Tinker

2: In the Eye of God

Time seemed to crawl by. The cousins went outside and found it was dawn. Someone had pulled the flatbed out of the way and locked it up. The keys needed to be found. Once they managed to get into the truck, they discovered that they'd made the break across the border on fumes. Oilcan dug out a fuel can and went off in search of gasoline.

Exhausted, Tinker bolted the trailer door, then stripped out of her day-old clothes and pulled on clean panties and her hoverbike team shirt. Curling up on her worktable where Windwolf had recently lain, she tried to sleep. Her torn left hand hurt, but she was too tired to check under the bandages that Jonnie had put on her. It wouldn't help to look anyhow; she'd killed all her first-aid supplies dealing with Windwolf. Jonnie had said that she would need to check into a hospital, she thought as she drifted off. When Oilcan came back, she'd have him drop her at Mercy.

A banging on the trailer door woke her. She felt cold and weak as she half fell off the worktable. She put out her left hand to catch herself, and the pain made her cry out; she curled tight around her hand, cursing. Whoever was at the door stopped beating on it.

The flatbed jostled oddly. Tinker squeaked in surprise as she suddenly found herself being hauled up and backward. Windwolf swung her up and sat her on the worktable.

"Windwolf!" She blinked at him, confused by his appearance, until she realized that he had opened the flatbed's cab door and crawled through the AC vent. "What are you doing here?"

"What is this for?" He held up the spell she had abandoned in the trash.

"Tooloo told me that's what I should cast when I paid the debt."

"Debt?"

"You put a life debt on me, during a fight with a saurus—five years ago."

He cocked his head and looked at her for a long minute. "You're the fearless little savage with the crooked metal bar? The one that put the saurus's eye out while I was dazed?"

When had he been dazed? "Um, yes. I had a tire iron."

"You were a boy."

She shook her head. "I've always been a girl. I was only thirteen. I was a child."

He gave a cold hard laugh. "And you're not a child now?" He crumpled up the circuit paper and flung it away. "And who told you about this debt?"

"Tooloo. I showed her the spell you put on me and asked her what it was. She said if you died, as your body rotted, so would mine."

He went still. "So that's the only reason you saved me?"

She waved his question away with her good hand. "It just made things scarier, that's all. As if the Foo dogs weren't enough to scare the shit out of me, I had this added little creepiness to deal with. I wouldn't have done anything different, but now we're even."

"We are not even."

"What? Look, I saved you! I risked my life, got my hand screwed up." She held up her hand to show the bound wound. "I tore my place into pieces so I could crate you around! We drove all over Lain's flower beds and yard, making big ruts and killing the plants, and I told her I would go to college to make it up to her! I pulled a gun on the border patrol—who weren't even border patrol, but that's another story. All to save your life! And you would have been dead! If I hadn't helped you fight those Foo dogs, and then hauled your skinny elf ass out here to the Rim, you would have died a couple times over."

He pulled his knife, making her yelp and flinch back. He caught hold of her wounded hand. A glint of light from the silver blade, and he cut off the bandage.

Don't argue with the elf! Yes, sir. No, sir. Then get the hell away from him!

He gazed at her hand, and then caught hold of her head, pulled her to him. His lips touched her forehead where he had once painted the symbol.

What the hell does that mean?

Windwolf reached over and unlocked the trailer door. He picked her up then, like she was a child.

Tinker squirmed in his hold. "What the hell do you think you're doing? Put me down!"

"No." He carried her out of the trailer and across the street. Various elves scurried toward them, bowing and speaking quickly in High Elvish. Windwolf gave curt commands that were instantly obeyed with a fluid bow and "Shya, ze domou."

Windwolf carried her into the hospice, through a maze of hallways. A storm of High Elvish continued all around her, all too fast for her to understand.

"Please speak slower, please!" She hated High Elvish because it was so extremely polite. Yet no matter how many times she asked, no one seemed to take notice of her.

Windwolf stopped finally in a small room, typical of the hospice. The floor was a dark, warm blue color, the walls the color of honey, and the lighting came from the soft glow of the ceiling. Windwolf laid her on a high bed. Its pale birch headboard was more ornate than any human-style hospital bed, but otherwise it seemed to serve the same purpose.

Tinker sat up, swearing in a mix of Low Elvish and English. "Answer me, damn it! What do you think you are doing?"

A silver-haired female elf took a clear jar down from a birch cabinet. She handed it to Windwolf. He carried it back across the room, unscrewing the wide lid. Inside was a large golden flower.

"What's that for?" Tinker didn't bother with Elvish this time.

Putting the jar on the table beside the bed, Windwolf lifted the flower out and held it so close in front of Tinker's face that she nearly went cross-eyed looking at it.

"Smell it!" Windwolf commanded.

Tinker sniffed it cautiously. It reminded her of honeysuckle, a warm drowsy smell, with the soft drone of bees, the sway of green boughs, summer wind, blue skies, white clouds blistering white, softness piled and billowed upwards, wispy here, knife-edged sharp…

Tinker realized that she was going under, and jerked back. She tried to push the flower away with her wounded hand, too sleepy to remember it was hurt, and whimpered at the sudden flare of pain.

Windwolf caught the back of her head, holding her still, pressing the flower to her nose. "Just breathe it."

Tinker fought instead, not sure what was happening, only determined not to be helpless before him. She punched him as he bruised the sweet silken petals against her. She had aimed for his groin, but he turned and she caught him in the hip.

"Do not fight, little savage." He caught her chin between thumb and pinkie, holding her face as if in a vise, the flower cradled by his other fingers. He let go of her head and caught her wrists, forcing her back, pinning her down. "You are only going to hurt yourself."

She held her breath and squirmed under him, trying to kick him. He had his weight against her thighs and hips. Then she couldn't hold her breath any longer, and gasped. Sweetness, warm and sleepy as clean sheets on a feather-soft bed full in the early morning sun, white light through sheer curtains, open window to wind from a garden…

The female elf came across the room, laughing musically as only elves could, a silver knife in hand. The air went shimmering white, closing in around them, warm and liquid as honey, and sweet…

The Foo dogs chased her in her nightmares. Only they kept changing. One moment, they were great cats. Another moment—huge dogs. Other times—Chinese dragons, coiling through the scrap like giant poisonous snakes. She ran, her legs heavy as if she waded through mud. Suddenly the dream changed; Windwolf rocked her, warm and gentle as her grandfather's arms. His voice rumbled soft comfort into her ear.

"The Foo dogs!" she gasped, looking about wildly. The dream room held nothing more dangerous than shadows, a chair beside the bed, a low table with a pitcher of water and glasses.

"They are all dead," he murmured, stroking her back.

She clung to him as the dream wanted to slide back to the monsters in the scrap yard, the edges of the room blurring into heaps of metal. "Don't let go!"

"I will not."

She worked at forcing her dreaming to focus on him. She thought she heard the slither of scales over steel and whimpered, burrowing into his hair.

"Easy. You are safe," Windwolf stated calmly. "I will let nothing harm you."

Think of Windwolf. She ran fingers through his hair, found his ears and traced their outline. She investigated their shape and texture, the slight give of the cartilage, the softness of the lobe, and the intricate coil of inner part versus the firm, stiff points of the ear tip. After a few minutes, he gave a soft moan and caught her exploring hand. He moved it to his mouth, kissed her fingertips, the palm of her hand, and then ran his tongue feather light over the pulse point on her wrist.

Who would have guessed that would feel so good? She would have to try it awake some time. She gazed at him, stunned again by the beauty of his eyes.

"I don't think I've ever seen anything so blue. Cobalt maybe."

"My eyes?"

"Yes."

He studied her solemnly and then said, "Your eyes are the color of polished walnut."

"Is that good?"

This dream Windwolf looked at her with gentleness that she wasn't accustomed to from him. "Your eyes are warm and earthy and yet strong enough to face any adversity."

"Oh, wow, you like my eyes?"

"I like all of you. You are pleasing to look at."

Now she knew she was dreaming. "Yeah, right, with my hair and my nose." She twanged her nose a couple of times. It was numb, just like when she was drunk. Windwolf's nose, of course, was perfect; she traced her fingers over the bridge of his nose. Just right.

"I find your hair appealing," perfectly dreamy Windwolf said.

"You do?"

"It is very pure."

"I thought elves liked long hair." She tugged on a short lock to illustrate that hers was anything but long.

"There is beauty in functionality that makes fashionable seem jaded. In our case, fashionable has passed traditional and become something nearly geological."

She pondered this for several minutes before realizing that he meant that the length of hair in elves was set in stone. "Sounds boring."

"I am not sure if it is lack of courage or lack of creativity that dictates the length of elfin hair; unlike you, there is a notable shortage of both in our women."

"Me?"

"You are the bravest woman I have ever met, as well as the most intelligent."

"I'm brave?" When?

"Fearless."

Tinker blew a raspberry. "Hell, no, I was scared a lot in the past" — how long had it been since Windwolf came over the fence, disrupting her well-ordered life? — "days." At least it seemed like days. She could remember at least two nights, but the number of meals and periods of sleeping didn't add to anything reasonable. "I only did what had to be done."

"And that is true courage. As you pointed out, without you, I would have died many times over. Indeed, I hazard a guess that of all the people of Pittsburgh, humans and elves, you alone had the intelligence and fortitude to keep me safe."

It was such a weird dream. The edges of the room slipped in and out of focus, and she felt too light and bold. It was like she was drunk, only usually then her limbs felt huge and needed effort to move them about. Her hands now kept adventuring off on their own, exploring Windwolf.

His fingers proved to be long and slender, with the cleanest fingernails she'd ever seen. Of course, everyone she knew spent a good amount of time with their hands in dirt or engine grease. Under a loose silk shirt of moss green, only faint silvery scars remained where the Foo dogs mauled him.

"Why did the wargs attack you? Who wanted you dead?"

"I do not know. I have many enemies. Other clans are envious of the Wind Clan's monopoly on the Westernlands, and within my own clan, many consider me a dangerous radical. This, though, was not a simple political assassination. This was pure madness, to loose monsters that kill everything in their path. I can not imagine any of my enemies attacking me in such a cowardly method."

"Someone has."

"Yes. Who remains a mystery."

There seemed to be some barrier that she had breached. Normally she would not think of touching someone, nor did she need to rebuff most people. A quick hug. A handshake. A pat on the shoulder. It was like they all walked around with invisible shields, deflecting even thoughts of reaching out to another person. She had never noticed before, but now, snuggling against Windwolf, she noticed the lack of them. Like antimatter and matter meeting, their protection shields had collided and annihilated one another.

Windwolf allowed her to explore his scarred shoulder. She found herself nuzzling into his neck, once again tracing the outline of his ear. She drew back slightly in surprise of herself.

"I'm sorry."

"Why?"

She tried to form an answer and lapsed into confused silence until she forgot what she had been thinking about. He took her hand from his ear tip again.

"Does it hurt?" she asked as he lifted her hand away.

"It feels far too good to let you continue." He nibbled on her wrist, delighting her. "You are too pure to follow that course. You are not yourself right now."

"Who am I?"

"You are Tinker without her normal defenses. You are on the edge of sleep, still full of saijin."

"I'm drugged?"

"Very much so."

She considered her body. Yup. That would explain things. "Why?"

"I did not want you to lose your hand."

She peered at her right hand. Windwolf took hold of her left, opening it to expose a network of pink scars, and anti-infection spells inked onto both the palm and the back. She flexed the hand, discovering it hurt faintly, deep inside. Thinking back now, she vaguely remembered he had carried her into the hospice.

"Oh. Thank you." She kissed him. She meant it to be a chaste kiss, but it became something more. Suddenly it dawned on her that she was half drugged, half naked, and alone with a male in a bed. Her heart started to hammer in her chest like an engine about to throw a rod.

"Do you think you can sleep now?" he asked, stroking her cheek lightly.

What did he mean by that? "Sleep sleep" or "sleep?" Luckily, the Elvish was a much more concise language. "Saijiata?" The act of sleeping?

He nodded, looking inquiringly at her, as if the other possibilities had never occurred to him.

Interestingly, the moment of panic had burned out all thoughts of monsters. "Yes. I think I can."

Tinker woke with a start. Her head seemed big, and full of air. The pain in her left hand had deepened into a constant dull ache. Turning her head, she saw the empty chair beside the bed. Windwolf.

A vase of flowers sat on the nightstand next to the pitcher of water. The vase was elfin, a deceptively simple twist of glass, a thick base sweeping up to an impossibly thin rim, elegant beyond words. The flowers were black-eyed Susans. She guessed that the flowers were from her cousin and that the hospice staff had provided the vase. As usual, the bright wildflowers made her smile. A note card leaned against the vase, printed in Oilcan's neat, over-careful hand and smudged with engine grease.

When I got back with the gas, they told me that your hand was going septic and that you were in surgery. I'm sorry I didn't check it before I left. I looked in just now, but you were still sleeping. If we want food and fuel for the next thirty days, I've got to go make sure to get it now. I hate leaving you alone. I'll be back as soon as I can. Get well soon. Love, Orville.

Orville. He must truly be rattled if he was using his real name.

There was a light tap on the door, and Maynard, God himself, opened it up.

"You're awake."

"Yes." Tinker wondered what God wanted with little her.

"I didn't make the connection between you and the Tinker until Windwolf told me about some of what you did to keep him alive."

She shrugged. "Happens all the time. No one expects the legendary Tinker to be a little snot-nosed girl."

No smile. Maybe God didn't have a sense of humor. She often suspected that.

"How old are you?" Maynard asked. "Sixteen? Seventeen?"

"Eighteen, as of last month."

"Parents?"

Little alarms were going off. "Where's this going?"

"I like to know who I'm working with."

Make that big alarms. "Since when am I working with you?"

"Since today. I've got a bit of a mystery I need solved, and maybe you can help. They say you're fit to leave."

He left it nebulous as to whether this was a declinable personal request or an official demand. Maynard certainly wasn't someone she wanted to alienate; as god of Pittsburgh, he could make her life hell. Now that she was a legal adult, she had nothing to hide. At least, she didn't think she did.

"Okay. Let me figure out what they did with my clothes, and you can show me this mystery."

Clothes found, and Maynard carefully shooed off, she got up to change.

Under the cotton gown she was naked. She put on her panties and bra without taking off the gown, eyeing the door—which had no lock. Luckily no one burst in to catch her dressing. She pulled on her carpenter's pants, and then in one quick motion pulled off the gown and slipped into her team shirt. With her back to the door, she took her time buttoning it up.

The hospice had cleaned her clothes, managing to get all of Windwolf's blood off her carpenter's pants and to find a replacement for the bottom button of her team shirt. It had gone missing weeks ago, and she'd been at a loss as to how to replace it. Cleaning clothes she could do. Repairing was something she could only do to machines.

She stepped into her steel-toed boots, sealed them, and clonked about the room, feeling more able to take on Maynard.

The contents of her pockets sat elegantly arranged in an elegant rosewood box. Elves stunned her sometimes. Most humans probably would have gone through her pockets and tossed most of her treasures. The hospice staff, however, had not only cleaned all the old grease-coated nuts and bolts, but had properly mated them together, and then arranged them by size on green velvet. They looked like bits of silver jewelry. Her spare handmade power lead (extremely crude looking but actually poly-coated gold) had been coiled and tied off with a strand of blue silk. They'd even kept the interesting-looking twig she'd pocketed the day before Shutdown, which now seemed weeks ago, instead of two days. It pleased her (she would have been unable to rebuild three separate projects without the various bolts), but still it weirded her out. When one was immortal, apparently, one had time to waste on other people's little details of life.

She pocketed her eclectic collection and went out into the hall to find Maynard waiting. He led the way out to the sun-blasted parking lot, towering over her. The flatbed was gone; Oilcan must have driven it back to the yard. Looking at the empty parking space where the tow truck had sat made her feel horribly alone and vulnerable. Stripped of her powerful toys and standing beside Maynard, she felt all of her five feet nothing. Nathan was as tall as Maynard, but he was a friend, so she never felt particularly small around him. Maynard was EIA. Her grandfather had viewed all forms of government with deep suspicion, which she of course had inherited in some part. After her grandfather had died, and she had been left an orphan in a town that exiled stray human children, the EIA had grown to bogeyman proportions.

I have nothing to fear from the EIA now. She and Oilcan had coasted a year, staying low, until Oilcan hit eighteen. At that time he could stand as head of household, and they were legal again, barely. There was the little matter that they were living in separate houses by that time. Last month, though, she had finally turned eighteen herself.

Maynard traveled in style; a big, black, armored limo rolled up to the curb, stopping so that the back passenger door could swing open without hitting them, and not an inch farther away. Maynard indicated that she was to slide into the air-conditioned comfort first.

"Parents?" Maynard asked after they pulled out of the hospice's parking lot.

"I'm eighteen—a legal adult." She tried dodging around the whole parent thing. Gods knew it was far too complex to go into. "I'm also a legal citizen: I was born and raised in Pittsburgh. I'm sole owner of Pittsburgh Scrap and Salvage. I did a quarter million dollars in business last year, and all my taxes are paid."

"Your cousin works for you?"

"Yeah."

"Any other family?"

She tried to bluff him off. "Should I save us both the effort and just dump a whole family history on you?"

"Like I said, I like to know who I'm working with."

She considered him and decided that meant "yes." She made a note not to bluff with Maynard again. "My grandfather had two kids: my father, Leonardo, and Oilcan's mom, Aunt Ada. That's all the family that I know of."

"Oilcan?" Maynard lifted one eyebrow. "Surely that's not his real name."

Apparently the loss of their ID cards had slowed down the EIA network. "No, it isn't. Aunt Ada was married to a man named John Wright. Oilcan's real name is Orville John Wright. I'm sure it was Grandpa's idea; he had a thing about inventors."

"Orville Wright." Maynard proved he had some sense of humor and smiled. "I can see why he goes by Oilcan. How did you and Orville end up here in Pittsburgh? You're too young to immigrate."

"Grandpa immigrated during the first year. I was born here. Oilcan came to live with us when I was six."

"What about your parents? Both yours and Orville's?"

"Both my dad and Aunt Ada were murdered."

"I'm sorry." Maynard thought for a moment, and then cocked his head. "Not here in Pittsburgh, or I would have known about it."

"My father was killed in Oakland before the first Startup. John Wright was a man with a temper; he killed Aunt Ada in Boston. I stayed with Lain when Grandpa went to Boston to get Oilcan; I've never been on Earth."

Maynard looked at her for several minutes through narrowed eyes. "Your father was killed—what—ten years before you were born?"

So, one couldn't slip things easily past this man. "Yes. My grandfather never got over my father's death. Grandpa used cryogenically stored sperm to have my ovum inseminated in vitro ten years after my father died."

"But your mother is still alive?"

"Technically, no." Tinker sighed—so much for trying to avoid complexity. "My birth mother wasn't the donor of the egg that my grandfather had inseminated. He also used a cryogenically stored egg. My real mother was also dead before I was born."

Maynard stared at her for several minutes before asking, "Did your parents, your real parents, even know one another?"

"I don't think so."

"Your parents, who had never met, were dead when you were conceived?"

"Yeah."

"Doesn't that bother you?"

"Mr. Maynard, if we're going to work together, can we just stick to scientific facts, and not go jaunting off through history and psychology?"

Maynard exhaled what might have been a laugh. "You hold your own."

Tinker wasn't sure what he meant by that. Sick of the whole inquisition, she forced the conversation off onto another track. "So what the hell do you want me to do?"

"Someone smuggled a large shipment of illegal goods in during Shutdown. Lucky for us, though, they were involved in a multiple-vehicle accident on the Veterans Bridge. Their vehicle was disabled, and they panicked in spectacular fashion, which makes us worried about what all they might have brought into Pittsburgh."

"You didn't catch them?"

"No," Maynard said. "They unloaded their truck, sorted through the shipment, and carried away what they deemed most important. The driver had been pinned by the accident; they shot him so we couldn't question him."

"Ouch." That earned her a dark look from Maynard. "So far it doesn't sound like a panic."

"Well, throw in a carjacking, assault on the other accident victims, picking up and throwing a Volkswagen Beetle over the side of the bridge in a fit of rage, engaging in a gunfight with police, and trying to blow up with C-4 what they couldn't carry away, and you start to get the idea."

Tinker gasped. Nathan! "Were any of the police hurt?"

Maynard looked surprised at the question. "Luckily, no. Not for the want of trying, though."

"And how do I fit in? I was in McKees Rocks fighting wargs when that accident happened."

"How do you know when it happened?"

"My friend Nathan Czernowski is a cop. He was with me at the scrap yard when the call came in. I'm assuming that there was only one multiple-vehicle pileup and fistfight on the Veterans Bridge."

"Yes." Maynard relaxed slightly, apparently accepting her alibi. "Well, you'll be interested to know that the description of the smugglers match that of your attackers at the Rim."

Tinker swore. "Smuggle in contraband one night, attack Windwolf the next?"

"Very busy people," Maynard said. "It denotes a large organization, of which these men are merely disposable muscle. So far, EIA has been able to keep such crime rings out of Pittsburgh. I want to pull this one up by its roots."

"Sounds like a plan. What does this have to do with me?"

"Some of the load wasn't contraband, just extremely expensive high-tech parts. The question is, what could they be used to make?"

"Oh, I see."

The impounded goods had been unloaded in a warehouse in the Strip District. Basically just one low room a block long, the place fairly crawled with armed EIA. While security for the building ran high, lighting and climate control left much to be desired. Natural light came in from windows lining an upper walkway. Work lamps tacked to support columns provided additional light, plugged into jury-rigged electrical boxes on newly strung Romex line.

Because of the virgin forests occupying most of the western continent, Elfhome usually ran several degrees cooler than Earth. Since Pittsburgh suffered from high humidity, the lower temperatures were a blessing. The rain storms of Shutdown and Startup over, a rare summer heat, however, had moved in. The warehouse's only nod toward climate control was ceiling fans, cloaked in the shadows high overhead, that barely moved the ovenlike heat of the building.

Tinker found herself wishing for shorts and a midriff shirt. In Maynard's company, she didn't even feel like unbuttoning her shirt. Sweat trickled down her back as she followed Maynard through trestle tables set up and loaded with smuggled goods.

What she discovered made her forget the heat.

There were digital boards, stripping kits, and connector kits. For fiber-optics work, they had a full run of splice trays, hot-melt connector systems, and a curing oven. She found a spool of gold wire. Fault finders, microscanners, and status activity monitors. There were tech kits that set her mouth drooling. Punch boxes. Wire crimp tools. Small precision mirrors. There were even new digital markers that laid out a metal-based ink held in a buckyball matrix. Tinker poked through the stuff, wishing she could take the lot back to her place. Lain had told her tales about the world beyond the Rim where such stuff was plentiful. Much as Tinker loved Pittsburgh, she had to admit that there was a true shortage of goods.

Maynard interrupted her trolling to hand her a length of cable with a box at the end. "Do you know what this is?"

Tinker took it. She turned it in her hands, studying it. The box was molded plastic with two power ports. She tried the various screwdrivers she had tucked into her pockets, the third being the charm, and undid the screws. "Oh my, this is sexy."

"What is it?"

"It's a power transformer."

"You recognize it?"

"What's to recognize? This is a male 220 line, meaning you plug it into a 220 outlet. It would have a pull on par with an electric clothes dryer or an electric range. The female leads are typical magic connectors. It takes electrical power and transforms it to magic. The question is—what type of spell is it keyed to?"

"It would have to be keyed to only one spell?"

"There isn't any way to change the output frequency. It's preset. Although, if you knew the frequency it was outputting, then you could probably set up a secondary translation spell anytime you wanted to use it for a different spell. You'll see a loss in power efficiency on the order of eleven percent, but at this amperage, such a power loss would be negligent. Shit, I could have used something like this on Windwolf. I'll have to build one."

"You could build one of these?"

"Yeah. It wouldn't be too hard. Of course, there's the whole question of why bother. Here on Elfhome, there's enough magical power to fuel any spell without the cost of electrical energy. And on Earth, except for healing elves, there are already mechanical solutions for almost everything."

"Magic doesn't work on Earth."

"Does too." Tinker replaced the screws and tightened them down. "The laws of the universe don't change just because you hop dimensions. The difference is the amount of magical power in the dimension. Think of magic as a waveform passing through multiple realities. Elfhome exists at the top of the wave: Magic is plentiful. Earth exists at the bottom of the wave: Magic is rare. Magic follows the laws of physics just like light, gravity, and time. I could show you the math, but it's fairly complex. There are types of radiation more common in one reality than the other, but lucky for us, the generation waveform seems larger, so we fall close enough on the curve that it doesn't affect either species adversely."

"So you can do magic on Earth?"

"It's how I kept Windwolf alive," Tinker said. "I had magic stored in a power sink and used it to feed a healing spell."

"Can you tell what the smugglers might have been trying to build with all this?"

Tinker shrugged. "Not a clue. I'm afraid I don't have a criminal mind."

"Make a wild guess."

She sighed, glancing around. "Well, unless they scooted off with all the uncommon stuff, they're not going to make a wide range of items. I'm guessing all those power transformers are set to the same frequency, or else they would be labeled somehow. There's a lack of moveable parts, so it's not like a car or a bike or a printing press. It's magic-based, either many scattered copies of one spell, or one massive spell."

"Can you tell what spell?"

"You'd better check with the elves for that. The best I can do is to match the frequency to a known spell, but my knowledge of magic is fairly limited. For all I know, they're going to change the population of Pittsburgh into frogs."

Maynard sighed slightly, perhaps not looking forward to trying to pry information from the always-obtuse elves. "Anything else?"

"Well…" Tinker held out the power transformer. "You could let me take this home and play with it. I can figure out the cycle on the magic output and search through my spell database for a match. It would at least start eliminating possibilities."

"Take it then."

She lifted up the markers. "I don't suppose I could have these as part of my payment?"

Was that a smile that tugged his mouth slightly sideways for one second? "You can have them." Maynard produced a business card and presented it. "This is my direct number. If you figure anything out, give me a call. It is always answered."

Of course it was—he was god of Pittsburgh. There was no name on the card, only a phone number. Wow, God's private phone number.

Tinker pocketed it. "I'll let you know what I find out."

"I'll take you home."

She wasn't comfortable with the idea of God knowing where she lived, although, he certainly could find out easily enough. "I've got some shopping to do, before everything's gone. Could you just drop me at Market Square?"