protect my shop equipment. Each sharpening reduces the life of the blade. You’re literally honing away metal until you have an edge. Eventually there’s nothing left to sharpen. There were some people that set up woodshops in Pittsburgh after the first Startup. They were using all man-made tools. None of them could keep up with the maintenance required.”

“So your knowledge of magic is essential?”

“Magic. Wood. Furniture making. My big weakness is business. Since my family all own their own businesses, I know the basics. I took accounting in high school because I knew I wanted to be able to understand bookkeeping. It wasn’t until I met Usa—someone who went to college for it that I saw that there was this whole big picture that I’d missed. We’re trading services. I’m making a table for her.”

Geoffrey waved a hand toward a massive expansive of maple wood. It looked like it sat nearly twenty people. The bunnies were multiplying like bunnies.

Nigel backtracked in the conversation to pick up a dropped thread. “I’ve read that the ejae are ‘magically sharp’ but I’ve never seen anything that explains that.”

“Probably because no one really understands magic that speaks fluent physics—except maybe Tinker. Tinker domi.” Geoffrey fumbled with Tinker’s new title. He knew the new Vicerine from before all the madness. “The Elvish for the various blades are ‘sharp,’ ‘tool sharp,’ and ‘magically sharp,’ so when you’re told it’s ‘magically sharp’ it’s a literal translation that describes the type of edge it has. ‘Sharp’ is a metal blade like a normal steak knife. See you can’t use magic and metal together—reliably—so any metal blade will be your typical steel ground to an edge. The elves are trailing behind us in that technology. They can’t produce high carbon stainless steel or vanadium alloys, or ceramic blades. They import those from Earth. ‘Tool sharp’ are tools that are iron-wood that are given an edge via magic. They’re fairly easy to make. Not simple—you need to know what you’re doing and have the right tools—but easy. They’re like this table. It would be very difficult for my friend to make it. She doesn’t have the workshop or the power tools or the experience. She could do it, if she worked at it, but it would take her days to do what I did in a few hours.”

“So you couldn’t make magically sharp blades if you wanted to?” Nigel asked.

Geoffrey shook his head. “No, I don’t know the spells involved.”

“I’m sorry,” Nigel said. “But I’m fascinated by this and I want to understand. How do you take a piece of wood and make it be able to cut through anything?”

“What makes a knife sharp is the thinness of the blade. Carbon alloys and such are all about how durable that edge is, but the actual ability to cut is the thinness. When a blade becomes dull, it’s because the edge has worn back to the point where it’s no longer thin. A normal steel knife is sharpened to an edge that is only microns wide. You can take wood down to an edge at the molecular level via magic.”

Chesty rose from the floor just as the door opened to the production truck. Jane rolled back, pulling her pistol.

“It’s me,” Yumiko was disguised as a pizza delivery woman. The tall, willowy female wore a pair of easy to kick off flats, blue jeans and a T-shirt from Church Brew Works as kind of a makeshift work uniform. By smell, she’d brought one of the Brew Works signature pierogi pizzas with mashed garlic potatoes, sautéed onions and cheddar cheese. With a pizza box in hand, she wouldn’t draw a second look.

Jane forced herself to lower her weapon. She still didn’t completely trust the tengu but as supposed allies, she should at least seem like she did.

“You’re having us watched?” Jane posed it as a question but it was the only way that Yumiko could have found them.

“For your own safety. At the moment, the oni are not sure what happened with Joey and Boo. They might have been eaten by the namazu. Kajo controlled the hatchery. He cannot discount that Lord Tomtom might have found the camp prior to the namazu returning to spawn, killed the guards himself, and took the children prisoners. Kajo has not told Lord Tomtom about their disappearance, so it’s possible Kajo still suspects him.”

“Are you just watching me or my whole family?” Jane asked.

“All of your family,” Yumiko stated calmly. “If you ask us to stop, we will be forced to take Boo to Haven. We cannot leave one of the Chosen bloodline unguarded. The oni could use her in the worse possible way to gain control of the flock.”

Jane remembered how Boo had been able to stop Yumiko with a single command. Jane would hate to have someone who had that control of her. “You sure you can trust the people you have guarding us?”

“They would die rather than betray our people. They know better than anyone what the oni would do to us if they had complete control. We are already just animals in the greater bloods’ eyes.”

Jane didn’t like it when she ended up on camera. She didn’t like being watched. It meant she lost control of the situation.

A flash of light made her glance at her monitor. Geoffrey was demonstrating how the pieces of wood could be bound together at a molecular level with magic, thus eliminating the need for glue or nails. Nigel looked utterly enchanted.

She hated that her family was now in the spotlight. It meant if she lost control of the situation, they’d be the ones in danger. Her little brothers were now men; they had the right to choose how they lived.

The camera panned to the right as Hal fell over into a pile of sawdust, still tied to the chair. He apparently had been trying to escape. Taggart lingered on Hal long enough to verify that he was unharmed and then focused back on Geoffrey.

They were going to have to edit that out.

“Why is Hal tied up?” Yumiko asked.

“Because this place is too dangerous for him to wander loose. He can’t keep his hands in his pockets when he’s bored. Did you find someone that can help us with the nests?”

“You can use these.” Yumiko held out a Mylar envelope. Inside was a ream of paper printed with identical copies of the same spell.

“Where did you get these?” Jane said.

“Don’t force me to lie to you. The truth is too dangerous.”

“Dangerous or damning? This is Elvish.” Jane tapped the runes. “But elves don’t use printers. You got this from Tinker somehow. You’re making it hard to trust you.”

Yumiko stared at her for a minute before looking away. “You tie up Hal to keep him safe. He still trusts you. It’s the same principle.”

“Hal has proved that he needs a babysitter time and time again. I’m not Hal.”

“If you do not know the truth, you can’t repeat it to the wrong person.”

“All you need to say is ‘this is secret’ and I won’t repeat it to anyone.”

“I’m to trust the man that you tie up with my secrets?”

“I won’t tell my team.” Jane partially lied. She would tell them if they needed to know.

Yumiko thought for a moment before sighing. “It is a long complicated story, the kind that comes into being when someone like Pure Radiance dabbles in the lives of others. Impossible convergences of fate lead to extraordinary events. The more I tease apart the cause and effect, the more I realize that there are multiple oracles warring with each other, moving others around like chess pieces. What we’re seeing today is the collision of their plans as they crash toward their end game.”

Yumiko continued. “Thousands of years ago, the greater bloods rose up to enslave all of the oni people. We did not count ourselves as tengu then; we were humans living on a foreign planet after escaping the cruel Emperors of China. We lived in a remote area, cut off from everything, and we were safe and happy in our ignorance. Then, one day, Wong Jin met Providence and everything changed.”

This sounded like a snow job, but Jane settled back to listen. Everything she knew about the oni and their world came from six-year-old Joey. Anything she learned would be useful.

“We believed that were only two worlds. Onihida and Earth. That day we learned that there were multiple worlds layered upon each other, like a stack of cards. Just as we could go from Onihida to Earth, there ways to go from Earth to Elfhome. Somewhere, beyond Elfhome, there were more worlds, and from those worlds, came the dragons.”

“Dragons?” Okay, that wasn’t good. The elves had always said that dragons were much larger than wyverns, which were freaking huge.

“These are not Elfhome dragons, any more than gorillas are humans. Distant cousins, perhaps, but no more. The dragons of Ryuu are like gods. Unimaginably powerful, they are also wise and noble. The rulers of the elves were envious. They wanted to steal the dragons’ strengths for themselves. They devised traps and ensnared the dragons one by one. They captured Brilliance who had been too curious for his own good. They captured Honor who loved him and came searching for him. They captured Clarity who should have known that she would be taken. They captured too Providence’s beloved daughter, Nirvana.

“To steal their powers, the elves shattered down the dragons and started to experiment with them. They were cowards, these monsters that called themselves elves. They were afraid of endangering themselves, so they made slave children to test their results. In their cowardice, they bred their own downfall. They gave their slaves gifts of the gods and then failed to understand how that would change everything.”

Jane glanced at the monitor. They were on a ticking clock with the eggs hatching and this had nothing to do with the digitally printed spells. She had never heard any of this, an entire world that she was ignorant of, and yet somehow figured into this war that was embroiling Pittsburgh. Yumiko had distracted her away from her original question of how the tengu ended up with the spell.

“What does this have to do with Tinker?”

“Everything. The elves gave their slaves godlike power and then couldn’t contain them. It threw their world into chaos. Everything you know about elves came after the fall of their masters.”

“Still not seeing the connection.”

“Tinker was not taken because she’s Windwolf’s bride, she was taken because she contains Brilliance’s genetics. Plans to kidnap her were put into motion even before she met the Viceroy.

“Tinker was born human.”

“No, she’s only appeared to be human. When Riki hacked into her datapad, he realized what she was and why Pure Radiance is using her as a weapon against the oni. Brilliance’s offspring are dangerously unpredictable when cornered. The oni do not know what they have captured. They believe they’ve caught a girl who had been human, clever but helpless. She will destroy them before she gives them what they want.”

Yumiko sounded very confident of that.

Jane connected the dots that Yumiko had laid out. “If the oni know this spell came from Tinker, they might guess what she is and how dangerous she can be?”

“Yes. If they knew she was actually a wood sprite, they’d change how they’re treating her.”

“Keep your cards close to your chest,” Tooloo said.

This might explain Tooloo’s odd rant. Pure Radiance was keeping her “cards” hidden as she played Tinker against the oni. Like in poker, the opponents’ ignorance was half the strategy. If the queen’s advisor flashed her hand, everything would be for nothing.

Lemon-Lime had foreseen Jane’s fight at the putt-putt golf course; they’d made a video of it months before Nigel even reached Elfhome. They’d given him the monster call and warned him about the oni. If they were the newest oracles pushing around chess pieces, what was Tooloo? Jane knew almost nothing about the intanyei seyosa beyond the fact that Pure Radiance was Queen Soulful Ember’s personal adviser.

It seemed that Tooloo was wondering if Lemon-Lime had the maturity to know not to expose the people the twins were using.

Or was Jane just overly paranoid, seeing connections where there were none? How would anyone know that Nigel was Lemon-Lime’s pawn? Even Taggart hadn’t known.

Jane ran back over both Yumiko and Tooloo’s conversations. Both of them were weirdly out of left field. Were they connected? Jane could understand what Yumiko was explaining but not why. The trip through history seemed the most inefficient way to explain the situation. Having to work on scripts for PB&G, Jane had become sensitive to how to lead people to information. How the listener could be diverted from one subject and made to focus on another. Why focus on dragons? Weren’t the button-pushing oracles the real game players? Boo had said that the oni had shifted camps merely because Pure Radiance had come to Westernlands. So far, Jane hadn’t heard even rumors of dragons being involved. After nearly thirty years, the creatures were still mythical in Pittsburgh.

“If the dragons were godlike,” Jane asked. “Why didn’t they go to war with the elves?”

“It wasn’t their world. They felt that since their children were trespassing, they should abandon them to their fate. It was not a popular decision but once made, all agreed to put the world of the elves in edict. They’d tear down the connections between the worlds with magic, where the elves would be most dangerous. They left the pathways to Earth simply because the damage that the elves could do to their neighbor was limited.”

“So they’ll stay out of this war?”

“Normally I would say yes, but I’ve heard a rumor that the oni captured a dragon. Some of the yamabushi have returned to Onihida to see if this is true, and if it is, free the dragon.”

So that wasn’t why Yumiko focused on her history lesson.

“Are there other monsters we haven’t found yet?”

“Yes. We have heard rumors that Kajo has camps somewhere in the forest. It is said that he has created massive beasts of war that he plans to unleash on Pittsburgh.”

“What kind?”

Yumiko shook her head. “We have mostly dealt with Lord Tomtom, as we call him. His true name is Tomaritomo. He’s a lesser blood, which means that a greater blood created his bloodline using animal DNA as well as oni. One of his ancestors was a ghost lion. For a lesser blood, he’s fairly intelligent but he operates mostly on brute force. In terms you’d understand, he’s in charge of the infantry. Think berserkers.”

“What?”

Yumiko laughed. “You don’t know your own history. Berserkers were Vikings who went to battle without armor, wearing only wolf skins. They fought in a trancelike fury; neither fire or iron could make them retreat. Savage, unthinking, fearless brutes. There is no reasoning with them. They’ll attack until they’re dead.”

“He has Tinker?” Jane flashed to the five-foot-tall, hundred-pound girl.

Yumiko waved away her concern. “Tinker will think rings around him. She bargained him into letting her keep her sekasha guard. Brilliance and Honor together? Lord Tomtom is doomed. Kajo is the dangerous one. He’s named after the most poisonous snake on Onihida, the Yutakajodo, for a reason. He’s a greater blood, which means while he looks harmless, he’s dangerously intelligent and resourceful. Gods forbid you ever come face to face with him, but if you do, don’t hesitate to kill him instantly if you have the chance. You will only have that one chance, and then you’ll be in a hell that you cannot even imagine.”

Kajo was the oni that took Jane’s little sister, Boo. He’d kept Boo as a plaything until his “Eyes” told him that she was too dangerous. Jane had proved them right by wiping out the monster hatchery at Sandcastle.

The Eyes were the oni’s seers. Pure Radiance was the elves. Lemon-Lime was weighing in with the humans. How did Tooloo fit in?

#

“Yumiko left already?” Nigel said. “I was hoping that we could interview her. She’s such a fascinating person. It must be wonderful to be able to fly.”

“She didn’t want to stay longer than her cover disguise allowed.” Jane put the pizza on a worktable for the others to share. “She brought copies of a spell but I still need someone who knows how to cast magic that won’t ask weird questions.”

“You’ve got me.” Geoffrey sounded hurt that she didn’t even consider him.

“You’re snowed under with work.” Jane pointed out.

“Pft!” Geoffrey threw up his hands. “If even one of these monster hatches out and gets away, the oni can start over again. We can’t be shortsighted and do a halfass job at this. The elves and the oni are looking at the big picture, and it’s not pretty thing. The oni will wipe the elves out here in Pittsburgh. They’ll have to. The elves lived as slaves of the Skin Clan and they will not go back to that. They’ll die fighting first. The oni have to win, and win big, here and hold all of the Westernlands before they can take the Easternlands. If they don’t win big, the elves can bring in serious backup. I’m not going stand by and let everyone I love be butchered.”

“Okay.” Jane said.

Hal cocked his head at Geoffrey. “You’re dating elves?”

“Hal!” Jane snapped. Geoffrey had gotten teased in school for his lack of dating experience. Boo’s disappearance had affected all her brothers in different ways. Geoffrey had thrown himself into learning all about woodcrafting.

Geoffrey blushed. “Yes.”

“You are?” Jane said. “Why didn’t you say anything. What’s her name?”

Geoffrey blushed deeper. “Floss Flower and Snapdragon.”

“Snapdragon?” She knew the male elf. “He plays drums for that one band. Naekunan?”

“Yes. Floss Flower is a weaver. She makes really cool fabric in silk.” Geoffrey plowed on, his chin getting that familiar Kryskill hitch that said he was going to let his fist talk if he didn’t like what he heard in reaction to his confession. “They want me to join their household.”

“Bisexual as papaya trees,” Hal murmured.

Jane smacked Hal before he got punched in the nose.

“Ow!” Hal cried. “What?”

“Not another word.” Jane had questions that she really didn’t want to hear the answers to. Geoffrey was twenty-two. He had the right to do what he wanted with whoever he wanted, as long as they wanted it too. And what he wanted to do was protect those he loved. “Okay. We need a boat.”

#

Jane tried to borrow a boat for their hunting, but nothing panned out. The tugboats were still shifting the barges that crossed into Pittsburgh during Shutdown. The EIA was searching far up and down river for Tinker. The police refused to pull their boats off guarding the city’s river fronts from any monsters that Jane’s crew might have missed. There were no fishing boats; Aaron Wollerton was completely right about that.

Out of sheer desperation Jane had called her cousin.

He’d told her that he owned a boat. He’d told her it was large enough for her crew plus Geoffrey. He’d told her that he would handle piloting the boat, freeing Jane up to film. He’d told her to meet him down at Neville Island dry docks. He’d told her not to worry, he’d have it ready by the time her crew got there.

He hadn’t told her that the boat was a hundred and ten foot long, three-deck high, paddlewheel.

Jane felt a sinking feeling as they stood on the edge of the river and gazed at the Three Rivers Queen.

Once upon a time, when steam engines were a big thing, paddlewheel boats had carried people up and down the Ohio River, making it simple to reach as far as New Orleans. The crafts had almost completely vanished before the first Startup took Pittsburgh to Elfhome, killed by the speed and efficiency of railroads, highways, and air travel. The Gateway Clipper Fleet owned the last six ships in the area. While the boats retained their signature paddlewheels, they’d been retro-fitted with diesel engines. The fleet did river cruises and operated a shuttle service during special events like baseball games and concerts, allowing attendees to use parking lots all over the city. Jane thought all of their ships had been sold; steaming downriver during Shutdown to return to Earth. Obviously she was wrong.

The Three Rivers Queen was swarming with people. Most of them she recognized as members of Team Tinker. She’d wanted a stealthy search of the river, not a traveling circus act.

“Jane!” Her cousin Andy waved to her from the top deck. He turned and shouted up to the pilothouse. “Roach! Jane’s here!”

His older brother can bounding down to greet them. “Welcome aboard the Queen! Isn’t she a beauty? I’ve been thinking of renaming her. I’m not sure if I should call her Queen Soulful Ember or Princess Tinker. I’ll have to market test it.”

“Where—How did you—?” Jane said.

“I won her in a poker game! She was dry-docked here while the Gateway Clipper Fleet was tied up in probate court after the founder died in 2009. Apparently everything in Pittsburgh was entangled in the entire question of do humans or the elves own orphaned property. This spring, the heir used his inheritance as excuse to get a visa to visit Elfhome. He didn’t have any way to get the boat back to Earth, so he used it as collateral in a high stakes poker game. I pulled a freaking royal flush. I won twenty thousand dollars and this!”

“Twenty thousand dollars? What were you doing at a game like that?”

“The heir hired me to be native guide. What he really wanted was access to a pit crew. He was a rabid hoverbike racing fan. I figured if I turned him away, he’d just pay Team Big Sky or Team Bonzai. I had Nathan keep a close eye on him and made sure he knew he could look, not touch, especially with my riders. He got me into the card game, but he sucked at poker.”

Her family were all sharks at cards. Once in, it wasn’t surprising that he’d cleaned out the richer players. The surprising part was that they let him keep the winnings.

“You can pilot this?” Jane asked.

“Not me. Sean!” He turned to point at the pilothouse. Her oldest cousin waved and tooted the horn.

Jane recognized the man beside Sean. “Wait. That’s Lee. He’s a sound engineer. He worked for WQED until KDKA hired him away.”

Roach backed out of striking range. “Yeah, yeah, Sean is going to be taping part of the hunt for the monster. I’m sorry, Jane. Please don’t hit me! It’s the only way Sean would do this. He spent four years crab fishing in Alaska before coming back to Pittsburgh to do the DJ thing. Everyone in town is going nuts about the oni and Tinker and these monsters. Sean thinks that having the listeners know that someone is doing something will go long distance in calming people down. And I have to agree with him. Besides, we’re all big fans of Nigel Reid. We want to meet him. That thing he did with the red pandas? Far too cute for words.”

Jane waved at the Team Tinker members moving about the boat, getting it ready to cast off. “I would have thought you’d be out looking for Tinker.”

“We did for a week. I had to cut Andy out of a strangle vine and we got chased all over the South Hills by wargs. We don’t know if she’s even in the city. The oni might have taken her down river a hundred miles by now.”

Everything Yumiko said seemed to indicate otherwise. Team Tinker didn’t even know which haystack to look in for the needle.

Team Tinker was the last group of people Jane wanted to know that she was working with the tengu. Her cousins would protect Boo, but the others would want revenge for Tinker. “I didn’t want all these people along. I don’t want someone along who doesn’t how to stay out of my firing range.”

He nodded. “I totally understand. Lee isn’t staying. He’s afraid of Hal. Apparently working at WQED, he got to know Hal a little too well. He does not want to be stranded with Hal in the middle of a shark-infested river with a crate of dynamite. I’m not sure I want to be onboard with Hal. I know how accident prone he is.”

“I’ll be sitting on him. Your team . . .”

“Is not staying. I just needed help with the engines. It’s been a few years since the motors were last run. Also I wanted someone here checking for leaks. I didn’t want to put her in the water and have her go straight to the bottom with my entire family on board.”

“Andy can stay.”

“Nah,” Roach drawled out and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Baby brother means well but I think he was dropped on his head once too often as a child, which probably is entirely my fault. He’s dangerously absentminded and has two left feet and hands. Giant river monsters, you shooting at anything that moves, warriors from another universe kidnapping people right and left, a crate full of dynamite, Hal…” Roach shuddered at his list of dangers. “I’m going to send him off on a wild goose chase to keep him out of our hair.”

“Good plan.”

#

The wheelhouse was a small room on the top deck. The KDKA crew had soundproofed the space with acoustic foam for a clean recording. The space that remained was not much larger than the front seat of a truck. Between the cramped quarters and Sean’s need to stay focused on the river, Jane decided to set up two fixed cameras to record the interview for Chased by Monsters. It gave a slight fisheye view but most likely she’d only use the audio part of the conversation over more interesting shots of the river. She placed more cameras at the boat’s cardinal points of stern, port, and starboard.

Jane set up the portable monitor station on the bow of the middle deck. She would listen to the interview with an earpiece while keeping guard with her rifle. She had the box of dynamite secured nearby so that Hal couldn’t get into it without her noticing. Taggart paced the ship, camera on his shoulder, carefully picking his shots.

They were going to be on the river for hours, if not days, so Sean allowed the conversation to flow naturally, only occasionally reining it back to the nests that they were hunting. After years of being one of Pittsburgh’s most popular radio personalities, Sean had much of the same hosting super powers as Nigel. He held his own in the lively conversation.

Nigel clearly was fascinated by the idea that Sean had been born on Elfhome, left to work on Earth and then returned. It made Sean a very rare beast. Nigel had worked on a documentary featuring the wildlife of the Kodiak Island where Sean’s crab fishing boat had been docked. Their conversation drifted from Nigel’s visit to Pittsburgh to the differences between the Alaska wilderness and the forest of Elfhome.

“Kodiak wasn’t as fierce,” Seth maintained. “Yes, there was the grizzly bears and the wolves and sharks.”

“And the cold,” Nigel added to the list.

“Oh god, yes, the cold. But that was about it. Here in Pittsburgh we’ve got the man-eating plants on top of bears and wolves and river sharks. Alaska has nothing like the black willows, saurus, the wargs and steel spinners. The Alaskans talked a lot about how newcomers couldn’t take the isolation of the little towns but in truth, you could pick up the phone and call people all over the world. You could watch five different football games on television at once. Live. You can go online, order just about anything you can freaking imagine from Amazon and have it delivered within a week. In a day if you paid the insane shipping cost of next day air. I have trouble even explaining Amazon to my listeners. It’s like something out of a fairy tale. A genie in a box fulfilling wishes.”

“We were filming in the Maasai Mara.” Nigel realized that Sean’s listeners would have no idea where that was. “It’s in Kenya. Africa. It’s a five hundred and eighty square mile game reserve with elephants and zebras and giraffes. We were staying at the Keekorok Lodge, which is in the Mara, in the direct path of the wildebeest migration. It was the height of the migration, thousands and thousands of these massive beasts were swarming around the stone bungalows, and someone stole two of our bags. Camera. Lens. Memory cards. The entire lot. Gone. We went online, ordered replacement equipment, paid an exorbitant amount for express shipping, and in a matter of two days we were back to filming.”

“Exactly!” Sean cried. “If you have the money, you are not truly isolated anyplace on Earth. Not like here in Pittsburgh where if you can’t find it within the city, you cannot buy it. We are in a universe wholly separate from the sun and moon and the stars of Earth.”

“What brought you back to Pittsburgh?” Nigel asked.

“Family,” Sean said. “I realized that if I met someone on Earth, I would never be able to talk them into living on Elfhome. Not after watching one person after another wash out of living in Alaska which isn’t nearly as isolated. Living separate from my family for a couple of years, that was fine, but getting married without my whole family there? My kids never knowing their grandparents? Their uncles? Their cousins? Shit, no.”

“You have a wedding ring on,” Nigel said. “You’ve met someone?”

Sean laughed. “Yeah, the girl I dated in high school and had been a complete idiot for leaving. We got married two years ago.”

Jane glanced toward Taggart as guilt stabbed through her. His parents were going to miss the wedding. Worse, she was about to immerse him in the full insanity of a Kryskill family celebration. That at this moment, her mother was charging about the city, overflowing with joy and plans. Her mom already purchased supplies for the thousands of cookies traditionally baked for a Pittsburgh wedding. She was probably descending on the priest and printer like an avenging angel, demanding schedules to be cleared. If she couldn’t find the names of Taggart’s parents on the Internet, she’d be calling for the information.

Jane had to warn Taggart. She made sure no one was in earshot and whispered the news. “I had to tell my mother about the wedding.”

“You did?”

“She caught me buying protection.”

He looked confused. “What kind of protection?”

She felt a blush burn its way up her face. “Condoms.”

“Oh! That kind of protection! Sorry, I’m kind of in the ‘fighting monsters’ mindset. I thought you meant ammo or flash bangs or big guns.” He’d turned to film her. “Yes, good thinking. I brought nothing. I wasn’t expecting to fall in love here.”

She didn’t scowl because she knew it would make her look worse on video. “I don’t like being on camera.”

He turned away to film an old railroad bridge sliding overhead. The twin smokestacks of the Queen barely fit under the crossing. “You’re so beautiful. I can’t help looking at you. Only where my eyes go, my camera goes. Sorry.”

“I suppose I should get used to it. You are a cameraman.”

“So—how did your mom take it?”

“She cried and then bought the store out of sugar and flour.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“It should keep her busy for the next few days.” She felt a stab of guilt again thinking about how his mother—if he had a mother—was going to miss the wedding. Did he have family? “I feel like you know everything about me and I don’t know anything about you.”

“I grew up in Hawaii on the island of Moloka’i. It’s actually smaller than Pittsburgh with only seven thousand people on it. Where I lived, on clear nights, you could see the city lights of Honolulu. Moloka’i is a beautiful place with a dark history. It had been a leprosy colony where people were rounded up on other islands at gun point and basically thrown off the boat to swim ashore with nothing but the clothes on their back.”

“Oh my god!”

“I understand the elves wanting to hold on to what they have. We were an island kingdom; my people had lived in isolation for nearly two thousand years. We had our own language and religion. When the Europeans first came to our shores, we embraced their technology. The palace of the king had electricity before the White House did. But the Europeans brought more than just technology. They brought diseases like leprosy and small pox. We died by the thousands until we were a quarter of our number. They brought rats and mosquitoes and invasive animals that decimated our native songbirds. They brought their riches from far away to buy up the land, imported indentured servants from Asia, and became more powerful and influential than any of my people. When the queen realized what was happening, she tried to pass laws that would protect us. The nephew of the United States President, Andrew Jackson, talked his uncle into sending a warship filled with marines. Once it was in Pearl Harbor, the white landowners stormed the palace and forced the queen to give up her powers. In the years that followed, they stamped out our language, banned hula which are dances that tell our history, and made us third-class citizens in our own country. There was no great battle. No epic fight that we lost. It was just a long, slippery slope down. You ask an American now about Hawaii and they’ll tell you that we were ignorant, naked savages that the United States ‘made a territory’ as if we had nothing, no government, no businesses, no international trade, not even proper houses. To this day, people will ask if we live in little grass shacks.”

“Grass shack?”

“It’s an old song which seems to be the full extent of some people’s knowledge.” He coughed to clear his throat and then sang, “I want to go back to my little grass shack in Kealakekua, Hawaii. I want to be with all the kanes and wahines that I knew long ago. I can hear old guitars a playing, on the beach at Hoonaunau. I can hear the old Hawaiians saying ‘Komomai no kaua ika hale welakehao.’”

Jane laughed in surprise. He had a beautiful baritone voice but she only understood half the words. “Well, that’s more than I know of Hawaii. We’re taught American history but most kids don’t feel like it has anything to do with us. We’re Pittsburghers.”

He nodded. “I grew up feeling so isolated. You can stand on a cliff’s edge and look out over the ocean. It’s water for as far as the eye can see, but you know there’s a full world out there. Too far to swim. Too far to sail by most boats. Too far for even small planes. I wanted to see new things. Explore new worlds.”

“You’re not going to feel trapped in Pittsburgh?”

He shrugged. “I don’t think so. Lately the world has seemed too big for a small island boy like me. I’ve thought about going back to Hawaii, but the reason there’s only seven thousand people on the island is because there’s nothing there. As kids grow up, if they want to be a scientist or engineer or television producer, they have to leave. The only jobs are fishing, farming, and being a native guide to tourists. Even on Oahu, I’d have trouble finding work.”

“What about your parents? Is it going to be okay that they miss the wedding? That you’re going to stay on Elfhome?”

“The problem of being from a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific is that when you leave, it’s usually for good. My family has had years to adjust to the idea that I’d marry a woman with roots elsewhere. They will be happy that I found someone; they were starting to worry that I never would.”

It should have made her feel less guilty but it didn’t. It was probably because she was so newly—and painfully—aware of how much more important the ceremony of a wedding was to her mother than to herself. Cummerbunds? She could care less what color they were! She disliked being the center of attention. It made her feel like she’d lost control.

Tinny music suddenly started to play loudly. It was like someone was playing a slightly off-key church organ. At first she thought it was coming from something crossing the bridge overhead but then realized it was coming from somewhere below deck.

“What the hell is that?” Jane shouted over the noise.

“I think its ‘Smoke on the Water,’” Taggart shouted. “Sometimes these things have calliopes.”

“Hal!” It had to be him. Faintly she could hear Geoffrey shouting at the man too. “Damn him! Roach, where is that thing?”

The bass chords started over again.

There was a sudden discord, as if all the keys were hit at once, and then silence.

“Ow!” Hal cried into the silence. “You could have just asked me to stop!”

There was another discord, as if Hal’s head had been bounced off the keyboard.

“Don’t break my calliope, Geoff!” Roach called.

“Okay, okay, okay, I’m walking! I’m walking!” Hal’s voice grew closer as Geoffrey force marched him through the ship.

A minute later Geoffrey shoved Hal toward Jane. “Spells are triggered by sound. I can’t cast if someone is making a racket like that.”

“I’ll keep him away from it,” Jane promised.

Geoffrey stomped off. Taggart drifted away to give Jane a chance to deal with Hal privately.

Hal wiped at his bloody lip. “He could have broken my nose again.”

“Why?”

“They’re going to broadcast to the entire city. Everyone will know we’re out here. They’re out here.”

He meant the Chased by Monsters team, not him. “You’re jealous?”

“No!” He looked at the blood on his fingers instead of meeting her eyes.

“Hal.”

“Okay, maybe a little. This is my city. My world. They’re going to waltz in, get on the radio, and in the end, all anyone is going to remember is that they were here on the river. Not me. No one is ever going to get to see all the scenes of me being glorious—mostly because you keep leaving me behind!”

No, he was not going to take the news that she was marrying Taggart well if this was how he was already.

“I will talk to Sean,” Jane said. “You will get on the radio. People will know you’re out here. They’ll probably even feel better knowing you’re out here. Pittsburgh trusts you. Only a few of them know who Nigel is.”

Hal gestured wildly at the river. “We should be taping! Not Chased by Monsters. It’s going to be months before anyone gets to see that. We should be taping for Pittsburgh! To get on the air right away! We should be answering questions, not KDKA.”

She locked down on a knee-jerk “no” and gave it fair consideration. It did seem shortsighted to trust other people to warn the city when they knew more than anyone else. “You’re right. We should be filming. In the past, we’ve been careful not to step on toes and kept carefully in the bounds of ‘DIY lawn show.’ We need to break out of that. We need to go bigger.”

“Hell yeah!” Hal cried.

“I’ll call Dmitri.”

“Hell no! Forgiveness is easier to get than permission. We film like normal and dump an edited episode of Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden on Dmitri too late for him to do anything about it.”

“Don’t be stupid.” Jane smacked him. “That would work for exactly one episode! Dmitri will hire a new producer. He’ll find someone hungry enough that they’d risk being set on fire by you. Probably several people to guard each other’s backs. We’d be hip deep with people who believe that they have the right to tell us what we do. If we want to keep getting the show on the air, they’d be right. You know that Dmitri doesn’t dick around.”

Hal huffed and then sighed. “Career planning was never my strong suit.”

#

Just as Dmriti rarely called Jane unless something had gone drastically wrong, she never called him unless it was to warn him of a possible legal shitstorm about to blow up.

Thus Dmriti answered his phone with “What did he do this time?”

“Nothing.” Just to get that over and out of the way.

“Did you tell Hal about the wedding?”

“Not yet.” Jane had her other hand over Hal’s mouth. Judging by the lack of reaction, Hal hadn’t overheard Dmriti’s question. “Things are too complicated at the moment. We want to put Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden on hiatus and film a different show.”

“You should be focusing on Chased by Monsters.”

“Yes, I know. This would be concurrent with that. KDKA is going to scoop us on yesterday’s fight with the river monsters.”

“What?” His voice went cold.

Jane explained as simply as she could about their needing a boat to find the nests and destroy them. “It will make a good segment for Chased by Monsters. More importantly, Pittsburgh would be screwed if we don’t find these nests. I needed to work with my cousins to get a boat. You know my cousin Sean Roach?”

“I understand.” Meaning that Dmitri recognized the name as one of KDKA’s top DJs.

She could skip over the rest of the explanation and get to the reason she’d called him. “We can film one segment, use both Hal and Nigel Reid as hosts, and then edit it however needed for both shows. Hal can be ‘this is what is happening now’ with the local show and Nigel will be ‘this is what happened in July’ for the network show. We’ve got a week to find these nests. Hal can have a show ready for our Sunday slot on Saturday which will be whatever we’ve managed to film by then. Nigel will have the entire hunt, start to finish.”

“It’s Wednesday,” Dmitri said.

“We’ve already have enough footage. We just need to shape a narrative. Editing will take the most time.”

“Okay. I can have production do a trailer for the change in programming. What are we calling this?”

“Pittsburgh…” That would be a nod that it was Hal’s baby and salve his ego. “Pittsburgh Here and Now.”

“That’s lame,” Dmitri said bluntly.

“Pittsburgh War Notes.”

“No.”

“Pittsburgh Under Siege.”

“No.”

“Pittsburgh Phantom Menace.”

“I don’t want an alarmist title. I don’t want the EIA any reason to pull executive power on us and have us yank it as yellow journalism.”

“Pittsburgh Predators. Wild Pittsburgh. Monsters in the Mist. Monsters in Our Midst.”

“Monsters in Our Midst. That will work.”

“Okay. We’ll have the first episode to you by Thursday afternoon.”

Dmitri hung up without saying goodbye, probably because he would have massive amount to work to do on the studio side of the production. Title credits, theme song, promotional material, and most importantly, sponsors to manage.

“Pittsburgh Monster Hunt?” Hal asked excitedly.

“Monsters in Our Midst.” Jane watched his face crash. “It’s catchier. PB&G is catchier than our original title of Pittsburgh Yard and Garden. Nigel is going to be focused on Chased by Monsters, so you’re anchor. Normal twenty-two minute format. This week’s episode will be the namazu. We’ll use what we got of Sandcastle hatchery. The swimming pools full of monsters, the first nest, the ecology of electric catfish, and the need to find the other two nests.”

“The shootout with the six monsters downtown?” Hal asked excitedly. It would make him a hero in the eyes of Pittsburgh.

“You weren’t there.” Jane reminded him. “And no, I don’t want it public knowledge that we were anywhere near that. We’ll just use Maynard telling us to hunt the namazu, which explains why we’re on the river. We can film you here on the boat for the end caps.”

“Just me?”

“Yes. You’ll need a script. There’s too much we can’t talk about. We need to film clean so we can edit fast.”

He wasn’t smiling but he was projecting excitement like a searchlight.

#

“Just do a practice run,” Jane said when Hal reappeared claiming he scripted out the opening of the new series. Hal saying outrageous bullshit was part of the appeal of PB&G. She didn’t trust him to actually keep tight to a script.

“The light is good,” Hal pointed out. He’d shaved, applied makeup to conceal his two black eyes, and styled his hair with his mystery product.

“I want to hear it first.” Jane held her hand for the tablet that Hal was carrying. She didn’t look at it since his handwriting was horrible. On Earth, apparently they stopped teaching children penmanship just about the time that Hal entered kindergarten. Even after six years together, she couldn’t read his scribbling. Only his signature was legible. Whenever possible, she had him use a computer but Hal’s carelessness and the open river seemed too dangerous to give him access to any of her precious equipment.

He found his mark, turned toward her as if she was aiming a camera on him and turned on his hosting super powers. “Nearly three decades ago, humans opened a door to a new world. We confidently swaggered in. The natives seemed armed only with weapons made of wood and bone. We thought we could do what we’ve done with people of lesser technology since the start of time. Push them off their lands and take it for ourselves. Upon encountering natives seemingly armed with nothing more than wooden swords, American soldiers with assault rifles backed up with Bradley troop carriers attempted to round up the elves to lock into a holding area. We’d invaded their world and because we thought we had superior weapons that we had the right to detain them.”

This was not the introduction to the show that Jane expected. Where the hell was Hal going with this? She flipped the pages of the script, trying to jump ahead of Hal. The writing was too messy to read.

“We all know how that ended,” Hal said of the failed attempt to detain the elves. “Windwolf stood up against us. He demanded that we treat his people as equals. He forced us to recognize that Elfhome is exactly that: the home of the elves. Its theirs and the human race are merely visitors.”

Accurate but not the diplomatic way to put the first Startup. Maybe she should have written the script.

Hal changed his pose and dramatically waved toward the river banks. “You might fiercely argue that this world also belongs to the local humans, but come next Shutdown, you will return to Earth. You have a home world. It may not be the one you were born on. It may not be the one you want to live on, but it’s there. It’s yours by the genetics in your body. Every cell in your body is a statement of ‘I belong to Earth and it belongs to me.’ And if someone from another world came to take Earth away by force, humans would stand up to fight to the death for it.”

“What the hell?” Jane muttered. Was he trying to piss off all of their viewers?

Hal sped up his pace, obviously trying to get to the end of his script before she shut him down. “The elves are gracious hosts. They have forgiven us for that messy encounter. They’ve met with us in peace and came to a written agreement so we could co-exist on their planet.”

That wasn’t a bad point but when was he going to get to the monsters?

Hal was talking at auctioneer speed now. “This is amazing because they know us. They know our history. Elves have been trading with humans, peacefully, for thousands of years. They watched Alexander the Great conquer Macedonia and all its neighbors as far as Egypt. They watched the Trojan War play out. They saw the rise of the Roman Empire spread across the face of the planet. Genghis Khan and the Mongolian horde. The Great Wall of China built on the bodies of the Chinese people enslaved to build it. All the Crusades, as the Christians marched to the Holy Lands again and again to claim for their own because they wanted land for their younger sons. Think of it. You have this amazing virgin property that you haven’t even start to explore and boom, suddenly there is this stinking, sprawling, concrete wasteland filled with toxic chemicals and rusting steel mills and railroads sitting smack dab in the middle of your land. Your new neighbor? He’s fresh out of prison for rape, murder, and armed robbery...”

“Hal! No!” Jane shook the script that Hal had written. “We want to make our audience feel safe, not insult them! Focus on the oni.”

“But I don’t know that much about the oni.”

“You know more than most people in this city. Talk about the monster. No one can top you there.”

“Nigel could.”

“No, he’s on equal footing. Will you please stop acting like a spoiled brat? I know you like Nigel and respect him. He likes you and respects you. Neither he or Taggart got to shoot the big gun any more than you. One radio interview shouldn’t throw you into hissy fits. This isn’t healthy thinking.”

Hal covered his ears. “Oh, God, not the healthy thinking campaign.”

Jane winced. That was a throwback to their first year together when every day was a battle to keep him from sliding into drunken depression. “I’ll stop with the healthy thinking—unless you keep this up.” She shook the script at him. “This isn’t the right way to start this.”

“I was getting to why the elves haven’t told us about the oni up to this point.”

“No! Don’t put words in their mouths! We don’t know why for sure. Hal, talk about yourself.” Jane knew that despite his ego, Hal rarely did talk about his past. Only when he was drunk or high on painkillers did he open up. “The people of Pittsburgh don’t know that you have the education that puts you on equal footing with Nigel. They think you’re just a television personality; that maybe you have a bachelor’s in communication. This is your chance to tell them that you know what you’re doing.” She shoved the paper back into his pad. “Talk about yourself!”

“You’re right! Most people in the city don’t realize I’m a naturalist. That I have a doctorate in biology from UC Davis. Most people don’t even know what UC Davis stands for. I should let them know that I’m well qualified to deal with magically altered creatures.”

“We can’t say that we know that the oni are magically altering them. That information came from Boo.”

“Right.” Hal paused a moment, shaking a finger before exclaiming. “Snapdragon! We’ll interview your brother’s boyfriend.”

“Oh god, don’t say that out loud!” Jane slapped a hand over his mouth. “No one else in our family knows!”

“There’s nothing wrong with being bisexual.” Hal mumbled through her hand. At least, that’s what it sounded like he said.

“I don’t know if my cousins are homophobic or not.” Jane whispered. “We are not going to out my little brother, not even to my cousins. He will tell them when he’s ready.”

Hal mumbled something into her palm.

Jane lifted her hand. “What?”

“This is one of those things where you will hurt me very badly if I slip up?”

“Very, very badly.”

“Okay. Just checking.” Hal dropped his voice to a whisper. “We can question any elf we can corner, like Snapdragon, about what the elves know about the oni. They might tell us things we don’t know already. Regardless, if they don’t tell us about the whole magical bioengineering, we can edit the interview make it seem like they did.”

Hal’s sneaky side could come in useful in this.

“Fine. Just write it out so you’re clear on what you’re going to say. I don’t want mistakes to end up on video.”

#

The first day was nearly anticlimactic. If it wasn’t for Hal trying to sneak sticks of the dynamite, the river sharks, the jump fish, and the occasional brush with the EIA who may or may not be oni, it would actually have been relaxing.

They started at Sandcastle and worked their way toward the city. They nosed the Queen into the mouth of Nine Mile Run and then trolled westward. Some of the little streams they investigated, she knew their names like West Run, Glass Run and Becks Run. Others were barely more than culverts, possibly without a name.

It turned out that the boat had some radar on it to keep track of the depth of the water. They stopped often to let Geoffrey cast a spell and frown at the result.

Eight hours on the river and there wasn’t a time that she thought it was safe to tell Hal about the wedding. He was being weirdly fragile, which might mean he’d already figured it out. She’d discovered when fighting his drinking problem that he’d ignore uncomfortable truths if not dragged out into the light of the day and chained around his neck.

She’d also learned that she could only force him to acknowledge so many uncomfortable truths without him collapsing under the weight. On Earth he’d lost everything—career, friends, and wife—in a sudden cascade of betrayals. He’d fled the planet rather than face the truth. Would she have liked him better if he hadn’t been so damaged when they met?

To be on the safe side, they left the dynamite with Roach.

While both naturalists chafed at calling it a day, her family had plans to once again eat as a family at Hydehold to celebrate the win against the namazu. It was really a flimsy excuse to be together as a family. They all felt that Boo needed it, especially since the tengu had taken Joey off to live with his cousins. A single meal would not erase six years of horror.

It came as a surprise when the tengu arrived in a car like normal people. It was a green, nondescript, SUV that would draw no attention to itself.

Joey threw open the door the moment the car stopped, half falling out of vehicle. “Jane!”

She crouched down to his level as she realized that he was crying. He flung himself into her arms. He clung to her, gripping her tightly as he buried his face into her shoulder.

She gave Yumiko a hard look as the tengu female stepped out of the car.

Yumiko shrugged. She had changed out of her pizza delivery outfit. She wore a backless black tank top which showed off impressive muscle tone for such a thin woman. “He forgot his Ravenclaw T-shirt and wanted to come back for it. I told him that someone could just pick it up but he said he had to be the one to get the shirt.”

“They won’t know!” Joey wailed. “I have to be sure! I need to see!”

“Marc.” Alton murmured quietly.

Yumiko frowned at Alton. “What about him?”

Jane picked Joey up, marveling anew how little he was. How little he weighed. It was hard to believe all her brothers were once this small. All she could remember from growing up was that they were all about equal-sized. “Boo, didn’t you pick up presents for Joey?”

“Yes, we did!” Boo took the hint. She swooped in to relieve Jane of the little boy. “We got a real drawing pad, the kind that artists use, and colored pencils.”

“Really?” Joey sniffed.

“And we’re making spaghetti for dinner! Do you want to help?”

“Spaghetti? With meatballs?”

“Yup!”

Yumiko looked torn between the fact that Boo was carrying Joey away and the fact that the boy had stopped bawling hysterically.

“When my dad died,” Jane said quietly. “Marc was about that age. He used to get up in the middle of the night and go from bedroom to bedroom, making sure everyone was okay. He needed to know that the people he cared about hadn’t died while he wasn’t watching. Joey’s aunt and uncle might have been dead for months but to him, they just died. He’s dealing with it the best he can. Boo was his only comfort for months and I saved him. I know you mean well but you’ve shattered his world a second time. Yes, he has his cousins, but he’s smart enough to know they’re just children and that he can’t lean too heavily on them. That’s why he ran to me, not Boo.”

“You’re an expert on little kids?”

“I have five little brothers, and a score of younger cousins that I had to ride herd over, on a planet with man-eating plants. When kids are rattled hard enough, there’s nothing a child their own age can do to get them settled down. They want an adult that can put the world right.”

“So he wants the woman with the biggest gun.”

“Kids aren’t creatures of logic. They’re pure emotion. I could pull my little brothers out of trouble, but they’d want mom before they’d stopped being scared. You guarded Riki, right? You went off to college with him and were at the house when it was filled with the other adults. You weren’t the one that fixed all the little disasters of Joey’s life when he was a toddler. You’re big sister but not mom.”

“Getting him out of the cage made you mom.”

“Kids don’t always make sense. You can’t argue with their logic because they don’t use it to see the world the way you might.”

“I guess we’re staying for dinner.”

“I hope you like spaghetti.”

#

Jane’s mother had made a quick and simple meat sauce over angel hair pasta for the first family dinner. It barely qualified as “spaghetti” in their terms. To do it right, first homemade loaves of bread needed to be made. The stale bread was reduced to crumbs, mixed with ground beef, pork, sautéed onions and garlic, freshly grated Parmigiano, eggs and basil picked fresh out her mother’s window garden. The resulting meatballs were then browned, baked and added to a marinara sauce made with fresh tomatoes that simmered for hours.

When Boo was little, they had it every Sunday. The aroma of the shimmering sauce would fill up the house. It was the smell of home. Jane had not realized how much she missed it until she walked into her kitchen. It wasn’t surprising that Boo said it was her favorite.

Her mother was beaming with joy. She hugged everyone as they came in so that she had an excuse of give Taggart the official “welcome to the family” hug. At dinner, her mother quietly made sure that he got the biggest and best of everything. It made Jane glad that she’d warned him that her mother knew, otherwise he’d probably be caught off guard by the sudden bombardment of affection. Luckily all the other news of the day distracted Hal and her brothers. She let Hal and Geoffrey cover the events so she didn’t have to lie about where the tengu got the spells. Yumiko stayed too focused on her plate; the female was obviously listening closely to see if Jane had betrayed that information. With a nervous glance at Jane, Hal managed to dodge around the discussion of Geoffrey’s sexual orientation while broaching the subject of questioning the elves about the oni.

She took command of the conversation to make sure that he didn’t misstep. “There’s a lot about the oni that we know only because of Boo. We need to figure out other sources of the same information so that we can share it without fear of exposing her. Since they never mentioned the oni up to now, the elves have been holding back . . .”

“We should corner one,” Hal impatiently jumped forward on her argument. “They can’t lie... Ow!”

Jane had kicked him under the table. She wanted to keep control of the conversation. The damage had been done. Her little brothers took it as permission to talk.

“They can dance around the subject like crazy,” Guy muttered darkly.

“They lie by omission,” Duff said. “Oh by the way, there’s an entire universe we haven’t told you about. We’re at war with them. We stranded them on Earth a few hundred years ago. They might have bred like crazy. There could be thousands.”

“At least they don’t stand there and lie to your face,” Marc said.

Alton snorted. “That’s for sure. There’s some humans that I wouldn’t trust a single word coming out of their mouth.”

“We’ll interview any elf we can corner.” Jane said loudly to gain control.

Her brother ignored her attempt.

“Damn right we’ll corner them!” Guy shouted.

“We should start with major domos at the enclaves,” Alton said.

“What?” Everyone chorused in surprise.

“We’re filming this,” Alton explained his logic. “The major domos are the ones that speak the best English. They’re also all in their quads; they need four digits to express their age. It means they saw the start of the war. A lot of the elves we know as friends, like the ones that live with Moser, are fresh out of doubles. They were born after the war.”

“We?” Jane said. “No, no, this is not a family project.”

Alton turned to Geoffrey. “Tell her. You know how elves are. If it’s a subject that they’ve been avoiding, then they’re only going to talk to ‘one on the inside,’ not total outsiders.”

Geoffrey nodded slowly. “Yeah, he’s right. The elves have dozens of words that track alliances. There’s someone in your household. A member of another household that is Beholden to the same domana as yours. Then there’s the households who have different domana but their lord is in alignment with your lord.”

“You don’t think they’ll talk to Hal or Nigel, but they’ll talk to you?” Jane asked Alton.

“They might not even talk to me,” Alton said. “The whole oni thing has them rattled. After that first attack on Windwolf, they tested to see if I was an oni in disguise.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Jane said.

“It was no big deal,” Alton said. “They cast some type of spell on me to make sure I was human. It took two seconds and it didn’t hurt.”

“The spell simply removes any magical disguise,” Geoffrey said. “It’s completely harmless as long as you’re not oni.”

“They did it to you too?” Jane growled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you’d be pissed off,” Alton said. “Besides, it was no big deal. It was like getting a background check for a car loan or something. The spell was written out on a strip of paper. They called it a biatau. They laid it on my arm, said the activation word, and boom, it was over. It felt like pulling off a wool sweater in a dry house. The enclaves wanted to be sure I was selling them food that was safe to eat.”

Geoffrey added in, “I needed access to the non-public areas of Raisin Sauce’s enclave where Oak Spindle has his workshop.”

“Raisin Sauce!” Nigel murmured. “The elves have such marvelous names.”

“The Viceroy is at Poppymeadows,” Geoffrey said. “So we won’t be able to talk to anyone there. The enclave closes to public when he’s in residence. I think Raisin Sauce is our best bet.”

Alton nodded. “If that fails, we should try Chili Pepper. He’s likes to talk.”

“We should still talk to the young elves,” Taggart said. “That way it would seem as if we learned enough to ask the older ones the more advanced questions.”

“I can talk to some of my friends,” Geoffrey said. “They might know something even if it happened before they were born. Certainly we could all talk some about historic events like the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the World Wars. They might be even more willing, since it’s ancient history to them, instead of something they lived through.”

The conversation was interrupted with the need to clear the table and wash dishes. For the second time in a row, a small miracle happened and her brothers finished up quickly without soaking one another. Her family moved into her spacious living room. They reviewed video and brainstormed interview questions that they could ask to draw out information that they already knew. Boo kept Joey entertained with his new sketch book and colored pencils. Joey settled into drawing, successfully distracted.

“Hal’s opening on the deck of the Queen is five minutes exactly,” Jane said. “It’s a little long if we get good footage on the river in the next few days, but we can edit it down slightly if needed. We can follow with footage from Sandcastle. Maynard actually asking Hal for help will explain how Hal went from PG&B to Monsters in Our Midst. Let’s start here at timestamp 9:52 and run to 11:37 for a total of one minute and forty-five seconds. That leaves us just shy of fifteen minutes of explaining about the eggs and hopefully finding them. If we don’t find the nests before Friday night, we might ask our viewers for help finding the eggs before they hatch.”

“Are you sure you want help?” Alton asked. “It could turn into a circus.”

“It would make the common person feel like they’re part of the solution,” Jane said. “It would go a long way uniting us when everything else is dividing us into factions.”

Joey came to climb into Jane’s lap. “Look! I drew Boo when she gets her wings!”

“Wow, that’s a wonderful picture!” Jane said before the subject matter sunk in because it was amazing drawing for a six-year-old. Her family loved to put up pictures that her brothers and cousin drew, so Jane was well educated on the average artistic abilities of children. At six, kids normally drew stick figures with big round heads. Joey had rendered Boo in detail that seemed more on par of a child in high school. The drawing had all Boo’s limbs on scale with her body. Her platinum blonde hair fell in curls down over her shoulders. She wore jeans without shoes, her crow feet plainly visible. Her massive wings were as pale as her hair, spread wide, dwarfing her. If Jane had not seen Yumiko’s wingspan in person, she would think it was a child’s exaggeration of scale. In the drawing, Boo smiled with happiness.

Jane’s stomach rolled with a sick feeling. Did Boo want wings that badly? Would they make her happy or would they make her more aware that the oni twisted her body into something alien?

“What is this?” Nigel leaned over to point at a small lizard in the background.

“That’s Providence!” Joey said. “He’s the guardian spirit of the tengu. He gave us our wings after the oni changed us. The oni gave us the desire to fly but no way to do it.”

“What type of creature is Providence?” Nigel asked.

“He’s a dragon!” Joey said. “Not like the ones in Harry Potter. He doesn’t have wings. He has a mane, like a lion, kind of. He used it to cast spells.”

“Can he talk?” Nigel asked.

“Only to the Chosen One,” Joey sighed. “We haven’t been able to talk to Providence for years and years. Not since Jin Wong went into space.”

“Hush.” Yumiko said. “We don’t tell outsiders about Providence.”

“Please, this is very important,” Nigel said. “I need to know about Providence.”

“There is nothing to tell,” Yumiko said. “His body is dead. His spirit cannot speak with us. We’re drifting, lost, without his guidance.”

“What would the oni do if they captured a living dragon?” Nigel asked.

Yumiko glanced suspiciously at Jane. She obviously thought that Jane had revealed the truth about Tinker.

“Nigel, why are you asking about dragons?” Jane asked to make it clear that she hadn’t talked to the man.

Nigel gave Yumiko a searching look as if he was trying to judge her trustworthiness. Finally he sighed and glanced to Taggart. “I’m sorry I haven’t told you everything. I was protecting Lemon-Lime Jello. When I spoke to them in New York City, they had a wee dragon with them.”

“What?” Yumiko cried. “Who is this—this—Did you say Jello?”

“I don’t know their real names.” Nigel started out by carefully concealing the real identity of the twin girls. “They asked to meet with me anonymously. I left the meeting place up to them. They chose a charity event on Mid-Summer’s Eve. It was run by NBC and they set up an elaborate spread that featured this massive five-tiered cake. It was a white cake with vanilla frosting and . . .”

“Forget about the cake!” Yumiko shouted. “What about the dragon?”

Nigel made soothing motions with his hands. “The cake looms large in the story.”

Yumiko leaned closer to Nigel. “Tell me about the dragon!”

“As promised, Lemon-Lime met me in private and warned me that I was in grave danger.” Nigel continued his story. “They had picked up on the fact that the oni were blocking access to Elfhome. They were worried that the oni might try to keep me from reporting on what I found.”

“The dragon!” Yumiko growled.

Nigel refused to be sped up. “They had given me the monster call and explained how it worked. I thought it would be harmless to give it a test blow, so I did. That’s when the dragon appeared.”

“What did it look like?” Yumiko said. “What color was it?”

“I couldn’t tell what color it was as it was covered in white frosting,” Nigel said. “It offered me some cake that it was holding in its hand.”

“What?” Yumiko cried.

“I told you that the cake figured prominently in the tale,” Nigel said calmly. “I found out later that it had burrowed its way into the heart of the cake unseen . . .”

“What? A dragon?” Yumiko threw out her hands to measure something huge.

“Oh, no, it was just a wee thing.” Nigel held out his hands to measure out something the size of a squirrel. “It appeared on my shoulder out of nowhere, covered in frosting, with cake clenched in one claw.”

They stared at him and the image he’d painted.

“Cake?” Yumiko said finally.

Nigel mimed cutting slices of cake. “I found out later that when they cut open the cake, the entire heart had been hollowed out. The serving staff never saw the dragon. They assumed rats had gotten to the cake and whisked it back to the hotel’s kitchen.”

Nigel had broken Yumiko. The female tengu sputtered, hands approximating the size of the described dragon.

“The dragon asked me if I wanted cake and said that it was yummy,” Nigel continued as if unaware that he just hurt Yumiko’s brain. “Lemon-Lime was quite upset at her. I got the impression that they had given her a large dinner before leaving home. They pulled her from my shoulder, scolded her firmly, and—and hid her away.”

“No. No. You must be mistaken. Dragons are not that small. They don’t—don’t— don’t—you don’t scold them. They’re like gods.”

“She looked very much like what Joey drew.” Nigel pointed to the picture. “She had a mane, and small five fingered clawed hands, with these proportions to leg to body to head. Lemon-Lime warned me that the oni might have more of these darling little things held prisoner. They did not know, though, what the oni planned to do with them. I fear the worse having seen the namazu. Since we humans don’t know anything about dragons, I can’t even guess what the oni could make from their DNA.”

Yumiko laughed bitterly. “You’ve met creatures made from dragons. The sekasha are all that remains of Honor. She was shattered down and combined with elf DNA to create the holy warriors. Pure Radiance is the granddaughter of Clarity. The Chosen are descendants of what was left of Providence’s daughter, Nirvana. You have no idea what the greater bloods can do with bioengineering. There is no limit to the perversity that they can create. The war between the oni and elves started when a Stone Clan trading party found an overlooked passage between Onihida and Earth. Without their connection to the Spell Stones, the domana could not protect their people. There had been twenty to thirty sekasha among the party. The oni used the warriors in an attempt to reverse the process and create a true dragon. What they created were evil mockeries. They had a fraction of their ancestor’s intelligence and none of the sekasha’s nobility. They did have great cunning and many of the dragon magical abilities. The oni call them dragons, but we tengu refuse to give them that name. They lack a true soul and are purely beast in nature. All but one was killed at the start of the war. Malice is all that remains.”

Jane waited for her to add in the recent discovery but Yumiko did not mention it. The tengu’s trust did not extend to the men. “If they did get hold of a real dragon?”

“They would make more monsters.” Guy guessed as Yumiko considered what she should admit.

“It is not that simple,” Yumiko finally broke her silence. “One of the things that the oni discovered with their experiments was that they could create transformation spells fueled by the body of a dragon and aimed by their souls. They had limited success with the creatures they had cobbled together with the sekasha DNA. The elves will tell you that their holy ones breed true—that no matter how diluted the blood stock becomes, the divinity of the warriors is dominant. It is the nature of the dragons, part of their ability to phase through walls and walk between worlds. There is a magical bond between their bodies and souls, a cohesion that cannot be broken. The oni have discovered how to twist this and create a spell that affects all creatures of a selected profile. When they captured Providence, it was with the intention of testing the full potential of the spell. Providence begged us to kill him so that wouldn’t happen. As punishment for our obedience to our guardian, the oni used us as test subjects. With his dead body, they transformed our entire tribe from human to tengu in a single spell. What can the oni do with a true dragon? The answer is beyond your worst nightmares.”

“Jesus,” Jane whispered.

“Pray,” Yumiko said. “And hope your god can protect you better than ours could. You said you saw this ‘dragon’ in New York City? Tell me where exactly. I’ll have yamabushi go and search for this creature.”

“It was at the NBC gala. I believe that Lemon-Lime crashed the party. They had hacked the hotel security to unlock the door of the room we met in. They wore masks throughout the meeting. They didn’t give me their proper names or any direct way to contact them. They are very careful with their identities; millions of their fans have been trying to determine who they are for several years.”

“Wait, Lemon-Lime Jello?” Yumiko connected dots and recognized the name at last. “You mean those cartoons?”

Joey threw his hands up in the air and twiddled his fingers. “Blast it all!”

“Yes!” Nigel said. “Indeed! Aren’t they simply brilliant?”

Yumiko looked like Nigel had broken her again.

Nigel had carefully not mentioned that they were twin little girls. He obviously didn’t trust the tengu with the girls’ lives. Jane wasn’t sure if she did either. The woman was willing to kill to keep Joey and his cousins safe from the oni. What if she decided that the twins were a liability? Yumiko controlled operatives that could easily travel to Earth and Onihida. She could send someone to New York to kidnap or kill the little girls without Jane ever knowing.

Jane distracted the conversation the future episodes of Monsters in Our Midst. “What else do the oni have hidden around the city? Do they have Malice here? Can we safely discuss the tengu?”

“No.” Yumiko said. “Nothing on the tengu.

“If we could get the Pittsburghers to understand that the tengu . . .”

Yumiko stood up, fists clenched. “There is so much that the oni do not know about the tengu. We have spent hundreds of years keeping them ignorant of our strengths and weaknesses. We cannot allow them to know anything of us!”

“A tengu kidnapped Tinker.” Alton earned a dark look from Yumiko. He held up his hands. “Hear me out. What do all the humans in Pittsburgh know about the current events? That some kind of animal killed the Viceroy’s sekasha Hawk Scream, possibly a pack of wargs. That the oni were behind the gunfight on the Veterans Bridge. That a shitload of monsters were downtown trying to eat Bowman. And that a tengu kidnapped Tinker.” Alton had been ticking the events off on his fingers. He held out the four fingers. “Four logical stories for Hal to cover. If he doesn’t cover them, people are going to wonder why.”

Jane swore as she realized he was right; they’d painted themselves into a corner.

“Pft!” Hal waved the concern aside. “We save the tengu for last and bury it in misinformation. Who could blame us for getting it wrong?”

“No, no, if we can’t do the truth, we’re not doing it.” Jane said. “We have three weeks to dig up dirt on other more important things like this Lord Tomtom and Kajo and the Eyes.”

Yumiko shook her head. “You won’t be able to find out anything about them. The only people who know about them are those loyal to them and the tengu. The oni will know that you’ve somehow won the tengu’s trust and are too dangerous to live.”

“We have three weeks. We’ll keep our ears open. All of us.” She pointed at Geoffrey and Alton. “You two talk often to elves. We need sources to get the real truth of what is going on. Windwolf requested royal troops. When will they show up? How many are coming? What does it mean for humans? Will the Wind Clan stay in control or will that change?”

“How do elves fit in as beasts?” Guy asked. “Isn’t the point of Monsters in Our Midst to cover monsters?”

Jane glared at her littlest brother. Her family had to stop being right all the time.

“Airships,” Nigel said. “The royal troops have to come to Pittsburgh somehow. They will need to travel either by airship or train. No one has ever done an in depth story on the gossamers. Presumably they’ve been bioengineered like the namazu. How do they fly? What do they eat? Where did they come from? How long do they live?”

Jane pointed her finger at Nigel. “Perfect! We should write this down. We can also cover the train. Maybe we could even get special permission to ride to the East Coast. No one has video of the elf holdings at the other end of the line. Three hundred miles of wilderness that no one goes out into and then the port that no one has ever seen.” Jane pointed at Marc. “What’s happening with the EIA?”

Marc looked confused. “All the networks have already covered Maynard asking Earth for more troops.”

“That’s brilliant!” Nigel cried. “We could interview the oni that the EIA have imprisoned! It would be wonderful for Chased by Monsters too! A whole third race that no one on Earth has ever seen before.”

Jane paused to take notes. Maybe they hadn’t painted themselves into a corner.

#

An hour later, they’d talked through two months of shows. By then both the EIA reinforcements and the royal troops would have arrived, hopefully bringing new stories with them. Lemon-Lime wasn’t mentioned again. Sprinkled all through the notes were nuggets of information that Joey, Boo and Yumiko added but couldn’t be used.

“Second show should be the disguised oni,” Jane said. “And how harmless the  . . . what was the spell called?”

“Biatau,” Alton said.

“No, that means any spell written on a piece of paper.” Geoffrey said. “What I’m using on the river qualifies as a biatau.”

“Whatever,” Jane said. “Close enough for Pittsburgh use. People here give directions via landmarks that aren’t there anymore. We should let our viewers know that the biatau that the elves are using to find oni are harmless to people.”

Joey was curled up on her lap, making writing notes difficult. He yawned deeply.

“It is time for us to go,” Yumiko said.

The tengu female carried Joey out to their car. The boy was nearly asleep, head on her shoulder. He cracked open his eyes, waved sleepily, and closed his eyes again.

Taggart waited until the engine had faded into the distance before saying, “Nigel, what else haven’t you told us about Lemon-Lime?”

“This will take a while. Let us put a kettle on.”

#

Jane didn’t want alcohol fueling the conversation with Hal and her little brothers present. After the last twenty-four hours, though, she really wished she could opt for something stronger than tea. Too many secrets. Too many unknown angles. Too many lives on the line.

She would have liked to shoo away her family but she couldn’t order her mother around. Once her mother dug in her heels, Jane wouldn’t be able to budge her brothers. Jane did warn them all to keep the following conversation secret.

“I’m very sorry, lad,” Nigel said to Taggart. “I’m sorry that I didn’t trust you with this. I was hoping that Lemon-Lime merely let their imagination run wild. Certainly their videos seemed to indicate that they were prone to flights of fancy, until all the shards of truth fell into place. It makes me wonder about Queen Soulful Ember’s mental state.”

“I need to see these videos sometime.” Jane said.

“Yes, you must!” Nigel said. “They’re brilliant. I have them all on my tablet. I can show them to you!”

“What else haven’t you told us?” Taggart said calmly.

“Here, this is easier to show you.” Nigel took out his tablet computer. For a moment, Jane thought Nigel was going to show them the cartoons, as he turned on her biggest screen television and linked his tablet to it. “Sometime ago, an anthropologist returning from Elfhome came upon a startling discovery. Many of the museums on Earth had in their collections artwork created by elves. These items weren’t recently added pieces but mothballed antiquities whose original was unknown. The initial piece was a vase given to Thomas Jefferson after he finished Monticello in 1809. The anthropologist set up a crowd- sourced program that had curators around the world rechecking their inventories to find similar works. Hundreds were found, all of clearly elfin design. Many were ancient but none were later than the mid-1700s. Knowing now that the elves had traveled between Elfhome and Earth for thousands of years and that they stopped doing so at the start of the Oni War, the reason for the age of the items become clear.”

Nigel was cycling through pages copied from the American Museum of Natural History’s website. “I’m not sure if this was a fully human organized endeavor or if it was the oni trying to find something they’d lost. However it started, the end result was this.” Nigel stopped on a large block of wood with spell runes around the upper edge.

“A spell locked box!” Geoffrey shouted with surprise and excitement. He leapt up to eye it closely. “Can you make it bigger? I want to see the lock.”

“A what?” Jane couldn’t see anything that looked like a lock or a lid on the block of wood.

“It’s a box that is locked with a spell,” Geoffrey said. “I can’t make them. Not even my teacher knows how to make them. The box itself is simple; it’s basically a hollow piece of ironwood. It’s the locking spell that’s insanely difficult. Somehow they embed a verbal code phrase into the lock. It’s kind of like ‘open sesame’ of the old fairy tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. If you say the correct words, the locking spell triggers a secondary loop that seals or unseals the binding on the lid. They’re the ultimate cool thing to do with ironwood but no one in the Westernlands can make them. The only one I’ve seen is the safe at the enclave and it’s heavily guarded. I can’t believe elves would take one to Earth; you can only get them open with magic.”

“The museum didn’t know what it was,” Nigel said. “They have it listed simply as a decorated block of wood. Lemon-Lime claimed it belonged to an elf that had been trapped on Earth and later was killed in the insanity of the French Revolution. As I said, I couldn’t be sure what they told me was truth and what was flights of fancy. The important part of this box is what’s inside.” Nigel flicked to a picture of an odd, elaborately decorated egg. “Lemon-Lime believes that it contains eleven of these devices that imprison little dragons like the cake-eating darling. The problem is that the museum returned the box to the elves via Sparrow.”

“Holy shit,” Taggart breathed. “Is that why we went back to the museum after the Gala? I wondered why you suddenly wanted to interview all the staff. It was all painfully boring but you kept plugging away.”

“I’m sorry, Tag. You’re simply a horrible liar. Once I realized the scope of the conspiracy and the danger Lemon-Lime are in, I felt it was better if I just kept it all to myself.”

Nigel started a film clip showing him interviewing a man in front of an elegant vase. “This is the vase that started it all?”

“Yes, this is the Jefferson Chinese Vase on loan from the Smithsonian,” the man explained. “It had been stolen from Monticello during the Civil War by a confederate soldier. He later donated it to the Smithsonian in an attempt to make things right. It sat in the Smithsonian basement for a hundred years before the Elvish runes were recognized by . . .”

“We can skip this part.” Nigel forwarded the video. “Tag is right; it’s painfully boring. The man loved to talk. I let him since I didn’t want to be obviously leading the interview to the item that I actually came to check on.”

In the video, Nigel was flipping through a slickie which seemed to be some kind of souvenir item of the exhibit. “I noticed that there’s some items missing from the exhibit. This ‘block of ironwood.’ I don’t see it here.”

“Ah, yes, that. That’s a bit of a sore subject at the moment. The UN took a vote and it was decided that in the interest of universal peace that the elves would have a chance to claim any of the items in the exhibit. Most of the museums were quite willing since these were items normally not on display since their origins weren’t known. The Jefferson Chinese Vase is one of the few exceptions and its historical importance comes from the fact that it belonged to the writer of the Constitution, who was one of our Presidents, and that it been stolen during the Civil War. Most items are like this block of ironwood. We don’t know where it came from or what significance it holds. It has no intrinsic value except for the mystery it presents. How did something from Elfhome find its way to the basement of the Louvre Museum in Paris?”

“I say!” Nigel faked in surprise in the video. “You mean that when Sparrow Lifted by Wind came to New York City, she came here to see the exhibit? Did you get to meet her? What was she like?”

Nigel was a very good liar. He’d gone to the museum knowing Sparrow had been there and taken the box. Listening to him, though, he sounded honestly amazed at the news.

“Yes, I met her,” the curator said. “She was stunningly beautiful. She took my breath away. Otherworldly.”

“I wish I had been here in time to meet her. I was tied up in L.A. I’ve wanted to meet an elf since I was nine. I’m so looking forward to finally getting a chance when I go to Elfhome next Shutdown. I’m slightly confused. Are you saying that of all the things on exhibit, the elves chose this mysterious block of wood?”

“Not just that. They also took this bracelet and this necklace.” The curator flipped through the slickie to point out the pieces of jewelry. Nigel turned and held up the digital souvenir booklet so Taggart could record the other missing pieces. The bracelet was a set of rich blue lapis stones strung as prayer beads with a small ironwood miniature prayer wheel to the Elvish god of luck. The necklace was a more elaborate piece with flame sapphires and polished heartwood. Both were obviously from Elfhome. “Sparrow said that unlike the other jewelry in the exhibit, these were highly personal in nature. Because they’re one of kind, it would be simple to reconnect them with their original owners.”

The curator flipped the slickie back to the picture of the box. “The Louvre is throwing a total hissy fit over this block of wood. They were supposed to send a flame sapphire tiara but the French government stepped in and refused because they were afraid that the elves would take one of their national treasures. When the Louvre found out that Sparrow took the ironwood, you would have thought she’d gotten the tiara. The block had been donated in 1820 and sat in the basement for over two hundred years. France is making a total mountain out of a mole hill.”

“I followed Sparrow’s visit closely on the news,” Nigel said. “I was hoping that I could wrap things up in Hollywood and then fly here and try to pull strings to see if I could get an audience with her. I didn’t see any video about her visiting the museum.”

“It was all hush hush,” the curator said. “We were getting bomb threats and a bomb went off a few blocks away. It took out an art gallery that specialized in artwork imported from Elfhome. We thought it would be wiser to keep a lid on ‘the elves raid the museum of priceless treasures.’ The elves came in after hours and made their selection. Oh. Please. Don’t air that.”

“We’ll edit it out.” Nigel promised. “Did Sparrow tell you anything about the history of the items that she took?”

The curator shook his head. “I’m afraid not. There simply wasn’t time. There was paperwork to sign. Then we needed to get a special visa for a curator who was going to deliver the items to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.”

“The museum?” Nigel seemed honestly surprised. Apparently his inside information hadn’t covered this detail. “I thought the elves were taking the items.”

The curator waved off the possibility. “Oh, no, we couldn’t allow that. There’s a standard protocol for handling exhibit items. They need to be transported with a bonded and insured carrier with a curator. Once the items got to Pittsburgh, the director of the Carnegie could hand them over to the elves with all proper ceremony. Or at least, that was the plan.”

“What happened?” Nigel asked in the video what Jane was wondering.

The curator laughed. “What didn’t happen? The Viceroy was attacked. His guard killed. Windwolf is missing. There was a shootout between police and smugglers during a traffic jam. Our curator crossed over the border, called in to report that he was stuck downtown as the police dealt with a bomb on one of the bridges and then—Startup. He didn’t get out. Shortly before midnight, the Carnegie said that he still hadn’t arrived. We have no idea what happened to him. We won’t know until next Shutdown.”

Nigel turned off the video. “I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that I was there to find out about the box, so I got him to talk about the other two items and Sparrow’s visit. Apparently when Sparrow was there, she encouraged her guard to explore the museum. The Chinese Ambassador to the UN arrived with one of the museum trustees and they had a long discussion in French.”

“French?” Jane’s mother said. “That’s a weird choice for an elf and a Chinese man. How does Sparrow even know French?”

“She’s fluent in many languages, including Mandarin,” Nigel said. “Also the Ambassador is fluent in English. Obviously they wanted to speak freely without being understood by anyone that might overhear the conversation. That fact made me believe Lemon-Lime’s claim that Sparrow took part in trying to kill Windwolf. She’s obviously deeply involved in something suspicious.”

“Wait! What?” Alton cried.

“Sparrow betrayed Wolf Who Rules?” Geoffrey said.

“Nigel!” Jane snapped.

Nigel raised his hands to fend off any physical attack. “Your family should know that she cannot be trusted if something were to happen to us on the river.”

Jane hated that he was right. The problem was that her brothers would want to do something about Sparrow’s betrayal. “We have no proof. We can’t go to the elves and accuse her.”

This raised a shout of denial from Duff and Guy and a low, angry growl of “We’ll see about that” from Marc.

“Jane’s right.” Geoffrey and Alton both said.

Alton continued, “The other elves don’t like her but she’s Windwolf’s Voice. Slandering her would be like attacking him. They’ll defend her because she’s one of them and we’re not.”

“With something like this, we would need solid proof of her guilt,” Geoffrey said.

“Even with the sekasha?” Guy asked. “They have the right to kill anyone with or without proof.”

Geoffrey and Alton glanced at each other.

Alton shrugged. “Elves and I discuss dead animals. You have a broader range than me, Geoff.”

“It would be Russian roulette,” Geoffrey said. “Someone would die. The question would be if it was me or Sparrow. I don’t want to play that game.”

“I know!” Hal cried. “We could put up a big sign in the middle of the night opposite of the enclaves saying ‘Sparrow is a traitor!’ Do we know the Elvish word for traitor?”

“No, I don’t,” Geoffrey said. “And we couldn’t get it up without being caught. The laedin have increased their patrols around enclaves.”

“We’re not tipping our hand,” Jane said. “Sparrow doesn’t know that we know. It’s our one advantage.”

“Jane is right.” Her mother backed her. “You’re not to tell anyone.”

“Sparrow might suspect we know,” Taggart said. “She’s tripping over us every time she turns around.”

“We could make it that she trips over a lot of different people every time she turns around,” Guy said.

“What?” Jane said.

“Other people live in this city,” Guy said. “If they knew what was going on, they’d want to defend it. They have a right to defend it.”

“No,” Jane said. “We’re not going to get a shitload of people involved. We trust them. They trust other people who trust other people until someone trusts the wrong person.”

“We can’t fight an entire army by ourselves,” Boo whispered. “That’s what the oni have. An army.”

Jane’s family had to stop being right all the time.

Alton did his oldest male thing. “The EIA and the police have their hands tied in this. If we don’t do something, then if this goes south fast, no one is going to be ready.”

“Ready?” Jane shouted. She had to get this back under control. “The last thing we need is a bunch of people with a bone to pick with the elves and who have no military training an excuse to get trigger happy. We need to have them focused on the oni and that’s what we’re doing with Monsters in Our Midst.”

“Let’s militarize our viewers.” Hal said. “Hal’s Army! Roger’s Rangers! Hal’s Heroes!”

“Hal!” Jane caught herself before backhanding him. This wasn’t something she could stop simply by hitting him. There was also the fact she needed to tell him about the wedding. A highly active fan group might stabilize him after she yanked the ground out from under him. “Fine. Hal’s Heroes.”

“Yes!” Hal shouted. Then he realized that she had caved too easily. “What’s the catch?”

“You need to be very careful with what you say. Written scripts. No improvisation. No information without showing a source other than the tengu or Boo or Lemon-Lime. We need military precision, not a circus.”

“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” Taggart said.

“It’s a great idea!” Hal started to bounce in place. “We could set up a uniform like red berets and spy cells. I could be Adam Selene. Lemon-Lime would be Simon Jester.”

“Who?” Jane asked. “What?”

“Oh, Jane, you really should read more,” Hal said.

She was changing her mind about smacking Hal.

“Ow!” Hal cringed back from her. “It’s from a book!”

“We need to find the box,” Nigel said. “I thought the issue was that whoever had it was smuggling possibly sentient reptile eggs. I didn’t realize that Lemon-Lime understood the dangers so fully.”

“We need to find the namazu eggs,” Marc said firmly.

“Yeah, the namazu nearly killed Bowman and they almost took out us,” Geoffrey said.

“How are we even going to find the box?” Guy asked. “I mean—it disappeared over a month ago.”

“It could have ended up at the Carnegie,” Hal said. “We’ll never know until we ask. You all know how traffic gets at Shutdown. Between the traffic and the rivers and the bridges being out and the GPS maps all being wrong, it would have been easy for them to get lost for an entire day. You know it happens.”

“I didn’t call the Carnegie,” Nigel admitted. “Since it had been over a month, the issue didn’t seem to be pressing as what we found ourselves caught up in.”

They’d been busy saving Boo, Yumiko, killing man-eating monsters, and planning a wedding. (Although she wasn’t sure if Taggart had told Nigel yet that he was best man; it had been a hectic twenty-four hours since she proposed.)

Nigel explained more why he hadn’t called the Carnegie Museum after arriving in Pittsburgh. “The wildlife of Elfhome is still fairly unknown because most species can’t exist without magic. Living specimens of plants are shipped to Earth but they die shortly after arriving. Even insects and bacteria fail to thrive—it’s the main reason why we don’t need to worry about invasive species during Shutdown. This lack of things to study pre-production made it simple for me to show up at the American Museum of Natural History saying that I wanted to research all things related to Elfhome. Here in Pittsburgh, though, I’m surrounded by native wildlife. The title of my show is ‘Chased by Monsters.’ What possible reason would I—a naturalist—have for researching a necklace, a bracelet, and a mysterious hunk of wood?”

“Who needs an excuse?” Hal said. “You point a camera at most people and they become blathering idiots.”

“Not always,” Jane warned. They used the tactic to their advantage in the past. The fire marshal, Brian Scroggins, was one of the people they could manipulate by putting a camera on him. Brandy was not. It was almost guaranteed that if they tried to involve her, they’d end up with a ticket and possibly jail time.

“They have that huge wyvern on display,” Hal said. “We say we want to film it as an example of bioengineering that the elves have done in the past.”

“Are wyverns bioengineered?” Nigel asked.

“Who knows? Who cares?” Hal said. “We can ask the elves later and not use it if they say no. In the meantime, we get in. Poke around. Ask a few questions. The oni probably have someone planted at the Carnegie.”

Jane stood up to signal the end of the discussion. “Okay, tomorrow morning back on the river. Once we find both nests, we’ll hit the museum.”

“Don’t hit it too hard,” her mother said. “The Carnegie is a treasure that we can pass on to our children.”

#

Jane thought finding Boo would have ended her nightmares. The fear that the oni would come thundering down on their heads, though, had fueled new dreams. At three in the morning, she tiptoed down to her kitchen.

Taggart was already there making hot cocoa. “Bad dreams?”

“Yeah.”

He held out his hands to her. “Me too.”

It felt good to lean against his bare chest. It felt better to kiss him. After a few minutes, she decided she wanted a locked door between them and anyone else who might be roaming about the house in the middle of the night. She grabbed his wrist and pulled him toward the stairs.

“Wait.” He reached out to switch off the boiling milk. “Okay.”

Upstairs. Door locked.

Chesty rose from her bedroom floor with a low warning growl.

Door unlocked. Chesty ordered out of the room. Door relocked.

There was a freedom in knowing that they’d already committed to marriage. That he’d seen her at her heavily armed and pissed off mode. That he’d met her brothers all in their heavily armed and pissed off mode. That he’d seen her channel her father’s ghost. That he’d seen her eat, and cry, and deal with inner demons. That he accepted her at her very worst. There was no need for her to hide any part of her life. She could be wholly herself without fear of turning him off.

It surprised her how aggressive it made her. She felt safe enough to take the lead in finding out what they both liked.

She had always wondered why people went on and on about sex. For the first time, she understood how good it could be to be so open and intimate and honest with another human being.

“I think I’m going to like being married to you a lot,” she murmured on the edge of sleep.

“I know I’m going to love it. You’re wonderful.” He laughed sleepily. “I’m kind of amazed by your mother. I was worried that she wouldn’t want someone like me as a son-in-law. I’ve never seen anyone look so happy before.”

“What do you mean? Someone like you?”

He put his bronzed hand on her upper arm. “Most people don’t see me as white.”

“Hm.” She had thought he was merely very tanned but now that she glanced down over him, she realized that he didn’t have any noticeable tan lines. Either he sunbathed nude, or he was naturally dark skinned. “I’m just ridiculously pale. Really. In winter I’m as white as Boo. Besides I’m twenty-six. She was starting to worry that I was gay.” Which made her think of Geoffrey. “She’s probably not going to be okay with Snapdragon. I don’t know what to do.”

“You don’t do anything. I mean, your mother and Geoffrey are both adults. They have to work their way through this on their terms. You’re not going to be able to change either one of them.”

“Are you an only child?”

“No. But I’m the baby of the family. One of the many reasons I left Hawaii was because my older brothers and sisters were always trying to tell me how to I should live my life. Everything from I should focus more on our culture, to not taking Journalism in college, to not taking a job on the mainland, to not going into the middle east to cover the war. Okay, so they might have been right about the war part, but I needed to learn that for myself. I didn’t listen to them. I didn’t want to listen to them. If I had listened to them, I wouldn’t have been happy because they wanted me to do things that would make them happy. It’s hard to see your sibling as a wholly separate person who has radically different needs to make them complete. When your older brother or sister keeps trying to ‘fix’ things simply because they’re a few months older than you, it gets extremely frustrating. You start to put distance between you and them every time they treat you like a child.”

“So you think I should act like my mom and my little brother are some strangers squabbling over their private life?”

He squinted. “I’m trying to decide if the truth is going to get me kicked out of bed.”

She laughed. “No. I want to know what you think. Honestly. I might totally ignore your advice but I want to know.”

“If your brother asks for help, champion him to the hilt. Until he asks, let him run his life how he wants to live it.”

#

Three Rivers Queen. Day Two.

Jane missed how the conversation started. She’d been focused on shifting their gear from the production trucks and making sure they were secure. She came on board to hear Roach say “Red beret? No. You don’t want a lame hat like that. Hey, Andy, give me your hat!”

“Just shut up about the damn hat!” Andy cried from below deck.

“Andy!” Roach shouted.

Andy came stomping up from below, flung his hat at Roach, and yelled, “I said I’m sorry already!” He stomped away.

Roach ignored his little brother. He picked up the hat and dusted it off. It was a wide-brimmed boonie similar in style to the standard military-issued jungle hat that Jane wore. Andy’s was Wind Clan blue instead of camo print. “See, it’s even the right color.”

“I was hoping for black and gold.” Hal sounded dubious.

“But this gets your fans allied with the elves,” Roach put it on and attempted to make it look stylish. Despite its military roots, the hat utterly failed to be impressive. He waved a hand toward Jane instead. “See, combat ready.”

Hal glanced at Jane. The doubt receded as he realized that the limp blue thing was similar in style to Jane’s. “It’s workable. I suppose we could tailor mine so it reads better for the camera.”

Jane couldn’t imagine anything could be done to the boonie to make it more stylish but said nothing. “What’s the deal with the hats?”

“I have ten thousand of them,” Roach said.

“Ten thousand?” Jane and Hal both exclaimed. There were only sixty thousand humans in the whole city.

“I let Andy handle ordering them. The idea was something like the Terrible Towel. All the Team Tinker fans would have the same hat and they could wave them in the stands during the race.”

“Terrible Towel?” Nigel was British. There was no way he would know about something that died off when he was eight. Pittsburghers held on tight to things that no longer existed.

Jane explained ancient history. “All the Pittsburgh professional sports teams had black and gold as their colors. Football was the Steelers. Baseball was the Pirates. Hockey was Penguins. At some point, back before my mom was born, the Steeler fans came up with this yellow towel with ‘the terrible towel’ written on it that they wave during games to cheer on their team.”

“It was the first rally towel,” Roach said proudly. “Our grandfather has one of the original ones hanging on his game room wall signed by Terry Bradshaw.” Nigel obviously didn’t recognize the name.

“Local football god,” Jane said.

“Four Superbowl championships!” Roach added.

“What is this design?” Jane pointed to something that vaguely looked like a hashtag mark in the center of the hat’s crown.

“It’s supposed to say Team Tinker,” he shouted the words.

“How many times do I have to say ‘I’m sorry’?” Andy shouted back from below deck.

“I order stuff online during Shutdown all the time. You put in a batch order during one Shutdown and take delivery during the next. The team T-shirts, our racing leathers, the helmets, the whole nine yards. I’ve never had a problem, so I thought Numbnuts could handle it. He screwed the whole order up. He exported the wrong artwork and ordered a hundred times what I told him to order!”

Roach shouted the last part.

“I’m freaking sorry!” Andy shouted back.

“Then all the bullshit with Tinker happened,” Roach continued. “Oilcan is acting as our anchor rider, but he’s not as good as Tink is. She’s fearless. It’s like she’s got eyes in the back of her head or something. If you see her suddenly duck and run, you just go, don’t stand there wondering why. Shit is about the hit the fan.” His voice got rough and he turned away. “Fuck,” he whispered. He wiped at his face. “Sorry. We started to hang out with her and Oilcan when Tink was ten. At first it was like ‘why do you need to bring your baby cousin with you?’ but she shows up, driving this go cart like a bat out of hell, and goes ‘hey, we could turn that pile of wood into a trebuchet.’ We spent the rest of day flinging rocks half a mile across the landfill. It was fucking awesome. Eight years of watching her grow up. Watching out for her. Keeping her safe. And then she’s gone. It’s like Boo all over again.”

“She—she’ll be okay.” Jane caught herself before saying something that would make him realize that she knew more than she was telling. “She’s crazy smart and has eyes in the back of her head. The oni are the ones that are going to get the short end of that stick.”

Roach laughed. “Yeah, you don’t want to corner Tinker.” He took a deep breath. “Anyhow. The logo kind of looks like two ‘H.’ You tell people its “Hal’s Heroes” before you show them the logo and they’ll see it.”

“How much?” Jane wondered if she could get the station to cover the cost. They could give them away in some kind of promotional deal.

“If you want, I could handle the merchandising for Hal’s Heroes. Do some posters. The hat. Have an autograph session . . .”

It would give Hal much needed ego-boo and salve her own conscience for not telling her cousins about Boo and Tinker. She was fairly sure Roach would keep his mouth shut, but Sean was a DJ for the largest radio station in town, and Andy was a bit of an idiot. “Deal.”

#

Sean interviewed Hal as they churned up river to where they left off searching for the eggs. They’d let Sean know that they were doing a new show so all the questions were geared at building excitement for its premier. He admitted that Nigel’s section was still in editing as KDKA decided that it didn’t want to make one of their most popular DJ’s a target of the oni. Much to Hal’s delight, it meant that his interview could be aired first.

Shortly before noon, they found the first nest.

Beck’s Run was marked on maps but was diverted underground the last few hundred feet as it was crisscrossed with roads, railroad tracks, and the abandoned paved walking trail. The culvert was wide to allow for flood water and marked with a sign that lay flattened in the undergrowth covering the steep river bank.

“There’s something weird down there,” Geoffrey pointed at where the creek spilled into the Monongahela River.

Hal came out of the wheel house. “I got this. Taggart? Camera.”

He wore his new Hal’s Hero’s boonie hat and a huge grin. With the concealer covering the last of the fading bruises, Hal seemed like his old self as he beamed at the camera.

Nigel held the light reflector as Jane checked on their mobile production system.

“It looks good on this end,” Jane said.

At Jane’s announcement, Hal carefully wiped the glee off his face but not completely out of his eyes. “We’ve found a likely site for the nest. We’ve nosed the Three River Queen into the mouth of Beck’s Run. Down below, in the murky water, we believe lies a nest of thousands of apple-sized eggs of the river monster.”

Hal followed their script and dodged using the word ‘namazu’ without even twitching.

“I’ve come prepared.” Hal lifted up a bucket on a chain. “First we’re going to attempt to fish out some of the eggs to verify we’ve found an actual nest. As you might recall, the fish finder sonar merely shows blimps on a screen. It’s very difficult to determine what the finder is showing. It could be some kind of vegetation or garbage dumped into the river. I’ve drilled holes through the bottom of this bucket so that the water drains out but the eggs will remain inside. It should operate much like a net.”

A second dodge around the fact they were using spells to locate the eggs. Jane had told her cousins she wanted to keep Geoffrey’s scry spells a secret. She didn’t even have to lie when she said that she worried what the oni might do if they thought he was dangerous to their movements in the area. Roach had created a fake fish finder by wrapping a cellphone inside of a bulky plastic housing with fake knobs. A tap on its screen made it display screen shots of the real thing. They’d already filmed Hal explaining how a fish finder worked. They’d carefully scripted the scene so he never stated outright that they were using it to find the nests. They were using smoke and mirrors to keep their cards close to their chest.

Hal lowered the bucket over the side of the boat. They needed to do three takes to get it right as it kept floating away before tipping, filling up with water several yards from the correct position. On the last attempt, he got it to go straight down.

“The eggs are heavier than water, so if we scoop like so through a large mass of eggs, in theory, we should be able to dredge up at least one.

Hal waited until Taggart had the camera into position. Roach was doing a good job keeping their secondary camera on Hal. Like Jane, he’d gotten into photography from their grandmother. He usually worked with still shots to create racing posters.

Hal quickly dragged up the chain, hand over hand. It took a full minute for the bucket to appear, leaking muddy river water.

“Come on. Come on. Be there.” Jane whispered.

“Oh yes!” Hal cried as the bucket reached the edge of the railing. He hauled it in and tipped it so the cameras could see inside. There were two large yellow gelatinous orbs inside. He picked one up and held it out for the camera’s close inspection. It had one red blood line striped across the surface of the egg with veins feathering out from it. “These are fertilized eggs. You can see already the two dark spots that will be the eyes. Peering closely, I can make out the heart beating. Based on the size of this egg, I believe that the newt will be approximately six inches when it hatches. We’re not sure how long that will take. We’re going to put these two eggs into an aquarium so we can monitor their development and know more about these monsters. Knowledge is power.”

This was news to Jane but Nigel was standing by with a second bucket full of river water for the two eggs.

Hal continued to hold out the first egg. “Since every one of these can grow into a forty-foot-long, man-eating monster, we will need to be careful to kill every one of them. We’re going to dredge up as many as we can and then drop dynamite to hopefully kill anything that we missed.”

“We are?” Jane muttered. How did Hal think they were going to dredge up the eggs?

As if on cue—and judging by the fact that Hal had pulled out his cell phone, it probably was on cue—a boat blared its horn just downriver from them. It was a tugboat pushing a set of barges, one of which was loaded with a bright red crane. The long boom of the crane was lowered so the barges could fit under the many bridges that spanned the rivers.

Hal stood up and pointed at the incoming boat. “And here are Hal’s Heroes, Glacial Sand and Gravel, who dredge the bed of the Allegheny River for important road building material, both for Pittsburgh and for export to Earth. They’ve volunteered their services to help keep our city safe from the threat of huge, man-eating monsters!”

The incoming tug boat blared its horn again. Taggart turned to focus on the boat.

She ripped off her mic, grabbed her rifle, and charged for to the bridge.

Hal saw her coming and edged behind Nigel.

“Shit, Hal, what did you do?” Jane scanned the incoming boat with her rifle’s scope. There seemed to be a dozen men and women on board, all in blue jeans, hard helmets, and tall rubber boots.

“They’re friends! We can trust them!” Hal cried. “Please don’t shoot them, Jane! We need them! We need them to dredge up the eggs and we need them to be role model heroes! Pittsburghers who volunteer to stand up and do something. We’ll film giving them hats and calling them heroes and it will be the start of something good.”

“How do you know that you can trust them?”

Hal pointed at Roach.

“They’re my cousins on my dad’s side.” Roach knew to keep the camera on Hal. “Second cousins actually. My great-aunt Esther married their granddad. They’re not Roaches, they’re McAvoys. Please don’t shoot them, Jane. My dad would be pissed.”

She recognized the name. She’d met the McAvoys at Sean’s wedding two years ago. They’d been rabid fans of Hal and offered then to take PB&G out dredging with them. She’d forgotten about them but apparently Hal hadn’t.

“Why didn’t you tell me that they were coming?” She asked Roach because she was fairly sure that Hal had a really stupid reason.

“Hal made it sound like it was your idea,” Roach said in defense. “You were just too busy to ask me.”

“You would have said no!” Hal stated his stupid idea. “You’ve been in maximum paranoid mode since Sandcastle!”

Hal meant getting Boo back.

“For good reason!” Jane glared at him and then switched focus to Roach. “How many people on that boat are your cousins? All of them or just the pilot?”

“Two are my cousins. One is engaged to Addison so he’s almost a cousin. One is their cousin on their mom’s side so that’s still family. The rest are their best friends from since they were little. It’s old school Pittsburgh. If we couldn’t trust them completely, I wouldn’t have called them. And if you can’t trust them, then trust me. I wouldn’t screw up something as this important.”

She trusted Roach. He had his father’s level business head. He lived and breathed risk assessment. “You need to tell me this shit ahead of time so I don’t shoot the wrong person.”

Jane opened the bolt on her rifle and took out the chambered round. She pocketed the bullet. She looked up to see that Taggart was grinning at her. It made her blush.

Sean found the Three Rivers Queen’s horn and blew it. It made his cousins toot their horn again, and Sean answer in kind. For a few minutes, no conversation was possible over the din of stunningly loud boat horns.

After a radio conference, it was decided that the nest would be marked by a buoy. The Queen would then back off and let the tugboat maneuver the barges into place. While the boats repositioned, the naturalist transferred the two eggs into an aquarium that had been set up on the first level of the boat. Through the glass sides, they studied the eggs intently.

“Well, they’re not following crocodile development, which is unfortunate,” Nigel said.

“Why is it unfortunate?” Jane asked.

“Crocodiles and alligators take weeks to develop,” Nigel said. “The Nile crocodile is reported to have an incubation period of ninety days while the American alligator can be as long as a hundred and twenty days. The namazu are keeping closer to a catfish, which is the six days we initially thought. It might be thirty or forty hours longer than a normal catfish but not much more, judging by this sample.”

“So we still can find the last nest in time?” Jane asked.

“These were definitely laid after the ones at Sandcastle,” Nigel said. “If we’re lucky, then the last nest was laid the same time as this one and not before the one at the hatchery.”

“But if it wasn’t, then we only have until Sunday to find it.” Jane said.

“Yes.”

#

Once the boats were repositioned, they filmed Hal being shown how all the equipment worked, although he was strictly forbidden to touch any controls. (Hal was a known quality to Roach’s cousins. He’d gotten bored at Sean’s wedding and started to show off different flaming cocktails. Roach was even more paranoid and thorough than Jane and had a fire extinguisher in hand. Sean’s mother-in-law had only lost part of her ponytail before Roach put her out. Luckily the woman was rabid fan and had an amazing sense of humor.)

The McAvoys were careful people. They’d worked on the river all their lives. They scooped up bucket after bucket of the yellow globes and dropped them into the waiting empty barge. When multiple buckets came up with only sand, it was decided that they had done the best they could. They shifted both boats again and let Hal drop dynamite from the Three Rivers Queen’s long nose gangplank. The explosions made the water froth. Fish bobbed to the surface, killed by the blast. They scooped the free dinner out of the water. It did not surprise Jane that Roach had chests of ice waiting.

“That’s one down,” Taggart said when Jane called a wrap to the filming.

“Let’s find the other.”

#

They found the second nest two hours later. Everyone cheered every step of the operation. Hal made it a point of thanking the McAvoys, calling them “Hal Heroes” and rewarding them with boonie hats. Nigel recorded a wrap up on the hunt that was more haunting and elegant. Jane had pre-screened the footage to make sure nothing dangerous made it to film. No comments of Boo, Geoffrey’s spell casting or her impending wedding.

“Now all we need to do is one monster editing session at the station.” She stretched. “We’ve got more than enough video for both shows”

“If we’re going to Oakland, we should go to the Carnegie Museum,” Nigel had said. “The box may be there and our worries are for naught.”

“Things are never that simple.” Jane checked her watch. They had two hours before the museum closed. Until they determined if the box had arrived or not, they were spinning wheels. “Okay, let’s hit the Carnegie.”

#

They decided that Hal would spearhead their invasion of the Carnegie Museum. Yes, in part, it was to salve his ego. More importantly, his reputation was firmly in “beast stalker” territory. Nigel’s partnership with a war correspondent made him a “respectable journalist” which might equal to an unwanted element if the museum was controlled by oni. They took the PB&G truck and camera to reinforce the impression that Chased by Monsters had nothing to do with the foray.

Jane hadn’t been to either library nor museum for a decade. She wanted to go carefully forward, unsure of what they would find. The century old, limestone covered and statue festooned massive building took up an entire city block at the edge of Oakland. They found street parking on Schenley Drive instead of using the museum’s limited access parking garage. It put them at the corner of the Carnegie Library that connected with the museum.

Nigel insisted that they film the block long walk along the building’s massive stone façade.

“Andrew Carnegie was Scottish.” Nigel let his burr accent his pride. “He was born in my home town of Dunfermline in 1835. His family immigrated to the new world when he was just a boy. Carnegie became the richest man in the world but he gave ninety-percent of his fortune to charities before he died. His greatest gift to the world were his public libraries. He built his first one in Dunfermline. He did so because a Pittsburgher by the name of Colonel James Anderson would open his personal library of four hundred books to working boys. Carnegie had taken his first job at the age of thirteen to work as a bobbin boy in the local cotton mill. Without the chance to educate himself, he’d never have been able to improve his lot in life. Before his death, he’d built over three thousand public libraries in cities around the world. The man was not a saint, but he left legacy that reached out over a century to improve the lives of millions of people. I spent most of my childhood at the Dunfermline library. It’s a grand old building, much like this one, but smaller.”

At the far corner a life-size fiberglass statue of a long-necked dinosaur stood guard.

“A diplodocus!” Nigel pointed.

“Yes, we’re very proud of Dippy,” Hal patted the dinosaur on its stumpy foreleg. Jane backed up to stay out of shot as Taggart filmed the naturalist discussing the large statue. “In 1899, Carnegie funded an expedition to the Wyoming badlands to find fossils. They found a nearly complete diplodocus skeleton. King Edward VII personally asked Carnegie for a plaster cast to be displayed in London. After that Kaiser Wilhelm II and other European heads of state came begging. There are still copies of ‘Dippy’ on display in museums around the world. The Carnegie museum had the world’s largest collection of Jurassic dinosaurs at the time of the first Startup.”

“How marvelous!” Nigel said. “Did they move the collection all to Earth afterwards?”

“They considered it,” Hal said. “Queen Soulful Ember came to Pittsburgh to sign the peace treaty. While she was here, she toured the museum. She must have liked it because she demanded that it stay intact. It was part of the peace treaty, or so I’ve always been told.”

The aftermath of the namazu fight indicated that the English translation of the treaty might have been compromised by Sparrow. They still needed to track down a copy of the original and corner someone fluent in Elvish.

Hal swept a hand toward the museum entrance, a gracious master welcoming in guests. “The elves donated specimens of flora and fauna from other parts of Elfhome. It’s one of the draws of coming to here to study biology and a few other related majors at the University of Pittsburgh.”

Taggart panned the camera upwards to the bronze muses that sat along the roofline. “Do you think what we’re looking for is on display here?”

“I doubt it,” Jane said. “Let’s get in and start poking around. They close up fairly early.”

Jane bought four adult tickets to cover their entrance. The “guard” was an ancient old man in a bright red jacket. Jane felt slightly guilty knowing that they were about to walk all over him.

The ticket seller was a college student who went wide-eyed at Nigel. “You’re Nigel Reid! I loved the red pandas!” Jane winced as Hal’s ego was already bruised. The girl spotted Hal and went into sudden fan girl overdrive. “Omg! Hal Rogers! Oh! Oh! I love you!”

As the girl had Hal autograph random scraps of paper and then her arm and finally pose for selfies, Jane consulted the map that came with their tickets. Her memories of the exhibits during field trips were like snapshots, none connected to place or time. She could recall individual displays with vivid recall but had no idea where they were in relation to each other. In elementary school she’d loved the little dollhouses in their window displays. In Junior high, it had been the Hall of Architecture with the marble statues. The Goddess Nike had fascinated her. In high school, it had been the Photography gallery in the Museum of Art.

Her least favorite section of every visit had been the newest collection focused on Elfhome. As little kids, they’d be herded through the big dim galleries to turn a corner and find themselves face to face with the worst man-eaters on the planet. Every year, at least one child broke down crying. Jane would have nightmares for a week afterwards.

“What are you doing here?” The ticket seller asked.

“We want to film your wyvern for my new show.” Hal paused so he could dramatically sweep his hand over an imaginary marquee. “Monsters in Our Midst! It premieres this weekend. We’re going to be doing big monsters and so far, the wyvern is the biggest.”

The ancient guard finally realized who was chatting up the ticket seller. He pointed at Hal with wide eyes. “You’re Hal Rogers!”

Hal either ignored the panic dawning on the man’s face, or missed it entirely. “Yes, I am. Do you want an autograph too?”

“We don’t have time for this,” Jane growled. She pushed Hal toward the gallery with the Elfhome animals.

“Oh! Oh dear!” The guard exclaimed.

Jane recognized the tone. Someone in charge was going to get an excited call in a few minutes. She pushed Hal again as he slapped his pockets for a pen. “Faster.”

She hadn’t been to the museum since high school but it hadn’t changed any since her field trips days. It seemed like a place caught in time. In her memory, the museum was a dimly-lit maze. It surprised her to discover that her memory wasn’t wrong. They could film a horror movie in the place without changing a thing.

They turned the corner into the Elfhome section. It was weirdly satisfying to see both Nigel and Taggart flinch back in surprise and dismay. It vindicated dozens of school children scared shitless over the years.

“Oh.” Nigel finally whispered. His hands were pressed together as if he was praying. “Oh. My.”

Hal beamed with pride as if he’d given birth to the wyvern. “Isn’t he wonderful? It was one of two killed during the construction of the railroad. This is the male. Females are larger.”

Nigel stared up at the massive creature. Its birdlike feet were on the ground, its dump truck-sized head suspended on wires, its tail coiled around the edge of the area, and its leathery wings flared as wide as the large three-story courtyard would allow. “Oh. Oh. This is—it’s —I’m speechless.”

“Go ahead, take it in,” Jane said. “I will look to see if the box has been added to the exhibit.”

Jane left the men communing with the immense wyvern to scout the area. The elves had given the museum an odd assortment of camping equipment and tools that had been used on the railroad project. It was things like a horse drawn field kitchen. Folding canopy beds with insect netting. Tables that folded into suitcases. Lightweight collapsible chairs. Survey equipment with carrying cases. Humans complained that it had been done to save the elves the hassle of shipping the gear back to the Easternlands. The everyday nature of the items was what Jane liked about the exhibit. To her, it was the real elves. The camping gear was all sturdy, clever and elegant. She still found it enchanting.

Nigel broke his silence when she looped back to the men. “I thought the saurus was massive. I can’t even put the two together in my mind.”

“There’s an adult saurus under its left wing for scale.”

Nigel walked to the far left to see the saurus. “Oh! Simply brilliant! And dragons are larger than wyverns?”

“That’s what the elves say. Much larger.”

Taggart had been silent this entire time. Recording without comment was the sign of a great cameraman but now that he’d gotten in Nigel’s reaction, he whispered. “I’ve swum with humpback whales. I thought I wouldn’t be impressed by how big wyverns were. I was wrong. This is amazing. I can see why your father wanted a cannon to protect his family.”

“The box isn’t here,” Jane reported. “Let’s film this with Hal and Nigel separately. Someone from the museum will find us sooner or later.”

They filmed Nigel first so that he could charm any staff while Hal filmed. “I am nearly beyond words. This is an Elfhome wyvern. I’m sure that the film will do little to impress the size on our viewers since we can’t get enough distance so that it fits within our camera’s range. Here, I’ll stand beside the leg. Yes, this massive tree trunk object is its leg! Look at these talons. Each one is larger than my arm.” He laughed, giddy with his pure emotions. “The size of this is simply overwhelming. You could fit a party inside that mouth! I’ve been in elevators with less interior room.”

He signaled that he was done. “We’re going to have to record a voice-over later. I’m just too amazed. This has never happened to me before.”

Hal clapped Nigel on the shoulder. He tugged at his Hal’s Heroes boonie hat and readied for filming.

“Most of you are familiar with the wyvern. If you grew up in Pittsburgh, you’ve seen this fellow on your field trip to the museum. What you might not know is these creatures were created for war.”

Jane hoped that Hal wasn’t about to go off into left field with some weird rant.

“Sometime in the past, the elves had terrible wars and creatures like the wyvern were bioengineered using magic into the horrible monsters we know of today. The wyvern. The wargs. These and others are not natural animals. Nor were they selectively bred as we have done to create a wide range of dogs, from Saint Bernards down to Chihuahuas. The elves used a magic that we haven’t witnessed here in Pittsburgh to do direct gene manipulation of a level that we can’t even imagine. It was that process that changed a very human girl into an elf female. The oni have similar abilities of using magic to bioengineer normal creatures into monsters. At Sandcastle, we found evidence that the oni had tampered with the water fairies, making them larger, more aggressive, and more poisonous.”

From the direction of the stairs to the modern art wing came the rapid loud click of a woman in heels moving fast. Nor was high heel woman alone. Underscoring the fast clicking was the rumble of many heavy boot steps.

Hal glanced toward the footsteps and changed the direction of his monologue. “This wyvern was an unprecedented gift from Queen Soulful Ember because normally the scales of the creature are used to make the chest armor worn by the holy warriors and the ruling caste. It is, in essence, a completely organic bullet-proof vest. Now the word ‘bulletproof’ is misleading. The true term is ‘bullet-resistant.’ The material of the scale basically catches the bullet, causing it to deform. It mushrooms.” Hal spread his hands to illustrate the bullet increasing in surface area. “This spreads the energy of the bullet over a large area. It defuses the power which then allows the thick material to stop it. Earth has many creatures that have similar protective shells and scales. Clams. Snails. Armadillos, whose name means in Spanish, little armored one. It is the sheer strength of the wyvern armor that makes it remarkable….”

Jane shifted to intercept the incoming museum staff. She’d worn a jacket to cover her kidney holster. She shifted the fabric aside to make sure that she could draw quickly. Boo had said that the oni greater bloods could appear human. There was a chance that the museum staff had been infiltrated if Sparrow had orchestrated the movement of the box via them.

Nigel appeared beside Jane, crouching briefly to tug his pants cuffs into place. He stood, brushing hands over his shirt and slacks to neaten his appearance to pristine. Seriously, the man must have packed a travel iron and starch.

Jane would rather talk her way out of any situation. Nigel with his hosting superpowers would be better at it than her. Still, she hated to put the gentle man on the front line.

The woman was younger than Jane expected, with rich brown hair and smoke gray eyes. She wore an expensive gray business suit with a pencil skirt, a short sleeved jacket and accents of Wind Clan blue. Behind her were six burly guards. From her angry look to the muscle-bound men at her back, it was obvious that the woman was there to toss them out.

“Good day!” Nigel beamed at the woman as if her appearance made his afternoon complete. “I’m so sorry for dropping in unannounced but when I heard you had an actual wyvern on display, I simply had to see it for myself! I’m Dr. Nigel Reid. I’m a naturalist from Clare College. It’s a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. England, not Boston.”

“I recognize you. We do have televisions here in Pittsburgh,” the woman snapped. “You don’t have permission to film in the museum. I will not allow you to waltz in here and walk all over our protocols.”

“Oh, I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have let my excitement over this simply wonderful exhibit carry me away. I didn’t mean to offend you!” Nigel extended his hand for a handshake. “Shall we back up and start over? Call me Nigel. You are…?”

It should have melted icebergs.

The woman flicked her gaze to Taggart’s camera. “I’m the director of the Carnegie Museum, Genevieve Lefèvre.” She had a faint accent as if she’d grown up somewhere outside of Pittsburgh and perhaps even the United States. The French name might mean something more than an ancient family tie to Europe. She held out her left hand to make it clear that she had no intention of shaking Nigel’s hand. Her fingers were manicured with long red nails. A blue bead bracelet looped about her elegant slim wrist. “You will turn over your camera’s memory card to me.”

Jane’s heart jumped in her chest as she realized that Taggart had been filming them since they arrived at the museum. What had they talked about? The box? The tengu? Her sister Boo? “No, that’s not possible. If we give you the card, we’ll lose a day’s worth of work,” Jane lied. “We’ve only been here for a few minutes and everything we’ve filmed is open to public viewing.”

“It’s fine.” Taggart said. “I put a new card in out in the truck. There’s only what we filmed here in the museum on it.”

Jane glanced at Taggart. Did he misunderstand the situation? No, he was trying for poker face but after a week of knowing him, it was clear that he was trying to hide something. What did he plan to do? Swap cards?

He made a production of taking the camera from his shoulder and removing the memory card. Jane knew he could do it on the fly; she’d seen him do it. This was so slow that it was easy to see that he didn’t swap the memory card unless he knew magic tricks. He held out the card to Lefèvre.

What was on it? Jane reached for it, not wanting it out of their control.

The museum director snatched the card out of Taggart’s fingers. “All the cards you have on you.”

“What?” Jane’s outstretched hand curled into a fist. “No way! Do you have any idea how rare they are?”

PB&G used decade-old cameras because Hal killed equipment nearly as often as he set himself on fire. They were generations behind the new ones in every regard. Replacement parts could be found only second hand, online, on Earth. If they lost all their memory cards, it effectively limited them to live streaming only for two months. The only good side of having old equipment was that no one could easily access their recording.

Lefèvre tucked away the stolen memory card. “You should have considered that before bringing your camera in here. For all I know, this is blank and what you recorded is in your pocket.”

Was that the reason Taggart so calmly handed over the card?

Hal decided to enter the fray. “Now, now, let’s not be hasty. I’m  . . .”

“I know who you are, Mr. Rogers,” Lefèvre snapped.

Hal skipped over whatever he was going to say and continued mid-sentence much later in his scripted discussion. “…and Nigel here has been telling me about visiting the American Museum of Natural History in New York. They have a wonderful exhibit featuring things lost on Earth by elves. Have you heard about it?”

“Yes, of course.” She volunteered nothing else.

There was a pause as Hal waited for Nigel to jump in.

“It was a simply wonderful exhibit,” Nigel murmured. “What exactly do you need from us to allow us to film the wyvern? It’s an amazing, one of a kind specimen. The people on Earth have seen nothing like it. Please, email whatever forms you require to WQED. We can fill them out at your leisure and set up a time to come in and film later.”

Jane and Hal stared at Nigel in surprise. The man waved toward the exit, giving them a tight grin that didn’t reach his eyes. For the first time since the Chased by Monsters team arrived in Pittsburgh, she was seeing Nigel frightened.

“Yes, you’re closing, aren’t you?” Jane pointed Hal toward the exit. What did she miss? If Nigel was frightened, then the odds were good that the woman and perhaps all the men behind her were oni. The six guards were big muscle-bound brutes with pistols and nightsticks. They didn’t look like any of the fragile old men from Jane’s school field trip memories.

Hal either didn’t take the clue or decided to press forward anyhow. “According to a curator at the American Museum of Natural History—that is a mouthful—they sent you some of the items from exhibit. Is it possible we can film them?”

The director’s face went from angry to deadly calm. “They call it the AMNH, idiot. The items never arrived.”

“Never?” Hal pressed. He was too far away to kick.

“No. The AMNH claims that the truck made it across during the June Shutdown but never arrived in Oakland.”

“There was that gunfight on Veterans Bridge.” Nigel pointed out, edging toward the door. “The truck could have been caught up in that.”

“Did you file a missing person report?” Hal asked.

“Hal,” Jane growled warning. She was outnumbered and outgunned.

“We’re closing now,” the director said. “Give me all your cards and leave.”

“We’re leaving.” Oni or not, Jane was not going to let this woman hamstring them. “We weren’t obligated to give you the first one. If needed, we will take this to the police. The television stations operate under the United States constitutional right of freedom of the press.” She only had to use this defense once before. It was a legally shaky ground since much of Pittsburgh was under United Nations control. The EIA usually defaulted to the City of Pittsburgh in terms of the media. At the moment, Jane was willing to run the risk that the EIA sided with the director. “We cooperated in a manner that should have been acceptable. We will not be further hampered by unjust demands.”

Lefèvre flicked her hand toward Taggart. “Search him.”

Taggart swung his camera out to the side even as Nigel stepped back and intercepted it. “Okay, okay, you can search me!”

Taggart and Nigel were tag teaming with the camera, so Taggart had picked up on whatever Jane was missing. Then Jane realized what she was looking at. Lefèvre’s bracelet was the missing lapis prayer beads with a small ironwood miniature prayer wheel.

Nigel had recognized the jewelry. He knew that the woman was lying about the curator from New York. Sparrow had spoken French when she planned the murder of Windwolf. Lefèvre’s French name wasn’t accidental. Nigel must suspect that the female was an oni greater blood and that she killed the curator. He was trying to get them out of the museum as quickly as possible.

“I keep a spare in my breast pocket.” Taggart said as the guard roughly searched his pants pockets. “It’s blank.”

The guard ripped Taggart’s shirt taking the memory card out.

Jane clenched her fist. What should she do? She didn’t want them to take the card; it might be the real recording if Taggart switched the two. He’d been recording continuously for nearly a half hour. They could have talked about Boo or Yumiko or the box. She couldn’t fight six men without danger of her crew being hurt. Their lives weren’t worth a memory card. If it was actually blank and she folded now, she’d make Lefèvre suspicious of their real objective.

“Two men vanish off the face of the planet,” Hal continued. “Carrying irreplaceable items that you’re ultimately responsible for, and you don’t file a missing person report?”

Lefèvre huffed with impatience. “I was only told some items were on a truck and would arrive in June. How can I report someone without knowing who they were?”

Jane stepped back to kick Hal.

“Ow!” Hal cried. “What? She knew what was on the truck. She could have filed a report saying that the truck was missing with two men, an ironwood box, and some jewelry…” Hal finally recognized the bracelet. “Shit.”

“Box?” Lefèvre echoed.

The AMNH had thought the block of wood was solid. Hal shouldn’t know that the item shipped was a box.

Lefèvre pointed at Jane. “Kill them.”

Jane shut down her normal moral rationale. All that mattered was saving her people. First target was to eliminate chain of command. She shot at Lefèvre but the bullet hit one of the guards leaping forward. He roared in pain and rushed Jane. She spun with the impact, trying to throw him. He took her down with him and they hit the marble floor hard together.

“Fire in the hole!” Hal shouted.

“Hal!” Jane shouted as she realized that he had succeeded at smuggling sticks of dynamite into the museum. She rolled to put the guard between her and the dynamite.

The explosion in the confined space was deafening. The noise echoed through the halls.

The blast force struck the guard grappling her in the back. He loosened his hold. She twisted away from him and shot him in the head.

She scrambled to her feet, shooting the nearest guard as she took in the battlefield. The blast had effectively confused the oni for vital seconds. The guards didn’t seem to know what had just happened; sticks of dynamite weren’t common weapons. The oni apparently hadn’t seen Hal drop it into their midst, they scanned everywhere for the source of the explosion. Lefèvre didn’t understand basic sniper tactics, she was merely using her guards as cover instead of seeking shelter.

“Hal! Truck!” Jane shot the guard directly in front of Lefèvre.

“Going!” Hal took off running, haring through the maze.

“Nigel! Taggart! Follow him!” She shot Lefèvre in the chest.

“Jane!” Taggart hesitated.

“Now!” Jane shouted. At the moment, she had the guards’ focus because she was the only one with an openly displayed weapon. That would change the moment their confusion wore off.

Taggart took off. She emptied her magazine, sending the remaining three guards ducking for cover.

She followed her team, bullets whining around her as she raced through the maze. Weaving back and forth through the skeletons of dinosaurs. Around the massive globe of the Earth, bullets cratering the North American hemisphere. Past the darkened gift shop; most of the innocent employees had left for the day. At the grand three story staircase, Jane slid sideways on the marble, trying to make the tight turn. Down the hallway, Hal came rebounding through the revolving doors.

“Bad guys!” He shouted and darted through the door into the Hall of Architecture.

“Not that way!” Jane called after him. “That’s a dead end!”

Nigel and Taggart slid to a halt, unsure if they should follow Hal or wait for Jane.

“There’s a secret door!” Hal shouted. “It leads to the library! Only staff are supposed to use it! The library is open until eight!”

How did Hal know that?

Jane hit the end of the hallway. More armed guards were coming through the revolving door, slowed down by the inherit design of the doors. She turned into the Hall of Architecture. Sunlight poured through the glass ceiling. It was huge room scattered with massive facades, tall columns, plaster casts of famous marble statues and a miniature replica of some Greek temple. It offered dozens of hiding places in deep shadows that her team apparently took advantage of. She couldn’t spot them.

“Jane!” A chorus of loud whispers came from the back corner behind ninety-foot long replica of the façade of Saint Giles du Gard.

She ran toward the corner. Two lit sticks of dynamite tumbled past as the sound of boot steps grew louder behind her.

“Jesus Christ, Hal!” Jane swore, running faster. “It’s a museum!”

The two loud explosions were followed by screams and the rumble of architecture collapsing and falling.

“Oh! Oh! God! Hal!” Jane ducked behind the stone column holding up the roof. She swapped her empty magazine for a fresh one.

Her team crouched at the feet of the Goddess Nike.

“Don’t you dare blow her up, Hal!” Jane meant the statue which had been a childhood favorite. “Why are you even still here?”

“The door is locked.” Hal pointed a weirdly normal wood door in the shadows. There was a chair beside it, as if one of the elderly human guards sat in it, keeping library patrons from sneaking into the museum free.

“Why didn’t you blow it open?” Jane didn’t really want him to blow anything up, but his logic escaped her.

“It’s a library!” Hal cried.

She shot the deadbolt on the door. “Go!”

She spun back around the column. The dynamite had taken down most of the front part of the room. The floor was filled with broken statues and columns, how much of it was real stone and how much was plaster replicas, she couldn’t tell. Most of the oni were under the rumble, not moving. Hopefully they were oni. She shot them regardless because they’d moved beyond talking their way out of the mess.

Getting out alive was one thing. How were they going to get out of this mess on the grander scale? The innocent ticket taker and the elderly human guard both saw them enter. Even if they got away from the oni alive there was still the EIA . . .

…waiting at the entrance of the library.

An entire platoon of EIA in combat gear crouched on the stone steps, guns leveled at the door.

Jane put her hands in air and hoped that they didn’t shoot first and ask questions later.

Seconds later, her team was face down on the pavement, being searched for weapons.

The museum guards chasing them came spilling out of the building. One of them panicked at the sight of the combat troops. He opened fire and a hail of bullets answered.

The silence after the thunder of guns and the heavy thud of bodies was sickening.

Taggart was beside her, staring anxiously at her.

“I’m fine,” she mouthed. She turned her head. Nigel lay to her other side. There was a slight tightening around his eyes but he seemed unworldly calm. He gave a slight nod to Jane. Beyond him, Hal was curled in a ball, arms around his head. It was Hal’s normal fetal position when he couldn’t talk his way out of trouble or run from it.

“Cease fire!” A male voice shouted.

Someone walked through the bullet casings that littered the ground. Jane could only see knee high boots. They stopped inches from her.

“When I asked you to kill the monster—” Director Maynard glared down at Jane. At Sandcastle, he’d assumed that Hal ran the show. He’d realized his mistake since then. “—I wasn’t giving you carte blanche to run amok in my city.”

“Half the museum staff are disguised oni,” Jane said. “We did something that spooked them. They tried to kill us.”

“What did you do?”

“We filmed without permission,” Jane said as honestly as she dared. Maynard would report to Windwolf or Sparrow. Since Jane couldn’t prove Sparrow was a traitor to her race, the truth could be deadly. “I think they thought we saw something we weren’t supposed to see. I did field trips here as a kid; I didn’t see anything new on display or anything missing. The director showed up with a bunch of guards. She confiscated our memory cards and then ordered her men to kill us.”

That sounded innocent enough.

Maynard called an officer over. He pointed into the museum. “Find the director and get the memory card off her. If she refuses, tell her we don’t need a warrant for stolen property.”

Jane considered telling them that she’d killed the director. No, they would find out soon enough. Besides, the woman might still be alive.

There was a sudden parting of the EIA personal as if an invisible force cleaved through the gathered mass. From Jane’s prone position, she couldn’t tell what was coming. If it was Sparrow, they were lost.

The last rank of EIA stepped aside, revealing a sekasha male. Jane wasn’t sure if she should cheer or cringe at the sight of the warrior. He could free them with a single word or strike them down. No one could stop him. She didn’t recognize the male; the sekasha only came to Pittsburgh with the Viceroy. The male wasn’t Dark Harvest, who’d saved them after the fight with the namazu. He seemed young, but it was hard to tell with elves. His black hair was gathered into a single braid threaded with blue glass beads. Despite his youth, he was taller than most of the men gathered around Jane. His wyvern armor vest and the shield spells tattooed down his arms were both in Wind Clan blue. He carried the magically sharp sword that only his caste was allowed to wield.

He was young, beautiful, deadly, and extremely confused looking.

“Walks Among Storm Clouds Looming on Wind.” Maynard bowed to the young warrior. “Is something wrong? Does Wolf Who Rules Wind need me?”

“A message has come via the distant voices.” The warrior frowned at a piece of paper in his hands. “It’s from the Queen. She sends an order to you. I’ve been looking for you to deliver it.”

“Me?” Maynard said in surprise.

The sekasha unfolded a piece of paper and read it aloud. “Our dear trusted ally, Director Derrick Senequa Maynard. You are to remember that the house of history belongs in full to the crown and not to the humans. It is only by our generosity that it operates as a place of study and reflection. Those who hunt monsters should be given full rein to the house of history in order to do a general cleaning of any and all vermin. Do not detain them in any manner.”

“It is a long complicated story,” Yumiko had said. “The kind that comes into being when people like Pure Radiance dabble in the lives of others. Impossible convergences of fate lead to extraordinary events. The more I tease apart the cause and effect, the more I realize that there are multiple oracles warring with each other, moving others around like chess pieces. What we’re seeing today is the collision of their plans as they crash toward their end game.”

Pure Radiance knew that Jane was looking for the deadly box. She just cleared the path for Jane to find it if it was still in the museum.

Yumiko had also claimed that Pure Radiance had set Tinker up to be captured by the oni, knowing full well that Tinker would destroy them.

“Thank you, Cloudwalker.” Maynard bowed to the young warrior. “I will obey the Queen’s wishes.” The director turned to his men and gestured at Jane and her team. “Let them go.”

While Cloudwalker seemed young and somewhat naïve, he quickly grasped what his queen meant by “vermin.” When all the dead guards turned out to be disguised oni, he called in laedin-caste warriors from the nearby enclaves to sweep the building. As it was after hours for the museum, it meant the librarians were rounded up and tested. Luckily they all turned out to be human.

Meanwhile the director’s body was found and the two memory cards brought to Maynard. He demanded that they play the video so he could see for himself what started the fight. Jane fought to keep her face neutral as Taggart slotted the card back into his camera.

The video didn’t start outside the museum or even with Nigel staring in amazement at the wyvern. It cut straight to Hal standing by the massive leg giving the later part of his segment.

“This wyvern was an unprecedented gift from Queen Soulful Ember,” Hal said on the video. “Because normally the scales of the creature are used to make the chest armor worn by the holy warriors and the ruling caste.”

Taggart had recorded up to the moment that Lefèvre held out her hand for the memory chip. He’d focused on the incriminating bracelet seconds before the video ended.

What the hell, Jane thought while struggling to keep the surprise off her face. There should have been a good half hour of recording on the chip before Lefèvre made Taggart hand it over. Somehow he’d swapped in a decoy when they’d heard Lefèvre coming, recording only Hal’s explanation of “bullet-proof” on it. The real memory chip with Nigel explaining his connection to Andrew Carnegie must have been the second one, the one taken from Taggart’s shirt pocket.

But it wasn’t. It was totally blank.

Relief warred with confusion. What had Taggart done with the real memory chip? It could be deadly evidence against them.

Jane remembered Nigel kneeling to straighten his pant cuff. Taggart must have handed the real memory chip off as cleanly as he later handed Nigel the camera. They’d done it without a word spoken, so she’d missed it.

Maynard switched from the blank chip to the decoy and played the short video a second time, frowning deeply. “What happened next?”

“She told her guard to kill us.” Jane left out them asking Lefèvre about the missing curator from AMNH. That part of the conversation wasn’t recorded anywhere, not even on the real memory chip—wherever it was. She was safe to skip everything about the New York exhibit. Even if Maynard was trustworthy, there were too many strangers standing around listening to discuss the still missing box full of baby dragon bombs. “They would have except Hal happened to have dynamite on him from our successful search for the monster nests on the river. We determined that there were two and found both of them earlier today and destroyed all the eggs.”

Maynard glanced toward where Cloudwalker directed the elves through searching the museum. “How did the Queen know you were here?”

“I have no idea.” Jane said truthfully. “We only decided to visit the museum this afternoon—after we found the nests. We’re doing a new show . . .”

“Yes, I saw the commercial,” Maynard said.

“And we thought that the wyvern would be a good example of what magic can do to normal animals.”

Maynard pointed at her. “I am allowing this merely because you’ve put on six years of much needed programming on how to safely deal with Elfhome wildlife. The city has been stronger because of your input. If you deviate now to yellow journalism, I will deport you along with the Chased by Monster’s team.”

Now was not the time to ask for an extension on visas, Jane decided.

“Can we continue filming now?” Jane asked instead. “We’re on a deadline.”

Maynard glanced again at Cloudwalker. “I think the elves will insist.”

#

On the pretense of filming, Jane and her team worked through the museum, tripping over scattered groups of laedin-caste warriors searching for oni. It became obvious that the bulk of the elves had come from Aum Reanu with the Viceroy and never been to the museum before. At every encounter their efforts were mutually derailed. They were the first elves that Nigel managed to nail down (not counting their previous brushes with the sekasha.) The warriors wanted translations of the museum information placards. They wanted to know if the mannequins in the dioramas like “the Arab Courier Attacked by Lions” were real humans. They’d never seen a globe of a planet—neither Earth nor Elfhome. They had questions and Nigel was more than willing to answer them all. He spoke passable Elvish but occasionally he needed Hal to jump in to translate. The two of them tag-team the elves, drawing out information that they already knew only via Boo, or the tengu, or Lemon-Lime Jello: the travel between the planets, the existence of multiple other worlds, the bioengineering via magic, and even some limited information on dragons.

Leaving her team to keep the elves occupied, Jane would examine each space carefully. The box had arrived over a month ago, so it was unlikely that they’d find it in a display, but she wanted to eliminate the possibility. The Carnegie was massive and full of surprises. When she was young, she never thought twice of all the monsters on display among the many glass cases. Aware now of how the oni could use DNA to make new monsters, she could only eye them with dismay.

Downstairs was maze of unfinished hallways, stark overhead lights and a puzzling array of rooms. There was a Quonset hut inside a secret courtyard filled with snake specimens. A Big Bone room. A Little Bone Room. (Contrary to Jane’s expectation, the room was small, not the bones contained within it.) A cafeteria and locker rooms for the employees.

They found the box in a massive workshop tucked in one corner of the basement. Someone had cut the ironwood box open, bypassing the magical lock with brute force. There was no sign of the little dragon bombs that been stored within.

#

Cold beer, grilled fresh fish, and her people all safe. Life was not perfect but at the moment, Jane was too relieved to care. They’d retreated to the studios of WQED. They only had thirty hours or so to edit several days’ worth of filming into a polished first episode of Monsters in Our Midst. Saturday morning, eight o’clock, they had to turn it over to production to add titles, music and credits.

Hal and Nigel were in the live room doing voice over narration. Taggart was in the control room with her, screening the footage for Chased by Monsters while Jane focused on Monsters in Our Midst.

“The EIA says that they got an anonymous phone call from a woman.” Taggart had fallen back to his war correspondent training. He’d interviewed some of the EIA while Jane searched for the box. “She said—and I quote—there are disguised oni at the library and sticks of dynamite. They are going to break down the door between the library and the museum and blow up parts of the Hall of Architecture.”

“Brilliant!” Jane opened her third beer. Yes, she was drinking heavier than normal but it had been a three beer week. Maybe four beer or even five. She’d lost track of the number of people that she’d killed. She’d pointed a gun at them, pulled the trigger, and seen them die. “The phone call made it sound like the oni had the dynamite but we’re the ones that did all that.”

“The EIA got the call at a quarter to five,” Taggart said. “The timestamp on our video doesn’t have Lefèvre arriving until seven minutes later. Hal was the only person that knew that he had dynamite on him. The Hall of Architecture is weirdly specific; there’s nothing in it except copies of famous statues.”

It had to have been Tooloo. The crazy old elf had complained about a new player at a dangerous game. She had implied without using the actual words that Jane’s team were game pieces to be moved about by an inexperienced player. For some reason, Tooloo and Pure Radiance both decided to get involved. “The phone call is nothing. The Queen got her message halfway across the world.”

“That was weird.”

Why had the two elves gotten involved? Was it merely to protect Lemon-Lime’s game pieces or had they thought Jane and her men would actually find the box intact? Did Jane miss something? The egg-like baby dragon bombs were smaller and thus easier to hide. Or did both adult oracles have other players in motion? Ones that weren’t driving around in fancy painted trucks and blowing the shit out of everything? Had someone slipped in and gotten the baby dragons while Jane’s team distracted everyone with explosives?

Taggart wrapped his arms around her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m coping.” She leaned back against his strength. The lights were down low in the control room so Hal wouldn’t be able to see in. “Things got crazier than I expected when we walked into the museum. It’s getting less clear what our priorities are. We found the nests and destroyed them. We found the box but we don’t know what happened to its contents. We weren’t even sure what the hell was inside. Was the animal that Nigel saw at the gala actually a dragon? How did the twins know what was in a magically locked box? It’s not like they could have opened it without magic. We don’t even know how long ago that the museum cut it open. A month ago? Today?”

“We can do what we do best.” Taggart kissed her temple. “Investigate and report.”

“That doesn’t seem like enough.”

“Yes, I know. It’s why I stopped. I was going into battle with just a camera to report to people—thousands of miles away—who weren’t even sure why their troops were there. What we did today with the nests was different, and important, and effective.”

Jane laughed. “There are some that would quibble that what we did on the river wasn’t investigating and reporting.”

“Screw them.” Taggart had had his share of beer. “I like being able to say ‘look, there’s a problem’ and then fixing the damn mess instead of hoping that someone else would actually react to what I filmed.”

“That’s what PB&G had always been about. We took care of the immediate problem but also educated our viewers how they could handle it on their own in the future.”

“I think Monsters in Our Midst is a good direction to go in. Nigel and I couldn’t have found the nests alone. We would have never been able to convince your little brother and your cousins and their cousins to drop everything and help us. I think doing Hal Heroes is important. It’s going be like an extension of your family. It will let us tap knowledge and resources quickly when time is of the essence.”

“So you’re behind all this craziness?”

“It’s not crazy.” He hugged her. “One of the things I find so wonderful about you is that you can do the impossible. Save your sister. Kill six giant monsters. Find two nests under miles of muddy river water. Find a box that has been hidden for over a month. You don’t even waver. You look trouble in the eye and make it flinch.”

“Are you drunk?”

“A little and very much in love with an amazing woman.”

He was lifting her spirits a lot more than the three beers.

Her phone vibrated with an incoming call from her mother. Jane winced at the screen and answered with, “I haven’t told Hal yet.”

“Oh dear God, Jane!” Her mother cried loud enough for Taggart to hear. He raised his eyebrows in question. “What are you waiting for? I need to be able to organize the cookies!”

“I know. I know.” It was a Pittsburgh tradition. The cookie table was far more important than the cake.

“I’ve already started the nut horns, the peanut butter blossoms, and the butter cookies. I’m scrambling to find the pineapple preserves for the Hawaiian tarts. It’s July! Everyone else in Pittsburgh have been planning the summer weddings for months! The stores are empty of wedding basic supplies!”

“We can just skip the tarts . . .”

“Bite your tongue. You are not getting married to a Hawaiian and not have Hawaiian tarts on the cookie table! I need to get my sisters involved if we’re going to get all the cookies done by the September Shutdown. I’ve drawn up the list and we’re looking at close to four hundred people if we just invite our family, your friends from high school, the people you work with, and a few others.”

Jane suspected that the “few” numbered over a hundred and included Joey and several tengu. Had she warned Taggart about the upcoming circus that her family called a wedding? She typed out “we need to talk” and then because Taggart looked worried, she added “Guest lists. Telling your family. That kind of stuff.”

He relaxed and nodded.

Jane focused back on her mother.

“. . . lady locks, macaroons, Italian knots, pecan tassies, linzer strips, raspberry and date kolacki, and of course, your favorite, pesche dolci.” Her mother was listing out the cookies. Most of them were cookies, like the Hawaiian tarts, were only made for weddings. “That’s nearly four thousand cookies. I need help or I’ll never get finished in time.”

Jane wasn’t sure if her mother intended to give out a dozen cookies per person or if she was just rounding up for easy math. “If you swear Aunt Lisanne and Aunt Marianne to secrecy, you can tell them about the wedding.”

“Oh thank you! But Jane, you need to tell Hal soon,” her mother said. “The man needs time to deal with it before the wedding or he’ll do something rash. With Hal, heaven knows what rash might entail.”

There was that.

“I don’t want anything to ruin your big day,” her mother said but meant “I won’t allow anyone to screw this up. I’ll do something if you don’t.”

“I’ll tell him,” Jane promised.

“Tell him . . . about the tarts?” Taggart guessed at the other side of the conversation based on what Jane had said. “What tarts?”

“Hawaiian tarts. I don’t think they’re really Hawaiian. They’re made with pineapple preserves.”

“Hawaiian tarts?” Hal had opened the door to catch her last sentence. He stalked forward with Nigel trailing behind, looking confused. “Hawaiian tarts?”

“What are Hawaiian tarts?” Taggart asked. “Why are we skipping them?”

“You are skipping them?” Hal pointed at Taggart. “Oh my God! You’re getting married?”

“Yes.” Jane snapped. This wasn’t the way she intended to tell Hal but it would have to do. There wasn’t any point to lying now.

“You are?” Nigel looked surprised. Did Taggart not tell him? Taggart had said he wanted Nigel to be his best man.

“Yes.” Taggart grinned. “We are.”

“Smashing!” Nigel cried with happiness. “Congratulations!”

“No. I do not allow this!” Hal shook his finger at Taggart, probably because he knew better than to point it at Jane. “She is mine.”

“I have never been yours in any way except as your producer,” Jane said as calmly as she could.

“Maybe Taggart and I should go get more beer!” Nigel said. “It’s going to be a long night of editing.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Jane said.

Hal pointed in the direction the two left to give Jane privacy. “You and him? Him? That—that—that—”

“Hal, don’t insult the man that going to be my husband. You know how I am about family.”

“Johnny-come-lately!” Hal shouted. “Why?”

“Hal, don’t make me be cruel to you.”

“What is cruel about telling me why? Why are you with him? Is it just so he can stay? I—I—I—I could marry him. That’s legal in Pittsburgh!”

“Oh god, Hal! Have you looked at the man? He’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. First time I saw him half-naked, I wanted to jump him. Do you remember the first time I saw you half-naked? Probably not—you’d just thrown up on me! You’d set yourself on fire, I had to take you to the hospital with first degree burns and you tried to down half a bottle of Vicodin on top of a flask full of Glenmorangie. Biggest waste of good Scotch I’ve ever seen! I had to take you back to the hospital to get your stomach pumped. Do you know how many times I’ve had to haul your half-naked unconscious body to emergency? I don’t know, I’ve lost count. Jesus, Hal, this is what I mean by being cruel to you. I would like to say I love you like one of my little brothers—I’ve seen you naked nearly as much as I’ve seen them without clothes—except they were toddlers when I had to take care of them!”

“I got better! I haven’t had Scotch for four years, six months and ten days.”

“Hal! You’re short! You hit me right in the boobs!”

“Yes, I know.” He got a slightly dreamy look. He realized that it wasn’t the proper face to be giving in the middle of a conversation like this. “That isn’t a good reason.”

“Yes, it is! It’s part of being sexy to me! I’m sorry but maybe it’s because my father died when I was young and it kind of got me all hung up on weird shit, but to me, husbands are taller than you. I’ve always wanted a man like the wedding cake toppers—taller than the bride! And he smells amazing! I thought it was his after shave or cologne, even though normally I’m not into that shit, but it’s him. He smells good to me!”

“I-I-I- use deodorant.”

“You wear Axe! My brothers all use Axe! Do you know how much that would mess with my head if I was attracted to the way you smelled?”

“I can change.”

“Hal! The chemistry isn’t there! I’m not attracted to you! There is nothing about you that I’ve ever found sexy! I like his black hair! I think he has the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen. His eyebrows. His eyelashes. The brown of his irises. They’re beautiful.”

“I could dye my hair. I could wear colored contacts.”

“Hal, I don’t trust you! I have to threaten to hurt you to get you to listen. I don’t like that. It makes me feel like a rabid dog sometimes. And it’s not just me! You don’t listen to anyone! You’ve got this ‘I know better than anyone’ and go plowing through the world without any regard to personal danger. That’s fine for you but I want kids and I want to know that my children are safe with their father—because shit happens and he might be all that they have growing up.”

Without warning, she was crying. She realized it as the tears started to burn in her eyes.

Why am I crying? She wiped at her tears. Was it because she thought of her father? Or was it because, for the first time, she realized what her mother was going through, losing the love of her life so young? Her parents been married right out of high school. Her mother was only a three years older than Jane was now when her father died. Twelve short years was all they got.

“Jane! I’m sorry! I can change! I can be more careful!”

“Hal, I’m in love with Taggart.”

“You don’t even call the man by his first name.”

She smacked him. “It doesn’t matter what the fuck I call him. I might start calling him Beloved. Would that make you happier?”

“You don’t need to be nasty.”

“Jesus Christ, Hal, when are you going to stop thinking just about yourself? I have been tiptoeing around for days, not telling anyone I’m getting married, because I’ve been so afraid that you will throw a hissy fit, meltdown, and go back to drinking. I didn’t tell my cousins even though they dropped everything in their life for three days to help me! I haven’t told my brothers, for god sake! I’m getting married and your self-centered candy ass is the reason I’m getting no joy out of sharing that news with my family. Instead of doing that stupid girly-girl shit of calling Brandy and asking her to be my maid-of-honor, I’ve been worried that my best friend is going to drink himself to death before the actual day.”

“I’m your best friend?”

“Yes! Of course you are! Who the hell do I spend all my time with?”

“You never told me!”

“Because the minute I told you, you would be trying to make it more than just friends. You’re my best friend. I care very much about you. I would kill to protect you. But I don’t think of you in any way that includes kissing and sex and all that shit.”

“You could grow to love me.”

“No! Don’t do that! I feel how I feel. This is like food. I like broccoli and peas and spinach. I hate lima beans and Brussel sprouts. I love corn on the cob. Peas will never make me love them like I love corn on the cob. It just never, never is going to happen.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes as much sense as you not being happy that I care very, very, much for you but I don’t love you. Not in the way you want me to. And I warn you, that if you screw up my wedding, I will not protect you from my mother. Trust me. She will hurt you very much if you do anything to mess it up. She has been planning this since she came home from her sonogram knowing she was going to have a girl. Nearly twenty-seven years! She will skin you alive if you fuck with it. That means on my wedding day you will be sober, properly dressed, and not draw any attention to yourself in any way. Anything else and you will be on her shit list. She will make you suffer. If you’re still alive.”

He fidgeted in that guilty way he had when she busted him before he could pull off something stupid or embarrassing. Jane pointed at him.

“I don’t know what is going through that mealy little brain of yours, but if you plan anything to mess this up on purpose, I swear to God, I will tell Dmitri to find someone else to be your producer.”

He looked properly horrified. “No. No, no. Not that! You’ve never threatened that before.”

“I love Taggart. But more importantly, this is the first thing in six years that I’ve asked you to do for me. Six years of all about Hal. I have cleaned up your vomit. I have kept you safe. I have made you the biggest name in Pittsburgh. I have made you part of my family. You betray me after all that—it’s over.”

He rocked back as if she hit him. “I—I—I’m going for a walk.”

Which meant he was heading for the nearest bar.

“No.” She pointed sternly at the abandoned stools in front of the microphones in the next room. “You’re going to sit down and record voice overs. You have your fans to think of.”

Hal hunched his shoulders, rocking in place. “I’m not that shallow. I can’t keep going just for some ego stroking by adoring fans.”

“Hal, right now your fans need you like air. No one is telling the whole truth. Not the elves. Not the EIA. Not the mayor’s office. Lives are on the line. Pittsburgh needs you to keep your shit together and tell the truth. Tell it loudly. Tell it bravely. Hal’s Heroes starts with you being a hero so that others know it can be done.”

“I’m only brave with you.”

“I’m going to be right behind you. Always.”

He stared at the floor, panting as if he was running.

She felt so bad for him but there was nothing she could do, not even break up with Taggart. Hal wanted something from her that she couldn’t give. If she could feel that way about him, something would have clicked in the last six years.

“Promise?” He whispered. “You’re not going to Earth with him?”

“I promise.”

He shuffled back to the live room. He dragged one of the stools closer to the microphone. He sniffed several times as if he was crying. “I’m Hal Rogers.” His voice cracked with emotions. He took a deep breath and tried again. “I’m Hal Rogers, and this is Monsters in Our Midst.”

“A dark time has fallen on us. It is hard not to feel lost and alone. To feel that we are just one against a growing number of monsters.” He took a deep breath. “Take heart. Do not be afraid. Since the time that our ancestors climbed down out of the trees, picked up sticks, and stood against the many predators lurking in the shadows, our greatest strength has been our numbers. It is not coincidence that the most feared hunters are the ones that gather into in groups. The pride of lions. The pack of wolves.”

He faltered and glanced up at control booth. He couldn’t see Jane in the dark room beyond the glass, but he knew that she was there. “You are not alone. All about you are people who will stand with you. Your friends. Your family—both of blood and of your own making. Your neighbors. We are mighty.”

He stood up, growing more sure of himself. “When I say ‘we’ I don’t just mean those of you that sink your roots deep in Pittsburgh. Those of you whose family were here before the Startup, who called Pittsburgh home for generations, who came to Pittsburgh when steel furnaces roared through the night. ‘We’ are all the ‘people’ within the sound of my voice. The Pitt students in Oakland. The scientists gathered on Observatory Hill. The EIA personnel scattered through the city. The elves who live at the enclaves. ‘We’ are everyone who is willing to reach out their hand, clasp tight to their fellow beings, and stand strong against the monsters.”

He clenched his fist and raised it. “We are one people! Indivisible! That is our strength. We must not let out foes divide us. We are Pittsburgh. We are strong. We are not alone.”

The End

Afterword

I worked at the Carnegie Museum in the 1990s prior to the birth of my son. It was a wonderful but odd place to work. I was down in the basement, near the Big Bone Room and the Little Bone Room (I kid you not.) All the administrative offices were tucked all over the place, so directions were often given as “go past the globe, turn at the Dodo, take the door under the golden eagle.” Yes, the “secret door” to the library was there when I worked at the museum.

For those who are trying to figure out where the wyvern is within the museum, I made the assumption that they enclosed the Scaife outdoor sculpture court with two entrances into the area, one through the Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibit and the other via the stairs in the modern art wing.

Windwolf crashed a skylight into the museum toward the end of Wolf Who Rules and found it under construction. Riki led him down into the basement beside the fossil café. Originally I thought the dinosaur exhibit had a skylight but I couldn’t verify it since the book was written back when the volume of information you could find on the Internet was much less. I can now see that no, while the gallery is quite tall, it doesn’t have a skylight. I decided that the skylight is the glass ceiling of the Hall of Architecture. The reader must ignore the speed at which Windwolf and Riki arrive at the steps leading down. Say it’s because Windwolf is unfamiliar with the museum and not because the author landed him in the wrong part of building . . .

* * *

John W. Campbell Award Winner Wen Spencer resides in paradise in Hilo, Hawaii, with two volcanoes overlooking her home. Her novel Tinker won the 2003 Sapphire Award for Best Science Fiction Romance and was a finalist for the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Fantasy Novel. "Monsters in our Midst" is set in her popular The Elfhome series, which includes Tinker, Wolf Who Rules, Elfhome, Wood Sprites, Project Elfhome—and the upcoming Harbinger.

Window on Samovar

D.J. Butler

“I miss windows,” Ellie said.

John tried not to listen to her. He mumbled, mouthing the strange words that ran as a vocabulary list across the screen of his multitool. Eetroo, he read. River. Sarovar Alpha had many rivers. It was a watery planet with two principal continents. Eez, tomb, gravesite. When was he going to have to talk about tombs in his new job as a Company accountant? He shook his head and scanned down, looking for more practical vocabulary. Et, food, that should be a useful word. But what did it mean that em plus a verb constituted a present progressive?

“John,” Ruth said. “You’re folding your hands.”

“You’re just jealous that I’m so flexible.” He grinned at his wife. “Not everyone can touch the back of their wrists with their own fingernails.”

“I’m worried your weak connective tissue will snap and you’ll pull your hands off,” she said.

“That can’t happen,” he said.

“Are you sure? That’s exactly what can happen to your heart.”

John grinned again and said nothing, to avoid the conflict.

Ruth shook her head and looked at the girls. They lay flopped on cushions on the floor of the family’s cabin of the Sarovar Company starship Oberon. The cushions were a pile of all of the cushions from the cabin’s sofa, the pillows from each of the cabin’s four beds, the dog’s sleeping cushion, and two more inflatable foam pillows spat out by the printing unit in the corner. Ruth sat on the sofa, also made of inflatable foam, and without cushions.

“Are you actually looking at pictures of windows on your multi?” she asked Ellie.

Five-year-old Ellie harrumphed.

“You can’t have windows on a starship,” Sunitha told her younger sister.

“You can,” Ellie said. “The ship that took us out to Jupiter had windows.”

“That wasn’t a starship,” Sunitha said. “It was just a shuttle.”

“It still goes in space,” Ellie said.

“But not between stars.” Sunitha dropped into her faux upper-crust British accent. “Sarovar System is forty light-years from Earth. We couldn’t just fly there directly through normal space.”

“Mom,” Ellie said, “Sunitha is now going to try to tell me about wormwood because she thinks I don’t know anything about it or about how we got to Sarovar and she knows everything.”

The lights in the cabin shifted to amber, which was a prelude to a broadcast announcement.

“I do not know everything,” Sunitha said.

Ellie folded her arms across her chest. “That’s right.”

“But I know more than you.”

“Mom!”

“Two hours until we begin our descent to Sarovar Alpha’s Central Transit Station,” a cheerful steward’s voice spoke over the intercom. “Please finish up your meals or your exercise sessions or whatever else you’re doing. In ninety minutes, you’ll want to be strapping yourselves into your bunks, for your safety.”

“Okay.” John stood, pocketing his multi. “Who’s going to take Ani for one last walk with me? Her next stretching of the legs should be on the planet.”

“It’s not fair to Ani to use her as a punishment.” Sunitha was eight years old, but the starchy look on her face would have suited a sixty-year-old, and somewhat peevish, librarian.

“I’m not punishing anyone,” John said. “I’m just separating you. And Ani is helping me because she’s a good dog.” He looked around the small cabin. “Except that she’s not here.”

Ellie bounced to her feet, her eyes big as saucers. “Ani!”

Twenty seconds’ search confirmed that Ani was not in either sleeping closet or in the small storage locker.

“Is she at the vet?” John asked. The vet was not actually a veterinarian, but an assistant to the Ship’s Surgeon, who used an AI docbox with a canine reference database to give Ani a monthly checkup. Mostly, the veterinarian pro tem used the time to take a few vitals and then marvel at Ani’s coat, which had jumped straight from Spring brown to Autumn rust.

Ruth shook her head. “How did we miss the fact that the dog wasn’t here?”

John shrugged. “She’s pretty quiet most of the time. I just . . .  I just assumed she was lying quiet in one of the corners.”

Ellie jabbed a finger at Sunitha. “You lost Ani!”

“I didn’t.” Sunitha’s fake English accent was gone.

“You took her for a walk!” Ellie’s voice climbed in pitch. “When you came back, she wasn’t with you!”

“Why didn’t you say something then? It’s your fault, too!” Sunitha jumped to her own feet.

“Maybe I didn’t notice!” Ellie squealed.

“It’s no one’s fault. These things happen with a dog.” John touched the control panel to open the door to the corridor. He had half-hoped that the family dog would be lying on her belly outside the door, tongue lolling out of a droll grin, but he was disappointed. “Sunitha, why don’t you come with me and let’s figure out where Ani ended up.”

“I’m coming too!” Ellie muscled past her sister into the corridor.

“Someone needs to wait here for Ani to come home,” John pointed out.

“Mom can do that.” Ellie looked up and down the corridor. “Where did you take Ani on her walk?”

Sunitha pointed and the girls bustled off together.

“Leave the door open,” Ruth suggested, “in case Ani comes back on her own.”

John nodded and followed the girls.

Ani coming back on her own was a reasonably likely outcome. It had happened all the time on Earth. Ani was smart enough to find her way home. She could easily do something similar here. He told the girls so.

“But a starship is dangerous, Father.” Sunitha’s posh accent was back. “There are engines and drives and all sorts of industrial machinery.”

“Ani could get hurt,” Ellie said.

They were right. That was the real reason to keep the dog close. But he also didn’t want them to worry too much.

“Fortunately, Ani is smart,” he said. “She’ll stay away from anything too dangerous. And if she encounters any real threat, she’ll use her chameleon powers to turn into the color of the spaceship floor and disappear.”

“Ani isn’t smart,” Sunitha said. “She’s a little skittish, because she’s a rescue. But she’s also way too curious for her own good. She’d walk right up to a crocodile to sniff it.”

“No crocodiles aboard the Oberon,” John pointed out. “Pretty sure.”

“Dad, she’s not a chameleon,” Ellie said. “It took her four weeks to turn red. And she skipped her winter color.”

“Which is the only color that would have helped her on this ship,” Sunitha said. “Since she can’t turn blue or yellow.”

“That color is called buff,” John said. “Blue and buff are the Company colors.”

The ceiling and upper walls of the corridor were buff. At waist height, a twenty-centimeter-tall band of buff ran along every wall; below that band, the walls and also the floors were white.

“I wish I had Ani’s sense of smell,” Ellie said. “Then I’d find her right away.”

“If you had Ani’s sense of smell,” John pointed out, “you wouldn’t need Ani.”

“We don’t need Ani,” Sunitha said. “We just like her.”

“We love her!” Ellie broke into a run. “Which way did you turn? Where did you lose her?”

“I took her up the lift.” Sunitha pointed.

“To the hyperpotties?”

“Hydroponics.” But Sunitha muttered this under her breath so her sister didn’t hear.

Ellie pressed the button and then jumped from foot to foot until the others joined her. They stood waiting for the lift.

“The most likely outcome is that we get back to the cabin and Ani beat us home,” John reminded his daughters. “Or someone on the crew finds her. Or another passenger. Her collar has our cabin number on it, for exactly this reason.”

A woman in the uniform of the Sarovar Marine Service passed. She was dressed in a jumpsuit with blue around the waist and shoulders, and otherwise buff. John nodded an amiable greeting. Could the crew help him?

“Yeah, but we have to look,” Ellie said.

“We have to look,” John agreed.

The lift arrived, they stepped inside, and Ellie pressed the button that would take them to the hydroponics floor. The lift doors closed behind them.

“Also, we don’t want to pay the fine,” Sunitha said. “Twenty dollars is a lot.”

John sighed. “Twenty dollars is for the first time the crew finds your animal walking the Oberon unaccompanied. The second time is a hundred dollars.”

“A hundred dollars!” Ellie shouted.

“Why doesn’t the Oberon have windows?” Sunitha asked.

“See?” Ellie said. “You don’t know.”

“It has an observation deck,” John said. “But it’s closed during the transit through the wormhole. Since we’re approaching the planet now, maybe it’s open. But I think only the crew looks through it.”

“So they can drive the spaceship,” Ellie said.

“No, I don’t think that’s it,” John told her. “I think sometimes they just . . .  reserve some luxuries for passengers who pay more. Or important passengers.”

“You’re important,” Ellie said. “You’re a counter.”

“I mean like congressmen,” John said. “Or Company officers. The Company isn’t very democratic, really. Most companies aren’t, on the inside. Anyway, we weren’t invited, not before the wormhole and not since.”

“Why don’t they look out the window in the wormhole?” Ellie said. “Are they afraid of the worms?”

“They’re afraid of space madness,” Sunitha said.

The lift stopped and the doors opened. They exited into the end of a room full of long tubes in vertical racks, with water dripping from tube to tube and lush greenery exploding along the tops.

“Space madness sounds like something out of a bad flick,” John said.

“But it’s not wrong,” Sunitha said. “No one knows what looking at a wormhole might do to a human brain, so they don’t let people look at it.”

“A wormhole might not actually look like anything,” John said. “No one really knows what a wormhole is. It’s a mathematical construct, really.”

“It’s a mathematical construct that sucked the Oberon in at the Jupiter end and spat it out near Sarovar Epsilon.” Sunitha shrugged. “So it exists in real space in some way, and it probably looks like something.”

“Touché.”

“What will looking at wormholes do to a dog brain?” Ellie wanted to know.

“The real question is, what will smelling wormholes do to a dog’s brain?”

John grinned at his own joke, but Ellie trembled as if she might cry. “Okay, what will smelling wormholes do?” she asked.

John picked Ellie up. “Nothing, sweetie, I was just making a bad joke about how Ani uses her nose more than her eyes. It’s not even true, Ani uses her eyes a lot, and anyway, we never looked at the wormhole or smelled it or anything, so Ani will be fine.”

“Because starships don’t have windows,” Sunitha said.

Ellie wrapped her arms around John’s neck.

“Let’s look carefully through all the hydroponics rooms,” John said. “I bet this place smells great to her. All the water and the plants. Do you remember taking Ani for walks in the early springtime, and how she likes to smell every bush and tree?”

“She can smell the sap starting to flow.” Sunitha was back to using her stiff British accent. That was probably a good sign.

“I think so,” John said. “Anyway, she could smell something. So I bet this place smells just great to her. Sap flowing through all these plants.”

“Plus if there are herbs and spices,” Ellie said.

“Maybe some herbs.” Sunitha cocked her head to one side. “Like rosemary or sage. But I don’t think the Oberon is likely to grow cinnamon or cloves or black pepper.”

“I don’t know.” John shrugged. “But it will be up on this deck if they do.”

They searched the hydroponics bays, peering under tables when they passed them, and between the growing tubes into the space with the scaffolding. They had turned a corner and nearly exhausted the ship’s growing space when they ran into a man with a thick mustache, wearing a solid blue jumpsuit. He knelt beside a cracked tube at the bottom of a growing rack. The tube had cracked, and mud slid through the fracture and dripped onto the floor. The man with the mustache was binding the tube with strips of epoxy tape, and then melting the tape with a handheld heatgun, so that it filled the crack and bound the tube together again.

He looked up at John and his girls, sweat on his brow and a frown on his face. “You looking for a little brown dog? Red-brown?”

“Ani’s not little,” Ellie said.

“Uh oh,” John said. “Does that mean she damaged the hydroponics?”

“No, no.” The man with the mustache grunted and hoisted himself onto his feet by gripping the hydroponics scaffolding. “No, this was my doing. I’m one of the ship’s gardeners. Tripped and fell right onto my own tube when I was here to cut a little parsley. But I saw your . . .  medium-sized red-brown dog. She went that way.” He pointed with the heat gun.

“Thank you.” John had been through this part of the ship once or twice, but not enough to find it familiar. “Remind me what’s in that direction.”

“Tool closet,” the gardener said. “And beyond that, cargo bays.”

John thanked the gardener and then had to jog to catch his daughters, who were already running.

The tool closet was stacked high with shelves bolted to the floor and ceiling. The tools not in use were strapped to the shelves with elastic bands, or kept in plastic boxes that were bolted shut.

The doorway at the far end of the tool closet was labeled CARGO. A woman in blue and buff stood in the doorway and raised a hand to stop them. John thought that her uniform marked her as a member of the Company’s Steward Service. A steward second class, or something like that.

“You can’t access your cargo now, folks,” she said. “You need to be returning to your cabin and preparing for landing.”

“I don’t need my cargo,” John said. “In fact, there isn’t any. We only have our suitcases.” He felt like an economic refugee saying that, and in a sense, he was. He was just out of school, and they’d been very careful with their money, using only inflatable foam furniture or the cheapest printed stuff. They’d left that behind in Brooklyn, and were now taking all their worldly possessions to Sarovar Alpha to make their fortune. The only possession not already in the ship’s cabin with them was Ruth’s jewelry, which was in the Oberon’s safe, to be reclaimed with the appropriate ticket only after landing.

“I’m afraid the time for tours of the Oberon is long past.” The woman smiled, but it was a hard smile. “Time to get back to your cabin.”

“Our dog is on the loose,” John said. “We need to get her and bring her back with us, and one of the gardeners said she passed this way.”

“She has her own safety straps,” Ellie said. “For takeoff and landing.”

“What will happen if we don’t bring her back with us?” Sunitha asked. “Will she fly about the cabin on landing and be crushed?”

“No,” John said. “But we should bring her back. We still have, what, an hour?”

“Go back to your cabins,” the steward said. “If your dog is wearing the right ID collar, we’ll find her and bring her back to you.”

“For a hundred dollars!” Ellie was almost shouting.

“Look, your dog won’t die,” the woman said.

“One hundred percent?” Sunitha asked.

“Well, nothing is one hundred percent,” the steward said.

“So she might die?” Now Ellie was shouting.

“She’ll probably just be really surprised and shaken up,” the woman said. “Maybe bruised. The worst likely outcome is a broken leg. But your dog will survive. But you can’t be running around the cargo bays now.”

“A broken leg?” Ellie screamed.

“Ani is nervous,” Sunitha said, lecturing the woman at high speed. “She was a rescue, she’s skittish. She won’t like anyone to help her who isn’t us. And she’ll be terrified.”

“Listen,” John said. “If a crew member finds the dog, I’m out a hundred bucks. I’ll pay you ten just to let us go look through the Cargo Bays.”

“Just the Cargo Bays?” the woman asked.

“Well,” John admitted, “I plan to keep searching until I find her or the time is really up.”

The steward looked carefully around the Tool Shed, then smiled. “The first time your dog was found outside the cabin, how much was that worth to you?”

“Twenty it is.” John handed over the cash.

“Be fast,” the steward. “The ship is bigger than you think.”

The Cargo Bays were much bigger than John remembered from his earlier tours. Crates were pinned to shelves with elastic webbing if they belong to passengers or crew, but the Company also had large amounts of cargo stowed here. The Company’s crates were bigger, of uniform size, and locked together with pins and latches built right into the crates. Clear plastic film over the stacked crates served as a backup mechanism to hold the cargo together during landing.

They ran through two large bays, looking between rows of crates and not seeing their dog. The girls panted from the running, but did their best to call, “Ani! Ani!” as they ran. When they reached the end of the second bay, and John realized that there were two more, he stopped.

“Look.” He pointed at an unattended hydraulic mule. “Let’s take a ride.”

The girls attempted at first to climb onto the lifting carriage, but John dragged them onto the seat beside himself.

“But if you lift us, we can see better,” Sunitha pointed out.

“You don’t need to see better,” John said. “Just keep calling.”

He drove the mule as fast as he could without losing control of it, both his daughters squeezed under one of his long arms. John had been headed for the Space Force Academy when a physical exam had detected his Marfan’s Syndrome, and he liked driving vehicles of all kind. He wove the mule back and forth across the aisles, maneuvering easily around stray crates standing unpacked on the floor and the occasional frowning Company crew member.

No sign of Ani.

But the last cargo bay ended in a large access door. It was big enough for the mule, or even a truck to enter, but the door was shut, and the word RESTRICTED was printed on it in large letters at eye level, above a wide window.

John first tried to drive the mule toward the door, to see if it opened. It didn’t, so he stopped the mule and dismounted to examine a control panel beside the door.

“Hey,” a voice called. “Are you crew?”

John smiled as he turned. Two men in blue and buff were bolting a crate into place a few meters away. One stood and walked toward John. John was tall, at one hundred ninety centimeters, but he was also very thin—Marfan’s. This man looked down to meet John’s gaze and probably outweighed him by fifty kilos of solid beef. His eyes looked singularly unimaginative, and his lips were twisted into a surprised frown.

“No,” John told him. “We’re passengers, but our dog is lost, and we’re looking for her.”

He looked through the window and saw more stacked crates, snapped together and wrapped in clear film. The nearest crates had large printed text on the outside: KUPARI.

That was a gun manufacturer.

The Oberon was carrying crates full of guns.

“That’s restricted,” the beefy crewman said. “I can’t let you in there. No way your dog’s in there, anyway.”

“Ani! Ani!” the girls continued to call.

“Are there any unlocked doors that let into that space?” John asked. “Not for me. I mean, my dog’s clever, is there any possible way in there she might have found. I want to get her back to the cabin for her safety, but also to get her out of your way.”

Big Beef shook his head. “No doors that aren’t locked.”

“Hey, did you say ‘dog’?” The other crewman stood and walked over. He was wiry, and much shorter. Like John, he had oversized hands, but his knuckles were visibly scarred and callused.

The light in the cargo bays shifted to amber.

“Yeah,” John said. “Kind of medium-sized. Face looks kind of like a lab’s, but built more like a pit bull. White collar.”

“Reddish brown fur?” Knuckles asked.

“That’s her!” Ellie and Sunitha yelled together.

“You have thirty minutes remaining, passengers,” the cheerful voice announced over the intercom. “As of now, all recreational and dining facilities are closed. If you are not receiving attention from the Ship’s Surgeon or a member of his staff, you must now return immediately to your cabins and prepare for landing.”

“You heard the man,” Big Beef.

“The dog,” John said. “You saw the dog.”

Knuckles sighed and pointed at the far end of the cargo bay at a lift. “Your dog went up that lift about five minutes ago.”

“How does a dog go up a lift?” John asked.

“Ani is smart!” Ellie said.

“Your dog was in the lift, sniffing around,” Knuckles said. “Someone summoned the lift up.”

“What’s up?” John asked.

“Just the one floor,” Knuckles told him.

“Go back to your cabins,” Big Beef said.

“Yes.” John nodded. “We’re on our way back to the cabins now. Come on, girls.”

He scooped the girls into his wake, one big hand on each child’s shoulder, and scooted them along toward the lift.

Why was the Company shipping guns to Sarovar? The human presence on the planet was minimal, just the Company itself, and the descendants of a few colonization efforts that had arrived in-system a few years before the Company had.

Were the indigenous species hostile? John gulped. He hadn’t read about conflict with the Weavers or the Riders or others.

He shook his head. There were plenty of animal species on Sarovar Alpha. The guns didn’t have to be intended for use against sentients, they could be for defense against the Sarovar analogs of lions and coyotes and bears and crocodiles. Which, since the planet apparently teemed with life, must exist.

On the lift’s control panel, there was just one button above CARGO BAYS. It was labeled OBSERVATION. John was still reading it when Ellie pressed the button.

“The skinny man said up,” she reminded him.

The lift closed and hummed softly as it hoisted them up to the ship’s highest level.

“Just remember that we haven’t been invited to this floor,” he reminded his girls.

“You can bribe them like you bribed the steward,” Sunitha suggested.

“Whoa, whoa,” John said. “I didn’t bribe anyone. And we don’t need to say that I did, especially to your mom. Or to the crew.”

“Maybe we can get another car and drive it around,” Ellie suggested.

John chuckled uneasily. “Let’s just focus on asking about Ani, shall we?”

The lift stopped and the door opened. Two crewmen in blue and buff stood facing John and the girls. They were broad-shouldered and they held stun batons; one has a shaved head and the other had long blond hair.

“Uh oh,” Sunitha said.

“It’s time to get back into your cabin,” Bald said. “Sir.”

John sighed. “I don’t want any trouble. I’m just looking for my dog.”

The two men looked at each other.

“Did I hear the word ‘dog’?” called a gravelly voice from the next room, out of sight.

“John?” Ruth called.

He heard a dog’s bark.

“Let him in,” the gravelly voice ordered.

“John!” Ruth called. “Girls! Come look out the windows with me!”

John and the girls moved forward from the lift chamber into the larger room, the two armed men stepping aside. Ani met them as they entered, leaping up onto one girl and then the other, tongue wagging in excitement.

The room was circular and had windows all along its outer walls. Was there shielding that closed to protect them while the ship traveled through the wormhole? But John could spare little time for the question, because through the windows, he got his first actual look at Sarovar Alpha, and it took his breath away.

The planet was blue with water. Like Earth, it luxuriated in oceans—more ocean than Earth had, in fact. Both continents, Wellesley and Napoleon, were visible. The Oberon appeared to be approaching the planet from its nighttime side, so to the right, John saw forest and mountains and plains on the northern continent, and rocks and desert on the southern, all illuminated by bright daylight; to his left, he saw darkness on the face of the waters and the land alike, with precious few lights twinkling here and there.

Beyond the planet he saw both its moons, circling as if about to dive behind the planetary mass, both fully light by the sun.

Ruth pressed against his side. “Ani made it up here on her own somehow.”

“Yeah,” John agreed. “We’ve been tracking her.”

“They read her collar and called me up,” Ruth said. “I beat you by just a minute or two.”

“I’m Captain Morris.” The captain was a thin man with curly hair and a slight stoop. He offered, and he and John shook hands. “Please, take a few minutes to enjoy the view before you return to your cabins.”

“Thank you,” John murmured.

“Ani isn’t nervous at all,” Sunitha said. She was scratching the dog behind the ears. Ani sat, tongue lolling out. “She just had an adventure, and she’s totally calm.”

“Girls.” John pointed out the windows. “Look.”

“We found Ani!” Ellie jumped in delight.

“I know.” John stooped and gathered the dog into his arms. She was heavy, but he wanted to take the distraction away from his daughters. He grabbed Ellie by the top of her head and physically turned her around to face the planet. “Now look out the window. It might be a long time before you see a sight like this again.”

“Okay,” Sunitha said, “so the starship has windows. I never said I knew everything.”

“Shh,” John said. “Just look.”

* * *

D.J.(“Dave”) Butler grew up in swamps, deserts, and mountains. After messing around for years with the practice of law, he finally got serious and turned to his lifelong passion of storytelling. He now writes adventure stories for readers of all ages, plays guitar, and spends as much time as he can with his family. He is the author of numerous novels including the Witchy War series, the Cunning Man series (with Aaron Michael Ritchey), In the Palace of Shadow and Joy, and more. “A Window on Sarovar” is set in the world of his upcoming novel Abbott in Darkness.

See the Fairville Oddity!

David Afsharirad

SEE THE FAIRVILLE ODDITY!

For the last fifty miles, Aaron had seen this message proclaimed from various sun-bleached billboards as he travelled along Highway 285. These weren't the big steel contraptions that lined the interstate, but old wooden structures, made of painted plywood, most falling down and nearly illegible. He wondered how old they were. Fairville, his phone's GPS informed him, wasn't on the map anymore, just another ghost town in the vast empty of West Texas.

It had been a mistake to take the back roads, he thought now. He'd reasoned it would be a good way to see some of the country as he travelled from Austin to Los Angeles, where Megan awaited, but though the views had been intermittently lovely, overall the trip made him lonely. Rural Texas had been emptying out for decades, everyone moving to one of the major cities along the I-35 corridor. Driving these lonesome roads, it would sometimes be hours before he saw another vehicle, and the small towns he stopped in had the hallowed out look of someone waiting to die.

And it was taking forever. He thought of an old saying he'd heard from his grandmother. The sun has rose and the sun has set and we ain't out of Texas yet.

SEE THE FAIRVILLE ODDITY!

Like the others, this sign featured a giant yellow question mark and a listing for how many miles still separated the weary traveler and the aforementioned oddity. Twenty-five, in Aaron's case.

This particular billboard looked to be in slightly better repair. And the one at the ten-mile mark looked like it might even have been touched up in the last decade. Was it possible, Aaron wondered, that though Fairville itself had gone the way of the dodo, the Oddity remained?

He hoped so. In addition to the Oddity, the billboard promised FOOD and GAS, and he could stand both. He remembered his mom always packed a cooler full of food when the family went on long road trips back when he was a kid, but this habit hadn't been passed down to the younger generation. Whenever Aaron took to the road, the fuel he ran on was McDonald's cheeseburgers and Taco Bell burritos, with the occasional gas station hot dog thrown in for good measure. What he hadn't counted on was that most of this back-country route did not fall in the shadow of the Golden Arches. Yesterday, he'd stocked up on beef jerky and Hostess cupcakes (not nearly as good as he remembered), but his supply was dwindling. Some real food would be nice. And he could top off the tank. At a little less than half-full, he wasn't in dire need of gas, but like fast food establishments, gas stations were in short supply along this forgotten stretch of road, and he did not want to have to get out and push.

So yes, he's stop and grab a bite and fill the tank—and see the Fairville Oddity, while he was at it. If, he reminded himself, there was still food and gas to be had and an Oddity to be seen.

SEE THE FAIRVILLE ODDITY!

This sign looked—well, not new, but in decent condition. Below the admonition to see the Oddity were the words "NEXT RIGHT."

The sun baked the road ahead, sending up heatwaves off the cracked pavement. The sky was bleached the same color as the surrounding land, everything in faded blues and browns and whites the color of bone. But just on the horizon, he thought he saw another billboard, with another yellow question mark.

As he approached, it resolved. Sure enough:

THE FAIRVILLE ODDITY!

YOU MADE IT!

And below the big yellow question mark, an arrow pointing down a hardpacked dirt road.

Aaron slowed the car to a stop at the intersection. He looked down the dirt road. Off in the distance, he made out the low-slung silhouette of a cluster of dilapidated buildings backed up to an arroyo. Like everything else out here, they were sun-bleached and wind-beaten. But still standing. It was hard to tell, but he thought he could make out a car parked to one side of the smaller structure. A minivan, looked like. And there were pumps out front. The lights didn't seem to be on, but that didn't mean that nobody was home.

As he neared the buildings, his hopes, however small, were dashed. The car he’d seen from the road—it was indeed a minivan—was empty, and both it and the building it was parked next to had the feel of being recently abandoned, but abandoned none the less.

Aaron pulled up to one of the pumps. It was covered in dust, but then so was everything out here, and the price of gas seemed about right. Was it possible…?

He got out of the car. The pumps were situated on a concrete island, with no overhang or awing, about two dozen yards from the main structure. Aaron removed his gas cap and set the nozzle. The pump was ancient, something that begged to be featured on one of those cheesy basic cable reality shows where the not-intimidatingly-good-looking-but-still-handsome hosts could "find" it in a barn, "haggle" with the owner, then restore it just after the last commercial break. All analog, there was no way to tell if the pump was operational without giving it a try. He flipped the switch and squeezed the handle.

Dry as a bone.

Aaron turned to surveil the station. It was made of adobe—what looked like real adobe, not just an adobe layer over a wood frame like most "adobe" structures were these days—and must have been built over a hundred years earlier. He wondered what it had been originally. Not a gas station. No call for gas in these parts that far back, was there? To the right of the main structure sat a double-wide trailer that had once been painted the same bright yellow as the question mark on the billboards. On its side, in red-faded-to-pink letters big as a man, was written: THE FAIRVILLE ODDITY! WHAT IS IT?!?!?! The door to the double wide hung ajar.

Aaron pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, noted that—surprise, surprise—he had no signal and that it was now after six. No wonder he was so hungry. If he pushed on, he might make it into New Mexico before he got too tired to keep driving. Then he could hunker down for the night—in a roach-infested motel room if there was one available, in the backseat of the car if there wasn't. Tomorrow, he'd make a beeline for the interstate, where he'd cruise along at seventy-plus miles an hour all the way to L.A. and Megan's waiting arms.

He returned the nozzle to its cradle and re-screwed his gas cap. Ducking through the open driver-side door, he did a quick sweep of the car, gathering the various used napkins, soda bottles, coffee cups, and beef jerky and candy wrappers that had accumulated on the floorboard and passenger seat. All of this he tossed in a plastic trash can the size of a whiskey barrel that had been painted to look like just that, with fake wood grain and steel hoops and three black Xs on its side. The paint was faded and peeling and the effect wasn't particularly convincing. Tourist trap kitsch, gone to seed. Back behind the wheel, he scanned the adobe structure and the double-wide once more. Hadn't he taken these back roads to encounter places such as this, the forgotten side of America that had been fading from memory? So what if it was closed? He could still have a look around, couldn't he? Realistically, he had no appointments to keep. What was ten minutes scouting an abandoned roadside attraction going to cost him in the scheme of things?

He got out of the car. By force of habit, he locked and shut the door—and immediately regretted it.

"No, no, no." He slapped his right pocket, the usual resting place for his car keys, then his left (unlikely but possible), then his back pockets, and the place on his chest where a shirt pocket would have been if he had been wearing more than a T-shirt.

"Shit!"

The sun glinted off the driver's side window, turning it into a reflective mirror. In it, Aaron caught a glimpse of his wide-eyed, frantic face before cupping his hands over his eyes to peer into the interior of his Honda.

There they were, taunting him from the center console. Right where he'd set them while mulling over whether or not to go exploring.

He knew he'd locked the doors but tried all four anyway. He even tried the trunk. The mechanism that opened the gas door also opened the trunk, depending on whether or not you pushed it up or down. Perhaps he had popped the trunk and hadn't realized it. If that was the case, there was a pass-through door in the trunk that led into the back seat so that you could haul long objects. Aaron had used this feature exactly no times since he'd bought the car, but knew that though the pass-through door had a lock, the lock was broken. If he could get into the trunk, he might be able to wriggle through into the back seat, at least far enough to reach one of the back door locks.

But when he tried to lift the trunk, it remained stubbornly closed. He tried the doors again. Then again. He peered in through the window at the keys as if he could guilt them into teleporting themselves into his pocket.

Speaking of pockets, didn't he have a cell phone in one of his? This being the second decade of the twenty-first century, of course he did. He dug it out.

Fifteen minutes later—he knew because he was staring at the clock on his cell phone—he gave up hope of getting a signal. He'd walked up and down the dirt road hoping for even just one bar, but to no avail. Had even tried lifting the device into the sky, as if it being that extra couple feet closer to orbit would help.

Two options:

Start walking.

Bust the window.

Neither was great, but soon the sun would dip below the horizon, and he figured the second was the better choice of the two. With the sun down, the temperature would start to drop —it got surprisingly cold at night—and his jacket was locked in the car with the rest of his worldly possessions. Not to mention that it wasn't too likely he'd encounter anyone willing to pick him up, certainly not on the stretch of dirt road that led to the Oddity—he'd been here over half an hour and hadn't seen a single car—and probably not on Route 55. He could walk until his phone had signal, but who knew how long that would take.

Nope, better to find a rock.

He began to search for one. There were plenty of smaller stones scattered around the cracked pavement of the lot as well as on the sides of the dirt road, some as big as his fist, but to knock the window out, he'd need something more substantial.

Aaron walked toward the arroyo behind the station. He didn't know why, but he gave the trailer a wide berth. Something about its open door. He passed the minivan, paying it attention for the first time. It was in fairly good shape. He wasn’t up on minivan trim packages and body styles, but it looked relatively new. As he rounded it, he saw that the sliding door on the driver’s side was open. When he’d been a kid, his mother had always refused to park next to a van’s sliding door. If you did, she warned, kidnappers might slide it open, snatch you up, and be gone. It was a ridiculous fear, of course. Aaron doubted that there’d ever been even a single such case reported, but the lesson had been imprinted on him at a tender age, and had more or less stuck. There was a part of him, creeping at the back of his mind, that expected some horror to jump out of the van.

But of course none did.

There were two car seats in the middle row of the van, a pink one and a larger red one. Loose crayons littered the floor. His heart nearly stopped when he saw what he at first took to be a bloodstain on the tan carpeting, but then his eyes found the overturned bottle of Big Red.

Still, it was plenty creepy.

He told himself there was an easy explanation, but gave up trying to think of one as he came around the back corner of the adobe station, and a stench hit him like a physical thing. It seemed trash service hadn't been exactly regular out in this part of the world, and the proprietor had taken to using the arroyo as his own personal landfill. The wind shifted and the smell of rotten meat wafted over him. Aaron gagged, pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth, thankful this lovely tableau was in the desert and not some Louisiana swamp, where the stench would be even worse. Down below, he saw dozens of black Hefty bags, filled to bursting. Some had burst, revealing rotten meat, moldy bread, cardboard boxes full of expired snack cakes. There was a bathtub down there, a porcelain sink that looked to date from the first half of the twentieth century. Enthralled by the depravity of the scene, he walked up one side of the arroyo.

Good God, was that a horse skull down there? He peered closer, shook himself.

"Not the time." He went back to searching for something he could use to break the window. Rocks large enough for his purposes seemed to be in short supply, but there was a rusty metal shed backed up to the station. Its door was pulled-to, but there was no padlock looped through the hasp. There might be a hammer or something in there. Aaron slid the sheet-metal door aside with a screeching that reverberated in the still air. He stuck his head inside, waited for his eyes to adjust to the low light.

A shuffling sound behind him, as of something being dragged.

Aaron pulled his head out of the shed and spun around. The wind whipped his hair and T-shirt. Not the hot wind of mid-day; there was the slightest hint of desert-night chill in it.

The shuffling again. It sounded as if it was coming from down in the arroyo. Aaron inched closer to the side. Cautiously, he peered over. He could see nothing but the piles of garbage.

Probably a rat, he thought. A big rat.

Or a coyote. They were supposedly pretty timid around people, but if this one had been making regular meals of the garbage out back of the station, its natural fear of humans might have worn off, in which case, even if it was small—and any coyote that had been gorging itself on this garbage was likely to be pretty large—it could be extremely dangerous.

The shuffling again. And did he see a Hefty bag shift over to the right of the bathtub, or was it just the wind and his mind playing tricks?

Best to find a hammer and get the hell out. He stepped inside the shed and found what he was looking for. The place was as organized as the arroyo was not. Rows of tools gleamed on the walls and the worn wooden workbench. To his left, hung a chainsaw, ax, shovels of different shapes and sizes, and a gas-powered weed-whacker. He removed a claw hammer from the pegboard and stepped out.

The rat/coyote had, it seemed, vacated the premises. Aaron no longer heard the shuffling. He walked back toward the car. As he passed by the trailer (SEE THE ODDITY! WHAT IS IT?!?!?), he paused.

"Oh, what the hell," he said. He had driven all this way, had locked his keys in the car, and would shortly have to replace a car window. He was going to see that damn Oddity.

He climbed the rough-hewn wooden steps and pushed the trailer door. The lights were off. He located a switch, flipped it one-two-three times. It made a satisfying click each time but did little else. He got out his cell phone and, using it as a flashlight, stepped inside.

To his right was the "souvenir shop." Red and yellow T-shirts with contrasting lettering hung on the walls behind a glass case, which, on closer inspection, held keychains, coffee mugs, and mousepads, all with the same "THE ODDITY! WHAT IS IT?!?!?" logo. It looked like the sort of stuff you could order from an internet site. Just upload your text and pick your colors and voilà: instant souvenirs. As with the outdoors, there was a thick layer of dust over everything inside. The T-shirts hung limp from their hangers, like wilted flowers, and slowly swiveled from side-to-side in an unfelt breeze.

A piece of posterboard on a collapsible easel to his left proclaimed that he was about to enter The Fairville Museum of Curiosities—Home of THE ODDITY. Other than the sign, there was no differentiation between the two sides of the trailer.

Aaron stepped past the sign and into the museum, such as it was. Mostly, it seemed to be a series of glass cases with desiccated knick-knacks and taxidermied animals: a one-eyed pig fetus, a two-headed snake. In one corner stood a six-legged cow. There was a Fiji mermaid, clearly fake, and a jackalope, equally as fake but charmingly so. The little critter reared up on hind legs, his glassy eyes full of mischief.

Faded photographs rested alongside the taxidermied animals and were stapled to the walls. These featured old sideshow freaks and images of Bigfoot, Yetis, lake monsters, and various assorted cryptozoological anomalies. Most were so grainy it was impossible to tell what you were supposedly looking at without first consulting the handwritten 3x5 notecard tacked next to the photo. None of the photographs looked to be original to the Fairville Museum of Curiosities. Instead, they were clipped from coffee table books and old issues of supermarket check-out periodicals. It was just the sort of junky stuff one would hope to find in a roadside attraction, and Aaron was glad he'd taken the time to stop. Well—maybe that was an overstatement. Rather, since he had stopped, he was glad that he'd taken the time to see the sights.

He shone his flashlight at the far end of the trailer where a casket-sized deep freeze lay on a velvet-draped table. On the wall behind was a vinyl poster bearing, unsurprisingly, the inscription THE ODDITY! WHAT IS IT?!?!? In addition to the yellow question mark, the poster featured a bright red arrow pointing down at the deep freeze.

"Guess I'm about to find out," Aaron said. His words cut through the stillness and he was suddenly aware of just how alone he was. He thought about the coyote/rat/whatever down in the arroyo. He shuddered and told himself it was because the air was turning chill and had nothing to do with his being all alone in what could easily be used as the set of a horror movie.

He stepped forward, his footsteps reverberating on the hollow floor. So, what was the Oddity, he wondered? He'd seen a few of these old carnival gaffs in his day. Usually it was some rubber monster so covered in ice that you couldn't quite make out how fake it was or what, exactly, it was supposed to be. The worst of them were just repurposed Halloween costumes, the best, custom-made monsters. He hoped the Oddity would fall into the latter category, though judging from the rest of the Fairville Museum of Curiosities, he wouldn't be surprised to see a gorilla suit stuffed with newspaper in the deep freeze.

A yellow line was painted on the carpet of the trailer two yards in front of the Oddity's resting place. "POINT OF NO RETURN" was written across the line in unsteady red-lettering. Aaron stepped over the line and peered down into the deep freeze.

"Well, shit."

The Oddity was gone, stolen from the looks of it. The glass lid of the deep freeze was shattered. Shards of glass crunched under the soles of his sneakers and sparkled under a few inches of dirty melted ice, now turned to room temperature water.

Probably some teenagers on a dare, Aaron thought. Or it was possible that the thieves had a fiscal interest in the Oddity. A few of these old gaffs, like the Minnesota Iceman and The Thing in Arizona, were rather famous and might be of value if sold on the black market to a collector. The rest of the stuff in the museum could be picked up for a few bucks on eBay, but the Oddity—whatever it had been—might have enticed an entrepreneurial criminal to break the door in and swipe the gaff.

On his way out, Aaron paused at the gift shop. Along with the junky trinkets was a stack of slim paperbacks: The Fairville Oddity: A History with Commentary. It was a homemade affair, printed on Xerox paper, the pages affixed with office staples. Inside there were a few black and white photographs interspersed among the dense, single-spaced text. One showed the trailer looking much newer than it did now, another, the Fiji mermaid—not even the Fiji mermaid on display at the museum, just a generic Fiji mermaid shot pulled out of some book. There was a picture of the casketlike deep freeze—and finally, yes, there it was, a photograph from above, the camera pointing down on the Oddity.

Reproduced in such poor quality, it was difficult to make out just what he was looking at. The Oddity was buried under a layer of snow-fine ice so that only the barest outline was discernible. It wasn't a gorilla suit, whatever it was; the proportions were all wrong for that. Aaron turned the book this way and that, squinted, trying to figure out what it was he was supposed to be looking at. A large oval, perhaps three feet in diameter lay at one end of the deep freeze. From this protruded two small appendages, arms he supposed. Which would mean that the oval wasn't the head of the creature, but its body. Did it have a head? He looked closer, but there just wasn't enough detail in the photograph. From the bottom of the oval, two long legs(?)—tentacles(?)—stretched to fill the length of the deep freeze. The whole thing was almost six feet long.

"The Oddity!" Aaron said, under his breath. "What is it?" He chuckled and tossed the book back on the pile, then changed his mind and slipped it into his back pocket. He'd keep it as a souvenir; there was no one around to protest his taking the old five-finger discount. He switched off the flashlight on his phone and made his way toward the crack of pale light that was the open door.

The Oddity was a fake, he thought. Had to be. Just a random assemblage of parts—maybe from real animals, like the Fiji mermaid (monkey and fish) and the jackalope (rabbit and deer antlers), maybe just various pieces of rubber and latex pieced together to give the impression of having once been some otherworldly creature.

It was rather effective, he did have to admit that. There was something familiar about the dark outline under all that frost. Not mammalian. Reptilian? Something about the bend of the legs/tentacles . . .

Not that it mattered. What mattered was getting back into his car and eating up the highway. He'd spent too much time dilly-dallying, and as he stepped out of the trailer he noted that the sun had gone down, the last rays of daylight fading to purple. He turned to push the door closed behind him, but both the bolt that the knob operated and the deadbolt had torn through the frame, leaving jagged splintered holes in the wood. Done, no doubt, by whoever had busted in and stolen the Oddity. Only something about it bothered him. It took him a moment before it clicked: the door seemed to have been kicked outward.

Once again he was aware of how alone he was. A shiver worked its way from the base of his spine to the top of his head, his arms erupting in gooseflesh. All at once he felt like getting the hell out of there. And quick.

He was at the base of the steps in a single bound and halfway across the barren expanse of the lot before he noticed the thing squatting in front of his car.

No, he thought. It wasn't a thing. Wasn't a thing at all. It was—the Oddity.

His feet nearly slipped out from under him as he skidded to a stop, his sneakers sliding on the compact dirt and gravel. His arms pinwheeled frantically trying to right himself. Falling now would be bad.

Once he had regained his balance, he stood rooted to the spot. The station, the trailer, and his car were equidistant. He was out in the open, exposed. The trailer would be his best bet, but the door was busted. There would be no way to barricade himself inside. The station was second-best, but as far as he knew, it was locked tighter than a drum. Whoever had broken into the trailer hadn't robbed the store.

Only no one had broken into the Fairville Museum of Curiosities, had they? Something had broken out.

He fixed his eyes on the Oddity, realizing what had been familiar in the poorly reproduced photograph. The bulbous head/body. The small arms. The strange bend of the outstretched legs.

As a kid, he'd been obsessed with nature documentaries, had absorbed them like a sponge. In those pre-streaming days, he'd recorded National Geographic specials on VHS tapes and watched them over and over again while other kids watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and reruns of Adam West's Batman. His favorite had been an hour-long special on amphibians. Something about them simultaneously fascinated and repulsed him. Their proportions were all wrong, the bend of their limbs out-of-whack. As he stared at the Oddity, he remembered scenes from the documentary he hadn't thought about it years.

The Oddity was a giant frog or toad. Squatting on its legs, the top of the Oddity's eyes came to the level of the car's bumper. It was a solid thing, compact. As he watched, it blinked its eyes slowly. Aaron had read an article not too long ago, something that had popped up randomly on his Facebook feed. Frogs and toads, it seemed, used their eyes to push food down their throats. When they blinked, the eyes pushed down into the roof of the mouth, giving whatever prey they'd just consumed a helping hand.

Now, seeing the monstrous Oddity, the idea made him sick to his stomach. Afraid he might puke, he averted his gaze—only for a moment. He couldn't afford to take his eyes off the Oddity for long. It was sitting still now, but with those powerful legs, it could make the distance between them in two leaps.

Slowly Aaron backed up, using his feet to feel behind him lest he trip over a rut. Falling flat on his ass would be bad right about now.

The Oddity blinked again. There was something unsettling about those eyes. They were so alien, with their oddly shaped pupils. Impossible to tell what was going on behind them. Amphibians were much lower on the evolutionary scale than mammals or even reptiles, their brains so inhuman it was impossible to comprehend what was going on in back of those eyes.

He was halfway back to the trailer when the Oddity leapt. It was like a film with a few frames missing, the reel spliced back together. One second the Oddity was sitting a couple feet in front of his Honda's bumper, the next it was in the air. It came down in a cloud of dust with an audible thump.

It took everything in him not to run for it. But there was no indication that the Oddity was interested in him. It had probably been gorging itself on trash—he now realized it was no rat or coyote he'd heard down in the arroyo—since it had busted out of its fiberglass coffin. And frogs and toads weren't, so far as he could remember, territorial. If he ran, it might see him as prey. But if he took things easy . . .

He backed up another few yards until his sneaker connected with the wooden stairs that led to the trailer.

The Oddity jumped toward him once again as he ascended the first step. It was now no more than a dozen feet away.

Okay, that was no good. If he went inside and the thing continued to follow, he'd be cornered. He put both feet back on solid ground.

Maybe he could lure it away. He sidestepped. The Oddity did not move and it was impossible to tell if it was tracking him with those dinner-plate eyes. If he could get it to follow at a safe distance, he could circle back around to his car and jump in.

Suddenly, the hammer felt very heavy in his hand. He hadn't remembered he'd been carrying it and for a moment he couldn't imagine where it had come from or what he was planning to do with it.

The keys. Damn it, the keys.

Would he have enough time to break the window? Or would the Oddity overtake him?

No matter. He would have to make time.

He sidestepped again, slowly. As he passed to the Oddity's right, several dozen yards away now, it turned to face him. No doubt but that it was tracking him now. He kept walking, slowly as possible so as not to provoke the Oddity into attacking. The Oddity followed in a series of short hops. Presently, he found himself facing the passenger's side door of the Honda. He was a good twenty feet away. The Oddity was to his right, halfway between where he stood and the trailer. Now was his chance. He'd have to run for it. He'd head straight for the car, hoping he could make it around the back bumper before the Oddity could overtake him.

His heart was beating, the blood pulsing in his ears, drowning out all other sounds save his labored breathing.

Okay, he thought. On three.

He gripped the hammer tighter. His hand ached from the vise-like grip he kept on it. He could feel the wood handle slick with his sweat. It was his last line of defense, though he admitted that it was mostly psychological. Taking down an animal that size with a hammer blow was unlikely.

One, he thought. Two.

Three.

But his legs refused to cooperate. He was fine shuffling along, like a man on a high ledge, but the idea of breaking out into a full-fledged run was untenable. What if he tripped and fell? What if his legs cramped up? The Oddity seemed to be keeping its distance. Better, perhaps, to keep moving slowly, edge his way to the car foot-by-foot and slip in.

Just then, the Oddity jumped a greater distance than it had heretofore. In a single bound it had halved the distance between them. Another leap like that and it would be on him.

He needed to move, and now. With as much will power as he had ever managed to muster in his life, he forced himself to run, full-out, toward the Honda.

He didn't trip and his legs didn't cramp. Behind him, he could hear the Oddity as it crashed down with each jump. It was following him, clearly. But the Honda was now only a few feet in front of him. He aimed straight for it, only sidestepping at the last moment to skirt around the back end of the car. As he did so, he heard a wet slap accompanied by a metallic thwap! Without thinking, he turned to look over his shoulder and faltered.

The Oddity sat six feet away, mouth agape. The sound had been its gargantuan tongue lashing out to grab hold of him. Only by skirting around the car at the last second had he avoided being hit. The tongue was a grotesque thing, a wet rope of purple and pink flesh that looked like entrails. As Aaron watched, the Oddity reeled it back in, leaving a patch of viscous saliva on the back panel of the car and a snail-trail in the dust. He felt his gorge rise, tasted hot bile in the back of his throat, but to stop now was unthinkable.

He dashed to the driver's side window and swung the hammer as hard as he could. It connected with a satisfying crack, the glass pebbling into pieces and falling away. Aaron reached through the door, pulled up the lock. As he reached for the handle, he looked up, realizing he'd taken his eyes of the Oddity for far too long.

It was gone.

Impossible.

Don't question it, he thought.

He reached for the handle, got the door open.

The car shifted, the shocks squealing in protest in concert with the sound of metal crumpling.

Aaron flung himself back from the car. The Oddity sat perched on the roof.

He ran.

The Oddity gave chase, but he couldn't risk looking back over his shoulder. Ahead, the adobe gas station sat, inscrutable, in the coming desert night. The main door was made of solid glass and he still had the hammer in his hand. If it was locked, as it most certainly was, he could smash through.

But the Oddity would simply follow behind him. He would be trapped inside with the beast.

Run to the trailer?

No. His situation there would be no different.

The Oddity crashed down behind him, almost on his heels now by the sound of it. With the length of its jumps being what they were, it was a miracle it wasn't on him already.

The station was now not more than a few feet in front of him. Suddenly, he remembered: he'd seen a side entrance when he'd gone around back to get the hammer. It was made of solid-looking wood, but had an elongated rectangular window inset in it. The service entrance, designed for deliveries. If he could smash the window, he could get the door unlocked and dash inside. The Oddity would have no way of following him.

If, he thought, he could make it in time.

He turned to his right and made his way around the building, skirting past the deserted minivan, the presence of which was now all too easily explained. He was almost glad he was running for his life. It kept his mind off what must have happened to the family in the van, the two kids who sat in the pink and red car seats, drawing and drinking Big Red.

Behind him, he heard the wet squelch impact of the Oddity crashing into the side of the station. It had been that close. He would never have made it inside.

Up ahead—yes, there it was—the door. He'd remembered correctly. He skidded to a stop in front of it, swung the hammer at the window, which shattered, not in small safety-glass pebbles, but in jagged, mean-looking shards. He tried clearing the window frame completely, but still cut his arm badly as he reached through to open the door. The pain knifed up his arm and forced his jaw shut with an audible snap. As he pulled his arm back through the window, he saw rivulets of crimson blood streaking down his arm.

Well, when he was inside and safe, he could deal with that. A cut wrist wouldn't make much difference one way or the other if the Oddity got ahold of him. He chanced a glance to his left just as the Oddity appeared around the corner of the station. There was something disturbing about how calm it looked. With a slavering bear or wolf or dog, you could see the blood-lust in the creature's eyes.

Aaron swung open the door and fell inside. He threw his weight against it, and locked it behind him.

Inside, the station was a tomb, dark, cool, and silent. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, checked to see if he had signal (he did not), and turned on the flashlight.

He was in the back stockroom. Ancient wire shelving held nondescript cardboard boxes. But cryptlike or not, the seals of the windows and doors hadn't managed to keep out the desert dust. He scraped at it with his sneaker, tracing a pattern on the worn linoleum beneath. Must be a half inch of dirt in here, he thought. How long would it take to accumulate?

All thought was cut off as the door jumped in the frame behind him. Aaron darted away from where he stood, nearly tripped over an empty carton that, according to the stark black lettering on the side, had once contained Snickers. The door jumped in the frame again—but held.

"Guess you'll have to find another snack, asshole," he called through the door.

Slowly, he stepped back toward the door and looked out the window. The Oddity sat in the dust, facing away from him now. Off to its left was the trash-filled arroyo where it had come from. If he sat tight long enough, it might lose interest and return there. Or he could make a break for it out the front doors. Frogs and toads could be crafty hunters, but they weren't particularly intelligent. The Oddity would have no way of knowing that Aaron could escape through the front of the station.

But first, he had to take care of his cuts. He looked down at his blood-slicked arm and at the spatters and small pools on the floor of the stockroom. Impossible to tell how badly he was injured; there was too much blood obscuring the wounds. It looked bad but not life-threatening.

He made his way down the narrow aisles between the shelving. Against a wall was an industrial sink with a cast iron faucet. He crossed to it, spun the rusty knobs. They turned with a protesting groan, but nothing came out of the pipes.

Sure, the electricity was off, why wouldn't the water be?

But this was a convenience store in the middle of the desert. There ought to be jugs of water.

Behind him was a door marked OFFICE and another, which was not labeled. He pushed through it out into the convenience store proper. It wasn't as large as he had expected, looking from the outside. He made his way to the refrigerated case along the back wall. Ignoring the soda and beer—and he didn't even want to think about how spoiled the milk was—he found the case that contained water, opened it and removed a gallon jug. There didn't seem to be a first aid shelf, but he found paper towels. They would have to do as a bandage for now. As he went back into the stock room, he chanced a look outside through the glass front doors. It was full-on dusk now and soon it would be too dark to see. If he was going to make a break for it tonight, he'd need to do it soon.He looked around for the Oddity, but didn't see it. He'd look out through the storeroom again, once he got his arm taken care of. Hopefully, it had disappeared back down into the arroyo. But if it was still waiting for him around the side of the building, he'd make a run for it. The thought of spending the night in the station did not appeal at all.

He pushed back through the storeroom door and went to the sink. There were three cuts on his arm, as well as an assortment of scrapes, but only one was what he might consider serious. He washed the wounds clean, managed to mostly staunch the flow of blood, though the most serious cut still seeped, and fashioned a bandage out of the paper towels and a roll of duct tape he found hanging on a peg above the sink.

Throughout this process, he had kept his back to the service entrance, as though ignoring the Oddity would make it go away. Now, he edged closer to it. Through the empty window inset in the door, he could see the moon rising, not quite full but close. Good. That would give him at least some light to see by when he made a break for the car. As he edged closer, he put his eye up to the busted-out window.

The Oddity sat a few feet away in the dust, facing the door.

Waiting.

It made sense. Most frogs and toads were ambush predators, and while the Oddity had displayed slightly different hunting patterns by stalking and finally chasing after him, it wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine that it probably more or less behaved the way its normal-sized counterparts did.

Quietly as possible, he backed away from the service entrance and walked back into the convenience store. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a run-of-the-mill gas station convenience store. Wire racks of candy bars, beer, soda, a few grocery staples, oil, wiper fluid. And behind the scuffed counter, lottery tickets and rows of cigarettes.

Aaron had smoked in college, had started in high school, in fact. He'd quit at the insistence of an old girlfriend who said he tasted like an ashtray. (She hadn't thought it funny when he asked her how many ashtrays she'd Frenched to make that comparison.) There were some former smokers, he knew, that spent the rest of their lives craving a cigarette, but not Aaron. He'd quit cold turkey and had never again felt the urge.

Until now.

He walked around the counter and helped himself to a pack of Camels and a Bic lighter. The cigarette tasted terrible, but it wasn't stale. Whatever had happened here hadn't happened all that long ago, in the scheme of things. He walked out from behind the counter to a rack of beef jerky, used his cell phone to check the expiration date on the package. Still good, and would be for some time. Same story with the Twinkies, which urban legends aside, had a relatively short shelf life.

Now was the time to run to the car, but he would feel better if he had something in his hands to defend himself. He'd dropped the hammer at some point in his haste to escape the Oddity and was now unarmed. But he was stuck inside convenience store, not a Walmart or Bass Pro Shop. No handguns for sale, no bows and arrows. Not that he'd know how to use either. But no hunting knives either. There was the tools he'd seen in the shed out back, including, if memory served, a rather lethal-looking axe, but they might as well have been on the moon for the good they would do him out there.

Aaron dropped the cigarette to the floor. He didn't want the thing, after all. As he ground it under his foot, he glanced over and noticed a wood-paneled door along the back wall, next to the row of refrigerated cases, marked PRIVATE. It couldn't lead to the back storeroom. A waste of time? Or perhaps there would be something back there he could use against the Oddity.

The moment of indecision stretched out until it felt to him like he had been standing on the scuffed linoleum for the better part of his life. Finally, he managed to shake himself out of it.

"Okay," he whispered as he headed for the door, "in and out. Five minutes tops, then I bolt for the car."

The smell assaulted him as he pushed through the door. The festering odor he'd smelled wafting up out of the arroyo multiplied by several factors of one hundred. In the cramped quarters of the apartment attached to the convenience store—for that is where the door led—it was almost unbearable. Aaron turned his head and vomited on a hook rug just inside the doorway. It tasted of bile and the half-cigarette he'd just smoked, a foul blend of acid-tang and ashy putrefaction. The stench was a real thing, a thick weight pushing against him.

Stumbling out of the apartment, he gasped for a breath of what a moment earlier he would have described as stale, musty air, but now felt as clean and fresh as a mountain breeze. He was still gagging, but thought that with any luck he would be able to keep from vomiting again.

Pulling his shirt up over his nose wasn't going to do much to keep the odor out, but there might very well be something he could use against the Oddity in there. Possibly even a gun. He found the automotive section of the store and opened a pack of shammies, which he held over his nose and mouth, then plunged back into the darkness and stench of the apartment.

It was a small cavern of a living space. One room for the living area and kitchenette. A sofa sagged in the middle of the room in front of an ancient tube television outfitted with foil-covered rabbit ears. Dirty plates were stacked on the coffee table and in the mildew-stained sink of the kitchenette, but there was no way that this was what caused the stink. Aaron stepped hesitantly into the room. He opened a closet on his right. Jackets hung below a shelf sagging under the weight of old Kodak slide carousel boxes. He rummaged around for a moment, but if there was a shotgun or baseball bat hidden among the detritus, he couldn't find it.

Closing one door, he walked toward the other. This one was set into the back wall and as he approached, he though the stink was getting worse. Perhaps it was because he was venturing deeper into the apartment, but he had a feeling that whatever was behind that door was what was causing the smell. And he didn't particularly want to find out what it was.

But the door undoubtedly opened onto a bedroom, the most likely place to find a firearm. The knob felt cool in his hand. He turned it and eased the door open.

That the odor didn't waft out on a visible green cloud was nothing short of a miracle, he thought. And all at once he was aware of a sound he hadn't noticed before. A low-level buzzing that was now almost deafening in the enclosed space.

Steeling himself, Aaron stepped into the bedroom and looked down at the rotting corpse of the old man who had once owned and operated the service station as well as the Fairville Museum of Curiosities. He looked to have died in his sleep. There was no sign of violence and the covers were pulled up around his neck. Aaron didn't want to do any further investigating. It was obvious what had happened. Old guy, all alone out here. He dies one night while the museum and station are closed and he never reopens. The few people that stop by assume the place is deserted and move on. When the power and water bills aren't paid, the utilities are cut off and the place looks even more deserted than it did before.

There were frogs in the arctic that would freeze solid as rocks during the winter. Come spring, they'd thaw out, good as new. When the power was cut off and the deep freeze that housed it started to defrost, spring had come for the Oddity for the first time in who knew how long. Maybe since the last ice age.

How strange, Aaron thought, it must be for it to wake up in a world that has passed it by. A desert landscape wholly alien to what it knew. It was the last of its kind, no doubt about that.

Well, if it tried to make a snack out of him again, he would see to it that it joined its compatriots in extinction. But in order to do that, he'd need a weapon. The bedroom was a wreck. Stacks of old newspapers tottered, lining the walls. But there was a small night stand on the side of the bed nearest him. If there was a gun here, this would be the place to find it. Aaron took a last long breath through his shirt and held it as he entered the room and rushed to the night stand. Inside: a flashlight, a Gideon's Bible stolen from some motel, and a stack of vintage porno mags that, judging by the soft-focus photography and feathered hair, dated to the 1970s. No gun. Whoever the dead man had been, he hadn't been too afraid of intruders all alone out here.

Aaron did his best to avoid looking at the desiccated corpse as he made his way out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

A window over the sink in the kitchenette was now a black mirror. It was full dark outside. No more time for dilly-dallying. If he was going to go for the car, he'd have to do it now.

Without thinking—because if he thought, he'd never be able do it—he walked out of the apartment and through the convenience store to the glass double doors. Outside, he could just make out the outline of his car at the darkened pump island. Not far. Not really. Farther than he would have liked and farther than was standard for a gas station to be set back from the pumps. But not far.

He could make it, easily.

With shaking hands, he unlocked the doors. The deadbolt snicked open with a deafening sound. Did frogs have good hearing? That was one fact he couldn't dredge up from the memory of nature documentaries past. If they did, it was possible it had heard him.

"Three, two . . ."

Suddenly the door was open and he was outside. He hadn't even waited for his countdown to end. The air was brisk now, a north wind cutting through him like a blade. His feet pumped the ground beneath him, churning up dust devils as he ran. He closed half the distance, two thirds.

I'm going to make it, he thought.

Three quarters of the way there. Now, he could make out the details of the car.

He skidded around the front of the car and tripped. His jaw snapped shut as he fell painfully on his right knee. He tasted the metallic tang of blood in his mouth. He tried to push himself up on scraped palms, but he was unable to stand. Was something broken?

He felt himself being pulled inexorably backward, his shirt riding up, his stomach scratching on bare cement. With effort, he managed to turn onto his back.

The Oddity sat, mouth agape, tongue extended. It was looped around his left leg. The Oddity was reeling him in like a fisherman hauling in a prize bass. Only this wouldn't be a catch-and-release situation if Aaron didn't manage to break the line.

He fought back vomit as he dug his fingers under the slime-slick rope of the Oddity's tongue. It stretched but was as strong as a steel band. Beating at it seemed to do no good, and all the while he was trying to escape, the Oddity, with its fixed dead eyes, was pulling him ever closer to his death. He turned back on his stomach, grasped at the pavement but only succeeded in breaking his fingernails. Pitted as the slab was, there was not a handhold sufficient to grab onto. Rolling back over, he began kicking at the Oddity's tongue with his right leg, clawing at it with bleeding fingers. It was as if he was doing nothing. He was close enough now to smell the swamp-stink of the Oddity's breath. He could see the razor line of jagged teeth in its jaw. Small, yes, but incredibly sharp, and angled in such a way that they prevented prey from wriggling back out of the mouth. This was because frogs and toads ate their meals whole, like snakes. Insane that he was thinking all of this as the last seconds of his life ticked away, but Aaron seemed unable to help himself. His foot was no more than six inches from the Oddity's jaws. Once inside, it would clamp down like a bear trap and that would be it. No escape. Once something went in a frog's mouth, it wasn't coming back out.

Again, an insane, useless memory from that old National Geographic special: an American Bullfrog that had starved to death after trying to eat another frog of slightly greater size. The bigger frog had gotten stuck in the throat of the smaller, and the smaller, due to its anatomy and method of hunting, had been unable to spit the larger out. The image had fascinated and sickened him as a child and it came back now with the force of a freight train, and suddenly he knew that it might just save his life.

With renewed ferocity, he clawed at the Oddity's tongue, to no avail. But as he was drawn closer, he sat up and attacked its bulbous eyes with hammered fists. He felt one pop under his hand, hot blood and vitreous fluid spraying onto his arms and face. The eye was like a deflated balloon.

And it had worked. The Oddity released his leg, reeling its tongue back in. Aaron scrambled to his feet, ran for the car. The Oddity gave chase. If it lashed out with its tongue before he could get around to the driver's side, he was sunk.

But no. He had made it around the car.

Behind him, he could hear the Oddity give chase. The open window and unlocked door were a beacon and he wanted nothing more than to climb inside his car and put the gas station, the Fairville Museum of Curiosities, and most of all, the Oddity, behind him. But there wasn't time. As the Oddity rounded the car, Aaron hoisted the barrel-painted plastic trash can that sat next to the pump. The soda bottles and coffee cups he'd deposited earlier clattered to the ground, the wrappers and napkins blowing away on the chill breeze.

The Oddity opened its mouth, the massive tongue preparing to dart out. He raced toward the Oddity, the trash barrel held out in front of him like a shield. When the tongue made contact with it, it was like being pushed hit by a baseball bat, but Aaron kept his feet under him. He held onto the barrel, rushing forward as the tongue reeled it in. With all the strength he could muster, Aaron jammed the barrel down the throat of the Fairville Oddity, wedging it as tight as possible between the beast's jaws. He stumbled backward and watched as the giant frog flailed in the dirt, trying to dislodge the obstruction from its throat. It banged into the pumps, knocking the nozzle loose.

Aaron climbed into his car, found the keys where he'd left them, started the engine, and threw it into gear.

As he made his way down the rutted gravel road, he watched as the Oddity struggled. It wouldn't suffocate. Its anatomy would allow it to go on breathing until it finally starved to death. It would be slow and probably painful, to the extent that a frog could feel pain. For a moment, he felt a little bad about it, killing this wonderful freak of nature. Then he looked down at the slimy residue on his leg left by the Oddity's tongue. He remembered the stink of its breath and the wet shine of its throat.

"Screw you, Oddity," he said. "And screw Fairville."

Soon, he was back on the highway. On the opposite side of the road, he saw the outline of a billboard against the night sky. He glanced up at his rearview mirror as he passed. As he expected it read, "SEE THE FAIRVILLE ODDITY!!!"

He had. And once was enough.

* * *

David Afsharirad is a writer and Associate Editor at Baen Books. He lives in Austin, TX.

Man on the Moon

Elaine Midcoh

Sasha Venditti hopped-skipped in her spacesuit just like the guide taught the group that morning. Two people on the tour, a teenage boy and an old woman, had already fallen at least once, but Sasha took to Moon hopping like a newborn calf takes to its mother’s teat, all natural, knowing what to do. She had saved nine years for this vacation, deciding that owning a home by age 35 was less important than getting to the Moon by age 35. And this excursion, the Alan Shepard’s Golf Ball Scavenger Hunt, had cost her at least five months’ salary, but, God, it was worth it.

“Don’t forget to look up,” the guide’s voice sounded in her ear. A full Earth hung in the lunar sky. If my smile gets bigger I’ll crack my helmet, she thought. At home right now she’d probably be reviewing a business merger deal or advising some self-important client on a hostile takeover. But instead I’m one of the .003 percenters who’ve walked on the Moon.

I’ll find Shepard’s golf ball. It wasn’t the glory she wanted, but the prize. Anyone who found one of the two golf balls that Alan Shepard famously hit during his Apollo 14 Moon mission was promised a free, all-expenses paid return vacation. And no staying in her little windowless berth, either. The finder would get a seven day stay in one of Fra Mauro Luna Resort’s best rooms, one that actually had a double bed and a window. The fact that no one had recovered either golf ball in the twelve years the resort had been opened did not deter her.

She had just hopped-skipped to the near edge of a small crater, certain she had spotted a ball, only to find yet another round lunar rock, when the tour guide’s voice sounded again in her ear.

“Ms. Venditti. Sasha Venditti. Please wave your arms.” Sasha turned around. She knew she was slightly away from the rest of the group, but didn’t think she had gone so far off that the tour guide would call her back. She spotted him standing on the roof of the rover-bus that had brought them out. She waved at him. He opened his arms wide then brought them to his chest. It was the signal he made them all memorize that morning: “Come to me.”

What the hell? She bit her lip, glanced around her one more time, just in case one of Shepard’s balls was close by, then hopped-skipped back to the rover-bus. As she reached the tour guide, she noticed a small rover approaching over a rise.

She started to ask the guide what was happening, but he waved his arms and put one finger against his helmet. Sasha’s heart jumped. She and the other tourists were all on the same radio frequency. He doesn’t want them to hear. The other rover pulled up about twenty feet away from them. The guide gestured her toward it.

The other rover had only four seats, two in front and two in back. The driver pointed to the back passenger seat. When she sat down, the driver got out, gently pushed on her shoulder so that she would lean forward and made an adjustment in the back of her space suit. That’s where most of the controls for the resort’s tourist space suits were located, out of reach from potential idiots who might be tempted to play with the buttons and dials. Sasha assumed the driver was switching her radio channel so that they could communicate, but instead of talking with her, he handed her a tablet with a thick protective covering, then got back in the driver’s seat. As they took off, obviously heading back to the resort dome, she heard a slightly tinny, but still familiar voice in her helmet.

“Sasha, are you there?”

The tablet’s view screen came alive and there was the smiling bearded face of Zander Henrikson, her boss, interrupting her vacation. Damn. As he spoke, the audio came faster than the visual, with a micro-second of lag time, making Zander look like he was starring in a poorly dubbed foreign film.

Do not curse out the boss. “Yes, I’m here.” She couldn’t believe Zander was calling. The cost of phoning the Moon was, well, astronomical. Whatever this was had to involve one of their “concierge” clients, the super wealthy big shots, for whom, if they contacted the firm and said they needed someone to eat their garbage, the firm would send an attorney to munch on their trash.

Zander didn’t waste any time. “Sasha, we need you to help out Andrin Lamar.”

Sasha frowned. Andrin Lamar was one of the firm’s six billionaire clients, the founder and president of a world-wide mass communications network. Zander and the other partners typically wouldn’t let any of the firm’s staff lawyers, even a senior attorney like her, near Lamar. The partners always handled his work themselves. She tried to keep the frustration out of her voice. “Zander, I’m on the Moon. I don’t have access to files. I’ve never handled any of his work. I don’t see how I can help with anything.”

“We’re not asking you to help Lamar, Sr. We want you to help Andrin Lamar, Jr., his son, nickname, A.J. He’s on the Moon, staying at your resort, and he’s in trouble.”

Sasha thought a moment. She had noticed a loud guy, with a bellowing laugh and the beginning of a beer belly, in the resort dome’s dining room and thought he seemed familiar. She realized he had to be Lamar’s son, albeit a younger and slimmer version. He was travelling with a bunch of other college-age kids, all laughing, shouting and somewhat obnoxious, butting the breakfast buffet line and storm trooping up and down the stairs. “What kind of trouble?”

Zander’s smile disappeared. “They say he killed a guy.”

Sasha’s eyebrows shot up. Her driver made the final turn back to the resort dome. Within minutes they would enter the airlock and then she would—what? “I’m not a criminal defense lawyer. I haven’t read a criminal case since law school. What am I supposed to do?”

Zander grimaced. “Whatever you can. The next transport to the Moon is in ten days. It’s booked up, but we’re trying to clear a seat for a top defense lawyer. Until then, you’re on your own.”

The screen went dead. Zander didn’t even say goodbye.

The grinning, joking technicians who had helped Sasha and the other tourists put on their suits earlier in the morning were not the ones who greeted her in the airlock. Instead, she was handed off to a tall, fit, clean-shaven man, just a little older than herself, probably in his early 40’s judging by the hint of gray in his hair, and he was not smiling at all. He was wearing the standard resort-logo jacket, but unlike most of the staff, he wore a collared, button-down shirt, rather than the usual polo. Though he lifted off her helmet and eased her out of the space suit with smooth movements, Sasha couldn’t help but notice the glaring eyes and clenched teeth. He was like a well-trained dog told to heel by its owner, but wanting nothing more than to rip apart a nearby squirrel.

“You’re Sasha Venditti?” She nodded.

“And you’re really an attorney?”

“Yes,” she said.

He shook his head. “The bastard actually traveled to outer space with his lawyer.”

She wanted to say, He didn’t travel with me. I’m on vacation! But her nine years with one of the world’s biggest international law firms broke through instead. “By ‘bastard’ I assume you mean my client, Mr. Lamar?”

“That’s exactly who I meant.”

She gave him her toughest lawyer I’m gonna whip your ass look and said, “So we know who I am, and we know who he is—who are you?”

He stiffened. “Gil Territt. I’m the Operations Manager for Luna Resorts. That means I’m in charge of the day to day operations. When everything is working fine, when the division chiefs can handle their areas, then I have an easy day. But if the toilets don’t flush and the maintenance crew can’t fix them, then that’s my problem. And if a bastard tourist murders one of my workers, then that’s my problem too.”

Oh God. A worker? No wonder he’s pissed. “Mr. Territt—Gil, if I may– I’m sorry for your loss. I didn’t know the victim was one of your employees. In fact, I don’t know anything about this case. Why do you think Andrin Lamar killed your employee?”

He stared at her and pursed his lips. Then he let go with a long exhalation. “Because, Ms. Venditti—Sasha—we have it on video.”

Gil offered to walk Sasha back to her berth so that she could change out of her excursion blue and white tight-fitting jumper, but Sasha declined. Wearing the excursion jumper was proof solid that she had left the dome and actually walked on the Moon, something she wanted to be reminded of, now that her damn boss Zander had called her to work. She momentarily thought about not putting on the specially weighted shoes that provided a more normal Earth gait while in the resort dome. God, she wanted to hop-skip some more in the low gravity, even if it was in the dome, but Gil’s grim face indicated he wouldn’t appreciate that indulgence.

Gil’s office was on the dome’s third level, about midway up the dome. His office was a bit chillier than the dome floor where almost all the tourist amenities were located. She wondered if the lower temp was a deliberate choice for Gil or had something to do with the dome mechanics. But the cold didn’t matter. Sasha couldn’t stop staring. The office was set against the transparent dome wall itself, giving a spectacular view of the lunar surface. For the first time Gil smiled. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Sasha nodded. “I paid a good part of my salary to be here. You get paid to be here. I wonder which one of us made the better career choice.”

Gil’s smile faded. “Normally, I’d say me. But not today. Do you want to see the video?”

Sasha tore her eyes from the view. “Yes. But first, where’s my client?”

“We locked him in a storage room in the mess—that’s the kitchen. We don’t have a jail. Do you want to talk to him before you watch the video? ”

“No. Let’s watch it now.”

“Okay. I’ll explain what you’re seeing.”

Sasha shook her head. “No. Let me watch it without any explanations or commentary. No offense, but I don’t want to be influenced by you. I want to see whatever it is ‘as is,’ get my own interpretation.”

Gil set her up at his desk in front of his large screen computer monitor. “Just click on this when you want it to start,” he said. Then he sat on a chair on the other side of the desk.

Throwing up was not one of Sasha’s planned vacation activities, though as the contents of her stomach traveled up her throat she did wonder how far they might travel in the Moon’s lower gravity. It was a more pleasant thought and a needed diversion from the video. A video of the first murder on the Moon, she thought.

“Here,” Gil said, pushing a small garbage can toward her. “If you’re going to lose it, do it in there. I don’t need your muck in my office.”

Sasha, afraid to open her mouth, nodded her thanks. She closed her eyes, swallowed twice and willed her stomach to stop flip-flopping. After a few minutes she handed the garbage can back to Gil.

“Thanks, but I’m okay.” She hesitated a moment. Time to be a lawyer. “I’d like to ask you a few questions. Your employee . . .” she began.

Gil gritted his teeth. “Ernesto Montaldo, one of our best tour guides. He’s been with us for four years. He was twenty-eight. A great guy, a really great guy.”

“Again, my condolences. There’s something I don’t understand. The dome is near the Apollo 14 site, but that looked like . . .”

“The Apollo 11 landing site. Tranquility base.” Gil finished.

“But why were they there? How did they even get there? It must be miles from here. And Apollo 11 is the first off-world World Heritage Site—it’s not supposed to be disturbed. No one wants tourist footprints near Neil Armstrong’s, right? So why were they there?”

Gil sighed. “Apollo 11 is 1,252 kilometers from here, that’s about 775 miles. And yes, there aren’t any excursions to Apollo 11, not officially. But operating the dome is expensive. This place is an experiment. You know that. We charge big money, but we’re barely profitable. What we are is prestige, something rich tourists brag about to their friends and big companies brag about to their stockholders. ‘Our company is a prime investor in the Fra Mauro Luna Resort,’ they like to say. So when a billionaire investor—or his son—wants to visit the Apollo 11 site . . .”

“You take them.”

“Yes.”

She shook her head. To be a billionaire. She thought about the video, rewinding it in her mind. A.J. Lamar gets to visit a place closed to practically everyone else and the idiot decides to steal a relic. And when the tour guide, Ernesto, tries to stop him, Lamar uses the plaque—the actual honest-to-God- “Here Men from the Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon the Moon . . .” plaque—and smashes Ernesto’s faceplate. Why did I have to see that part of the video? Why did I have to see Ernesto’s face when the plate cracked, why did I have to see . . .  Sasha closed her eyes, but the playback of Ernesto’s last moments of life wouldn’t erase from her brain, the ice forming on his lips and nose, and the fear, oh God, the fear in his eyes. And now I’m Lamar’s lawyer.

Sasha opened her eyes. I am his lawyer. “Gil, how is it that we have this video, such a detailed video?”

Gil shrugged. “People want souvenirs. The rover that took them was equipped with three video recorders and both Ernesto and Lamar had multiple recorders attached to their suits. Typically, after an excursion, we take all of the videos and edit them to create a keepsake of the trip. This time it’s a keepsake of a murder.”

“And how did Lamar get back here—I mean, with Ernesto dead, how could he even find his way?”

Gil’s fists clenched. “He called for help on the radio. He said there had been an ‘accident,’ that Ernesto was hurt. We actually mounted a rescue mission for that piece of scum.”

When Gil walked her through the kitchen’s large food prep area, down the hallway to the storage room where Lamar was being held, she noticed three burly resort employees standing guard outside the locked door.

She glanced at Gil. “Seriously? You need three people to make sure he doesn’t escape?”

“No, I need three people to make sure no one breaks in and kills him. Ernesto was popular among us Moonatics.”

She stopped. “Us what?”

Gil sighed. “Moonatics. It’s what we call ourselves, those of us who choose to live here. We’re Moonatics.”

She said, “Nice. Ernesto was a Moonatic too?”

“Very much so. Ernesto came from Dubaquai—you know it?”

Sasha nodded. Dubaquai was a small island nation famous only for its misery: earthquakes, cyclones, limited resources, high crime rate, corrupt government and extreme poverty. It was a basket-case country, so bad that most international aid agencies had given up on it, unable to operate because of government theft of goods and demand for bribes.

“Ernesto clawed his way out of there. He started in the ocean cruise industry, working in laundry—that’s one of the worst jobs. Along the way he taught himself a few languages and worked himself up to assistant Maître d' at various ships’ restaurants. Then he applied with us. He loved it here. He was our only employee who refused to take the free trip back home every year for his vacation.

Gil unlocked the storage room door and held it open for her. “Knock on it when you want to leave,” he said. She went inside and Gil closed the door behind her, followed by a loud click of the lock.

A.J. Lamar sat on a padded bridge chair tucked into a corner, next to heavy metal shelving attached to the wall. The shelves themselves were filled with hundreds of gigantic sealed packets of food. Lamar’s right wrist was handcuffed above his head to a shelf holding a multitude of vegetable packets, from asparagus to carrots to potatoes to zucchini. Sasha thought the room should smell of food, but it had the same sterile air smell as most of the dome. Lamar was wearing a carbon copy of Sasha’s blue and white excursion jumper, which reminded her of the pure, unadulterated joy she had felt just hours earlier. She restrained herself from slugging him. Lamar peered up at her with watery eyes. She thought he’d been crying. Was it for himself or Ernesto? She hoped it was, at least, for both of them.

“Are you really my lawyer?” he asked. “I have to pee.”

Ninety minutes later Sasha was back at her berth. She had exchanged her excursion jumper for a plush NASA-themed bathrobe that she had bought especially for this vacation. On her small table was the uneaten, still simmering, half portion of a beef stew hot meal she had bought at the dome’s convenience store. It didn’t taste good, but her room smelled great, almost like an oven was cooking. Lying in bed she went over the notes in her tablet. Lamar had sworn he hadn’t intended to kill Ernesto. “It was all just a joke, really.”

He’d told his friends he was going to the Apollo 11 landing site and they hadn’t believed him. So they’d dared him to bring something back from the site to prove it. ‘Bring the plaque,’ they’d said.

“I wasn’t stealing it,” he’d told Sasha. “I would have given it back.” But when Lamar reached over the chain link fence and picked up the plaque, Ernesto ordered him to put it down and tried to grab it from him.

“I didn’t mean to break his helmet. Honest. I just wanted to push him away.”

“So why did you hit his faceplate three times?” she had asked.

Lamar had glared at her for just a second, then he’d shrugged. “He shouldn’t have tried to order me around. I’m the customer. He was an employee. My dad helped build this place. The guide had no right to tell me no.”

Sasha reviewed her notes again and shook her head. This is why I didn’t go into criminal law . . . .But whether he was an uncaring, self-entitled ass, or a dumb kid pulling a stupid stunt, Lamar was, for certain, her damn client and she had to defend him. Could the ‘innocent college prank gone wrong’ defense actually work? She doubted it. Lamar had struck Ernesto’s faceplate three times before it cracked and the viciousness of the attack itself, so perfectly caught in multiple angles on the video, would sink him. Lamar was going to spend a lot of time, maybe twenty years, maybe life in jail, and there was little she could do about it.

Sasha jerked upright in the bed. But there isn’t a jail here. She bit her lip, one finger tapping against her cheek. Can it be this simple? In seventy-five minutes she was scheduled for a teleconference with Zander and some of the other partners in her firm. Maybe now she’d have something to tell them.

She put her tablet on her lap and clicked on the link to the resort’s Internet. It wasn’t live, of course. Though the resort did broadcast current TV shows, news and sporting events on their internal television system, granting guests access to the live Internet was simply too expensive. So every month the resort downloaded major segments of the Internet and cached it. But Sasha didn’t care. The info she needed would be there.

Four hours later Sasha sat in Gil’s office. Gil was leaning against the transparent dome wall, staring out toward the lunar surface and the dark sky above. The string of profanities pouring from his mouth had stopped, replaced by silence. Finally, he turned back to her.

“Are you certain?” he asked.

She nodded. “I am. It might be different if Ernesto had been from some other country, you know, like Norway or England. But Dubaquai . . .”

Gil glared at her. “You have to tell them,” he said.

Sasha’s eyebrows rose. “Tell who?”

“My staff. Ernesto’s friends. His fiancée. Oh, I didn’t mention that to you, did I? Ernesto was engaged to be married. Her name’s Lily. She’s a med-tech at the infirmary.”

Sasha stood up. “The only person I have to tell is A.J. Lamar.”

Gil walked up to her, his face inches from hers. “You do have to tell them. They all know about Ernesto’s death and they all know we have the bastard who killed him. You’re the one who came up with this, so you get to explain it. Unless it’s not true.”

“It’s true,” she said. “And I will tell them.”

Sasha had deliberately not brought any of her work clothing with her to the Moon, so the best “professional” outfit she could come up with was a long-sleeved white buttoned down shirt with black jeans. The staff cafeteria was not nearly as fancy as the dining room for guests. It had plain rectangular tables, no linen tablecloths, and the chairs were the same make as the padded bridge chair Lamar had been sitting on when she met with him. Sasha and Gil were on a slightly raised small stage toward the front of the cafeteria, also sitting on bridge chairs. At home, sitting on that sort of chair would make her back ache, but the Moon’s lower gravity took care of that problem.

Sasha thought there were at least forty people in the room and Gil had told her that her remarks would be broadcast to the rest of the staff-only areas. The soft chatter in the room suddenly hushed. Three women entered and walked toward the front table which had been left vacant. In the middle was a young woman with swollen eyes, a tissue clutched in her hand, her friends offering support by her side. The fiancée. Oh God.

Once the three women sat down, Gil stood and took a few steps forward. He began with a moment of silence for Ernesto. For Sasha, that silence was filled by the thudding of her heart.

Gil addressed the crowd. “You all know what’s happened and how it happened. And you know that we have in our custody the man who killed Ernesto. As for next steps . . .” Gil paused, squeezing his eyes shut. He didn’t speak for several seconds. Sasha watched as people in the audience shifted in their seats, glancing at each other and back at Gil.

Finally, a pony-tailed man in the middle of the room yelled, “What is it, Gil? Spit it out.”

Gil opened his eyes. Then he gestured toward Sasha. “This is Sasha Venditti. She’s here on a one week tour. Back home she’s an attorney with an international law firm, supposedly one of the best. She’s going to talk to you.”

As a few in the room softly clapped, Sasha’s eyes widened. Gil didn’t tell them I’m Lamar’s lawyer. When she stood up, Gil headed back to his own chair.

“Why didn’t you tell them Lamar’s my client?” she whispered.

“I’m the only one who knows,” he whispered back. “I didn’t want them throwing chairs at you.” Then he sat down and Sasha was standing alone on the stage.

She took three steps forward. She had been prepared for hostility, not polite attention. The ‘toughest lawyer in the room’ tone she had planned to use was suddenly no longer appropriate. Damn Gil. She licked her lips.

“Hello,” she said. “Here’s the situation. There’s been a homicide on the Moon—an alleged homicide, one that has to be proven in court. But there’s no place to have a trial, except for maybe one country, and they’ll probably refuse.”

Stay calm, nice even voice. “The Fra Mauro Luna Resort was built by an international business consortium, with dozens of different companies as investors, but with no countries involved. It’s not like the Shenzhou Base constructed by China or the Collins Moon orbiting station built by the U.S.A. Let’s say there was a murder at the Shenzhou Base—then China would have jurisdiction and could put the suspect on trial. But who has jurisdiction here, at the resort dome? Nobody. There’s no government entity up here, no government employees, no system of laws at all. In fact, about the only authority to do anything is expressed in the tourist user agreement—something similar to what’s in your workers’ contracts. Here’s what it says.”

Sasha read from her tablet. “‘The Fra Mauro Luna Resort reserves the right to expel any guest for disruptive behavior, as determined by the appropriate Fra Mauro Luna Resort representative.’” Sasha looked up. “That would be Gil.” She continued reading, “‘Any guest determined to have committed a disruptive act will be confined to his/her/their berth until such time as he/she/them can be placed on the next available transport back to Earth.’”

Sasha lowered her tablet and scanned the room. No one was throwing chairs yet.

The pony-tailed man who had yelled to Gil earlier stood up. “But, like, when he gets back to Earth, then there’s a trial, right?”

Sasha shook her head. “No. Let me explain it. Here’s how a country might get jurisdiction over this case. Like I said, if Fra Mauro was some government project, then it’d be easy—that government would have jurisdiction. But that’s not the case. If the transports to Fra Mauro had been on a government’s own transport ship then—maybe—that government might claim jurisdiction. But the transports are private, owned by another international business consortium, ‘Space Skyways.’ It’d be a stretch, but a country might even claim jurisdiction if the transport took off from their country. But Space Skyways built their launch pad on their own man-made island in the middle of international waters, just so they could avoid government regulations. Let me be clear, there is no government authority up here.”

“What about Interpol, can’t they do something?” the pony-tailed man asked.

Sasha shook her head again. “Interpol—that’s the International Criminal Police Organization—is an agreement between nations, about two hundred countries now. The Fra Mauro Lunar Resort is private. It’s on the Moon. No country has jurisdiction here, so neither does Interpol. And the World Court in The Hague—that’s the International Court of Justice—doesn’t have jurisdiction either. Its authority comes from the United Nations and they can hear cases involving member nations. That’s ‘nations,’ not the Moon. In fact, one of the only things the U.N. does say about the Moon is in the ‘Outer Space Treaty of 1967,’ and that specifically says no country can claim sovereignty over the Moon.”

Now there were rumblings in the room and they were getting louder. Sasha glanced over at Gil. His lips were a tight line, but he nodded to her. Then the room suddenly went silent. Ernesto’s fiancée, Lily, had stood up. The tissue she had been using was clenched in her fist and there were no tears now. Her voice rang out clear and loud.

“You said there was no place to have a trial, except for one country—which one?”

Sasha swallowed. “What I said was that there might be one country, but that they would probably refuse.”

“Which one?” Lily repeated.

“It would be Dubaquai, Ernesto’s home nation. Since the crime occurred against one of their citizens they might claim jurisdiction, the way the United States sometimes claims jurisdiction when its citizens are victims of international terrorism.”

A man stood up in the back of the room. “So send him to Dubaquai,” he yelled. Within seconds others stood too. They began what was almost a yell-chant, “Send him to Dubaquai, send him to Dubaquai!” Sasha stopped herself from taking a step back. Thank God Gil hadn’t revealed that she was Lamar’s lawyer. Then Gil was standing at her side. He motioned for quiet with his hands.

Gil said, “Dubaquai probably won’t work. The killer—” He glanced at Sasha. “The suspect has a father of influence and Dubaquai . . . Dubaquai is known for its corruption. Sasha believes, and I agree, that, in all likelihood, the father will pay off Dubaquai officials to ensure that they don’t bring charges against his son.”

Lily said. “Are you saying that there’s nothing we can do, that there’s no justice for Ernesto? Is that what you’re saying?”

Gil didn’t answer and turned to Sasha. Sasha studied the crowd. There was Lily with her clenched fist—what had Gil said? She was a med-tech. And the pony-tailed man was standing with his arms folded in front of his chest. From the oil and grease marks on his shirt Sasha thought he must be a mechanic. One of the burly men who had guarded Lamar was standing in the back. His face was taut, like he had just received a bad medical report. Sasha recognized a cafeteria worker too.

These people weren’t astronauts, the so-called ‘best of the best’ of humanity. And they weren’t wealthy space tourists either. They’re just regular folks, Sasha thought, but they’re special too. What did Kennedy say in that speech? ‘We choose the Moon.’ The Fra Mauro Luna Resort workers were ordinary, but they had chosen the Moon, just like when early man chose to take the first steps out of Africa, or when the ancestors of the Polynesians chose to paddle into open water to find new homes.

Sasha took a deep breath. Don’t say it. “Will there be justice for Ernesto? Probably not.” Don’t say it. But she did. “At least, not on Earth.”

Gil stared at her, eyes wide.

Do not walk away. But she did. “I’m going to my berth,” Sasha said and she left the room.

Sasha was lying on her bed, still in the same clothes, when her doorbell buzzed. She peered at the clock on the wall. Only one hour, thirty-seven minutes had passed. That quick? She opened the door. Gil’s face had no expression and he was standing so straight that Sasha thought he must have strapped a board to his back.

“Lamar escaped,” he said, without really looking at her.

“Did he? He got out of his handcuffs, managed to unlock the door and made it past your three guards?” Gil didn’t respond.

Sasha reached for his arm. “Get in here.” Gil sank into the only chair in her tiny berth, head down, with hands clasped on his lap. Sasha sat on the bed.

She said, “Was there a trial? Or the semblance of a trial?”

He raised his head. “Not a real trial, but we talked and had a vote.”

“Okay. And then what happened?”

Gill swallowed twice. “Then we took Lamar to the airlock, shoved him inside and opened the outer door.”

She blinked, but managed to keep her face frozen. Her heart pounded hard against her chest. Did I really believe they’d keep Lamar locked up in a kitchen storage room for twenty years? Did I?

Gil sighed. “Sasha, we need a lawyer.”

My fault. All my fault. She patted Gil on the knee. “You’ve got one.”

Sasha spent the next several hours trying to come up with something—anything—that might serve as a defense. There was no chance of avoiding a trial. A.J. Lamar had been a citizen of two nations, both with democratic governments that maintained a mostly honest justice system. Once the news hit of what happened, probably both countries would claim the right to hold the criminal trials. And once the workers were threatened with imprisonment, some would surely talk. She didn’t know which of the “Moonatics”—or how many—would eventually be charged with Lamar’s killing, but Gil was certain to be among them.

She took a walk in the dome’s promenade, filled with the cheap souvenir stores, the classier gift shops and space art galleries, and food kiosks selling everything from ‘lunar dogs’ to the traditional astronaut ice cream to ‘milky way shakes.’ There were two playgrounds for the kids. One hundred actual living plants lined the walkways. The giant “Moon” Ferris wheel stood in the promenade’s center, going up so high that when you reached the top you could almost touch the dome ceiling. The violin notes of one of the strolling musicians reached her ears. He was playing the old song, “Take Me to the Moon,” a resort favorite.

She shook her head. The tourists were gobbling food, clapping, pointing, holding hands, smiling, laughing, with no clue that a murder—no, two murders, had happened here. The workers had their smiles too, frozen, just part of the job. But whenever one made eye contact with her the smile would momentarily fade. Often there would be a slight nod before the worker would look away. I have to come up with something. But what?

At 0800 Lunar time, Sasha found herself back in Gil’s office. Gil had set up his computer monitor on his small conference table. How he had gotten a real oak table to the Moon was a mystery, but she liked the warm feel of the wood under her hands. The table could seat five people, but only she and Gil were in the room.

“Ready?” Gil asked. She nodded. She’d come up with a plan, but wasn’t sure at all if it would work.

A moment later Zander’s face appeared on the computer screen. Her boss did not bother with a greeting. “I’m connecting Mr. Lamar now,” Zander said.

Within seconds Andrin Lamar, Sr. joined the video conference. He had a fat face and graying hair. What A.J. Lamar might have looked like in a few decades. His eyes were red rimmed and his lips were turned so much downward that it appeared unnatural, an extended grimace that would be a plastic surgeon’s nightmare.

“Who killed A.J.? Who killed my son?” he said. “I want him. I want anyone involved. I’ll make sure they rot in hell.”

Sasha felt Gil jerk in his seat beside her. She didn’t blame him. Though technologically impossible, it seemed like Lamar’s jabbing finger would burst through the computer screen and poke them both in the eye.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Mr. Lamar. I had the opportunity to meet with A.J. He struck me as being a nice boy.” Gil glanced at her, but thankfully said nothing. Sasha had warned him to stay quiet.

Zander said, “Rest assured, Mr. Lamar. We’ll get to the bottom of this. Sasha, until we can get our own investigators up there, I want you to head the investigation and—“

“We need to think about that, Zander” she said. Zander pursed his lips at her interruption.

“Go on,” he said.

She continued, “Mr. Lamar, I presume Zander has told you everything that happened? I don’t mean about A.J.’s death, but about what happened before that—about what he did?”

Mr. Lamar said, “A.J. was young. He got excited, that’s all. It was an accident.”

Sasha nodded. “He was sorry about it too, quite remorseful.” Gil sat stone-faced beside her, but the downward curl of Mr. Lamar’s lips loosened a bit.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yes.” Sasha leaned forward. “But you know what, Mr. Lamar? If we bring investigators up here and insist on a trial for those who killed A.J.—if we can even identify them—then the whole world will know why he was killed. No one will remember the names of those responsible for A.J.’s death. But everyone will remember Andrin Lamar, Jr., your son, your namesake, as the first man to commit murder on the Moon. Generations from now, when all of us are long forgotten, your son will still be remembered as the biblical Caan of outer space. Do we want that?”

Mr. Lamar stared so long that Sasha wondered if the screen had frozen. But then Mr. Lamar bit his lip. “No,” he said.

“What do you have in mind, Sasha?” Zander asked.

Sasha leaned back. “I think this is what happened. I think A.J. arranged for a private tour—not of the Apollo 11 site, because that’s not allowed.” She glanced at Gil who looked straight ahead.

“No,” she said. “It was the Fra Mauro landing site, the one for Apollo 14. And I think what happened is that Ernesto—that was the tour guide’s name, Mr. Lamar—I think Ernesto had a stroke perhaps, or an aneurysm. But when Ernesto collapsed, young A.J. thought Ernesto’s suit wasn’t working, that he wasn’t getting air. We know that because that’s what he said on the radio when he called for help”

She leaned forward again. “Mr. Lamar, did A.J. ever do any scuba diving?”

Mr. Lamar blinked several times. “No.”

“Well, he must have been reading up on it, because your son tried to share his own air with Ernesto, just like scuba divers do. Poor A.J. He probably thought that air could be transferred between space suits in an emergency—and it can be—but it’s a complicated process and A.J, was never trained. He didn’t know how to do it. Still, he couldn’t just stand by and watch Ernesto die. He had to try. By the time the rescue party reached them they were both dead, Ernesto from natural causes and A.J. from loss of air. A.J. died because he risked his own life to help someone else.” She leaned back. “That’s what I think happened.”

Gil’s mouth hung slightly open, while Zander sat, arms folded across his chest, with a miniscule smile emerging on his face. But Sasha was only interested in Mr. Lamar’s reaction.

Mr. Lamar looked away at something off screen. Sasha thought it might be a photo of A.J. as a child, in better days when all was innocence. Or maybe it was a photo of the Lamar Company headquarters. Finally Mr. Lamar turned back to the screen.

“My son died a hero?”

Sasha said, “A brave hero.”

Mr. Lamar nodded. “All right,” he said. “All right.”

“So,” Sasha said, “there’ll be no investigators sent up here, no investigation at all . . . and no retribution against anyone.” She glanced at Gil. “Everyone up here keeps their job, so long as everyone keeps their mouth shut. No one gets arrested, no one gets charged.”

Mr. Lamar nodded again. “Agreed. And my son died a hero.”

As soon as the call ended Sasha collapsed deep in her chair. Despite the office’s cold temperature she felt perspiration drip down the back of her neck. Her left foot was jiggling so much she wondered if she could stop it, but then decided it felt good. As for Gil, he looked like he had just run a marathon backwards.

He reached over and grabbed her hand. “I can’t believe it,” he said.

“We got lucky—this time.” She straightened. “Gil, this can never happen again.”

He sat up too. “It won’t. I’ve already got people working on a jail. A real one.”

Gil said. “Sasha, we need a lawyer. Someone to help write new laws for us. Someone to help us deal with the folks back home. We’ll be negotiating new worker contracts in a few months. Normally I would negotiate for us, but maybe you could help. And we need help when there are disputes here. Sometimes, some of the ‘Moonatics’ . . . well, they get into disagreements.” He laughed. “Right now, we’ve got two former roommates cursing each other out every day over who gets their old coffeepot. I can’t even list them for the same shift anymore. So who gets the coffeepot, Sasha? How do we decide that?”

Gil stood. “I can’t pay you much, but I’ll give you an impressive title. Deputy Operations Manager, Chief Legal Counsel, whatever you want. And your berth won’t be much either, but I’ll make sure it’s a single and that you get a window.” He gestured toward the transparent dome wall. “You’ll never have a view like this back home. You’ll never see the stars the way you see them here. And you’ll still be able to go back home once a year, visit with your family, friends. Will you think about it?”

Sasha smiled. A chance to create a new legal system from the beginning, to take the best of the best Earth laws and codes, and make them into something better—a chance to be a pioneer.

She said. “I’ll do it on two conditions. First, we stop using the term ‘Moonatics.’ I’ll not work on anything called the Moonatic Laws. We need a name more distinguished, like Moonians or lunarians. The Lunarian Legal Code. That sounds good.”

Gil sat down by her side. “Done. What’s your other condition?”

“I get to go on the next Shepard Golf Ball Scavenger Hunt excursion. It wasn’t fair that mine was interrupted.”

She expected Gil to laugh and agree. Instead he rose, went to his file cabinet and withdrew from the bottom drawer a flat object wrapped in a blanket.

He brought it to her and said, “How about a different excursion?” He took the blanket off.

Sasha jumped up. “Is that the real thing?”

“No, but that ass A.J. Lamar thought it was. The real one is attached to the ladder that Armstrong used when he climbed down to take his ‘one small step for a man.’ We can’t let anyone near the real plaque because it’s too close to Armstrong’s footprints. But everyone who goes to the Apollo 11 site always wants to see it. So we put this replica on the perimeter of the landing site, right on the inside of the chain-link fence.”

Gil shook his head. “The bastard—oh, excuse me—I mean the ‘hero’ didn’t know the difference. He snuck it onto the rover while we were dealing with Ernesto’s body. I have to take it back. You can come with me if you’d like.”

My God, I get to go to the Apollo 11 landing site. She ran her fingers over the raised letters. “HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969, A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND”

She said, “You know, I don’t think man really made it to the Moon in July, 1969.”

Gil frowned. “Oh hell. Please don’t tell me you’re one of those who believes the lunar landings were faked.”

Sasha laughed. “No. What I mean is, look at the wording: ‘first set foot upon.’ That’s just passing by, isn’t it, not really being here.”

She sighed. “But maybe man finally made it to the Moon this week. Think about it, Gil. We had a murder, mob justice and a cover-up. That’s proof of man on the Moon.”

Gil took her hand. “No, Sasha. Proof of man on the Moon is going to be in the laws that you write.”

She stared at him for a moment. “Maybe. But someone’s going to have to enforce those laws. How does ‘Sheriff Gil’ sound?”

Gil blanched, but quickly recovered. “Necessary. But someone else is going to have to apply those laws and figure out how they should work. Don’t you agree . . . Judge?”

Sasha’s eyes widened, but she nodded. “I do.”

The two leaned against the transparent dome wall and peered out over the Moon’s surface, what an Apollo astronaut had once called “magnificent desolation.” But it wasn’t desolate for them. The Lunarians were home.

* * *

Elaine Midcoh (a pseudonym) is a retired criminal justice/law professor. Her story, “The Battle of Donasi,” was published in Writers of the Future, Volume 37. Another of her stories will appear in the upcoming anthology, Compelling Science Fiction. She’s thrilled that “Man on the Moon” won this year’s Baen Award.

From the case files of Detective Ezekiel “Easy” Novak . . .

Trouble Is My Business

Mike Kupari

Delta City is one hell of a town. You ever been there? Let me tell you about it. The Big D is the second-largest city on Nova Columbia and the largest in the planet’s northern hemisphere. Situated in a crater some forty miles across, it’s a sprawling megalopolis of thirty million people that never sleeps. It’s constantly churning, constantly busy, twenty-six hours a day, four hundred and one days per local year. The Chamber of Commerce likes to call it The Economic Engine of the Northern Hemisphere, and that’s probably a fair assessment.

You might be asking yourself why we all live in a handful of huge, densely populated cities when we have a whole planet with only ninety million inhabitants. Believe me, it’s not because we enjoy each other’s company that much. Nova Columbia is the only habitable planet in the 18 Scorpii system, and they say it was a perfect candidate for colonization. It has gravity close enough to Earth’s so as to not make any difference, fifty percent of the surface is covered in oceans, and it has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere that you can breathe. The native life is primitive and mostly benign.

But while there’s a lot of open land on Nova Columbia, most of it is pretty bleak, even barren. The vast continental interiors are rocky, dry, and volcanically active. In many places you have to drill down eight, ten, even twelve thousand feet to hit the water table. There’s no vegetation and the soil lacks many of the basic nutrients needed for agriculture. Land is cheap; useful land is precious. Every year, the terraformed zones get a little bigger, but the process takes a long time.

Someday, this planet will be a green and blue paradise to rival Earth. Until then, most of us live packed into places like Delta and Epsilon City. From what I understand it isn't as congested as some ancient Earth cities like London, New York, or Shanghai. In any case, it’s not so bad. I wouldn’t make a very good farmer or frontier homesteader. I’m a detective, a professional snoop, and a city like the Big D gives me plenty of opportunity for work. I was born here, I grew up here, and it’s my home.

Not everybody lives in the city, though. North of the Crater, between it and the Black Mountains, is a vast plain over a hundred miles wide, bisected by the Idaho River. It’s known as the Delta Agricultural Zone, or Ag Zone, or DAZ, depending on who you ask. Here there is plentiful ground water, rich soil, and enough annual rainfall to make it one of the most fertile agricultural zones on the planet. As you can imagine, on a bleak world like Nova Columbia, productive farmland is incredibly valuable. Sure, there’s hydroponic farming all over the place, but it can’t beat the volume of low-cost production that millions of acres of premium farmland provide.

Most of the farms are heavily automated and are managed by one of several agricultural corporations, but there are some that are still owned by the descendants of the first wave of colonists. Many of these families accumulated a lot of wealth in the subsequent hundred and forty or so years. Old money, the closest thing Nova Columbia has to a landed gentry.

I reflected on this one morning as I drove along Route 1, over the pass at the northern rim of the Crater, through the Delta Hills, and down into the Ag Zone. My client in this case came from one of those old money families, and I was on my way to his home to meet with him. I don’t normally make house calls like that, but for the money I’d been offered up front, I made an exception.

Taking city traffic into account, it was more than a two-hour drive from my office in East Downtown to the client’s residence, an estate deep in the Ag Zone. My car’s auto-navigation function was on the fritz again, so I was driving it manually. I didn’t mind; I like driving. It relaxes me. I called Lily, my assistant, to get briefed on the client. She appeared on my car’s console screen as we talked. She was fair-skinned, her hair black with purple streaks in it, and she wore a lot of eyeliner.

“Good morning, Boss,” she said, cup of coffee in hand. She wasn’t what you’d call a morning person. “How’s the drive?”

“I just crossed over into the DAZ,” I said, pausing to sip my own coffee from my travel mug. I kept my eyes on the road and only occasionally glanced at the screen as we talked. “You just get into the office?”

“No,” she said, “I’ve been here for a couple hours.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said. Bless her heart, I couldn’t run the agency without her. Barely in her twenties, Lily was the best net-diver I knew, a former child prodigy who fell in with the wrong crowd and got busted for hacking as a teenager. She was a hard worker, though, and was both honest and loyal.

Lily shrugged. “I was up anyway, and I’d rather work from the office in case I needed to access our case files.” To protect against data theft, none of my agency’s records or private client data was kept on a computer connected to the planetary network. It was all stored on a separate drive in a safe in my office, and even that was encrypted. Some might think it’s overkill, but plenty of big corporations, armed with the best network protection money can buy, have suffered embarrassing hacks and network breaches.

“So, what have you found?” I asked. Normally I didn’t go into a client meeting this unprepared, but this was an unusual case. Late the night before I received an encrypted audio call from a man calling himself Cyrus Vermillion. He said he represented a Mr. Felix Konrad, who was a man of some means. He was real sparse on the details, but explained that there was a situation that called for my expertise and a lot of discretion. He was willing to pay double my normal retainer fee up front, but the catch was I had to meet the client in person at his home the next morning. He also made me sign a nondisclosure agreement.

“First off, the guy who called you? Yeah, turns out that Cyrus Vermillion is, in fact, his real name, not an alias or pseudonym. He’s an attorney, the personal consigliere of Felix Konrad, and has worked for him for many years.”

“Who is Felix Konrad?”

“You didn’t do any research last night, did you?”

I grinned. “Kid, I’m gonna be straight with you, I was already a few drinks deep when the call came in, and yesterday was a long day. After I contacted you I went straight to bed. What’d you find?”

“Felix Konrad is the great-grandson of Maximillian Konrad, an agricultural scientist who was in the first wave of colonists at Site Delta. He was from the Republic of Texas on Earth, and was one of the original stakeholders of the Nova Columbia Colony Project a hundred and forty years ago. Today the Konrad family owns twenty-five thousand acres of prime farmland in the Delta Agricultural Zone, where they grow corn and wheat. Farther out, in the marginal regions of the Ag Zone, they have an additional two hundred thousand acres of ranch land, where they raise cattle.”

“That’s a big spread. What else?”

“The Konrads are rich, but they’re not, like, super-rich. They’re not, you know, billionaires. Most of their wealth is tied up in the land and in the agribusiness. They’re facing stiff competition from the big three ag corporations. By the way, all three have made buyout offers, which the Konrads declined. You think that might have something to do with the case?”

“Can’t say at this point, but that’s good to know.”

“Felix is a third generation Nova Columbian and the legal owner of the family assets. The property itself is tied up in a perpetual land trust established by his great-grandfather. It can’t be parceled out or sold piecemeal, it’s all or nothing.”

“How old is Felix? Are his parents still around?”

“He’s Sixty-three local years of age and no, they’re not. His parents were celebrities. Not only did they come from a prominent, first wave family, they were a husband-and-wife team of adventurers. They spent a lot of time off-world together, joining different survey and exploration missions. They liked to find and collect alien artifacts.”

“Hmm. That’s the sort of hobby that isn’t necessarily legal.”

“There’s a lot of bureaucracy to work through if you want to legally bring off-world alien artifacts to Nova Columbia. It’s not just Commonwealth law you have to navigate, either—the Terran Confederation has a binding treaty called the Conventions on the Discovery and Control of Alien Technology, Organisms, and Remains. Long story short, it’s doable, but it’s an expensive process. There’s a pretty lucrative collector’s market for a lot of this stuff. All the regulation just inflates the prices even further.”

“Interesting.”

“Scanning through old tabloid articles, there were rumors and accusations that not everything they brought back was legal, but nothing that warranted an official investigation. Forty-five years ago, they departed the system on a ship called the Ganymede Elegy and were never seen again.”

“Is that right? What happened?”

“No one knows,” Lily said. “The ship was last seen departing the Zeta Leporis system. It was never found. Felix was only nineteen years old when the ship was declared overdue. A year later it was presumed lost, and he became the legal heir of the family holdings, though the property remained tied up in the land trust. This was a big story in the tabloids at the time.”

“Well, ain’t that a hell of a thing? Any siblings? Any other beneficiaries of this land trust?”

“No, he’s an only child.”

“Does he have family of his own?”

“Yes. His wife is named Lorraine. He has two adult children, a daughter named Lydia and a son named Miguel. The daughter doesn’t have any kind of a record that I can find. The son, Miguel? He’s been in trouble a few times, both as a minor and as an adult, but his actual criminal record is sealed.”

“Sealed, huh? Interesting. Are there any news reports of him being arrested?”

“Not that I can find. Whatever it was, they kept it quiet. Sorry.”

“That’s all right. You’ve given me plenty to work with for now. I don’t even know what this whole thing is about. Keep at it, if you would. I’m going into this blind and I’d like to know as much about the client as possible.”

“Will do. How far out are you?”

“I’ll be there in less than an hour. I’m enjoying the scenery.” The gently rolling hills and green fields of the Agricultural Zone were a nice change from the ceramicrete canyons of the city. “I’ll call you after the meeting.”

“Just be careful, Boss. They hired you and made you sign an NDA without even telling you what the situation was. Feels like trouble to me.”

“Feels the same to me, kid, but you know how it is. Trouble is my business.”

# # #

It was right around 1000 in the morning when I arrived at the Konrad Estate. It was a palatial spread to say the least. Turning off the highway, I came to a stop at a closed security gate. They were expecting me, so the gate opened without me having to do anything and I proceeded onto the estate grounds. The driveway to the house was half a mile long, flanked on either side by fields of corn stalks. The house was large, not quite a mansion but much larger than a normal single-family home. It stood amidst several acres of perfectly landscaped grass and trees. The driveway ended in a loop that circled around a huge oak tree, with a small parking area off to one side.

No one was waiting outside to greet me, so after getting out of the car, I headed for the front door. It was a pleasant morning, with the temperature already in the high sixties and climbing, and it was noticeably more humid than it was in Delta City. The sun was shining and there were only a few scattered clouds. I was wearing my summer suit jacket, one that’s so lightweight you can forget you’re wearing it, and a tie, despite the nice weather. It’s important to look professional, especially when meeting a new client. In any case, the jacket concealed my gun, which was in a shoulder holster under my right arm.

The house had numerous windows in the front, but they were all polarized to where I couldn’t see in. A set of wide stairs led up to a sprawling covered porch. I crossed that and came to the front doors of the place, flanked on either side by tall, narrow, windows. A small camera turret above it was tracking me as I approached.

“Please state your business,” a synthesized voice said. It surprised me a little.

“I’m Eziekiel Novak,” I said, looking up at the camera. “I’m expected.”

The camera beeped once and the double doors quietly swung open. “Please come in,” the electronic voice said. I stepped inside and removed my hat. Just across the threshold was a large foyer. To my right, along the wall, was a curving staircase that led up to the second floor. A man in a black suit made his way down the steps to greet me. He was about six feet tall with an athletic build. His hair was jet black and his face had a little stubble. There was a slight variance in the skin texture on his face, along his right cheek and jawline. He’d had a skin graft on his face, I thought, the kind they do with burn victims, but it had been a long time since. His eyes glinted unnaturally—they were prosthetic implants.

You meet a lot of people in my line of work and you get a feel for them. This guy? He was a serious man, the kind who didn’t suffer fools. He stuck his hand out as he approached. “Cyrus Vermillion,” he said, crushing my hand in an iron grip. “We spoke last night. Thank you for coming all the way out here on such short notice.” He was assertive while being soft-spoken. He made steady, unflinching eye contact. I could tell he was sizing me up.

“It was no trouble,” I said. “So, uh, what is it that I can help you with?”

“Mr. Konrad wishes to discuss that with you directly,” he said. “I’ll take you to him. Please, follow me.”

To my surprise I was not brought to a home office or a private study. Vermillion instead led me across the house to a small room behind a locked door. In this room was an elevator door with a security lockout on it. The house only had two floors. Why the hidden elevator? It must go down to an underground level, I thought.

Vermillion said, “Please leave your handheld on that table there, Mr. Novak.” He had in his hand an electromagnetic frequency scanner, the kind they use to search for hidden cameras or listening devices.

“What’s this all about?” I asked, setting my phone down.

The consigliere stepped forward, a little closer than I would have preferred, and began to sweep my body with the scanner’s antenna array. “You were hired because of your reputation for discretion, Detective,” he said. “Mr. Konrad values his privacy and the security of his home. As such, personal devices are not allowed on the lower level.” He then took a step back, looking at the display of the scanner, and raised an eyebrow. “You’re carrying a weapon with a holographic sight,” he said. “A rather large weapon, if I’m not mistaken.”

I grinned. “Sure am, friend. It’s a Sam Houston Mark Four-pattern Combat Dragoon revolver, .44LRM caliber, with both a holosight and a flashlight.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “That’s an unusual choice of a sidearm.”

“Don’t I know it.” The gun was a gift from a dead friend and it has sentimental value for me. The cylinder only holds seven shots, but when you need to reload, the whole thing ejects up away from the gun. Slap a fresh one in and you’re good to go. It’s a little slower to reload than a typical service pistol, but the big, armor-piercing, explosive bullets always get the job done, even on cyborgs with epidermal armor. “You want me to leave it up here?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Vermillion said. “If we thought you were a security risk we wouldn’t have hired you.”

“You trust me with a gun, but not my handheld?”

He shrugged. “All electronics can be compromised. A handheld, a tablet, or even an implant can be programmed to record, even if the user is unaware. Many devices are constantly listening for voice commands. It’s difficult to account for every possibility, so the simplest solution is to ask guests to leave them.”

“Fair enough,” I said. Was Konrad paranoid or just prudent? Sometimes it’s hard to tell one from the other.

Vermillion looked at the scanner’s screen again. “I . . . got some strange feedback by your head. It’s not a neural implant.”

“No, I never felt comfortable with the idea of plugging a computer directly into my brain.” I tapped the side of my head. “I do, however, have a metal plate up here, a souvenir from the war.”

“That’s right, you’re a veteran,” he said, letting me know he’d looked into my background. “I am as well.”

“What branch?”

“Nothing glamorous, I assure you. Quartermaster Corps.”

“Were you on Harvest?” I asked. The campaign to retake the colony world of Harvest from the Ceph was largely carried out by the Nova Columbia Commonwealth Defense Force. It was a hard-fought victory, paid for with tens of thousands of lives.

“I volunteered when the war began,” Vermillion said. “They wanted to make me an officer and put me in the JAG Corps because I’m an attorney, and because I was in my forties. I refused and took a standard enlistment. I arrived on Harvest a few months after Landing Day.”

The invasion of Harvest was preceded by weeks of deep space and orbital battles, as the Terran Confederation Space Forces fought to drive the alien enemy out of the Waldorf’s Star system. The Ceph, whose warrior classes had no concept of surrender, fought on even after space superiority was achieved. Prone to tunneling underground to evade orbital strikes, they had to be rooted out through a protracted ground war. I was mechanized infantry and spent most of the campaign in a Marauder Mark-V powered armor suit. I got to see tentacled bastards up close a few times.

“My unit made planetfall about four months after L-Day,” I said. “I was there until the end of the campaign, including a few months spent in a hospital in the rear.”

“We were there at the same time, then,” Vermillion said, “but my deployment was cut short. I was planetside for only a couple of months when our supply convoy was ambushed. It was . . . ” He hesitated. “Well. Ceph assault mechs hit our vehicles with plasma projectors from close range. I was badly burned and left blind, but I survived, unlike . . . well, unlike most of the convoy. They medevac’d me to a hospital ship in orbit. That was the end of my contribution to the war effort.”

I gave the man a knowing nod. “Hell of a thing.” Despite what you may have seen in the propaganda media, Harvest was a bloodbath. Don’t get me wrong, it needed to be done; the Ceph killed millions of people in their invasion, and damned if we were going to let that stand, but the price was steep. More than fifty thousand personnel from the Terran Confederate forces died there, including almost thirty thousand Nova Columbians. Me, I survived, despite my injury, but I left a piece of myself there, and I’m not talking about that chunk of my skull.

Vermillion cleared his throat and regained his composure. The change in his demeanor was subtle but clear. “Mr. Konrad is waiting for us down in the sub-level.” He accessed a biometric scanner next to the elevator. The doors slid open and he motioned for me to enter.

# # #

I found myself in a long, rectangular room with a polished black granite floor, surprised at just how big the basement of the Konrad house was. The dimmed overhead lighting was supplemented by blue accent lights. The air exchanger hummed quietly in the background. A carpeted walkway ran down the middle of the room, flanked on either side by displays. I was in a private, underground museum.

“This is the Konrad family collection,” Vermillion said, stepping out of the elevator behind me. “Well, the prized parts of it, anyway. There’s more than can be put on display here.” The walls must have had sound dampening material on them, because there was no hint of echo in the room. “The family has been collecting rare and unique items for generations, since before the founding of Nova Columbia.”

He proceeded down the aisle and I tagged along behind him. The first display on the left was a suit of medieval plate armor. “That armor comes from the country of Italy, on Earth,” Vermillion said. “It was crafted in the mid-fifteenth century, making it about a thousand years old. Such items are difficult to come by, largely due to the Earthsphere Wars of the early twenty-second century. Mr. Konrad’s great-grandfather especially prized historical relics from ancient Earth.”

A bit farther down on the right was some kind of archaic, open-topped automobile in immaculate condition. It was a bright, glossy red in color, with shiny chrome accents. “That is a 1963 Ford Thunderbird,” my host said. “Maximillian Konrad spent decades collecting the necessary original parts to restore it. It runs, by the way, though the fuel is hard to come by.”

“The engine burns petroleum, doesn’t it?”

“Gasoline,” he said, “a refined petroleum product. There are few petroleum deposits on Nova Columbia, but we can substitute synthetic fuels that are more readily available.”

I was there on business, not for a tour, but I couldn’t help but stop and gawk at some of the items on display. There was an assembled dinosaur skeleton, a selection of ancient musical instruments, even some kind of propeller airplane.

“That’s from the mid-twentieth century,” Vermillion explained. “A Cessna Model One-Fifty. They were once quite popular with private aviation enthusiasts.”

“Looks rickety,” I said. “Does that run, too?”

He smiled. “It does, in theory, but the family has never flown it. It’s constructed of aluminum and fiberglass—it probably isn’t airworthy after four centuries.” At the end of the hall was another set of doors, a large cargo elevator. I figured that was how they got the big stuff down there. The carpeted walkway turned to the left and headed through a doorway into the next room.

Felix Konrad was waiting for us there. He stood with his back to us as we approached. His hands were folded behind his back, as he looked up at a slab of stone mounted to the wall. He glanced over his shoulder as we approached.

“This is Detective Novak, sir,” Vermillion said.

“Very good. Thank you, Cyrus. Please wait for us in the lounge. I wish to speak to our guest alone.”

Vermillion withdrew from the room, leaving me alone with my client. I looked up at the stone slab that he’d been contemplating; on its face was something that resembled a partial sculpture of a giant bug.

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked.

“Indeed it is, Detective,” he answered, “the fossilized exoskeleton of a being from the First Antecessor Race.” The fossil was broken and fragmented, but the overall shape of the thing was clear. The long-extinct aliens had six appendages—they walked upright on four of them and used the other two as arms. The body was divided into two segments—the legs connected to the bottom one and the arms to upper half. An elongated, teardrop-shaped head topped the whole thing off. “The soft tissue was not preserved, which is why it’s missing the eye-stalks.”

“Where did this come from?” I asked.

“My father helped finance an expedition to Styx about sixty years ago,” he said. “Heard of it?”

“Hell, I’ve been there,” I said. “Spent a few weeks there during the war. Miserable place.” That Godforsaken rock has a fourteen-hour rotational period, a thin atmosphere, and eight percent more gravity than Nova Columbia. Between the extra weight, the lack of oxygen, and my screwed-up circadian rhythm, I was exhausted the entire time I was there.

“I agree, it is indeed a miserable place, but it’s a treasure trove of First Antecessor Race artifacts. They had what we think was a very large colony there, once. Like all such sites, it was destroyed in some kind of cataclysm sixty-eight million years ago. But . . . I didn’t bring you here to show off my collection.” He turned to face me. “I need your help.”

I studied my client for a moment. People say I’m a big guy, being six-foot-one and weighing in at two-twenty, but Konrad was easily two inches taller. Broad shouldered, he looked pretty good for a guy in his sixties. He was dressed in a finely tailored black suit with a bolo tie and ornate leather cowboy boots. His complexion was dark shade of brown, with deep lines in his face. His curly black hair, now graying, was cropped short with a high fade. His goatee, neatly trimmed, was also turning gray. “That’s what I’m here for, Mr. Konrad,” I said. “What seems to be the trouble?”

“Do you have children, Detective?”

“Me? No.”

“They can be vexing sometimes. You do your best to raise them, to provide them with everything they need, to teach them your values, and yet . . . for better or for worse, they have their own minds and make their own decisions.”

“I understand you have two children,” I said, “a son and a daughter. I assume this is about your son?”

Konrad smiled humorlessly. “His reputation precedes him,” he said, bitterness in his voice, “despite his sealed records.”

“I’m a snoop,” I said. “This is what I do. What sort of trouble has he gotten himself into?”

“Walk with me,” Konrad said. We meandered through the second hall of his private museum as he explained his situation. Deprived of my handheld, I scribbled notes on a pad of paper. It seemed his son, Miguel, was a troubled young man. As a teenager, he had gotten addicted to neural-linked virtual reality and abused it so badly that it caused long-term neurological damage. His neural link had since been removed, but the damage was done and he hadn’t been the same after. For years he was prone to mood swings, outbursts, even destructive behaviors like substance abuse.

My client described how, in the past year or so, it seemed like things were turning around for Miguel. He found himself a girl and the two became an item. He said she was good for him, that the kid was more like his old self around her. He started to take on some responsibilities with the farming business. He seemed healthier. Things were looking up.

Then, Miguel stole a valuable artifact from the family collection, leaving behind only a cryptic message that he needed to “borrow” it, and ran off. They’d heard nothing from him in a week. It was the second time something had been stolen from the collection in the past year, and this time Konrad's own son was apparently the culprit. Konrad didn’t want law enforcement involved, either. Everything else aside, there was a limit to how much time and resources the Colonial Security Forces Corps would put into helping a rich man recover a family heirloom.

I took notes as he gave me the rundown on his son’s girlfriend. Her name was Maya and she made a living as a freelancer, moving from gig to gig, finding work wherever she could. She seemed like a nice enough young woman and there’d been no hint that they were planning anything like this.

There was an almost apologetic tone to Konrad’s voice, like he was embarrassed that this had happened to him. “You must understand, for all his troubles, Miguel is a grown man. I don’t monitor where he is at all times. After his . . . injury, both his doctors and psychologists emphasized to me the importance of not treating him like a child, or acting as if he’s disabled. It was a hard road, and there were obviously some unfortunate incidents, but it was working. I let him live his life, especially after Maya came along. I liked her. She was good for him, or so I thought.”

The client explained that he had no idea where the young couple had gone. He’d sent his consigliere to the city to look for them. Miguel had checked out of the hotel he stayed in while visiting Delta City. Maya supposedly lived in an apartment tower on the South Side, but apparently she’d moved out months before and left no forwarding address. All of their efforts to locate or contact either one of the missing kids had come up empty.

At the end of the second hall, there were several other, smaller rooms in which he displayed the collection. Konrad gestured for me to enter the darkened room. The lights in the room came on automatically as I did so. I found myself looking up at one of the Ceph, only a few feet away. Every muscle in my body tensed and I stepped back, reflexively reaching for my gun, heart racing. A second later I realized that it was dead, preserved in a block of solid, transparent material.

“Are you all right, Mr. Novak?”

“Yeah,” I said, not taking my eyes off the alien. If you’ve never seen one, the Ceph are hideous. Imagine an eight-foot-tall, armored octopus that slithers around on dry land, using several of its tentacles for locomotion. They have an upright posture and the way they move is unsettling to watch. The body is shaped like a giant, grotesque gourd. The lower half is where the tentacles come together in a pulsating mass of muscle and tissue. The upper part, the bulbous head, is protected by a thick shell. They have small mouths and four glistening, red eyes. “Just caught me off guard, is all.” I shook my head. “Christ, I haven’t seen one of them since the war.”

“My apologies,” Konrad said. “I should have warned you.”

“How did you get that thing here? Customs wouldn’t have let it through, would they?”

“It’s possible, if you get the right sort of permits and pay the right sort of fees,” he said, cryptically. I was pretty sure what he meant was that he bribed someone, but his dealings with the Customs Service weren’t my concern. “Back to business,” he said, leading me to the back wall of the room. There was a lighted display case there, covered by thick, ballistic glass, filled with strange trinkets of different shapes and sizes. In the center of the case was a conspicuously bare spot.

“This is where the missing item was kept,” he said.

“Can you show me what this item looked like?”

“Yes, of course.” He reached into his suit jacket, retrieved a handheld, and brought up three-dimensional image of the object. It was a perfect sphere of some dark gray metal, maybe six inches in diameter. It was completely covered in incredibly intricate engravings and runes. Sliding his thumb across the screen, he rotated the image of the object. It appeared damaged on one side; gouges and scoring marred its surface and the markings had been rendered illegible. “It’s made of a hard metal alloy, the exact composition of which is unknown, and weighs ten pounds. It emits a strong magnetic field.”

“What . . . uh . . . what is it?”

“That is an excellent question, Detective, but truth be told I don’t know. It’s called a Rune Sphere, but its precise function has never been ascertained. It’s a relic of the First Antecessor Race, in fairly good condition despite its age. This was the first alien artifact in the family collection, acquired by my grandfather eighty years ago. I never learned how he came to possess it.”

“I see. What’s it worth?”

“I had it appraised last year, our of curiosity. There are quite a few of these in private collections, mind you, and as First Antecessor relics go, they’re not especially rare. I was told I could probably get a quarter-million dollars for it, given its condition.”

“Two hundred and fifty grand is a lot of money to regular person,” I said, rubbing my chin. “It’s not that much money when you’re the son of a millionaire. So why take it?”

“In his message to me, he insisted that he was only borrowing it, but I’ve been unable to contact him since.”

“You said that something else was stolen from you before.”

“Yes. In fact, it was to be a companion piece to the Rune Sphere, a relic known as a Chalice.” He showed me another 3D image on his handheld screen. The name was apt; it looked like a large goblet, made of the same gray metal. There were strange patterns carved into it, but no runes. “These serve as display stands for Rune Spheres. Both the spheres and chalices emit strong magnetic fields. When you combine the two, the Sphere will levitate about an inch over the Chalice. While neither item is especially rare, it is quite uncommon for one collector to have both that still have intact magnetic fields.”

“How is it possible that they still have magnetic fields at all, after tens of millions of years.”

“Exo-archaeologists have been trying to figure that out for decades. The First Antecessor Race was incredibly advanced.”

Konrad went onto explain that, after years of searching, he’d finally found himself one of these chalices with an intact magnetic field. Miguel, wanting to prove himself, took the lead on getting it from the “importer,” which is to say, the smuggler. This particular artifact hadn’t come through legal channels and he hadn’t paid the required duties on it. Some would say that’s unethical, but enforcing the Commonwealth’s customs regulations isn’t my job.

“The deal was interrupted,” Konrad explained. “A third party interrupted the exchange, men with guns. They shot and killed the importer before robbing my son. They took both the Chalice and the two hundred thousand dollars in cash he’d brought to pay for it.” He shook his head. “I was outraged, and Miguel blamed himself for what happened. It wasn’t his fault, of course, and I told him that, but he felt like he’d failed his father. He was quite depressed for a while, until Maya came along.” He looked up at me. “Why, after all that, would he turn around and steal from me himself? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Do you know who took the Chalice?”

“They were damned COFfers, I’m sure of it. They were masked, but Miguel noted that one of them was wearing a Cosmic Ontological Foundation pendant.”

I haven’t had a lot of dealings with the COF, but you’ve probably heard of them. They’re a pseudo-religious organization that believes that sentient life in the galaxy was created by advanced aliens long ago. Popular in some circles of the rich and elite, many consider the Foundation to be little more than a cult. I agree with that assessment, personally.

“If it was COFfers, they wouldn’t want to sell it. They think things like that are holy relics.”

Konrad nodded. “It may have been to the First Antecessors. A popular theory is that the Rune Spheres were some manner of idol, roughly akin to a crucifix.”

“How did Miguel get the Sphere out of here?”

“Everyone in the family is allowed to come down here, including Miguel. Getting into the case itself requires an electronic key. I keep those in a safe in my office.”

“I see. Does Miguel have access to this safe?”

“No, but I tend to leave it open when I’m using things stored in it. I don’t remember leaving him alone with it open, but I must have. I suppose it was foolish of me to trust him.”

“You can’t be faulted for letting your guard down around your family in your own home, Mr. Konrad,” I said.

“I have a protective case for transporting the Sphere, one that’s properly shielded. He took that, too. You don’t . . . you don’t suppose he wants to sell it to the COFfers?”

“I don’t know enough to guess at his motivations, though that seems unlikely. He didn’t ever express interest in joining the COF, did he?”

Konrad scoffed. “After what they did? He hated them. At least, I thought he did. Perhaps I was wrong.”

“This situation is certainly a mess, and I you were right to bring a professional in. I take it you want me to recover your Rune Sphere for you?”

He looked me in the eye. “I want my son back, Mr. Novak.” I’m a cynical man and I have to admit, that wasn’t what I was expecting him to say. “Yes, he stole from me. Maybe he was manipulated into it, maybe the whole thing was his idea, maybe he’s sold it already. It doesn’t matter. He’s my son. I couldn’t live with myself if I just gave up on him. Lorraine would never forgive me. If you are able to safely recover the sphere, I’ll make it worth your while, but Miguel is the priority. Bring my boy home.” His expression softened. “Please. He needs help.”

Felix Konrad was a proud man, but in that moment, in his own, subtle way, he was pleading with me. I couldn’t give him any guarantees; the wayward son might be a young fool, but he was an adult. I couldn’t force him to come home if he didn’t want to.

I gave the client the only reassurance I could. “If he can be found, I’ll find him, Mr. Konrad.” That seemed to satisfy him.

# # #

Back in my car, I took a moment to study a picture of the two young lovers that Konrad had sent to my handheld. Miguel looked like a younger, lighter-skinned copy of his father. So alike were the two men in appearance and build that, had they been the same age, you’d have guessed they were cousins, if not brothers. His fairer complexion probably came from his mother; Lorraine Konrad was a natural blonde, the descendant of immigrants from Northern Europe on Earth.

His squeeze, Maya, looked like the sort of girl that can get a young fool into all sorts of trouble. Her full name was Maya Kim Nguyễn, and she was a knockout. She had long black hair with red streaks in it, dark brown eyes, and a smile that said she knew how to get men to do what she wanted. She was shorter than Miguel by nine inches, and if she weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds I’d have been shocked.

There’s only so much you can glean from a photograph, and it’s real easy to let your own biases and assumptions color your assessment, but . . . let me put it this way: if you were going to send a honeypot to entice a young man to steal something from his father, she was the kind of girl you’d want to do the job. I didn’t know if that was what had happened, but I couldn’t rule it out, either.

I called Lily back and caught her up on the situation. Using an encrypted connection, I relayed to her all of the information Konrad had given me about his son and the girl. It would take me a couple hours to get back to the city, giving her time to do some digging. I then left the country estate and began the long drive back to Delta City.

I was nearly back to the Crater when she called me back. “Hey Boss,” Lily said, her image appearing on my car’s console screen.

“Did you find anything?”

“I did a search for Maya Kim Nguyễn, cross-referenced with the picture you sent. Not much came up. There are other women with that name, but none of them are her. There are no criminal records of anyone with that name. Because of privacy laws, landlords don’t make public who resides in their properties, but no one by that name shows up in public property records. There are no outstanding defaulted debts, bounties, or warrants, either.”

“It might be an alias,” I said. “Did an image search turn anything up?”

“No. No social media, no incidentals, nothing. You think she might be a pro?”

“It’s possible, but I don’t have enough information to say for sure, and I don’t want to work off an assumption that proves to be false.” Not having a social media presence doesn’t make you a criminal. Hell, I’m not on social media. I don’t like arguing with strangers about politics or whatever else, either.

“The agency has a net presence even if you don’t,” Lily said. “Someone who works as a freelancer would have to advertise, or be active on the job boards, or work with recruiters. I wasn’t able to find anything about this girl at all.”

“Hm. Maybe Miguel did go and find himself a professional hustler,” I said. “Did the COF connection turn anything up?”

“Nothing that I can find. COFfers are real good about infosec these days. I scanned all the message boards and known COF forums that I could access. Nobody has said anything about the alleged theft, either of the Sphere or the Chalice. I didn’t expect to find much, though.”

“That’s not surprising, no. Tell you what, I’ll give Iggy a call, see if he knows anything.”

“He’ll want cash up front,” Lily warned.

I chuckled. “Snitches always do.”

One of the keys to success in this business is developing a network of contacts and informants. Ignatius P. Sanchez was a disaffected COFfer turned informant, provided you had the cash to make it worth his while. The trick is to not lean on your informants too heavily too often. The more risk of exposure they have, the more hesitant to talk they get, and the more expensive getting them to talk becomes.

Iggy lived in an older, ninety-story apartment block called Camelot Tower in East Central Delta City. Like most of these buildings, there was a market in the plaza on the ground floor. I met the snitch at his favorite noodle stand, a joint called Power Noodles. It was automated, with the ramen served by a robot that understood dozens of languages but only spoke in synthesized Japanese.

I sat on a stool next to Iggy as he slurped up a big cup of Ramen with a pair of chopsticks. He was the sort that had his own chopsticks that he carried around with him. I was enjoying a cup myself, seeing as I’d missed lunch.

“I knew about the deal with the Chalice,” he said, talking with his mouth full. “A group of young pledges from the an associate chapter pulled that job off hoping they’d be granted a higher level. Instead, their reward was a two-year long mission off-world, and their chapter was quietly reprimanded. The Foundation was worried they’d brag too much and bring the heat down on them. They didn’t even take possession of the stolen Chalice, they left it with the chapter leader.”

“What about this Rune Sphere?”

“That’s the thing, that chapter is still around. There was some buzz a week ago that an outsider had showed up wanting to join. Supposedly he had a Rune Sphere to go with the Chalice. Do you know about the magnetic fields?” I nodded. “It’s a real big deal if they’re intact. They think it can channel the energy of the First Antecessor Race, that if you meditate near it you’ll slowly learn their wisdom.”

“Sounds like a bunch of crap to me,” I said.

Iggy smiled. “Yeah, but it’s something tangible, something real, something ancient and mysterious. There are a lot of lost, lonely people out there. The Foundation makes them feel like they’re a part of something, tells them they’re seeking ancient knowledge. Associate chapters like that are quasi-independent, so the Foundation can’t be held responsible for their behavior, but they’re the biggest source of new pledges. They’re much more accessible to outsiders than the Foundation itself is.”

He raised the noodle cup to his mouth and finished it before continuing, washing it down with a beer. “Supposedly, now that this chapter has both the Sphere and the Chalice, they’re going to present them to the Foundation to try and get back in their good graces.”

“Will that work?”

Iggy shrugged. “It might. A triumvirate of Foundation Scholars will hear the chapter’s case and make a decision.”

“And the fellow who brought them the Sphere, what happened to him?”

“He’s a pledge. When he showed up with it, they welcomed him with open arms. He must be a true believer, right?”

“Right,” I said, but I wasn’t so sure. “Do you know where this chapter meets?”

“The funds to rent a chapter hall were suspended for a year when they got reprimanded, so they’ve taken to meeting in a vacant commercial building in the industrial area on the Southeast Side. I’ll send the address to your handheld. From what I understand, the chapter lead is a property manager for a real estate group that buys up unused property to eventually resell. That’s how he has access to the place.”

“I don’t suppose you know when they’re going to be meeting again, do you?”

“Most chapters meet on Sunday nights.” Iggy looked around, then leaned in closer to me. “This is different, though. According to word of mouth, the chapter lead and the new pledge will be meeting the Triumvirate of Scholars there this coming Thursday. They’re going to present the Rune Sphere and the Chalice together.”

“I see. How sure are you about this?”

Iggy took a long swig from his beer. “As sure as I ever am. None of this stuff communicated electronically. I hang out at the get-togethers, feed the pledges alcohol, and listen to them talk.”

I handed him an envelope with a thousand dollars in cash in it. “I appreciate your help.”

He pocketed it and took another sip of his beer. “Listen, Easy, it’s been nice doing business with you, but I think this is the last time.”

I raised an eyebrow. Was he going to try and haggle for more money? “What’s the problem?”

Iggy finished his beer and set the empty bottle down on the counter of the noodle stand. “I’m tired. I can’t play along and watch the COF do that to people anymore. Besides, the longer you do this, the more likely it is they’ll find out. The way some of these associate chapters are, if they find out I’m an informant, they’ll kill me. They’re no better than the Green Dragons,” he said, referring to a motorcycle street gang that hailed from East Central. “I’m going to quit, get out of Delta City, even. Maybe I’ll write a book.”

I patted Iggy on the shoulder, told him it had been good working with him, and wished him luck. I bought him another beer and left him at the noodle stand.

# # #

Late Thursday afternoon, I went to the address that Iggy gave me to do a little surveillance of the place. I wandered around the perimeter of the place, taking note of places where I could sneak in, and placing miniature, remote camera pods. It was a fifty thousand square-foot industrial building, designed with manufacturing in mind. It sat on a large, fenced-off lot with multiple out-buildings and an empty storage yard. According to city records, it had sat vacant for almost four years at that point, though the real estate company maintained it.

Not wanting to draw attention to myself, I went in disguise, dressed in second-hand clothes and looking a little shabby. Under a cheap jacket I wore my gun and a thin body armor vest. A respirator mask and an old baseball cap completed the ensemble. You wouldn’t have been able to pick me out of a crowd of people loitering at a monorail hub.

Wearing a mask around Delta City doesn’t make anyone look twice, especially in the industrial areas. Nova Columbia doesn’t have much in the way of native life, but there is one family of slime mold that is particularly troublesome. Too much exposure to the spores from the gunk causes Kellerman’s Syndrome, a serious, chronic medical condition. My grandparents both died from it.

As the sun went down I made my way back to my car, which was parked away from the building, and updated Lily on the situation. She could monitor the video feed from my camera pods from back at the office, so I asked her to take the first watch while I caught a little shut-eye. I had no way of knowing when they’d show up, or if they’d show up at all.

It was dark when Lily woke me up. Looking at the clock, I realized I’d been out for three hours. I told her she didn’t have to let me sleep for that long, but she insisted that I needed the rest. She’s a thoughtful kid like that, and she was probably right.

Pulling the video feed up on my car’s console screen, I cycled through the cameras until I found the one with activity. Two cars had pulled up to a gate on the east side of the property. The gates, activated remotely, slid open and the cars went in. They parked close to the east end of the building, not far from the gate, and cut their engines. Four people got out of the first car, and two people, a man and a woman, climbed out of the second one. The car matched the make and model of the one Miguel owned. A big man and a shorter, thin woman got out. Between the darkness and how far away my camera was, I couldn’t positively ID them, but my gut told me I’d found Felix Konrad’s wayward son.

This meeting with the COFfers wasn’t a good place to confront Miguel, and I still had no idea where he’d been staying. Normally, you can track a vehicle by its transponder and navigation systems, but Nova Columbia has pretty strict privacy laws and all of that can be disabled by the owner if he wants. Miguel, to his credit, was smart enough to think to do that, which is part of the reason Cyrus Vermillion had been unable to locate him. Putting a tracking beacon on his car would be a safer bet than trying to tail him. Then, I could figure out where he was staying, let his father know, and see where he wanted to go from there. It all sounded simple enough in my head.

Life has a way of being complicated, though, especially when you come up with a simple plan. Two more vehicles arrived at the site, one of which was a large, swanky-looking luxury sedan. They parked with the other vehicles and people began to pile out. It was hard to make out from the camera feed, but the three guys who got out of the big sedan looked like they were wearing long robes, like the kind you wear for graduation. The three guys who got out of the second car looked normal. Bodyguards, maybe? As the three robed men headed inside, their security went with them, but the driver of the sedan stayed with the car and lit up a cigarette. Damn it. I was going to have to be even sneakier now.

It took me a few minutes to make my approach, but I plotted a route that would let me get close while not being in the line of sight of the man lingering outside. I crawled through a hole in the fence that I had noted earlier and entered the property. Most of the exterior lighting of the place was shut off, so I was able to creep along the side of the empty factory toward the parked cars under the cover of darkness.

My target car was just around the corner from me now, but the driver of the four COF bigwigs was still pulling security outside. I was able to watch him by using my handheld to monitor the camera feeds. He looked bored and was pacing about. If he would just wander a little ways away, I would be able crawl up to Miguel’s car and plant my bug. All I needed was for something to distract him, maybe draw him off for a minute.

I guess it was my lucky day because I got the distraction I needed. A muffled boom erupted from inside the building. Old habits die hard and I reflexively crouched down.

Whatever that explosion was, it got the attention of the driver. He dropped his cigarette and ran inside. I slipped around the corner, approached Miguel’s car, and slapped my tracking beacon up in the undercarriage. I was about to make my exit when I heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire coming from inside the building.

The smartest thing I could have done in that situation was to call the Security Forces and withdraw back to my car. I’d found Miguel Konrad, I’d done the job I was hired to do, and I wasn’t being paid enough to go inject myself into somebody else’s gunfight. Getting involved in a situation like that is stupid going on suicidal—I had no idea who was shooting at who or why.

I guess I wasn’t blessed with an abundance of brains, though, because against my better judgement I found myself running to the building’s entrance. A desperate father had looked me in the eye and pleaded with me to bring his son home. It didn’t feel right to just run off when he could be in danger.

I didn’t get far. Just inside the door was a landing, with one door leading into the building and a set of stairs going to the upper level. Miguel crashed into me at the base of the stairs and it was like getting hit by a truck. Running down a flight of stairs, he hit me straight on and knocked me flat on my ass. The big lug tumbled to the floor himself, landing on top of me.

“Miguel!” a woman cried. It was Maya, she was right behind him. The Konrad boy pushed himself up off of me and clambered to his feet. In his left hand was the special shielded case his father had told me about, the one used for transporting the Rune Sphere. In his right hand was a gun, and it was pointed right between my eyes.

“Don’t shoot!” I said, showing him my hands.

“Who are you?” he demanded, waving the gun in my face.

“I’m a detective, I’m a private detective!” I said. “Your father hired me to find you! He wants you to come home!”

From up the stairs came a whole bunch of angry sounding footsteps and the shouts of men.

“They’re coming, we gotta go!” Maya cried. Slung across her back was a case similar to the one Miguel had. She was also carrying a gun, and had it pointed back up the stairs.

“Get out of the way!” the boy shouted at me. I scrambled to get out of his way before he decided to shoot me. Miguel grabbed Maya’s empty hand, and pulled her with him as he ran for the door. They were almost clear when three men in suits came running down the stairs, guns drawn. Gunshots rang out, head-splittingly loud in the ceramicrete stairwell, as the lead man fired off shot after shot at the fleeing lovers. A round caught Maya in the back just as she disappeared through the door. I heard her scream.

Remember what I said before about not getting involved in somebody else’s gunfight? I stand by that, even if I’m about to prove myself a hypocrite. I didn’t know what was going on, exactly, but I wasn’t about to let those COFfer lunatics kill the young man I’d been hired to find. Still seated on the floor, I drew my revolver from under my right arm, extended it out in my hands, and fired. The gun roared in the vestibule. The bullet caught the bodyguard, the one who’d shot Maya, in the side, under his right arm. If he’d been wearing a vest, it didn’t do him any good. Blood splattered on the wall behind him and he tumbled to the floor.

With that I was on my feet and moving, gun pointed up the stairs. The other security men started firing wildly in my general direction, and I was pretty sure some of their bullets hit their fallen compatriot. Leaning around the stairs, I popped off a few more shots to keep the pursuers heads’ down and was out the door in a flash.

Miguel was on his knees just outside, hands shaking, obviously in shock. Maya was lying on the ground in front of him, face up, bleeding badly. She wasn’t dead, but she would be soon if I didn’t get a seal on that wound.

“Get her up!” I said, ejecting the partially empty cylinder from my gun. I snapped a fresh one in place. “You need take her to your car!”

“This is all your fault!” he screamed, pointing his gun at me.

We didn’t have time for this. “Listen to me, goddamn it, or she’s going to die! Do you understand? Your father sent me to find you and bring you home!”

I got through to him that time. He lowered the gun, and started to say something, but I heard the door behind me get kicked open. I spun around, weapon at the ready, and was faced with three more gunmen. There was no time to do anything else—I fired.

# # #

Late the next morning, I was back in my office. I really wanted to go home, take a shower, and sleep for a day, but I was always a stickler for making sure all my work was done before going home. I poured myself a glass of Darwin Ducote Single Barrel, a locally produced bourbon that’s aged ten years in a real wooden barrel. It’s pricey, but after the night I’d had, I needed it.

Lily sat in the chair across from my desk, looking at a tablet screen, as I caught her up on everything that had transpired. Believe it or not, as hairy as things got, this one worked out in the end. I’d shot four men, killing three of them, but at the moment it wasn’t bothering me. That would come later. I was able to get a seal on Maya’s wound and had Miguel drive us to a doctor. Not a city hospital, but a private practice doctor who’s a friend of mine. He’s on call and doesn’t ask too many questions. She lived, by the way. The girl caught a round in her back, but it missed her heart and spine.

As Miguel told it, he and Maya hatched a plan together to get the Chalice back from the that associate chapter of the Cosmic Ontological Foundation. Maya had grown up on the rough side of Delta City and was something of a hustler. She admitted that when she originally met Miguel, she was planning to fleece him, but the girl had a real soft spot for the big idiot and they became an item.

It was she who helped him track down the Foundation chapter that had stolen the Chalice and killed that smuggler. They took the Rune Sphere and offered it to the COFfers, spinning a story about how they wanted to join, and how he could get more items from his father’s collection. The COFfers fell for the scam, too. That meeting was the first time that the COF chapter leader had brought the Chalice with him, seeing as how he planning on combining it with the Sphere and presenting it to the Triumvirate of Scholars. Those crazy kids set off a flash bomb and popped a canister of riot control agent, grabbed both artifacts, and ran for it. Their plan didn’t account for all the security the Scholars brought with them, though, and it almost ended badly for them.

In the end, it was a young man’s incredibly stupid and dangerous attempt to correct what he felt was a mistake on his part, encouraged by Maya. I was right about her after all, it seemed—she was the sort of woman who could get a man into all sorts of trouble.

Luckily for probably everyone involved, the Security Forces never caught wind of the incident. The Foundation wasn’t about to report that its people had gotten killed in a deal for a stolen alien artifact gone badly. It was just another wild night in the Big D.

Like I said, Delta City is one hell of a town.

* * *

Mike Kupari is the author of four science fiction novels, from Baen Books, as well as the coauthor, with Larry Correia, of the best-selling Dead Six military adventure series. He grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and enlisted at the age of seventeen. Kupari has worked as a security contractor with several firms, did a tour in Southwest Asia with a private military company, and is an NRA-certified firearms instructor.

“Trouble is my Business” is set in the world of his upcoming hardboiled detective science fiction novel, Trouble Walked In, featuring detective Ezekiel “Easy” Novak.

Dark Angel

David Carrico

Mordechai Zalman’s mobile sounded at 23:43. “Answer,“ he said, and the mobile routed the sound through the car speakers. “Zalman speaking.”

“Sir . . .” He recognized the voice of one of the regular operators. As they frequently did, she spoke in English. “. . . Pakad Dayan says it’s urgent that she speaks to you.”

“Patch her through.”

An audible click.

“Colonel?” As was her norm, the pakad spoke in Hebrew.

“Rivka,” Mordecai said. “Make it quick.”

“I need you in the Golan Heights area as soon as possible.” Her voice gave a sharp edge to the Hebrew syllables. “The Druze village of Ayn Qunya.”

Mordechai frowned. “Why?”

There was a brief pause. “Colonel, do you remember the time we found the man frying his wife’s liver after he killed her? What was that—fifteen years ago?”

“Sixteen. And yes, I recall.” Mordechai’s stomach tightened, and his left hand was white-knuckled on the steering wheel.

“You remember what you told me afterward?”

Mordecai said nothing, and after a moment Rivka Dayan’s voice assumed a deeper intonation. “‘Dayan, when you see something weirder than this, call me.’” She paused again. “I’m calling.”

Mordechai looked at his watch, said, “Two hours. End call.” He turned the nearest on-ramp to Highway 6, the Yitzhak Rabin Highway.

* * *

Mordechai was north of Haifa and had transitioned to Highway 77 when he sighed and tapped a control to turn the air conditioner fan down. Summer in Israel was hot, and even a vampire could appreciate modern technology at times.

“This is not good,” he growled—to himself, to haShem, to the not-yet-present Dayan—he wasn’t sure. But for Rivka Dayan to bring up that grisly old story, one which was legend among the ranks of the Israeli Police Force? It didn’t help any that the man’s name was Livshitz. What the typical police mordant sense of humor did with that was almost a crime in itself. But after all Dayan had seen and done in the twenty years it had taken her to climb to a pakad’s rank—basically a captain in the IPF—for her to bring that old case up meant that it wasn’t just going to be bad. It was most likely going to be horrific.

He grimaced. Of course, given the things that Mordechai himself had seen in his two hundred and eighty-plus years of life as both a Jew and a vampire in eastern Europe—the wars, the persecutions, the pogroms, the Holocaust, the Warsaw ghetto—his perspective on bad and horrific was almost certainly a bit different from the young woman’s.

He snorted. Young woman. She would really take him to task if she knew he thought of her that way. She was every bit of forty years old, and rightfully proud of it—proud of the age, yes, but even more so, proud of the experience and everything she had survived to attain it. But from his point of view, she wasn’t much more than a child. Everyone was, with the exception of the less-than-a-handful of other vampires he knew or knew of.

A kilometer post flashed by, catching Mordechai’s eye. Thoughts of the ghetto returned. That—that had almost broken him. They had fought so hard. He had fought with them, making the Nazis pay an exorbitant price. The world still had no idea of what the true cost of defeating the Warsaw Revolt had been., Many of the German casualties from quelling the uprising had been buried in the Eastern Front casualty lists by the Hitler regime. The world also had no idea how much death an angry vampire could wreak against even a modern army.

But in the end, it wasn’t enough. In the end, the revolt failed—almost a modern-day Masada.

And that had almost broken him. Even he had finally tired of killing the gray-clad soldiers who were helpless against him. It was the rebirth of Israel that had saved him, had called him forth from his silent retreat and given him purpose. And that was why he was here tonight.

Another kilometer post flicked by, resetting his perspective again.

Mordechai’s chuckle was almost a laugh, acknowledging the change. He tapped the GPS on the dash. “Taking 77 over to Tiberias, where we’ll pick up Highway 90 and go north. If this is accurate, we’re about seventy kilometers from the junction with Highway 99, and from there it’s just a few kilometers to Ayn Qunya. About an hour, maybe a bit less.” He still wasn’t sure who he was talking to, but he didn’t feel alone tonight, and that was okay.

“Of course, the way I drive, probably a lot less.”

Mordechai chuckled again but said nothing else. He simply stared ahead through the windshield. It still sometimes amazed him how much detail he could see at night. He settled back in the seat and pressed the accelerator down a bit more. The Audi responded and arrowed through the night.

* * *

“Time,” Mordechai said, eyes on the slightly winding road.

“01:19,” his mobile responded through the car’s speakers.

About what he figured. He should be about five kilometers or so out.

“Call Dayan.”

The third ring was cut off by the response, “Dayan here.” Still in Hebrew. “Zalman?”

“Yes. I’m almost there. Four minutes, maybe. Where do I find you?”

“You know where the administration building is?”

“Yes.”

“Meet me there. We can walk from there.”

“Good enough. Soon. End call.”

In point of fact, it was only three minutes when Mordechai brought his car to a halt in front of the city administration building below a sign with a line of Arabic script and a line of Hebrew script, putting the Arabic Ein Qiniyye above the Hebrew Ayn Qunya. Two related names describing the smallest Druze village in the Israeli-claimed Golan territory.

By the time Mordechai was out of the car and closing the door, Dayan was striding toward him with another plain-clothes inspector beside her. His blazer over jeans didn’t compare well with Mordechai’s Savile Row suit. Mordechai’s mouth quirked at that.

They were joined by two Border Policemen in their standard gray uniforms to one side and three male Druze in civilian clothes on the other. Dayan was wearing her standard pants suit in a dark hue—green, he judged. It was a shade that was hard to discern in really dim light, even for vampire eyes.

“Dayan,” he said with a nod.

“Colonel Zalman. My partner, Elon Nazriani.” The two men exchanged nods. Dayan shifted to Arabic. “Do you know Mayor Tarek Jurdi?” She gestured to the central of the three Druze, an older man with a graying beard.

Mordechai shifted his gaze, and followed her lead into Arabic. “I know of him, but I’ve not met him before. Mayor.” He gave a second nod.

The mayor’s face was in a set expression, but Mordechai didn’t miss the furrows between his brows. “Colonel Zalman. I’ve heard of you. Pakad Dayan insisted we call you in.” His tone indicated reservations. Mordechai didn’t blame him.

Mordechai’s gaze shifted back to Dayan. “What’s the problem, Dayan?”

“It will be easier to show you than to describe it, sir.” She gestured to the west. “If you’ll accompany us, please.” It wasn’t a question, which gave some indication of the stress she was under.

Dayan led the way. Mordechai walked beside her, the Druze followed, and the two Border Policemen brought up the rear with rifles slung across their chests in high carry position, alert and watchful.

They walked past several buildings along the curving road, until Dayan turned into an alley between two buildings that turned into a pathway up the rise of the hill behind them. They walked a bit over a hundred meters up the hill, stopping beneath an ancient cedar tree with a wide-spreading canopy of branches. There were half a dozen more Border Police standing perimeter guard fifty meters apart from each other around the tree. Mordechai could see a mound beneath the tree, even in the shadow of the canopy, that didn’t match the line of the ground around it. His night vision didn’t reveal anything else.

Dayan led them to a spot directly beneath the canopy of the tree. “Here.“ She flicked her flashlight on. The bright beam dazzled Mordechai for a moment, but his eyes adjusted quickly. He watched as she bent down and pulled a blanket from where it covered the mounded shape. He saw instantly why she’d called him.

“How long?”

“The Border Police were called four hours ago. As soon as they saw this, they called us in. As soon as I saw this, I called you.”

The body was that of an older man, clearly dead by the amount of blood on him. His hat lay on the ground beside him. His thinning hair was tousled, and the gray stubble on his cheeks and chin had trapped a lot of the blood from the wounds in his neck.

Mordechai knelt by the body, holding one hand up.

“Light.”

Dayan slapped her light into his hand. Bringing it close, he peered at the neck wounds. As he suspected—as he feared—they weren’t caused by a wild animal. They didn’t match the kind of biting, slashing, and tearing that the fangs of a larger feline or canid would have produced. Not that there were many such in Israel anyway, but those possibilities were ruled out by what Mordechai saw. It almost looked like something had been trying to chew on the neck without much success. There was little tissue missing, but also very little intact skin—mostly just raw bloody tissue between the collar of the man’s shirt and his jaw.

Mordechai turned the light off, and bent forward to put his face close to the victim’s neck. He inhaled, softly but deeply. He held the breath for a moment, then opened his mouth to release it quietly, then repeated the process.

There.

A hint. The barest hint of a musklike scent, slight and almost covered by the metallic tang of blood in the air, but it was there. After his second exhale, he leaned back and turned the flashlight back on.

Rising to his feet with one lithe motion, Mordechai handed the light back to Dayan and turned to look between the mayor and the inspectors, straightening his jacket and cuffs as he did so. “Brief, please.”

Nazriani pulled his mobile from his pocket and read from the screen in a deep baritone. “Faisal Safadi. Age 54, widower with no living children. Gardener. No known record or charges. No history of violence or politics. His neighbors say he was a quiet and peaceful man. No known enemies, no major debts, no known addictions.” He thumbed the screen off and put the mobile back in his jacket pocket.

Mordechai stared down at Safadi’s corpse for a long moment, then looked up to face the Druze who had been watching him with expressions varying between expectation and disdain.

“My sorrow for your community’s loss, Mayor Jurdi.” Mordechai placed his hand over his heart as he spoke in Arabic.

“It is indeed a loss,” the mayor replied. “He was a good man, a gentle man. Can—will—you find who killed him?”

Mordechai ignored the implication that he might not do his duty. As insults went, it was pretty weak. “I believe I know what killed him. We will see what I can find tonight.”

“Your pakad insisted we wait for you, at the cost of several hours.” The mayor’s voice was even, but a narrowing of his eyes indicated anger. “May we remove him to prepare for the burial? The day will be on us before long.”

Mordechai nodded. “Indeed. I have what I need. You may do him honor now.” The three Druze came forward. “And Mayor?” Jurdi turned to face him. “After you remove the body, it would be best if your people remained indoors until dawn. For their own safety, you understand. It may take some time to find and take down the killer.”

The mayor’s mouth tightened, but he nodded. “As you say.”

The other two Druze rolled the body into the blanket and lifted it, following the mayor’s flashlight down the hill back toward the streets of the village. Mordechai watched them go.

After they reached the bottom of the hill, without turning, he said, “Dayan. Nazriani.” He felt them draw up on each side of him. “How many people do you have here?”

“The eight you’ve seen,” Dayan said.

“We can have more in an hour—two, at the most,” Nazriani said, pulling his mobile from his pocket.

Mordechai lifted a hand. “No, this is enough.” He turned and faced them. “Dayan, you and seven of your people stay here. Lights on. Four watching out, four watching the ground around the tree. Rounds chambered, and knives loose in your sheaths. Keep lights on the space. You,” he pointed at Nazriani, “you and the newest recruit will come with me. We will scout the village, then come back here.”

“Take more men with you, Colonel,” Dayan said. “At least two more. I can manage with five.”

“No.” She opened her mouth, and he gave her a commander’s glare. “No.” She shut her mouth and nodded stiffly.

Mordechai looked at Nazriani, and said, “Find your man, and let’s go.”

“Spira.” Nazriani held up a hand and beckoned with two fingers. A short troop pushed through the others and stood before them. “Colonel Zalman, this is Shoter Dov Spira, the newest man in the squad, and also the best marksman in his class.”

“Good. You’re both with me. Spira to my left. Nazriani on the right. Walk as soft as you can. And no talking.”

“Right,” Nazriani replied. Spira just nodded and shifted position, lifting his rifle just a touch from where it rubbed on his armor. Mordechai lifted his hand to point forward and stepped off toward the northwest.

For the next ninety minutes, Mordechai quartered through the parts of the village that lay north of the cedar tree where Dayan was watching. He of course had no trouble seeing where he was going. The others weren’t as fortunate, stumbling every so often, especially if they left a street to walk to the crest of a hill, which Mordechai did fairly often.

Mordechai said nothing, not even in response to the occasional muttered curse from Nazriani. He would stop fairly often to listen to the night sounds—or the lack of night sounds, it might have been. And he would draw deep breaths through his nose, teasing out subtle scents. He appreciated that none of the Israelis were wearing perfume or cologne. Those scents could spread across wide spans and mask everything else around them. Something the early resistance fighters had passed on to the Israeli Defense Force in its infancy.

Spira was silent and motionless at such times. Nazriani would shift from foot to foot, and mutter under his breath at least once for each stop. Mordechai’s hearing understood his curses just fine.

It was at the northernmost point of their course that Mordechai finally found a hint of scent, a very slight catch of the almost-musk he had smelled on Safadi’s body. It wasn’t even really a spoor, just a wisp that he only caught because he’d imprinted on it during his examination of the victim. Though very faint, it was distinctive.

The night air was still, and as he turned toward the east, he picked up more hints. A slow incremental turn, another inhale, another taste of it. A fractional turn, and his hand shot out to clamp on Nazriani’s shoulder in mid-mutter.

“Stand still!” Mordechai hissed. “Be still.”

Nazriani froze, and after a moment the vampire removed his hand.

Mordechai tracked the scent around, hint by hint, step by step, until it brought them back to the tree. That was no surprise to him. Once he’d caught it, that was where he had expected it to lead him. And so it did.

They walked through the police perimeter surrounding the tree. Mordechai waved Spira and Nazriani on to rejoin Dayan as he slowly paced around the tree at the edge of its canopy. As he came around to the south the second time he left that circle and walked over to where Dayan was standing with Nazriani and Spira.

“What time is it?”

Everyone looked at their watches, but Spira spoke first. “2:57, sir.” In contrast to Nazriani, he had a pleasant tenor, Mordechai noted.

“Pull your men in, Dayan, all of them, and take them fifty meters down the path.”

“Do you want the perimeter maintained?”

“No. Just take them down the path.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see,” Mordechai said. “Just do it, Dayan.” He knew his voice sounded hard, but he was focused on what was coming next, not on being polite. He stripped off his suit coat and handed it to Nazriani. “Hold this.” The coat was followed by his shoulder holster and pistol, which he placed in Dayan’s hands. “And this.”

He looked Dayan in the eye. “Pull them back now, and don’t move until you hear me call you or it’s dawn.” He turned and walked back up to the edge of the canopy and waited as the troops filtered past him and they all moved down the hill.

Mordechai turned his head to watch them go. They went the fifty meters, although he was certain that Dayan and probably Nazriani were standing a little bit short of that mark. He would have wanted to be closer to the action, in their place.

He waited until he felt the moment was right, at which point he walked softly to the trunk of the cedar and rested his hand upon it. He felt the life of the tree under his hands, slow moving, regular in its rhythms. After a moment, he stepped back and looked up.

“You might as well come down.” Mordechai spoke in Arabic, in a conversational tone. “You can’t hide from me. I know you are up there. I can smell you. I can hear your heart beat.” He allowed himself to enter the hunt, and felt his fangs descend. The resulting smile had nothing of humor about it.

There was a slight scrape and thump sound. Mordechai’s smile sharpened. After a moment, a figure walked around the trunk of the tree to stand facing him. The figure was tall and wide-shouldered, though not quite as tall as Mordechai. Mordechai could see that its face was covered by several days of matted beard, and it was dressed in a ragged Syrian army uniform with a captain’s insignia.

“Apostate . . . heretic . . .” the figure mumbled, raising one hand to point at Mordechai. “Kill you . . .”

“I think not,” Mordechai replied. “You end tonight.”

“Can’t . . . kill me.” That was something like a snarl.

“What? Of course I can. You think you’re the only vampire around? Poor deluded baby vampire.” Mordechai’s voice had grown very cold. “You know so little, and now you will never have the chance to learn more.”

The Syrian shrieked—almost a steam whistle—and leapt at Mordechai. His left hand clawed across Mordechai’s shirt as the older vampire spun away, and only the fact that it was partly woven of Kevlar kept the shirt from being torn to shreds.

The next few minutes were both frantic and frenetic. The feral vampire laughed and shrieked like a crazed baboon, and fought like one as well, hands clawing and slashing, teeth constantly seeking to tear whatever could be brought to his face. Even for a young vampire, this one was particularly manic, Mordechai observed as he blocked a kick and a claw. That was followed by the thought that maybe the old saying that the most dangerous opponent was one who knew nothing might not be so far away from the truth after all.

A fist slamming him on the top of his head punctuated that.

The Syrian spun and leapt at Mordechai again, but this time the angle was right. Mordechai reached up and grabbed the other’s left wrist and, with all of his own strength, redirected the feral vampire to slam face-first into the trunk of the cedar.

Even a vampire can be stunned for just a moment by an impact like that, which was more time than Mordechai needed. In less than a split-second he was on the Syrian, left hand between his shoulder blades pushing his opponent against the tree with his full strength, while his right hand landed rapid trip-hammer blows to the back of the Syrian’s neck. With the third strike he heard pops and cracks. With the fifth he felt two of the vertebrae shatter.

Mordechai put his left hand against the back of the Syrian’s skull and pushed while his right hand cupped the chin and pulled. In less than a breath the Syrian was looking back over his own shoulder, still conscious, still with eyes glaring, still spitting incoherent threats. Mordechai push-pulled harder. The flesh around the Syrian’s neck began to tear. Blood began to ooze and spurt as he forced the head farther and farther around. As the rotation increased, so did the tearing, until at a critical point the flesh gave way entirely and the head ripped loose from the body.

He let the head drop, stepping back to let both parts fall without getting any more blood on himself. The body fell backward and landed more or less straight, feet pointed toward the tree. The head hit the ground and rolled a bit, but came to rest face up, empty eyes perched above a meaningless leer that displayed the fangs to good effect.

Mordechai took a deep breath, then released it in a slow sigh. Always the new ones were the same: always rage and adrenaline. Fierce, but blind and stupid. He shook his head. And once they killed, they had to be taken down.

He turned and walked down the hill until he reached Dayan and Nazriani, with the Border Police troops only two meters behind, all with weapons aimed up the hill.

“Spira,” Mordechai called out. The new recruit lowered his rifle and stepped forward. “Run down to my car. The code to the boot is 84637. In the left side of the boot is a small kit bag with some workout clothes in it. Dump the clothes in the boot, but bring me the bag and the towel. In the right side of the boot is a box with three body bags in it. Bring me one of those as well. Run.”

Spira saluted and took off in a sprint.

Mordechai turned to Nazriani. “Go find the mayor and bring him back here.” Nazriani handed Mordechai’s jacket off to one of the troops and left. He didn’t sprint, but he wasted no time in being about his task.

“And what do you want me to do, Colonel?” Dayan said in a flat tone.

“Just wait here for a few more moments and have one of your men get me some water to wash my hands.”

“Yosef!” Dayan snapped over her shoulder.

“Pakad.”

“You still carrying that extra canteen?”

“Yes, Pakad.”

“Give.”

A moment later Dayan was twisting the cap off the canteen. Mordechai held his hands out and she poured part of the water over them. He scrubbed them together, then held them out again and she poured the rest over his hands to rinse them. By the time Mordechai finished shaking the water off of his hands Spira was back and was offering him the towel, which he took and wiped his hands dry before stuffing it in the kit bag.

Dayan handed him his pistol and shoulder holster, and watched as he settled those into place, shrugging into the comfortable weight of them. Spira then handed him his jacket, and in a moment he looked presentable again—at least in the dark. He pulled his pistol from the holster and slid it back in to make sure it was settled correctly and ready if he needed it. In response to a gesture, Spira handed him the body bag.

“Why didn’t you use that?” Dayan said with a sidewise tilt of her head toward his holster.

“Not the right tool,” Mordechai said.

“A Glock 40 isn’t the right tool for dealing with a madman?” He could see her eyebrows elevated halfway to her hairline.

“Not this madman.”

Mordechai looked toward a noise. “Good, they’re here. Bring your flashlight.

“Mayor,“ he said, turning toward that worthy, “please come with me. I have something to show you. Just you,” he added, as the inevitable companions from earlier in the evening moved to come with him. “We’re just going up to the tree. Not far, and we won’t be long.” He gestured toward the tree, and after a moment of reluctance, the mayor waved his companions back and began mounting the hill toward the tree.

“Dayan, Nazriani, you also, but only you three.”

It took a bit over a minute to walk the less than fifty meters back up to the top of the hill. When Mordechai stopped, the rest stopped as well. Dayan and Nazriani spread a little to the sides.

“Dayan, your light please.”

A click came from her direction, and the bright LED-fed beam splashed over the scene. The headless body was prominent at first glance, eliciting grunts from the other two men. Dayan said nothing; her beam held steady.

Mordechai could tell when the others saw the head. “Shit!” Nazriani exploded, echoed by a sudden hiss of indrawn breath from the mayor. Dayan still said nothing, but the beam of the light wavered for just a moment, then settled to spot the admittedly macabre object.

“That, Mayor,” Mordechai said with a heavy emphasis on the first word, “is what killed Faisal Safadi. It won’t kill again. Obviously.” His voice was cold, his Arabic sharp-edged.

There was a long moment of silence, before the mayor said, “Thank you.” He paused to clear his throat. “But was this, then, the only one?”

“You may rest assured, Mayor.”

Nazriani had recovered enough that he was gazing at Mordechai with narrowed eyes. Mordechai could see his lips moving, but no words were spoken. That caused one corner of his mouth to quirk with amusement. Nazriani was not someone that Mordechai thought would often be at a loss for words.

“Dayan—light off.”

It quenched immediately, and the four of them were left in relative darkness. Mordechai knew the others would be effectively blinded for some time.

He bent down with the towel in his hands and picked up the head and placed it in the kit bag and zipped it shut. As he laid out and opened the body bag, he said, “You three are the only ones who have seen this. I'm telling all three of you that you need to not talk about this. It would cause needless panic.“ He picked up the body and laid it in the bag. “And I would not be happy if rumors started.“ He zipped the body bag up again. “And besides, you won’t be able to prove anything happened.”

Hoisting the body bag to his shoulder, Mordechai bent and picked up the kit bag. “Tomorrow it will all seem like a dream.”

With that, Mordechai started back down the hill. After several steps, he heard Mayor Jurdi hiss, “Iblis!”

“No, Mayor,” Dayan responded. “Not Iblis. Azrael.”

“But . . .” from Nazriani.

“Not another word, Elon,” Dayan muttered in Hebrew. “If he doesn’t shoot you, I will.”

Mordechai’s mouth quirked. He’d known Rivka would understand.

* * *

Mordechai had been on the road back to Tel Aviv for over an hour when he had finally unwound enough.

“Call Avram.”

His mobile made the call and routed it to the car’s speakers. It rang four times, followed by a click.

“Hallo.” Dr. Avram Mendel’s voice was dull, having just been roused from sleep, but it was recognizably his friend’s.

“Good early morning or late evening to you, Rav Avram,” Mordechai began in Hebrew, “whichever you choose.” Dr. Mendel the scientist was also Rabbi Mendel, which made for interesting conversations at times.

“Mordechai?”

“The same.”

“It’s . . . 4:30 in the morning. Why are you calling me?”

“Because I have a new case study for your favorite project, and I’ll be back in Tel Aviv in about an hour. I assume you want it in the usual place?”

“Oh.” Mendel’s voice sharpened quite a bit. Mordechai smiled at the clicks that were transmitted from the other end. Mendel was trying to find his glasses. “Yes, the usual location. I’ll notify Dr. Hurwitz about it as soon as we hang up.”

“He’ll be delighted, I’m sure.” Mordechai chuckled.

“Undoubtedly.” Mendel’s voice carried a note of a smile with it even through the car speakers. “What can you tell me about it?”

“You’re lucky to get this one. I’m coming back from the Golan Heights. It’s Syrian in origin, apparently crossed the line tonight. Just an infant, really. Still soft. I’d say no more than two weeks old.”

They were talking in circumlocutions. It was long ago established that they wouldn’t use the word “vampire” outside very secure locations, especially in communications.

“Any collateral issues?” Dr. Mendel, also being Rabbi Mendel, was always concerned about the people in any episode.

“One on our side of the line in one of the Druze villages,” Mordechai said. “I suspect one or more on the Syrian side of the line as well, depending on when it changed, but I don’t know for sure. Maybe our security monitors can pick up something.”

“I’ll drop a hint in their ear this morning.”

“Do. I’ll do likewise with the Mossad techs. And Avram?”

“Yes?”

“Add Pakad Rivka Dayan to your list of good people.”

“Do you want to recruit her?”

“Umm . . . eventually, maybe, but not right now. But if we can ever do her a good turn, we owe her for tonight.”

“I’m making that note now. When will you have a full report for me?”

“Probably tomorrow night, unless something else comes up. It won’t be a long one. This was a very short episode. Less than five hours from first notice to conclusion.”

“Good. The shorter the better.”

“Agreed.”

“Will you be able to make it here safely?”

“Yes. I should arrive about dawn, and the darkened windows in the car will cover me until I get there. But I think I will doss down in one of the guest rooms at the facility. I don’t want to have to deal with the sun unnecessarily.”

“Understood. I’ll call staff.”

“And I’m afraid I’ll need fresh clothing.”

“Covered, my friend.”

“I’ll see you later today, then.”

“Indeed. Shalom, Mordechai.”

“Shalom, Avram.”

The wishing of peace to each other, while not usual practice among modern-day Jews, was something the two of them had done for decades, since almost their first encounter. Mordechai found it comforting that a good man like Rav Avram, knowing what Mordechai was, would still bless him with peace when so much of the world would not, not if they knew what he really was. The rabbi was perhaps not a tzaddik—a righteous man—but if he wasn’t, Mordechai didn’t know anyone else who came close.

His mouth quirked as Dayan’s last words came to mind. “Azrael, huh?” He shook his head. “Now that, Rivka, may be crossing a line. I am out of the ordinary, and I may be one of the priestly lineage of the Kohanim, but I am certainly not a mal’āḵ, an angel.” Not for the first time Mordechai contemplated the thought that the Most High might have a sense of humor.

“But since I seem to be called to be his assistant at times, if I have to have another name, that one is probably fitting.”

Azrael, the angel of death. Mordechai nodded. He could live with that—could live with that for a long time. It was fitting—especially on nights like tonight.

“Oh, yes. Note to self . . .” The mobile pinged back at him. “Reset the boot combination.”

All in all, a good night’s work.

* * *

David Carrico made his first professional SF sale to The Grantville Gazette e-magazine in 2004. Since, his stories have also appeared in the Grantville Gazette and Ring of Fire anthologies from Baen Books and in Jim Baen's Universe e-magazine. He is the author of 1636: Flight of the Nightingale, and, with Eric Flint, 1636: The Devil's Opera and The Span of Empire, which was nominated for the 2017 Dragon Award for Best Military SF or Fantasy novel. “Dark Angel” is set in the world of his upcoming Vampire novel The Blood Is the Life.

On Cultivating a Chosen One

Christopher Baxter

The bag over Professor Belik’s head reeked of moldy onions. The tunnels he was stumbling through, meanwhile, carried a musty odor of distant shit. The assault on his nostrils was enough to make him dizzy. Maybe that was the point—he’d long since lost track of their course through the darkness. He clutched his satchel to his chest and went where he was led.

He could hear water flowing nearby; he suspected they were in the sewers, or at least nearby. And every now and then, echoing distantly from up above—screams. Probably sacrifices to the Night King, on the altars far above. Belik shivered. He should never have come back to the city. This was too close, too dangerous.

He clenched his teeth and shoved those pitiful fears aside. This was greater, far more important, than his own life. And at his age, how much longer did he have, anyway?

“We’re here, professor,” his guide whispered, slowing her pace.

“Thank you for arranging this, Karesh,” he replied.

“How could I pass up the chance to hear you lecture again?”

Belik heard the creak of old hinges, felt the hand on his arm tug him in a new direction. He heard a scrape, felt a chair touch the back of his legs. Karesh patted his shoulder, and he sat. The door creaked shut. The room remained dark.

“Professor Belik,” a raspy voice said from somewhere up ahead. “I understand you wanted to speak with us.”

“Demanded, more like,” a high, reedy voice said.

Belik squinted, trying to make out the speakers. What was the point of leaving this malodorous sack on his head in the pitch black? “You are the leaders of this . . . rebellion?” They’d been giving him the runaround for weeks, and he half expected yet another delay.

“. . . some of the leaders,” replied the raspy voice.

Belik knew that voice, he was sure of it. “General Omar? It’s you, isn’t it?”

There was a pause, followed by some muffled whispers. Then a sigh. “Karesh, a light, please.”

From nearby he heard the strike of a match, and a lantern guttered to life. The bag was pulled from his head. Belik blinked in the light. A grizzled man, nearly as old as Belik himself, stood over him. Long scars ran down the side of his face, pale on his dark skin.

“I thought you died when the university burned,” Omar muttered. “With all the rest.”

“I nearly did.” Belik grimaced. “Most of my books did. All my research . . .” He spat, as much for the distaste of the memory as for the taste the sack had left in his mouth. “It’s taken me a long time to replace what I could.” He held up his satchel. Omar took it and returned to his seat, opposite Belik. Beside him sat a hunched, club-footed woman and a young man with bandages over the lower half of his face. A few more ragged soldiers, armed with rusty rifles or even rough spears, stood around the edges of the room. Karesh took a place among them and nodded to him.

“What is this about, Mr. Belik?” the hunched woman said, frowning.

“Professor. I came to inform you that your tactics won’t work.”

The man in the bandages snorted. The woman sneered. “. . . and what do you know of tactics?”

Belik straightened. “What I know is history. And history says that you will fail here.”

“I assure you, Mr. Belik. Between us we have more than sufficient knowledge of military tactics, historical and modern.”

“This isn’t some border skirmish; it’s not even a war. This is a dark lord. Your tactics don’t matter. No hit-and-runs, no bombings, no assassinations are going to bring down the Night King! Your little cells, your scattered army, will simply be snuffed out. Armies are useless here.”

The bandaged man rolled his eyes. The woman frowned at Omar, as though impatient for him to speak. Omar simply watched Belik.

“Dark lord or not, he isn’t invincible,” the woman said. “We can wear down his forces, slip moles into his legions—”

“You are ants hoping to wear down a mountain.” Belik nodded to the satchel in Omar’s hands. “Take a look. Dark lords are creatures of ancient magic, and it is only by deeper, greater magics that they may be laid low.”

Omar tapped his fingers on the satchel, still watching Belik. Then he opened it and removed the papers inside, each covered front and back with tight writing and hasty sketches. He glanced over them briefly. The bandaged man leaned close to see better, but the woman barely glanced their way.

“What are we looking at, professor?” Omar said.

“History. Dark lords are not brought down by armies, nor by rebellions. They are brought down by heroes, by those chosen at fate’s hand.”

Omar leafed through the pages. “I’ve never heard of most of these.”

“Have you been beyond the Talon Mountains? Studied the lore of the sunken continent? Have you spent four decades of your life specializing in prophetic history? Of course you haven’t heard of them.”

“This is superstition and nonsense,” the woman said. “We can’t take this seriously.”

Belik bit his tongue, strangling a cutting reply. He needed to be polite. So many idiots ignored reason if it wasn’t presented to them pleasantly. He’d learned that the hard way. He waited, watching Omar.

“Five years ago,” Omar said, his voice distant, “Professor Belik demanded to speak before the national council. He spoke to us of prophetic symbols, of dark omens. That he believed a dark lord would soon arise in our land. We did not listen.” Omar glanced at his companions, each in turn. “I think I would be a fool to ignore him again.”

The two still looked dubious. Belik cleared his throat. “I trust you all remember the first building to burn, when the Night King took the capital?”

The woman wouldn’t meet his eyes. “The university.”

“Not just the university. The library of history. My department.” Belik pointed at the papers. “The Night King knows that prophecy will come for him, eventually. He fears a hero will rise.”

Omar rubbed his chin, still studying the papers. “What sort of prophecies have been made about the Night King?”

Belik shook his head. “I have no idea. He’s kept them well under wraps, if there are any.”

“Then what use is any of this to us?”

“Most chosen ones share certain characteristics,” Belik replied. “We may not know who will rise to destroy the Night King, but we can create as many candidates as possible. Put the numbers in our favor.”

The three of them shared a long glance. Finally, the woman sighed. “Create candidates how, Mr. Belik?”

“Professor,” Belik said. He stood and pulled a few papers from the pile. He held them up and continued, as though he were lecturing students again. “I have the entire plan outlined here. The first place to start is with the Night King’s commanders. His generals, overlords, and advisors. Start at the top and work your way down. Scour their histories; interrogate their households, if you can. We’re looking for any illegitimate children who have been swept under the rug, hidden away. Particularly children who don’t know their own parentage—even a legitimate child will work, if they somehow don’t know their origins.”

“That would be nearly impossible to trace,” Omar said.

“Do your best. And we should learn the commanders’ schedules—find out if any of them have any whores they favor, or concubines or slaves. If one of them becomes pregnant, get her away by any means possible.”

“This is absurd,” the woman interrupted. “We can’t control these commanders. For all we know, none of them have any illegitimate children. To say nothing of lost or forgotten ones.”

“I said it was the first place to start. Pay attention. Next is half-breeds.”

The rebellion leaders shared an uncertain glance. “Halfers? Why?”

“Most chosen ones are half-breeds,” Belik said, pointing to the relevant pages in their hands. “Since the elves worship the Night King, half-elves would be ideal for our situation. But others might do. The important thing is that they be unusual. Outcast. Not accepted by either culture. Chosen ones are usually outliers.”

Omar seemed uncomfortable. “There aren’t a lot of halfers around. Most of them are just left out in the cold after they’re born.”

“So scour the streets for them, take them in before they freeze!” Belik took a breath and tried to moderate his tone. “And we can make more. You must have funding of some sort—hire whores. Give them a bounty for any half-breeds they birth.”

The woman scoffed. “You want to pay whores to have children?”

“Yes. We should keep an eye on any orphans we can, too.”

“What are we supposed to do . . . stake out orphanages?”

“We should build orphanages. As many as we can.”

“We can’t afford to build orphanages!”

“They won’t cost much—we don’t want them to be good orphanages. A miserable childhood is the crucible that creates heroes. Keep an eye out for anything unusual among the children—strange scars or birthmarks, odd hair or eyes, an unexpected predilection for magic, a . . . a particular talent for music! It could be anything.”

The woman shook her head. She looked as though her stomach was unsettled. “I don’t like this.”

“That’s . . .” Belik let out a calming breath. “Yes, all right. It is . . . unconventional. But it is our best chance at overthrowing the Night King.”

Omar looked over the papers, grimacing. “Even if this could work, it will take decades at the least.”

“And you thought your little hit-and-run sabotages would work so quickly?” Belik jabbed a finger at the papers. “This is how dark lords are brought down. A chosen one will come. Even if we have to make one.”

#

FIVE YEARS LATER

Belik rubbed his eyes beneath his bifocals and squinted at his papers. He missed his office at the university; keeping track of research and ongoing projects had been so much easier when he’d had chalkboards and easels, when he could cover his office walls with pages and look over everything all at once. But with the rebellion, he had to be ready to move at a moment’s notice. He could leave nothing behind—they couldn’t allow the Night King to get wind of their plans.

“Professor, you might want to see this.”

Belik glanced up and adjusted his glasses. Karesh stood in the doorway with a folded message. It reminded him of the university; she’d been his assistant then, too.

“It’s about FHE-11,” she said.

He flipped through his pages as she approached. Female half-elf number eleven. Sisha, by name. Daughter of a whore and a minor elf nobleman. He’d allowed the woman to raise the daughter herself for the first few years, but only because he’d known that the woman’s health problems would take her before too long. The girl had been sent to an orphanage where she was the only halfer, was mistreated by the staff and other orphans alike, and even showed signs of magical talent. One of his favorite candidates.

He frowned as Karesh offered him the paper. “She wasn’t killed, was she?” They’d lost too many children over the years. Half-breed orphans had high mortality rates.

“No, she’s fine, it seems.”

Belik unfolded the message and then shot to his feet. “She was adopted? Who allowed this?”

“Her orphanage wasn’t one of ours, professor. We only have one asset there, and they couldn’t prevent it.”

“We know where they live?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Take me there. Let’s have a look.” Belik snatched his overcoat and cane. “Who in the fifth hell adopts a halfer girl from a ramshackle orphanage?” he muttered under his breath.

Karesh led him down to the street, where they hailed a two-wheel cab. They were dressed in the dull grays of minor government officiants—just important-looking enough to avoid most harassment, but not important enough to warrant attention.

Their route took them past the altars, which were blessedly silent at the moment. The next sacrifice was still half an hour away. Rows of cages behind the altar held slaves awaiting the knife. Most were humans, but a few elves who had failed their King and a smattering of other races shared those pens, too. They were watched over by the Black Guard, rotting armored corpses with glowing red eyes.

Karesh averted her eyes, as most people did around the altars. But Belik knew he didn’t have that luxury. He scanned the faces in the cages, searching for children. It would be dangerous, foolhardy even, to try to rescue someone from those cages—but if he could find a child who had seen their parents sacrificed, the risk might be worth it. But children were rare in the cages these days. He suspected few of them survived the labor camps to be brought here.

To Belik’s surprise, FHE-11’s new home was across the river to the north. It wasn’t exactly an opulent part of the city, but nor was it impoverished. He and Karesh disembarked near an apothecary. From there, she led him down an alley and into a ramshackle building out of view of the street. He huffed up several flights of stairs to the attic, where one of their operatives sat beside a boarded-up window, peering out through a gap with a pair of binoculars.

“You can see their house from here, sir,” he said, handing over the binoculars. “They’re just starting dinner.”

Belik peered at the house, a two-story with a small garden at the rear. Through the window, he could see FHE-11 sitting at a table, gesturing with her utensils between bites of food. A human serving woman dished more food onto her plate. An elf man sat at the head of the table, chuckling.

“Who is he?” Belik asked.

“A medic in the military,” Karesh replied. “A sergeant, I think.”

“An officer? Hmm.” He watched a moment longer, and was surprised to see the human woman take a seat at the table. “Wait, I thought that woman was a servant.”

“His wife, sir,” their operative replied.

“He married a human? That’s career suicide.”

Beside him, Karesh shrugged. “There’s no explaining love.”

Belik snorted. No explaining love, perhaps, but he could certainly explain the societal expectations among elven officers, the stigma against intercourse with humans, let alone marriage. The confluence of unlikely events required to land this child in this family . . .

“This is impossible,” he muttered.

Karesh nodded. “Should we remove her from the list, professor?”

Belik shook his head. “No. No, this is just a setback. She’s too solid a candidate to give up so easily.” He pondered a moment. “. . . we can turn this to our advantage.”

Karesh and the operative exchanged a glance. “. . . how, sir?”

Belik glared at them. “You know damn well how.”

#

Belik watched the shadowed house through the broken window. Any minute now, FHE-11 and her adoptive parents would return from the military parade. He’d waited six months for this moment. Just long enough for the girl to get attached, for her new life to begin to feel real. Long enough that the loss would really mean something.

Soft footsteps sounded on the stairs. “The men are in place, professor,” Karesh said. She seemed subdued, but she understood the necessity. It was why he’d chosen her to aid in his undertaking—she’d been an exemplary assistant at the university, and she remained so now. Focused. Professional.

The carriage came around the corner. It stopped before the house, and the family disembarked. As the carriage rolled away, shadows approached the three figures in the darkness. Rebels, all of them, but dressed in the uniforms of the Night King’s military. They knew their script—they were here to punish the officer and his wife for their “unnatural” marriage. The fight would escalate. The couple would die. The girl would be left alone in the darkness as the assailants retreated into the night, and she would know the Night King’s regime for what it was.

She could be the one, Belik reminded himself as the shadows surrounded the family. She could save them all.

Then he saw a glimmer, the smallest flash, of red light from the center of the shadowed gathering. “What was that?” he muttered.

Karesh peered through the binoculars. “I don’t know. I can’t see it from here.”

And then more red lights appeared down the street, streaking through the darkness. Karesh gasped, and Belik realized what they were. The glowing eyes of Black Guard soldiers, more than a dozen of them.

“No!” Karesh said, dropping the binoculars. She turned to run for the stairs, but Belik caught her arm. “I have to get our men out of there,” she snapped.

Belik clung to her as she tried to shake him free. “It’s too late,” he whispered, watching through the boarded window as the Black Guard descended on their men. He lifted the binoculars—one lens now cracked—and spotted FHE-11 and her parents. They were up against the wall, flanked by three of those abominations. Whole and hale. He cursed.

“A summoning stone,” Karesh muttered, leaning against the wall. She slid down to sit on the floor. “He had a summoning stone. He called the Black Guard.”

“He’s too low ranked to have a stone.” Had they been mistaken? Was this officer more important than they’d realized? But even if he were . . . the nearest guardhouse was several minutes away, and no Black Guard were quartered there. Where had those things come from?

“Our men are down,” he whispered.

“Did any escape?” Karesh replied.

Belik counted the shadowed bodies in the street. “No.”

“Are any alive?”

“I don’t think so.” He watched as the girl and her parents retreated into their home. The Black Guard took up position around the house. A few minutes later, he spotted movement down the street. “The military is here.”

“They’ll scout the area, interrogate the neighbors,” Karesh said. “We should wait here.”

An hour they waited, while the military puttered around. Finally, once the Black Guard had retreated and most of the soldiers with them, they ventured out of hiding. Only three soldiers remained; two patrolling the street in front of the house, one interviewing an old woman beneath the lamp on the street corner. Belik leaned on Karesh’s arm, playing the role of the doddering grandfather on his granddaughter’s arm, pretending they were late customers just leaving the apothecary. He glanced briefly at the soldier and the old woman, just as she glanced his way. Their eyes met, and he froze.

“No,” he whispered. “Chorai?”

The woman stared at him. The lamplight illuminated her face—dark of skin, freckled, tightly curled hair that stuck out as far as the brim of her hat. Her face was more wrinkled than he remembered, but her eyes were just as bright as they were at the university. Professor Chorai, head of ancient religious studies.

“Belik,” she whispered, stepping toward him. “I thought you . . . the fire at the university . . .”

“I thought the same,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse.

The soldier moved to follow, but she waved him back. Belik did not miss the gesture. His mind began to whirl. The impossible adoption, the summoning stone, the Black Guard. He clutched Karesh’s arm to keep from falling as the truth struck him.

“Chorai . . . you’re working for them?”

For a moment, just a moment, he thought he saw shame in her eyes. No, not true shame . . . chagrin. Like a child caught misbehaving. But then her brow furrowed. She glanced down the street at FHE-11’s house, glanced at him, at Karesh. A slow grin broke out on her face as she shook her head.

“Belik. You clever bastard. All this time, I couldn’t believe how many half-breeds the city was suddenly producing, all the orphanages . . . I thought it was just fallout of the coup, of the sacrifices . . . I thought I was fighting against fate, against some unknown prophecy . . . but it was you wasn’t it? You’re trying to . . . to breed yourself a bloody hero of prophecy!”

“A chosen one,” he snapped without thinking. Gods, how they’d argued over the terminology, all those years . . . “Chorai, I thought you were dead, and now . . . you’re working to keep a dark lord in power?”

Chorai lifted her chin, defiant. “You didn’t think he came up with the idea to burn the university on his own, did you?”

He stared at her. At this . . . this stranger. “Why, Chorai?”

She pursed her lips. “They were going to pass me up again, you know. They were going to make you dean over the history department, when I had been there longer, when I had more discoveries to my name, more research . . .” She took a slow breath, wild-eyed. “Well, now their university is gone. Now I get to found my own university, decide who I want in charge. And all I have to do is keep the Night King from falling.”

“You can’t do it, Chorai. You can’t stop fate!”

“If you can help fate, then I can fight it! I will adopt every last orphan myself if I have to—there will be no hero of prophecy!”

“Professor,” Karesh whispered. She tugged at his arm. He saw the two soldiers down the street approaching. The one behind Chorai had his hand on the trigger of his rifle, wary.

“Karesh?” Chorai laughed. “Still working for this bastard, after all these years?” She shook her head. “You chose the wrong horse, dear.” She gestured to Belik. “Take them!”

“Professor, run!” Karesh shouted. She shoved him down the street. Her pistol was already raised. The shot rang through the darkness. Behind Chorai, the soldier collapsed. Belik saw Karesh dive for his rifle, saw her roll to her knees, rifle ready. Her shot hit one of the other soldiers just as one of theirs hit her.

The last Belik saw of her before he rounded the corner was her staggering to her feet, charging the final soldier with bayonet at the ready.

#

Belik staggered into the rendezvous alley, dizzy, chest heaving. He’d dropped his cane at some point in his mad dash, he’d fallen into the gutter, landed on his knee . . . it throbbed now, swollen and tender.

“Professor!” Omar jumped forward and caught Belik before he fell. “Yala’s teats . . . what happened?”

“We lost . . .” Belik muttered. He let Omar guide him to a crate against the wall.

“How? Where . . . is it only you?”

“Only me. It’s all . . . everything is worse than we knew.”

In gasped half-sentences, Belik related what had happened. “She knows all the history, she knows the patterns. She knows what we’re trying to do.”

Omar knelt beside him, face grim, hands folded. “Can her plan work? Could she stop fate?”

Belik leaned against the brick wall and stared up at the black night sky. Slowly, his mind began to right itself. He had always been a logical man, calm and collected. Even now, his mind was working through the problem.

“No. No, it won’t work. A regime like this one, a creature like the Night King, a ruler who feeds off of sacrifices . . . it will always produce orphans. It spawns sorrow and tragedy. She can’t stop that by placing a few orphans in homes, by protecting some families.”

“What’s to stop her from just . . . wiping out all the orphans?”

“We should be so lucky. She’d never catch every last one, and whichever survived? Almost certain to be our chosen one. But she knows that. She won’t do it. She’ll work in the other direction, try to . . . to distract fate’s eye from what’s going on here. But fate is on our side—even if we can do nothing but counter her efforts, the rest will fall into place.”

#

ANOTHER FIVE YEARS LATER

Belik nodded to the girl who brought his beet soup—a half-elf. She smiled and curtsied and hurried back to the kitchen. Sights like her were common these days. Though it was rarely spoken of publicly, most members of the military knew that soldiers in mixed marriages were favored for advancement, and that their superiors looked favorably upon adoption. Many soldiers had risen higher in the service faster than expected, and now many of them were retiring and using their wages to open little places like this with their families.

He raised a spoonful to his lips and then paused. Chorai settled into the seat opposite him, smiling. He glanced out the window. Black Guards had taken up positions beside the door. Most likely there were more out back. Possibly even up on the roof.

“I suspected you couldn’t resist coming out of hiding today,” Chorai said. She wore a self-satisfied little smile. “Good morning, professor.”

He lowered his eyes and sipped his soup. “Professor.”

“It’s ‘dean,’ now, actually,” she replied.

Belik snorted. “How is your little puppet show going?”

“If you mean the university, it is about to graduate its first class of students.”

“Mmm. And how much hand did your master have in their learning? How much were they not allowed to learn?”

She stared at him, face neutral. “Kidnap any children lately, Belik?”

“No. You won that battle.”

Her smile returned.

“Though I thought that executing officials who didn’t recognize their illegitimate children was rather excessive.”

“It was effective.”

“Mmm. You can’t legislate away abusive families. Not even your master can monitor them constantly, or inspire enough fear.”

“We’ll get there.”

“Tighten your grip enough, and they’ll cut off their own arms to escape.”

“Then perhaps the world will be better off without them.” Chorai smiled at the half-elf girl when she reached the table. “Just a tea, please, dearie. Greenfold with lemon and honey.” When the girl left, Chorai gestured after her. “I don’t suppose she was one of yours?”

Belik let his gaze wander out the window. Across the street was one of his orphanages—well, his no longer, since the state had seized it.

“Waiting for something?” Chorai blinked at him, eyes wide. “Nothing is going to happen. We disarmed your bombs. Twelve in all, correct?” He nodded. “Really, Belik. Bombing orphanages. The public’s opinion of your little rebellion is waning fast enough as it is. You must be desperate, to be so petty.”

“Petty?” Belik snapped, glaring at her. The girl brought the tea, but scurried away quickly at the look on his face.

“Ah, there you are. I wondered if you still had any fight left in you.” Chorai squeezed the lemon into her tea. “Yes, petty. You said yourself that I already won that fight. And what good would it have done? Any orphans that survived would not have blamed the king. They’d have blamed you.”

Belik frowned and sipped his soup.

“Oh, don’t pout, Belik.” She leaned forward and dropped into a whisper. “There could still be a future for you, you know. My history department is in need of a dean. That position could be yours . . . if you lead us to the rest of your little rebellion.”

Belik shook his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a waving blot of blue—sunlight reflecting off of glass on a rooftop down the street. It darted into and out of view three times, and then vanished.

“One way or the other, your part in this ends here, Belik,” Chorai said. Any warmth had faded from her voice. She sipped her tea. “You can face trial . . . or you can go back to the life you once enjoyed.”

“The life I enjoyed was the study of history, Chorai. I’ve seen the empty façade your little puppet show tries to pass for history. I’m not going to peddle your propaganda. And you can talk about the public’s waning opinion of the rebellion all you want—we both know that so long as blood is running down this city’s altars, I’ll never lose that contest.”

Belik pushed his soup away and stood. Standing took some time these days, thanks to his bad knee. He needed his cane just to stay on his feet. Once he was there, he took a moment to catch his breath. “Oh . . . speaking of those altars—how many prisoners would you say are kept at each of those?”

Chorai’s eyes narrowed.

“Enough for three days at a minimum, right? One an hour, twenty-eight hours a day . . . at least eighty-four prisoners per altar. With dozens of altars around the city, that’s . . . thousands of prisoners. Thousands of people who have lived their lives in fear and forced labor . . . lots of elves who feel betrayed by their leaders, cast out for some minor error. Many of those people may have watched their families dragged off to be sacrificed, one after another . . . seems like you’ve been keeping a ready pool of potential chosen ones for me.”

“Heroes of prophecy. And there is no way you could free all those people.”

“Maybe not, if they were still guarded by your abominations.” He nodded to the Black Guards outside. “But you’ve got them out and about now, tirelessly watching over this city’s adopted children. Or out defusing bombs.” He frowned at her. “Really, Chorai, you thought I would stoop to bombing orphanages? For no reason?”

“The military—”

“Interesting fact about the military: it turns out that there are a lot of pureblood elves in the upper echelons who loathe being forced to promote soldiers who have mixed with the humans. And having their homes policed. Unwanted children forced upon them. In fact, they loathe it all so much that they have reconsidered their loyalty to their dark lord. General Iindosh, for one.”

Chorai’s face was hard. “If he loathes humans so much, why would he work with you?”

“Oh, he won’t, after this. But he held his nose long enough to strike your master where it would hurt most.” Belik gestured out the window, where the smoke from the burning altars could now be seen, rising in black columns around the city. “Your master will be left pretty weak, won’t he?” He dropped a few coins on the table. “Your tea’s on me today.”

“This won’t kill him. You can’t think it will.”

“Killing him isn’t my job. It never was.”

“You think this will be better, Belik?” Chorai snapped. “Setting lose an army of bloodthirsty elves? It will be civil war. No—I doubt the humans can even manage that, now. It will be a massacre. A genocide.” She drank several gulps of her tea and slammed the cup back onto its saucer.

“We’ll deal with the elves, one way or another. There are a lot of officers who won’t want their families massacred, after all. Like Ylen—the elf who owns this place? He already had to watch his parents sacrificed at the altars. I’m sure he’d do just about anything to keep that from happening again.”

The anger slipped from Chorai’s eyes. Worry replaced it. She glanced toward the kitchen.

Belik smiled. “To answer your question from earlier—yes, she is one of mine. Enjoy the tea.” He headed for the kitchen and paused in the doorway. “Would you like to know the real reason I couldn’t consider your employment offer?”

Chorai didn’t respond. She was breathing heavily, clutching her stomach.

“If I were to be a professor again, I would need an assistant. But I don’t have one anymore.”

He waved farewell and then followed Ylen and his family through the trapdoor in the kitchen, locking it behind them.

#

The rebellion was celebrating; or at least, those left behind in the city were celebrating, after the rest of their number had escorted the rescued slaves out to hundreds of hiding places around the country. It was quiet, for a celebration—they were still in hiding—but bottles were open, toasts were being drunk, even some dancing was happening.

Belik sat at the entrance to the chamber, waiting. Omar approached with a drink, which Belik declined.

“Why so gloomy, old man? This was a great victory. We may have won this war, right here and now!”

“We haven’t won, old man,” Belik replied. “We burned some altars. We have a host of candidates. But none of them is a chosen one. Not yet.”

Omar shook his head. “I’m going to enjoy our victory while we can. You and I don’t have long left, you know.”

Belik nodded. And he waited.

One of his spies arrived around dawn, panting from his run, with a newspaper in hand. Belik smoothed out the paper and found the headline:

Night King Declares End to Sacrifices

He blinked and reread the line. Then he hurried through the article. “Because of the obedience and faithfulness of his people” the Night King had chosen to end the sacrifices of yore, “and set to flame his own altars, so that the blood of his people could come no more upon them.” Buried near the end of the article, Belik found the truth—the Night King would subsist on animal sacrifice and “executions of duly convicted criminals.” How convenient then, that the next article described the betrayal of General Iindosh and an entire legion’s worth of the military, in “anger and protest over the discontinuation of living sacrifices.” Iindosh and his men would be hunted down and tried for treason.

Not everyone would believe it. But then, as long as most sacrifices were ending, not everyone would care. It was a bold move. Clever.

Too clever. This wasn’t the Night King’s work.

Belik slipped a hand into his pocket, where he kept a small dagger concealed. Omar had told him just to slit Chorai’s throat, but . . . he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. What kind of man was he, that he could order a child’s parents murdered in hopes of finding a fable, but couldn’t really bring himself to end the one woman who truly stood in his way?

He should have stabbed her. He’d known it. The poison had seemed easier. Cleaner. Less . . . personal. And now . . .

Belik sighed and set the paper aside. Chorai was still out there. She would be after him, after his potential chosen ones. Or, more likely . . . she would leave them alone. Which could be even worse. That was the eventuality he had to plan for.

One way or another, a chosen one would arise.

THE END

* * *

Christopher Baxter got in trouble for reading books in class from kindergarten through high school. To stop his teachers from getting upset, he began writing stories instead (it looked like he was taking notes). He works as an editor and writer (writerinthehat.com). His short stories have appeared in the October 2016 and Spring 2018 volumes of Deep Magic E-zine, the Best of Deep Magic and Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel anthologies, and Immortal Works’ Flash Fiction Friday podcast. He is blessed with the best wife and two adorable little boys.

The Bloody Dentist

Jacob Holo

The teenage gangster hadn’t died well.

Not that Acting Deputy Detective Isaac Cho believed there were many good ways to depart this mortal coil. Religion and philosophy weren’t topics he often discussed, and even if he’d found himself so inclined, he would have undoubtedly frustrated those around him with his insistence on hard facts—which was the currency he dealt with in the Consolidated System Police—rather than the mercurial vagaries of less concrete disciplines.

But he knew a bad way to die when he saw one.

The male corpse lay on its back, forearms twisted with multiple fractures, face and throat crushed and bloodied to a pulp, mouth agape with broken and missing teeth. Blood spackled the gangster’s jacket, which featured the blue silhouette of a snarling canine against a white backdrop, indicating the wearer belonged to the Frost Jackal gang.

The body had been found in a narrow corridor carved out of the ice shelf beneath Promise City on Titan, the largest and most populous of Saturn’s moons. Sparse lighting glittered against ice walls sealed behind transparent sheets of vacuum insulation while a chill breeze blew in from the incomplete zones of the city expansion further down.

Isaac knelt next to the corpse and rested a forearm on his knee. He let out a slow exhale, and the air turned into a faint cloud of white mist before dispersing. His cheeks and ears were red and his fingertips cold, though his torso remained warm thanks to his uniform’s internal heating.

“What a godawful mess,” groaned Senior Detective Omar Raviv, standing behind Isaac with arms hugging his chest and hands stuck under his armpits.

“Yeah,” Isaac agreed. “Substantial blunt trauma along the forearms, upper chest, and face. Looks to me like he tried to block the incoming blows before the assailant overwhelmed him.”

“And then proceeded to smash his face in,” Raviv finished with a shake of his head.

“Right.” Isaac reached out, allowing his wetware to interface with the virtual corpse. The real one had already been removed by the Saturn State Police, but the record of the crime scene allowed him to view the area as if frozen at the moment of discovery as well as call up any forensic results uploaded to their case log.

He tilted the brutalized, almost inhuman face toward him and then widened what remained of the mouth with a pair of fingers. The simulation responded, animating the corpse in the detectives’ shared virtual vision.

“Something catch your eye?” Raviv asked.

“Maybe.” Isaac passed his gaze across the ground. SSP drones had scoured the crime scene for evidence around the corpse, but virtual echoes remained in the simulation. Small icons hovered over nearby blood splatters and genetic traces, but that shouldn’t have been the only fallout from an assault this brutal. “Cephalie?”

His LENS drone hovered down to his side. The Lawful Enforcement and Neutralization System resembled a metallic lidless eye slightly larger than his head. The avatar of a tiny woman appeared atop the drone, clad in a long fur coat. She was barely as tall as his hand.

“You rang?” the artificial intelligence asked, pushing up her opaque, circular glasses with a gloved hand. Her full name was Encephalon, and she’d been Isaac’s integrated companion for the last four years, since he’d received his wetware implants at the age of twenty-five.

“Can you count the victim’s teeth? I’m curious if any are missing.”

“Give me a moment. Some of them are in a lot of pieces.” A virtual chalkboard materialized next to her, and a map of the victim’s jawline began to fill in, tooth by tooth.

Isaac stood up and brushed off his knee.

“Missing teeth?” Raviv asked, his own LENS floating beside him.

“We’ll see. Given how little is left of his face and jaw, I expected to see teeth on the ground.”

Raviv bowed his head in thought, then nodded.

Isaac had been mentoring under the senior detective for roughly two years now. Their working relationship had started with Isaac very much the learner, busy observing how Raviv conducted himself on their cases in an effort to absorb the senior detective’s tried-and-true habits, but that dynamic had shifted to the point where nowadays Raviv let—indeed encouraged—Isaac to take the lead, only taking charge when he felt it absolutely necessary.

“Looks like you were right,” Cephalie announced. “He’s missing five teeth. Or four and three quarters, depending on how picky you want to get about counting the pieces. Three incisors and most of two canines.”

“Thanks.”

The virtual woman gave Isaac a quick wave.

“Thoughts?” Raviv prompted.

“Not sure,” Isaac admitted. “If they weren’t at the crime scene when SSP arrived, then it makes sense someone took them. If so, then the most likely person is the attacker. Trophies from the kill maybe?”

“Hmm. Could be. Could be.” Raviv shrugged, his hands still stuck under his armpits. “I’ve come across stranger habits. I remember this one case where the killer collected his victims’ bodily fluids, mostly blood and saliva. He kept them in vials, all lined up in chronological order on his desk. Weird, disturbed fellow.”

“Did the local infostructure catch anything?” Isaac asked Cephalie.

“Nope,” she replied bluntly with a frown. “Down this far, the coverage is spotty at best, and the gangs have flooded what’s here with viruses. Take my word for it. It’s a freaking mess!”

“I figured as much.” Isaac blew out a quick sigh. “But no harm in asking.”

“I do have some good news, though. SSP just posted a preliminary report to our case log.”

“Let’s see it.”

Identical abstract documents appeared in front of the two detectives, and Isaac tabbed through his copy.

“Victim’s name is Lorenz Napello,” he read. “Known member of the Frost Jackals, which isn’t a surprise.”

Raviv nodded at this. Six Frost Jackals had gone missing in the past few weeks, and SSP hadn’t found a single lead, which was why they’d escalated the case to the detectives of SysPol. Napello wasn’t a missing person—obviously—but Isaac suspected his death was related to the missing gang members.

“Time of death estimated at six-fifty this morning,” he continued. “No wearable devices found on him. If there were any, the killer likely took them. No implants on him either, since he’s under twenty-five.”

“Which means we didn’t get lucky with a digital trail,” Raviv grumbled. “Typical.”

“If our jobs were easy, anyone could do them.”

“Ain’t that the truth!”

“Moving on, looks like Napello’s been busy. Multiple counts of vandalism, plus one charge of sexual assault that was later dropped. By his girlfriend, no less. Her name’s Pamela Mathey, and she’s a Frost Jackal as well. Body was discovered by Bartholomew Kozlowski, an independent hardware retailer who’s been doing a lot of business in the Ice Grotto recently. Seems to me we should talk to both of them.”

“Agreed,” Raviv said. “You want the retailer or the girlfriend?”

“I’ll take Kozlowski.”

“Works for me. I’ll track down the girlfriend. Meet up back at the precinct when we’re done?”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” Isaac closed the crime scene’s abstraction, and the virtual body vanished.

“All right.” Raviv took out his hands and blew into them. “Now let’s get out of here before something important of mine freezes.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Isaac was silently pleased by Raviv’s suggestion to split up. At the start of his mentorship two years ago, the senior detective had kept a watchful eye over him, but that attitude had softened considerably in recent months. He wasn’t sure why. He didn’t think his habits had changed that much, but perhaps matters appeared different from the outside.

He headed down the corridor until he and the LENS reached an area with better infostructure coverage.

Cephalie contacted Kozlowski on Isaac’s behalf and arranged for an interview at a park three levels below him. Isaac followed virtual arrows through the ice-sheathed corridors and down three flights of stairs until the space opened to an oval parkland. The few clusters of people kept to themselves and—judging by their attire—most were members of one gang or another, a fact emphasized by the gang graffiti animating across the walls. A smattering of pine trees rose from uneven grassy turf toward a high ceiling that glowed with artificial light.

The Ice Grotto had been intended as an expansion to Promise City that didn’t require the construction of any new domes. More space on the cheap, as it were. Construction had cut downward from the city’s largest dome, but progress had stalled about a year ago when voters finally authorized funding for a brand-new dome, leaving the Ice Grotto as an unappealing half-measure that quickly fell out of favor.

Technically, the area wasn’t cleared for habitation, but that hadn’t stopped all manner of troublemakers from moving in. Gangs, addicts, job dodgers, and other lawbreakers had taken up residence in what they now called “the Fridge,” owing to the incomplete insulation in many parts of the Grotto.

Isaac spotted Kozlowski in the shade of a particularly tall pine tree. The man wore a heavy coat and pair of wraparound earmuffs that framed a weathered, bearded face. His dark brown hair was shot with strands of gray, and a large drone hovered at his side.

The drone—amusingly enough—resembled an old-fashioned double-wide refrigerator with gleaming metallic skin over its boxy, vertical frame. The drone looked heavy, but even someone with Isaac’s mediocre physique could drag it around in Titan’s gravity. Isaac had been born on Janus-Epimetheus, a megastructure floating through Saturn’s atmosphere, and his body was acclimated to the gas giant’s “surface” gravity of one point oh six gees. He found Titan’s point one four awkwardly anemic by comparison.

Kozlowski waved a hand when he spotted Isaac approaching, perhaps keying off his uniform or the LENS floating behind his shoulder.

“Mr. Kozlowski,” Isaac greeted, stepping up to the man. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with me. I’m Detective Cho of SysPol’s Themis Division.”

“Yes, your IC called ahead,” Kozlowski replied, not rudely but not welcoming either. “I’m not sure why you’re bothering me, though. I already gave my statement to SSP.”

“I’m aware of that. However, I have some follow up questions of my own.”

“Then ask away. This won’t take long, will it?”

“Have somewhere you need to be?” Isaac asked.

“Not especially. Just want to get back to business. You’re scaring away my customers.”

“Your customers?”

Isaac glanced around at the clusters of gang members in the park. Most were conspicuously avoiding eye contact with him, though he didn’t doubt for a second he was the center of attention.

“You do business with the gangs?”

“That’s right.”

“What sort of business?”

“I’m a certified reseller of Trades’n’Crafts patterns.” Kozlowski thumped the side of his drone. “Customers order from a curated selection of tool patterns, and I use my mobile printer to produce them on the spot.”

Isaac took in the drone, noting the delivery port in the front. The entire back appeared capable of hinging open, which would make replacing the material cartridges easy.

“What sort of tools?” Isaac asked.

“Here. Take a look.”

An abstract menu appeared in Isaac’s virtual vision, showcasing an array of vibro-knives, vibro-saws, drills, and hammers of various sizes. Most of them came with small infosystems capable of limited self-diagnostics as well as uploading performance feedback.

“Tools?” Isaac fixed the man with a stern gaze. “You mean weapons.”

“What is a weapon, but a tool used for destruction rather than creation?”

“That sounds like a very practiced response.”

Kozlowski crossed his arms. “Is there an actual problem you wish to highlight, Detective?”

“The problem, Mr. Kozlowski, is you’re in the business of arming gangsters.”

“What they do with my products is their own business. My legal responsibility ends at the point of sale.”

“A fair enough legal point.” Isaac left his opinion of Kozlowski’s morals unspoken. The man’s activities in the Grotto might be all kinds of shady, but until he broke the law, there wasn’t much Isaac could do about it.

“Yes,” Kozlowski agreed. “It is.”

“Moving on, I’d like to turn our attention to the body you discovered.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Did you know the victim?”

“I met him once, though only briefly. Lorenz, I think his name was. He was a customer of mine. Or, at least, a potential customer. Came to browse my wares the day before . . . you know.”

“Did he purchase anything?”

“No. Just window shopping, as it were.”

“Did he say why he was in the market for a weapon?”

“He did.”

“And?”

“He was worried about the Numbers. They’ve been encroaching on Frost Jackal turf. Relations have been strained between the two gangs, and that friction has grown worse with the missing Jackals.”

“Do the Jackals blame the Numbers for the disappearances?”

“Some do, I’m sure.”

“What do you make of those suspicions?”

“Well . . .” Kozlowski shrugged. “I hate to bad mouth any of my customers, but maybe there’s some truth to their fears.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Just a feeling. Nothing more than that, you understand. Everyone down here’s worried about the disappearances. There’s tension in the air. Everywhere, that is, except around the Numbers. In fact, I’d go so far as to say their deacon is pleased with the Jackals’ recent misfortune.”

“Are you suggesting the Numbers are behind the disappearances?”

“You said it, not me.”

The Numbers are the biggest, meanest gang down here, Isaac thought. Would they really resort to kidnapping and murder when they can just bully the other gangs into submission?

“How did you come across the body?”

“I was on my way down to the Grotto parks this morning. I’ve been staying at a hotel up in Promise City, you see. Anyway, I came across that poor kid face down. Even in the dim light, something about his limbs didn’t . . .” He frowned and took a slow breath. “Didn’t look right, you know? I called out to him. He didn’t respond, so I bent down and shook him. Then I turned him over.”

And in the process, Isaac thought, contaminated the crime scene umpteen different ways.

“Please continue.”

“That’s when I saw . . . saw his face. About the same time, a group of Frost Jackals started down the corridor. I called out to them for help and convinced one of them to run to an area with better reception. I assume his call got through because the police arrived soon after that.”

“Did the Frost Jackals give you any trouble?”

“What do you mean?”

“You were found with the victim, and you likely had blood on your hands from touching the corpse.”

Kozlowski glanced down at his hands. “You’re right about the blood. I turned over my gloves to the state troopers. But no. I’m a known face down here. The gangs don’t give me any trouble. Do you think I can get my gloves back?”

“You’ll have to ask the state troopers about them. Do you have a sensory record of when you found the body?”

“No, unfortunately. I keep my wetware set to maximum privacy. It only records my senses when I manually switch it on.”

Which doesn’t surprise me, Isaac thought, given the kind of business you’re in.

He and Kozlowski spent the next half hour going through the rest of SSP’s preliminary report. Isaac failed to turn up anything else of note.

* * * * * * * * * *

“I hope you had better luck than me,” Raviv groused, joining Isaac in front of Promise City’s 29th Precinct building. The precinct was a dark, nondescript cube with an abstract “29” rotating above it, nestled against the central tower that ran from the base of Promise City all the way up to the spaceport atop the habitat dome.

“How bad was she?” Isaac asked.

“Let me put it this way.” Raviv held up four fingers. “Napello’s girlfriend managed to contradict herself four times in the span of the first few minutes alone. I don’t know if we can trust a single word out of her mouth. And her attitude! Good grief!”

“Interesting,” Isaac pondered out loud. “Her combativeness could mean a lot of things, though. She’s a teenage gangster being grilled by SysPol, after all.”

“She’s lucky a grilling was all I gave her!” Raviv huffed. “It got so bad, I was tempted to charge the girl right then and there with lying to the police.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because holding that threat over her proved more useful than stuffing her in a cell.” The senior detective flashed a sly grin. “It took the better part of an hour, but I was able to wear her down. Even pried a few useful tidbits from her that I think are more reliable than the rest. Seems Napello had been antagonizing the wrong Numbers. Not your average rank-and-file losers, but their deacon and his retinue.”

Isaac’s eyebrows shot up.

“Yeah, I had the same reaction,” Raviv remarked. “I hate dealing with Numbers, but one thing I’ll give them is they’re easy to figure out, and Rule Number One is don’t fuck with their deacons unless you’ve paid up your life insurance. It seems Napello received a few predictable death threats, which prompted him to go shopping for a weapon.”

“I heard pieces of the same story from Kozlowski. The guy’s been selling makeshift arms to the gangs down here.”

“Seriously?”

Isaac nodded.

“Oh, that’s all we fucking need!”

“Napello approached him yesterday but didn’t purchase anything. Also, Kozlowski made it sound like the situation between the Numbers and the Frost Jackals could blow up any day now.”

“Yeah, I got the same impression from the girlfriend.” Raviv shook his head and glanced over at the precinct. “Things are going to become ugly if this little cold war between the gangs turns hot.”

“All the more reason for us to keep at it.”

“Thoughts on our next steps?”

“I hate to say it, but we might have to break Rule One and have a . . . chat with the Numbers’ deacon.”

“I knew you’d say that.” Raviv shook his head, then bobbed it toward the precinct. “Come on. Let’s give the lieutenant the bad news.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Lieutenant Alfons Garnier sat behind his desk with a pained—if sympathetic—expression. It was no exaggeration to say he was the reason Isaac and Raviv were down on the moon. He’d headed the original investigation into the disappearances, and when his own efforts stalled, he’d filed a support request to SysPol. After the two detectives arrived on site, he’d acted as an effective liaison between them and the local state troopers. He wanted the case solved as much as they did, if not more so.

Which, Isaac reflected, explains the expression.

“I’m sorry, detectives,” Garnier began, fingers knitted tightly on the desk. “But I can’t help you with this one.”

“Why not?” Raviv demanded, his cantankerous side showing itself almost as a reflex.

“Unless I’m mistaken,” Isaac cut in before Garnier could respond, “everyone in the Grotto is, at a minimum, guilty of trespassing. Charge Deacon Morrisette with that and haul him in. We’ll take it from there.”

“I’d love to. Truly, I would. But the situation is more complex than it might seem from Kronos,” Garnier said, referring to the SysPol station that covered the Saturn State. “I’d love nothing more than to sweep the Grotto clean. The place has become a festering sore underneath this city, and the sooner we restore order there, the better.

“On top of that, I’d leap at the opportunity to lean into Morrisette. The Numbers were the first group of troublemakers to move in after the construction crews pulled out. They—and Morrisette especially—are the biggest obstacle to turning the Grotto around.”

“Then why can’t you bring the deacon in?” Isaac asked.

“Because my hands are tied.” Garnier spread his upturned palms. “The city council has passed measures restricting our ability to enforce minor infractions in the Grotto.”

“Why the hell would they do that?” Raviv grumped.

“The official reason is they don’t want us troopers spread too thin.” Garnier leaned in and lowered his voice. “Unofficially, it’s because the council has ties with the Sect of the Divine Randomizer.”

Isaac and Raviv exchanged knowing looks. The Numbers were a violent offshoot of the Sect. Both groups believed that divine intervention took place through randomness. All randomness wasn’t, according to their creed. Officially, the two weren’t related, but that didn’t stop the Sect from looking the other way whenever the Numbers caused mischief.

“If you ask me,” Garnier continued, “Morrisette is in bed with the city council. He’s trying to set up his own private kingdom down in the Grotto, and they’re willing to let him build it, for whatever asinine or corrupt reasons they have. Which leads us back to where we began.”

“With you unable to help us,” Raviv sighed.

“Just so, I’m afraid.”

“Lieutenant,” Isaac started, “I think I speak for both of us when I say we understand and sympathize with the predicament you find yourself in.” He shot a quick glance at Raviv, who gave him a subtle nod to continue. “You’ve made the limits you’re under clear, and so we won’t press the point. We’ll find another way to move forward with our investigation.”

“Thank you,” Garnier replied, visibly relieved. “And, again, I am sorry.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“You sure you want to do this?” Raviv asked, standing outside the Numbers’ main hangout in the Grotto. A pair of tall ice columns separated the pedestrian street from a widening colonnade that led deeper into the vacuum-insulated cavern. A pair of gangsters watched them from the entrance, both clad in white business suits with random numbers floating across the smart fabric and armed with vibro-blades sheathed at their hips.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Isaac replied with a brave smile.

“You really want me to spell it out for you?”

The smile vanished.

Isaac didn’t want to admit it, but this course of action unnerved him as well. He’d much prefer to speak with Morrisette at the precinct, with the gang leader at a distinct disadvantage. But since that wasn’t possible without escalating SysPol’s role in the case—an escalation they lacked the hard evidence to justify and which would go against the wishes of the local government—then the next logical step was for them to go directly to the Numbers.

He knew they were ceding the advantage to Morrisette, but multiple people had cast accusation toward the deacon, and it was their duty to hear his side of the story before jumping to conclusions.

Isaac’s gaze tracked down to one of the guards’ weapons. Data passed between the LENS and his wetware, highlighting the knife in his virtual vision. He mentally toggled an icon next to the weapon, and an information window expanded. The guard carried a Trades’n’Crafts “Cut-All Elite” Pattern AA vibro-knife, one of the many products Kozlowski offered.

His uniform provided some protection against bladed or blunt attacks if the locals turned . . . unruly, though he’d prefer not to test its effectiveness today. Additionally, the LENS served as his primary form of defense, equipped with a fast-acting shell of programmable-steel that could be utilized in a wide range of situations. But as capable as the standard LENS was, he doubted even both of their drones would be enough to subdue the entire hangout.

“Here goes,” he breathed to Raviv, then walked up to the two gangsters and transmitted his badge. “We’re here to see Morrisette.”

One of the gangsters held out a palm and scrutinized the abstract ID while the second opened a comm window blurred behind a privacy filter.

“Yes?” asked the man on the other end of the call.

“Those SysPol detectives are here to see you, sir.”

“Then let them in.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The badge checks out,” reported the first guard.

“This way.” The second guard sneered at them and gestured inside.

They followed him down the colonnade until it opened to the tiered interior of a cavern, its insulated walls a mixture of rock and ice. A square space at the bottom led upward along staircases in three orthogonal directions, flattening at regular intervals. The empty space the room formed resembled an inverted step pyramid, with the three paths finally disappearing into branching passages at the top.

Isaac swept his gaze over their surroundings, noting the gangsters lounging around, watching them from above. His LENS provided a quick tally of thirty-seven, most of them armed.

One man stood out from the crowd, seated casually on the steps directly ahead of them. He wore an expensive white suit with a golden “77” on the side of his collar. His black hair was slicked back, revealing a prominent widow’s peak.

“Detectives Cho and Raviv.” Morrisette dipped his head toward them ever so slightly. “What a pleasure it is to have not one but two members of the illustrious System Police in our presence. Please, join me.” He gestured to the vacant steps beside him. “Why not take a load off? I’m sure you two have had a busy day, and even Titan’s gravity can wear on you after a while.”

“We’ll stand,” Isaac replied, “if it’s all the same to you.”

“As you wish.” Morrisette leaned back and draped an arm across the step behind him. “Now, what can I do for you two fine gentlemen?”

“We’re here to talk about the death of Lorenz Napello.”

“And who might this Napello person be?”

“A Frost Jackal found this morning. Someone bludgeoned him to death.”

“Oh my,” Morrisette wore an expression of faux shock. “How terrible.”

“We’re investigating his death and would appreciate your cooperation.”

“Mmm.” The deacon nodded. “Now, you must forgive my ignorance in this matter. I see why SysPol might be interested, but I must be missing why you two are here, speaking to me.”

“Napello received death threats from the Numbers before he was killed.”

“Ah.” Morrisette gave them a resigned shrug. “And now the reason for your curiosity becomes clear. Granted, our . . . relationship with the Frost Jackals is a bit strained at the moment. Perhaps these threats were nothing more than ill-timed bluster.”

“We have reason to believe the threats came directly from your retinue.”

“I see.” The deacon twisted around and gazed up the steps. “Well, which one of you was it? Come on now.” He clapped twice. “Let’s have it. The detectives don’t have all day.”

A broad-shouldered teenager hurried down the steps. Isaac found his eyes drawn to the large hammer hanging from a loop at his waist next to a sheathed vibro-knife. The LENS identified both as Trades’n’Crafts products.

“I did, Deacon.”

“State your name for the detectives, please.”

“Smash-80.”

“Now, now,” Morrisette chided. “You know how the police frown upon our sect names. Give them your legal one.”

“Sorry, Deacon. It’s Dario Vogl.”

“And Dario, why did you see fit to pass on such a threat without my knowledge?”

“Because that mouthy punk mocked your good name.”

“How?”

Vogl’s face twisted with apprehension.

“How did he mock me?” Morrisette pressed. “Come now. There’s no harm in repeating it. The kid is dead, after all. What’s he going to do to me now?”

“Sir, he . . . implied you had improper relations.”

“Indeed?”

“With your mother.”

“Oh, how scandalous,” Morrisette commented with a bored tone.

“Also, with your pet dog.”

Morrisette rolled his eyes. “And this was enough for you to say something that stupid?”

“I thought—”

“No,” he corrected. “You didn’t. And that’s the problem.”

“Dario Vogl,” Isaac began sharply. “Where were you this morning between the hours of six and eight?”

“Umm . . .”

“Better think hard,” Morrisette warned the gangster. “This is the important part.”

“Around here, I guess. Probably eating breakfast.”

“Do we have any witnesses?” Morrisette prompted. “Anyone see him at breakfast?”

A few hands went up.

“There, you see, Detectives?” The deacon leaned back with a smirk. “It couldn’t be him. He was here, with us, eating breakfast. Case closed, I’m afraid. Better luck elsewhere.”

Isaac considered the alibi flimsy at best, but he also knew he lacked the leverage to press the point. He needed something firmer than one gangster mouthing off at another. He considered his options, trying to figure out the best way to push the case forward.

“The Bloody Dentist claims another one,” someone laughed from high up the steps, her voice barely audible.

“Who said that?” Raviv snapped, searching the room’s upper reaches. He pointed at a teenage girl. “You! Get down here!”

“I’m sure it was just an innocent—” Morrisette began.

“You either cooperate, or I swear to God, I will bring the full wrath of SysPol down on all your heads! Now which one is it going to be, ‘Deacon?’”

One of Morrisette’s eyes twitched, and his jaw tightened. He raised a hand and beckoned the gangster down with a pair of fingers. The girl came down, her face decorated with black lipstick and way too much eye shadow.

“What did you just say?” Raviv demanded.

“He claimed another?” she asked more than answered.

“Who? Who claimed another?”

“The . . . the Bloody Dentist.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“How the hell do the Numbers know our killer collects teeth?” Raviv growled. “We only found out this morning, and yet the whole gang is swirling with the rumors!”

The senior detective paced from one end of the conference room to the other, then turned around and marched the other way. He and Isaac had returned to the 29th Precinct after their meeting with Morrisette.

“Could be one of them came across a different body and didn’t report it,” Isaac wondered aloud, seated at one end of the conference table. Their two LENS drones loitered outside the room. “Maybe that started the rumor?”

“Or one of them is the killer!”

“There’s that possibility, too.” Isaac lowered his head in thought. “That said, there are a few things about this case that have been bothering me.”

“You mean besides who this ‘Bloody Dentist’ is?”

“Yeah. Besides that.”

“Well, go on.” Raviv stopped pacing and plopped into the chair next to Isaac. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

“My first issue is with the initial six disappearances. If we’re dealing with the same person who killed Napello, then where are the bodies? You and I have seen enough of the Grotto to know there aren’t many places to hide that aren’t controlled by one gang or another.”

“Which implies one of the gangs knows where the bodies are.”

“Yeah. And the Numbers are on the top of that list, if for no other reason than all the victims have been Frost Jackals, and the two gangs have been butting heads recently. But . . . I don’t know. That take doesn’t sit right with me. Did Morrisette strike you as someone who’d order hits like this?”

“Not really,” Raviv admitted with a huff. “His gang already has the upper hand, especially if the lieutenant’s right about city hall’s tacit approval of the Numbers squatting down there.”

“The same thoughts crossed my mind.”

“It could still be one of the Numbers behind this. Or a team of them.”

“Possibly.” Isaac rested his cheek on a fist and stared at the wall. “But at the same time, Morrisette seemed to keep his gangsters on a tight leash.”

“Not tight enough. That Vogl character stepped out of line.”

“With words,” Isaac countered. “But would he kill someone without his deacon’s approval?”

“That’s a tougher question. Did you spot how Vogl was carrying a hammer?”

“I did, though I’m hesitant to jump to any conclusions. Yet,” he added meaningfully.

“So, body disposal is your first problem. What are the others?”

“Problem Two: how’s the killer getting the drop on his victims? The first victim wouldn’t have been watching his back, but what about two through seven? The Frost Jackals are all on edge, both from the disappearances and because of the Numbers. They’ll be traveling in groups most of the time, and when alone they’ll be alert and on edge.

“Think back to Napello’s body. We didn’t see any signs that he ran or struggled. The killer struck first. Napello went down, vainly trying to block with his arms, and was then pummeled to death. Why didn’t we see an attempt at fight or flight? Especially if the killer was some stranger or one of the Numbers. How did the killer manage to close on someone who was on the lookout for danger?”

“You’re suggesting the victims knew the attacker?”

“I think it’s a strong possibility.”

“Maybe a fellow Jackal then?” Raviv suggested.

“Maybe,” Isaac echoed.

“Anything else?”

“Just one more. How’s the killer picking the time and location to strike? From what we know, Napello was attacked while alone, and it seems likely the same happened to victims one through six. How’s the killer pulling this off?”

“I don’t know. Normally, I’d say someone must be hacking the local infostructure to scout out the victims.”

“Right,” Isaac replied. “But the Grotto’s infostructure is chock full of holes and viruses. It’s borderline useless as a surveillance method. So, how’s the killer doing it?”

“That’s a good question.” Raviv leaned back in his chair. “So, where does this leave us?”

“You tell me. All I’ve got are questions.”

Raviv flashed a quick smile. “I’m not testing you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t have a clue either.”

“Oh, for the days when I thought you were infallible,” Isaac mused, returning the smile.

Raviv snorted out a laugh. “Come on. I’m being serious.”

“Let’s see,” Isaac sighed. “I suppose we can head back down to the Grotto. If there’s a firm connection between all seven victims, then their fellow Jackals should know. How about we poke around their haunts and see what turns up? Maybe we’ll get lucky?”

“That’s the spirit!” Raviv said, rising from his seat.

The two detectives headed back down to the Ice Grotto after grabbing a quick lunch.

They returned to Promise City late into the evening with nothing to show for their efforts.

* * * * * * * * * *

“This is not how I wanted to start my morning,” Raviv grumbled, steaming cup of black coffee in hand as he stared down at the eighth victim.

“I think Mr. Vogl has it worse than us,” Isaac commented.

Dario Vogl lay in a pool of his own blood, his face smashed in, his one remaining eye wide with terror, his lower jaw broken and askew. A disk-shaped SSP drone hovered near the body, its arms collecting and recording trace evidence. A group of the victim’s fellow Numbers watched from beyond the virtual police cordons, while a pair of stern-faced state troopers watched them.

Isaac’s LENS ascended to his side, and Cephalie’s avatar appeared atop the drone.

“More missing teeth on this one. Call it five and two thirds. Mostly incisors and canines again.”

“Thanks, Cephalie,” Isaac replied, not taking his eyes off the corpse.

“At least the killer’s consistent.” Raviv grimaced before taking another sip.

“Anything else of note?” Isaac asked.

“Nothing so far,” Cephalie replied. “But their drone’s still picking evidence off the floor.”

Isaac took slow steps around the corpse, staying clear of the SSP drone’s activities. He studied the body, hoping it would reveal the unspoken secrets of this terrible crime.

He continued his slow circuit around the corpse and then stopped.

The sheath attached to Vogl’s belt caught his eye. It was empty. One of the gangster’s weapons was missing.

Isaac checked the surrounding floor. No knife. He called up the drone’s evidence log and scrolled through the list, finding only blood specks and the like. Nothing even close to the size of a vibro-blade.

What does this mean? Does it mean anything? It’s just a knife, after all. He could have dropped it somewhere or left it behind at the hangout.

Yeah, sure he did, Isaac thought sarcastically. He left it by his bedside with a gang war ready to blow up and a killer stalking the Grotto. He left it there right next to his sense of self preservation.

No, it makes too much sense for him to bring the knife with him.

But then . . . where is it?

Isaac checked the floor again and once more came up empty.

“Looking for something?” Raviv asked.

“Maybe. Not sure it’s important, though.”

A knife.

A missing knife.

Why would the killer take Vogl’s knife but not the hammer? The killer doesn’t use bladed weapons.

Not as a weapon, then? Perhaps as a trophy?

But then how does that fit in with the missing teeth? How many trophies does one killer need?

Okay, let’s take a step back. Isaac drew in a long, slow breath as he thought. Let’s assume the knife wasn’t taken as a weapon or a trophy. What’s left? What possible value could it have to the killer?

He bowed his head in thought, but nothing came to him.

Perhaps I’m looking at this from the wrong direction. Maybe the better question is: What value does the knife have to us? Could it contain evidence the killer doesn’t want us to find? But then, why take the knife but not the hammer? More importantly, what could the knife tell us that we don’t already know? Why would the killer not simply ignore it?

Did Napello have a weapon on him, too? Did the killer take that one as well?

But no, Kozlowski said Napello didn’t purchase anything.

Hmm.

Am I making too much out of this?

Isaac held up his palm and summoned the case log in his virtual vision. He tabbed over to the LENS records from the previous day and checked the specifications on the weapons Vogl carried back in the Numbers hangout.

The hammer came up first. It was a very standard, very unremarkable Trades’n’Crafts “Pounder” Pattern D general purpose hammer. Just a regular, dumb tool. Literally, in this case, since it lacked a built-in infosystem.

The knife was relatively flashier, with a higher-grade pattern and a compact infosystem for self-diagnostics and user feedback.

So, the knife has an infosystem and the hammer doesn’t . . .

Then that means . . .

The pieces finally came together in Isaac’s mind, and he snapped his fingers.

Raviv glanced his way. “Found something?”

“You could say that.” He gave the senior detective a savage grin. “I know who the killer is.”

* * * * * * * * * *

The “Bloody Dentist” didn’t think of himself as such. It was a stupid name created by stupid criminals, but the fear it engendered would prove useful. The scar formed by his hunts would linger long after he’d moved on, continuing the Good Work he’d begun in this desolate, depraved cesspit under the city.

The act of cleansing never ended, but he was a tireless warrior, and the refinement of his techniques would soon bear fruit. He’d begun his Work simply enough in a far-flung corner of the solar system. He’d sought out the stench of crime in places the authorities ignored, taking upon himself the hard tasks necessary for a healthy and just society.

Evil deserved no mercy, and he gave it none.

But he was only one man, and there was only so much Good he could perform.

That’s when he’d hit upon the idea. Why not let this criminal scum help him out? Why not coax Evil to kill Evil?

It was so close now that his hands trembled with giddy anticipation. Another subtle nudge here, another corpse discovered there, and the gangs would be at each other’s throats. Open warfare would soon follow, spilling out across the Fridge, drenching its ice in Evil’s blood.

He didn’t care who won, just so long as the conflict produced a body count. In that way, both factions would lose. Good would triumph over Evil. It was almost funny when he thought about it, how these stupid degenerates would soon aid him so unwittingly.

But that would come later.

For now, he stood in one of the Fridge’s many unfinished parks, engaging in one of the few tasks he could perform openly. A cluster of Numbers spotted him and began making their way toward his drone. He rubbed his hands in anticipation and flashed a warm smile their way.

Suddenly, the Numbers stopped, their gazes drawn toward the park’s nearest entrance. A flash of motion caught his eye, and a metallic blur slammed into him.

“Oof!”

His world spun, turning sideways, but something cushioned his fall at the last moment, lowering him almost gently down on the grass. He tried to get up but found his limbs bound by the prog-steel pseudopods of a SysPol LENS.

A pair of SysPol detectives walked over, and a second LENS floated behind them. He recognized the younger of the two as Detective Cho.

But why? Why bind him? What were they doing? Didn’t they know?! They were all on the same side!

“Good morning, Kozlowski,” Cho greeted him. “Let’s talk about the recent killings, shall we?”

“But . . .” His mind raced. Why were these detectives being so stupid?! He couldn’t let them find out! “What’s going on here? What’s this about?”

“I suspect you already know the answer.” Cho motioned the second drone forward. “Cephalie, search him.”

Oh no! his thoughts screamed. He hadn’t stashed his mementos away yet! He’d be exposed!

“Now hold on!” Kozlowski squirmed against his restraints. “You can’t do this! I know my rights! You can’t search me without a warrant!”

“Unless we have good reason to believe you’ve committed a crime, which we do. And that means we have limited authority to perform a warrantless search.” Cho gave him a little shake of the head. “It’s funny how many people miss that last part.”

The second LENS approached him, opened the front of his coat, and began searching through his pockets. One of the rummaging pseudopods stopped, then dug deeper into his breast pocket before retracting with several bloody teeth stuck in the prog-steel. The LENS retrieved a small evidence tube from its interior and let the teeth clatter inside.

Icy fear traced down his spine as the LENS continued its search, finally pulling a knife and a hammer out of his coat, the latter caked with blood.

“Bartholomew Kozlowski,” Cho announced. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Dario Vogl.”

Anger boiled up inside him. He’d had enough of this farce.

“But I’m not done yet!” he pleaded. “Don’t you see? There’s so much more I must do! What do you fools think you’re doing, stopping me?!”

“Get this piece of trash out of here!” snapped the senior detective.

* * * * * * * * * *

“Mind filling me in?” Raviv prompted, once the still-ranting Kozlowski was out of sight.

“About what?” Isaac asked.

“How you put the pieces together. I feel like I’m still a few steps behind you.”

“Oh, that.” Isaac gave his partner a slim smile. “Remember the three problems we discussed?”

“Body disposal, catching the victims alone, and approaching them without raising suspicions.”

“That’s right. Coming up with a theory for the second one was where the pieces started to fall into place for me. As both of us noted, Kozlowski couldn’t use the local infostructure, assuming he even has the skills to hack it in the first place. So, he needed an alternative approach.”

“Which was?”

“These.” Isaac gestured to his LENS, and Cephalie placed the knife in his hand, the weapon sealed in an evidence bag.

“The tools he was selling?”

“I noticed Vogl’s knife was missing but the hammer was still on him. At first, I couldn’t come up with a reason why the killer would take one but not the other. Then it dawned on me that the knife came with a modest infosystem while the hammer didn’t. From there, it wasn’t much of a leap to assume it could be used as a makeshift tracking device.”

“Wait a second.” Raviv crossed his arms. “You’re saying the guy was tracking his victims with his own products?”

“That’s the theory.” Isaac turned the knife over in his hands. “I suspect we’ll find the ‘user feedback’ software has been tweaked to provide data back to Kozlowski, giving him eyes on potential targets. I also suspect he lied about not selling anything to Napello, that in actuality he took that weapon from the crime scene, same as he did with Vogl.”

“Because he didn’t want us to find the modified software.”

“Precisely.”

“Huh. You know, the killer being Kozlowski also covers how he could approach his victims without raising suspicions. He was a known face to both gangs. Hell, he was helping them protect themselves! Why wouldn’t they trust him?”

“And,” Isaac noted, “on top of that, he happened to be the one who ‘discovered’ Napello. But in actually, it was the Frost Jackals who caught him in the act, and so he fabricated that part of his story.”

“And the last problem?”

“Disposal of the bodies?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, let’s see.” Isaac glanced over at Kozlowski’s drone, which still reminded him of an old-fashioned double-door refrigerator hovering just above the ground.

“Wait a second.” Raviv’s brow furrowed. “You don’t mean . . .”

“You might want to stand back,” Isaac warned. “Just in case. Cephalie, would you do the honors?”

“Sure thing.” The LENS floated over to the printer drone and stabbed a pseudopod into the seam along the back hatch. It cut through the lock, and the hatch swung open.

Dozens of severed body parts—arms, legs, heads, and chopped up pieces of torsos—spilled out onto the ground, now released from a cramped space normally reserved for extra printer cartridges. The two detectives stared at the human carnage for long, uncomfortable seconds.

“It’s a strange thing about this job,” Isaac said at last after the lengthy silence.

“What is?”

He looked over at his partner with a sad smile. “Sometimes I hate being right.”

* * *

Jacob Holo is the coauthor of the national bestseller The Gordian Protocol, an epic space/time adventure, with New York Times bestselling author David Weber. Weber and Holo continued Gordian Division series (in which “The Bloody Dentist” is set) with The Valkyrie Protocol, and the newly released time travel murder mystery The Janus File.

Holo is a former-Ohioan, former-Michigander who now lives in South Carolina with his wife/boss H.P. and his cat/boss Nova.

Fire-breathing Dragon

Dan Koboldt

“Fire-Breathing Dragon” is set in the world of Dan Koboldt’s Build-A-Dragon Sequence, a series best described as “Jurassic Park meets the Build-A-Bear Workshop.” First entry Domesticating Dragons was followed by this year’s Deploying Dragons

I opened my front door and came face-to-face with a dragon. It was chestnut brown, about the size of a Labrador Retriever, and quite occupied with urinating on the rosebushes.

"Hey, stop that!” I shouted.

The dragon ignored me. It was one of the flightless models. Probably a Rover, but a good twenty pounds overweight. Must belong to one of the neighbors. I watched it waddle over and sentence another rosebush to death.

I groaned. "Come on, I just planted those."

I got into my car and headed for work. I glanced in the rearview just in time to see the dragon bound up the street to wreak havoc in another neighbor’s yard.

Goddamn dragons. They were everywhere now and that was partly my fault. I worked for the company that built them. The company that turned a creature of myth into a living, breathing household companion; the company that had made the Fortune 500 list for two years running.

The Build-A-Dragon Company.

Our building was a shining 20,000 square foot facility in downtown Phoenix. You might think it was the deep talent pool or the strong biotech economy that drew us there, but you’d be wrong. It was the desert. May through October, the average daily temperature was over ninety degrees—the ideal hatching temperature for dragon eggs. Even in the cooler months, the hatching pods captured enough sunlight to keep the eggs warm. A good thing, that, because it was a green building. Supposedly carbon-neutral, though I’m not sure how anyone would verify it.

I rode the elevator to the seventh floor and, because I was running late, took the shortcut through the hatchery. This was always a chance maneuver: it was a more direct path to the design lab but there was always a possibility I’d be run down by the over-eager hatchery staffers. The heat from the room rolled over me when I tugged open the heavy door. Most of the hatching pods were active at the moment so the room was a flurry of activity. I dodged and shimmied my way through the maze of egg carts and uniformed staffers. They wore white jumpsuits, hooded, with tinted face plates to protect their vision from the UV radiation. It was like spending twenty seconds in a low-budget science fiction movie, and then I was through.

I let the second door shut behind me and caught my breath. This room was darker and more spacious. Quiet, too, except for the hum of high-end computers. The thing that made it all possible, the biological printer, occupied the middle of the chamber. Designer workstations were arrayed honeycomb-style around it. I slid into the one of these just as the printer stirred. Every egg-printing started with the same high-pitched whine of the long robotic arms coming up from their rest position. The cacophony of whirs and hums that followed was like a fingerprint unique to each dragon. I’d heard enough printings to imagine I knew what each one sounded like. This one was a Laptop, one of our smaller flying models. Second only to the rosebush-killing Rover in popularity. They were both on the tame end of the spectrum. Good for families. Steady sellers.

Boring, in other words.

For my part, I really loved the custom design jobs. These were a premium add-on. The design queue was empty when I got in, but our status feed said was an order pending. I was watching for it, but I imagined the other designers were, too. The egg printer fell silent at last. A team of hatchers showed up instantly to claim whatever it was. The hatchery would be almost at full capacity with that one, but I was hoping we’d squeeze in one more with that pending custom. The moment the hatchers left, I heard the unmistakable harried click-clack of high heels.

Evelyn Chang moved through life—and her career in biotech—at 1.5x speed. She was a geneticist by training, and joined the company back when we only offered a single dragon model. She was the one who recruited me, and more importantly, she was the one who handed out custom orders if it looked like there might be a fight over them.

“Good morning, Noah,” she said.

“Morning,” I mumbled. I hadn’t had my coffee yet, and keeping an eye on the customs queue was currently occupying most of my few active neurons.

“We have a new custom order.”

“Oh?” That perked me up.

“A priority order, in fact.”

For an additional fee, you could get priority processing of your custom dragon order. In theory this put your order at the front of the line so that your dragon arrived faster. Then again, if there was no line, it didn’t really make a big difference. “Go on,” I said.

“An executive priority order.”

I chuckled. “Now I see.” For yet another additional fee, an executive at Build-A-Dragon would personally take your order to the design team. In theory this made sure you got even higher priority and even faster delivery. Again, all that was assuming that there was a line of orders in front of you. Maybe five percent of customers paid for priority customs, and only a fraction of those went the executive route. I only knew of two previous executive priority orders. They’d gone to Korrapati and Wong, fellow designers. Impressive orders both, and I’d been a little envious. I drew in a sharp breath. “Do I get this one?”

She smiled. “It’s your turn.”

“Finally!” I reached for the embossed folder she carried. “I can’t wait to see what they want.”

She held it away from me. “The request is for a large flying model. Somewhere between the Rover and the K-10.”

“Whoa, that’s big.” The Rover, as I’ve said, was our most popular model and about the size of a Labrador Retriever. K-10s ran larger; we mainly sold them to law enforcement. “It’ll need a large wingspan. And a lot of calories.”

“Caloric intake is not a concern.”

“Okay.” I wasn’t sure I bought that, but anyone who could afford executive priority service wasn’t living hand to mouth. “Who’s the buyer?”

She pressed her lips together. “Confidential.”

Of course it was. “What do they want?”

“The dragon should be an acrobatic flier, and ideally nimble on the ground.”

So perfect in every way, basically. I managed not to roll my eyes. “Coloring?”

“Emerald green. Iridescent if possible.”

“Hmm.” Green was a popular coloring choice, but the iridescent part added a new twist. It wasn’t something I’d designed before, but I liked a challenge. “I think we can do that. Anything else?”

“One more little thing. It’s in the file.” She handed me the folder.

I flipped it open and my eyes went to the buyer information. Which, of course, was redacted. That included the telephone number of the buyer, but based on the length of the black stripe, it was an eight-digit number. North America. Everything else was so heavily redacted, I couldn’t get a read.

I moved on to the feature requests. They were extensive to say the least. Almost every checkbox was checked, and the buyer had filled out the “Other Requests” text box right up to the character limit. I skimmed it for clues about the mysterious buyer. The grammar was perfect and they clearly knew their dragons, but there were no further insights. Oh, except for the little thing she hadn’t wanted to say. And I knew right away why.

“Fire-breathing if possible,” I read aloud.

“Yes.”

“Are you serious?”

She shrugged. “It’s what the buyer wants.”

“We’ve talked about this.” More specifically we’d talked about how fire-breathing dragons violated too many principles of biology and physics to exist in the real world.

“Maybe there’s something we haven’t thought of yet. If there’s anyone who can find the answer, it’s Noah Parker.”

It was an obvious play to my ego. Especially because she’d said it loud enough that the other designers might hear. Almost like a dare. If I refused, she might decide someone else should have first crack at the design, and I couldn’t let that happen. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll take another look.”

“Good.” She smiled, undoubtedly pleased with herself.

“With or without the fire-breathing, there won’t be enough points for this,” I said.

The points system governed how many advantages we could give to dragon prototypes, which is what this custom job was. A one-off prototype. Features like size, strength, wingspan, and intelligence all took feature points. In theory, this kept us from creating a super-predator that might start picking off humans. While I understood that intellectually, the point limits were a source of constant frustration.

“You can have fifty points beyond the limit for this design only,” Evelyn said. “Use them wisely.”

Ooh, an exception. Finally a reason to color outside the lines. Now all I had to do was figure out how to make a fire-breathing dragon.

#

Once Evelyn had click-clacked away, I touched the glass-and-steel surface of my workstation desk with my right hand. Soft blue light sprung up around my fingertips. A soft chime sounded, and then projection monitors sprang into existence at eye level. The desk surface lit up with my custom keyboard, which I’d resized and mapped out with new hotkey commands. I touched one to bring up DragonDraft3D, our genetic engineering program, into screen one. Screen two had links to all of my saved designs as well as the mainline prototypes—the dragons we’d designed, field-tested, and put into mainstream production.

The new custom dragon didn’t match any of our production models very well. We had several flying dragons, of course, but they were specialists. The Laptop, for example, was a small and nimble flier suited for city living. They ranged upward in size all the way to the Pterodactyl, a powerful aerial model that had a tendency to fly into stationary objects. Still, flight was the hardest capability to get just right, so I started with a basic flying prototype. I used the built-in design sliders to goose up the body mass and wingspan until they were close to the buyer specs.

I ran the design through my biological simulator. That was my claim to fame around here, my graduate thesis project. It was a computer modeling program that simulated an organism based on the DNA sequence. It could predict physiology, traits, and even behavior with reasonable accuracy. Granted, for a complex organism it needed insane computing resource to do so. Those computers were stacked all around the egg printer. Switchblades. A type of next-generation server that wasn’t even on the consumer market yet, and we had dozens of them. It sure beat cloud computing where you paid for every cycle. In fact, the Switchblades were one of the main reasons I came to work at Build-A-Dragon in the first place.

The simulated dragon bloomed into existence in midair above my desk. All of our dragons had four legs, even the flying models. We’d experimented with bipedal prototypes but they were ungainly beasts on the ground. Like it or not, dragons were terrestrial animals. Even the best flying models spent most of their lives on foot. Just because they could fly didn’t mean they always would. I’d pointed out once that they were like Osceola turkeys in this way. The marketing folks asked me never to say that again.

The rendered image had the look of a classic dragon. It was larger and more muscular than the Rover model, but leaner than a K-10. I ran the first battery of motor-competence tests—designed to predict how well the dragon could do things like run and jump—which it passed with flying colors. I’d increased the tail length, which didn’t cost many feature points but helped enormously with balance. Unfortunately, my simulator said the dragon would be several kilograms too heavy to get off the ground. Even when I pushed the wingspan to the sustainable maximum for a dragon its size.

“Well, damn.” I tried some adjustments to the wings and body shape, but the ratio only got worse. So much for the rest of this design coming easy. “Hey, Wong?”

A rumbling sound from the adjacent workstation answered me. Andrew Wong rolled out to where I could see him over the half-wall. He was my friend and fellow designer, here on a work visa from China. And man, did he put in the hours. He beat me in to the office every day and was usually still here when I left. Not long after I’d come to Build-A-Dragon, he and I had cracked domestication together. We’d been close ever since. “Hey, what?” he asked.

“Ni mang, ma?” I asked in Mandarin. Are you busy?

“Never too busy for number one designer.” He gave me his crooked smile.

“Yeah, yeah. Come look at this, will you?”

He didn’t get up, but rolled out to the end of his workstation in his chair, turned the corner, and pushed himself up into mine. He had a hell of a work ethic but he conserved energy like a contestant on Alone. Which was especially funny because he was a somewhat portly guy. He scrutinized my dragon for a full rotation. “Looks like a strong dragon. Very powerful.”

“Yes, that’s what the buyer wanted.”

“Who is buyer?”

“I don’t know, it’s redacted.”

He nodded, far more accepting of the anonymity than I was. “Tail looks longer.”

“I figured it would help with balance.”

“What’s the problem?”

“It’s too heavy to fly.”

He shrugged. “Get bigger wings.”

“They’re already at maximum.”

He produced an apple from his pocket, took a huge bite, and then gestured with the rest of it at my dragon’s rendering. “Need to cut weight.”

“I know, but from where? It needs the musculature to move.”

“Maybe the head,” Wong said.

If I reduced the cranial capacity, it might reduce the weight by half a kilogram. It would gain back some feature points, too. “That might help some.”

“Just don’t reduce too much. Or else you end up with…”

“The Pterodactyl, I know.” The wingspan had consumed so many feature points that few remained for intelligence and perceptive vision. Which was why it had a tendency to plow into the side of buildings. It got so bad that someone smartass had started an online petition to rename it the Terrible-dactyl.

“That still won’t make it light enough.”

“You know what to do,” Wong said.

“No, I really don’t.”

He took another giant bite of his apple and either didn’t see me wince or didn’t care. “What nature did.”

“Nature?”

“This kind.” He put his apple in his mouth, intertwined his thumbs, and made an unmistakable flapping gesture.

“Butterflies?”

He shook his head.

“Birds, then.” This won me a thumbs-up. I hadn’t really thought about birds for the wing design. “Designing a feathering system would be complicated.”

“Not feathers. Bones.”

“Oh, right.” Duh. Birds had hollow bones, which significantly cut down on their weight. I did some quick math. “It might work. But will the dragon be strong enough?”

“One way to find out,” he said.

#

I dove back into the design, adjusting the genetic program for the skeletal growth plates to produce bones that were mostly hollow. The mass reduction proved just enough to let the dragon get aloft, at least from what my simulator predicted. Now it came to the true difficulty, giving it the ability to breathe fire.

Surprisingly, even though this seemed to be a common trait of dragons in folklore, there wasn’t much science involved. No creature on the planet could breathe fire. The bombardier beetle probably offered the closest example from real-world biology. It has two glands near the base of its abdomen filled with hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone. When threatened, the beetle releases the chemicals into a vestibule containing catalases and peroxidases. These enzymes rapidly break down the hydrogen peroxide and catalyze the oxidation of hydroquinone. It’s what chemists call an exothermic reaction. It makes a loud pop and produces a hot, noxious spray that the beetle can direct with surprising accuracy. As many would-be predators have undoubtedly learned.

The bombardier offered a decent starting point, but it was a complex system. I’d have to design the physical glands, and the nervous system that controlled them before I could start on the biochemistry. Even if I pulled it off, I’d essentially produce a dragon with defensive flatulence. Something told me this mysterious and demanding buyer wouldn’t see that as breathing fire. Neither would I.

Wong, uncharacteristically, was out of ideas.

“Ask Evelyn,” he said.

I found her in the hatchery, of all places. The air was three degrees above ambient and smelled faintly of the desert. None of the hatchery staff were in view; they must be between egg turnings. Evelyn stood a few feet away from one of the pods, staring at the egg through the window. She wore her usual dark business suit and white blouse—and her ever-present tablet appeared in sleep mode. For her, it was a strange look indeed.

“Nihao, lao bahn,” I said to her. Hello, boss.

She didn’t jump, but offered the indulgent smile she reserved for when I practiced Mandarin. “Nihao, Noah Parker.”

“I’m not sure I’ve seen you in this room before.”

“I used to visit more in the old days.”

“Old days?” I chuckled. The company hadn’t even existed a decade.

“When we were printing only the Guardian.”

She meant the original dragon prototype that the company founder, Simon Redwood, had developed to control feral hog populations. It was a wild creature but incredibly effective at hunting hogs in the thickets and swamps they liked to call home. Too effective, really. Now that prototype, the dragon on which Build-A-Dragon was founded, barely sold at all.

“So, I’ve hit a wall on the custom job,” I said. “Mainly with the fire-breathing.”

She nodded. “You looked at the beetle?”

“Of course. We could go that route if you wanted, but it’s a complex system for what amounts to a pepper spray.” I paused. “It’s the wrong end of the dragon, too.”

“We could put it on the snout.”

“I suppose, but if the dragon is airborne, it would fly right into it.” Benzoquinone, the chemical that was ejected by the reaction, had a powerful effect on membranes of living organisms. Especially the eyes, which meant the dragon might blind itself mid-flight.

Judging by her frown, Evelyn had reached the same conclusion. “That does seem like a problem.”

“Any suggestions?”

“There’s always the cobra,” she said.

“You want it to be venomous?” That seemed even further from fire than explosive sprays.

”The spitting cobra, Noah.”

“Oh. No, I hadn’t looked at that.” At least it was the front end, and arguably easier to control. “I’ll run it down.”

“Keep me posted.”

When I got back to the design lab, the egg printer had swung into motion, its long arms pivoting and spinning as they worked. I poked my head into Wong’s workstation. “What’s printing?”

“K-10 model”

That was our dragon version of the German Shepherd, which sold almost exclusively to law enforcement. “Customized?”

“No, standard,” he said, with a hint of disappointment.

I didn’t blame him. Custom dragons were more fun, even when they were frustrating. I dove into research of the so-called spitting cobra. Africa and Asia both had species that could spit venom through front-facing holes in the fangs. Like the bombardier beetle, spitting cobras tended to use this system for defense from predators. Development of the ability and changes in the venom were examples of convergent evolution—multiple independent species evolving an ability that provides a selective advantage. In this case, the pathways for venom production had evolved to maximize the pain inflicted on a predator. Obviously we’d need the glands to be filled with some kind of fuel rather than venom, but it might work as a delivery system. At the very least, it wouldn’t come out of the dragon’s ass.

The fuel, though, was going to be a problem. Flammable liquids required significant energy input to synthesize. We might address that with a high-calorie diet. However, the bigger problem was that flammable liquids tended to also be carcinogens. Even if we could find a way for the dragon to synthesize them, they’d be like poison. Granted, I’d given dragon genetic defects before—usually for a good reason—but exposing a dragon to a hazardous chemical just for a visual effect seemed wrong.

I shoved back from my workstation. “I give up.”

Wong must have heard me. He rolled out far enough to make eye contact. “On which part?”

“Fire breathing. There’s no safe fuel.”

“If good for nature, nature would have made it already.”

“Exactly.” I couldn’t have put it better myself. That was why we so often looked to the natural world for useful design features. If no creature could sustainably breathe fire, maybe it meant that natural laws prevented it. “I think it may be time to try the mechanical route.”

“Did Evelyn say you could?”

“No, but she didn’t say I couldn’t, either.” At this point, I was ready to try anything.

#

I drove out to the desert in my Tesla late in the afternoon after swinging by the condo to pick up Octavius. He was my pet dragon, a failed prototype I’d printed as an experiment in my first year at Build-A-Dragon. All of his feature points went to intelligence, so he was clever and resourceful, but about the size of a chihuahua. That was far smaller than the custom model I was currently designing, but I figured that we were testing the principle out, not the final equipment.

That equipment rested in a foam-padded crate in my passenger seat. It, too, was a prototype from our dragon equipment laboratory. The engineers who worked there had been enormously helpful; they’d tinkered with the idea of a miniature flamethrower for our dragons, but figured it would never get past safety review. Since this was a custom job, most of our safety protocols didn’t apply. As long as customers signed the waivers, they could have pretty much any dragon they wanted. And if they were well-heeled enough, they could even get around the points system.

Octavius soon figured out where we were headed. The heat and sunshine of Arizona took on special qualities out in the desert. The change in light patterns was apparent even through my tinted windows. He perked up from where he’d dozed on the back seat and perched himself to look outside. When he saw the browns and dusty yellows of desert country, he chirped a question at me.

“That’s right, we’re going out to the desert,” I said. “Do you remember Big Mesa?”

He crooned far too loudly and began bouncing around in the back seat.

“Hey, watch the leather!” I shook my head and laughed. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Big Mesa was one of our favorite geocaches, located in a large nature preserve outside of Phoenix. It was almost an hour drive from Scottsdale, but that made it remote enough to guarantee some privacy. Octavius was technically unregistered, and the equipment in the wooden crate might draw further unwanted attention. I parked in a distant lot well away from the main roads and got Octavius suited up. The harness was too large for him, so I adjusted it down to the smallest possible setting. The fuel tank rode up against his belly, and the apparatus extended up to his snout.

I tapped the clamp-trigger in front of his head. “See if you can bite this.”

He promptly latched onto my finger.

“Ow! Not my finger!” I shook him loose. “Jeez.”

He gave me a look like, You said to bite you.

“Bite this metal thing, please.”

He obliged me and bit down gingerly on the metal trigger. A small tongue of flame flicked out from the end of the tube.

“Whoa, that’s incredible.” The engineers had really done a bang-up job. “I think if you bite down harder, it’ll—“

He chomped down and a gout of flame roared forth right into my face. I shouted and tumbled backwards on instinct, falling hard on the ground. It singed my eyebrows and left a too-hot feeling over my skin. For one terrifying moment, I worried he’d blinded me. Slowly the orange after-images faded. My face still felt hot to the touch, but I thought I’d maybe avoided any lasting damage.

“Be careful with that!”

Octavius at least had the grace to look remorseful.

After a few more false starts, he got decent enough at the controls for a flying trial. He took off sluggishly. The apparatus increased his weight by a third, and I could tell it affected his flying ability. He did make a couple of lazy circles, spraying the miniature flame-thrower once or twice when he passed overhead. Then he seemed to tire, and banked toward a stand of saguaros on the far end of the plateau.

“Oh, please don’t—“ I started, but I was too late. He tried another gout of flame when he was too low, and it sparked a fire. I was already running with the fire extinguisher. I stumbled and nearly fell on the uneven terrain. When I got close, I saw the saguaros themselves weren’t burning. It was the buffelgrass on the ground around them. This was an invasive plant from South Africa, and it burned like dry kindling. I doused it with the extinguisher and stamped it out with my boots to be sure. After that, I was ready to call it a day. Octavius was flagging, too.

“Let’s go home.”

I freed him from the harness and carried him back to my car. Both of us were covered in char and reeked of the chemical smell of fire-suppressant foam. He whimpered a little as if upset, but I stroked his flank and reassured him. “Don’t worry, buddy. You did great. Dragons just aren’t meant to breathe fire.”

#

When I got to the design lab the next morning, Evelyn was there waiting for me. She stood by Wong’s workstation chatting with him in Mandarin, but the way she straightened when I saw her suggested she was killing time until I arrived.

“Good morning, Noah Parker,” she said.

“Good morning.” It was early and I hadn’t had my coffee, but I summoned the energy to be polite. “Were you looking for me?”

“Yes. Is that custom model ready yet?”

“Nope. I still can’t get the fire-breathing to work. I even tried a mechanical system.”

“Did it work?”

“Great, if our buyers don’t mind random things catching on fire.”

She leaned close to me and wrinkled her nose. “You smell like smoke.”

“Like I said, things caught fire.” I slid into my workstation and brought up the current design in the simulator. “We’ve got the other specs down cold. Wingspan, body type, everything.”

She studied the rendering of the dragon as it rotated slowly over my workstation. “It looks like a good design. Hits all of the requested features, certainly.”

“Except fire breathing,” I said.

“How far did you go over the feature point limits?”

“Not very much, now that you mention it.” I’d been so focused on dealing with the design challenges that I hadn’t paid that much attention to my point totals. They were outside allowable spec, but barely.

Evelyn glanced at Wong, and then back at me. “What if you reduced the size of the dragon by twenty percent?”

“Well, we’d probably be within the limits, but that’s not what the buyer wants.”

“Try it and see.”

I managed not to sigh, but I obliged her and brought the size down by twenty percent. The rest of the ratios were the same, and it actually helped with the flight ratios. “That’s twenty percent smaller. We’re back in normal feature point range.”

She studied the rendered image again, and then gave a sharp nod. “Let’s print a prototype.”

I nearly thought I’d mis-heard. We sometimes printed early prototypes for mainline production models so we could evaluate them for market potential, but we never got to devote that many resources to a one-off custom job. Then again, I’d never designed one with executive priority status. And for the moment she seemed to be letting me skate on the not-breathing-fire thing.

“It would let us evaluate a scaled-down version,” she said.

“Hey, sounds good to me.” I hit the hotkey for print before she could change her mind. Because we’d come back into the feature point limits, I didn’t even need any special clearances. The egg printer emitted the high-pitched whine that said it was getting started. It whirred and hummed for a few minutes, a new pattern of sounds for a one-of-a-kind dragon design. Then the arms fell silent and the egg slid out on the conveyor belt beside my workstation. It was a perfect ellipsoid cast in a rich dark green with subtle glints of amber. Almost as if the God Machine—as I sometimes called the printer—had sensed what I’d tried to do with the fire.

Evelyn brushed it with her fingertips and sighed. “It’s marvelous.” She laid her palm on the side. “Oh, and warm!”

“They always are.” I put my hand on it, too. The surface was hard and smooth. Still warm, of course, but starting to cool.

As if summoned by this thought, a pair of hatchery staffers marched through the door pushing a metal cart between them. Evelyn and I stepped out of my workstation to clear a path for them. We knew better than to stand between hatchery staffers and a fast-cooling egg. They team-lifted it into a snug foam holder atop the cart and wheeled it into the hatchery.

“And now we wait,” I said.

#

Two weeks later we met outside in the outdoor arena located behind Build-A-Dragon’s headquarters. It was essentially a large, Roman-inspired amphitheater, with twice as many seats as we had employees at the entire company. Since this was for a custom design rather than a possible mainline prototype, only Evelyn and Wong and I had come to watch it. Two hatchers rolled out the egg, which was strapped to a transport cart. They released the harnesses and team-carried it to one of the nesting areas. These were wooden boxes, two feet by two feet square, in which the Herpetology staff had built nests with soft, dry plant material. Supposedly it resembled lizard nests in the wild. The hatchers placed the egg into this, returned to their cart, and pushed it into the building.

“Why don’t they ever stay?” I wondered out loud.

“Their part is done,” Evelyn said.

“Still, after tending the thing for two weeks, wouldn’t you want to see it hatch?”

“It’s their choice, Noah.”

“It’s weird.”

“Very weird,” Wong said.

“See? It’s not just me,” I said. Then again, a guy who’d ridden a scooter out to our seats in the arena rather than walk a few hundred feet might not be the best supporter.

“You should worry less about them and more about whether your dragon design meets the buyer’s requirements,” Evelyn said.

“Right, right. Who is that buyer again?”

“You know I can’t answer that.”

A crackling noise drew my attention back to the egg. Hairline fractures spiderwebbed up from the bottom to the top. Then the shell split open. The dragon emerged, blinking in the bright sunlight. It shook itself to shed the last of the shell fragments. Then it spread its wings. I drew in a sharp breath. It was one thing to see a computer simulation of a new dragon, but something else entirely to see it in person.

“Nice wings,” Wong said.

“Think it will fly?” Evelyn asked. “It’s more muscular than our flying models.”

Wong winked at me. “It’s lighter than it looks.”

The dragon was almost clear of its shell. Now came the vital imprinting exercise, where a human handler fed the dragon its first meal. Something about that act created a bond between reptile and humans. We often let the dragon-wranglers from Herpetology do this part, but Evelyn wanted to keep this small. I picked up the tray of raw meat that sat between us and offered it to her. “You want to do the honors?”

Evelyn looked surprised. She knew how much I loved feeding the dragons. Still, she accepted the tray and stood. “That’s very generous of you.”

“Well, it’s your dragon, isn’t it?”

She faltered and looked back at me. “What?”

“You’re the mysterious buyer of this dragon.”

She said nothing, and that told me I’d guessed right. The dragon, meanwhile, had no patience for word play. It had smelled the meat, and now let out a screech of impatience. Evelyn hurried off to feed it.

“How did you know?” Wong asked.

“From the request form I figured it was someone who understood our dragons fairly well. And she’s been around more than usual for this design. She was even there for the printing, you know?”

“I remember.”

We watched Evelyn offer the dragon a strip of raw meat. It lunged for the food, teeth flashing white in the sun. She didn’t even flinch.

“The dragon is like her, too,” I said. “Strong and adaptable to any situation.”

“Close to perfect,” Wong agreed.

“Plus, it’s her favorite color.”

He gave ma side-look. “She likes green?”

“Emerald green. You didn’t know?”

“No.”

“Come on, Wong. You should really pay more attention.”

We walked over for a closer look at the dragon, which had consumed half of the meat on the tray. Evelyn couldn’t feed it fast enough. The wings looked even more impressive up close, and the cords of muscle rippling about its shoulders suggested a powerful flier. I couldn’t wait to see it in the air. Evelyn glanced up at me and smiled. “You did well, Noah Parker.”

“It’s good to have a customer with discerning taste. Sorry I couldn’t pull off the fire breathing.”

She laughed. “Wong, how long did you spend trying to crack fire breathing before Noah joined the company?”

“Three months. Maybe four.”

I was aghast. “Dude, you said you didn’t have any ideas.”

He shrugged, completely unfazed. “Tried them already.”

I rounded on Evelyn. “Why did you request fire breathing in your custom if you knew it wasn’t possible?”

“I like to give you a challenge, Noah. It keeps you on your toes.” She gestured at the dragon. “You focused on that and didn’t obsess over the other features, so they came out perfectly.”

I bit back a further retort because she was right; the dragon in front of us was one of the best customs I’d ever designed. It was sleek and graceful, and the emerald color really worked. It might not breathe fire, but it would fly like the wind.

I nudged Wong. “You knew about this the whole time?”

“Of course.” He gave me the crooked grin. “You should really pay more attention.”

* * *

In addition to his work for Baen, Koboldt is the author of the Gateways to Alissia trilogy (Harper Voyager), the editor of Putting the Science in Fiction (Writers Digest, 2018), and the creator of the sci-fi adventure serial The Triangle (Serial Box, 2019). As a genetics researcher, he has coauthored more than 80 publications in Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, and other scientific journals.

Dan can be found at dankoboldt.com and on Twitter at @DanKoboldt. On his blog, he runs the popular “Science in Sci-fi / Fact in Fantasy” series, where experts in various fields contribute articles about how to write more realistic fiction. Articles from this series were collected into a book that came out in 2018 from Writers Digest. Kobolt’s “Putting the Science in Science Fiction” blog can be found here: dankoboldt.com/science-in-scifi. He has also written nonfiction articles for Clarkesworld, Apex Magazine, and Baen.com.

Xmas at ESL1

Wil McCarthy

Igbal Renz was a trillionaire—one of the Four Horsemen.

Igbal Renz owned a gigantic solar collector, the size of Wyoming, at Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 1, that provided more electrical power than the entire United States of America.

Igbal Renz owned a space station—ESL1 Shade Station—1.5 million kilometers sunward of Earth, with a crew of 35—mostly women.

Igbal and his people had (probably) made contact with aliens; the mysterious Beings, who could only communicate through the pathways of a human brain twisted on psychedelics. Either that, or Igbal and his people were all nuts, which was a possibility that had to be kept in mind at all stages of the project. Because, you know, he was spending a trillion dollars of his own money to build the starship to go and meet them.

But—shockingly—that wasn’t at the center of his thoughts.

What worried him at the moment was what to do about Christmas.

Good Lord, it sounded simple, right? Igbal wasn’t widely known as a generous man, but he treated his people well enough. Good pay, good bennies, which kept them usually in pretty good spirits. And of course, few of the people here were religious, or even culturally Christian, or whatever. But the holiday season—Hanukah and New Year’s Eve and Kwanzaa, etc., was undeniably a global phenomenon, and he was going to need to mark it in some way, for the people who lived out here in what was, after all, a pretty bleak environment. The mission depended on it. The business depended on it.

The station’s first Christmas had been a special case—everything was brand new, and everyone was excited and very busy. The second Christmas had been okay, too; there were only a dozen people here, and there was still a lot of travel back and forth with Earth. But the third Christmas had been a shit parade, and this year there were nearly twice as many people here, and mostly for indefinite duration. They had all freely chosen to come here, pursuing their own personal dreams of space colonization, but that mattered surprisingly little. The truth was, outer space was worse than Antarctica, worse than a ship at sea. Worse than prison, in some ways. They were all free to leave at any time—free to drop into “squirrel hibernation” and catch the next ion ferry back to Earth. Be home in a month, safe and sound. Nobody was choosing that.

But hell, the records from the drug printer showed their consumption of antidepressants and sleeping pills was through the roof. And stimulants, and alcohol, and blended cannabinoids, what have you. And the holiday season bummed people out anyway, reminding them of where and with whom they were not. So it was a problem he, Igbal Renz, was going to have to deal with.

“Damn holidays,” he said to Alice.

“What?” she said, looking up from her tablet.

The two of them were floating in his office—he looking out the window at the blue-white billiard ball of planet Earth, she fussing with the tablet and looking annoyed.

Alice was his second in command, sort of. Okay, if you wanted to be technical about it, Alice was not an Employee of Renz Ventures at all. Strictly speaking, she was a major in the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Wing, sent here undercover—disguised as an ordinary colonist—to take over the station by force. Which had happened, yeah, sort of. So you could argue she was his boss, or handler. Or jailer. But she had also, even more arguably, been co-opted by the dream of outer space. She seemed to like it here, and over the past six months she’d become so essential to the operation of the station that her formal titles included “Assistant Chief Medical Officer,” “Chief of Security,” and “Head Astronaut,” so one way or another, most of the station crew answered to her. And she never (well, almost never) gave him orders, except in emergency situations. Of which there’d been very few since she’d moved in and started whipping things into shape.

“I said, ‘Damn holidays.’ ”

She looked at him. “What are you talking about, Ig?”

“The holidays. What are we going to do about ‘em?”

“We?”

Annoyed, now: “Yes, we. We don’t have any way to give out presents. What do we do, ship them up from Earth, at forty thousand bucks a pound? With a 30-day lag, if we’re lucky? It’s already too late for that. And anyway, what if someone doesn’t like their gift? What a waste!”

“This is a factory,” Alice said mildly, with that tone she used for things she didn’t consider important. Which was most things. “Make something.”

“With what tooling?”

“I don’t know. 3D printers?”

“And idle production? That’s even more extravagant. Anyway, people live in rooms the size of a sectional sofa. Where are they supposed to put some pointless tchotchke?”

“Fine. Fresh fruit?” Alice suggested. She was hovering by the exit hatch, with one bare foot hooked lazily on a grab bar.

“It’d rot before it got here. Even apples. The radiation makes them age faster.”

“Hmm. Us, too,” she said unhappily. She was an Emergency Medical Technician, among other things. She was a lot of things, most of them amazing, which was why Igbal had forgiven her for betraying him. Mostly forgiven her.

“Well, we’re living organisms,” he said. “We’ve got repair enzymes and error correction routines. Apples don’t have that stuff.”

She pinned him with a suspicious gaze. “Really?”

“Um, I don’t know, Alice. I know they wouldn’t survive the trip. I’ve tried.”

Alice sighed.

Igbal sighed.

“Booze?” she suggested.

“Nope. The drug printer’s idle time is already one hundred percent spoken for, making illicit hooch. You people are thirsty.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You people?”

“Fine, us people. Myself included.”

“Maybe we need another drug printer.”

He nodded. “Yeah, we definitely do. It’s on my list. Pfizer’s got ‘em back-ordered, though. Best case, we’ll have one here on the April ferry.”

Alice sighed again. “Why exactly is this my problem?”

“You’re asking me that?” Igbal said. “Really? The ESL1 Shade is measurably affecting the Earth’s climate, and the President of the United States, your boss, was freaked out enough to sneak you in. You seized control, remember? Do you remember that? You want to tell her we’ve got a bunch of people up here, crying into their CHON chow from holiday blues? I’ll tell her myself if you don’t want to.”

“Fine,” Alice said. “I’ll talk to the chef about some fake turkey or something.”

“Hmm.” Igbal had never been one for half measures.

Working the problem, he decided to do something he’d never done before.

“Lurch,” he said, addressing the station’s AI concierge, “place a call to Brother Michael at Saint Joseph of Cupertino Monastery. Let’s see what he has to say. They’re on the Moon, all alone. They must have the same problem.”

#

“Oh, we plan to spend the Eve and the Day in labor, prayer, and contemplation,” Brother Michael said, when the call had gone through and the problem was explained. “As we spend most eves and days, quite frankly, but with perhaps a bit more focus on the boss’s alleged birthday. I take it that solution won’t work for you?”

“Um, I doubt it.”

“I can give you an excellent recipe for beer, made from the seeds of lupin flowers, if you can believe it. But even if you have the plants already, there isn’t time for the beans to ferment, unless you’re content to celebrate a month delayed.”

“Hmm. Nope, I don’t think that’s going to cut it.”

“Well,” Michael said, with an empathy that managed to sound both grave and amused, “there’s always song. Raising voices together can be a transcendent experience, even among the irreligious.”

“Hmm,” Igbal said, shrugging at Alice. That wasn’t a bad idea, but it hardly seemed sufficient.

#

Alice exercised her prerogative to ignore the issue and let Igbal deal with it, and get on with her own business, which was very serious indeed.

Thanks to Igbal’s not-secret-enough particle accelerators, ESL1 Shade Station had managed to use its vast energy surplus to produce several kilograms of pure antimatter. It was worth a literal fortune, and was a threat to the security of every nation on Earth. After six months of diligent work on Alice’s part, the security around it was no longer a total joke, but the station was still not really equipped to survive a concerted assault by professional forces. And Lord knew, there were plenty of professional forces making their way into space these days. Even the other Horsemen—particularly Grigory Orlov, of Orlov Petrochemical—commanded enough resources to be more than just an economic threat.

So Christmas was maybe not that big a deal, except that Alice wanted it, too. She was part of this population now, separated not only from family (i.e., her horrible mother) and friends (i.e., her special forces teammates and colleagues), but from the Earth itself, and everything that went with it. Fast food! Lakes! Leaves! Hell, she even somehow missed spiders and caterpillars.

She had new friends here at ESL1; Maag, the witty procedural chemist, and Jeanette, the endlessly cheerful asteroid mining engineer. And flyboy Derek, whom they somehow all managed to time-share romantically, without any significant jealousy, mainly because he was one of only three men on the entire station, and only here intermittently anyway. They were all good friends; some of the best she’d ever had. And there were other friends, too, or friendly acquaintances, here and there among the colonists of ESL1. Even Igbal was her friend, kind of.

But that didn’t make her miss the Earth any less. That didn’t make her stop wanting a Christmas tree and a New Year’s party, and eggnog and all that stupid bullshit.

So, amidst her many labors, she found time to check in on Igbal and make sure he was actually doing something about it. He spent a lot of time with a tablet computer, doing God knows what, and he spent time looking out his office window. Not (she thought) at the distant Earth and Moon, but sidewise at the Hub, and the vast expanse of the Shade at whose center it sat.

Was that useful? Was it holiday-related? She couldn’t tell.

Sadly, he also spent a fair bit of his time in the hibernation lab, pining over Pamela Rosenau. Pamela, who was pregnant with his child, and who had volunteered to be frozen, fetus and all, for a trip to Alpha Centauri that now might be delayed, or might not happen at all.

In the wake of contact from the Beings, corporate priorities had shifted. Alice still wasn’t sure she believed it, but allegedly both Igbal and Hobie Prieto had been contacted (like, telepathically) by actual fucking aliens. Igbal was hardly a trustworthy source for that kind of information due to his drug problem, etc., but Hobie’s own account gave her pause. Hobie was another flyboy, with zero reason to put his credibility on the line for something so clearly outrageous. He said they sang to him! They told him to meet them in the dark between the stars. No-nonsense Hobie! So yeah, maybe.

Anyway, what mattered was that Igbal believed it, and had consequently put Alpha Centauri on the back burner. But Jesus, one look at his face, as he floated next to Pamela’s hibernation tank, said just how not-at-all-lightly he had made that decision.

When Alice entered the hibernation lab, he was murmuring to Pamela’s frozen body, the way people would talk to a gravestone.

“. . . not here for this,” he said. “I don’t know what you’d want me to do. I don’t know what anyone wants me to do.”

He looked up then, and saw Alice hovering in the hatchway.

“Do you need something?” he said, looking caught, and a little angry.

“Are you okay?” she asked him.

“No,” he said, like it should be obvious. Then, when Alice didn’t say anything, he added, “I don’t know whether to thaw her out. She’ll be furious if I do, because it’ll cost her her place in history. She got pregnant specifically for the Centauri mission. Rows of pregnant women, frozen, headed for a new star—that was the plan.”

“But if you don’t revive her,” Alice said, getting it, “she could be in there twenty years. With unknown health effects.”

“Or forever,” he agreed. “She’s carrying my baby, and they’re both clinically dead. And it’s Christmas, and I want her here.”

“That sucks,” she told him. “I’m sorry.”

“And I know I’m not the only one,” he said. “Everybody’s missing someone. Even you.”

“Yes,” she agreed, guardedly.

It was her firm policy to respond to no-win scenarios by escaping. What more was there to say? It was also her policy to leave no comrade behind, no matter how much metal was in the air, but Igbal wasn’t the kind of person you could rescue. Not from this. With some hesitation and a fair bit of guilt, Alice nodded and left him to his ruminations.

#

She didn’t exactly meet up with Jeanette and Derek “after work,” because there was no such thing as work-life balance here at ESL1. All work was play for the people who’d given up everything to come here. Space colonists! And all play had an element of work to it, because life was dangerous out here. You had to take your gee-pills and your radiation pills and watch out for anything out of the ordinary, that might indicate a leak or (God help them all) a module separation. The bus-sized hab modules were tough, but space was full of little rocks moving at 10x bullet velocities. Space was as dangerous as any battlefield Alice had ever parachuted into, and she never let that thought stray far from her attention.

But anyway, yeah, she met up with Derek and Jeanette for a game of cards in the newly completed lounge module.

“Your deal,” Derek told her grumpily as she entered the module. He was holding out the deck of cards as though it belonged to her, and maybe also smelled bad or something.

Alice took the deck from him and shuffled it. Like all Special Forces types, Alice played a lot of cards, and knew ten different ways to scramble a deck. This was complicated by zero gravity, and by the fact that the cards were rigid brass—intended for swimming pools and hot tubs, not outer space. But some of her tricks worked anyway, and some worked better, and Alice was adaptable. Not particularly stable, but certainly adaptable.

Once the deck was randomized, she flicked cards at Derek and Jeanette, who caught and held them. She kept five for herself, tossing them against the neck of her jumpsuit. She then slipped the deck into a leg pocket, and finally grabbed and fanned out her hand to have a look.

They were, of course, playing five-card draw—one of the few games Derek and Jeanette could both handle. Alice preferred meatier stuff like Texas Hold’em and Canasta, or Bridge if she could find three other people who knew it. But ESL1 was populated with people who’d been raised on the idea that their time was too valuable for such drivel. Even Derek, a veteran who’d flown combat missions against the Cartels, viewed card games with suspicion. But there weren’t a ton of options up here, and Alice was persistent.

“Fold,” Derek said immediately.

“Sure?” Alice asked him. “You don’t want three cards?”

“I’m sure.”

“I’ll take two,” said Jeanette. Then, to Derek: “You okay? You seem down.”

“Perceptive,” he said.

“Dealer takes two,” Alice told them both, and dealt the extra cards.

“Raise five,” Jeanette said. The five-point ante was assumed. Alice would rather play for money—even pennies—to keep it interesting, but no one ever wanted to agree to that.

“See and raise,” Alice said. “Twenty points.”

“Ooh. Fold,” Jeanette said.

Alice glared. “Seriously? You have literally nothing at stake.”

“I have my pride.”

Alice, who had once or twice joined Jeanette and Derek in naked wrestling, wasn’t so sure about that. But it seemed impolite to say so, so she sighed and gave herself the fifteen points.

“You guys are a barrel of laughs,” she said.

“It’s the holidays,” Derek said.

“Oh, sweetie,” Jeanette clucked. “You’re not even going to be here, are you?”

“Nope.”

Derek had been at ESL1 longer than almost anyone else, but he spent most of his time running low-speed ion ferries back and forth between here and low-Earth orbit. He was scheduled to depart in four days, picking up another load of colonists—people to help with construction of the now-repurposed starship—plus some assorted light cargo. He would not be back until mid-January.

“This life is starting to wear me down,” he said.

“Too many women to fuck?” Jeanette said, with a just-barely-noticeable tinge of jealousy.

“Three’s more than enough,” he assured her, although Alice was pretty sure he’d availed himself of more than that.

Just then, Maag appeared in the hatchway.

“Ooh, cards,” she said. “Can you deal me in?”

“Sure,” Alice said.

Maag—Malagrite Aagesen—could barely play even five-card draw, and spent most of the time gabbing instead of looking at her cards. But she was a generally cheerful person, and Alice liked her. Maag spent nearly all her synthesizer allowance on teal-colored hair dye, and you could tell, because it meant she had to skimp on other things, like toothpaste and deodorant and even soap. But hair dye was more fun, right?

“Smelly Malagrite,” some of the other colonists called her, though they’d learned not to do it within earshot of Alice. Alice had spent too many of her formative years sweating in ditches and aircraft cabins to pay much attention to how people smelled, and there would be no mean-girl bullshit on this station if she had anything to say about it. Everyone knew she was an expert in Zedo, the zero-gee martial art, and everyone knew she had about as much patience as a wet dog, so the odds were definitely in her favor on this one. And anyway, Maag was one of those people whose natural smell (within reason) was really kind of attractive.

“Derek was just telling us about his shitty life,” Alice said.

“Aw,” said Maag. “Do we need to send you off with another foursome?”

“Maybe,” he said, finally showing some interest, “but it’s really the holidays that have me down. They always do, I guess. I used to think it was because the nights were so long, but we don’t have that problem here.”

Indeed, as far as daylight was concerned, it was always late August here on the station, with the hall lights shifting through sunrise mode starting around 6:30 AM, and gradually reddening and darkening into “moonlight” starting around 7:30 PM. The sun itself was blocked by the Hub, though visible as a yellow-white glow through the Shade beyond it.

The Shade was like a Britain-sized bullseye; opaque and solid at the very center, but hair-thin and nearly 50% transmissive at the outer boundary. In the parts of it that were visible through the station’s portholes, it let through about 10% of the sun’s light, which was almost too bright to look at without tinting the windows. This let a lot of light into the station that was “natural,” if peculiar, and it varied in intensity only fleetingly, as the transparency of the shade was adjusted here and there, to steer it with photon pressure so it didn’t drift out of position. Most of the time, even those changes were basically invisible, so the porthole tint followed the same program as the hall lights: bright mornings, dim nights. So yeah, there were plenty of inconveniences with living on a space station, but a shortage of daylight wasn’t one of them.

“So what do you think is the problem?” Jeanette asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I just want an old-fashioned family Christmas.”

“Aren’t we your family?” Maag asked.

“I know what you mean,” Alice said to Derek, because she really actually did, and she didn’t want Maag making things worse. “There’s nothing different or special happening. Every day is the same. Maybe we should introduce ‘seasons’ here, just to break it up a little.”

“Isn’t Igbal working on some kind of celebration?” Jeanette asked.

“Allegedly,” Alice said. “He’s mostly just holed up in his office, typing code or looking out the window. Sometimes pining over Pamela. He’s more of a mess than Derek, quite frankly. At this particular moment, even the starship doesn’t seem to excite him.”

Then Derek let go of his cards, setting them adrift in the lounge module, and said, “Fuck it. Let’s get drunk.”

But just then, Lurch piped in over the nearest loudspeaker, saying, “Alice Kyeong, please report to the medical lab. Alice Kyeong, please report to the medical lab.”

“What is it?” Alice asked.

“Please report to the medical lab,” Lurch said again. And that could mean several things. Possibly, Lurch didn’t really know what was happening, which wouldn’t be all that surprising. Concierge modules like that were creepily superhuman in some ways, but dumb as donkeys overall. Another possibility was that Lurch was guarding someone’s medical privacy. Still a third possibility—and the worst one Alice could think of—was that something was seriously wrong, and Lurch did not want to start a panic.

“I’m on my way,” she said.

#

When Alice got to the medlab, she had to plow through a knot of people at the hatchway.

“Everybody out,” she said. “Back off, everyone.”

“It’s Helen,” someone was saying.

“Is she breathing?” someone else asked.

“Back off!” Alice said, as she made her way over to the examination table. One of the construction workers, Helen Sharareh, was strapped to it, and Doctor Lee—Rachael to her friends—was trying to get an IV catheter into her arm.

“Status?” Alice demanded, although Rachael was the ranking medical officer.

“She was found nonresponsive.”

“We found an empty bottle of sleeping pills!” someone called out.

“Shit,” Alice said.

“She’s got a pulse,” Rachael said, “but she’s barely breathing. Pupils dilated. Can you strap this arm down for me, please?”

Despite being unconscious, Helen was somehow twitching, so Alice held the arm against the table and Velcroed it in place.

“Breath smells like vodka,” Rachael observed. “She’s been drinking, too.”

“Wonderful,” Alice said.

Clearly, Helen was trying to kill herself. As far as Alice knew, this was the first time anyone in outer space had ever tried to do that.

With the arm secure, Alice launched herself back toward the hatch, and closed it in the faces of the hovering workers. She turned then, and asked, “Prognosis?”

“Give me a minute.”

The IV was in, so Rachael hooked up a saline pump and then set about inserting a tube down Helen’s airway.

“Epinephrine,” she said. “One milligram.”

While Alice fetched the medication and drew it into a hypodermic needle, Rachael inserted another tube down Helen’s esophagus and into her stomach.

Alice, who had knelt over more than her fair share of nonresponsive patients, injected the epi into Helen’s IV to keep her from going into cardiac arrest while Rachael pumped out the contents of the stomach. Cases like this were a race against time; if too much sedative got into the patient’s bloodstream too quickly, they could simply expire on you even though there was nothing fundamentally wrong with them. On the other hand, if you got ahead of the curve, pumping up the blood volume and clearing out the intoxicants still in the stomach, then the patient would simply sleep it off, none the worse for wear.

But Alice’s only experience was with accidental overdoses—soldiers on deployment who’d maybe snuck some booze to wash down a couple of sleeping pills and a couple of painkillers and a couple of random prescription meds, and thus nearly removed themselves from the battlefield forever. She’d never dealt with an actual suicide attempt, and didn’t really have any idea how it was likely to go.

But Rachael, watching Helen’s pulse ox while she drew syringe after syringe of yellow-white garbage out of Helen’s stomach, finally declared, “She’s going to make it. It was close, though. She wasn’t fucking around.”

“Jesus,” Alice said.

For one thing, this meant morale was even worse than she thought. For another . . . suicide was contagious. If Helen had succeeded, it could have set off others around her, destabilizing them to the point where a permanent solution to their temporary problems seemed like a grand idea.

“This was an accidental overdose,” Alice declared. “A very minor accidental overdose. She just took a couple pills while she was drunk, that’s all. I want you to write it up that way.”

“Okay,” Rachael said, seeming to grasp the logic of that.

“I’ll tell everyone that’s what happened,” Alice said. “However, we found an irregular heartbeat that might indicate a need for care we can’t provide here. In an abundance of caution, we’re going to put her in squirrel hibernation and ship her back to Earth for observation.”

Squirrel hibernation was a lot milder, medically speaking, than freezing somebody. Aside from the lower core temperature, it wasn’t much different than the state Helen Sharareh was in right now.

“That’s even actually a little bit true,” Rachael said; Helen’s pulse was smoothing out now, but it had sure as hell been irregular a few minutes ago.

“That’s fine, Doc. I’m glad you understand.”

#

To Alice’s surprise, that story actually held up. People believed it, or pretended to, and so as bad as things were, they didn’t actually get any worse. Derek did in fact depart on schedule, with Helen Sharareh tucked away in the hibernation bay. And then nothing happened for a few days, and then it was December 24th, which miraculously managed to be the eve of Hanukah as well as Christmas, and two days before the start of Kwanzaa, and a week before New Year’s Eve, and all across the station people seemed to be letting out their breath and giving up. Okay, fine, nothing special was going to happen. They might as well go about their duties like any other day of the year.

But then, midway through the morning, Igbal started passing out smart-paper sheet music for Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” that included lyrics in English, Mandarin, and the original German.

“Memorize this,” he said to some people known to have musical talent. “Familiarize,” he said to others. And to certain hopeless cases, Alice included, he said, “The words will be underlined when you’re supposed to sing them. Just mumble along and you’ll be fine.”

And Alice thought, okay, singing was good. She didn’t think this was exactly Christmas music, but it was non-denominational and festive, and maybe that was the point.

And although Alice never had gotten around to talking with the station’s chef, Thenbecca Jungermann, there was fake turkey for lunch anyway, along with some fairly convincing “mashed potatoes and gravy,” and green beans that had been grown here in the station’s hydroponics module.

“Happy Holidays. Happy Holidays,” Thenbecca said as she handed out the bowls and utensils, and Alice’s shriveled heart was warmed by the joy Thenbecca seemed to take in this.

There wasn’t room for the entire crew in the dining module, so they spilled out into neighboring modules, eating and smiling and joking in a way they really hadn’t been, lately. And although Igbal Renz had never been much for speeches, he got to the center of the mob, cleared his throat, and said, “When you’re done eating, I want everyone to fan out around the station. Find a porthole that lets you look out on the sunny part of the Shade. I’ve got a present to share, that I want everyone to see.”

With that tease hanging in the air, people finished their dinners more quickly than they might have, or else brought their zero-gee bowls and drink bulbs with them as they dispersed.

And then there was music, playing softly from every speaker on the station. The smart paper sheets had all gone blank—a signal that it wasn’t time to start singing yet. Alice and Maag settled by a porthole in the chemical processing module, looking out at the sunlit Shade, wondering what was about to happen.

The music grew louder. The Shade went white. The smart sheets showed music again, and suddenly everyone was singing. Throughout the station, in voices beautiful or rough, singing together a tune the whole world knew.

“O friends, no more of these sounds!

Let us sing more cheerful songs,

Bright and filled with exaltation!

For to bear our hearts along.”

Something was happening out on the Shade. The white had gone gray, then white, then gray again, and Alice realized the whole thing was pulsating in time with the music, showing jagged patterns in gray and black, and clear sunshine too bright to look at. Starbursts! Expanding ripples! Flocks of birds, and a steady pulsating heartbeat at the back of it all! Igbal had turned the Shade into the biggest video display the human race had ever seen.

Frantically, Alice dug out her phone—an ancient slab of glass and plastic, given to her by the President of the United States—and dialed Derek. He was already a quarter of a light-second away, and the SpaceNet charges were going to be murder, but what the hell. It was Christmas!

“Look at the Shade,” Alice said into the phone, the moment Derek had picked up. “Rotate the ship! You’ve got to see this!”

“I’m looking,” Derek said, and Alice could hear “Ode to Joy” playing in the background, in the cockpit of Derek’s tiny spaceship. “Igbal sent me instructions this morning. Believe me, I’ve got a better view than you do! It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever . . . nobody’s ever . . . Jesus.”

And then Alice just kind of lost herself in the music. She’d never known the lyrics to this song, or even that there were lyrics, and although they were all about a God she didn’t believe in and a family she’d never had, it seemed to be about everyone, directed at everyone. A song of peace and happiness for the whole human race, nine billion assholes and counting, and Alice was part of it.

And when the music was building to a crescendo, as tears built up in her eyes, she looked down at the lyrics sheet and sang:

“Hark, you millions, I embrace you.

This kiss is for all the world!

Friends, above the starred expanses

There must dwell a loving Lord.

Do you fall in worship, millions?

Do you thy creator know?

Seek beyond the empty heavens;

Above the stars must He dwell.”

And then the music stopped, and the Shade went dark, and nobody said anything for a long, long time.

#

Igbal was in his office, looking over machine-generated reports, when Alice floated in, grabbing a handrail to halt herself.

“You did good,” she said.

“Really?” he asked, not quite believing it. It wasn’t the kind of thing he heard very often. No matter how much good he did, no matter how much he had single-handedly raised the Gross Domestic Product of the entire world, all people could ever talk about was how selfish he was. He didn’t see them giving all their money to the poor.

“Yes, really,” Alice said, wiping away what looked like an actual tear. It was hard to tell in zero gravity. “Thank you. And Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas to you,” Igbal said. “I’m glad you liked it.”

Just then, the phone rang. More specifically, the station’s concierge passed a real-time message through to Igbal’s office, ringing a chime for his attention.

“Grigory Orlov for you, sir,” said Lurch.

“Put him on screen.”

Igbal’s picture window, with its view of Hub and Shade and Earth and Moon, was replaced with the ugly mug of one of Igbal’s fellow trillionaires: the CEO and majority shareholder of energy giant Orlov Petrochemical. The second-richest of the Four Horsemen, Orlov now resided at an asteroid gas mining facility parked at EML1, where the gravity of Earth and Moon balanced to zero.

Igbal had never spoken with him. In fact, for the past six months—ever since the Beings had made contact—Igbal had spoken to almost no one outside of Renz Ventures.

“Hello?”

“Greetings,” Orlov said. He was in some kind of dark control room, filled with graphical displays and orange-lit buttons. Two men hovered behind him, in stretchy gray uniforms straight out of some B-movie wardrobe department. Their attention was not on Orlov or his phone call, but on the workstations in front of them, as though they didn’t dare stop working, even on Christmas-and-Hanukah eve.

“What can I do for you?” Igbal said, now somewhat irritated that this man had interrupted what might have been the first heartfelt conversation he’d had in a long time.

Orlov’s smile was a mask of warmth, thinly painted over a face long accustomed to scowling. “My father had a tradition, to call his enemies on Christmas eve and wish them well. He would put enmity in abeyance for a few days, and take no hostile action even toward those who’d clearly invited it. I disagree with a lot of my father’s ideas, but that one I’ve always respected.”

Orlov’s voice seemed to be chiseling the words out of stone.

Scoffing in disbelief, Igbal said, “Are you calling just to tell me we’re enemies? Seriously?“

“On the contrary. I’m here to offer you my thanks and congratulations. Our telescopes picked up your light show. Our mainframe matched it to Beethoven’s ninth symphony. Your own work?”

“It was, yes.”

Orlov had of course just revealed that he had a telescope pointed at ESL1 at a totally random time, which meant it was probably pointed here 24/7. Igbal shared a look with Alice, who nodded. Yeah, she got that, too.

“A new art form, quite beautiful,” Orlov said. “I can share the recording to all the news media, globally, as my gift to the people of Earth. Assuming they have not seen it already, with sensors of their own.”

“Wouldn’t that be my gift to the people of Earth?”

Orlov clucked. “We are off on the wrong foot, you and I. Can we not share this gift together? You and Beethoven and I? Your beautiful lights, as seen from my perfect vantage. A show of solidarity between adversaries.”

Scoffing again, Igbal said, “You’re not my enemy, Grigory. I have much bigger things on my mind.”

“I see. Well, perhaps you can set those things aside, too, and join me in a message to Earth? Peace and love, for all mankind? You have touched my heart, Renz—a thing not easily done—and I find myself with the curious desire to spread that joy to others.”

Pausing and blinking for several seconds, Igbal processed those words, and came up actually kind of blank. He’d only set out to do something nice for the people who worked here. Something cool, something no one else could possibly give them. It had taken weeks of his time—arguably worth a billion dollars—but he’d done it without reservation, because he wanted to make them happy. Was that kind of thing . . . infectious? Could he spread it? If he could touch the heart of Grigory God-Damn Orlov, then who knew what might be possible?

Finally, after much too long a pause, he looked Orlov in the eye and said, “Okay, fine. Peace and love, all mankind. Let’s do it.”

And so a message of hope was beamed down from Heaven to all the people of Earth, and despite the weight of misery and strife with which human beings had always been afflicted, a little bit of that hope leaked through and, for a moment, lit the world.

* * *

Engineer/novelist/journalist/entrepreneur Wil McCarthy is an award-winning author whose short fiction has graced the pages of magazines including Analog, Asimov's, WIRED, and SF Age. His novels include the New York Times notable Bloom, national bestseller The Collapsium, and To Crush the Moon.