Fractal Mode

CHAPTER 11—SLICK

THE walk was reasonably routine, considering. They did encounter a dragon, but avoided it, and similarly avoided something that seemed to be a crossbreed between a scorpion and a tractor. They crossed a sea made of jelly solid enough to walk on—that was nervous business, because it might change to thin water at any boundary—and passed a region in which the ground seemed wooden and the trees were made of stone and earth. They did not pass any realities with telepathic animals; that would be in the vicinity of Seqiro’s anchor, perhaps on the opposite side of the Virtual Mode.

It was, however, a longer journey, requiring several days. Provos’ supplies were adequate; she might not remember details of the many realities they would cross, but she had known how long their excursion would be.

Colene discovered that she rather liked being with Provos, who had many sterling qualities despite being hard to talk with and of another generation. Colene wished that her own parents had had more such qualities. Scratch a suicidal girl, she thought wryly, and you found a fouled-up family. Provos seemed to have no evil habits. Had she ever married? It was hard to tell, but Colene suspected not, because her house was too clean and uncluttered.

What would Provos do on Earth? Colene hadn’t thought of that, but now it worried her. Colene herself had a home, such as it was, but she couldn’t take Provos there. In fact, maybe she couldn’t take herself there; she had been away for a month or so, and there might be awkward questions. But what were they going to do—throw her in prison? She could maybe hide Provos in Dogwood Bumshed, her hideaway. It wasn’t as if she were going to stay any length of time.

But Provos herself could help. All they had to do was give her time to get her memory straight, and she would know what pitfalls awaited them. That and common sense should get them through, Colene hoped. She really hadn’t been thinking of the possible complications of her home reality when she blithely said she could get the fractal information.

ON the fifth day of this leg of the journey the territory began to look familiar. They were coming to the Earth Colene knew. She experienced a certain bitter nostalgia. She had not loved her life on Earth, yet it had had its points. She had gone over some of them with Seqiro, in a fashion expiating emotional events, but there were others. Her feelings were mixed.

She could have used her bicycle here. But that had been lost to the despots, who had surely been much perplexed by it, and anyway Provos didn’t have one. So they plodded on along beside the increasingly stable highway.

They found Colene’s town, and walked the street toward it. Cars blinked in and out on the road as the two of them continued to cross realities. Colene had left this place at dawn, with little traffic, so it had been some time before she had realized exactly how strange the Virtual Mode was. Now it was afternoon, with plenty of traffic, and the way the cars popped in and out of existence was startling. Trees were stationary, and animals generally slow-moving, so the eye could reorient on them. But the cars were traveling, some of them at high speed—if there was any driver in Oklahoma who even knew what the speed limit was, he concealed that information—so that they shot through the ten-foot section of whatever reality Colene stood in like the proverbial bats out of hell. Provos was alarmed, but adjusted as Colene reassured her; they were reasonably safe on the sidewalk.

Then they reached Colene’s house. It was the wrong design and color and had the wrong trees in the yard. But these details kept shifting as they approached, until everything was pretty close.

Colene led the way around to Bumshed, which was where the anchor actually was. Until they passed through it, nothing really counted; even if they saw people, they would not be in the same reality, and a miss by even one thin reality would be a whole lot more significant than a miss by a mile.

They entered the shed and passed through the anchor. Suddenly the things Colene had left behind appeared: crumpled blankets, a covered privy pot, her teddy bear, Raggedy Ann doll, books, and her guitar. And the knife. All the things she had gathered together here when she planned to kill herself. Only she hadn’t had the guts to do it—and then the Virtual Mode had come, and she had grabbed the anchor and gone off to seek Darius.

She stood looking at it all. There was her locked box, containing her instruments of death and her diary addressed to Maresy Doats. There was her picture of Maresy, grazing in a nice field. There was the artificial carnation flower saved from the prom. And there, tucked in between the pot and its cover, was her farewell note for her family.

Hadn’t they checked here? Hadn’t they seen that note? It couldn’t be that they had never even missed her!

She stooped to pull it out. She read it. DEAR FOLKS: DONT WORRY; I AM FINE. I JUST HAVE SOMEWHERE TO GO. COLENE.

The sheet blurred. She was crying.

Provos put her arms around Colene and held her close. It was a comfort Colene needed. Somehow she had hardly thought of this, of what she had left here. It was as if she really had sliced her arms and bled into the pot until she died, leaving all her precious things around her body. Now she had returned from that death, and they had faithfully waited for her.

But she couldn’t afford to waste time moping. She had a job to do, so she could rescue Darius and Seqiro.

Even as she came to that conclusion, Provos was letting her go. The woman began to put the shed in order, making room in the center and fashioning a kind of cushion by a wall. She knew she would have to stay here while Colene went out, because there was no way Provos could get by in this reality.

But Colene had to do some organizing of her own. This was afternoon and her folks should not yet be home from their jobs; she had time to get inside and change to local clothing. It would never do to parade around here in a tunic and giant diaper!

She opened the door and looked out. All was clear. Nothing in sight but the house and the little dogwood tree. Was she really in her home reality? To make sure, Colene went out and walked ten feet: nothing changed. But of course it could be a very similar reality. So she picked up a pebble and walked back. The pebble didn’t disappear. She might look like an idiot doing this, but she needed to be sure. This was her home, all right.

Everything in the yard looked just about the same as it had been when she had left it. The grass needed mowing, but it always did. Things looked a little browner, but that was because the fall season was another month along.

Provos emerged from the shed. “But you mustn’t be seen!” Colene protested.

The woman walked toward the house. Colene realized that Provos’ future memory had taken good hold; she remembered that no one was home at this hour, and she wanted to see the house.

Colene ran to catch up. She went to the back door. It was locked, but Provos was already fetching the key from under the mat. She gave it to Colene, who used it to open the door. Then Provos put it back under the mat. Obviously they had done this in the future.

“Well, this is my old house,” Colene said, showing off the cluttered kitchen and living room. It didn’t seem to have changed an iota. Hadn’t her absence made any difference at all? This was weird!

They went upstairs to her room. This too was unchanged. It was as if she had gone out this same morning, and returned routinely this afternoon. As if the entire month she had been away was only a day here, so she hadn’t even been missed yet.

Could that be? Could time on the Virtual Mode be different? No, because it had evidently passed in normal fashion for the folk of Darius’ reality. Probably for Provos’ reality too; the woman had shut up her house for the duration, being well organized, so it didn’t much matter.

And there was a signal of her absence: a little pile of letters on the stool near the door. Her parents did not open her mail; they left it in her room for her to handle when she returned from school. None of it was personal; she had learned the hard way not to trust others, and never to put into writing what she did not want widely known. Maresy Doats was her only truly personal correspondent, and those diary entries were kept locked up, and sometimes written in oblique fashion to confuse any possible snooper. So it was all junk mail, both with her name and without, because anything that related to books, records, or novelty catalogs was in her bailiwick.

Provos was looking. “This is mostly Carrot Sort,” Colene told her. “ ‘Cause that’s what it looks like: CAR RT SORT. Means they parcel it out to every house on the route. Maresy says maybe they figure there’s a big rabbit here. I say that if they drop any more of this junk on me, I’ll drop my Bomb of Gilead on them.” She touched the little jar of ointment nearby, marked GILEAD. “That’s really ‘balm,’ but I go for the violence.”

Provos smiled, but probably not at anything Colene had said, as she wouldn’t remember it even if she understood it. The woman was merely curious about Colene’s strange residence. She walked here and there, examining without touching, perhaps getting her upcoming memories straight.

“I gotta change,” Colene told Provos. She went to her closet and rummaged until she found blue jeans and a dark blouse. Also regular panties and sneakers.

She pulled off her tunic and undid her diaper, while Provos continued to look around, evidently intrigued by this strange house. Colene went to the bathroom and had a quick washcloth and dab cleanup. She got into her home-reality clothes, which fit her perfectly. Somehow she had almost thought they wouldn’t. Maybe she had just hoped that her bra would be a little tight, indicating that her breasts had grown. No such luck. It would be a long time, if ever, before she had a tape measurement like Nona’s.

Then she had another thought. Provos should change too. Then the woman wouldn’t have to hide; she would look like a local visitor. She turned—to find Provos already picking out suitable clothing.

Colene’s jeans and blouses didn’t fit Provos. Both were too short and loose. When it came to tape measurements, Provos wasn’t in it. But a long dress and sleeved shirt adjusted nicely enough.

“But that hat will have to go,” Colene said—even as the woman removed it. Provos located a kerchief, and tied that around her graying hair; it seemed that she did not feel comfortable with a naked head. She looked reasonably normal now.

Then Colene heard something. A vehicle—and it was pulling into the drive! It was her mother’s car. “We’ve got to get out of here!” she cried. “Before Mom comes in!”

But Provos refused to be rushed. She seemed unconcerned about discovery. Colene reminded herself again that the woman remembered the future; she must know it was going to be all right.

Still, there was a protocol to honor. “I’ve got to face Mom first,” Colene said firmly, and hurried to the stairs.

Colene was there in the living room, watching the TV, when her mother came in. Just as it always had been. She would simply pretend that nothing had happened, and see how it played. She hadn’t thought about this aspect of her return before.

It didn’t work. “Colene!” her mother screamed, dropping her packages. Then she swayed, seeming about to faint.

Colene jumped up and got to her before she fell. She got her mother to the couch, where they both collapsed. “I’m okay, Mom,” she said consolingly.

Her mother clutched her, crying. She reminded Colene of herself, in Bumshed with her things and their sudden memories. Suddenly her mother seemed ten years older, and frail, and Colene just wanted to hold her and reassure her. But somehow that wasn’t what came out.

“You never checked Bumshed,” she said reprovingly. “I left a note.”

“We did!” her mother sobbed. “Your note—it said you were fine, and had somewhere to go. But it didn’t say where or why!”

“But nothing was touched,” Colene protested.

Her mother gazed at her with a tear-ravaged face. “We were afraid you—there was a knife—all your things were—we didn’t dare—”

“You thought I—” Colene started. She had never even hinted to her folks about her suicidal nature. She thought she had fooled them completely.

“That somebody had come and taken you from the shed,” her mother said. “Made you leave a note. That you were raped or dead—oh, thank God it wasn’t so!”

They didn’t know about the rape scene either. “It wasn’t so,” Colene agreed. “I just had somewhere to go, Mom. It wasn’t as if it would matter much here. You have your beverage and Dad has his social life.” She was speaking euphemistically. Her mother got drunk almost every evening, and her father had a mistress who monopolized his free time. As families went, theirs was mostly charade.

“Not matter! Oh, my dear, I haven’t had a drink since we lost you! And your father has been home—”

Then, seeing Colene’s disbelief, she got up and urged her to the kitchen. She opened the cupboards. There were no bottles there.

“You really—?” Colene asked, almost daring to believe.

“My precious child, we did not have an ideal marriage, but we both loved you. That was the one thing we had in common. Didn’t you know?”

Colene felt the tears starting again. “No.”

Now it was her mother who held her. “You were always so smart, so good, so well adjusted, despite everything. You were our joy. Only somehow we got distracted by things. When you left, it shocked us to our senses—too late.”

Good? Well adjusted? Colene had gone through a series of shocks, beginning with the rape, and had sought to kill herself. Her exterior life had become an act, covering her suicidal depression. She had cut her wrists daily and watched them bleed, daring herself to do it, to die. She had been on the verge of it when Darius had made the Virtual Mode and given her a chance to find him.

“But nothing changed!” Colene protested. “You lived the same way without me as you had with me. I didn’t make any difference.” There was one of the fundamental bitternesses of her existence.

“Everything changed,” her mother said. “We—we were so afraid of what might have happened that we denied it. We didn’t report you as a runaway, we didn’t make any fuss, we just told the school that you had gone to visit relatives in Alaska, that an emergency had come up there and they needed you, and no one questioned it. But between ourselves we denied it. We didn’t touch anything of yours. We put the note back and pretended you were still with us. That you were up in your room, or out in your shed, or at school, or visiting a friend down the street. Because if we ever admitted it, then it might become real, and we couldn’t face that. We—we pretended to be the family everyone always thought we were, with you included, and neither of us dared to break the spell—in case you did come back—so as not to drive you away again—”

Colene was appalled. Her departure had reformed her parents! They had covered for her, and acted perfectly, just in the hope of having her back. All the rest had disappeared when she went. They really did love her!

“Now you are back,” her mother said. “Our prayers have been answered! We will be all the things we never were before, so you can have a family worthy of you. We had to believe that you would return!”

How was she to tell them that she had not come to stay? Colene had just walked into a guilt trip she had never anticipated.

So she avoided the issue. “I—have a friend,” she said.

Provos appeared. There was no common language, but Provos had an unerring memory of what was appropriate, and there were no slips. “She—I traveled to a, a strange place,” Colene said. “And met several people, and right now I’m traveling with Provos. We have to—to do something here.” It was all awkward, but it didn’t seem to matter. Provos, an old woman, was a reassuring presence. No one could believe that Provos would ever be involved in anything oddball. In fact, soon Provos was helping to fix supper.

Then the other car pulled in. Soon Colene’s father entered the house.

“Baby!” he cried, spying Colene. There was relief and gladness in his face, and tears shone in his eyes.

In a moment it was clear that what her mother had said was true. The family had become normal, cleaning up its act in a hurry. All because she had gone. What was she to make of that?

Try as she might to be cynical, she could not deny it: she did love her parents. Maybe that was what had made her hold back, and never quite actually kill herself. Maybe she had known, deep down, that there was after all a foundation, however dilapidated the superstructure.

They had supper together, making a good impression on Provos, and on each other. Colene explained that she would have to go into town tomorrow with Provos, to get something done, and this was not challenged. They didn’t want to do anything to drive her away.

The guilt was growing. Colene had given her family no consideration at all, deeming it a lost cause. Now she saw how wrong she had been. But there was still no way she could stay here. Not in this reality.

They watched TV after supper. Provos was fascinated by this too, as she was by the purely mechanical cooking and sanitary facilities.

Provos was satisfied to sleep on a mat on the floor of Colene’s room. There just seemed to be no problems with her presence, or Colene’s return.

Colene lay awake. All this seemed too good to be true. Had she missed something? Was this some kind of a dream? Should she try to penetrate through to the reality?

Then she remembered the guilt, and was morbidly reassured. It was too good to be true—because she was the fly in the ointment. She was the one who made it untrue.

Damn! She wished it had been otherwise. She felt like a clod of horse manure.

NEXT day they were ready to get down to business. Colene had enough money for a taxi, and called to have one come. It wasn’t as if she would have any use for money later. Provos was intrigued by the bills and coins, which were not her type of money.

They went to a sleazy gaming center known to be the hangout of borderline-criminal types. Now Provos’ future-memory became invaluable. Colene, knowing that the type of information she wanted was too complicated to research in the local library, had decided to make a deal with Slick. Slick was a chance acquaintance she thought could help. Chance acquaintance was a good description: it was chancy to deal with him. He was called Slick because he cut throats for a living, slick as a razor. A dangerous man—but she believed he would treat her fairly. Maybe her intuition was foolish, but there had been something about him, the way he had treated her, that suggested that there was decency in him as well as murder.

They walked through the center. This was morning, and there were few gamers there. But there were some. Colene made ready to approach the first one she saw.

Provos held her back. For once the woman’s composure was frayed; something truly bad would come of that introduction.

Colene bypassed that one and approached the next. Again Provos held her back. But the third one was acceptable.

This was a burly man who looked as if he would like to chop up young girls for breakfast. But his expression changed when he heard the name. “Slick? Yeah, I know him.”

“Will you tell him Colene wants to deal?” she asked.

The man glanced at Provos. “You and who else?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

The man nodded. This type of answer was acceptable, in this type of company. “Wait.” He went to a pay phone and dialed a number.

He returned, impressed. “He’s on his way. He says to take good care of you. Come on.”

Colene glanced at Provos. Provos was already nodding. So they went with the man. Apparently Slick’s word counted.

The man bought them milkshakes. This was one more novel experience for Provos, though she seemed to like hers well enough. “It’s maybe not my business,” the man said gruffly. “But there’s a story about a little girl, real cute, went with five men about a month back, and when they came out, not one would say what happened, but she’d never been touched and they said she showed ‘em something they’d never seen before.”

“I’m the one,” Colene agreed. Real cute? She liked that.

“Listen, I said it’s not my business, but—” He shrugged, evidently quite curious. “Those guys must’ve seen everything about any woman who ever opened her—uh, whatever. So how…?”

“I challenged one to a duel,” Colene said, enjoying this. “One on one, with knives. I won.”

He nodded. “I guess you did. But you know—well, those guys were good with knives. So—”

“It was a bleeding contest. I cut my arm with Slick’s razor and let it bleed into a bucket. All the other guy had to do was cut himself and outbleed me. But he forfeited. I guess he had a generous nature.”

The man stared at her. Then he shook his head, not saying more.

In due course Slick arrived. He was a dark man of average height, undistinguished, but the others in the center knew him and turned away. He didn’t say a word; he handed a bill to the other man, who departed. Such was the oblique communication between criminals: never a paper trail, hardly even a verbal trail. Just tacit understandings.

Provos stood and walked to Slick. She hugged him. The man’s mouth fell open. So did Colene’s. What did Provos remember?

Then the woman released the man and returned to her seat. Slick shook off his confusion and took the vacated chair. Perhaps he assumed that Provos was trying to make it look like a family meeting instead of business.

He looked at Colene. “You sure, girl?” he asked. Again, no actual statement; they knew they weren’t here for tiddlywinks.

“I have to have help,” Colene said evenly. “It’s nothing illegal, it’s just that I don’t have much time and it’s sort of technical. Something I have to find out, that maybe a math prof would know. I hope that you know how to get legal things done too.”

Slick smiled. He seemed relieved, oddly. “Let’s go where we can talk.”

He drove them to a surprisingly nice country house. Colene reminded herself that one thing that successful criminals had was money. Slicing throats must pay very well. The funny thing was that Colene sort of liked the man, maybe because she knew something about slicing flesh and making blood flow. She had scratched her wrists rather than cutting throats, but the principle was similar. She had the feeling that Slick liked her too, maybe for the same reason.

Was she fooling herself? She didn’t think so, because she was learning to read minds, and even when she couldn’t get the words, she got the emotion. The longer she was with this man, the more her conviction grew: not only did he like her, there was something he wanted from her, and it wasn’t sex.

“Your friend,” Slick said as they sat in easy chairs. “She knows me from somewhere?”

Provos was already moving purposefully to a wall.

“She’s from another world,” Colene said. “She remembers the future. She doesn’t speak our language, but if you signal what you want to know, like maybe a test question, she can show you.”

He turned to look at Provos. She put her hands to a framed picture, and pushed it aside to reveal a wall safe behind.

“I was going to ask—” he said, staring.

“Where the safe was,” Colene finished. “You open it later in this session, right? While we’re here? She remembers. Take my word, Slick—she has nothing to do with this world, and we hope to leave it tomorrow. You can trust her because she’ll be gone.”

“You’re into heavy stuff,” he said.

Provos set the picture straight and went to a chair, where she gazed benevolently at Slick. This made him nervous, though he tried not to show it. Colene was an old hand at reading nervousness.

“Look, you don’t have to believe me,” Colene said. “I’ve been traveling in other worlds—other realities—and I’m not crazy. My man is trapped on one of those worlds. It’s fractal. I need someone who knows how to name the parts of the Mandelbrot set. That’s a mathematical construction.”

“Let me check,” Slick said. “A math prof, you said?” He fetched a cellular phone.

“I think. He’s got to know all about the Mandelbrot set, and Julia sets, fractals, that sort of stuff, and be able to explain it to me. And he’s got to be right. No guessing.”

Slick placed a call. “Give me the prof,” he said. “No, no name, sister. Just get him.” There was a pause. Then: “You know who. I got a deal. You know the Manbrot—right, Mandelbrot—you can tell all about it? You can explain it to a teenager? Yeah, she’s smart. Naming the parts? Okay, you satisfy her, and it’s paid. Tomorrow. Day after?” Slick glanced at Colene, who nodded. “Okay. Day after. No, no catch; it’s just something I want. I’ll bring her to you. Noon.” He ended the call.

“Just like that, a math prof?” Colene asked, impressed.

“He owes the syndicate. A lot of good citizens do. I’ll have them cancel the balance. It’s a good deal, for him.”

“And what’s the deal for me?” Colene asked, knowing that there would be a real price to pay, and that she would have to pay it. Slick might like her, but this was business.

“Good deal for you too. She’s in the same city as the prof. Sis works for the university there.” He turned a hard glance on her, and Colene felt a trill of fear. Slick was being nice, but he was a killer. “First, you don’t tell anybody.”

Colene ran her finger across her own throat. No talking. “Who’s ‘she’?”

“Second, you really have to try.”

“Sure I’ll try. But what? I don’t want to get into—”

“No sex. No blood. Just find out something for me.”

“But you’re the one who finds things out!” Colene protested.

“Not this time. She’s my niece—my sister’s child. About your age. Maybe the one good thing in my life, only she isn’t in my life; Sis won’t let me near her. You know why. I think she’s going to kill herself. I want to save her. You talk to her. Find out what’s with her. Who’s making her hurt. Give me that name.”

And if that name had to be killed, it would happen, Colene realized. Slick was a professional; he thought in terms of killing problems. So the girl would have no more trouble.

“Slick, I’ve got to tell you, killing won’t solve some problems. If she’s suicidal—”

“You know about suicide,” he said.

“Yes. But what I mean is, once a girl’s been, say, raped, killing the man won’t make that rape go away. I might find out something you don’t want to know.”

“Then find out how I can make it right for her. Anything. That girl’s got to be set right. I’m dirty, but she’s got to be clean.”

“She may be dirty too,” Colene said.

“No. She’s clean. Like you.”

“Listen, Slick, I’m dirty! I got had by four men, and I can’t ever wash that filth out of me. It’s not so much my body, it’s my mind. They shit on my innocence.”

“I know it. But you’re a fighter. Esta’s not. You talk to her, help her be clean. Tell me how. How I can fix things for her.”

“This may be like fishing a snowball out of hell. I’m afraid of what I’ll have to tell you.”

“You want that Mandelbrot info?”

Colene sighed. “Well, I warned you. She may be as far into her situation as you are in yours. She may not even talk to me. All I can promise is to try.”

“You try,” he agreed. “That’s the deal.”

“That’s the deal.”

“You may need money,” he said. He walked to the picture, pushed it aside, and worked the combination to the safe. Colene saw Provos watching. This was what she had remembered.

He gave Colene a wad of bills. “Save Esta,” he said.

Colene stared at the wad, her eyes refusing to focus on the bills. It had to be more money than she had known existed. “Slick, what is this? You hardly know me, and—”

“I know you’re the gutsiest little girl this side of hell,” he said. “The money doesn’t matter any more. Just do the job, and you can keep that roll or throw it away.”

Colene shook her head. “There’s got to be something I’m missing. You could hire an army of psychiatrists for this! You don’t need me.”

He gazed at her a moment, considering. “I’ll level with you, kid. I don’t have much time. I made a mistake, and there’ll be a contract on me before long. I have to go far away. So I can’t mess with others, and I can’t stay here to watch my niece. I have to make it right for her now, while I can. Your showing up right now—it’s almost like a message from God. Maybe He knows this is my only chance to do some good before I get blown to hell.”

Blown to hell. He was not speaking figuratively. He expected to be killed, and to be in hell. His “mistake” must have been to kill a wrong person, maybe a ranking mobster. It might take the mobster’s henchmen a while to figure out just which hired hit-man had done it; then they would act, and it wouldn’t be pretty. So this really was Slick’s last plane out, as far as helping his niece.

It was a motive Colene could trust. She knew about wrapping things up in this life, before leaving it.

“Let’s go.” Colene hoped that Provos would be able to help in this too, because it promised to be difficult. She knew just how tricky it could be to talk about suicide to a suicidal girl.

Slick took them back to his car and drove for an hour, to the city of Chickasha. “Take a hotel room for the night,” he said. “Two nights. As long as you need. Bring her there, if you have to.”

“But what about you? Does she know you? I mean—”

“Kid, I’m under court order not to see her. I love her, and I watch her, and I help her how I can. Her bike’s broken, so she has to walk home from school, and no one mugs her. They know. But if I get near her, she’s in trouble, and I don’t want that.”

Colene considered. “Let me make sure I have this straight. You know her, she knows you, you never molested her—”

“I never touched any child,” he said. “My business’s my business, but I’m no pervert. That’s why I was glad to see you get off last month. I couldn’t interfere, because it was your challenge, and you showed you were savvy, but I kept thinking of Esta. But my sister—I can’t blame her for not wanting her daughter to associate with the likes of me.”

“Okay. But maybe Esta would be better off with you than what she’s in now.”

“Not with my business! She doesn’t know about that, and I don’t want her to. She thinks I live too far away to see her. And I do—but not in distance.”

Colene was intrigued. She suspected she shouldn’t push her luck, so she did. “You figure you’re not good enough for your niece?”

“I know it,” he said seriously.

“But suppose maybe, just maybe, you could, well, take over, and be her parent-figure, and she’d be like your daughter. You’d have to take her to the dentist and foot the bills for her braces and see that she got in from dates by eleven pee em or be grounded and go to PTA meetings and make her keep her grades up—all that dull stuff parents have to do—and finally she’d grow up and get married and move far away and you’d only get postcards from her any more, but her kids would call you Granddad when they visited. How’d you feel about that?”

He spread his hands on the wheel. “That would be heaven. I’ve never had a life like that, and never will. I’m locked into what I have. I’m good at it, but I don’t enjoy it. I’d have quit long ago, if I could.” He smiled grimly. “And now I will, only maybe not the way I wanted.”

She was surprised. She had assumed that he did what he did because he liked it. Or at least because he liked the money it paid. Yet now it seemed that he envied ordinary people their routine lives. Somehow he had gotten trapped, and could only dream of change. That had been the case with her, before Darius came, and the Virtual Mode.

“Where can I reach you?”

Slick gave her his business card. It had no name or address, just the phone number. “Just say your name when you call,” he said. “They’ll put your message through.”

Colene realized that any person who had to ask Slick’s business wouldn’t want his business. The man was a contract killer. Yet she liked him, and if she wasn’t fooling herself, she was picking up his sincerity about Esta from his mind. Also, Provos was not protesting, which meant that things would work out okay. In fact, Provos herself seemed to like him. People with what amounted to telepathy and precognition could walk safely through the most hazardous regions and relationships.

Then another thought made her nervous again. This was the science reality. Magic didn’t work here. So how could Provos remember the future? How could Colene have telepathy? Were they fooling themselves?

But these things were working. She knew it. Provos had proved her ability, and Colene knew the difference between fancy and reality. Special abilities did not either work or not work in different realities; they might be partial or qualified. Seqiro’s telepathy was reduced in range on Oria, but otherwise complete. Provos’ future memory seemed to be constant no matter where she was, limited only by her time in a given reality. Darius had lost his sympathetic magic in the reality of the DoOon that they had escaped by freeing its anchor, but had retained some of his emotional transfer ability. On Oria he had lost the transfer and recovered his other magic. So it was different for each person in each reality. It just had to be tested. Magic didn’t work here on Earth, but the more subtle things might.

The car stopped at a school yard. It was now early afternoon. “She gets out in ninety minutes,” Slick said. “You can meet her when she walks home. Maybe she will think you’re a new student, or one she hasn’t met.”

Colene glanced at Provos. “Will this work?” she asked.

The woman seemed to understand her question from her memory of the future. She nodded affirmatively.

Colene returned to Slick. “But if you figure it’s this easy, what’s this business about money for a hotel room?”

“You need a base. Where you can talk. Maybe not a hotel. I always take a room when I travel. Whatever you need.”

Colene brought out the money, which she hadn’t really looked at before. The top bill was a hundred dollars. Under it were more of the same denomination. There could be several thousand dollars here. That made her nervous for a new reason. She had never carried such an amount before.

Then she got a notion. “Provos, you carry it.”

The woman’s hand was already extended. She took the money and put it out of sight.

Colene’s mind oriented on the next problem. “Maybe I can walk with her, but I can’t just take her away with me. Her folks would miss her and give the alarm.”

“Latchkey,” Slick said. “She’s alone for three hours.”

“Then I can talk to her at her house.”

“Maybe. Whatever works.”

Colene nodded. She could make do. “How close is this hotel?”

“A mile.”

She still wondered why he thought she needed a room for the night. But it seemed feasible. “Okay, let’s get that room.”

He started the car and drove them to the hotel. It was a fine modern building, surely expensive. The need for the money was becoming more credible.

Colene and Provos entered the lobby and proceeded to the desk. Now it was time for some business Darius wouldn’t have liked. But Darius didn’t know a lot about life in this reality.

Colene spoke to the clerk. “My aunt and I need a room. She’s from another country; she doesn’t speak English. She doesn’t use banks either; just cash. You have any problem with that?”

The clerk took it in stride. He accepted hundred-dollar bills for the double room and gave them change. He did not protest when Colene guided Provos’ hand for the signature on the bill. It occurred to Colene that some of the criminal types might use this hotel, so the personnel had learned to cope. Money was money.

The suite was beautiful. There were two big beds, a bathroom fit for a sultan, and a huge color TV set. A picture window looked out toward the school. “Gee, I hope we have reason to stay here the night!” Colene breathed.

That made her think of Darius. How she would have loved to get him into a room like this, all sumptuous and private, and tempt him until he just couldn’t stand it any more. Of course if she succeeded in seducing him, she would lose, because it wasn’t sex she wanted, but love. Yet she had to keep skirting that thin edge, risking what she feared. It was her nature. So she would have fought to make him get sexual, and been happy in her frustration when she failed.

But the notion of his getting sexual with any other woman was another matter. There was no temporizing there, no confusion of feelings: she didn’t want it. That Nona was too damned pretty! But at least her boyfriend Stave was there, and Stave was a sort of handsome, sort of decent hunk of young man. So Colene didn’t need to worry about that. And if there were demons in that underworld they were going to, well, demons were ugly creatures. Maybe in fantasy a demoness was luscious and seductive, but she was pretty sure that wouldn’t be the case in real life. And even if the demoness was sexy, what would she want with an ordinary mortal man? So Darius would not be facing any temptation there. He might get cut to pieces and eaten for supper, but not seduced. That was a relief.

A relief? What was she thinking of? Darius had had women galore in his home reality before he met Colene. She loved him anyway. She’d certainly rather have him seduced than dead! She knew he loved her, and that was what counted. She could survive her own jealousy and frustration, but she couldn’t survive his loss. All the same, she hoped there were no luscious creatures down inside that world.

Provos was already stripping her clothes. “But we have to go see Esta!” Colene protested. “We’ve used up most of our free time—”

The woman ignored her. Then Colene realized that this was her answer: they would be here for the night, and she would go alone to meet Esta. Provos really had no business on that excursion.

“Okay. I’ll see you later,” Colene said. “I guess you know how to turn on the TV. And you know not to go outside this room.”

She heard the water of the shower running. Provos was handling Earth okay.

Colene went back out to Slick. “Okay, we’re set. I’m ready for Esta.”

Slick nodded and started the car.