Omes and Witsend Take the Case



This work is drawn from and dedicated to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.



Additionally thanks to Baroness Orczy and Walter Gibson for their work that I have drawn from for this.



This book was written during the National Novel Writing Contest for November, 2018. There were a lot of us writing and these people were some of the ones that gave advice and inspiration to keep going:

Gwen 42

Carelia

Mr. Badger

Sinfony

Saffon Angel

Merflower

Imperial_Dreamer

Belleflower

Mr. Oz

Glitter Pen

Taviar

DGWhite57

Elfin Clova

Wardct42

Moonhunter

Hermit



My son, Donnie, and friend, Josh contributed some great advice.

CES



The Battlefield Ghost

1

I sat in the sun window and watched the dust float around. Omes sat at his desk. He read the screen. He had found some reports he was trying to use to find the owners of the slingshot he was chasing.



We had been chasing one particular villain for a long time. We finally had a trace we could use to chase him down.



I looked out of the window. A man walked down the avenue toward Twenty Two Bee. I frowned. Not many people came down to Time Village. He had to be there to visit Omes.



"We have someone coming for a visit," I said.



"Really?," said Omes. He blanked out his reading matter. "So far I don't have much for my troubles."



"Maybe a case will help you out," I said. "Hopefully it will be something simple that doesn't require much brainwork."



"Perhaps," Omes stood. He straightened his white clothes as he went to the door.



"He's just now coming to the dock," said Addison. His voice drifted all around us. "I'm slowing the house."



The house thumped as Addison braked its spin outside reality and dropped it in place in front of the dock.



Omes returned to the parlor with a man in a tweed suit, graying hair, and a scar on his hand. My friend gestured for our visitor to sit on the couch while he returned to his chair by his desk.



"What can I do for you?," Omes said.



"I'm Colin Hughes, and I need you to get rid of this ghost that keeps appearing in front of me," said our prospective client.



I rubbed my ear as I considered his preposterous story. I could see that he believed he was seeing something.



"We don't really handle ghosts, Mr. Hughes," said Omes. "I suggest some kind of spiritualist."



"I tried two," said Hughes. "They said they didn't see anything unusual."



"What do you think, Witsend?," Omes asked.



"He doesn't have any physical problems that I can see," I said. That didn't mean anything better than he didn't have any chemicals, twisted brain structure, or injuries I could see with my life sense.



Hughes half-turned to look at me.



"I thought all the talking cats were killed during the war," he said. "I was there with the Black Metal."



"I served with the Sky Wolves," I said. I rubbed my ear.



The Black Metal were a division of Artillery that hammered a target before ground troops went in and secured things. Sometimes they provided cover when something was let loose that ordinary bullets couldn't stop.



My platoon provided security and protected field hospitals from attack when we could.



"We'll look at this for you, Mister Hughes," said Omes. "I can't promise anything."



"Thank you," said Hughes. "When do you want to get started?"



"We can go now and look things over," said Omes. He stood up and pulled a gauntlet from a box in a desk drawer. He put it on. "There might not be anything we can do for you."



"That's better than nothing," said Hughes. He stood. "If you can't figure out what's going on? What do I do then?"



"We know some people who might be able to help you," said Omes. He stood and pulled his coat and bowler off their hooks. "Let's look at the scene of the crime. I presume the ghost shows up at your house."



"No. It usually accosts me on the street," he said. "It's another member of the regiment, Davy Sanders."



"Does it appear in one spot?," asked Omes.



"It usually appears on the way to my office," Hughes said. "I see it on the sidewalk."



"Take us there so we can look around," said Omes. He put on his coat and bowler. "So you and Sanders were mates?"



"We worked two different guns," said Hughes. "I ran the calculations on my rig. He loaded the cannon from the back for his."



"And?," said Omes.



"We used to go out to the local pubs, and chase the local girls," said Hughes. "He was killed by a fire drake before we could fall back."



I rubbed my ear. The Sky Wolves had been across the valley when that happened. We had been caught by a flock of those things, and some other things while trying to advance following our orders.



"Let's see where this thing is manifesting," said Omes. He gestured for Hughes to proceed before him. "Then I'll know if I can help you."



"Thank you," said Hughes. "What else can it be?"



"It's been a while since the war," said Omes. "I would expect the ghost to have found you the first day you were back. The gap in years is suspicious."



I hopped down from the window. I agreed with Omes. Why was the ghost showing up now?



Something else must have happened that Hughes didn't know about.



We stepped out of Addison. He spun his body up so it vanished piece by piece outside of reality. The other houses in Time Village blinked in and out as their brains dipped into our reality for a moment. Two of them had vanished for good in my opinion.



Hughes's brain looked agitated, while Omes had settled into the neutral state I associated with him waiting for information.



I didn't know what to make of the story. If it wasn't a ghost, then what was it? There was so many things that it could be.



And I felt that Hughes had left some part out of his story.



I didn't say anything as we walked to the arched entrance of Time Village to step out into the city proper. If there was a ghost, we couldn't do anything about it. If there wasn't, maybe we could find out what was really going on.



I knew Omes wanted to get to the bottom of this. Mysteries were his meat and gravy. He never let anything go if he thought he could solve it.



Hughes called for a cab when we stepped through the gate. Most cabbies didn't want to go into the Village. The risk of losing their rig was there.



A clanker pulled cab rolled to a stop to let us board. Omes made sure it wasn't a rig working for a company we associated with our enemy before he boarded. I didn't blame him for the bit of paranoia.



The man had ruined many people's lives and killed more just for being in his way. He definitely had a reason to come after us by now.



I wondered why he hadn't tried. No one would retaliate against him if he did. Very few knew he existed.



We rode in silence through the city. The cab took us up to East Canaan, and then toward the Royal House. Then we rolled through the offices and government buildings until we were on the other side. The cab pulled to a stop in front of a veteran's assistance agency. We dismounted. Hughes paid the driver while Omes and I looked around.



There were plenty of living traces everywhere. My life sense wouldn't pick up a ghost at all. I sat and rubbed my ear.



Omes seemed equally perplexed. I supposed he had hoped for some physical trace he could use to prove there was a ghost.



"Is this where you've seen it?," said Omes. He indicated the spot in front of the building.



"All along here," said Hughes. "Sometimes in the morning, and sometimes at night."



He paused. He looked down the street. Omes and I looked down the street too. I didn't see anything.



"He's walking toward us," said Hughes. He pointed. "I can see him. He's still burning. Can't you see him?"



His brain spiked in a way I had seen during the war. I decided there was one way to deal with this.



"Catch him," I said to Omes. He nodded in understanding.



I grabbed hold of Hughes's nervous system and put him to sleep. Instantly his brain stopped spiking and resembled what I associated with dreaming.



"He's not seeing a ghost," I told Omes. "He's being psychically attacked. I saw the same thing during the war."



"What do you mean?," asked Omes.



"The enemy had something we called Guilt Thorns," I said. "If they marked a soldier, they could make that soldier see what he was the most guiltiest of doing. Some committed suicide before we figured out what was going on."



Omes sniffed the air.



"They smell like lilacs, don't they?," he asked.



"Yes," I said. "So who is using the thorns on him?"



"That's what we're going to have to find out," said Omes. "At least it isn't a real ghost."



2

I woke Hughes up when the smell had faded away. We didn't need him seeing his ghost when we needed some quick answers. Omes acted like the presence of the flowers was a case breaking clue.



Maybe it was.



"Mr. Hughes," said Omes. "Are there any plants at your business?"



"No," said Hughes. "Margaret has a garden around the house if that helps."



"Could we see it," said Omes. "It might be the answer to your problem."



"Certainly," said Hughes. "Come along. The house is on the other side of the Royal Boulevard."



He led the way through the section of business and government housing to a wide road that led from the capital to the South. The northerly direction ran to the edge of the chaos between us and the Upper Qioloth. Once we had crossed that road, we were in a area of houses that all looked the same except for the directions in front of them.



Everything appeared to be laid on a grid with a circular road around the area. That road led to the Royal Boulevard we had crossed.



"My house is up this way," said Hughes. He led the way to a house that looked like every other house on the street except for the garden surrounding it.



"We're going to look around and see if the problem is in your garden," said Omes. "Go inside and take a break. As soon as we know something, we will tell you."



"All right," said Hughes. "Thank you for believing me. No one else has."



"It's not a problem," said Omes. "This is our bread and butter. Go ahead. We'll let you know if we find anything."



Hughes went inside and closed the door. I watched his trace recede from the door.



"I find it interesting that his wife planned this garden," said Omes. He held both hands up to frame the flowers between them.



"It wouldn't be the first time that a wife did something to her husband," I said. I rubbed my ear as I considered the flowers in front of me. "Guilt thorns only work if someone actively uses them."



"So every time he saw the ghost, someone had to be here in the garden to use the plant?," said Omes. He moved his "frame" to the side to capture more of the garden.



"I expect so," I said. "It seemed to be the nature of the things when we found about them during the war."



"So if I told you that I only see traces of the wife out here, what would you think?," said Omes.



"I would think she was the culprit," I said. "But we would have no way to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt."



"We need to catch her in the act," said Omes. "But what happens when we do? I doubt Hughes will be happy that his wife is making him relive his guilt over and over."



"That's not really our problem," I said. "We're not here to fix their marriage. We're supposed to banish the ghost that is haunting Hughes. Anything else is out of our hands. She might be trying to get him to commit suicide for all we know."



"True," said Omes. "How do you want to handle this? I prefer staking out the garden and catching her in the act."



"So do I," I said. "I don't know how we could bait the trap."



"I do," said Omes. He smiled as he adjusted his bowler. "All we need is a little time to find a hiding place and Mr. Hughes will do the rest for us."



"What if he does something stupid?," I asked.



"We can't prevent him from doing everything," said Omes. "We can find the source of his problem and try to cut it off."



"All right," I said. "Do you know where the guilt thorns are? I don't."



"Yes," said Omes. "We'll have to leave them in place to trap our suspect."



"All right," I said. "How do you want to do this?"



"We send him to work and see who comes out to use the plants," said Omes. "Then we can use that to force some kind of explanation."



"I like it," I said. "Usually your plans involve letting the villain try to kill you."



"I like to change it up sometimes," said Omes. "Let's inform Hughes what we need him to do. Then we can sit back and watch how this goes."



"Did you find the plants?," I asked. "We might need to know that before we put your plan in motion."



"They're under the window to the right," said Omes. "They're the only ones she stands at for any length of time. I suppose she has to do that to activate them."



I looked at the indicated spot. I saw a bushel covered in purple plants. They were nestled in the middle of similar looking flowers as camouflage. Mrs. Hughes had planned well as far as that went.



"The only risk is Hughes snapping for good," said Omes. "I'm going to warn him about the plan that involves him. Then we can take off until tomorrow."



"Why tomorrow?," I asked.



"I don't think she'll strike while he's home," said Omes. "I think she will strike when he is away and vulnerable."



"All right," I said. "Let's put this thing in motion."



Omes froze the flowers before he went to the door and knocked. Hughes opened the door. He didn't look happy about it. My friend told our client to go to work the next day. He also told him not to be bothered by the ghost, and that we had a partial solution in hand.



"What do you mean a partial solution?," Hughes demanded.



"We think we have found the source of your problem, but we need to make sure," said Omes. "Rest assured that it isn't the long lost ghost of your dead friend. Just go in to work and act like nothing is wrong. We'll take care of the rest."



"Are you sure about this?," asked Hughes.



"I would not be telling you this if I wasn't," said Omes.



I rubbed my ear. We needed his cooperation but he seemed to think we were going to perform some trick on him.



"Do what we say, you blithering idiot," I said. "Go to your job. Act like everything is normal. Either we take care of your problem for you, or we won't. Don't stand there and act like you don't know what words mean."



"I don't think I like your attitude," said Hughes.



"Then don't act stupid," I said. "Just keep all of this to yourself and things will work out."



"If they don't?," Hughes asked.



"Then we won't bill you," I said.



"Witsend is right," said Omes. "There's a better than even chance you will be attacked again. We want to make sure it's the last attack."



"All right," said Hughes. "I pretend everything is normal and then come home."



"Exactly," said Omes. He adjusted his hat. "We'll see you tomorrow."



We left him standing there in his door.



We took the Tube as close to home as it went. I was glad to be unstrapped and free of that. Omes didn't say anything about the case. I briefly told Addison what we thought was going on while Omes cooked a small meal for us. We ate in silence. Omes went back to his search from his desk. I took the visitor's couch and napped.



The next day we had breakfast and Omes packed us a lunch. We headed back to Hughes's house and found a vantage spot where we could watch the house without being seen. Omes settled in to watch while I napped.



"There goes Mr. Hughes right on time," said Omes. "All we have to do now is see who tries to use the guilt thorns."



I dismissed the noise and went back to my nap. Omes would tell me when it was time to act. And then I would.



We ate lunch in our hiding place. Omes kept his attention on the house. It wouldn't be long before the ghost should appear to Hughes. That was the conclusive proof we needed to get things done.



A dowdy woman with a touch of gray and a little too much weight came out of the house at about three. She carried a watering can in her hand. She walked toward the guilt thorns.



Omes picked up his bag and stood. He walked toward her. I followed, noting her trace and how it didn't match some of the trace on Hughes when he visited us.



Omes paused at the edge of the yard. He watched her pour water on the guilt thorns. She frowned when she didn't feel anything, or release the scent of lilacs in the air.



"They won't work now, Mrs. Hughes," Omes said. "Can I ask why scaring your husband was utmost in your mind?"



"I don't know what you're talking about," said Mrs. Hughes. She brandished the water can, but I didn't consider it a threat yet. "Who are you?"



"I'm Murdock Omes, and this is my colleague, Dr. Witsend," said Omes. He gestured at me with his free hand. "We've been hired to stop your husband's visions. I think once we tell him what you have been doing we've done our job. I am just curious as to why."



"Because I think he is cheating on me, and a botanist friend told me about guilt thorns," said Mrs. Hughes. "I want him to stop cheating."



"Using guilt thorns will do that," I said. "You're pushing him to kill himself and anybody around him. That will stop his philandering."



"You could just get a divorce," said Omes. "That would be messy, but you wouldn't have to put up with any behavior you didn't like afterwards."



"Everything is in Colin's name," said Mrs. Hughes. "I would have to start over with nothing."



"So?," I asked.



"I'm too old to start over, you stupid cat," she said.



"Face on fire," I said back.



She shouted and poured water from her watering can over her head to try to stop the nerves from her face registering torch level pain and heat. Omes nudged me with a foot, and I turned it off.



"Let's try again," said Omes. "I'm Murdock Omes and this is my associate, Dr. Witsend. We have been contracted to stop the unwarranted attacks on Colin Hughes. You are the attacker, Mrs. Hughes. We have fulfilled our end of the contract upon stopping you from attacking your husband with the flowers. We don't investigate romantic problems as a rule, and I will take your assertion that Mr. Hughes is philandering to be true but unprovable. I think that is where we stand at this point. Is this correct?"



"Yes," said Mrs. Hughes. She put down the watering can and brushed the hair out of her round face.



"The guilt thorns aren't specific to what they show the victim," I said. "And what you have been showing your husband has no bearing on his mating with other females. You need something else."



"And you know what that is?," said Mrs. Hughes.



"Yes."



3

Two weeks later, I lay on the visitor's couch with my paws in the air, thinking that I should get water from the kitchen sink, but not wanting to get up. I had went through my appointments and felt like just lying in place since getting home from the office.



Omes had gone off on some errand related to the airship he was trying to find. He would be back soon. That was when we would decide on dinner at home, or the club.



I was in the mood for fish, so I favored the club. They had cooks that knew how to grill some salmon.



"Omes is back," said Addison. "Are you two eating in, or going out?"



"I have no idea," I said. I righted myself and drew up into a ball.



The thunk of Addison applying the brake to his spin, and the following thump of him vanishing from reality was interrupted by Omes walking into the parlor. He hung up his bowler and coat before sitting down at his desk. He opened his main screen and wrote down some notes from a slip of paper.



"I think I have a name finally," he said. "I have to make sure this is the right man. You want to come along?"



"I think it would be better if I did," I said.



"The slingshot from Excelsior's base is owned by the McMahon Corporation," Omes said. He turned to the screen with the slingshot pictured on it. He opened another window and put up three pictures for me to examine. "Lucy and Linus McMahon, and their father Luther."



Luther McMahon matched the man we had talked to by screen when we had investigated an imposter impersonating people to send them to jail while he walked away with the stolen goods.



I felt an urge to rip his arms off now that I knew who he was.



"How did you find this out?," I asked. Omes might have attracted attention with his search. The McMahons might actively try to get rid of him now that he knew who they were.



"I used the slingshot to find them," said Omes. "I spent the time after the Hughes case following the ship around the Industrial Quarter to make sure there was a solid link to the building we found. Then I narrowed it down even more by searching building records. If I were to show Luther McMahon's picture to Costello, I am sure he would want to serve warrants right away."



"And why don't we do that?," I asked. I would be glad to let Metropole hang this fish as long as I got some alone time with him.



Some anger needed to be expressed about his callous indifference to life.



"Because all we have as proof is the picture on the screen in that warehouse that could be faked by anyone who knew who he was," said Omes. "We need something ironclad before we try for him."



"We need the world's biggest smoking gun," I said. I couldn't fault the logic. If McMahon had some connection to Metropole, the chances of evidence being lost increased.



"So we have to build our case slowly," said Omes. "Once we have something that can't be swept under the rug, then we can release it to the world. Let the government and the press take up where we stopped."



I rubbed my ear. Leaving things to the bluecoats is what Omes said now. In the future, he would be doing something to make the man come forward and incriminate himself.



Omes didn't share the spotlight when he didn't have to.



The main screen that Omes used buzzed. He blacked out his two ongoing searches and the pictures of the McMahons on the three alternate screens before he answered the call.



"Omes?," said Colin Hughes. "What have you done to me?"



"Nothing," said Omes. "Why is your face purple? Is something wrong with your screen?"



"No, there's nothing wrong with my screen," said Hughes. "I thought you had solved my problem."



Omes leaned back in his chair. His expression didn't betray the amusement his brain gave off.



"Have you had any more visits from your dead friend?," asked Omes.



"What does that got to do with this?," asked Hughes.



"You asked us to stop the haunting and we did," said Omes. "It took a herculean effort on my part to track down the flowers you were exposed to, but I did it. This seems to be something new."



"I want you to do something about this," said Hughes.



I noted that his new complexion had handprints and round impressions. I rubbed my ear. It looked like Mrs. Hughes was right unless she put those blank spots in herself.



"You need to do some exercises," I said. "The more you sweat, the faster it will come out. You might need to wear old clothes while you're exercising. The sweat will stain your clothes."



"Do you know what this is?," asked Hughes.



"Yes," I said. I didn't elaborate.



"What is it?," demanded Hughes.



"It's verdian powder," I said. I rubbed my ear. "It's harmless."



"How do you know that?," asked Hughes.



"I'm a doctor," I said. "I've seen this a hundred times. Just go outside and do some manual labor. The color will come right out of you."



"Colin?," said Mrs. Hughes from off screen. "Are you home? Advocate Mathers and I have found a nice place in the country for vacations. He is helping me with the paperwork."



"Advocate Mathers?," said Hughes and Omes at the same time.



"I think you need to talk to your wife," Omes said. "Tell her the condition is not life threatening and you can sweat it out."



"Colin?," Mrs. Hughes said. She was just off screen from the sound of her voice. "Are those handprints?"



"Call us when you have things worked out," said Omes. He cut the connection with a shake of his head.



"We violated the conflict of interest laws on this," he said.



"We solved his problem first before we took money from her," I said. "I don't see the conflict."



"I don't think we are supposed to take work from our client's enemy when we knew the client was going to be the target," Omes said.



"It was better than having her push him into a nervous wreck and doing something stupid to get out of it," I said. "I have seen too many of that."



"I suppose you're right," said Omes. "I need to do some research on the McMahons before we try to confront them over Excelsior and their other crimes."



"Let's eat at the club, and then we can watch the boats in Canaan," I said.



Omes stood. He looked at the darkened screens. He smiled. He reached for his bowler and coat.



"Can I ask a question?," said Addison.



"What would you like to know, Addison?," said Omes. He pulled on his coat and hat.



"What exactly just happened?," the voice of our landlord said.



"Do you want to tell him, or should I?," asked Omes.



"I'll do it since it was my idea," I said.



I rubbed my ear as I sat on the visitor's couch. I put the events together in my own mind before I said anything.



"Mr. Hughes came to us because he had spent several days, maybe a few weeks, being visited by the ghost of his dead friend," I said. "But it wasn't a real ghost. It was a psychic projection attacking his mind. The biggest thing that Mr. Hughes felt guilty over was the loss of his friend. His wife had assumed that the plants would act on his philandering, but she didn't know how the plants worked, and the fact the guilt was focused on the biggest mistake he had made.



"Philandering is not usually considered a mistake until the husband is caught so there is no guilt about that.



"So all she was doing was pushing her husband to a breakdown which might have led to an explosive confrontation with any number of people including herself," I said.



"I understand all that, but the call just now," said Addison.



"I'm getting to that," I said. "A little patience, please."



"I'm sorry," said Addison. "Go on with your tale."



"Thank you," I said. I rubbed my ear. "After Omes and I had examined the scene where the attacks had happened, we agreed that it wasn't a real ghost. We performed a cursory search around the client's house and found the weapon outside the house. We decided to catch Mrs. Hughes in the act. She broke down and told us she was trying to get her husband to admit his philandering so they could break their contracts and she would have something after the divorce."



"All right," said Addison. "That seems simple enough. Now how did all that pertain to the call where he was purple?"



"I advised Mrs. Hughes that her scheme was exceedingly stupid. After some discussion with Omes, I suggested an alternate scheme where she could show her husband was philandering with no lasting harm. There is a plant substance you can add to food that will turn people's skins purple. It will also hold the imprint of anything touching it in the first twenty four hours," I said.



"So the handprints weren't Mrs. Hughes?," Addison said. "Oh."



"Exactly," I said. "All she had to do was pick a day that she could leave for a bit, leave the stuff in his coffee, and take off for the next two days. Everything else took care of itself."



"The advocate was a nice touch," Omes said.



"She must have come up with that on her own," I said.



"So you stopped the attacks on your client by helping the attacker prove that he was seeing other women," said Addison. He sounded amazed.



"And we potentially saved them both from death, Donegal Island, and plenty of other things that I can't think of right now," I said.



"And we were paid twice over all this too," said Omes. "That's enough to pay our rent."



"All right," said Addison. "I suppose that makes things all right."



"If Hughes hadn't started seeing other women behind his wife's back, and his wife hadn't decided to make him sorry about that, we would never had been called in," said Omes. "And they wouldn't have a reason for fixing things."



"I don't think they'll be fixing things now," I said. "An advocate on the scene might keep them from going at things tooth and claw."



"We can't help that," Omes said. "We have our own fish to fry."



"Do you two think Mrs. Hughes would have kept going with something else if you hadn't shown her how to do something nonviolent?," asked Addison.



"Yes," I said. "The next thing would have been something immediate like a frying pan to the head."



"I have to agree," Omes said. "She had already spent months growing those flowers. If we had told Mr. Hughes and triggered the divorce on his terms, she might have resorted to something faster and easier like a bullet."



The Undead Patient

1

Omes and I had spread drawings of the building we wanted to break into across the kitchen table. I felt that we should not rush into the lair of our prey without knowing how to get out. He wanted to know where the main screens were so we could send the information out and use that to lever Luther McMahon into a trip to Donegal Island.



If we were caught, we would be the ones going to Donegal Island as guests of the state.



The screen on Omes's desk buzzed to life. We looked at each other. Who could be calling us now? I looked at the clock on the screen. It was ten at night according to the numbers.



"Let's see who that is," said Omes. "It might just be a misnumber."



He walked from the kitchen to his desk and told the screen to put the call through. He made sure his searches were blackened first.



"Hello?," he asked the caller. The other end had not set up a video link.



"Is this Dr. Witsend?," asked the caller. I perked up my ears when I heard my name. "I have a medical emergency."



"Hold on," said Omes. "I'll get him for you."



I walked across the space and jumped up into Ome's desk chair. I looked at the calling number. I didn't know anyone with that number.



"This is Dr. Witsend," I said. "What is this about?"



"I have a man who appears to have had a stroke," said the caller. "He was asking for you before he passed out. I found the number in his effects."



"Where are you?," I asked.



"I am at Forty Four Bee Rinault Space Way," said the caller. "My name is Hennessy."



"All right," I said. "My associate and I will be right there to look at things. Have you called an ambulance to take him to hospital?"



"He's at a hospital," said Hennessy. "Forty Four Bee is Iverton General in South Eribea."



"You're down beyond the Shipping Point," I said.



"That's right," said Hennessy. "How soon can you get here?"



"I don't know," I said. I glanced at Omes. He shrugged. "Say about an hour."



"We'll be waiting for you when you get here," said Hennessy. He cut the connection.



"What do you think is going on?," asked Omes. He pulled on his coat.



"I don't know," I said. "Iverton is known as a rural hospital. The man must be a local, but why ask for me?"



"Let's go down and see what's going on for ourselves," said Omes. He took his bowler off its hook and put it on his head. "Then we can sort out a solution."



"There's not going to be a train, and a cab will be expensive," I said.



"That will be okay," said Omes. "We might need a cab to get around down there anyway."



He went into the kitchen and put the drawings in a case. He put the case in the kneehole of his desk.



"We're going to take this on despite not knowing anything?," I asked. "Shouldn't we wait until morning?"



"The man might be dead by morning," said Omes. "We have to learn what we can while we can."



"I suppose you're right," I said. I used the screen to leave a message for my nurse and assistant Elga Spangler. She would see it in the morning if we didn't get back in time to conduct business.



An emergency was an emergency but I preferred to see patients in my examining room/office.



"What do you think, Addison?," I asked.



"I think the sooner you get done, the sooner you'll get back," Addison said. "I will wait up for you."



"All right," I said. "I suppose you should tell any visitor we had headed down to Iverton to consult on a patient."



"I will be glad to do that, Witsend," said Addison.



Addison slowed the spinning of the house so it set down at the three step dock we used. We stepped out through the front door. Omes pulled on his gauntlet as he headed for the entrance to Time Village.



His brain had settled down in its neutral state to show he was waiting for something to happen. I knew mine must have been skipping around trying to figure out why someone would want to call me if there was an emergency.



At least it wasn't Costello. He was a dog and had no pockets to carry things.



We reached the arch that signaled the entrance to our neighborhood. The houses vanishing and reappearing threw sparks in the air as I watched. I figured the effect was a result of the houses hopping out of reality and coming back.



Omes walked down the sidewalk, looking for a cab. It would take the night to walk to the hospital. We didn't have the time for that.



Finally he was able to wave one down. The unicorns pulling the hansom pawed the ground as they looked at us. The driver smiled down at us from his bench.



"How can I help you two?," asked the driver.



"We need to get to Iverton Hospital as fast as you can carry us," said Omes. "We just got bad news from there."



"Hop in the back," said the driver. He tipped his top hat. "It will be my pleasure to help you two."



"Thank you," said Omes. "The hospital said the man was dying. We need to see what we can do to make sure that doesn't happen."



"We'll be down there in a few, Guv," said the driver. "Unicorns can run all day if they want."



"Thank you," said Omes. He opened the door and helped me in the hansom, before he climbed in after me. "Can you wait at the hospital?"



"I expect so," said the driver. He checked his pocket watch. "We don't usually get busy for another couple of hours."



"Thank you," said Omes. "Once we get this sorted out, we will pay your fee and a bonus."



"A bonus?," I said.



"We don't know what's going on, or how we're going to handle it," Omes said. "He deserves a bonus if he can ferry us around until we're through with things."



"Don't worry, Mr. Cat," said the driver. "I can take you most anywhere you want."



"All right," I said. "I'm Dr. Witsend, and this is my associate, Murdock Omes. We need to hurry."



"Close your eyes, and hold on to your fur, Doc," said the driver. He cracked the reins and yelled "How do Ken?" at the top of his lungs. The hansom rocketed from the curb and sliced through traffic like a bullet.



Omes and I were thrown back against the seat. The boy smiled at the wind whipping by as he held his hat on his head with his ungauntleted hand. The other wore his weapon and clutched the side of the hansom as we flew by other carriages and their horses.



We arrived at Iverton about ten minutes after we got in the cab. I pulled my claws out of the seat and tried to fix my fur. Omes wore a smile on his face as he brushed his hair back and straightened his bowler.



"That was great," said Omes. "What's your name?"



"Max Shreevy," said the driver. His heavy coat had settled around him as the unicorns stamped their hooves in place. He doffed his top hat to reveal a head that was mostly skin with a rim of long hair around it. "It was my pleasure. The boys don't get to run like that usually, Guv."



One of the unicorns neighed in agreement.



"We're going to have to go in and talk to someone," said Omes. "We may have to go to other places. Will you wait for us?"



"Aye, Guv," said Shreevy. He held up his pocket watch so we could see the time. "If your job doesn't pan out by midnight, let me know and I will take you back to where I picked you up."



"Thank you," said Omes. He pulled out a silver and some copper coins from his pants and handed it over. "This is a partial payment for the speed."



"Thank you, Guv," said Shreevy. He put the money away. "We'll be waiting here until midnight, then we have to head back to the city."



"Hopefully, it won't take two hours to figure out what's going on," I said. "The call just said it was an emergency."



"Don't worry, Doctor Cat," said Shreevy. He climbed down off his bench. "I'm sure they wouldn't have called if they didn't think you couldn't solve it."



"Or they are getting ready to pass the blame if I can't solve it," I said. I walked toward the door.



Omes followed at a few steps removed. I had to wait on him to open the doors of the hospital. I glanced over my shoulder. Shreevy petted the unicorns and talked to them as he stood there by the cab.



"I thought unicorns were dangerous," I said.



"They are," said Omes. He paused to look around the hexagonal space of the lobby. "They are carnivorous and tend to stab their prey with their horns."



"Our cab driver is petting his like he doesn't care if he loses his hand," I said. I looked around the lobby, cataloguing traces in the air.



"They must like him," Omes said. "It's not something I would do."



"Let's find Hennessy and figure out what's going on," I said. "We still have an assault to plan, and I don't relish the thought of having to walk back if Shreevy has to go back to work."



"I agree," said Omes. "Let's walk down to the wardrooms. Maybe someone down there knows what's going on."



We looked at the signs screwed to the walls and picked a hall that said general care since we didn't know what we were looking for in the first place. We walked down to a round desk with screens and seats competing with paperwork. An open space for patients' beds had curtain separators for privacy hanging from tracks in the ceiling.



A nurse was on duty. She didn't look happy to see a boy and a cat in her ward. I was fine with that. I wasn't too happy to have to look at her.



2

"What are you two doing here?," asked the nurse. I couldn't see the name on the front of her uniform.



"I'm Doctor Witsend," I said. "This is my associate, Murdock Omes. We were asked to consult on a case by a Doctor Hennessy. Is he here?"



"Dr. Hennessy runs the plague ward," said the nurse. "Go back to the lobby, and take the hall marked for Quarantine."



"Thank you," I said.



I headed back to the hexagon and looked at the signs. I rubbed my ear as I looked down the dimly lit hall recommended to us by the nurse. I thought taking the cab back to the city was a viable thing now.



We could come back tomorrow.



"Let's go," said Omes. He started down the hall. "We don't have a lot of time if we want to keep Shreevy waiting on us."



"I know," I said. "I am a surgeon and general practitioner. I don't have a lot of experience with disease treatments."



"We'll think of something," Omes said. "I doubt we'll have to examine the man ourselves if Hennessy has already done that."



"That doesn't make me want to get any closer than I have to," I said.



"How bad can it be?," said Omes.



"It depends," I said. Memories of things released during the war drifted through my mind. I hoped this situation didn't have anything to do with that.



We walked down until we reached an airlock. I thought that was a good idea. I definitely didn't want to walk into an open contagion zone. An office standing to the side for the nurses and doctors for the floor held three worthies in white coats and disposable uniforms. None of them looked happy.



"How do you do?," I asked. "I'm Dr. Witsend. Dr. Hennessy called me about a consult. Is he here?"



"He's here," said one of the three. She carried a little more weight than she should, had wrestled her hair into something that looked like a bun, and had lines cutting into her round face to show her years of concentration.



"Can we talk to him?," I said.



"No," said the woman. "He's quarantined until we can figure out what's wrong with him."



"I don't understand," I said. "He called about another patient being admitted."



"They are both in there," said the woman. "No one is going in, or out, until we figure out what's wrong."



"I need to talk to him," I said. "Is there a way to do that without going in?"



"We can ask him to use the conference microphone so you can talk to him from the airlock," said the woman. "That's the best I can allow."



"Let's do that then," said Omes. "What are the symptoms?"



"And you are?," asked the woman.



"The restraint," said Omes. "Shall we talk to Dr. Hennessy? My associate is not known for his patience, or good humor."



"What is that cat going to do if we say he can't talk to Hennessy?," said the woman.



I rubbed my ear. I didn't have time for this. I could see the other two watching us. They would back the woman and try to eject us. I squinted at the trio. They didn't want to move, and I needed to know what was going on.



"Go to sleep," I told her. She fell over like a domino. The other two looked at her on the floor. I told them to go to sleep too so they wouldn't get in the way.



"That was not a good way to impress them with your ability," said Omes.



"The woman didn't want to allow us access," I said. "I need to know what's going on, and what we can do. It's obvious these three don't have a clue and will interfere in any type of effort for a cure."



"And they were getting on your nerves," said Omes.



"They were getting on my nerves," I conceded. "I need you to open the airlock door, and get the phone off the hook for me. Wear a mask and gloves. Get me a mask too. Then I need you to search the files for whatever symptoms might be recorded at this point."



"Are you sure about this?," asked Omes.



"We have to know what we're facing," I said. "Mask and gloves. Neither one of us can afford to get sick if we need to look for a solution."



Omes placed a mask over my muzzle. He tightened the string so it wouldn't fall off. He pulled on gloves and his own mask. He opened the airlock's outer door, pulled the microphone off the wall. He pushed the button to lift a screen from a window so we could talk with Dr. Hennessy face to face. He pushed the call button before stepping back.



"Hello?," said a thin voice inside the ward.



"Dr. Hennessy," I said. "This is Dr. Witsend. You sent for me."



"I'm glad you came," said Hennessy. "I'm in a pickle. I was accidentally infected by our patient. I have to stay in here until we figure out what's going on."



"All right," I said. "I need to see you, Dr. Hennessy. Can you stand in front of the window."



"My appearance is not good," said Hennessy.



"I can't help you if I can't see you," I said. "Your colleagues didn't want me to talk to you at all."



"They probably didn't want you to spread the infection," said Hennessy. "We don't know what the vector is."



He stepped in front of the window. I didn't have an idea what he originally looked like, but he resembled a walking corpse with sigils covering his visible flesh. The whites of his eyes had filled with the color of blood. I noted an excessive growth of canines.



"You look like a vampire," said Omes.



"I know," said Hennessy. "I don't know how much time I have before we can't reverse this. The patient is asleep right now, but his vitals have been slipping since we brought him in and strapped him down to his bed."



"All right," I said. "I am going to need a DNA trace, and a way to test it without contaminating the building."



"There's also an issue where we don't know if our patient is the only one infected like this," said Hennessy. "There might be more out there infecting others."



So we might have a pandemic. This was worse than I thought. We should never have answered the phone.



"I can trace the original patient back to where he picked up the illness," said Omes. "I need you to wake him up and see if he can tell us anything else we might need to know."



"He was ranting when we strapped him down," said Hennessy. "I doubt he'll be able to tell you anything useful."



"We have to try," said Omes. "We have to rule out a deliberate infection."



"I understand," said Hennessy. He stepped away from the window. He came back a minute later. "I need you to talk to these people. They want to help us out."



"There is no help for us," said the unseen plague carrier. "They should just burn us up and be done with it."



Omes took the microphone in hand. He went to the window. He frowned at what he saw.



"Sir," said Omes. "I need to know what you did tonight before you came here to the hospital."



"I had a drink with my friends at the Slippery Eel, then I talked to a couple about setting up a darts game, but I left before anything came of it," said the patient. "I started feeling sick and then I came here to get checked out. After that they strapped me to this bed."



"What did this couple look like?," Omes asked.



"Average looking, woman had brown hair and a mole on her cheek. Man had a scar on his hand. It looked like four furrows," said the patient. "Am I going to die?"



"No," I said. "I won't allow that. Omes, call Metropole. Find those people. I'm going to have to go inside and do what I do best."



"Are you sure about this, Witsend?," said Omes.



I saw the flare of concern in my friend's brain. It made me consider what I was going to do.



"Something has to be done," I said. "Call Elga and tell her to get Weyland and come up here. I don't care how drunk he is. Then call Costello. I need someone I can trust to help me run the tests while you track that couple down."



"I understand," Omes said. "I don't like it."



"Hopefully I will be immune," I said. "Very few diseases will jump from a human to a cat. This might be one of those."



"All right," said Omes. "I'm going to step out so you can work the airlock and go inside. Then I will start doing what I can from the outside."



"I will wait for news with baited breath," I said.



He stepped outside the airlock and let the outer door close. The inner door opened after I got sprayed with cleaner. I hoped I hadn't made a mistake.



I stepped inside the ward. I felt silly with the mask on but I didn't want to immediately start battling the illness before I could get to work.



"Roll him back to where he belongs, Dr. Hennessy," I said. "Then I am going to need you to lay down so I can take a look at you."



Hennessy did what I asked. He seemed uncomfortable that I had come into the room. I couldn't work from a distance. I needed to be able to see what was going on. My life sense would give me a small list of diseases I could check for presence which would help me find a cure.



Elga and Weyland would check anything I sent through the airlock. I trusted them more than I did the staff of the hospital. They seemed too ready to write Hennessy and his patient off.



I jumped up on an empty bed so I could look at the victims. I didn't quite recognize what was flowing through their veins, but I had seen it somewhere else, or something related to it. I needed to slow the process any way that I could.



Once I had identified it, I could move to making a cure.



"I want the both of you to go to sleep," I said. I reached out and sent the message to their nervous systems. The nervous system resisted but I prevailed.



I started scanning their cell structure before something happened and I lost my life sense.



I wished I had gone with Omes to find the couple spreading this around. It would have been my pleasure to rip their arms off.



I heard barking as I worked on completing my scans. I looked up. A head with pointed ears and brown eyes looked through the window at me. The expression said concern.



I jumped from the bed and went to the microphone.



"Cat," said Costello.



"Dog," I said. "Is Elga there? I have some things I need her to do."



"I'll take care of it," said Costello. "What do you need?"



3

I felt better with Costello on the job. We had done some things. He might not like me, but he wouldn't let me die because he was scared of what was going on.



He wasn't that smart in my opinion.



"All right," I said into the microphone. "I think the thing is similar to the virus we stopped Excelsior from releasing with his clones."



Excelsior had blended himself and two other brains into one body, created and ran an organ running operation, and created a virus that we still didn't know what it was supposed to actually do and implanted it into the organs he sold. If his backup brains hadn't cut the finger off their primary clone and used it to alert Metropole, we could have lost the city to an epidemic.



Maybe someone had a source code for the virus and decided to hand it out to another mad scientist.



"How do we stop it?," asked Costello.



"I don't know yet," I said. "I forced it into dormancy for the moment, but that could go away at any second."



The sigils bothered me. We needed someone who could figure out what that was all about. They might be the cure for the whole thing if we could get an expert.



I knew an expert.



"This is what we need, Costello," I said. "I need someone to take a blood sample, and compare it to the DNA we took from Landon. I need someone to call Dr. Karen up in the Qlioth and get her recommendation for an expert to look at these skin markings. We need to know if they are relevant, or just some strange side effect of what else is going on. I need to have any paperwork seized from the people I sent Omes after. I need to have anything on paper to show how they designed this thing and possible antidotes in case they were infected."



"Your nurse and one of your partners are here," said Costello. "They can get the blood sample."



"Lab area?," I asked.



"Metropole set up a mobile one right outside this chamber," said Costello. "They get the sample, walk five feet, and start testing. They don't have to go around to the hospital lab. That would just increase the risk of spreading the virus until we're sure we have an antidote."



"Send in Weyland," I said. "If he dies, I don't have to pay him the two bottles of whiskey I owe him."



Costello flicked his ear.



"You're still the meanest cat ever," he said. "I will talk to your partner. He might not want to help you out."



He went away. I thought it was logical to use Costello in the airlock. He might be immune to this whatever it was. And if he was kept away from humans, he couldn't infect them if he was a carrier.



It didn't make things safer, just more manageable. What they needed was a sample and some way to reverse what was going on. If they had those two things, they could immunize anyone who might come into contact with their carriers and get Hennessy and the first victim back to normal.



The sigils were something extra that had to be because of the plague. I doubted two people getting sick and developing script on their skin was a coincidence. I just couldn't think of a normal disease, or a paranormal one for that matter, that did the same thing.



Maybe if Doctor Karen had come down from the Q, she could help me figure that out.



What was the disease supposed to do other than making humans sick?



The airlock opened. Weyland stepped into the ward. He wore a full suit and an unhappy expression. He carried a tray with vials, needles, and a rubber hose to tie off the arms of the patients.



"How do you feel?," he asked.



"Fine," I said. "Whatever the incubation period, it doesn't seem to be affecting me yet. I going to need you to take a sample of my blood to go along with theirs. Animals might be immune to this."



"I hope so," said Weyland. "I want my two bottles back."



"I'll pay you back," I said. "Maybe you should slow down the drinking."



"No one likes a moralistic cat," he said. "Let's get this over with. The Army and Metropole are out in force. Everyone in the hospital is locked down. Your boy is out beating the bushes for anyone who might have been in contact with these two."



"I wish I was out there with Omes," I admitted. "I don't want him to be infected with this. We don't know what it is doing to these two."



"I'd say it's turning them into vampires," said Weyland. "And there might not be a cure."



"That's what I am afraid of," I said.



Weyland drew blood from the two humans with practiced ease. He labeled the vials and made sure they were sealed tight. Anyone handling them would have to use the same type of suit he wore to avoid being infected.



If the contagion was airborne, then anyone not protected would breathe it in and start changing.



"I'm going to take a tiny sample from you," Weyland said. He secured a fresh needle and vial to draw blood. "Then we can see if we can figure out what's going on."



"Better hurry," I said. "I'm suppressing the overwrite as much as possible, but we could still lose them if we can't figure out what's going on fast enough."



"We have a detachment from Angels of Mercy helping us," said Weyland. "I don't know why you called me when you have them."



"I don't trust them to do what I need to have done," I said.



He drew a sample of blood from me. He labeled the vial and put it next to the others on the tray. He looked me over quietly.



"You don't seem that bad," he said. "If you start feeling symptoms, I want you to report it to the dog right away."



"Thanks for the help, Weyland," I said.



"I can't run the practice without you and your lazy ways," he said. I could see him smiling through his helmet. "You make more money for us than the rest of us combined."



"That's not true," I said.



"Yes, it is," said Weyland. "Every time you do an examination and work your magic, the Crown pays us in gold not to let the old people die."



"I don't remembering seeing this gold," I said.



"That's because it goes in the operating account and you get the copper at the end of it all," he said. "Keep an eye on these two. If they become vampires, they are going to be thirsty if they wake up."



I considered what he said. I rubbed my ear.



"You mean I could have asked for a raise in salary, and didn't know it," I said.



"I wouldn't go that far," Weyland said. He carried the tray to the airlock door. "You might have gotten a bigger bonus."



"Really?," I said.



"Don't worry about that," said Weyland. "Worry about being stuck in here with mentally damaged patients and no way to get away from them."



"As long as they are asleep, there should be no problem," I said. "Be careful with their blood. We don't know what is carrying the virus for them. I doubt it was just a bite."



"Probably airborne in some way," said Weyland. "We'll see what's going on."



He left through the airlock. I could have had a bigger bonus. I would have to settle that after this was over. I thought my pay was too low.



Patient Zero woke up and struggled against his straps. I grabbed his nervous system and put him back to sleep again. It was a minor struggle as his body tried to refuse to follow my command.



I could see the flow being diverted. I yanked a few more strands of gray matter and he went down.



I saw a time when I couldn't put him asleep. His condition would probably make it hard for him to sleep. I would have to switch tactics when that happened.



I wonder how they would feel with their faces on fire. Would they even feel it? I hoped Omes was having better luck than I felt we were having.



If we had the source of the infection, that might allow us a better shot at a cure.



And it would keep others from being infected.



I sat back on my bed and waited for something to change. Weyland and Elga would find out what was going on. I had faith in them. The only thing I could do was make sure our patients didn't try to escape and start biting people.



What was the endgame? Creating a race of vampires didn't seem the best way to make super soldiers in my book. Why bother?



I hoped Omes was taking precautions against this. There was no guarantee of a cure. It would be hard to be a detective when you are cordoned off from society.



At least Hennessy was still only slightly affected compared to his patient. He lay on his bed peacefully.



How long did we have before they were more vampires than people?



4

"Cat," said Costello from the airlock.



"Dog," I said in return. I had slowed the process but it wasn't stopping. Eventually both men would be overwritten by their virus.



"We think we have a solution," said Costello. "We need to test it."



"Which one are you testing it on?," I asked.



"Hennessy," said Costello. His snouted pointed at the doctor. "If it works, we can try it on the other man."



"All right," I said. "What do you need from me?"



"We need you to monitor things to make sure we are wiping it out," said Costello. "If this is the solution, we can apply it to any more of these people that we find."



"Omes?," I asked.



"He's still out with Armed Response," said Costello. "We've identified a few more carriers. They are being brought here under lock and key."



"This is such a stupid scheme," I said. "There's no profit out of this except whatever can be gathered out of the confusion of Metropole hunting his victims down."



"I agree," said Costello. "It is the best distraction from things happening in the neighborhoods around the city."



"Let's see what your solution is," I said. "Then maybe I can get out of this ward and get out and hunt anyone else that has been infected instead of sitting on my paws."



"They are probably not going to want you out in the field just yet," said Costello. "They are still testing your blood to make sure you are immune."



"What do you know that I don't know?," I asked.



"Nothing," said Costello. His ears were back some. "It's just that the doctors are wondering why you aren't feeling bad."



"I would suppose it is because this thing is designed for humans, and not cats," I said.



That did sound bad when I said it like that. It made it look like a cat conspiracy had gotten together and created human fall guys for their scheme to wipe out humanity.



There were a few human diseases that showed up in cats and vice versa. They were rare. Whatever this was, it had the feel of someone designing it to try to wipe out humanity.



Not many cats would do that. We depended on humans for their hands.



"Can we have the solution now?," I asked.



If Costello was messing with me, I would fix his ears for him.



"All right," said Costello. He dropped down from the window and went to the outer air lock door. He said something into the intercom, before he returned to the window.



The airlock cycled and a extremely tall and muscular man stepped out to talk to Costello. I noted the way his skin glowed and the archaic dress. Blond-white hair and blue eyes went with his look.



"Duquesne?," I asked. "Is Dr. Karen here?"



"Sure is, little buddy," said the spirit. "You ready for what we're about to do?"



"I guess so," I said. I didn't feel ready, but maybe Duquesne had been briefed enough by Dr. Karen that he wouldn't mess up his first try.



Dr. Karen's summons waited for the airlock to open before stepping into the ward. He smiled as he took in the sight.



"Where's your protection?," I asked.



"I don't need one, Fluffy Wuffy," said Duquesne. "Spirits are immune as far as they could tell."



"Do whatever it is you're going to do," I said. I wanted to rip an arm off but I couldn't think of any way I should rip the arm off the spirit.



"Hostile much?," asked the spirit. "Do you want to talk to the Dukester about it."



"Not really," I said. "You don't seem smart enough to offer good advice. What are you supposed to be doing?"



"Increasing the sunlight in this room," said Duquesne. He raised his hands. The air warped into something that looked like a rainbow and a mirror at the same time. The resulting beam fell on Hennessy. The symbols on his skin started burning away with the rest of his flesh. "Maybe it's not as good as we thought."



"I'll say," I said. I turned my sense on Hennessy. His body had started healing the burns in seconds. Some of the sigils looked permanently gone after the onslaught.



"All right," I said. "It works in a limited way, but we can kill them if try for another beam like that. We need to tone it down some."



"All right," said the spirit. "Toning it down."



He raised his hands again. A small beam leaped from the air. It erased the sigils as it passed. The internals wobbled around as the light forced the virus to try to make more of itself in the areas where it was wiped out.



Hennessy sat up with a wild look in his eyes. He leaped at Duquesne. His hands wrapped around the spirit's neck. His bite to the neck was blocked by a forearm to his throat.



"You need to calm it down, my friend," said Duquesne. "I don't want to light you up."



"Light him up!," I said. "Do whatever you have to do to take him down."



"Are you sure?," he asked.



"Do it, you big goldbrick," I said.



Duquesne pushed Hennessy away. The transformed doctor leaped at him from where he landed. His teeth looked the size of a dog's in my opinion. A beam of light tossed him through the air. He hit the opposite wall hard and slid down to the floor.



"I hope I didn't kill him," said Duquesne. "Dr. Karen will be mad if I did."



I leaped over to Hennessy. I examined his face and hands. The marks were gone. I checked his inner body. I couldn't detect the virus at all. Parts of him had been burned under the blast, but I fixed that by growing new flesh for the wounds while aging the old stuff off.



"It looks like you saved Dr. Hennesy," I said. "We'll have to test him, but it looks like he might come out of this scarred but alive."



"That's great," said Duquesne. "So he won't die?"



"Not if I can help it," I said. "I want you to blast the other patient just like you blasted Dr. Hennessy. Then we need to separate them and watch for a return of their symptoms."



Duquesne nodded. He raised his arms as he approached the bed. I kept an eye on the patient's chemistry. The light beam sent smoke in the air as it flowed over the man's body. The virus fled from the intense beam, but all of its members went up in smoke.



"We need to get them monitored," I said. I worked on the burned patches as fast as I could. I didn't want the man to die because he was the only test case we had. "We need to separate them into different rooms. We need to make sure the virus can't jump around."



"I can separate them," said Duquesne. "Let me talk with Dr. Karen. I think there is an isolation ward in the local fort. We can put one of them there with round the clock security."



"Put Hennessy on that other bed over there," I said. "Then I want you to cover this whole room with light. Can you do it?"



"The Duke can do anything, little cat buddy," the spirit said with a smile. He turned into a blinding column of light. I had to turn my face away from the flare. He put Hennessy on an empty bed after the display. "I'll get these two separated so we can monitor them for a reoccurrence. It looks like all we have to do is find any more people turning into monsters."



"Thank you for your help," I said. "This might turn out better than I thought at the beginning."



"It's no problem," said Duquesne.



"If you call me Fluffy Wuffy again, I will find a way to rip your arm off," I said.



"Your threat is noted," said Duquesne. He left through the airlock.



I did another examination on both men. I made sure they were asleep and brain function was all right. I pawed their eyes open to check them. The bloody color had faded away.



They both might be normal after what Duquesne had done.



"What do you think, Witsend?," asked Costello. I had forgotten he was in the airlock.



"That might have done the trick," I said. "They'll still need to be monitored to make sure they aren't carriers. If we use sunlight on all the affected people we round up, it might save their lives."



"I think they are trying to figure out how to do that on a large scale," said Costello. "I don't know."



"Better tell them to have burn teams ready," I said. "That beam fairly cooked our two in here."



"I'll let them know," said Costello. "Don't go anywhere."



"Seriously?," I said. "Stupid dog."



I settled on my bed and made sure my patients were asleep. I would have to get some food for myself and take care of my bodily functions. Hopefully the situation would be better and I could leave the plague ward soon.



"I'm back," said Duquesne. "I'm taking the doctor to the plague unit at the fort. They have separate rooms set up for the victims."



"All right," I said. "How many have been found?"



"A few dozen," said the spirit. "You're boy is doing a bang up job helping them round the vampires up."



"The couple that started everything?," I asked.



"Shot by Armed Response and Army Rangers," said Duquesne. "They wouldn't surrender, and were trying to board a boat to the colonies. Captain Rickard felt he had no other choice but to shoot them. That section of the dock had to cleaned."



"The bluecoats and the Rangers?," I asked.



"They are being examined at the Fort," said the spirit. "So far none of them were infected by this whatever it is."



"All right," I said. "Go ahead and take Hennessy. Make sure he isn't reinfected."



"Don't worry," said Duquesne. "Without you, this could have been spread across the country. Imagine the crew of that boat taking ill and waking up in the colonies as vampires. They would have spread the virus across the continent."



"Let me know when I can leave," I said.



"Will do," said Duquesne. He picked Hennessy up in his arms and walked out of the room in a blaze of light.



I didn't see Costello at the window. I wondered what had happened. I jumped up and looked into the airlock. He had sank down on the floor and gone to sleep.



I rubbed my ear. He was supposed to be watching out for me. Instead he was sleeping on the job.



I should be the one sleeping.



I settled back on my bed and decided to wait until I had more news. It would be good to be able to leave this ward after what had already happened. I thought about fish stew at the club and had to fight down hunger pangs.



I closed my eyes and let my life sense stand on watch for me. If the patient moved, I would be able to put him back to sleep in an instant. Otherwise, I was resting.



"Witsend," pulled me out of my nap. "I think we can go home now."



Omes stood at the window. He smiled as he petted Costello. The dog smiled too.



"So we're done with all this?," I asked.



"Yes," said Omes. "Metropole and the Army have everything in hand. Kirk says he is still holding your money."



"Don't say anything like that," said Costello. "I am still getting used to my stripes."



"I assure you, Costello," I said. "I will make it look like an accident when the time comes."



"Come on," said Omes. "You need to get checked out and then we can have a bite at the club."



"That sounds good to me," I said. "Did you track down all the infected people?"



"I think so," said Omes. "None of them were carriers as far as we can tell. The only ones carrying the vampirism had no symptoms."



"Did they really try to fight it out with Armed Response?," I asked. I made sure that Patient Zero remained asleep as I waited for the airlock door to open.



"Yes," said Omes. "They were asked to surrender so we could track down their lab, but they refused."



"What do we do now?," I asked.



"It has been a long time," Omes said. "The job is done. A cure has been found. I got Weyland the two bottles of whiskey you owed him. Everything is good. The Crown still stands."



"All right," I said. "I guess I can't ask for a better solution."



"Without you, the hospital would not have alerted the country to a plague threat in time," said Omes. "You've saved the country, maybe the world."



"That won't get me a grilled salmon," I said.



The Missing Translator

1

I sat at the kitchen table and wished for hands. Even an opposable thumb would be good. I wanted to raid the refrigerator, and couldn't think how to do it without making a mess.



How did other cats handle this? I supposed they hunted down birds and rodents. If I wanted to do that, I would have never joined the Army.



Maybe a butler would be a good addition. That way I didn't have to wait on Omes to get home to open the refrigerator for me.



Twenty Two Bee thumped to a halt in reality. Omes must be home. I could have my snack while waiting for dinner.



I went to the kitchen door. Omes stood next to the hooks in the wall for his hat and coat. He smiled as he hung the clothing up.



"Could you open the refrigerator for me?," I asked. "I have been wanting something to snack on for a bit."



"I can do that," said Omes. "How did things go at your office?"



"Smoother than usual," I said. "I can't believe Weyland has been holding out money from my bonuses."



"How much does he owe you?," Omes asked.



"About the same as the bottles of whiskey you got for him," I said.



"So he was riding you over it," Omes said. He smiled.



"Yes," I said. "He wants me to give up my light scheduling."



Elga, my nurse and assistant, packs as many people as she can in a few days so we can take the rest of the week off.



"You could do a bit more doctoring than you do," said Omes. "I admit it's nice to have you there if I need you, but Weyland probably needs you more."



"He has a staff helping him," I said. "I only have Elga. That's the way I like it, but he doesn't really need me except for diagnosing cases he hasn't seen before."



"And I take it he doesn't get that many of those," said Omes.



"He works with children," I said. "He's probably seen every childhood disease a million times. He probably knows more about those things than I do."



"If you want to make more money out of your practice, you need to work a little harder," said Omes. He started for the kitchen, but looked over his shoulder when his screen buzzed. He went to his desk and answered it after making sure the other three screens were dark. "Hello?"



"Are you Murdock Omes?," asked a young woman on the screen. "My name is Polly Combs. A customer of mine asked me to call you. He wants you to come down to the café."



"Really?," asked Omes. "Did he say why?"



"He wants to hire you," said Polly. "Can you come down and talk to him before we close?"



"I'm interested," said Omes. "What's the name of this café?"



"The Orczy Pimpernel," said Polly. "It's in East Canaan, heading toward the Royal Boulevard."



"All right," said Omes. "We'll be there as soon as we can. Who do we look for?"



"The old man in the corner," said Polly. "You can't miss him."



She cut the connection.



"The old man in the corner?," Omes said. "That's a strange alias."



"Can you help me with my snack first?," I asked. I rubbed my ear. "I don't want to rip someone's arm off on an empty stomach."



"I totally agree with that," said Omes.



We went into the kitchen. I jumped to my chair and sat. I rubbed an ear as I watched Omes pull ingredients out of the refrigerator. He poured me a bowl of milk and opened a bottle of tea. He put our snack together mechanically as he considered the message.



"Are you sure you should meet this new client?," asked Addison.



"I expect it will be something mundane that he wants," said Omes. "This mysteriousness might be nothing more than being embarrassed about hiring a detective."



"Or it could be a trap, and McMahon is saving us the trouble of finding proof that he's a criminal mastermind," I said.



"Either way, we'll know soon enough," Omes said. "We can take the Tube down to the river and walk down the bank until we find the place."



"All right," I said. I watched him divvy out the snacks. When I was sure I had my due, I started to eat.



We finished our food. Omes put the empty plates and my milk bowl in the sink to be washed later. He pulled on his coat over his gauntlet and put his bowler on his head. I rubbed my ear.



We were as ready as we were ever going to be. We went to the foyer and waited for Addison to touch down before stepping out on the three steps we called a dock. As soon as we were clear, the house started spinning out of reality.



We took the Tube down to the station in East Canaan. We walked out of the station and headed down the street toward the Crown's residence. Omes nodded at a place away from the river with a star shaped flower on the sign out front. We stepped inside and looked around.



Polly Combs nodded when she saw us. She pointed to a table at the back of the place. Someone sat there in oppressive gloom. We walked over to talk to the stranger.



Old man in the corner was an apt description. His chair back formed a triangle with the walls on either side. Ancientness drifted from him in a way that most humans didn't show. I noted the presence of several scars and wondered where he had gotten them. He held a string on the table in front of him. He worked it into knots as he regarded us as closely as we regarded him.



There was something not quite human about this man, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was.



"Please have a seat, gentlemen," said the old man in the corner. He gestured at two chairs facing his chair.



We took the chairs. Omes put his bowler on the table.



"Thank you for coming," the old man said. "I have a problem only you can handle. You need information only I can give you. I propose a trade."



"A trade?," asked Omes. His brain flared at the thought someone was asking him for a service in return for a service.



"I need you find a missing man," said the old man. "I am confident that you can do this. In return, I will answer three questions to the best of my ability."



"That doesn't seem like much of a trade," I said.



"I know that the two of you are interested in the McMahon family, especially Luther. I know that you need more evidence than what you have to bring him to justice. I know that at least one member of Metropole is giving him information," said the old man.



"Everyone knows that," I said. I rubbed my ear.



"Not everyone," said the old man. "Have I proven my credentials to you?"



"All right," Omes said. "We will trade with you. Who is the missing man, where was he last seen, and do you have a photograph so we can identify him?"



"His name is Astredis," said the old man. "His wife saw him three days ago, came to see me this morning. She brought his picture."



He reached into the jacket he wore. He pulled out a black and white photograph that had faded to gray. He handed it to Omes.



"He was last seen getting into a cab in front of his wife," the old man said. "That was the last she saw of him. Metropole has been less than helpful in this."



"He's from the Circle?," I asked.



"Yes," said the old man. "He came here after the war to get work as a translator."



"One more question before I get started," said Omes. He put the photo in the inner pocket of his coat. "Why are you doing this? Why trade with me at all?"



"Like you, I am a detective," said the old man. "Usually I would have an answer to give to my client almost instantly. This one case has made two things clear. Someone knows what I can do and has taken steps to hide Mr. Astredis from me. The second is that I can't leave my post, nor can I expect my client to be able to secure her husband's release. I need someone who can act where I can't."



"That seems reasonable," said Omes. "We'll do what we can to hunt him down. If we can't find him, then he can't be found."



"I will honor my side of the bargain," said the old man.



"Let us get started," Omes said. "Witsend and I will have to start at Astredis's home. Do you have an address for that?"



The old man took a card from his coat. He pulled a pen from another pocket. He wrote down the address on the back and handed the card over.



"We'll call here if we find anything," Omes said.



"The café is closed after nine," said the old man. "After that, you will have to call in the morning."



Omes nodded as he stood. He started across the café floor to the door. I lingered in my chair.



"Yes, Doctor?," the old man asked.



"How long have you pretended to be an old man?," I asked.



"A while," said the old man. "It serves my purpose."



"You could find this Astredis," I said. "You don't need us."



"I couldn't rescue him," said the old man. "I am forbidden from leaving this spot. I can only trade what I can get for actual hands to do the job. I am sure you understand that."



He indicated my paws with a finger.



"I do," I said. "If you can't leave here, how can you detect?"



"I listen really well and I show the client the flaw in their logic," he said. "Sometimes, I have to suggest something so they can see what they missed in their story."



I rubbed my ear. I twitched my tail as I considered.



"I see what you mean," I said. I hopped down from the chair. "We'll find this man for you, demon. You can count on that."



"I retired that part of my life," said the old man. "I would like to keep it that way."



"No one but the two of us will know," I said. "I respect a change in attitude more than most."



"Thank you, Doctor," said the old man.



"Come on, Witsend," said Omes from across the room. "We're burning daylight."



"I'm coming," I said. "We'll be back with Astredis."



"I will be prepared for that," said the old man. He waved.



Omes saw me coming and opened the door for me so we could step out on the sidewalk. He looked up and down the street. He started walking.



"What do you think about this?," Omes asked as we walked through that section of the city.



"If he's an honest trader, he might be able to give something we can use against the McMahons," I said. "We need something more than what we have at the moment."



"He hasn't moved from that spot in a long time," said Omes. "I wouldn't be surprised if he traded for things to get done like he's doing now."



"I can't disagree with that assessment," I said.



We walked along with an eye on our surroundings. Omes paused at a street corner. He looked in both directions as he pulled the photograph out. He turned right and kept going.



"See something?," I asked.



"I think I caught a glimpse of something," said Omes. "It's probably nothing."



"But we're going to make sure?," I asked.



"I don't see why not," said Omes.



2

Omes and I walked until we reached the edge of Edge Row. We were close to Wendy Maximus's place, but not close enough to drop in. I wondered why anyone would want someone from the Circle to help them. There had to be local people who could do the job just as good.



What he translated seemed to be the core of the motive.



I considered whatever needed to be translated was something from the Circle. That meant it could be anything from an ancient poem to the tax documents of their Chief Consul. How many other translators could do the same thing as Astredis?



Was this the first time they had taken someone to carry out whatever they planned to do?



I glanced at Omes. His brain rested as he cut his trail. Questions would be answered when we got to the end and found our lost sheep.



"I think we'll have to break in up ahead," said Omes. "The cab seems to have stopped for a moment, and then pulled away to leave Astredis and his captors at the gate ahead."



"How many?," I asked.



Any number below ten ordinary men I felt we could handle on our own. Anything above that, we would have to call help to take our prey.



We definitely would have problems if any of the kidnappers were magicians. My life sense couldn't grasp their nervous system.



"I think four men took Astredis, with the cab driver," said Omes. "The driver hasn't come back, so maybe he didn't know what was going on."



"So we're looking at four to five men being inside the house with Astredis," I said. Those were good odds as long as we could keep the element of surprise on our side.



"I think so," said Omes. "Let's walk by the gate first. Maybe take a look at the ground before we try to break in."



"One look," I said. "If they see us prowling, they will know something is up."



"I just need enough to think what we should do for our next step," said Omes. He acted nonchalant as we walked in front of the gate and kept moving.



"I saw two sentry eyes on either side of the gate inside the wall," I said.



"There are small screens along the wall," said Omes. "There was at least one more sentry next to the front door of the house. It'll be tough to go through the front without Armed Response to help us."



I paused to rub my ear as I considered.



"We should take a look at the back before we give up," said Omes. "There might be something there we can use."



"This is a lot of security," I said. "What are we looking at here?"



"Whatever they wanted him to translate must be valuable," said Omes. "If we knew what it was, we could try to use it to trap the gang somehow."



"Not if they already have it," I said. "Turn left up ahead. That road leads to the Edge. We'll be able to sneak back down the rear wall as long as we don't step over the line."



Stepping over the line didn't necessarily mean the end of the world for you, but it could since you could step off into some other place, or be suddenly confronted with some monster. It was better to stay on this side of the line and make other people step over.



The estate seemed to be as broken down as Wendy's from my quick glance through the bars of the gate. Grass stood tall, trees blocked the house from sight, bushes had been allowed to swallow whatever they could wrap around. The paint on the house had faded to a dusty orange with brown on the shutters. I thought one of the windows had been broken at some point.



That was completely at odds with the three sentries and the screens being used to make sure no one could break in.



"I think the servant's gate is up ahead," said Omes. He nodded at the approaching barred door.



"Check for security," I said. "If they covered the front, they wouldn't leave the back unguarded."



Omes nodded. He kept his head low as we went by the door in the gray wall. He kept going until we reached the next estate that appeared to be open to the Edge of town.



"The back had just as many screens as the front," said Omes. "I only counted two sentries."



"So if we could blind the screens, we could potentially get on the grounds," I said. "You'll probably have to freeze the eyes so they don't shoot at us."



"It's about eight targets," Omes said. "Then I could use my key on the door and we would be on the grounds."



"We would be on the grounds with four men willing to harm us," I said. "I don't see any other way except to call Sherwood and ask him to bring his squad down to open the place for us."



"I think we can do it," said Omes. "We just have to be ready for any traps that might have been planted. Just because we can see two sentries doesn't mean they didn't bury others as a surprise."



"So we're going to do this?," I asked.



"We'd better before I lose my nerve," Omes said.



Omes lifted his gauntleted hand. He shot each of the screens that we could see as they rotated on stands on the top of the wall. He moved forward with each shot, confident no one could see him as he advanced.



We reached the gate and used the wall as cover. Omes took a moment to scan the ground again. He nodded as he took a bead and knocked one of the sentries down. He fired on the other sentry as it registered that we were attempting to break in.



We waited for a moment to see if anyone would come out and check their frozen systems. If they did, one of us would do something to make sure they didn't get back into the house. No one came.



Omes pulled his skeleton key from his coat. He slipped it into the lock of the gate. One turn sent the gate open with a loud creaking.



He slipped the key back into his pocket as he looked around. Nothing jumped out at us. It looked like we had a free rein unless someone looked out the back of the house and caught us marching through the grass.



"There's something buried to the right of the main path," he said. "I think they buried something else next to the back door. I don't know what they could be. They aren't that big."



"We'll have to steer to the left and make sure we don't step on anything," I said. "Whatever it is isn't scaring the birds and insects. So it's not dangerous to creatures just prancing around on the lawn."



"All right," said Omes. "Be careful."



We crossed the lawn slowly. The grass concealed us from view. We reached the edge of a stone patio set down in front of two glass doors leading to a kitchen area. I wondered if this was for staff, or if the owner had liked to cook his own food and eat out behind the house.



Omes gestured for me to stay to the left of the doors. He crept up to the edge and looked inside. He shook his head. I reached out with my life sense. No one stood close by.



"There's a screen just inside the door," he said. "I don't see any other security, other than what they have buried on the other side of the door."



"We could draw them to us if we triggered whatever that thing is over there," I said.



"All right," Omes said. "If it's anything living, we break for the inside of the house. That's the only cover around."



"Agreed," I said. "Try throwing one of these rocks on it. It might only be triggered by something alive. We might as well find out if we are going to do this."



Omes nodded. He picked up a rock at the edge of the patio. He heaved it at the thing buried next to the door after we had backed up to give the trap room to move without being in immediate danger.



A large peal of thunder shook the neighborhood. A wave of fire rushed right at us. Omes held up his gauntlet. The blast ran on either side of us. I shook my head as the grass caught fire.



"Back up to the corner," said Omes. "Someone is definitely going to check that out."



I agreed with his assessment. The explosion would draw attention from miles around. The Brigade would be on the scene in a matter of minutes to fight the fire burning up the back yard.



Two men came to the missing back doors. They carried old fashioned pistols as they surveyed the carnage. Their clothes were the mish mash I associated with free merchants and sea pirates. I wondered what they were doing on land as I judged the range.



I put the one closest to me asleep. The other froze up as he watched his companion fall over. I rushed to the new hole in the wall. Two out of four was good. Now we needed to find the other two, and Astredis. Then we could go home and get some dinner.



Tomorrow we could collect from the old man in the corner.



I heard Omes behind me as I plunged into the dining room. Debris littered the floor, but there were no furnishings. The owner must have moved out. That explained the air of destitution.



I grabbed traces of DNA out of the air. They led me to a set of steps off from the kitchen and dining room. Someone down there called for a report.



That was something that was never coming.



I bounded down the steps. I saw another pirate with a gun watching the steps. A bullet passed me as I leaped to the floor. I put him to sleep with a thought.



Where was number four?



I glanced to my right. Number four aimed a gun at me as I kept moving. There was nothing to use for cover. I should have been more cautious.



He fell over in a frozen shooter pose.



Omes descended the steps carefully. He examined the room and smiled.



Mr. Astredis sat in a wooden chair in the middle of the room. They had tied him to it carefully. A gag kept him from asking questions.



He appeared to be tall and beaky. He wore the dark complexion of the Circle, and the wavy dark hair. His shirt had been ripped in places. Blood covered his face and trousers.



"We're here to rescue you," I said.



Omes used a pocket knife to cut the gag off first. He started working on the ropes next.



"Hello, Mr. Astredis," said Omes. "This is Dr. Witsend, and I am Murdock Omes. I'll have you free in a second."



"Thank you," said the translator. "They wanted me to translate some sacred text."



"Why?," asked Omes.



"Talk later," I said. "We set the building on fire and we need to get out of here before there's a problem."



"Witsend is right," said Omes. "Let's go before there's a problem."



We froze the other man and left him there while we made our escape.



3

We went out the front of the house to avoid the fire. The round bodies of the Brigade descended from the sky. They swelled as they drew in water from the air. Then they began cutting the fire with streams of water.



"What were they having you translate, Mr. Astredis?," asked Omes. The job was done, and he was asking for information to fill in the blanks.



"It was a map for some treasure," said Astredis. "It was supposedly hidden here in Edge Row."



"Someone hid a treasure here in Edge Row," said Omes. He indicated the small estates everywhere. "If the Edge shifted one bit, it would have taken their treasure with it."



"They were sure it was here," said Astredis. "They had found some of the things listed in the map, and were looking for the rest."



"All right," said Omes. "We need to get you to Metropole. Then we need to call your wife to tell her that you're alive. Then we need to find the rest of the gang and see if we can find this treasure first."



"We've already done our job," I pointed out. "It's more than enough for our trade."



"I think if we don't find these people, Mr. Astredis and his wife will be in danger," said Omes. "They were still holding him, so they didn't have everything they needed. I should have thought of that before we set the building on fire."



"New information adds to the old," I said. "We can walk down to the home of an acquaintance of mine and ask her if we can use her screen. Then we can try to sort the rest of this out."



"All right," said Mr. Astredis. "I would like to talk to my wife. She must be worried sick."



"She hired someone who hired us," said Omes. "Getting you back was the priority. Now I'm afraid keeping you out of this gang's hands has become the priority until we can round them up."



"Come along," I said. "The faster we talk to Wendy, the faster we can take whatever steps we have to. She stills owes me for the bottle that I owed Weyland."



"I remember that," said Omes. "That was the lady that you let sleep in your office."



"Exactly," I said. "I asked Dr. Karen for an advisor for her. I hope everything went well on that front."



"Do you two think you can find the treasure before the rest of the gang?," said Mr. Astredis.



"I don't know," said Omes. "We don't have the map. The only thing we do have is a trail from the house to wherever they went. That doesn't help us find whatever they want."



"Their leader carried the map with him," said Astredis. "He was tall, a little heavy, with three scars on his hand. He said he wanted to know everything about the treasure. I told him that the map indicated that it was buried along the Edge, under a peculiar tree."



"Lots of trees along the Edge," I said. Something pinged on my life sense. I looked in the direction indicated. A badger as big as a bear regarded us from under a bush. It turned and trundled away as I kept an eye on it.



The last thing we needed was a fight with a giant mammal while walking among the properties of wealthy people.



I spotted the Maximus estate ahead. It looked better than the last time I had been there. I noted that cats stared at us as we approached. At least they weren't possessed by members of the family and turned into giant half-spirits with wings.



"This is the place," I said. "Let's go through that gap in the wall. Wendy seems to have worked on the place since she took over as the head of the family."



The house still needed work, but it didn't look like a pile of wood ready to fall over. The windows looked cleaner than I remembered. Some of the undergrowth had been trimmed back.



Madrigal Maximus had been stealing her family's bodies for so long she didn't seem to care about taking care of the place where she based her power.



I was glad Wendy and I had done for her. I hoped her afterlife reflected all the body stealing and soul imprisonments she had committed to stay alive. She and Mrs. Mackenzie could burn together like the witches they were.



I led the way to the house. The back door stood closer to us than the front so that was the way I went. I noted the cats didn't move except to look at us as we passed. I wondered if they were still being used as security guards.



We paused on the back porch of the house. Omes knocked with his gauntlet. We waited for someone to answer the door.



I could sense that Wendy and Corwin were home. They were upstairs, but blurry.



"Knock on the door again, Omes," I said. "Wendy is home."



Omes knocked again. He put more effort in the swing, letting the gauntlet bang on the wood. He stepped back and waited with me.



"Are you sure your friend is home?," asked Astredis.



"Yes," I said. "They are upstairs trying to ignore us."



I didn't have the reach to grab their nervous systems. I looked around for something to let me close the range.



"Let's go around before you try to inflict something on Miss Maximus," Omes said. He walked off the back porch and walked around to the front of the house. Astredis and I followed him.



He walked on the front porch. I noted that it didn't sag in the middle this time. Corwin must be rebuilding the house piece by piece.



Omes pushed the bell. Omes counted under his breath until he reached sixty. He pushed the bell again. We waited as Omes counted down for a third bell push. Wendy yanked the door open. She froze in puzzlement as she frowned at us.



I rubbed an ear.



I noted that her clothes seemed to be in small disarray and she didn't have her shoes on. Also there were traces of other DNA in the air.



"Hello," Omes said. "I'm Murdock Omes, this is Mr. Astredis and Dr. Witsend."



"I know Witsend," said Wendy. She glanced inside the house. "What do you want?"



"I've come to collect the bottle of whiskey you owe Weyland, and to use a screen," I said. "Can we come inside?"



"Right now?," said Wendy.



"Yes," I said. "You can mate later. I have important business to conduct that won't take up more than a few minutes. So let us in to do what we need to do so we can do what we need to do."



"What if I don't want to do that?," said Wendy. She glanced back inside the house.



I rubbed my ear as I considered. Putting her to sleep was the first option to jump to the front of my mind.



"Doctor Witsend?," said Corwin. He looked a little embarrassed. "What do we owe the pleasure of your company?"



"Smooth your hair down," I said. "We just came by to make a call and get the bottle of whiskey we are owed."



"Come in," said Corwin. "Our house is your house."



Wendy shook her head, but Corwin smiled and gently hugged her out of the way. We stepped inside. The interior of the house was outstanding. They had put a lot of work into cleaning the place up and rebuilding everything after what had happened with Wendy's ancestor.



"Thank you," I said. "Where's the screen?"



"It's next to the window," Wendy said. She pointed to a small screen set up on a table.



"Thank you," I said. Omes had already started for the screen before Wendy spoke.



He opened the screen and dialed the number for the old man's café. The first priority was to let the client know how the case was going.



"Orczy Pimpernel," said Polly. She nodded when she saw it was Omes on the screen. "I suppose you want to leave a message for the Old Man?"



"Tell him that we have Astredis, and have left four men timelocked in the remains of their house," said Omes. "The leader of the gang is looking for some kind of treasure. We're going to see if we can stop him from getting it."



"Found Astredis, looking for treasure, trying to get treasure before the bandit chief," said Polly. "I'll give him the message."



"Thank you, Polly," said Omes. He cut the call.



"A treasure hunt, Doctor?," said Corwin.



"We think so," I said. "Omes, and Astredis, this is Corwin. Corwin, this is my partner Omes, and Astredis. Thank you for the use of your screen."



"It's no problem," said Corwin. "Do you need anything else?"



"Can I use your bathroom?," Omes asked.



"It's upstairs, first door on the right," said Corwin. He pointed in the direction he meant.



"The house looks better," I said. I jumped on the window sill to wait for Omes to return.



"Wendy has done most of the work," said Corwin.



"I've been using some things that Corwin showed me to get things done," said Wendy. "He's still in the Army, and you are wasting our time together."



"Ten minutes is not going to kill you," I said. "How is school going?"



"Fine," said Wendy. "Moving out here actually saved me money."



I remembered that Wendy had been sharing space from what she had said when we met. She seemed mentally tougher somehow. I noted the various lines across her body. She had evidently excelled under Corwin's tutelage.



I wondered if I could put her to sleep now since I couldn't seem to grab a magician's nervous system as well as I did a normal person's.



"I think we should go," said Omes. "Thank you for letting us use your screen. We have to find this treasure hunter before he does something else."



"Should I call in someone from the Army?," asked Corwin.



"I don't know," said Omes. "They booby-trapped their house down the way where the Brigade is working. I froze everything, but it's still there."



Corwin went to the screen to make his call.



"It was pleasure to meet you, Miss Maximus," Omes said. "Don't worry about repaying Weyland for the whiskey. We already did. Have a good evening."



He gestured for Astredis and me to follow. The translator followed. He seemed embarrassed about barging in on people he didn't know. He gave an offhanded wave as he followed Omes out of the manor.



"Take care, Wendy," I said. "The place does look better."



"Don't die," said Wendy. "I still might need a doctor someday."



"I'll do the best that I can," I said. I walked through the open door and joined my comrades as they walked down to the gate.



Wendy shut the door softly behind me.



Omes opened the gate for us. He looked both ways down the street in front of the estate. He chose to walk away from the cloud of smoke in the distance.



"We'll go this way and hope we cut the trail of the mastermind," said Omes. "Whatever Astredis told him must have been the last bit of what he needed to find the treasure."



"The papers I looked at didn't say what was buried," said Astredis. "It might not be anything but a chest of old cutlery."



"It doesn't matter," said Omes. "We have to make sure that he doesn't come after you again."



"All right," said Astredis.



I followed at the rear. I doubted that whatever was buried was some conventional treasure. I didn't have an alternate, but I doubted that some jewelry was the cause of all this.



Omes paused ahead. He looked at a walled estate through the bars of the front gate. He looked around.



"I'm going to have to go in and look around," he said. "I think this is the place."



"I don't see a tree, or a moon," said Astredis.



"I do," said Omes. "I also see the chief villain ordering his people to work."



I peered through the gate. Three life lights glowed across the lawn. They seemed to be trying to decide what to do with their discovery.



"Open the gate, Omes," I said. "Let's see what they found."



He flipped the lid of a console built into the wall next to the gate. He entered the passcode. The gates separated as they swung back out of the way.



I started across the lawn. I didn't see anything bigger than a squirrel as I marched across the grass. All the animals must have fled from the thing in the ground when it was uncovered.



That didn't say anything good about whatever it was.



The three men noticed me coming at them, or Omes behind me. They reached for weapons under their arms. I noticed jackets laying on the grass away from the grave. I told them to go to sleep one by one.



The man identified as the leader by Astredis shook off the command. He glared at me as his minions dropped to the ground.



"I don't have time for this," he said. He raised a hand. Fire leaped out of it.



4

I leaped out of the way of the stream of flame. I didn't try to shut down his nervous system. A battle spirit I met told me if I wanted to do anything with my life sense, I had to cut the magic off. I haven't taken time to try to figure out how to do that.



Omes flung a bolt of frozen time from his gauntlet. He paused as the flame acted as a shield for him, diverting the fire around the frozen blob in the air. The treasure hunter cut off his attack to do something else to us.



The frozen piece of fire dropped to the ground. I looked at his comrades. Maybe there was something there I could use.



The magician couldn't be allowed to keep trying to work spells to kill us and then take what they had dug up. I refused to allow it. I grabbed the nerves of one of the lackeys and pulled his weapon clear of its holster. I triggered it with a yank of the finger.



The magician raised a shield as bullets flew through the air. It looked like one got through before he blocked the rest. I couldn't be sure.



Omes stepped around the frozen fireball to try to get a clear shot at the enemy. He walked into a blast of air that sent him flying through the air. He hit the ground and rolled.



I grabbed the other lackey's nerves and forced him to shoot with his own weapon. I saw two bullets hit before the magician blocked the rest.



Now all I had to do was keep him distracted until he bled out. That wouldn't take long.



I didn't expect him to jump into the grave with the treasure. I should have. I had already wounded him. Jumping into a foxhole to shoot back while being under cover was a natural move.



The weapons I had used were empty. I needed something else to wrap this up.



I glanced at Omes. He had taken a hit and was dazed, but he was okay. Astredis had vanished during the exchange of fire. I hoped he hadn't gotten killed.



It would be embarrassing to free him from captivity to get him killed after telling our client he was on the way home.



I wondered how the old man would take that bit of news.



Red light flared from inside the hole in the ground. Wind formed a funnel. A shape made of dirt and leaves sprang into being. It stood over the burial place. Green sparks could have been fireflies, or glowing eyes of doom.



I had no idea how I was going stop that. I stepped back as it grew over the estate. Maybe we should beat a retreat.



I trotted away from the grave as the two lackeys were swept up in the grip of the funnel and flung into the air. When they hit the ground, they might be killed by the impact. There was nothing I could do about that. I didn't want to suffer through the same thing happening to me.



I reached Omes's side. He held his bowler to his head as he looked up at the giant of leaves and dirt bearing down on us. He raised his gauntlet and locked up part of its leg. The beast pulled free, leaving the trapped part of its leg behind as it made another to close the distance to where we stood.



"The gauntlet doesn't seem able to freeze all of it at once like it usually does," said Omes. "Any ideas?"



"We need to go back to Wendy's and have Corwin call for a push from the local Army bases," I said.



"You do that," said Omes. "I can hold it here, so the only thing it can hurt is the house."



"What about you?," I said. The creature's shadow fell on us. "I think we should both run until we figure out what to do."



"Can't," said Omes. "Someone has to stop this thing from marching into the city. The loss of life would be catastrophic."



A huge fist descended toward us. I jumped one way. Omes jumped the other. The ground shook from the impact of that fist on the field.



Omes pulled a small white block from his jacket pocket. He threw it so it would hit the monster in the face. The block of salt did nothing when it exploded.



That excluded things like spirits and demons.



How did we stop it? I couldn't sense a nervous system to grab. That eliminated a living being inside that wind.



I ran to the grave. The treasure hunter lay on a wooden box. Blood from his wound had trailed along the wooden top until it reached a marking at the foot of the box. The marking glowed as wind and lightning erupted from it.



How did I stop it?



I wracked my brain as I kept an eye on the monster roaming around. The Army must be having kittens right now. They had summoners and spirit handlers at their beck and call.



Would Valeria of the Seventh help us?



"Valeria of the Seventh, I need you!," I shouted. The wind was carrying sound away almost as fast as I said the words.



A rainbow appeared in the darkened air. A giant woman in green armor appeared from the flash of light. Her glowing face smiled as she saw the other spirit marching toward the city. She pulled a giant hammer out of the air as she grew to meet it. The whirlwind turned to meet her charge with a giant fist of dirt and thunder. She flew into the ground and rolled.



I hoped she could hold it until the rest of the Army mobilized. I trotted over to where Omes stood in the wind. He held his hat down as he stared up at the two giants.



"Have you got more of that salt?," I asked.



"Yes," said Omes. "I have one more block."



"Follow me," I said. I led the way back to the grave. He hunched down over the box. He looked at the connecting tendril feeding the wind as it absorbed a hammer to the faceless head and rebuilt the damage.



Valeria couldn't win as long as it was doing that. We had to stop it somehow.



Omes took out the block of salt. He broke it open on the mark. He frowned when that didn't do anything. He took one of the pieces and jammed it in the hole in the lid. The wind lessened immediately.



Valeria brought her hammer down. She split the whirlwind into two. They picked her up and threw her across the wall and out of the estate grounds. They turned to deal with us.



"This doesn't look good," said Omes.



The two pieces joined together. The giant raised a hand to drop down on us like a wrecking ball.



"Go left," I said. "It can't hit us both."



"We need to make friends with more powerful spirits," said Omes. He grinned at his unfunny jest.



"Get ready," I said. I didn't want the whirlwind to change actions if we split too early.



"Stop!," said a female voice. The spirit froze. The green sparks looked over its shoulder. "I command you to stop."



"It's Miss Maximus and Corwin," said Omes. "Oh, I see."



I did too. Astredis had ran back to tell them what was going on. That was why he had vanished in the middle of this.



It was just our luck that Wendy was a spirit talker, and Corwin had some kind of ability to summon things from beyond.



The whirlwind rumbled as it straightened to regard Wendy and Corwin. I tensed. It might not listen to her for long.



Astredis stood by the gate. I saw Valeria standing behind him, hammer in hand.



"What is this all about?," asked Wendy. "You don't have permission to wreck anything. Do you have a master?"



The whirlwind hissed at her petulantly in my opinion.



"All right," said Wendy. "You've been issued orders to attack the city when released. The war is over. Your attack would just cause more trouble. You can go back in your box until I find a way to send you back to your home plane, or you can be my butler. Which would you like to do?"



The whirlwind turned and walked toward the open hole in the ground. It threw the treasure hunter out of the way with a flick of its hand. It glowered down at us.



Omes pushed the salt out of the way with his thumb. He stepped back to one side. I stepped back the other way. We didn't want to give it a free swipe at us now that it was going back in its box.



"Thank you, Miss Maximus," Omes said. "That was impressive."



"The most powerful spirit wranglers in the city," I said. I rubbed my ear.



"Now what are we going to do with this?," she asked. She gestured at the destroyed yard, the pile of dirt that had been mobile, and the dead man that crashed to the ground a few feet away.



"I think we should take the box," Corwin said. "The Army will be here to check everything out soon. We can send the elemental back across to where it belongs at your house."



"All right," said Wendy.



"I knew making friends with you would be great, Witsend of the Sky Wolves," said Valeria. She grabbed the box out of the ground and put it on her shoulder. "I can't wait until the next time you call."



"Valeria, this is Wendy and Corwin, and Astredis," I said. "Thank you for answering my call."



"It was my pleasure," said the spirit. "The rest of the barracks will be so jealous."



"Let's go," said Wendy. "I don't want to explain why a tornado ripped up his lawn to Mr. Peabody."



We followed her through the gate.



5

We went to the Orczy Pimpernel two days after Wendy and Corwin dealt with the elemental force buried in Edge Row. We had to answer some questions, but we claimed that Wendy and Corwin had saved the city. Corwin's superior officer acted as his shield so Metropole had to take the explanation we gave them and like it.



Mr. Astredis had been able to explain most of the action to both sides. That had been enough to get us out of burning down the house the gang had been squatting in.



Now here we were going in to get our part of the bargain with the old man settled.



He nodded when he saw us. He had a string of knots in front of him as he considered the morning's paper.



We took what I considered visitor seats across the table from him. He smiled. Omes tipped his hat back. I rubbed my ear.



Polly brought us a bowl of milk, a bottle of mead, and a cup of coffee. The old man thanked her quietly and she retreated.



"The paper is full of a buried weapon found by a famous doctor and his assistant," the old man said.



"It was why they took Astredis," said Omes. "They wanted him to translate the burial orders from the Circle. Once he did that, they planned to use the elemental to blackmail the city. All they needed was proof they could control it at will."



"You don't think they could control it?," asked the old man.



"Yes, the leader of the gang could have if Witsend hadn't shot him," said Omes.



"I didn't know blood would break the seal," I said.



"Thank you for saving the city again," said the old man.



"It was the least we could do," said Omes. "We came about your part of the bargain."



"I'm ready for your three questions," said the old man. He sipped at his coffee.



"We talked about what we wanted," said Omes. "The first thing we need is evidence of McMahon's wrongdoing. Where can we get it?"



"McMahon has a remote screen he uses to keep his accounts," said the old man. "It's buried in a secret chamber below his building. You'll need to think of a way to get to it and avoid his security."



Omes pulled out his pad and wrote down the note to indicate we were going to have to break into McMahon's building in the middle of the Industrial Quarter.



We could do it if we had a way to look inside the place, or at the construction plans. Unless McMahon used spirits, or other esoteric means, we could get in anywhere we wanted. The question would be getting out.



"Does McMahon have any allies inside Metropole?," asked Omes.



If we went in and stole the evidence, it could still be quashed by the blue coats. We wanted to be able to turn it over to an honest policeman and let him carry things to its conclusion.



If we couldn't do that, we had to think of some other way to deal with McMahon.



"About the same as any other criminal mastermind," said the old man. "He does have a potent ally in Sir Ralph Beckinstall."



"That makes sense," I said. "Backstabber would ally with anyone with the money to give him what he wanted."



"Hopefully, we will be able to tie him to McMahon and send them both to Donegal Island," said Omes. He opened his bottle of mead and sipped at it.



"You have one more question, gentlemen," the old man said. He sipped at his coffee.



"We're thinking," said Omes. "We don't want to waste it on something stupid."



"Commendable," said the old man. "I have a question for you. Why do you wish to imprison McMahon?"



"He's made it clear that he will get rid of us when he can," said Omes. "Luckily, it seems that running his organization is more important than coming after us."



"And I promised my nurse that I would stamp him out," I said. "That and a little girl used to attack the city is enough reason for me."



"I see," said the old man.



"Do you have any suggestions that we can use?," asked Omes.



The old man scratched his chin as he looked at us. He sat back in his chair.



"Don't try to give the information to Metropole," he said. "Give it to someone in the Army. Tell your contact that crimes against the Army are indicated. Let them pursue the warrant. That will bypass Beckinstall and anyone else in Metropole that will lose the files. Don't try to confront McMahon in person. You want to do this through as much of a proxy as you can. Once he is sure you're involved, he will come after you. Avoid being alone until he is sent to Donegal Island, and even then keep an eye around you since his leftenants will want revenge for what you've done."



"Thanks for the advice," said Omes. He sipped his bottle of mead.



"Three answers is what I promised," said the old man. "I wish you the best of luck if you try to get at McMahon's files."



"If you want to do another trade, let us know," said Omes. He put the empty bottle on the table.



"Make it something not earth breaking," I said.



"I will do my best," said the old man. "Thank you for your assistance. The Astredis are back in their professions, working on their next translations. I have something that Mrs. Astredis sent here. I think she wanted you to have it."



He pulled a wrapped gift from under his jacket. He handed it over.



Omes pulled his knife and cut the paper open. A book sat in the paper. He looked up.



"I don't understand," said Omes.



"Neither do I," said the old man. He smiled thinly. "Perhaps the pages will give you something to think about."



"Thank you," said Omes. He stood. He put the book in his coat pocket. "Do you want in on this?"



"No," the old man said. "My cases don't usually touch any of his schemes. When they do, I use a proxy to do what I need to do."



"I understand," said Omes.



I rubbed my ear before I dropped down from my seat. I nodded at him. I wondered if we were about to do something he couldn't do on his own.



Omes and I stepped out of the café and walked away. The answers had given us something we could use to put McMahon out of our misery. It would be a pleasure to put him in his place after the harm he had caused to accomplish his schemes.



"We're going to plan better than we usually do," Omes said.



"We don't usually plan at all," I pointed out. "Usually you use yourself as bait, and then I try to put the villains down."



"We have to plan better than that," said Omes.



I made a noise. Omes loved to improvise more than plan. It was in his blood.



"Where are going?," I asked.



"I don't know," said Omes. "I thought I would walk around until I figured out what we're supposed to do next."



"When do you want to break into McMahon's building?," I asked.



"Let's do it now," said Omes.



"Let's get some food from the club," I said. "Then let's see if we can find this secret room on a copy of the construction plans from the building archive."



"No fighting security with the deadliness of the Terror of Tuscane?," he said. He smiled at his heckling.



"No," I said. "We are planning an illegal assault using the words of an information broker who may sell the target the information as a matter of course. Let's eat and try to plan better than we usually do. Then if something goes off the rails, we can do what we do best."



"Run around like chickens on fire?," said Omes.



"I was thinking improvisation," I said. "That seems to be the thing that we do extraordinarily too much of for some reason."



"It's something that plays to our strengths," he said.



"It will also get you killed if you don't watch out," I said.



"Me?," said Omes.



"I plan to watch you go down in flames from a safe distance so I can avenge you savagely," I said.



"That's extremely kind of you," he said.



"I think so," I said.



We walked across the city. Omes was in the neutral mode I associated with him waiting for a solution to a problem to pop in his head. I had no doubt he could find the room when we needed to find it. His ability to find anything was worthy of respect.



I doubted that McMahon would have normal guards. He knew what we could do. We had sliced through an underling's operation like it was a piece of bread. He knew that too.



The question of Beckinstall rode in my mind. I wondered if he knew he was being used by the biggest criminal mastermind in the city. That wouldn't stop me from pulling his plug with extreme prejudice.



I already hated him. Finding out he was supplying information and succor to my enemy didn't make me hate him any less.



I doubted that we could do anything to him until we could prove he was in the hip pocket of McMahon. After that, I expected it would be open season on our knight.



"We should let the Duchess know about this," I said. "I think she can help us with this."



"It technically is in her field of operations," Omes said. "I don't think she can authorize the removal of the superintendent of Metropole on her own."



"I thought she might be able to give us some support," I said. "She can get us access to the plans we need with no questions allowed."



"We couldn't let her act in the assault," Omes said. "That would bring her integrity into question."



"We don't need her for that," I said. "Covert backing might be what we need from her."



"Maybe she can get us personnel to help our planning," Omes said. "Do you want to see if she is in her office."



"We might as well," I said. "She likes us enough to give us five minutes."



"You're right," said Omes. "Let's head over to the Quarter and see what we can do."



He hailed a cab for us. We boarded and rode silently to the Quarter. I watched the streets for any threatening gesture. How many of these people helped wreck others for a little bit of money?



Omes watched the buildings. I knew he could spot a trail in the haze that filled the air of the Quarter.



The cab pulled to a stop in front of the Alsance tower. It looked different not locked down like it had been the last case we had solved for Her Grace. We dropped down to the street. Omes paid the driver. We went to the front door and entered the lobby of the headquarters.



We walked to the counter. The clerk looked down at us. I didn't like the sneer on his face. I rubbed my ear instead of letting him dance around with his face on fire.



"How can I help you?," the clerk said. The voice sneered too.



"Is the Duchess, or the Duke in?," said Omes. "We need to chat with them."



"Who may I ask is calling?," said the clerk. He waved at one of the guards. I expected he wanted to expel us.



I jumped on the desk and sat. I looked him in the eye. I rubbed my ear.



"The Duchess's personal doctor," I said. "I fix stupidity in her employees. Call her now, or you will be picking potatoes somewhere with cleaner air than the Quarter."



He reached for the screen and called up to the top of the tower. The Duchess appeared. She smiled when she saw me.



"Dr. Witsend?," said the Duchess. "What do I owe the pleasure?"



"We need five minutes of your time, Your Grace," I said.



"You haven't killed anyone in the lobby yet?," she asked.



I looked at the clerk. He had stepped back from the desk.



"Not yet," I said.



"Come up," she said. "The Duke and I were just getting ready to step out a function. We can give you five minutes at least."



"Thank you," I said.



I jumped down from the desk. Omes and I walked to the lift doors so we could ride up to the Duchess's offices.



The Criminal Papers

1

Omes and I looked at the plans we had been able to secure. I didn't see anything but lines. Omes's brain cycled in flares of light as he studied the drawings. He frowned as he ran his fingers over the paper.



"It will be hard to get to the vault," he said. "I can't see a way to get to it. McMahon must have built his redoubt without putting it on the plans."



"So how do we find the door?," I asked.



"I don't have a clue," Omes said. He straightened. "I think we need to compare what we have to what's actually standing there."



"Do you think that's something we should do?," I asked. I sat on my chair. I rubbed my ear.



"There's nothing we can do without being able to find the passage to the vault," Omes said. "The old man might have been wrong about the secret files."



"I don't think so," I said. "Whatever we need to find is there. We just have to find it."



"Let me change, and we'll take a look around," said Omes. "Maybe there is a way in that isn't on the plans."



"All right," I said. He left the kitchen. I studied the plans as I waited. The open spaces could be a death trap if we were caught by security.



Omes returned a few minutes later. He had changed from his customary white clothes into an ensemble from castoffs that the poor didn't want. I rubbed my ear.



"How do I look?," he asked.



"Like an urchin that needs to go to an orphanage," I said.



"That's precisely the effect I want," Omes said. "Shall we go?"



"Do I get a disguise?," I asked. Black cats associated with boy detectives couldn't be that common.



"Yes, you do," he said with a smile.



I protested but it did no good. I wore the disguise, or stayed home. I grumbled about it but accepted it was something that had to be done. I wasn't happy but I could endure it until we were done.



That was why an orphan boy was rolling his baby brother in a stroller around the Industrial Quarter. We inspected the target building from all sides as Omes pushed me along.



At one point, he stopped and stared at the building. He started smiling. His brain flared for moments as he considered what he had seen.



"All right," he said. "I know where the door is and how to get in."



He rolled me away from the building. He aimed for the nearest gate out of the Quarter. He waved at a guard as we crossed into the city proper.



"So how are we doing this?," I asked.



"I need to look at the plans again," said Omes. "The alterations aren't on them, but I can draw an approximate shape so we can plan. There are probably some more surprises buried there that the plans have no idea are there."



"So he hid the door," I said. "That's about what we expected."



"If there is a door," Omes said.



I thought about what he had said. I didn't like it. A room without a door meant McMahon had a way inside that involved some type of summoning. People would pay millions of pounds for such a way to get around. He could make more money as a licensed contractor than stealing.



It also meant that anyone who found how he did it could use it to get into his secret place and rob him.



"How do we do this?," I asked. I favored killing everyone in the building and burning the place down.



"I don't know yet," he said. "Let's head home. I have to change clothes and think about the planning. Too bad we can't borrow Armed Response. Sherwood would know how to assault a building better than we do."



I rubbed an ear. I agreed with Omes. We could clear the building on our own, but they could punch holes through the thing at will.



"I would like to quit being the baby now," I said.



"Never happen," Omes said.



"Don't get on my nerves," I said. "I am feeling wrathful now."



"All right," said Omes. He reached in and took off the baby swaddling. That felt better.



"Do you think the disguises fooled them?," I asked.



"I don't know," said Omes. "The Doctor has shown that he is capable of thinking outside the box. The impostor scheme was brilliant in my opinion. He might still be doing it if Costello hadn't sniffed out the switch."



"I wonder if he is still trying to change the country through the DNA virus," I said. "The vampire plague had his fingerprints all over it."



"Maybe that will be in his files," said Omes. "I think we should eat at the club and then turn in early. I have to sleep on things I think."



"Don't try to break in without me," I warned him. "You'll need someone to watch your back."



"I know," he said. We walked down the street to the Thunder Bridge.



Omes put the stroller on the bridge. I hopped out. The sky above the bridge clouded over as we watched. He pushed the stroller forward as hard as he could. Lightning started striking the bridge as the baby carriage rolled toward the other end. We ran down the bridge behind the lightning. We hopped off the other end as another wave prepared to chase us. The clouds cleared off without a target to shoot at.



The buggy burned where it fell off the bridge. We looked at it. A single Brigade member floated to the scene as we kept walking. A stream of water put the fire out in a second.



We took the Tube to the station closest to Time Village. We braved the vanishing and appearing houses to reach Twenty Two Bee. Addison slowed the house to reality. The door appeared at the dock before the rest of the house.



"How did the scouting go?," Addison asked from the air.



"I don't know," said Omes. He opened the door for us. "I need to look at the blueprints again."



He headed for his room to clean up and change. I went to the guest bathroom and drew water in the sink. I bathed to get the itchy feeling from my fur. At least I hadn't picked up fleas or ticks. I kill them with a glance thanks to my life sense.



I waited for my fur to dry before I levered open the door and walked out. I joined Omes in the kitchen. He hovered over the plans with a bottle of mead in his hand. He shook his head at what he saw on the paper.



"They put the door to the chamber inside the lift shaft," he said. "The only way to get in is to get into the elevator and find the secret door. I doubt McMahon used something like a simple key lock for it."



"We won't know until we break into the elevator," I said. "If he used any type of armor, it will be a tough nut to crack using explosives on it."



"It will be a tough nut to crack with a torch," said Omes. "We need something with heavy duty power to crack that door. That's something neither one of us possesses."



"All we need is McMahon," I said. "We can use him to open the door if I can get close enough to put him under."



"That's a thought," Omes said. "Can you mesmerize him?"



"We won't know until we try," I said. "We'll need a cab we can use to follow him around and look for a chance."



"We can use Shreevy," Omes said. "He was a big help while you were in the hospital."



"All right," I said. "The plan seems simple enough if I can mesmerize McMahon and nothing gets in our way."



"I'll call Shreevy in the morning and see if he will help us," said Omes. "Then we can see what McMahon does with his days."



"There's bound to be some form of retaliation," I said. "He's been taking his losses as acceptable up to now. If we do major harm to his operations and don't take him or his top leftenants, we will be in for a war. Are you ready for that?"



"We can't let him continue to do what he wants," said Omes. He sipped his mead. "He has been harming people all over the city, the country, possibly the world. He has planned at least two plagues that we know about, and actually released one. He has put our lives and the lives of our clients in personal danger. We are already at war, and one of us must go."



He put his empty bottle in the refill bin.



"And if one of us has to go," he said. "I prefer it to be him, and all of his cronies."



I agreed with his sentiment. Ever since his victim had died stealing the blue corpuscle from the hospital, I had nursed a grudge against our enemy. It would be good to finally settle it.



"Let's get something to eat," said Omes. "Tomorrow, we start on our plan."



"I don't have a problem with that," I said.



Omes rolled up the plans and put them in a carrier. He put the tube beside the refrigerator. We walked into the parlor where he pulled his coat and hat from their hooks and put them on. He armed himself with his gauntlet.



"We're just going down to the club, Addison," said Omes. "We shouldn't be too long."



"I will still be here when you get back," said Addison.



I wondered how much longer Addison had. I supposed he would be the last house standing in the village. Some of his neighbors had already given up and vanished for good.



I liked to think that Omes and I gave him a reason to stay touching reality instead of vanishing himself. I didn't ask. If Addison wanted to talk about it, he would.



We waited for the house to spin down so we could step on the dock. Addison spun it back up as soon as we stepped off the porch and on the dock to normal society. We made our way through the flickering houses to the gate.



I noticed Omes putting up his mental regulator as we turned to walk to the club. The rest of the night would be about anything but what we planned to do. Tomorrow would be about acting until we were done.



If we could get McMahon's files, how much corruption could we expose? How badly had things gone before we started interfering? The fact that Backstabber was giving aid didn't elude me.



I would like to settle with him too.



"We will have to watch tomorrow, maybe the next day," said Omes. "I doubt that McMahon has a routine we can exploit, but once we see something we can use, we should plan around taking him from that spot and taking him to the building. We can use him to bypass security."



"The main problem is can I mesmerize him," I said. "Some people can't be manipulated like that. If he is one of those, we'll have to come up with an alternate plan on the spot."



"We'll come up with something," said Omes. "There has to be a way we can use him to get inside his room and find the evidence we need."



"Even if we do find something, it doesn't mean it will hold up in court," I said. "We might be the ones sent to Donegal Island if we're caught."



"I'm more worried about what will happen to us while we're waiting to go to trial," said Omes.



I didn't argue that. Plenty of prisoners had been murdered by other prisoners, or bought guards. A boat had been sank with most of the convicts still onboard to cover the tracks of the rest that were freed to be used by the mastermind.



There was no question what would happen to the likes of us before we stepped into the courtroom. It would be a miracle to be left alive to face a judge.



I didn't want to leave my practice to spend the rest of my life on the run.



And Omes would have to give up solving mysteries to bury himself in darkness.



I decided that before anything like that happened, McMahon would die before we ever saw a court. He wouldn't live to press charges against us.



I don't know if that would help us in the long run, but I wasn't going to let him gloat about how he had stopped us.



And I wasn't going to let him live to dog us while we ran.



2

We spent the next three days following McMahon around. He seemed to follow the same routine everyday. As far as we could tell, he didn't meet any of his minions face to face.



He took a cab from his home near Edge Row down to the Quarter. He went into his building and stayed until quitting time. He left his building and went to his club, a fighting arena, or home. When he was done with the club, or the fighting arenas, he went home.



Unless he was meeting his minions at the club, or arena, he relied on screen messages, or letters.



"We need to see what he will do tonight," said Omes. "So far we know he stays inside his building until he is ready to go out on the town. If he goes out tonight, we might be able to grab him."



"So the plan is to watch him for an opening, and then pick him up and take him back to his building?," I asked.



"He is going to see us eventually, if he hasn't already," said Omes. "We're going to have to move up our plan to cover for that."



"If he goes to the club, or the arena, we can take him coming out the door," I said. "We just have to take the cab he uses too. If he goes home, we will have to take him at the gate."



"Seems reasonable," said Omes. "I can keep him locked down until we get back to his building."



"If he goes somewhere different, we'll have to improvise," I said. "He might use the slingshot to leave the city for a bit."



"If he does that, we'll wait for him to come back," said Omes. "We have time. We don't have to chase him when we could be taking other cases."



"That sounds reasonable," I said. I rubbed my ear. "Who are you and what have you done with my friend?"



"I know," Omes said. He held up his hands. "We've been chasing this criminal for so long, another week won't matter in the scheme of things. Now that we know who he is, we can attack any time we want as long as we don't involve Metropole."



"All right," I said. I agreed about Metropole. We had helped them in the past, but what we planned to do was not the usual emergency breaking of a mystery that Metropole liked to call on Omes to perform. This was a personal vendetta against someone that had tried to set us on fire.



I doubted that would go over with the top brass in their offices next to the Palace.



"We'll follow him tomorrow," said Omes. "Then we grab him the first chance we get. If we can't do it, we put it off until we think we can make an opening and do it then."



"I don't have a problem with that," I said. "Tomorrow, I have to go in and handle my appointments. I will be off in time to join you at the Quarter to help with this."



"I'll wait on you," said Omes. "I can't get into the building without you."



We had a cold supper, and I left him studying his screen while I napped on the visitor's couch. When he had gone to bed, I used the screen to check around the city for anything that might interest me.



The next day we split up to take care of our separate duties. I took a cab to the office. I tried not to worry about Omes getting caught, but it rode in the front of my mind as I checked my patients and made sure they knew what was going on with their bodies.



As soon as I was done, I headed for the Industrial Quarter to check on Omes. Elga said she could handle any paperwork that had to be turned in. I hoped I would be able to give her a raise in the near future.



I found Omes standing by a store on the corner across from the McMahon building. He stood in a door as cover. He nodded when I arrived.



"Shreevy will be back in a few minutes," said Omes. "I didn't think it would be right to keep him from working when we know McMahon isn't going to leave his business for another half hour."



"So he hasn't done anything out of the ordinary yet?," I asked. I sat down next to the doorway and rubbed my ear.



"No," said Omes. "I haven't seen him leave."



"Here comes his carriage," I said. "It looks like he's a bit earlier than usual."



"Maybe Thursdays are a special night," Omes said. He watched the carriage heading away from us.



"We need to get after that carriage," I said.



Omes looked undecided on what to do. Chasing after the cab would attract the wrong kind of attention. Letting it slip away meant allowing McMahon to do anything he wanted until he came back under scrutiny.



"Wait," I said. "We can follow him when Shreevy gets here."



Omes nodded.



I didn't like it either. If we lost him in the city, he might be up to anything. I wondered how much of his business he conducted by screen. I doubted many criminals had faith in a boss that never seemed to do anything.



Shreevy rolled to a stop a few minutes after the other carriage had disappeared. He smiled down at us.



"How's it going, Guvenors?," he said.



"He is on the move, Shreevy," said Omes. "We have to hurry if we want to catch up."



"Never fear," said Shreevy. "The boys and I are ready for work."



Omes and I got in the passenger part of the cab. The driver pulled after McMahon's vehicle. Omes gave directions as we went.



"He's headed down the river toward the Shipping Point," I said.



"I know," said Omes. "What could he want there? The last three nights he has stayed in the city. Do you think he is on to us?"



"I don't know," I said.



If he was on to us, we were looking at something that could be a trap. A good ambush would be able to wreck us.



I kept my life sense ranging for other people and animals on the road with us. So far everything I could see was not interested in us. We might as well be invisible.



McMahon's carriage appeared in the road in front of us. The horses trotted toward their destination.



Shreevy slowed down. We didn't need to catch up as long as we could keep the other carriage in sight. The only thing we had to worry about was if McMahon happened to look back and recognized the driver. There was nothing we could do about that.



"He didn't get off anywhere," said Omes. "This road leads to docks on the river heading down past the Shipping Point and then toward the ocean. What could he be doing down here?"



"Maybe he has a ship he has to meet," I said. "Smuggling would not be beneath him considering the other things we know he has had a hand in."



"Good point," Omes said. "At a certain point, we're going to have to get Shreevy to wait for us while we figure out what we're going to do."



"So you want to try for him at wherever he's going?," I asked. I rubbed my ear. We might not have another chance, but I didn't want to rush things. I wanted to get in close and make sure things went my way.



"If we can," Omes said. "I want to see what he's doing first. If we have a chance to move in, I would like to try."



"Let's see how the ground lies before we plan anything major," I said. "We might not have a chance to do anything."



"Agreed," said Omes.



Shreevy pulled his cab to a stop. His horses danced in place. He leaned over to talk to us.



"It looks like he is going into some kind of dock area," said Shreevy. "I can see the river behind him. I don't see boat lights."



"Who can he be meeting?," I asked.



"Let's go see what's going on," said Omes. "You might want to turn the cab around so we can make a fast getaway to the city."



"You don't have to tell me twice," said Shreevy.



Omes and I disembarked. The ground felt soft to my paws. I hoped that didn't mean a run through mud. I didn't want another bath.



We jogged across the space between the main road and the driveway McMahon had used. We followed that into a shipping yard with empty docks sticking out in the river. A warehouse and a smaller building that could be an office sat next to the water. The carriage stood beside the smaller building.



I counted five men in the yard. I whispered for Omes to follow me as I led the way to a pile of container boxes stacked up to one side of the yard. I knew they would be loaded on a ship with a crane, but I didn't see one anywhere.



What was going on?



I concentrated on the smaller building. I thought that it had to be an office of some type.



McMahon stepped out of the office. He waved a hand. More men followed him. Some dragged a man in chains between them. I rubbed my ear. This might be the end of the line for the man in chains.



I felt Omes tense, but his brain stood quiet. I knew he was going to act. He didn't have it in him to let someone be murdered.



"We need to make a hole," I whispered. "See if you can freeze the ones closest to us first. I'll need to get closer if I want to do anything with my life sense."



"Be careful," Omes said. "We take McMahon out of this after we put a stop to whatever is going on."



"All right," I said.



I crept down to the end of the container boxes. I reached out. They still stood out of range. I needed to get closer than this. I looked around for cover.



I saw a trashcan standing near the closest dock. If I could get there, I would have a better shot at sowing chaos in the ranks.



I had to keep them from the dock. If they dropped the man in the water, he was as good as dead. The river would eat him alive.



I glanced at the men. They all seemed to be concentrating on the man in chains. I crept to the trashcan. I rubbed my ear as I linked to the closest nervous systems. I had a chance to commit some violence as long as I was careful not to get spotted.



"Take him to the end of the dock," said McMahon. "Drop him. The river will do the rest for us."



I tensed. Ordinarily I wouldn't care if one criminal was done away by another criminal, but I didn't know if the man was a criminal so I had to do something until I did know. And no one deserved to be eaten alive by the toxic waste the Tam still was this far down from the Industrial Quarter.



I needed to cause a distraction so the man could make a run for it.



I grabbed the man nearest me. I drew his weapon and fired it at the closest men to him. I kept the aim low so I didn't kill anyone. I smiled at the leg wounds caused by the pellet caster.



The prisoner broke free of the two men holding him as they went for weapons under their coats. He ran for the container boxes. Some of the gang drew and fired at my puppet. Some fired at the fleeing captive.



I let my puppet take his medicine as I cast about for another nervous system to take over. I linked in and turned my victim's gun arm toward the backs of my targets. One trigger pull sent them scrambling for cover.



I noted some of the men winked out as Omes fired his gauntlet from behind the container boxes. They had been facing me without knowing it so they didn't see him cutting down their numbers from behind. The frozen minions fell over as he worked his way across the back of the crowd.



Some of the men fled toward the office to escape the sudden shooting field they were in. They were too late as Omes and I finished our ambush and dropped them to the asphalt of the dock yard.



Omes came forward to freeze the wounded so they wouldn't bleed out before help arrived.



3

McMahon lay facedown on the asphalt. He had the look of someone who knew what was going on. He just didn't know where we were when we attacked.



"What do we do now?," Omes asked. He looked around at the wounded and captured criminals. "Calling Metropole while we abscond with the mastermind seems out of the question."



"When you lift your freeze, the wounded will start bleeding again," I said. "I could close the wounds with a little work. That will let us call the bluecoats to figure out what happened to lay these men out."



"And while the coppers are here, we'll be back in the Quarter and breaking into the Doctor's secret lair," Omes said. "I like it."



"It keeps things easy," I said. "The real problem is whether or not we can control McMahon's mind enough to get him back to the cab and then get us through the security of his building."



"Let's do what we can for these clowns," Omes said. "Then we can get on with the real job."



The next few minutes consisted of Omes unfreezing one of the wounded, then I put the man to sleep, then closed the wound. Some needed better care than what I could do, but they would live to get to the hospital.



"We're going to need to make the call, and then get away from here as fast as we can," I said.



"I'm for that," said Omes.



We went into the office. It consisted of one room with filing cabinets for orders and a screen. Omes opened the screen, making sure the visual was black. He called the switchboard of Metropole in the city. He identified himself as a captain on the river reporting gunfire and a man in manacles. He hung up after giving the address of the docks.



"Either they are coming, or we have been dismissed as pranksters," said Omes. "Either way, we have to get McMahon and get him back to Shreevy's cab so we can get out of here."



The man in the manacles would have to take care of himself for the moment. As long as he didn't try to impose on our capture, I was willing to live and let live.



The real test was how long could I hold McMahon, and would he refuse to do as my colleague said.



"All right," Omes said. "Let's get this together. If Metropole acts on what we reported, someone will be showing up to report back."



"Unfreeze him," I said. I readied my mastery of the human body. If I couldn't put him under, we would have to resort to something else to get things done.



Omes pointed his gauntlet at the criminal brain. I noted the man winking back to reality. He looked around in shock.



"Go to sleep," I commanded. I noted that he seemed to fight the control. He wasn't a magician, so he lost. I rubbed an ear as I considered our next move. I brought him up enough so he could hear me in his sleep. "I want you to get to your feet and walk ahead of us down the road to our waiting cab."



McMahon did what he was told. I kept an eye on him as we went. One moment where his brain spiked up could be the moment he tried to kill us. I wasn't going to let that happen. If he did anything but what I told him, he would have a stroke, and I would leave him in the road for Metropole to find.



We walked him back to the cab. Omes directed him to a seat and then froze him in place. I jumped up and rubbed my ear. Part two was going to be a little harder to carry out in my opinion.



"Please take us back to the building we've been watching, Shreevy," Omes said. "We're going to need you to wait outside while we finish our business."



"No problem, Guvernor," said the driver. "What happens after that?"



"We're going to see if Mr. McMahon can get us inside his building," said Omes. "Once we're done, we'll have to pull out of there fast. We're going to have to go home to Time Village. You might want to deny knowing us if things go wrong."



"I can't exactly say that after the vampire business, but I can say that I was busy with regular fares," Shreevy said.



"We want to keep you out of this business as much as possible," Omes said. "If you see things go bad for us, drive away. If we escape, we'll make sure you get paid."



"It's fine," said Shreevy. "I've seen things you don't want to think about in the city. A little burglary is the least of any of that."



I rubbed my ear. If Shreevy waited for us, we might make a clean getaway out of this. It appealed to me to commit a crime to capture a master of criminals.



Shreevy drove us back to the McMahon office. He parked a block away from the building with his horses pointed toward the gates we would need to get through to escape.



"All right," said Omes. "Let's see if this mad scheme will work."



"Remember to run if there is trouble, Shreevy," I said.



"You don't have to worry about me, Doctor," said the driver.



"Ready, Witsend?," said Omes.



"Yes," I said. "Three count, then unfreeze him."



I waited patiently for Omes to count to three and then unfreeze our enemy. I put him back to sleep. I pulled out the part I needed to get him walking. The hard part was going to be to get him to take us to the hidden office, and to show us how he accessed his records.



He climbed down from the cab and started across the street. We followed behind him. I kept an eye on him to make sure he stayed asleep. There was no telling what would happen if he woke up in front of his guards, and sounded the alert.



We followed McMahon into the building. He gave the guards a wave to let them know he saw them before he went to the four lift doors at the back of the lobby. He walked down to the last one in line and pressed the button.



The doors slid open. We stepped inside the metal box. McMahon pressed the stop button as the doors closed. He took out his key ring and inserted a key into a hole under the buttons. The rear of the cab opened to reveal a darkened room. We stepped into the space and let the door shut behind us. McMahon put his hand on a square reader on the back wall of the room. The wall slid out of the way to let us into his office.



He went to his desk and powered up his screen. I noted he needed a thumb on a scanner on his screen to open it for use. I put him to sleep in his chair. Omes rolled him out of the way so we could use the screen.



Omes started by opening every file on the screen. He scanned each one quickly. He frowned at what he found.



"McMahon has his fingers in every criminal operation across the world," said Omes. "He has agents in every country. His wealth is beyond belief."



"Now that we have access to it through this screen, what do we do with it?," I asked. I rubbed my ear as I kept an eye on the room, door, and McMahon.



"I don't know," said Omes. "Who do we trust with this?"



"Billy Lee and Costello," I said. "That stupid mutt wanted to be in on this. He will be angry to know we didn't give him a chance."



"He couldn't do what we needed to do," Omes said. "He would have lost his badge just taking McMahon like we did. We're looking at abduction if this comes out."



"We still should let him know," I said. "He can try to get Hierath to cover some of this."



"We're talking about having whole regions of police trying to arrest members of this organization," said Omes.



"I don't have a problem with that," I said.



Omes tapped the top of the desk as he considered what to do.



"We can't call them," he said. "We have to put this out without anyone knowing it was us."



"That won't stand up in court," I said.



"It's the best we can do," said Omes. "As soon as we tell anyone what we found, they are going to ask how we found it. Then we will have to answer questions we can't answer. And Sir Ralph will want to protect his employer from any evidence getting out."



"So how do you plan to do this?," I said.



Omes looked at the files. He closed them after saving them to a file. He duplicated the file and sent them across the wire. He stepped back when the screen notified him that his message had reached his list of contacts across the world.



He looked across the desk. He smiled when he found a storage cube. He put that into the side of the screen. He loaded the files on that, and then ejected it. He put the cube in his coat pocket.



"We can't guarantee that any of our allies will open the files," said Omes. "But we have enough information to ruin things for our friend on our own."



"I would love to talk to Backstabber about this," I said.



"If he's smart, he will avoid talking to you at all," Omes said.



"He's not that smart," I said.



The door opened on the office. We took cover behind the desk. Who could be entering the office now? Lucy McMahon stood there with the light behind her.



"Father?," she said. "What are you doing here?"



McMahon snapped awake. He blinked his eyes.



"Lucy?," said McMahon. "Where am I?"



"You're in the office," said the daughter.



"Omes," said McMahon. He stood up. "I was at the dock. There was a fight."



"What do you mean Omes?," said Lucy.



"He and his stupid cat are behind this," said McMahon. He looked at the opened screen. Omes and I pushed deeper under the desk. "We have to kill them now."



Omes frowned. I could see his brain burn with anger. I doubted he wanted to take things peacefully now.



We needed the McMahons to leave. When they did, we could sneak out from under the desk and try to walk out of the building. If they found Shreevy outside, the cab driver would be in danger.



We needed to escape from this situation.



I put them both to sleep. I rubbed my ear as they collapsed to the floor. I walked out of our hiding place and headed for the front door. Omes followed, holding on to his hat.



"That was some bad luck," I said. I paused inside the lift. We had to open the other door, and cross the lobby. Hopefully the guards wouldn't shoot at us when we ran for our lives.



Omes pulled his skeleton key from his coat. He inserted that into the room keyhole. He turned it to close the rear of the cab up. He pressed the open button for the lift. The doors opened for us to leave.



I kept an eye on the guards as we walked toward the front door. The McMahons would be sleeping things off, but if they sent out an alert before we got clear, we were fighting.



Omes opened the door for us. We stepped out. No one tried to stop us.



"Walk naturally to the cab," Omes said. "No one is coming after us."



"Not right now," I said. "McMahon knows it was us that took his files. He'll take steps to get rid of us."



"We'll have to be extra careful until we know what's going to happen," Omes said. "If we're lucky, they'll be dodging the Crown instead of looking for us."



"Back home?," I asked. I couldn't wait to get back to Twenty Two Bee.



"It's the only thing we can do while we wait for the fallout to settle," said Omes. "I imagine tomorrow will be eventful for people other than ourselves."



"The McMahons will deny what was in those files," I said.



"That's fine," Omes said. "The newspapers will either dig into things, or they won't. Metropole might be paralyzed by the list of officers that were taking payouts. Her Majesty's ministers might have to face the wrath of the Crown. We can't control any of that. The only thing we can control is the bank account that I looted to pay our expenses out of the various bank accounts that McMahon's illegal monies were flowing into from his various networks."



"How will we explain our sudden wealth?," I asked.



"The same way the people who were indentured for debt will explain how their debts were paid so they are free to go," said Omes.



4

I sat in the sun window the next day. I watched the street as Omes roamed the kitchen. He had decided to make us lunch. We had told Addison the whole story of our night's adventures and that he should watch out for anyone brave enough to come into Time Village looking for us.



There were things that could rip up his anchor and bar him from reality. We didn't want him to be banished from the world for something we had done.



The screen buzzed. Omes and I let it take a message. We didn't want to talk to anyone at the moment. Eventually the Duchess would come by, or Metropole would send officers to collect us. Unless McMahon tried to press charges on us, we were ready to deny everything we had done the night before.



The only two things that could link us to the flood of data sent out from the secret office was the man McMahon was getting ready to kill on the dock. He might have seen us when we rescued him and said anything. And Shreevy might turn us in if the reward was high enough.



I imagined Costello would be angry that we didn't call him. I agreed with Omes. There was no way that he could help us without some kind of legal framework to operate in.



He would have tried to arrest us so we couldn't break into McMahon's office.



On the other hand, he might have been able to put McMahon in jail if he had been there to see them getting ready to throw their prisoner into the river.



"Come and get it," Omes called from the kitchen.



I hopped to the visitor's couch, and then to the kitchen door. I sniffed the air. I smiled. The smell of fish filled the air.



"It's tuna casserole," Omes said. "I thought it would be something we could both enjoy."



"It smells wonderful," I said. "Thank you."



"It wasn't a problem," Omes said. "I'm not quite sure I have enough tuna, or cheese, but I think it will be all right."



"It looks good," I said.



Omes put the casserole dish on a wooden platter to keep it from burning the table. He placed plates for us. He poured me a bowl of milk, and got out two bottles of mead for himself. He took a serving spoon to the casserole and placed two decent chunks on our plates.



"Let's eat," said Omes. "This time tomorrow, we'll be up to our ears in unfriendly investigators and vengeful criminals."



"I already warned Elga to keep an eye out," I said. Elga Spangler and Weyland were the only other chinks in my armor as far as I could see. If someone grabbed them, hurt them, I would do terrible things to get them back.



I wasn't worried about Addison since his ability to dip in and out of reality would put a damper on plans to hurt him.



Omes was the biggest target of any of my friends. I tried to keep an eye on him, but eventually he would have to take care of himself. I couldn't be his protector all of his life.



"We have an official carriage coming up the street," said Addison. "Do you think it's the Duchess?"



"Maybe," said Omes. "I sent her a copy of McMahon's files since she rules the Quarter, and has influence elsewhere."



"She's going to want answers," I said.



"I don't have any for her," Omes said. "Anything we say will get the three of us in trouble, and maybe Shreevy too. Silence and pretended ignorance is our only course at the moment."



"It's hard being a vigilante seeking justice," said Addison.



"The Duchess of Alsance is at the dock," said Addison. "I'm letting her in."



Omes stood and went to the kitchen door. He ushered the Duchess in and pulled out a chair for her at the table.



"It's only a casserole," said Omes. "But you're welcome to eat with us."



"That would be lovely," said the Duchess. "Some kind of fish?"



"Tuna," Omes said. He got a third plate down and set it in front of her. He gave her the unopened bottle of mead he had planned to drink himself. He cut a corner of the casserole out for her and put it on her plate. He supplied a fork last. "What brings you by, Your Grace?"



"My office received an anonymous file from a secret server last night," said the Duchess. "My staff has been running down the entries. They tell me other agencies have also received the same file, and are doing the same thing."



"I am not very good with electronic searches, Your Grace," said Omes. He took a bite of his food. "I expect you want me to find out where the file came from?"



"I suspect you know where the file came from already," said the Duchess. She tasted the casserole and nodded. "This is very good. Let's not fence, gentlemen. There was a battle on the river. A witness said that Luther McMahon had planned to throw him in, but a boy and a cat had stopped the execution and took McMahon with them. And then an hour later, files indicating the McMahon family had been making payoffs and laundering money among other crimes is conveniently sent to my office, every police agency in the country, and the newspapers. So let's have something that looks like the truth."



"I tracked down the McMahons from their use of a slingshot during the Excelsior case," said Omes. "I identified Luther McMahon from his attempt to kill Witsend and me in that warehouse you let me search, and the call he made to Geoffrey Windershins's team of thieves. We followed McMahon out to the river and took him while they were busy. Then we used him to open his secret office in his building and disseminated the files."



"And you didn't want people to know this because?," asked the Duchess.



"Because we committed crimes to get the information which could never be used in court to prove McMahon did anything," I said. "And he tried to create at least one plague that we know about."



The Duchess worked on her casserole and mead as she thought. We had helped her in the past, but she had no reason to become our accomplice in breaking in to McMahon's system.



"The admissibility of the evidence gathered is not something I can say anything about," said the Duchess. "The man you saved has backed up some of the file's claims. That was enough to force the McMahons to flee. Metropole is looking for them."



"I'm sure they will find them without Backstabber getting in the way," I said.



"Sir Ralph hasn't been removed yet," said the Duchess. "They are still going through his financial statements."



"Hasn't been removed yet?," I said. I couldn't believe my ears.



"The financial squad is comparing what you sent out to what he has from his lands," said the Duchess. "He has been suspended pending a motion."



"So we still have to deal with him," I said.



"I think you two should wait and see what the legal effort will be," said the Duchess. "The city is awash with the news. Some of the people you have exposed are trying to make deals to save their own skins."



"So we have done some good," said Omes.



"As long as this remains between us, there should be no problems for you two," the Duchess said. "I think that you should come to me before you do something like this again. I could have gotten you permission to do what you've done without it."



"We doubted we had legal grounds to make such a plea," said Omes. "Identifying the man from the slingshot seemed too fraught with complications for a court order to carry out a plan of attack."



"It wouldn't been left to a court," said the Duchess. "I would have approved the action under my authority as a peer."



"Seriously?," I asked.



"Yes," said the Duchess. "I do have the defense of the Industrial Quarter in my purview. That's the only reason I am not throwing you two in irons at this moment."



"I thought it was because we invited you to dinner," said Omes.



"No, that's a bonus for me," said the Duchess. "I want both of you to know that I am willing to turn something of a blind eye to your investigations, but if you uncover something like this again, come to me. I will help you straighten things out without letting you take on more danger than you can handle."



"Thank you," said Omes.



I rubbed my ear.



"I will let you both know if Sir Ralph is removed," said the Duchess. "An internal panel will be convened and someone will be picked to take over for him while we discuss what to do."



"I know what to do," I said.



"Cutting out his heart is not an option, Doctor," said the Duchess. "Be reasonable."



The Probability Bridge Fall

1

I reached the office an hour before we opened. I looked in the window of the door. Marcia Crona spotted me and waved. She levered her round body out of her chair and walked around the counter to open the door for me. She smiled at me as I walked in.



"Good morning, Doctor," she said. She emitted brightness in her manner. Patients loved dealing with her. She tended to get on my nerves.



"Is Elga here?," I asked. Elga Spangler was my personal assistant and nurse. A lot of my practice depended on finding problems in people and trying to fix them. My partner, Weyland, dealt with children on his side of the office.



"No," said Marcia. "She hasn't called in either."



Elga almost always beat me to the office. It didn't feel right that she wasn't there yet.



I stepped in my consulting room and jumped up on the counter where the screen was positioned. I powered it up and dialed Elga's place. Maybe she had missed her alarm.



No one answered. I didn't like that at all. Elga's never failed to answer her screen since I've known her.



I rubbed my ear as I considered what I should do. I decided that I should push my appointments back a day, and go to Elga's place to see what was going on myself.



I decided to call my roommate and ask him to meet me at Elga's. If there was a problem, he could help me out while I tried to figure out what was going on.



I headed back to the reception desk and jumped up on the wooden top. Marcia raised her eyebrows at me.



"I need you to reschedule my appointments," I said. "If they really need to see a doctor, have Weyland go over their tests and reschedule for another day."



"Emergencies?," Marcia asked.



"Send them to Angels of Mercy and have them checked in," I said. "I am going to go down and see what's going on with Elga, so I don't know how long I will be."



"Got it," said Marcia. "I will make notes of the new appointments for you on your calendar."



"Thank you, Marcia," I said.



I went back to my office. I jumped on the counter and dialed home. Omes should still be there. There was still some fallout from our last case so he hadn't left the house for a while.



A new case might stir up the hound's blood in him.



"Hello, Witsend," said Omes. "What's going on?"



"I need you to get a cab and meet me at Elga's," I said. "She hasn't come in to work, and she hasn't called."



He nodded. Foul play wasn't out of the question, but it was something that could be ruled out. He would be able to do that with a glance, and track down where she had gone.



We hadn't heard from Luther McMahon and his brood. This might be an opening gambit to some kind of revenge.



"I'll be there as soon as I can get transport," said Omes. "Don't do anything until we meet."



"If McMahon, or Backstabber, is behind this, they will suffer," I said. The Duchess of Alsance had asked me not to go for Backstabber because he was being reviewed in the light of his unreported financial success. That would change if he had hurt Elga, or her kids. I would grind him down until his metal joints screamed for oil.



"I understand, but let's start with step one," said Omes. "I'll meet you at Elga's. We'll look around and make sure that she's not overslept, or had some emergency where she couldn't send you a message. We'll expand out from there."



"All right," I said. I cut the call and rubbed my ear. I didn't want to think something had happened to Elga. She was one of the very few lynchpins of my life. I couldn't afford to lose her.



All of our allies in Metropole had been reassigned to other places. They couldn't help us with this.



Not all of our allies, I thought. There was still Armed Response.



I wondered if they would help me get things done.



I dialed Metropole headquarters. The operator looked amazed to see me. Maybe she didn't deal with a lot of cats. Maybe that was her natural expression.



"I would like to talk to Leftenant Sherwood in the Armed Response division," I said.



"Hold please," said the operator. The hold bar appeared on the screen while I waited. I rubbed my ear.



"Witsend?," said Sherwood. His craggy face frowned at me. "What can I do for you?"



"I need a favor, Leftenant," I said. "My nurse didn't come in to work. I was wondering if I could get you to send someone around to her children's school and check to see if they arrived."



"How long has she been missing?," asked Sherwood.



"I don't know yet," I said. "I'm meeting Omes at her house to make sure she's okay."



"Got it," Sherwood said. "I'll send Kirk and Bosco over to check on the kids. What's the name of the school?"



"Black Oak," I said. "Their names are Thor and Wilhelmina Spangler. They are blonde, blue eyed, a year or two younger than Omes so about ten and nine."



"All right," Sherwood said. He stuck a cigar in his mouth and lit it. "I'll let you know if there's trouble."



"Thank you," I said. I cut the connection.



I had enough faith in Sherwood that if his men found there was a problem, he would track me down and let Omes and me handle things.



And I didn't doubt his men looking after the kids. They had been fine comrades in arms, and I think they were reasonably aware of what I could do to a human body.



And I might have a chance to collect whatever money Kirk was holding in the case of the superintendent's sudden expiration.



I left the examination room and had Marcia let me out. I stood on the sidewalk until I saw a cab. I stopped the horses so I could talk to the driver. He asked me how I was going to pay for the ride since I didn't seem to have pockets. I told him that Omes would pay when we reached my destination.



I boarded the taxi and waited for the driver to crack the reins so we could get rolling across the city. I tried not to think about Elga being in trouble. If something was wrong, it was because of me. I was responsible for her, and I couldn't let anything happen to her.



I wished I knew how Omes was able to calm his thoughts like he did. That would be a useful skill to know now.



I sat up when I saw Elga's place come into sight. It was a yellow cube amidst other colorful cubes at the edge of East Canaan. I saw another cab standing at the curb. The driver waved at his rival as my cab pulled to a stop.



"Wait here," I said.



I bounded from the cab and trotted to Elga's door. It stood open. I slipped inside. Splashes of DNA that didn't belong to the Spangler family marked a few places. Omes stood in the middle of the room, hands raised to frame his view.



"It looks like trouble," he said.



"I asked Sherwood to check on the kids," I said. "How do we get her back?"



"I don't know yet," Omes said. "I'm pretty sure McMahon is behind this. Let's see if we can cut a trail and find Elga."



"He doesn't get a chance after this," I said. "As soon as I see him, I will put him down."



"Are you sure about that?," Omes asked.



I rubbed my ear as I considered. We were already in a precarious position after what we had done with his files. Did I want to cause even more trouble with the Duchess if I did have to murder this fugitive?



I decided to let her know my intentions so we could have it straight before I committed the crime.



I went to Elga's screen and opened it. I pawed in the number for the Duchess's office. I waited. If she didn't answer, I would leave a message.



"Hello, Doctor," said the Duchess. "How are you today?"



"Something has happened to my nurse," I said. "We think it's McMahon. If it is, I am sanctioning him."



Her eyebrows drew down. Sanctioning was the old army word for murdering the enemy while he slept, or was noncombative.



"Are you sure it is McMahon?," she asked.



"Yes, ma'am," said Omes. "I have five, six, footprints. One matches him, one matches his daughter."



"But not his son?," asked the Duchess.



"No, ma'am," said Omes. "I haven't gotten a clear picture of him on the scene."



"All right," said the Duchess. "Is there anything else I should know?"



"I called Armed Response to look after Elga's children at their school," I said. "Sherwood said he would send over two guards for them."



"A Major Ben Fumer is the acting superintendent of Metropole," the Duchess said. "I will call him and let him know you are actively in the area, and looking for Luther McMahon. He will probably assign men to keep an eye out."



"We will have McMahon in the bag before that," I said.



Metropole governed the whole of the Empire. Everything broke down into regions of importance. That made them slower than a boy and a cat who could track people and sanction them.



"I expect a call back," said the Duchess.



"We will, ma'am," said Omes. He cut the connection. "Let's go while the trail is hot."



"Do you think you can find her?," I asked.



"I don't see why not," said Omes. "The problem will be if McMahon has taken steps to neutralize my skill."



"I think he will call us in that case," I said. "This has revenge written all over it."



"I agree," Omes said. "If we can't find him, he will call us to arrange a meeting."



"Elga is his way of insuring good behavior," I said. "He thinks we won't call the authorities."



"We do have a reputation," said Omes. He stepped out in the street and raised his hands as a picture frame. "It looks like two of his cabs were here at the curb. They headed toward the Quarter from what I can tell."



"Why the Quarter?," I asked. "Didn't Metropole seize all of his assets?"



"He might still have assets that they didn't know about," said Omes. "We exposed a list of hidden properties that he had extorted the owners to hand over. That doesn't mean we got them all."



"So he might have another building in the Quarter," I said. I didn't like that. The plan had been to uproot him. Missing something he could use as a home rankled.



And the fact that he was moving through the city easily during a manhunt bothered me as well. Shouldn't someone had reported his movements by now. I realized that we had wounded Metropole exposing the corruption of some of its officers to the public.



Why should the honest members of the organization do their job when their fellows had taken money to look the other way?



Omes paid the cab drivers before he walked along. His brain flared as he took in information I couldn't see. At least the DNA from the drivers of the cabs floated in the air for me to follow his progress.



"I think he is headed for one of the bridges," Omes said. "I think he is heading for Probability."



"Why there?," I asked.



"It's a perfect place to get rid of a body," Omes said. "It's not like he can throw her in the river and not have parts of it wash up."



The Tam was the dumping ground of the Industrial Quarter. Efforts to clean it up had been blocked in Parliament. If you put your hand in it, you would need a doctor like myself to fit you for a prosthetic.



The Probability Bridge looked on different points of history. If you jumped from the railing, you vanished. No one knew where you wound up. No one knew if you could survive the process.



People who have tried to use the bridge to watch history unfold by tying themselves to it have found their ropes or chains separating and dumping them into the flow of time.



The fact that McMahon had headed in that direction with Elga didn't make me happy.



I wondered if Sir Ralph would be with them. I would love to have a second chance with him.



No one would be around to start him up again this time.



We paused when we reached a point where we could see the bridge in the distance. Two cabs had been pulled to block the bridge from all but the most desperate to cross. Clankers stood in their yokes patiently. The bridge blocked a count of the numbers waiting for us. The air around it swirled in a fog of images drifting together.



"Let's go down and see what we can do," said Omes. "Obviously he is expecting us."



2

Omes and I walked down to the cabs. No one was inside them. The clankers didn't move their clockwork bodies.



The bridge blocked my life sense. I didn't like that. We paused at the end of the span. McMahon stood in the middle of the platform. Elga stood with him. Backstabber stood to one side. A group of ten men stood around them in a circle as shields.



"I don't see the daughter, or the son," said Omes.



"Neither do I," I said back. "We're going to have to play this by ear, but I don't like it."



"We want to punch a hole for Elga to get away," said Omes. "Take Sir Ralph first. His armor will be a problem for ordinary weapons."



"He's an idiot," I said. "He could have sat this out and go on with the rest of his life."



"Look at it as an opportunity to collect the money Kirk is holding for you," Omes said. "Let's see what we can do about this."



We walked on the stone work. Letters lit up as we proceeded. They faded as we approached the center of the bridge.



"Time resetting," said Omes. He gestured at the scenes changing in the air over the rails.



I didn't look. All my attention was on the group ahead of us. This was a showdown, and with Elga in the way, I knew they wanted to use her as a lever against us.



"Freeze Elga first," I whispered. "They can't hurt her if she is locked."



"All right," said Omes. He raised his gauntlet.



"You're weapon won't work here, Omes," said McMahon. "That's why I picked Probability Bridge."



Omes tried to fire a wave of frozen time at Elga. Nothing happened that I could see. He dropped his hand.



I tried to grab one of the men with my life sense. I found my mind sliding off of some cover he possessed. McMahon laughed as if knowing what I was trying to do.



"I came prepared for your talents too, Doctor," said McMahon. "All of my men are wearing protection against your mental power. You can't hurt them at all."



"Is Backstabber wearing protection too?," I asked. I turned my gaze on the knight. His face was all the answer I needed. I turned him off. His metal body crashed to the bridge.



"Fix him," demanded McMahon.



"Release Elga," I said. "You already know I have been wanting to kill Backstabber for a long time. If we're going to die, he's going first."



"You don't have anything to gain by holding Mrs. Spangler," said Omes. He put his hands in his coat pockets. "We don't have anything to gain by letting Sir Ralph walk away."



"All right," said McMahon. "We'll trade her for Sir Ralph."



"Come this way, Mrs. Spangler," said Omes. He gestured with one hand. The other hand remained in his pocket.



"I said we'd trade her for Sir Ralph," said McMahon. He gestured for one of his men to shoot my nurse.



Omes threw one of his demon blocks at the crowd. Everyone looked at the block as it flew down the bridge. I demanded for Elga to sprint through the men. I had to get her out of there before something happened.



I forced adrenaline through her system. It was enough for her to crash into the bodyguards from behind and run. I told her arms to come up to cover her face.



The bomb went off in the air. Salt sprayed the villains in a cloud.



I reached out with my life sense. I saw where their shields protected their brains from me. There were other places to grab on and squeeze that the devices didn't cover.



I needed to get Elga clear. The best way to do that was to give every enemy in my reach intestinal problems. I couldn't inflict pain as such, but when that part of your body goes on strike, it's a distraction like no other.



Omes pulled out the other demon block from his coat. He pushed the button and threw it into the crowd. Elga ran past us. Salt dusted her like a trace of snow.



The block went off. White powder dug into the thugs. Some of them were blinded by the display. They still tried to pull weapons to deal with us.



"Run," I ordered Omes. "We have to retreat."



Omes started for the end of the bridge. Elga had reached the end, and waved at us to come on. I gave each of the men more problems as I backed up. I couldn't stop them trying to shoot at us. I could make it hard for them.



McMahon ran at us. I tried to stop him by telling his liver to shut down. I cursed myself for not being bigger. He faltered but he was faster than the both of us, even struggling against his body. He grabbed me by the neck and Omes by the arm. He lifted us off the bridge.



"I may die, but I am certainly going to take you with me," he hissed the words.



He carried us to the railing. The swirl of history pulled on my fur. I tried to grab something else to make him drop us.



If he hadn't that shield, I would have just put him to sleep. Maybe I would have set his face on fire. I couldn't do that as long as I couldn't grab his central trunk.



"I'm sorry, Witsend," Omes said. He hung by his arm. He looked sad at failing. And then I realized he was sad for another reason.



His other hand and arm wore his gauntlet. Mostly he froze people with it. This close he could still use it as a maul at the end of his arm. And McMahon wasn't able to hold him at the end of his longer arm due to the weakness I had inflicted.



Omes struck McMahon in the face with his gauntlet. The metal fist didn't inflict more than a bloody nose, but it was enough for him to drop me. I hit the bridge on my feet, looking for a chance to do something.



The both of them fell over the rail.



I stared at the swirling air. I pressed up to the rail. They had vanished into the mists of time.



What was I going to do now?



Elga picked me up. I don't remember when that happened. She carried me off the bridge. I couldn't help but keep staring at where my friend and enemy had fallen over the side.



Elga carried me down to some restaurant and plopped me in a chair. I stared at the door. I should have went to the bridge alone.



"Hello, Dr. Witsend," said a familiar voice. I snapped out of my fugue to recognize that Elga had brought me down to the Orczy Pimpernel. The old man in the corner sipped his coffee as he looked at me.



I stared at him. He had given us the information we needed to pull McMahon from his perch. We should have done something else. Releasing those files had cost me everything.



"Do you want to talk about it?," he asked.



"No," I said. I rubbed my ear as I considered everything around me.



"I assure you that you will be able to see your young friend again," said the old man. "It's only a matter of time."



"What do you mean?," I asked.



"You know as well as I that Probability Bridge touches different points in time," said the old man. "Your friend is touching down in the past right now. He is making his way back to you even as we speak."



"How do you know this?," I asked.



"Because we talked then, as I am talking to you now," said the old man. "He came to me for advice about his problem. I warned him about the consequences of time travel. He has taken it upon himself not to interfere with what has happened since he has met you, and the outcome of your struggle that led to the formation of the loop he is in."



"So he is alive?," I said. "He really is alive?"



"Yes," said the old man. "He will be a bit older than when you last saw him. There's nothing either one of us can do about that."



"It's good enough that he's alive," I said. "What do I owe for this?"



"Nothing," said the old man. He sipped at his coffee in its ceramic cup. I noted that it had some kind of writing on it, but I couldn't read it. "It's a courtesy between detectives."



"I'm a doctor, not a detective," I said.



"Yes," said the old man. He smiled.



"What about McMahon?," I asked. "Will he be returning too?"



"I'm afraid you've done for him," the old man said. "You possess the only thing that remains of him."



"Witsend?," said Elga. "I called Metropole. They're sending someone to talk to us."



"That's fine," I said. "Elga, this is one of Omes's colleagues, the old man in the corner. Old man, this is Elga Spangler, my assistant and friend."



"It is a pleasure," said the old man. "You may call me Percy, miss."



"Thank you," said Elga. "Are you okay, Doctor?"



"Percy has reassured me of some things, Elga," I said. "We will deal with the bluecoats and then I will get you home. I called Sherwood earlier. He assured me that he would send two men down to look after Thor and Mimi."



"That's a relief," said Elga. She sat down in the other chair. "Thank you."



"It was the first thing we did," I said.



"Would you like some coffee, or ale?," asked the old man.



"I would like some milk and something that passes for food if you don't mind," I said. "I will cover the bill when I get back to the office."



"I could use some tea," said Elga. "Thank you."



"My treat," said the old man. He held up his cup in the air. "Remember what I said. Your friend is making his way back to you. Be patient."



"I understand," I said.



How different could he be? Will he be my friend anymore after this? What did he think of my failure?



Polly came over to the table with a carafe of coffee in hand. She poured a refill for the old man with a shake of her head.



"Dr. Witsend would like one of the egg specials, you decide," said the old man. "He would like some milk with that. Miss Spangler would like some tea. Would you like something to eat, Miss Spangler?"



"No," she said.



"I'll put it on your tab," said Polly. She took the carafe away.



"Metropole will be here soon," said the old man. "I'm afraid you're going to have to eat fast, Doctor."



"I can handle it," I said.



Polly returned with a glass of tea for Elga. She put a bowl down for me. She added milk to it with a flourish.



"Thank you," said Elga. She nudged me slightly.



"Thank you, Polly," I said.



"My pleasure," she said.



The egg special arrived a few minutes later. I wolfed it down as Elga and the old man talked about things I didn't care about at the moment. The blue coats walked in as I tried to lap up the rest of my milk.



The old man raised a hand to wave them over.



I wondered what I was going to tell Addison about this. I hope he didn't turn himself inside out.



I didn't want to lose another friend, and I wasn't sure if Omes would still be my friend after he came home.



The Locked Crate

1

I sat at Omes's desk. I stared at the skull he kept on a shelf. He had tried to see how far he could reach back to imagine who it belonged to before he found it. Looking at it, the faint traces of DNA I picked up belonged to Luther McMahon.



I was glad to have his literal skull in front of me. It didn't make up for losing Omes, but it was a reminder that some people should not be allowed to live.



"Witsend?," said Addison.



"Yes, Addison?," I said. I looked down at where his brain pulsed inside the house.



"We're about to have official business," said my landlord.



I jumped down from the desk, and walked over to the sun window. I squinted into the perpetual sunlight. A bluecoat walked through Time Village. I didn't see many of them here except when they were visiting Omes and me.



And Omes wasn't around to investigate their unsolved cases for them.



I wondered what Metropole wanted from me. I didn't investigate crimes, and only went to my office and came home these days. I either had food picked up by my office staff, or went to the club. The refrigerator was full of food that needed to be thrown out, and I didn't have hands to do it.



I took a closer look. The constable was Kirk. That made things even more mysterious. Kirk belonged to Armed Response, and if any division of Metropole didn't need a consultant, it was Armed Response. They didn't solve crimes, they assaulted criminals.



Kirk carried a box under his arm. I wondered what he was bringing to me. I didn't have Omes's talent for tracking. There was nothing I could do to find the owner if he hadn't left viable DNA on the thing.



"Let him in, Addison," I said.



Ordinarily I would have turned any constable from Metropole away, but Kirk with a box and not shooting some criminal had triggered some innate curiosity. And besides the question of what was in the box, the other obvious question bothered me too.



Why was he bringing his burden to me in the first place?



I heard Addison breaking the spin of Twenty Two Bee. The door opened. Kirk came into the parlor and took everything in.



"I was expecting some kind of stomach thing going on," said Kirk. "This actually is better than what I was imaging."



"Some kind of stomach thing?," said Addison.



"Addison, this is Constable Kirk," I said. "Kirk, this is Addison. Why are you here?"



"I was expecting more chit chat," said Kirk. "Carrying this thing to you was a lot of work."



"What do you mean?," I said. I didn't sense anything living in the wooden chest he still held under his arm.



"This thing came to Central addressed to you," said Kirk. "The chief asked me to bring it down here and give it to you."



"What's in it?," I asked. I was tempted to tell him to take it back to his headquarters and bury it. The thought that someone had sent something to Metropole to be delivered to me stopped me.



Most of my enemies were dead. The living ones would not have sent something through the mail to take care of me.



"Don't know," said Kirk.



I rubbed my ear. Kirk smiled. I wondered how much trouble it would be to cut the smile off of his face.



"Would you like me to open it for you?," Kirk asked. He pulled a knife and held it up in the air.



"That would be fine," I said.



Kirk jammed his knife under the lid. He worked it down. The lid came off so we could look at the contents of the package.



Omes's gauntlet gleamed from the packing. I frowned at it. He had been wearing it when he fell off Probability Bridge. Now here it was two years later. I rubbed my ear.



"Was there a note?," I asked.



"No," said Kirk. "This is your old partner's, isn't it?"



"Yes," I said. I hopped down from the window sill. "And this was sent to Armed Response?"



"Yes," said Kirk. "It was sitting on Sherwood's desk when I reported for Roll Call. He picked me to bring it because we are doing swimming exercises today."



I could see the logic in that. Why would Kirk need to work on his swimming? He could turn into a fish in the water. He was the last one to need to work on swimming fast and far.



And we had worked with Sherwood and his men before. They were dangerous but trustworthy people in my opinion.



I pawed the gauntlet to get a look at it. It certainly felt like Omes's gauntlet. I noted something was inside the wrist part of it. I propped it up with my paw as I looked at the concealed object.



"Looks like a letter," Kirk said. He picked up the gauntlet by the edge of the arm hole. He pulled out an envelope. My name was on the outside of the envelope. "Beauregard, eh? Do they call you Beau?"



"No," I said. "They call me Dr. Please stop making my face feel like someone is dumping lava on it Witsend."



"Touchy," said Kirk. He used his knife on the envelope to get at the contents.



"What does it say, Kirk?," I asked.



"Dear Witsend, I'm sorry for the trouble. I used the gauntlet to stop time for myself. I need you to find me. I am sure that I left the directions on my desk somewhere. Omes."



"Are you sure that's what it says?," I said.



"As sure as you're a mean black cat doctor," said Kirk.



"I can rip your face off," I said.



"You are not proving me wrong," said Kirk.



I went to Omes's desk. I frowned at the lack of paper. He left directions. Where did he leave directions?



If I was Omes, where would I leave directions for myself?



I pawed open the screen. I looked through the file names. Most designated old cases we had solved. I saw a header next to the Muskrat Summoning case for Conley Schwa. I opened that one and read the contents.



"All right," I said. "Bring the gauntlet. I think he had help burying himself."



"My job is done," said Kirk. "I don't see why I have to help you at all."



"Because you still owe me the money for getting rid of Backstabber," I said.



"About that, I didn't think you would really kill him, so I bet the money at the horse races," said Kirk.



"Seriously?," I said. I rubbed my ear. "How much did you lose?"



"All of it," said Kirk. "Don't worry. If I paid you, I would have had to arrest you."



"I don't have the words to express how much I want to make you suffer," I said. "Get the gauntlet and let's go."



"So where are we going?," asked Kirk. He closed the lid on the box and tucked it under his arm.



"Down to the Museum," I said. I led the way to the door. I waited for the house to stop at the dock before I opened the door. Opening it up before then was a bad mistake.



"Why the Museum?," asked Kirk.



"Omes added a note to one of our old cases that a specimen had been donated to the Museum of Natural History," I said. "He didn't usually care about something like that."



"So he might have left something for us to find with this specimen?," said Kirk.



"I don't know," I said. "We're just going to look around. If we find something, we might be able to get Omes back."



"No one has ever come back from Probability Bridge," said Kirk.



"I know," I said. "It's been two years since I last saw Omes. The thing is if he used his gauntlet on himself, he might have set it up so he can be revived by me. All we have to do is trigger the gauntlet and unlock him."



"We have to find him first," said Kirk.



"That's the real problem," I said. "As long as he is timelocked, I won't be able to use his DNA to find him."



"Don't worry, Doc," said Kirk. "If I have to, I will call the boss and have the squad come down and rip the place apart."



I looked at him. We had walked through Time Village's warping houses to the arch at the start of the road down.



"It's the least I can do for spending your money," he said. He grinned at me.



"Let's get a cab," I said. "I don't feel like riding the Tube down to the Royal Boulevard," I said.



"No problem," said Kirk. He stepped in the road and held up a hand in front of the first carriage he saw. He lifted me up to the bench before climbing up after me. The driver looked at us with drawn brows.



"What's going on?," demanded the passenger. "You can't just board my carriage."



"I'm commandeering this vehicle in the name of the law," said Kirk. "I have an emergency that I am taking this doctor to so it can be handled. Take us to the Museum of Natural History right now."



"I won't allow it," said the passenger.



"Go to sleep," I said. He started snoring in his seat. "Driver, I suggest you start driving, or you will be walking."



"You heard the cat," Kirk said. "Get these horses going."



The driver flicked the reins and the horses started pulling the carriage forward. He tried not to look at us. I was fine with that. Kirk settled in and fell to sleep on the bench. I rubbed my ear.



The driver drove through East Canaan, taking us where I had killed the hellhound with the help of some veterans that happened to be in the area, and then the Pimpernel.



I hoped the old man in the corner was right, and this was Omes finally coming home.



I missed my friend. I didn't want to admit it, but I did. I wondered how he had spent the years since his vanishing into time. Had he gone into solving crimes some other place? Had he tried to save the day somewhere? Was he all right after everything he must have experienced falling through time?



"That's the Museum up ahead on the right," said the driver. He nodded toward the cube of a building with its round portico in the front and its small plaza with a statue of a black tiger.



"Thank you," I said. "The city owes you a debt of gratitude. Take your master wherever he has to go."



"I'll do that when he wakes up," said the driver. He pulled to a stop at the edge of the plaza.



"Wake up, Kirk," I said. I leaned on him to see if I could push him off the bench. He awoke instantly. "We're here. Let's go."



"I'm going," said the bluecoat. He slid down the side of the carriage. He took a moment to look around. "Where do we get started?"



"Let's go inside and look around," I said.



2

We walked across the plaza. I wondered about the giant cat, but I didn't know any cats with an ego that big. Kirk opened the door for me so we could take in the entrance area.



The first thing I looked at was the map of the building. We didn't have any idea where we should go. I had hoped that the map would give us some kind of clue.



A counter with a young lady sitting behind it was to the right of the map. Information had been spelled across the front of the counter in brass letters.



Display cases formed aisles behind the information booth and map. Rooms led off that great hall. Stairs led to the other floors at either end of the foyer formed by the counter and map. I noted two more at the other end of the display cases.



"What do you think?," asked Kirk.



"Let's look around," I said. "I doubt Omes left a message for me. Other people are still looking for him."



"You got a point," Kirk said. "We never found McMahon's spawn."



"They had enough money left over to go anywhere they wanted," I said. "Neither was at the confrontation on the bridge."



"Left their old man in the lurch?," said the bluecoat.



"I think he wanted to them to be safe while he took his revenge," I said. I led the way through the display area of the great entrance hall. The clear cases weren't big enough to hold a boy Omes's size.



It took us some hours to go through the building. We searched through every display that we could. I didn't see anything that could hide a boy. We walked back to the foyer as the museum staff herded sightseers out. Kirk just waved the usher on without looking at him.



If Armed Response got an alert for the Museum, a young man in a double breasted shirt with the place's monogram better have armed himself to stop the invaders from blowing a hole through a wall with explosives. He better make himself bulletproof too on top of the other.



"Did you see anything?," I asked.



"I saw a couple of places I could stash a body," Kirk said. "I made notes so we can take another look at them."



"Really?," I said. Kirk grinned at me. "What places?"



"There's a sarcophagus that is closed to touching in the Eban section," said Kirk. "There's a couple of other places in that room I could stuff a kid in with no problem."



"What other places did you see?," I asked. I noted the sarcophagus but I thought Omes would hide his body somewhere else than inside that box.



"There was some storage chests near the animal pens," said Kirk. "I saw a small pool that would hold a body if you chained it down."



"The only thing I saw was a couple of rooms saying they were closed for renovation," I said.



"He could be in the walls if he was frozen and then covered up," Kirk said.



"I know," I said. "How do you want to handle this? We're going to have to open all those spaces without interference from the curator."



"I doubt that's possible unless you want to come back after hours," said Kirk.



"We might have to," I said. "These ushers are going to fight any attempt to cross the rope line."



"I could see if the boss is in and have him send the squad down to help us out," said Kirk. "They might like a chance to improve their brains."



"I doubt that," I said.



None of the troopers we worked with looked like the types for reading books and speculating on how bird wings worked.



"What do you think?," Kirk asked. The set of ushers glared at us.



"I think they want us to leave so they can close up and go home," I said. "Let's do that. We can come back later and look around without their interference."



"That requires us breaking in after hours," said Kirk.



"I am good with that if you are," I said. "We need to get a closer look at the exhibits and they aren't going to let us touch them."



"I can see that," said Kirk. "Let's get something to eat before we do that. Committing illegal acts of villainy always makes me hungry."



"Let's go down to my club," I said. "We can eat there while we plan on how to get in."



"I can get us in," said Kirk. "I have to screen Sherwood. He might want to send in the whole squad for a breaking in exercise."



"You can do that from the club," I said. "Let's go before we have to start fighting the ushers."



"I can do that too," said Kirk.



"I doubt Sherwood would approve of you attacking some helpless civilian," I said. I headed for the door.



"I do it all the time," said Kirk. He held the door for me. "Is this club swanky?"



"No," I said. "It's for veterans, and their dependents. I can swing a guest."



"I could do with some steak and eggs right now," Kirk said. He looked back at the building.



"I am partial to their grilled salmon," I said.



"You would be," said Kirk.



We walked down to the club. We needed to eat up time before we committed our burglary. There was no point breaking in while the staff was on duty. That meant assaulting them.



I didn't think Kirk had a problem with that, but I wanted to keep collateral damage down until I knew where Omes was, and how to get him out of trouble.



I doubted that he had foreseen any problems hiding his body inside the Museum would bring. I assumed that he had figured some way to freeze himself and send the gauntlet to Metropole. I couldn't figure out how from what I had seen in the place.



I doubted he had trained one of the animals to do it, because I didn't see any with hands, but I could be wrong.



I knew there were some intelligent animals that hid what they could do so they could take advantage of human gullibility.



Maybe he wasn't at the Museum at all. Kirk and I might be wasting our time.



I decided we had to take another look around. If we couldn't find him, maybe I could ask the old man in the corner for some help.



"You ready to go?," Kirk asked. He pushed his plate away.



"Yes," I said. "I hope we're not looking in the wrong place."



"In the absence of directions, we're doing the only thing we can do," said Kirk. "Personally I would love to have the squad come by and help us tear the place apart. The boss said we're on our own."



"Let's try not to get caught," I said. I waved the waiter over. I paid for our meal out of my club account. And then we started the long walk back to the Museum.



We paused by the big tiger statue as we looked for an easy way into the place. I noted a light moving around. Maybe a security guard in motion walking his rounds. I rubbed my ear as I thought.



Kirk leaned on the tiger as he watched the plaza for signs of others on the hoof. I could feel his eyes searching the night air.



"How do we get in?," I asked myself. "I don't see a way unless we break a window."



"Getting in is the easy part," Kirk said. "Finding your boy is the hard part."



"Really?," I asked.



"Really," said Kirk. "Follow me and look important."



I didn't think that would be too hard to do.



He walked up to the front door and hammered it with his fist. He looked at the light moving upstairs. He looked at the door and frame again. He pushed the call button beside the door.



I sat at the base of the door. I wondered what he was doing calling the guard to the front door. Maybe he had some kind of an attack to put other humans asleep like I did.



Kirk waited for a second before he pushed the door bell again. He held it longer this time.



"Why are you pushing the bloody bell, you fecking fool?," said the guard when he opened the door and looked at the both of us on the entrance floor. "The place is closed."



"I want you to look at this uniform," said Kirk. "Then I want you to look at this badge on this uniform. And then when you've done both those things, I want you to get out of the way and shut up until my assistant and I get done looking around."



"Your assistant?," said the guard. "I don't see a fecking assistant."



"He means me," I said. "Go to sleep."



The guard collapsed inside the door. Kirk had to drag him out of the way and tuck him up beside a suit of armor. He closed the door so we could have our run of the place.



"I need to learn how to do that," said Kirk. "I wouldn't have to shoot people except when I wanted to shoot them."



"You have to be able to map neurons in your sleep," I said. "Where do you want to start?"



"Let's start on the top floor," said Kirk. "We can work our way down to the storage area in the basement."



"There's a storage area?," I asked. "I don't remembering seeing that."



"You wouldn't because it's underneath the place and holds all the things that aren't on display," Kirk said.



"Let's look at that first," I said.



Kirk took the guard's ring of keys and led the way through the museum to a door off the curator's office. He tried the door, then tried the keys until he found one that opened the door. He turned on the lights as he led the way down to what I would consider to be a warehouse space as deep as the space upstairs.



I frowned at the vast array of boxes that spread out in front of me.



"This is a big area to search," said Kirk. "That's why I wanted to search upstairs first."



"He's here somewhere," I said. I smiled at the traces of DNA in the air. They were old but still floated like dust. "We need to put ourselves in his shoes."



"He's older so he won't fit in any box that is your size," Kirk said.



"He needs something to close the box after he freezes himself," I said. I started walking the aisle, looking for the traces.



"He needs something to send the gauntlet to Central after freezing himself," said Kirk.



"He needs something like that mail chute," I said. I moved over there to start the real search for my friend.



3

I started my search by looking for any crate that might have my name on it. The gauntlet had been mailed to Metropole. Omes might be in a box labeled the same way.



"This is a fancy waldo, Witsend," said Kirk. He indicated metal arms on the wall next to the mail chute. "I bet it picks up stuff and chucks it out of the museum all the time."



I examined the waldo and thought for a moment. I looked at the base of it. A stack of crates rested in a neat pile. Whenever the Museum decided to ship them, the waldo would pick them up one by one and slide them down the chute. A truck would receive the load outside the museum.



I wondered if the waldo could be programmed to do other things beside stacking boxes.



I felt a web of thought at the entrance of basement. I leaped up on the track and made a silence motion to Kirk. He nodded. I dropped down and took cover behind a row of boxes marked Aegyptic Cornophagus.



Kirk dropped behind boxes on the other side of the aisle we had walked down to get to the chute. He knelt behind his cover, and pulled a pistol from an ankle holster.



The stuff of life wafted into the room. I regretted not shutting off the lights now. That gave our enemies an advantage. I waited for a clear view.



If they were museum staff, I expected to take a look around, cut off the lights, and go back upstairs. If they were there for nefarious purposes, I expected them to start searching the stacks for whatever they had come to take.



I squinted when I saw who was leading the group of men into the basement. Lucy McMahon walked among her hirelings, black hair tied up, face painted for clandestine work, dressed in dark clothing.



"Spread out," said Lucy. "We need to find that crate, and that boy. Once we have them both, then we can get rid of him, and take our belongings."



I rubbed my ear. Had Omes planned a rescue, or was he getting the gauntlet away so no one could get whatever he had taken? How did we want to handle this? If we had a gunfight in the storage space, the Museum would lose some classic treasures. If we let them hold the artwork and scientific displays hostage, we were as good as dead.



I doubted Lucy had forgiven my part in the death of her father on Probability Bridge.



I counted the unfriendlies as they started into the basement. I looked at Kirk. He glanced my way. I held up one paw twice. He held up two hands with eight fingers extended. I nodded. He nodded back. He made a spinning motion with one finger and then a chop of his hand. I went down to the edge of my cover and looked for another spot I could use for an ambush.



I knew Kirk was doing the same thing. His motion had meant go around and flank. I hoped that I could inflict some pain on these goons to keep them out of my fur.



I got to the edge of my range. I tried to grab the nearest goon with my life sense. My mind slid off. I paused. She had fitted her goons with shields to thwart my ability.



I had been caught by surprise on the bridge. I knew how to get around that piece of hardware now. There were other ways to hurt someone other than the central nervous system.



Sometimes all you needed was chili on top of rice and beans for dinner.



I decided to make the nearest man sick to his stomach. I didn't want him so sick he couldn't move. I wanted him sick enough to abandon the search and head for the nearest bathroom.



He clutched his stomach and ran toward the stairs. The enemy watched him with suspicion. They must have been told their shields would protect them from me. I usually liked to take the brain and mold it, but I could do other things.



I crept forward. Lucy wasn't going to accept a deluge of sick hirelings without thinking I was around. I gave her points for being as sharp as her father. Metropole had been looking for her for the last two years and never found a clue where she could be hiding.



I wondered how Omes had found her. I realized he had a head start. Once he landed in the past, he could keep track of the whole clan. He just couldn't interfere until his younger self fell off the bridge.



No one knew how time worked. No one sane wanted to screw it up for everyone else. It made me think who had the bright idea for random time travel by jumping off a bridge into the Tam. That was an excellent way of dying if you hit the water near the present.



I watched as two of the henchmen came closer. I squeezed between two stacks of boxes and waited. All I needed was a clear shot.



I examined my two targets. I realized the mind shields had a plug to fit them inside their protectees. Anyone who wanted to use them had to have a partial datajack. The thing is you could cut something like that off if you knew what you were doing.



And I knew what I was doing.



I went to work on the left hand man. It took me a moment of hard work to trip the cut off for his shield. I let him advance so I could use him to target his friends.



I didn't have to shut all of the shields down if I could grab one. I concentrated, thinking about the nerves I was going to have to use. I rubbed my ear in my cramped duck blind. Then I went to work.



The target grabbed the pistol he was wearing. He shot his friend in the leg. The man went down with a scream. I turned my puppet around. I had sightings on three of the remaining targets. I pulled the trigger three more times. The men went down with flesh wounds. The remainder shot my weapon three times in the torso. I stopped the bleeding so he would live if he was taken to the hospital soon.



Kirk stood up from cover and shot the others in the back. He did that so fast that he dropped back behind cover before anyone got a look at him, or could fire back.



I counted up our victims as I tried to think what I should do next.



I had sent one to the bathroom. Four went down thanks to my meddling. Then number six was shot by his two remaining friends. Then Kirk shot them. That should only leave Lucy.



I wonder how she had taken the spat of gunplay.



I took a moment to center on her. She was retreating to the stairs. If she made it out of the building, she could go back to hiding again.



I wondered if she was armed.



I pulled myself out of my hiding spot and jumped on a wooden box. I wanted to be able to look her in the face.



"Hello, Miss McMahon," I said. I rubbed my ear. "What brings you out of hiding?"



"You," said Lucy. She had a gun in her hand. She didn't point it at me. "I should have known you would be trying to find the pass codes for my father's organization."



"I'm here for something else," I said. "Omes was the detective."



"Why are you here?," said Lucy.



"Someone sent Omes's gauntlet to Metropole," I said. "I'm here to see if his body is here."



"Why should I believe that?," she asked.



"Because Armed Response is here in the building with me," I said. "You can leave if you want. I don't care about the rest of your business. All I want is to know what's buried in this place."



"So I can just walk away?," she asked.



"Your hirelings will have to stay," I said. "I can insure some good care for them."



"What about my personal files?," she asked.



"What about them?," I asked. "I don't care about them and Kirk can't read. Leave them. I only care about figuring what else could be here."



"All right," said Lucy. She backed up from her position. She did point the weapon at me. She focused so much of her attention on me she excluded Kirk coming in and knocking her out with a solid punch.



"Man, this is the last thing I need," said Kirk. He manacled Lucy to one of the wounded. "I'm going to have to call this in."



"Watch out for the one I sent to the bathroom," I said. I jumped down off the box I used for my stage. "He might be still in there."



"I got him," Kirk said. He went upstairs to deal with the last intruder. I disconnected the shields and put everyone to sleep. I made sure to stabilize the ones that I could. Kirk had put his targets down fatally.



I went back to my search. The waldo made me think that Omes had planned to mail himself. That still left some mysteries about what was going on.



I checked the labels of the crates. None of them were addressed to the Metropole headquarters. None had my name on them.



What else would Omes use as a cover identity? I cast about as I looked at the boxes. I saw one that said Costello on it. I paused. Lou Costello was printed on the label in a shaky hand.



It couldn't be that simple. I looked at the stack. The boxes were supposed to be placed on the mail chute and sent out. I realized the museum had sent the gauntlet first while moving the boxes around to send each thing in a group. The Costello box sat at the bottom of the pile with the address for Metropole. It was the only one marked that way.



I supposed my friend had been shifted to the side out of incompetence more than anything else.



Kirk came back downstairs. He looked around at the sleeping bodies.



"I'm glad I don't have to clean this mess up," he said.



"Can you help me with this stack of boxes, Kirk?," I said. "I want the one on the bottom."



Kirk went to the stack and tried to lift the top one. He gave that up as a bad job when he couldn't budge it.



"I think we're going to need the waldo to move this," he said.



"Can you operate it?," I said. I couldn't.



"I think so," said Kirk. He went to the control pad next to the robot arms. He turned the power on. The hands at the end of the arms clicked their trio of fingers together.



"All right," said Kirk. "Let's see how this works."



It took him until constables came flooding into the room to lift the top box and put it down next to the stack. Encouraged, he moved the rest with little grace. The Costello box showed us a blank face. He tried to open the lid, but couldn't pry it open with his knife.



"It's timelocked," I said. "Get the gauntlet."



Kirk pulled the metal hand out of the box we had carried into the museum. He reached in and triggered it despite being unable to fit his whole hand in. The wave struck the Costello box and it became realer to me.



"I think we can pop the lid now," he said. He put the gauntlet down and worked on the crate with his knife. He jerked the lid away with a small amount of effort.



"This your boy?," Kirk asked. "He looks older."



"Unlock him and we can make sure," I said.



Omes did look older. He had aged six years from the look of him since he had fallen off the bridge. His web came to life after Kirk unfroze him. He smiled when he saw us.



"Witsend! It's good to see you after all these years," he said. "Constable Kirk. Thank you for helping me."



"We're going to need an explanation," said Kirk. "The doc shot four or five guys, and Lucy McMahon is sitting in a pair of cuffs."



"Help me out of the box," said Omes. "I will be glad to explain everything."



4

Omes bustled around the kitchen. He had thrown away the bad food, restocked, and had started cooking a meal for us and our guests. He didn't wear his customary white, but had dressed in a Colonial flag with its eagle and stars for a shirt, and black pants. He smiled as he went about his business.



I watched from my chair as he worked on the meal.



"I picked up some things from the market," he said. "I hope the recipe turns out all right."



Costello came in the room and sat down in the visitor chair. I looked at him. He grinned back at me.



"Cat," he said.



"Dog," I said back. "We're cooking here. Do you mind?"



"No," he said. "I love cooking. It would be great if I had hands to do that."



"How are things in the south, Sergeant?," said Omes. He mixed some ingredients together in a pot of boiling water. He checked something baking in the oven.



"We've closed some smuggling cases, and solved a mysterious death, along with the usual," said Costello. "How does it feel to be back in the old place?"



"Excuse me," said Addison. "I am in the prime of my life."



"It feels good," said Omes. "This is really the only home I have ever had, and Witsend and Addison are my only family."



"Thank you, Omes," said Addison.



"Thank you," said Omes. He sniffed the boiling pot. He stirred in some more ingredients.



"What are you cooking?," asked Stroud. He filled the door. "It smells good."



Toby pushed around him and leaned on the table with his big paws. His nose stuck out of his fur and sniffed the air with a sigh of happiness.



"Dog," I said. Why did these two lunkheads have to come with the Metropole people.



"Cat," said Toby. "Sergeant."



"Constable," said Costello. He stood half the size of Toby.



"You two take off," said Stroud. "I would like to talk to my friends."



"All right," said Toby. He sniffed the air one more time. He dropped down from the table and left the kitchen.



Costello jumped down from the visitor's chair and followed.



"You want to tell me what's going on?," said Stroud. He dropped his bulk in the visitor's chair.



"Nothing," said Omes. "I had to sort out a new identity, and travel until it was safe to come home. It took a little longer than I liked."



"They said you fell off Probability Bridge," said Stroud. His mustache stuck out in all directions like an enraged porcupine.



"No big thing," said Omes. "The worst part was letting things happen when I had the solutions to some of my own cases. I couldn't give myself the solutions. That would have changed time in ways that no one could know. It was safer for everyone if I left the city."



"And then you came back," said Stroud. "Constable Kirk told me what happened at the Museum. Was the rigamarole needed?"



"Yes," Omes said. "Lucy has been trying to carry on for her father who vanished into time. I had an eye on things, even from a distance. I stole her pass codes so I could look at what she was doing. I realized that I couldn't escape as long as they had an eye on the Museum so I resorted to the desperate ploy of trying to mail myself out of trouble."



"Instead of mailing his crate, the Museum staff moved it to the bottom of the stack after mailing his gauntlet to Armed Response," I said.



"Witsend and Kirk found me and unfroze me," said Omes.



"Using Costello's name on the label was all right," I said.



"Lucy knew everyone else close to me," said Omes. "It was Costello, or Toby. It seems her intelligence apparatus missed the dogs for some reason."



"Because they're not human," Stroud said. He crossed his arms. "It's a common thing. I've seen it a million times."



"They get overlooked because no one thinks they are as smart as human beings?," said Omes.



"Yes," said Stroud. "I'm sure Witsend has seen the same thing in action."



"Yes," I said. I rubbed my ear. Some people didn't want me to operate on them. They asked for Weyland. He only deals with children and turns away anyone over the age of ten.



"So what are you going to do now?," asked Stroud.



"I don't know," Omes said. "I have enough to retire on now. I could take lazy days to the end of my life."



"What?," said Stroud. I squinted at my friend. His brain flickered as he checked everything he had cooking.



"I'm not getting any younger," said Omes. He dipped some of his brew out. "Here try this."



He handed the spoon to the Inspector. The big man sipped at the broth. He nodded in approval.



"It's good," he said. He handed the spoon back.



"It's almost ready," said Omes. "I'll get plates for everyone. Could you make sure everyone has a drink, Billy Lee. This will take me a couple of minutes to divvy."



"All right," said the Inspector. "Retirement? Hmmph."



The last he said as he left the kitchen.



"Are you really going to retire?," I asked.



"I don't see why not," Omes said. "I could enjoy the city without having to worry about chasing someone down in the dark."



"What did you do while you were hiding?," I asked.



"I helped out my neighbors, traveled and worked on commercial shipping, and learned some small self-defense in case I needed it," he said.



"How did you send yourself the message?," I asked. "Addison would have told me if you had come in while I was out."



"I used the link from the Metropole portal," he said. "I did that before I got into trouble."



"There was a chance I wouldn't have looked for you," I said.



"I know," he said. He shrugged. "It was a chance I took to try to get someone who could help me escape from the situation I was in."



"I'm still mad," I said. "It's been two years in the dark for me and Addison. We thought you had been sent so far back we would never see you again."



"It's hard to explain what we thought would happen if I started interfering in your life again," said Omes. "The old man has been keeping an eye on you for me. Luckily, I didn't have to do a lot for you other than showing Thor how to punch the bullies in his school."



"That was you?," I said. "Thor got sent home for knocking another boy's tooth out."



"Good on him," said Omes.



"Elga punished him for that," I said. "She did not like getting a call from the school that her youngest cub had knocked down another boy on the playground."



"He deserved it," said Omes.



"Be that it may, it got Thor in trouble," I said.



"I'll try to make it up to him some time," Omes said. He pulled all of our plates from the cabinet and carried them into the parlor. We had added a table to hold everyone after moving the visitor couch out of the way.



I waited for him to take the pot of boiling ingredients off the stove top. He picked up two wooden doilies and took them into the parlor first. Then he came back for the pot. He took that in. Then he came for the casserole in the oven. I followed after him when he took that into the parlor.



I went to the sun window and sat in the sill. The sunlight felt good on my fur as I watched Omes and our guests divide up the food. Everyone had brought something to share out.



The table wasn't big enough for everyone, so Kirk and Sherwood and the dogs took their plates away from it. Kirk brought his plate over to the sun window and leaned against the frame.



"What do you think?," he asked through a mouthful of food.



"I think you should chew before you talk," I said.



He smiled slightly.



"I think in a few years, Omes won't need me to watch out for him," I said.



"It's always sad when your kittens grow up," he said.



"It's also great to know they can hunt on their own if you have taught them well," I said. "Thanks for helping me."



"Breaking things and kicking down perpetrators is the best part of the job," Kirk said. "Also I didn't lose all of the money."



I smiled.



The Missing House

1

I sat in the sun window and looked out on the street. Omes and I planned to go sailing later. The Regatta was running in East Canaan. Omes had bought a boat we could race down the river with the rest of the part-time sailors.



He had been gone two years and we were still adjusting to the fact that he had spent six years on his own, and I had spent two being alone, except for my practice and Addison.



And Addison was not going to go down to the club with me to get some grilled salmon.



The screen buzzed on Omes's desk. I squinted at it. Omes hadn't started his detecting again. He seemed content with just going around the city and looking around. The clients had died off after I explained that I wasn't going to look for a lost ring, or follow a spouse around to see if he was mating with someone else.



Who would be calling now? Maybe it was Elga. I waited for it to buzz again. When it did, I hopped down from the window sill and walked to Omes's desk. I hopped up in his chair and turned the screen on with a paw.



"Witsend," said Wendy Maximus. "I need some help. Can you come down to Edge Row?"



"We were going sailing," I said. I could take or leave sailing, but I didn't want to be at someone's beck and call.



I liked to do the beckoning and calling.



"Something's happened to Corwin," Wendy said. "I really need your help."



"I will be right there," I said.



I cut the screen and hopped down. I went to the door and listened for Addison slowing the body of Twenty Two Bee down to a stop in real time. As soon as I heard the thump of landing, I pawed the lever of the door to pull it open.



Omes walked on the street as I stepped off the dock. He wore dungarees and a double breasted shirt. He had traded his bowler for a Colonial hat in the six years he had been gone. He paused when he saw me stepping down from the porch.



"Something wrong?," he said.



"Wendy called and said something had happened to Corwin," I said. "I'm heading up to Edge Row to find out what's going on."



"Corwin?," said Omes. "Was Wendy specific?"



"Not really," I said. I started down the street to the entrance to Time Village. Omes followed behind me with his hands in his pockets.



He didn't ask any questions. I think he had met Wendy twice. Once had been when we were trying to find a buried treasure that had turned into a wind spirit. The other had been at the reunion dinner after I had rescued him from a box in the Museum of Natural History.



Here he was following me into a problem without asking. Some things never changed. Omes hadn't picked up any new cases but he still liked to chase a mystery.



We took the Tube up to East Canaan. We came out of the station and crossed to the other side of the river to take a Tube north to the other side of the Annex. Then we took a cab to the Maximus house on Edge Row.



I paused at the gate. It looked better than the last time we were there.



"It looks better than I remembered," said Omes.



I led the way to the front door. Omes knocked on the door. We waited for Wendy to greet us. I rubbed my ear. Cats watched us from a distance.



Wendy pulled the door open. Relief flooded her face.



"No hugging," I said. "What's going on, Wendy?"



"I don't know," said Wendy. "I think Corwin fell over the Edge. The Army won't tell me anything. I'm hoping you can find him and bring him back."



"Let me call my teacher," I said. "Maybe she can tell us something."



"Karen?," Wendy said.



"Yes," I said. I had introduced them at the dinner. Dr. Karen had come down from the Upper Q with Billy Lee, Barhart, and Toby. "Let me call her. She might know something since she trained Corwin and was keeping an eye on him."



"I'm sorry," she said. She led the way to where she had set up a screen. "Go ahead."



Omes stood to one side, looking around. I didn't know if he could cut a trail into the wilderness beyond the Edge. If he could, that would make finding Corwin easier.



I pawed the numbers for Karen's office. I waited for the call to be answered. A corporal appeared on the screen. He looked too young to be in Karen's office.



"Dr. Karen's Office," said the corporal. "Who's calling?"



"Dr. Witsend," I said. "Is the doctor in? I would like to talk to her about a case that has come up."



"Hold please," he said. The bar of holding appeared on the screen.



I rubbed my ear as I waited on the chair in front of the screen. I hoped Karen could tell me something. If she couldn't, we would have to do things the hard way.



I didn't plan to just give up in the face of adversity. There had to be something we could do with our combined abilities.



"Witsend," said Dr. Karen. "How are things?"



"Wendy Maximus called me to help her find Corwin," I said. "Does the Army know anything I could use?"



"I don't know," said Karen. Her white hair didn't glow like I remembered. She had been my trainer when I had enlisted and she had seemed old then. Now she seemed frail. "I will call down to his post and see if I can get you clearance to look around."



"Thanks, Karen," I said. "Where was he posted?"



"Fort Ross," said the doctor. "I will call down to the commanding officer and see if I can get you inside."



"Thank you," I said.



"Be careful, Fluffy Wuffy," she said. She cut the connection.



"Fluffy Wuffy?," said Wendy.



"She is going to try to clear the way for us," I said. "Let's go down to Fort Ross to see what happened."



"All right," said Wendy.



We left the house and walked through the main gate. I frowned at the lack of cabs. There was never one around when you needed it.



"Let's walk for a bit," said Omes. He looked in both directions before starting off down the avenue of small estates.



"Fort Ross is the other way," I said. I followed him and wondered when he had increased his walking speed.



"He didn't go to the fort," said Omes.



His brain had settled into the neutral flare I associated with his waiting pattern. He had not lost that skill in the last two years he had been gone.



"Do you know where he went?," asked Wendy.



"Not really," said Omes. "His trail goes this way as far as I can see. We'll come across something to show us where he turned."



"Are you sure?," Wendy asked.



"Yes," said Omes. "I assure you I still have the touch. He went this way."



"I'm sorry," said Wendy. "You seem a lot different than the boy I rescued."



"I had six years to think about retiring," said Omes. He paused when we reached a cross street leading into an undeveloped section of Edge Row. "Corwin went this way."



"I don't see any life signs up there," I said. That was always trouble. If you had an area devoid of life, that meant even the insects wouldn't breed there.



"Let's go up and take a look around," said Omes. "It's the least we can do. If there is trouble, we can call Dr. Karen back and she can call Fort Ross for us."



"Corwin is a lot more powerful than I am," said Wendy.



"This isn't about mental and physical power," Omes said. "This is about how much sand in the gears you can be. Something is up there. We should look at it. If we can't get Corwin back, we'll retreat. We don't have to fight to the death."



That not the Omes I knew. Six years had taught him to retreat? The younger Omes would never advocate for that.



I wonder what he had done in that time he had been wandering around.



He led the way up the trail, hands in his pockets. He paused every now and then to look at something on the trail before continuing. Eventually we found a house in the woods.



"Corwin went up to the house," I said. His traces indicated that much.



"Yes," said Omes. He looked around. "Let's knock on the door."



"There's some kind of spirit power here," Wendy said. "I can feel it."



"Maybe that's what attracted the Army's attention," said Omes. "Things drifting from over the Edge is something they have to keep an eye on."



"If Corwin went inside, I can't see him through the walls," I said.



"They're probably blocking your vision," said Omes. "I did a lot of research when I was traveling. Some places put up shells to look normal but anything living inside is prevented from communicating with the outside."



"So we have to get the door open," I said.



Omes nodded. He walked on the porch and knocked on the door. The door swung inward.



2

The house in the woods had a two story plan from the outside, with a parlor/kitchen/dining room on the bottom, bedrooms in a smaller space on top. The room on the other side of the door was a grand hall.



"The space looks too big for the house," said Wendy.



"It might be obscuring its real dimensions," said Omes. He stood on the edge of the doorway. "I don't see Corwin. The house might have covered his tracks."



"I don't see any traces either," I said. "So we have a house actively covering up the presence of a visitor, as well as changing things around."



"I'm going to go in and look around," said Omes. "You two should stay out here in case I get into trouble."



"I am going in too," I said. "Wendy should stay out here since she's the only one who can rescue the three of us."



"All right," Omes said. "We'll need something to keep the door open. Once we're inside, I'm sure it's supposed to close like the bar on a mousetrap."



I looked around. I spotted part of a tree trunk on the ground in front of the house.



"Let's use that," I said. I went down to the trunk. "We can use this to block the door."



Omes nodded. He came down off the porch, picked up the trunk and hefted it just inside the frame. If the door did close, it would hit the trunk before it shut all the way.



"I think the plan is simple enough we can't mess it up," Omes said. He pulled a small bag from his pocket and looked inside. He fished out a small ring. He gave that to Wendy. "If something happens to us, call up to Fort Ross. This will allow them to find our bodies when they examine the house."



"All right," said Wendy. She put the ring in the pocket of her jacket. "Bring Corwin back to me."



"We'll do what we can," said Omes. "Come on, Witsend. Let's see if we can find our missing friend."



We stepped over the door and into the grand hall. I noted the cobwebs and dimming lights as the door tried to close. The trunk stood firm as the door dug into it.



"We won't have long before it figures out how to move our block," said Omes. "Which way should we go?"



"Any way is good when you don't know where you're going," I said. "Do you still carry your lighter?"



"Always," said Omes. He pulled it out of the other pocket from the one with the bag in it. "Which drape do you want to set on fire?"



"The middle one," I said. "I doubt there's a window to the outside behind it."



"If there is, it's probably fake," said Omes. "It would be too easy for its prey to escape if they just found a window and broke out to the real world."



"I agree," I said. I rubbed my ear as he applied the flame from the lighter to the drapes. It smoked but it didn't want to catch fire like we wanted. "Fire resistant."



"We'll see about that," he said.



He pulled out his bag again. He cut the lighter off long enough to pull a small stone from the bag. He put the bag back in his pocket. He held the lighter so the flame would exit the top and bend back like it normally would in one hand and the stone over where the flame would come out in the other.



"What's that?," I asked.



"It's a flame stone," he said. "I picked it up wandering the Colonies. Watch this."



He flicked the lighter. The flame hit the stone. A jet of dragon's breath set the drape on fire. A wail sounded somewhere.



"I had to do some things over there to get along," Omes said. "I got the stone in a trade with a fur trapper for helping him hunt the wildlife. I had to push him down a mountain when he tried to murder some natives."



"I'm sorry I wasn't there," I said.



"You would have pushed him down the mountain sooner," said Omes. He stepped back to admire his handiwork. "I wonder if there is anything else we can burn in here."



"Let's see if there is some furniture we can work on," I said. "We might have to move to another room."



"Let's do that," said Omes. He set another drape on fire as we walked to a door off the grand hall. "I wonder how many more things we can burn before it gives us Corwin."



"We should burn all of it," I said. "This thing is just another vampire that needs to be put down."



"I'm not going to be able to burn all of it," Omes said. He tried the door. It refused to open. "But I will be able to set fire to this door and see if that will let us in the other parts of the house."



"Go ahead," I said. I looked back at the drapes. They emitted a harsh cloud of smoke that gathered at the ceiling. The flames scorched the wooden ceiling as I watched.



Omes directed a jet of flame at the door, turning the knob red with the exhalation. He kept at it for five minutes. Then he stepped back. He waved the lighter to cool it down. He threw himself against the door and knocked the door knob tongue out of the jamb.



"I still don't see where Corwin went," Omes said. "So any path we pick will be as good as any other."



"Same with his life web," I said. "It's a big dead zone around us, but I am sure this house is alive in some way."



"I think the vampire analogy is more correct than you thought," said Omes. "This is a vampire Addison."



"You have to be kidding me," I said.



"No," said Omes. "I'm sure that's partially what's going on."



"And it's not going to give Corwin back unless we hurt it bad enough," I said. I liked the conclusion. Did the house have enough will to hold out while we burned our way through it? What was it doing to Corwin right then?



"No furniture to sit on," said Omes. He led the way through the nearly empty room. Cabinets against the walls made it seem like some kind of storage room. The cabinet doors opened to reveal mummies dragging their wrappings behind them.



"How is this supposed to stop us?," Omes asked the house. He set fire to the mummies and kicked them away when they got too close to us.



"It's stalling us," I said. I rubbed my ear. "It wants us to concentrate on it while it is eating Corwin."



"Maybe a salt bomb could do something," Omes said. "I haven't carried one of those in a while. Let's see what else I have in my bag."



He brought out the small bag. He put the flame stone away as he looked inside the thing. He put his fingers in and pulled out a small vial of reddish amber liquid. He held it in his hand as he searched for something else he could use. He shook his head.



"Everything else is geared toward breaking into places," he said. He put the bag in his pocket. "Let's see what this does."



He flicked the lighter and held the flame under the vial. He watched it as it bubbled under the heat. The color changed to an almost white. He pulled the top off the vial and began pouring the contents in a straight line toward a false window on the other side of the room.



The liquid bubbled against the floor. The bubbling grew we watched. We stepped back as it ate the false wood of the floor. And the more it ate, the more the bubbling grew.



"It's pretty risky since we don't know where Corwin is, but this thing won't eat him and us and get away with it," said Omes. "Just stay back and let the acid do its work."



"It's making us an exit from this room," I said. "That's good enough for me."



Omes nodded. The liquid started falling through the holes it was eating open. Anything underneath the expanding bubbles was going to have a bad day.



"We're going to have to jump to the center," said Omes. "The acid will eat away around us. The problem is Corwin. We need to find him fast now."



I tensed as I waited. The house may have blocked my life sense with its body, but I could still use it if I got close enough.



"Get ready, Witsend," said Omes. He braced himself and then hopped over the spreading acid. "Feck!"



I hopped over the border. The acid ate at the floor here. It looked like small pools of slurry. I landed in a clear spot and made sure nothing dipped into the mess around me.



Omes had landed on the edge of one of the slurries. His boot boiled as he worked to slip it off before it ate his foot.



"That was bad," Omes said. He threw the boot into one of the pools. "Any ideas where to go from here?"



"Corwin!," I shouted. "Can you hear me?"



Something faint drifted to my ears. I swivelled my head as I tried to get a bead on it. I saw Omes doing the same thing.



"Corwin!," I shouted again. "It's Dr. Witsend. Give us something to find you."



A flare of light blasted out of a tunnel on the other side of the falling acid. I looked at it. How did we get across to get to him before the acid ate him and us?



"All right," said Omes. "We're going to have to take a risk. Are you ready?"



"We can't stay here," I said.



Omes picked me up in his arms. He breathed in and then exhaled. He raced after the vanished light, jumping over the pools of acid as he went. He ducked around a deadly stream falling from above and then sprinted as fast as he could where the light from Corwin had been thrown out.



He carried me down a twisting corridor that opened up to a large room full of tentacles with teeth. Corwin had been enveloped by a mass of them. His inner glow faded as we looked at him.



"We need help," I said. "Corwin is dying. This place is eating him alive."



Omes pulled out his lighter and flame stone. He directed the fire into the tentacles around Corwin. The dragon's breath sliced through the mass in a minute. Corwin fell out of the grip of the house.



I concentrated on Corwin. His body was covered with wounds. He had a low blood count. His brain activity was almost nil. That last burst of light must have eaten his reserves.



I reached in to grab hold of his brain to juice it up. It rebuffed me. Stupid magic and its stupid rules. How did I get around it so I could help him?



The magic rebuffed my talent. I thought about it as I concentrated on him. I noted the magician lines in his body. They marked his ribs, heart, and one lung. I concentrated on one of the smaller ones, willing the scar to heal over in a way that it was erased.



I tried his brain again. I hooked it but not enough to keep things going. I needed to erase the other marks.



I concentrated on the lines. One by one, they vanished as the organs cleaned themselves. I felt full access kick in for my life sense.



Time to go to work.



The blood loss and the wounds would have to wait. I needed to get his brain running enough where I could heal the bites without worrying about him crashing. I went over his mental wounds, sorted them, fixed what I could. Curse marks had formed from what the house had done. I couldn't fix those.



I worked on the wounds. Sealing them after stopping the blood flow while fixing the veins and arteries was something I used to do while getting shot at by flying fish. I ignored the smell of burning rubber and vomit as I willed everything to grow together as fast as possible.



"How are you doing, Witsend?," Omes asked.



"He'll live if we can get him out of here," I said. "He's taken some major trauma to his brain."



"Hopefully Wendy has seen the smoke escaping our beast and is calling for help," Omes said.



A tree crashed through the wall over our heads. I looked up through the smoke and flame. A ghost the size of the Royal Residence stood there with a tree in hand. It glared down at us. Wendy floated in the middle of it. She pulled Corwin out of the wreckage and headed away with him.



"Looks like we're on our own," said Omes. He directed a jet of flame at a tentacle that reached for him.



"The Brigade will be on the way in a bit," I said. "That might give us an opening to get out of here."



The sirens of the Fire Brigade preceded the floating spheres as they hovered over the mess Omes and Wendy had caused. Jets of water rained down on the mess. Omes threw me over the wrecked house wall before climbing over himself. We backed up from the house.



3

Omes and I stood at a distance from the broken house. I had examined his foot. He had missed stepping in the acid he had used to cut our way to Corwin. The water from the Fire Brigade had exacerbated the effect and most of the vampiric guts had suffered more damage than either one of us had expected.



A Sergeant Groves from the Army inspected the remains. He had some virulent things to say. I wondered when he was going to turn his invective on us. When he did, he had better hope he had some magic shield to protect him.



Omes threw his other boot away after looking at it. He shook his head.



"Can't only have one boot from a set," he said.



"I agree," I said. "Saved your foot from the looks of things."



"They were tougher than leather," Omes said. He shook his head at the loss.



"I believe it," I said.



Sergeant Groves approached us. He wore a professional mask on his apish features. Little beady eyes glared at us from under a wide-brimmed hat. I wondered if Wendy had ruined the Fort hospital the same way she had ruined our enemy's body.



"Can I have an explanation for what happened?," Groves asked. He looked at Omes, then me.



I rubbed my ear. It seemed obvious what happened. How much did we have to explain?



"No," I said.



He glared down at me. I smiled back. It has been a long time since any sergeant could make me quake with fear.



"How is Corwin doing?," said Omes. He put on an air of trying to be helpful without wanting to volunteer anything. He didn't pick that up from me.



"I don't know yet," said Groves. "The docs were still looking him over when I came out here to see what the mess was."



"He suffered about forty seven bites from whatever used to live in that shell," I said. "He had some blood loss, and injuries to his brain that I associate with curses and magic workings. I did what I could for him in the field, but I don't know if he will ever recover."



"What are you going to do with the remains?," asked Omes.



"We're going to destroy them, and then post a sight bearing here," said Groves. He looked at the clearing. "If another house shows up, one of our units will take it apart before it starts hunting."



"There used to be another house here," said Omes. "I remember it from an old case. I haven't thought about it in a long time. I think your outsider moved into that house and changed the looks of it to make it more presentable."



"So this missing house got used like a crab shell?," said Groves. "That's great."



"It just means you'll have to examine the dwellings along Edge Row for more incursions," said Omes. "They seem to like to eat magicians the most."



"Where are you two going to be if I need you?," said Groves.



"Twenty Two Bee in the Time Village," said Omes. "Do you mind if we talk to Corwin and Wendy?"



"I don't know if Captain Corwin will be able to talk to anyone ever again, but I can't stop you from talking to the girl," said Groves. "I'm going to need answers to my questions at some point. Be ready to give me more than what you've done so far."



"I'll take another look at him," I said. "Maybe there's something I can do to put him on his feet again."



"What if he's a vegetable for the rest of his life?," asked Groves.



"Then he will still be smarter than you," I said. I rubbed my ear.



"We'll do what we can, Sergeant," said Omes. He held out his hand. I thought Groves would slap it away. He shook it after his brief hesitation.



Omes led the way down the long drive back to the main road that ran through Edge Row. He looked around for a moment before making his way toward a cobbler's.



The shop was behind plainer houses that gave way to the surrounding shops and restaurants before turning into the edge of the Annex to the south.



I thought I could see Angels of Mercy standing in front of the skyline in the south.



"What's your honest opinion?," Omes asked as we walked toward the cobbler's.



"If Corwin survives and regains the use of his faculties, I will be as surprised as my fur falling out overnight," I said.



"Extremely unlikely outcome?," he said.



"You had a better chance surviving falling off Probability Bridge than what I rate his right now," I said.



"Don't tell Wendy that," he said.



I waited inside the door as he bought a pair of make do boots from the cobbler, and asked for a set to match what he had just lost to his own acid. The shoemaker assured him that the boots would be delivered in a week.



Omes paid for both pairs and put the make dos on so he had something to walk into the hospital in instead of his bare feet.



We headed for Fort Ross to check on Wendy.



We used a cab that we had picked up from the shopping streets to get to the Fort. We stated our names to the sentries at the gate. The private in charge pointed the cab to a brick building with a ton of windows on the other side of a large exercise yard. Omes asked the driver to wait before we went inside to see how much more trouble we could cause.



We had to argue through three nurses and a doctor before my claim as the attending physician was honored. Wendy had claimed a chair next to Corwin's bed. She glared at us when we entered with the Army doctor behind us.



I hopped on the bed and went over everything I had done to Corwin with my life sense. Omes took up a position next to the window so he could look outside while I worked. Corwin's brain was the real problem.



I rubbed my ear as I considered. Anything I said other than Corwin was going to be back to his usual self would be bad as far as Wendy was concerned. She wasn't ready to take on any bad news.



And she wasn't ready to deal with a reality where Corwin could be given to someone else to be cared for because he was a vegetable.



How did I break any bad news like that?



"How bad is it?," said Wendy.



"The physical things look all right except for his brain," I said. "It looks like it has suffered from curse marks being applied by the house."



"What does that mean?," asked Wendy.



"When someone is hit with some kind of inhuman effect, it leaves a mark like a blot," I said. "In a normal brain, you wouldn't see one of those. Corwin has fifteen of them. Part of his brain has been destroyed by what's been done to him."



"So he might not be normal when he wakes up," said Wendy.



"He might be normal in every way but the ability to use his magic skills," I said. "There is no way to tell right now. The Army has some specialized summoners that might be able to heal the marks. He still might have to relearn things. This is very much like a stroke, Wendy."



"So he won't be like he was," said Wendy.



"No," said I said. "What do you want to do?"



"What would you do?," she asked.



"I would wait to see what the next few days would bring before I decided on what I could do," I said. "When Corwin wakes up, he will need a friendly face to help him get back on track."



"I could use the Probability Bridge to rewrite this," said Wendy. She nodded at Omes. "I can do what he did."



"Can you?," Omes said. "Can you pinpoint the exact moment you need to drop out of the timestream? Can you change one thing without changing everything else? What do you do if you miss and the day you land in is so far back that you create a loop that you can never fix because Time will make all of your choices irrelevant? Can you live in a world where you aren't even you any more because you were never born?"



"Can you live in a world where you never met Corwin at all?," I asked. "What do you see as a fair trade in that situation?"



"I don't like this at all," said Wendy.



"You don't get to pick the best solution all the time," I said. "We have to play a waiting game for the moment. It will change into a doing things to make things better game eventually. Corwin will need you. I understand if you don't want to commit. It's a lot of responsibility to take care of someone else when they can't take care of themselves."



"I'm not leaving him," Wendy said. "I won't do it."



I rubbed my ear. She had changed in the years since I have known her, and I hadn't realized that. She took the ring Omes had given her out of her pocket. She offered it to him.



"Keep it," he said. "You're going to need help down the road. We're going to help you. That's what we do."



She looked at him in disbelief.



"When the Army have done what they can, call and set up an appointment," I said. "I'll do what I can to help him out."



"Thank you both," Wendy said. "Thank you. I'm being such a selfish person."



"You saved our lives," Omes said. "It's the least we can do."



He held the door open for me so we could let the Army's expert explain to Wendy how bad things could be, and how they would try to mitigate things.



I silently wished him the best of luck.



Nine Silver Dancers

1

Omes and I walked through Time Village. I kept an eye on the flickering houses as we went. Omes was covered with sweat from the beating he had taken from Corwin. The soldier had healed faster than I expected in the two months since his wounding by the missing house.



As part of his recovery process, he and Omes played tennis on the grass courts in East Canaan. At first, Omes beat him like a drum. Then as the days rolled along, they drew even. Now Corwin won more than he lost. I foresaw a point in the future, he would win every game.



"How much longer with the therapy?," Omes asked as we came within sight of Twenty Two Bee.



"I don't know," I said. "He's doing much better than I thought he would."



"Spirit power?," Omes asked.



"Maybe," I said.



We paused at the dock that edged up to where Addison would make his body appear when he wanted. Twenty Two Bee appeared board by board as the house spun to a stop.



"How did things go?," asked Addison from the porch ceiling.



"He beat me five out of ten," Omes said. "He's definitely getting better. We might need to get a pro to face him the way he's going."



"Most of the damage to his brain is fading," I said. I pawed at the door. "It looks like most of it was temporary."



Omes let us in. I went to the visitor's couch and rolled into a ball on a cushion in a corner. He went to clean up and change out of the tennis gear Wendy Maximus had picked out for him.



Every minute that Corwin did better, she did better in my opinion.



The screen buzzed for attention. I wondered who that could be. Elga had taken her kids to a zoo for the day. Weyland had taken a day like me and was supposed to be out playing golf somewhere. Metropole hadn't called us since Omes had fallen over the Probability Bridge. Some of our old acquaintances knew he had returned but none had asked him to solve a mystery for them.



I doubted Dr. Karen would call. She had the Army at her beck and call.



What did she need with an excellent doctor and an adequate detective? She already had plenty of those.



Omes came in the room, pulling on a shirt that had JUSTICE written on the front. He glanced at me curled up on the couch. I rubbed my ear.



He walked to the screen, boots in hand. He sat down at his old desk. Luther McMahon's skull, the frozen explosion, and his gauntlet all sat on a shelf above his screens. He answered the buzzing tone with a thumb push.



"Murdock Omes?," said the caller. He looked thin and needed more hair to give him some stolen youth back. "I need your help."



"Why?," asked Omes. He pulled on his boots as he waited for a reply.



"You're the only one can find my silver men," the caller said. "Conley Schwa said you can find anything."



"How is Conley?," Omes asked. "I haven't talked to him in a while."



"He's married," said the caller. "He said you can find anything. I need that talent."



"I'm retired," said Omes. He straightened his pants over his boots. "I don't find things for people anymore."



"Please, Mr. Omes, I need this," said the caller. "This is my life's work. I need to get them back to show how I made them."



"Silver men?," said Omes. He glanced at me. I rubbed my ear with hopefully visible disinterest. "What's your name, and where were your silver men stolen?"



That was the opposite of what I thought he would do. He took down the information on his old pad and cut the call. He looked down at the sheet. He shook his head.



"Any reason why you want to look into this?," I asked.



"Not really," said Omes. "It's just something to keep me busy until Linus McMahon comes out where we can see him."



I didn't comment on the lie. I think his experiences had made him wary of taking on other people's problems. The hunt didn't appeal as much as it had before he had fallen back through time.



He didn't speak that much of his adventures roaming the world. I wondered how he had felt being forced to do things on his own for the first time. He might have erased the future if he had called me to take care of him.



I would have answered the call. He was my kit, and I would have taken him in even then.



The fact that the future would have been warped beyond recognition didn't mean that much to me.



"Let's go down and look at Mr. Bernim's laboratory," said Omes. "How hard could it be to find some stolen silver? We used to do that all the time."



I doubted it would be as simple as he thought. People didn't call him when they just needed something found. They called him because they thought he was the only who could help.



And being the last straw was something that tended to be overlooked when the client had his problem solved.



"Where are we going?," I asked. Conley Schwa lived in the horse country. If we were going there, we would need a train, or a windjammer.



"A place called Sumpton," said Omes. He checked the screen for a map. He wrote down the directions. "This keeps up and we'll need to buy our own carriage. It looks like there is a train line that will cut through on the way to Fort Broadsail."



"So we're taking the train?," I asked. I thought about dinner. "Do we have time to get something to eat?"



"It looks like we can stop by the club and catch a train heading that way in three hours," said Omes.



"What do you think these silver men are?," I asked. "I didn't hear why they were so important other than how they were made."



"Mr. Bernim's explanation didn't make that much sense to me either," Omes said.



"He created clockworks that run on a headset built from a gaming rig," said Addison.



"Are you sure?," I asked.



"Reasonably," said Addison. "Some of the more technical aspects fell short."



"So we have to find these silver clockworks," Omes said. "What makes these any different from the clankers we already have?"



"I don't know," said Addison. "Clankers are smart enough to obey simple orders. Maybe these will do more complex things."



"The controls of the rig might give him remote control from a distance," Omes said.



"What's the profit in stealing these clockworks?," I asked. That was the only motive I could see, and why bother if you could just get a more reliable clanker almost anywhere.



"I don't know," said Omes. "Shall we head to the club?"



"I don't see why not," I said.



"Hold the fort, Addison," said Omes. He grabbed his black coat off the hook, and his Stetson. "We'll be back as soon as we have things sorted out."



"I'll be waiting," said Addison.



We left Twenty Two Bee and took a cab to the club. We ate our meal quietly. Omes had retreated into his stolidness as he thought about the problem ahead. I concentrated on the grilled salmon.



When we were done, we headed for the Bleek House Street to get tickets for the train. A bench held us while we waited. Finally the train rolled into the station. We boarded and found a private cabin where we could watch the landscape go by without being bothered by other passengers.



The train rolled into a station at the edge of a tiny place that seemed to be a small array of houses around a square from the way the lights were laid out. Omes stood and led the way to the disembarkation steps.



"This is a small place," said Omes. "I would expect someone to notice what was going on and trying to stop it."



"I know," I said. "We seem to be the only ones getting off here. I wonder how many people are actually living here, and commuting to the city."



"I don't know," said Omes. "Let's see what the scene of the crime looks like."



"Why didn't you bring your gauntlet?," I asked as we walked out of the station. The lights from the town glowed like dew on a spider web in the morning.



"It doesn't fit my hand anymore," said Omes. "I don't know how I can have it resized. I don't even know of anyone who could build me another."



"It was useful," I said. I knew what he meant. Sometimes a tool had to be stored until you found a reason and a way to use it again.



"I know," said Omes. He smiled. "I thought I would have to cut my hand off using it to freeze myself under the Museum. I picked up some tricks while I was wandering that should carry us through any trouble we might get into."



"The dragon breath?," I said.



"I have a whole kit to help me escape any dangerous situation," he said. He paused and looked up a road heading north. "I wonder if this is the road our villain used for his escape."



"It's heading back toward the city," I said. "If he had something capable of carrying a clanker's weight, this could take him up toward the Shipping Point."



"I expect he didn't steal the clankers to sail back down the river, and then head across the sea," said Omes. He knelt and put his hand on the road. "I think he might be going into the city, but we have to make sure we're on the right track before we head down this road."



Hiding in the city made sense if he wanted to go to ground and sell the things to someone else. Heading south and sailing from one of the towns and small cities around Fort Broadsail might be more viable if he wanted to sell them in the Colonies, or to the Circle on the continent.



Omes led the way down to a small house with a barn behind it. He looked up and down the road. He nodded.



"Let's knock on the door and see what we can find out from Mr. Bernim before we start out," said Omes.



I rubbed my ear as I looked around. Two different DNA types hung in the air. Cats and dogs mixed in with birds and insects. A few rabbits and mice crossed trails.



I followed Omes up to the front door of the house. Lights leaked from shaded windows on either side of the door. He knocked and listened for movement.



The caller threw open the door. He looked at us in confusion.



"I'm Murdock Omes," said Omes. He gestured down at me. "This is my friend, Dr. Witsend. You called us about a theft of some clankers."



"They weren't just clankers," Bernim said. "They were the most advanced creations in clockworks ever."



"Why don't you show me where they were stored," said Omes. "I need to look at the scene so I can get started recovering them."



"Of course," said Bernim. "Come with me."



He led the way to the barn. He indicated the broken lock hanging from the lock bar. He opened the door for us to look inside.



We walked inside and inspected everything. I detected the strange DNA in the room. It seemed to congregate around a post where something was hung. Maybe that was the control rig for the clankers.



Omes said nothing as he walked around. He lifted his hands to frame the scene as he cut the trail left behind for him.



"Do you know anything about the thief?," Omes asked.



I doubted he needed that, but it could cut our search down to a reasonable amount of time.



2

"It has to be my assistant, Phillip," said Bernim. He gestured at the empty barn. "He knows everything about how I put the silver men together. He helped build the control unit. All he had to do was turn the rig on and march the clankers out of here under their own power."



"Do you have any other suspects?," Omes asked.



"No," said Bernim. "The clankers aren't really that important. It's the control unit."



"Because it controls the clankers?," asked Omes.



"And because if it is modified enough, it can control other things than the nine," said Bernim. "Phillip could shut down anything with power to get what he wants."



"Do you have a home address and a description?," Omes asked. "He might have just taken the things home to work on them."



"He lives in a rented place near the square," said Bernim. He pointed to the center of town. "It's Grail House. It's a collection of three or four houses crammed together. You can't miss it."



"What does he look like?," Omes asked.



"He's about thirty, brown hair, and a big set of glasses," said Bernim.



"All right," said Omes. "Have you called Metropole?"



"Why would I do that?," said Bernim. "I just want my work back. They can't do that."



"They can find Phillip faster than we can with certain basic facts supplied to them," said Omes. "I can't call my friends to get this posted so they can help since it's late in the day. Tomorrow, I am going to ask them for help. Hopefully they will be able to run your assistant and stolen equipment down before he does something like flee the country. If you had called them, they would have closed the ports and started inspecting the cargo before it was loaded. Now, it might be too late."



"All right, I apologize," said Bernim. "I didn't mean for things to be out control."



"We're going to start looking for Phillip," Omes said. "I'll call Commander Griggs and ask her to put a bulletin out in the morning. If we're lucky, someone might have seen him in his transport."



"What do you need me to do?," Bernim asked.



"I just need you to be ready to recover your clankers if we do find them," said Omes. "We'll screen you here to let you know where they are so you can bring a wagon up to pick them up. We might have to let Phillip go if we do that. The Crown can't prosecute if the stolen goods were returned."



"I don't care about that," said Bernim. "I need them to show me how I worked their behavior so I can build more."

"All right then," said Omes. "I'll let you know where you stand in the next few hours."



"Thank you," said Bernim.



"Don't thank me yet," said Omes. "He might have destroyed the clankers to extract the parts he wanted from them."



"That's terrible," said Bernim.



"It's a possible future," said Omes. "Be ready if it comes true."



We walked out of the barn. We headed to the main road. Omes turned to go back to the road we had paused at walking from the train station.



"We're not going to the boarding house?," I asked.



"No, he didn't go home," said Omes. "He pulled his wagon up to the barn, marched the silver men out, and drove away toward the city. The question is where did he go once he got there."



"What can he do with nine clankers?," I asked.



"I don't know," said Omes. "The rig suggests he can order them like parts of his body."



"So he's made nine machines work like extra arms," I said. I understood the implications but what could he use nine bodies to do.



"I think so," said Omes. He looked down the road. "We definitely need to get our own carriage. There's no trains heading back to the city. It's a long walk if we want to follow this trail."



"Did he go all the way into the city?," I asked. "We might miss the trail if we take the train back."



"Good point," said Omes. "Let's go back to Bernim's. Maybe we can use his screen to call a cab."



"That's the best we can do tonight, unless you want to stay at a hotel and try to pick things up in the morning," I said.



"I think we are on a time limit," said Omes. He turned and we retraced our steps. "I don't know what's going on, but Phillip must have learned something new that caused him to take the clankers. He's already spent months helping build them. Why now, unless something came up to prompt him to take them."



We found Bernim's house and knocked on the door again. He came to the door. His expression said did you get them back yet.



"We need to use your screen, Mr. Bernim," said Omes. "I feel like your assistant went into the city with your clankers. Did he get any news that you know about?"



"Not here," said Bernim. "The rig might gain him something if he knew someone who could buy it. The silver men don't have anything to move them without the rig, so he could only sell them for the mechanisms and the metal."



"Thank you," said Omes. "Witsend, do you know if Shreevy is still driving his cab?"



"Yes, he is," I said. "He picks up Elga for me when she has to do errands."



"All right," said Omes. He went to Bernim's screen, opened it, and pushed in the number for Shreevy's cab service.



"Jonas Cab Company," said the one-eyed man who answered the phone. "How can I help you?"



"Is Shreevy working tonight?," asked Omes. "I need a pick up and I am out of the city."



"He's not due to check in for an hour," said the one-eyed man.



"When he does, tell him that Omes and Witsend need him in Sumpton at the Bernim residence," said Omes. He gave the address and directions from the road we had found. "We'll wait for him to get here."



"Understood," said the one-eyed man. "Can you give me the screen number in case he needs to call you?"



"Certainly," Omes said. He gave Bernim's number to the dispatcher.



"I'll give Shreevy the message," said the one-eyed man. He cut the connection.



"Now we wait," said Omes.



We didn't wait long. Shreevy's cab rolled to a stop in front of the Bernim house twenty minutes later. He smiled from his bench when he saw us.



"Mister Omes," he said. "It's been a while since I dealt with you. How have you been?"



"I've been fine, Shreevy," said Omes. He helped me up to the bench before climbing up himself. "You didn't have to go that fast. We trailing a clanker thief."



"A clanker thief?," said Shreevy. "I don't think I have ever heard of one of those. I knew a clanker salvager once. He was a pain in the neck."



"Clanker salvager?," I asked. I knew better but I couldn't help myself.



"He used to get a clanker that had been abandoned, or had maybe lost some of its writing as its spool loosened, and either fix them up, or sell them for parts," said Shreevy. "Some of the neighborhood thought he was salvaging things he had broken in the first place."



"I can see where that would be a problem," I said.



"He didn't do it any more after Mankey Mayfair caught him next to his clanker with a magnet," said Shreevy. "You could hear the bones breaking a mile away."



"Mankey Mayfair is a tough guy," said Omes.



Shreevy nodded in agreement.



I looked at the both of them. I rubbed my ear. Omes wore a smile on his face.



"I am glad to know there is more than one tough guy in the city," I said. "It is so lonely knowing that you're the toughest around, but now I can thank the stars that Monkey Mayfair is out there too."



"Mankey Mayfair," said Shreevy.



"He will be fine to have his name upgraded," I said.



"Turn left here, Shreevy," Omes said. "We're following this road back until our thief enters the city, or turns off somewhere."



"It's the Dixon Road," said Shreevy. "I used it to get down here. A lot of smugglers still use it from what I hear."



"Right now, his tracks are still going north," said Omes. "I wonder what he wants to do with the clankers."



"Maybe he wants to sell them to somebody," I said.



"I wonder if there is something we don't know," said Omes. "Maybe there is something going on with Phillip that caused him to do this instead of whatever else he could be doing."



"It would have to be recent since he has been working with Bernim on these things," I said.



"I agree," said Omes. "He is still going straight, Shreevy."



"If he keeps going this way, there is a fork in the road up ahead," Shreevy said.



"Whichever road he took, we'll have to take to catch up with him," said Omes. "I doubt he will run all night, but he might."



"He's had a four hour headstart," I said. "That's not counting how long he had before Bernim discovered the theft. He might have already settled for the night."



"Which means he will be rested by the time we catch up with him," said Omes.



"If he rests," I said. "We still don't know why he wants the clankers."



"Good point," said Omes.



Shreevy drove us into the night. When we reached the fork in the road, Omes asked him to stop. He dismounted and looked around for a few seconds before climbing back up on the bench.



"Take the right hand road, Shreevy," Omes said.



Shreevy pointed his team down that way, and let them run a bit. He didn't bother to crack the reins at them. They trotted in perfect harmony.



"This way leads across the lower Tam, and then up into the southern part of the city on the East Canaan side," said Shreevy.



I rubbed my ear as I considered. East Canaan was a vast duel strip on both sides of the East Tam branch of the river with houses, shops, and docks for private boats running to the Parliamentary Hall. What could he want there if he got that far?



What could he do with nine human clankers?



We rode on, passing various signs for villages in the south. At one point we passed the cottage where we took the corrupt guard for helping to send the prison ship Hannay to the bottom of the ocean. Then the lights of the Shipping Point came into view.



"He's still heading north, Shreevy," Omes said.



"There will be a bridge up ahead so he can cross and enter the southern gate of the Quarter," said Shreevy. "If that is where he's going, he will have plenty of places to hide there."



3

We followed Phillip to a place in East Canaan. He had left by the time we had arrived. Omes shook his head. He got down from the bench and stretched. Shreevy yawned from his place behind the horses.



I sat in a ball and rubbed my ear. Chasing things across the country all night was something I had done many times before this.



Omes went to the door of the house and knocked. His hands went to his coat pockets as he waited. I stretched on the bench and sat with tail twitching. I concentrated on the door.



Anything I could handle that was hostile would get a face full of figurative fire.



An old lady answered the door. She bore heavy glasses, and shrunken back. She looked at Omes with her watery eyes, and then me and Shreevy.



"Hello, madam," said Omes. "We're looking for Phillip. Is he home?"



"No," said the old lady. "He stopped by to talk for a bit, but he said he had to meet someone about something. He said he would be back when he could."



"And you don't know when that will be?," said Omes.



"No," said the old lady. "Phillip just said he was busy and he had to get to the Dock Bank before it opened. He had something to show the manager."



I rubbed my ear. The Dock Bank, The First Bank of East Canaan on the Water, was where people kept their money if they lived in East Canaan. What could Phillip want there? Did he plan to sell the clankers to someone?



"Thank you for your help," said Omes. He checked his pocket watch. "We'll try to catch him there."



"Is there something I can help you with?," she asked.



"No, madam," said Omes. "This is something we have to talk over with Phillip. Have a good day."



He walked back to the cab, and climbed on the bench. He waved to the old lady as Shreevy cracked the reins to get his drafters walking again.



"To the Dock Bank?," asked Shreevy.



"Yes," said Omes. He checked his watch again before putting it away. "It's about to open."



I didn't ask any questions. I felt the mystery would resolve itself as soon as we caught up with Phillip. As long as he wasn't doing anything to attract the attention of Metropole, just confronting him and getting the clankers back should be no problem for us.



We didn't have to turn him in as long as we recovered the prize.



The problem was we should turn him in. He was acting erratically and no one knew if he would act erratically in the future. Metropole and a court should decide if he was safe enough to stay out in society.



Shreevy pulled his unicorns to a stop a block away from the bank. He tipped his hat back on his head. I rubbed my ear. Omes made a sound that resembled a low whistle.



Nine humanoid clankers danced outside the doors of the Dock Bank. Someone had armed them. They pointed their weapons at anyone who got close enough to attract their attention while they spun in place. They hadn't shot anyone yet from the looks of things.



"All right, I think I need a drink," said Shreevy.



"So now we know what he's doing with the clankers," said Omes. He climbed down off the bench. "He's robbing the bank. Now how do we stop him."



"If we could talk to him, I could shut him down," I said. "I don't see how we're going to get close with the ballerina gunmen out front."



"And the danger of shooting someone just walking by seems high," said Omes. "We need something to distract him. We need the bluecoats."



I couldn't disagree with his assessment. It was the call I would insist on making myself.



"Shreevy, go ahead and call Metropole. Tell them that stolen armed clankers are guarding the bank's front doors," said Omes. "Mr. Bernim will be unhappy about this, but I don't see any other way to keep things contained. I guess you should tell them that Witsend and I are on the scene and are trying to negotiate a peaceful surrender."



"Are you sure you want to do that?," asked Shreevy. "Metropole doesn't like civilians getting in the way."



"I think if we don't, then Phillip won't live to answer our questions," said Omes. "And I want to know why he turned criminal."



Omes started away from the bank. He turned the corner and walked down to the river. He turned again and walked along the docks to the side of the bank. I followed quietly.



Maybe we could talk some sense into Phillip. Maybe we couldn't. We certainly couldn't talk to the clankers dancing in front of the bank. Any time something moved, all nine hand weapons pointed at it until it moved away from the scene.



I had no doubt they would shoot at the center of their attention if it approached them.



Omes watched the front as he crept to the back. The bank had its own dock for those who wanted to sail up and talk to the staff. A wooden door was in place to allow visitors to the two story building.



Omes walked up to the door and examined the lock. He shook his head.



"What's the matter?," I asked.



"The lock has thumb reader to prevent the use of a skeleton key," Omes said. "It's a good precaution but it makes things harder for us at the moment."



"So we go back to the front?," I asked.



"No," said Omes. "We take down the door."



"How do we do that?," I asked.



"I told you I have a kit now," said Omes. "Not having the gauntlet means I have to think about things more before I rush in. So I created a way to open doors without a skeleton key."



He pulled out a rod with a spike on top. He pressed the spike into the lock and held it there. Then he pressed a button. The spike punched through the lock on the end of a steel cord. He pulled the spike back and wound the cord up inside the rod's handle. He pushed the base of the spike back into the rod.



"Doesn't work on anything heavy," he said.



He pushed open the door and we walked in. I took up a position behind a desk for filling out checks. Omes stood in an alcove for coats to be hung by the staff.



Phillip had a small crew of people at gunpoint. He wore the rig from Bernim's house. Something had been added to it, but I couldn't tell what. I thought I could put him to sleep. What happened to the dancing puppets if I did put him to sleep?



The last thing we needed was for the silver menaces to enter the bank and start shooting at anything that moved.



"Hello, Phillip," said Omes. "Do you really want to do this?"



I rubbed my ear as he came forward. He shouldn't have done that. He should have waited until I put Phillip to sleep, then got everybody out the back.



"Who are you?," Phillip asked. He pointed his weapon at Omes. I took a closer look at the rig. It looked like he had strapped dynamite to it. What happened if that went off in this confined area? What was the trigger?



"I'm Murdock Omes," said Omes. "Mr. Bernim asked me to find his mechanical men. I see you taught them how to dance."



"I taught them how to shoot too," he said.



"Doesn't matter," said Omes. "As soon as Armed Response gets here, they are as good as destroyed. It will be just you inside this building. I expect they will kill you too."



"I don't care," said Phillip. "These people were going to put my gran on the street. They deserve what I am going to give them."



"I talked to your gran," said Omes. "She doesn't have an idea that you are here doing this. She thinks you are talking to manager about a loan."



"I wouldn't be if these parasites hadn't sent a declaration they were foreclosing on my gran's house," said Phillip. He pointed the pistol at the man in the suit that I guessed was either the manager, or the loan officer. "She has made every payment."



"I think blowing up the bank is a little excessive," said Omes. "And it won't stop the foreclosure."



"Who's going to follow through when there's no one around to do it?," asked Phillip.



"The bank has already put things in motion," said Omes. "Just because you kill these people, that won't stop the bank from continuing. You would have to kill everyone working for the bank in every country throughout the world."



I keyed in on Phillip, then looked at his rig again. I jumped to the top of the desk. He looked at me. I squinted at him.



"How long do you have?," I asked.



"What do you mean?," said Phillip. He pointed the gun at me.



"You have a tumor in your head the size of your fist," I said. "How long do you have?"



"I don't know," said Phillip. "It doesn't matter."



"It does matter since any competent doctor could take it out," I said. "I'm surprised you're not blind."



"All right," said Omes. "I see it all now. It's a good plan, Phillip. Who put you up to it?"



"No one," said Phillip. "I'm trying to save my gran's house and punish these malefactors."



"I don't think so," Omes said. "I think you are trying to get yourself killed for the insurance money. That would be enough to save the house. Who put you up to this?"



"I don't have to listen to you," said Phillip. He pointed the gun at Omes.



"It's so simple, but requires that the patsy believes that he's dying," said Omes. "I don't think I have ever run into a scheme like this before. This is straight out of the Doctor's playbook. Who put you up to this?"



"I don't have to answer your questions," Phillip said. He started to pull the trigger on his weapon. I inserted a nerve block in his hand so he couldn't.



"Now you do," I said. "Let's start with the fact you could have had your tumor removed. Who told you that you couldn't? Then we'll need a lot more answers after that."



"What makes you think I'll give you what you want?," said Phillip. He tried reaching for his vest with his other hand. I put a block in that whole arm. It swung back down as he couldn't command it any more.



"Go to sleep," I said. His eyes closed and he started to snore. "Can you hear me?"



"Yes," he said. "I can hear you."



"How do we get the vest off you without blowing ourselves up?," I asked.



"There's a lock in the back," said Phillip. "You just need the combination."



Omes walked around him. He did something and then pulled on the top of the vest until it fell to the floor.



"Who told you that you couldn't have your tumor operated on?," I asked.



"Dr. Mitchell," Phillip said. "My friend recommended him."



"Your friend?," I asked.



"Linus is my friend," Phillip said. "I had to save my gran's house. This was the only way."



Omes looked at the bank manager. The man shook his head.



"We don't do mortgages on property," said the manager. "We lend money based on material collateral. If we loaned his gran money, she would have had to give us something worth at least half of what we loaned her. A house is too much of a problem for us to deal with to get our money back."



"So you only deal in artwork, collectibles, things like that?," said Omes.



The man nodded.



"It's looks like Linus wanted to loot the bank," said Witsend.



"And it looks like we stopped him," said Omes. He cut the power to the rig. "I wonder what he will try next."



"It doesn't matter," I said. "He'll join his family one way, or the other."