Spider Robinson - Callahan 11 - Calahan's Con

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This book is dedicated to Larry Janifer, known to some as Oudis: senior colleague, Knave

extraordinaire, and extraordinary friend

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen

property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the

publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or are

used fictitiously.

CALLAHAN'S CON

Edited by Patrick LoBrutto

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC 175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 0-765-34165-4 EAN 978-0765-34165-5

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2003040285

First edition: July 2003

First mass market edition: June 2004

Printed in the United States of America 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For assistance and advice in matters of science and technology, this time around, I am deeply indebted

to Douglas Beder, Jaymie Matthews, Ray Maxwell, Jef Raskin, Dave Sloan, and Guy Immega; as

always, any mistakes or inaccura-cies are my fault for trusting them. Assistance of other kinds, just as

valuable and appreciated, was provided by Rod Rempel, Lawrence Justrabo, and Colin MacDonald (the

wizards behind my Web site), and by Bob Atkinson, Steve Fahnestalk, Daniel Finger, Stephen Gaskin,

Paul Krassner, Alex and Mina Morton, Val Ross, Riley Sparks, the late Laurence M. Janifer, every one

of the posters to the Usenet newsgroup alt.callahans, and oth-ers too numerous or fugitive to mention.

Particular thanks go to one of my favorite writers, Laurence Shames, for his gracious permission to

borrow, for the second time, his splendid creations Bert the Shirt and Don Giovanni. If you find them as

delightful as I do, look for Mr. Shames's novels Florida Straits, Sunburn, and Mango Squeeze.

None of my thirty-one books—or anything else I've done—would have been possible without the

advice, ideas, research assistance, not-always-credited collaboration, and ongoing love and support of

my wife, Jeanne. This time out, however, she deserves more than the usual thanks; this is the first book

I've written since I quit smoking tobacco, and I estimate I was about 15 to 20 percent harder to live with

than usual during its creation. (Neither of us is complaining; we both figure it's a good trade. But

still—thank you, Spice!) For the same reason and others, special thanks go to my longtime friend and

agent, Eleanor Wood, and evenlongertime friend and editor, Pat LoBrutto, for believing in me and being

patient.

Howe Sound, British Columbia 8 September 2002

Teach us delight in simple things, And mirth that has no bitter springs.

—Rudyard Kipling

The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to

master her.

—George Bernard Shaw

Give up owning things and being somebody. Quit existing.

—Jaka ad-Dinar ar-Rumi

When you can laugh at yourself, there is enlightenment.

—Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

1 ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE

The basic condition of human life is happiness.

—the Dalai Lama

A little more than ten years after we had all arrived in Key West, saved the universe from annihilation,

and settled back to have us some serious fun, bad ugliness and death came into my bar. No place is

perfect.

I noticed her as soon as she came through the gate.

I always notice newcomers to The Place, but it was more than that. Before she said a word, even

before she was near enough to get a sense of her face, something—body language maybe—told me she

was trouble. My subconscious alarm system is fairly sensitive, even for a bartender.

Unfortunately I'm often too stupid to heed it. I did register her arrival, as I said . . . and then I went

back to dispensing booze and good cheer to the happy throng. Trouble has walked into my bar more

than once over the years, and I'm still here. Admittedly, I did require special help the night the nuclear

weapon went off in my hand. And I'm the first to admit that I could never have succeeded in saving the

uni-verse that other time without the assistance of my baby daughter. In fact, it would be more accurate

to say that she might not have succeeded without my supervision. All I'm trying to say is that in that first

glance, even though I recog-nized the newcomer as Trouble looking for the spot marked X, not a great

deal of adrenaline flowed. How was I to know she was my worst nightmare made flesh?

If the Lucky Duck had been around—anywhere in Key West—there probably wouldn't have been any

trouble atall, atall. Or else ten times as much. But he was away, trying to help keep Ireland intact that

winter, in a town with the unlikely name of An Uaimh. My friend Nikola Tesla might have come up with

some way to salvage things, but he was off somewhere, doing something or other with his death ray;

nobody'd heard from him in years. Even my wife, Zoey, could probably have straightened everything

right out with a few well-chosen words. She had a gig up on Duval Street that evening, though, sitting in

with a fado group, and had brought her bass and amp over to the lead singer's place for a rehearsal she

assured me was not optional.

So I just had to improvise. That only works for me on gui-tar, as a rule.

It was late afternoon on a particularly perfect day, even by the standards of Key West. The humidity

was uncommonly low for the Keys, and thanks in part to the protection of the thick flame-red canopy of

poinciana that arched over the compound, we were just hot enough that the gentle steady breezes were

welcome as much for their coolness as for the cycling symphony of pleasing scents they carried: sea salt,

frangipani, fried conch fritters, Erin's rose garden, iodine, coral dust, lime, sunblock, five different kinds of

coffee, the indescribable but distinctive bouquet of a Cuban sandwich being pressed somewhere upwind,

excellent marijuana in a wooden pipe, and just a soupcon of distant moped exhaust. The wind was

generally from the south, so even though The Place is only a few blocks from the Duval Street tourist

crawl, I couldn't detect the usual trace amounts of vomit or testos-terone in the mix.

It was the kind of day on which God unmistakably intended that human beings should kick back with

their friends and loved ones in some shady place, chill out, get tilted, and say silly things to one another.

I've gone to some lengths, over the years, to make The Place a spot conducive to just such activity, so I

had rather more customers than usual for a weekday. And they were all certainly doing their part to fulfill

God's wishes: I was selling a fair amount of booze, and the general conversation tended to be silly even if

it wasn't.

On my left, for instance, Walter was trying to tell Bradley a perfectly ordinary little anecdote—but since

they each suffer from unusual neurological disorders, even the mundane became a bit surreal.

"I was down walking Whitehead Street when there was suddenly big this boom, and I'm on my lying

back," Walter was saying. Thanks to severe head trauma a year or two ago, his whack order is often out

of word: he can say eloquently things, but not right in the way. After you've been listening to him for

about five minutes, you get used to it.

Bradley's peculiarity, on the other hand, is congenital, some sort of subtle anomaly in Broca's area. I've

always thought of it as Typesetter's Twitch: Brad tends to vocally anagrammatize, scrambling letters

within a word rather than scrambling the order of the words themselves like Walter. Sometimes that can

be even more challenging to follow. Right now, for instance, he responded to Walter's startling news

with, "No this!"

Walter nodded. "I to swear God."

"What went grown?"

"What went wrong some was criminal trying to district the scare attorney who sent jail to him," Walter

explained. "A DA? Which neo?" Brad is a court recorder.

"The new one, Tarara Buhm. He trapped her booby car with a bomb smoke."

Our resident cross to bear, Harry, cackled and yelled one of his usual birdbrained comments: "You're

welcome to smoke these boobies, bubbelah!" No one ever reacts to Harry anymore, but it doesn't seem

to stop him.

"Wow," said Bradley. "I bet she was sacred."

"Her scared? I pissed about my just pants!"

"How did it?"

"Some named fool Seven and a Quarter."

"Seven and a Quarter?" Bradley said. "Pretty wired name." "His apparently mother picked it out of a

hat. But if you think that's name a screwy—"

Listen to too much of that sort of conversation without a break and the wiring can start to smoke in

your own brain. I let my attention drift over to the piano, where Fast Eddie Costigan was accompanying

Maureen and Willard as they improvised a song parody.

A nit is a tiny little pain in the ass

The size of a molecule of gas

The average nit's about as smart as you,

Which means that you may be a nitwit too.

... and if you don't ever really give a shit

You may grow up to be a nit.

"Knit this!" Harry screamed at the top of his lungs, and was roundly ignored as always.

Or would you like to swing on your dates

Carry on at ruinous rates

And be better off than Bill Gates

Or would you rather be a jerk

A jerk is an animal whose brain tends to fail

And by definition he is male... .

Maureen and her husband both started pelting each other with peanuts at that point, so Fast Eddie went

instrumental while they regained control and thought up some more lyrics.

From over on the other side of the bar, Long-Drink McGonnigle's buzz-saw voice cut through the

Gordian knot of conversation. Apparently he'd been inspired by a couple of words in the song's chorus.

"Coming soon to your local cin-ema," he declaimed, trying to imitate the plummy tones of a BBC

announcer, "the latest entry in the longest-running comedy series in British film history: a romp about air

rage titled, Carry-On Baggage." There was general laughter.

Doc Webster jumped in, with a considerably better fake British accent. "Joan Sims will play the

baggage—fully packed indeed—Charles Hawtrey will handle 'er, and they'll spend the movie squeezed

together, either under the seat or in the overhead compartment, while flight attendant Sidney James offers

everyone his nuts." Louder laughter.

Doc has been topping Long-Drink—hell, all of us, except for his wife, Mei-Ling—for decades, now.

But the McGonnigle likes to make him work for it a little. "Rest assured that once they get their belts

unfastened and locate each other's seat, they'll soon be flying united," he riposted.

"—in the full, upright position, of course," the Doc said at once, "and setting off the smoke detectors.

The Hollies will provide the baggage theme song, `On a Carousel,' performed by Wings in an airy, plain

fashion while eight miles high. As the actress told the gym teacher, `It's first-class, Coach.

Long-Drink raised two fingers to his brow to acknowledge a successful hijacking and joined in the

round of applause. As it faded, Willard and Maureen tried another take, together this time:

A jerk is an animal who's here on spring break

He sure can be difficult to take (raucous laughter)

He has no manners when he swills his ale

He'd sell one kidney for a piece of tail

So if its years till you have to go to work,

Then don't grow up: just be a jerk

"Jerk this!" Harry shrieked inevitably. After a brief pause for thought, Maureen launched the next

chorus:

Hey, would you like to swing on a bed

Try to moon some frat boy named Fred

And be better off when you're dead

Or would you rather get a life?

"Excuse me," a stranger's voice said, when the cheering had faded enough.

It had taken that long for the newcomer to make it as far as the bar. I'd vaguely noticed her doing a

larger-than-usual amount of gawking around at The Place on her way, examin-ing it intently enough to

have been grading it by some unknown criteria. I turned to see her now, and a vagrant shaft of sunlight

pierced the crimson leaves overhead, forcing me to hold up a hand to block it, with the net effect that I

proba-bly looked as though I were saluting.

It seemed appropriate. The short pale Caucasian woman who stood there was—in that Key West

winter heat—so crisp and straight and stiff and in all details inhumanly perfect that I might well have taken

her for a member of the military, temporarily out of uniform, an officer perhaps, or an MP. But she wore

her severe business suit and glasses as if they were a uniform, and in place of a sidearm she carried

something much deadlier. From a distance I had taken it for a purse. The moment I recognized it for what

it really was, I started to hear a high distant buzzing in my ears.

A briefcase.

With an elaborate crest on it that was unmistakably some sort of official seal.

I felt a cold, clammy sweat spring out on my forehead and testicles. Suddenly I was deep-down

terrified, for the first time in over a decade. My ancient enemy was in my house.

The others were oblivious; most of them could not have seen the briefcase from their angle. "No,

excuse me, ma'am," Long-Drink said politely. "I didn't see you there. Have a seat."

"There's no excuse for either of you dickheads!" Harry said, and shrieked with laughter at his own wit.

The stranger ignored him, which impressed me: Harry isn't easy to ignore when you first meet him. He

spent a few too many of his formative years in a whorehouse, where the competition for attention must

have required strong measures.

"Welcome to The Place, dear," Mei-Ling said. "What are you drinking?"

"Nothing, thank you," the stranger said. She had ignored Long-Drink's invitation to sit, too. Her voice

sounded eerily like synthesized speech on a computer, the audio equivalent of Courier font. "I am looking

for the parents of the minor child Erin Stonebender-Berkowitz. Would any of you know where they

might be found at this point in time?"

My friends are pretty quick on the uptake. By the time she was done speaking, everyone present had

grasped the awful truth.

A bureaucrat was among us.

Nobody flinched, or even blinked, but I knew they, too, were all on red alert now, ready to back my

play. The small comfort was welcome: I was so terrified, it was hard to get my breath.

She was short, not much over five feet, and fashionably anorexic. I guessed her at fifty-five years old,

but could have been low: her greying brown hair was yanked back into a bal-lerina bun so tightly that

there might have been some inci-dental face-lift effect. Her skin was paler than average for a Floridian,

and I could tell by the incipient sunburn on her left arm and the left side of her face that she had just

driven down the Keys that morning. But no part of her that I could see was shiny with perspiration . . .

even though a business suit is at least two layers of clothing more than is desirable in Key West.

The best way to lie is to tell part of the truth, in such a way that your listener fills in the blanks,

incorrectly, for herself. That way if you get caught, you can always play dumb. "Her mother's not here

right now," I said. "Is there a message I can pass on when I see her?"

"No. Do you know exactly where she presently domiciles?"

About fifty yards away, in the nearest of the five houses within the compound. "Have you tried the

phone book?"

"What about her father?" I wasn't the only one who could answer a question with another question.

"Never met the guy," I said, still miniskirting the truth.

I was very glad I still had all my hair, at age fifty-mumble, and still wore it Beatle-style: those greying

bangs concealed the icy sweat dripping down behind my sunglasses now. So far, I was still speaking the

strict truth—my wife, Zoey, was a few weeks pregnant with Erin when I met her—but I was beginning to

pass beyond the area where I could later claim to have innocently misunderstood what this woman was

ask-ing. And I already didn't like the direction this was going.

She looked around at the others, one by one. This was a lit-tle more complex than it sounds, because

she did it like a poorly designed robot: instead of moving her eyes from face to face, she kept her eyes

fixed straight ahead and moved her entire body slightly each time. You had the idea she was tak-ing a

mental snapshot of each face. "Do any of you know where I might find either of the parents of Erin

Stoneben-der-Berkowitz at this point in time?"

Maybe Mei-Ling guessed my problem. "No offense," she said, "but who are you, and why do you want

to know?" "My name is Czrjghnczl—"

I hastily began drawing her a glass of water to clear her throat—but stopped, because she went on:

"—Field Inspector Ludnyola Czrjghnczl—and I am from Tallahassee."

My heart was already hammering. Now it started flailing away with a maul, putting its shoulder into it. I

had taken her for a town-level bureaucrat, or at worst someone from Mon-roe County. But Tallahassee

is the capital of Florida. Ms. Czr-jghnczl was state-level trouble.

"I am a senior field inspector for the Florida Department of Education," she said, confirming my worst

fear, "and I have been tasked with determinating whether Erin Stonebender-Berkowitz is being properly

and adequately homeschooled, or is in fact in need of immediational custo-dial intervention and/or

removal from her parents' custody."

Pindrop silence.

The thing to do when you're terrified is to take a step forward and smile. I did both, and when I was

done, I had pretty much shot my bolt, so I just stood there, smiling and trying to understand what had

gone so horribly wrong.

It was my understanding that Zoey and I were cool with the state education people regarding Erin's

homeschooling-; we certainly had been for the past seven years. And the idea that her education could

be deficient in any possible way was ludicrous. To be sure, every single thing we had ever told the state

of Florida about her homeschooling had been complete and utter bullshit. But let's be fair: the God's

honest truth could only have confused them—at best. Thanks to the inter-vention of a cybernetic entity

named Solace (now deceased) during Erin's gestation, our daughter was born with a higher IQ; a better

vocabulary; and a broader, deeper education than either of her parents. Try explaining that to a state

func-tionary with a fill-in-the-blank form sometime.

I wished Zoey were there so badly my stomach hurt. She was our family's designated

Speaker-to-Bureaucrats, not me. She spoke fluent Bullshit. I speak only American, some Cana-dian,

and a smattering of English, and I've learned from painful experience how dangerous that is around a civil

ser-vant. It would be three more years before Erin would turn sixteen and become immune to the dark

powers of school boards; in the meantime she was, in the eyes of the law, just like any other child: a

slave.

Zoey wasn't there. We owned no cell phone. I couldn't recall the last name of the lead singer at whose

place she was rehearsing, if I'd ever known it, so I had no way to look up his phone number. It was up to

me.

I cleared my throat and said, "Listen, Field Inspector Czr-jghnczl, I—excuse me a moment."

The brain behaves oddly under stress. A penny finally dropped. I turned away from her for a moment

and directed an accusatory glare down the bar at Walter. He grimaced back, probably with shame. "The

district attorney's name was Tarara Buhm?" I asked him.

He hung his head.

"Tarara Buhm, DA?"

He nodded.

I took in a long slow breath, let it out even slower. "Right." I turned back to the Antichrist. "Listen, Field

Mar-shal Von .. I'm sorry, Field Inspector Czrjghnczl ... I'd just like to—"

"The accent is on the rjgh," she interjected.

Another long slow breath. "Right. As I was saying, I'd like to—"

Harry picked then to shriek, "I'd like to cut the mustard with you and then lick the jar clean afterwards,

you spicy slut!"

She turned bright red and spun on her heel, ready to do battle. Then she relaxed a little. "Oh, for God's

sake. I thought it was a person."

For once, Harry was speechless. He blinked at her for a moment . . . then rose into the air with a flurry

of angry flapping and flew past me. In a place of honor behind the bar sits an old fashioned pull-chain

toilet, a little under five inches tall but fully functional. Harry landed, perched on it, put it to its intended

use, and flushed it.

"What a disgusting parrot," she said.

"True, but he's not dead."

She didn't get the reference, and I didn't try to pursue it.

"Excuse me, madam," Ralph Von Wau Wau said behind her. "On what basis do you say that my friend

Harry is not a person?"

Uh-oh, I thought. You don't often hear Ralph drop that Colonel Klink accent of his . . . but when he

does, it's time to seek cover.

She, of course, had no way of knowing that, and his tone was soft and gentle. She turned around, and

whether she intended to debate with him or simply tell him she was too important to do so cannot be

known, because when she fin-ished turning, he was not there. Nobody was. She had just heard his voice

from two feet behind her, and now nobody was there; she blinked in annoyance.

Then she thought to look down.

She had been opening her mouth to speak as she turned. Now it just kept opening, until she looked like

she was using it to pleasure an invisible elephant . . . but nothing could come out of it because she could

not stop inhaling.

It was hard to blame her. It's disturbing enough to look down and discover a full-grown, visibly

pissed-off German shepherd at your feet. But if it challenges you to argue semantics with it, and you don't

lose your cool . . . Jack, you dead. I sighed. I could already tell this was probably going to cost me.

"I vill admit," Ralph told her, "his sense of humor leaves virtually everything to be desired. But by zat

criterion zere are very few perzonss present here right now." His fake accent was starting to come back,

an encouraging sign.

She yanked her eyes away from him with an almost audible sucking sound and looked quickly around

her. I could tell she was looking for the ventriloquist who was causing this dog to appear to talk, and she

kept trying even though she kept com-ing up empty. Again, hard to blame her. The night I met Ralph

myself, maybe a quarter of a century ago at the origi-nal Callahan's Place, he was working a ventriloquist

con, in partnership with a mute guy. We only caught on because the guy wasn't very good at lip synching.

But finally she gave up. You could see that she wanted to hit a delete key and make Ralph go away.

But she couldn't find one. "Vould you mind telling me just vat your definition of `perzonhood' entailss?"

he repeated.

Since he persisted in speaking, she would have to answer him, but that didn't necessarily mean she had

to concede he existed. She stared straight ahead of her and addressed the empty air. "The abortion

controversialization has made the legal definition quite complexitized; it would be imprudent to

paraphrase it from memory. I can however direct you to—"

"The hell with the legal definition," Alf yelled. "Answer the damn question, lady."

She froze. This new voice was much higher in pitch and reedier in tone than Ralph's, did not sound even

vaguely canine, and had no accent at all—Southern Florida Standard English, if that isn't an oxymoron.

But it came from roughly the same height as Ralph's voice, so she already sensed she was in trouble.

Again she looked down.

And again performed her Linda Lovelace At The Zoo impression. And once again, I could not find it in

my heart to fault her for it. Most people are stunned silent by their first sight of a Key deer.

They look pretty much like any other deer . . . only seen through the wrong end of a telescope: perfect

little miniature creatures. One taller than knee-high would be considered a basketball player by his tribe.

Tourists who take the trouble to get past the safeguards protecting Key deer and see one up close just

about always react with awe. Even without hearing one speak.

Much less speak rudely. "Come on, come on, sugar—we do have all day, but we have better things to

waste it on than you," Alf snapped, twitching his tail.

The Inspector could not seem to shake off her paralysis; every time she started to, her eyes refocused

on Alfie and her mainspring popped again. Alf's nose is hard to look away from, so big and red he looks

like W. C. Fields's lawn orna-ment—apparently there's an auxiliary brain in there. The bureaucrat tried

looking away from it . . . and found herself staring at Ralph; no help there. I felt an impulse to intervene

somehow, but many years ago I gave up trying to find ways to cushion fellow humans against that first

meeting with people like Ralph or Alf. There is no way to cushion it that I've ever found; it's simply a

sink-or-swim kind of deal. Best to let the hand play out as dealt.

Long-Drink McGonnigle stood up, frowning.

Shit, where did I put that fifth ace?

He loped over to the chalk line before the fireplace and raised his glass. Silence. "To manners," he said,

emptied his drink in a gulp, and flung the glass into the hearth. The smash was loud and musical.

There was a ragged but strong chorus of, "To manners!" and more than a dozen glasses followed

Long-Drink's in a ragged barrage.

Newcomers to our company often find our toasting cus-toms almost as startling as Ralph Von Wau

Wau: A sudden thunder of bursting glassware can make some people jump a foot in the air.

"Now, Ms. Belch...," Long-Drink said, turning and advancing on Field Inspector Czrjghnczl. This was

not going well. "Exactly what the hell makes you think you have the right to saunter in here and make wild

insinuations and vile threats about people you've never even met?"

This was something she knew how to deal with: Her blank face congealed. "And you are ..."

The Drink nodded. "Magnificent. I know."

"Well, in point of fact, Mr. Nificent, I happen to be fully authorized to—"

"Authorized?" Doc Webster interjected. "Nonsense. Where's your elbow patches? Your coffeemaker?

The beads of blood on your forehead? The line of creditors hounding your footsteps? No offense,

Ralph."

"I doubt she's authored a thing in her life," Long-Drink agreed. "She looks like more of an editor to me."

She rebooted. "In point of fact, I am fully authorized by the state to investigate and make

recommendatory sugges-tions for disposition vis-a-vis the educational slash residen-tiary status of minor

children deemed to be in a state of potentialized risk."

"Wow," Marty Pignatelli said. "You carry a piece?" She gave him a withering glare.

"Not even a throwdown?" Marty's an ex-cop.

It had been over a decade since I had last heard someone use the word "slash" in a sentence that did

not also have the word "prices" in it. I couldn't help wondering who was responsible for major children.

And of course, "state of potentialized risk" was one for the archives. But I wasn't thinking about any of

those things just then. I was beginning to understand how much trouble I was in.

This was no mere garden-variety bureaucrat. This was the hydroponic monoculture logic-resistant

kudzu-gene Franken-food kind. She didn't need a damn gun. Sweat ran down my back into my shorts.

It was time to start proffering olive branches. "Field Inspector Czrjghnczl," I said, carefully placing the

accent on the rjgh, this time, "I don't think anyone here would question your authority, your

responsibility, or your probity. Would we, folks?" I put just enough spin on the last three words that the

response was a strained silence. I went on, "There's really no need at all to approach this in an

adversarial spirit. I'm sure that with open, honest communication we can arrive at a mutually—"

It was working; I could see it in her eyes. My submissive display was pulling her back from the very

edge of a snit. There was still hope for negotiation. I was trying to recall everything I knew about stalling,

when without warning the situation went completely to hell.

It happened too fast to really grasp, but as I reconstruct things, what started it was Pixel the cat,

materializing on the countertop behind me ... less than a foot from where Harry the parrot still sat on his

little porcelain throne. Yes, he's that Pixel: the Cat Who Walks Through Walls, former master of Robert

A. Heinlein; he wandered into our company and took us captive shortly after Mr. Heinlein's death in

1988. You'd think Harry would he used to his sudden appearances by now, after more than a decade of

mutual ballbreaking, but it still gets the little guy every time. He screamed `Jesus Christ," erupted from

his commode like a Nike from its launch rack, and made a beeline for whatever he happened to he

looking at at the moment. Which was Field Inspector Czr-jghnczl, of course.

From her point of view, she was suddenly under scuz mis-sile attack, albeit a missile trailing feathers

and profanity. Her reaction must have been just as automatic as his: She tried to bat Harry out of the air

with her deadly briefcase. She had excellent reflexes, too; the only thing that saved Harry a nasty

concussion was the twenty-five pounds or so of cat that seemed to be attached to her arm all of a

sudden. Painfully attached: I've seen Pixel dice melons with those claws. He doesn't like it when anyone

but him gives Harry a hard time.

Still operating on hardwired programming, she let go of the briefcase and tried to fling him from her arm.

But just as she got to the point where she planned to "snap the whip" and use centrifugal force to unseat

him . . . he was just gone. She ended up in a spinning, off-balance stagger. Alf just had time to bray,

"Hey, I'm walkin' here—I'm walkin' here—" before Ludnyola tripped over him. Her brain was lagging

three or four crises behind, and her reflexes had done all they could; she would have gone down and

landed heavily on that infinitely fragile little animal. But Ralph von Wau Wau roared and reared up on his

hind legs, and suddenly all the frenzied high-speed activity congealed into a static tableau.

Ralph and Field Inspector Czrjghnczl appeared to be dancing. A new dance, one I felt definitely had

possibilities. Her arms hung limp at her sides, and Ralph was holding her up by the tits.

She stared, from Ralph down to her chest and back up to Ralph, whose muzzle panted and drooled

slightly a few inches from her face. Her brain caught up, or perhaps only her reflexes. She screamed,

pushed Ralph violently away, and sprang backwards.

Most of us started yelling, but of course the more we yelled, the more determined she became to keep

on backpedaling. And she had only been about twelve steps from the pool to start with.

It will be very bad, I thought, if she falls in the pool.

She stopped on the eleventh step and planted her feet firmly, oblivious of the water just behind her. By

now her brain had definitely caught up, and overruled the reflexes. A civil servant never retreats, no

matter what. Not even if it is the only sane thing to do. The hounds of Hell can always be slapped with a

subpoena or threatened with a seven-year audit. I could see her using fire-extinguisher blasts of anger to

smother her fear. She took a deep breath, raised her voice, as if she didn't already have anyone's

attention, and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I require your cooperation. Are either of the parents of Erin

Stonebender-Berkowitz here present?"

Gee, this was not going well.

I was out of wiggle room. Outright lying would only make things worse. Time to cop. "I'm Jake

Stonebender."

Her target radar locked on to me. "I see. Is your wife pres-ent?"

"Uh, no, she's at a rehearsal."

Somewhere on her console a red light came on. "She is an actress?"

I hastened to deny the slander. "A musician."

I could tell from her expression I had added another amber light and a warning buzzer. "I see."

I was wishing I'd thought to lie. Now she was going to ask what instrument, and I was going to have to

say bass. Bureau-crats are not likely to be impressed by bass players. Perhaps you've heard the one

about the difference between a bass player and a large pepperoni pizza? The pizza can feed a fam-ily of

four. I wondered if I could phrase it so as to imply that Zoey bowed a bass, for a symphony orchestra.

Would Field Inspector Czrjghnczl know Key West has no symphony? Maybe I should

"And where is Erin herself now?"

Cerebral meltdown.

"," I said, not very loudly. How could I have not anticipated this question?

"She is nearby, I presume?"

"Ye-e-es," I agreed cautiously, crossing my fingers hard enough to raise bruises. In a certain sense, Erin

is always nearby. And it would not be good to admit that I had no clear idea where—or even

when—she was, and that she could easily be thousands of miles away . . . or for that matter, thousands

of years. This woman believed, as an article of faith, that anyone Erin's age was by definition a PINS, a

person in need of supervision, and that it was my responsibility to keep tabs on the kid every second.

"Pursuing some sort of educational project at this time of day, no doubt?" she said skeptically.

Here I was on less shaky ground. "Absolutely. Anthropo-logical research."

"Fetch her, please."

"Look," I said desperately, "I don't see any need to—" "Kindly produce her at once," the Field

Inspector said. "If in fact you can."

A couple of people went w0000. She had issued fighting words. I considered feigning offense, as a

stalling tactic. But stalling until what?

Damn it, I might as well bite the bullet.

I sighed deeply and brought my watch up. I pressed the mode button on the lower left and the display

changed to a dormant stopwatch labeled CHRONO. I pressed it again and the watch became an alarm

clock awaiting instructions. Another press, and the watch offered to tell me the time in some other time

zone, arbitrarily designated "T-2." On most watches, the fourth press would have reverted it to default,

the current-time readout. On mine, the fourth press caused it to display a crude but recognizable picture

of a ladybug.

I hesitated for several more seconds, trying to think of a good way out of this. Then I pressed the

button on the upper right, once. The ladybug began flashing

Erin materialized, immediately between me and Field Inspector Czrjghnczl. "Hi, Papa!" she said

cheerily. "What's up?" Her pitch dropped several notes. "Why are you holding your face in your hands

like that?"

Behind her, there was a large, loud splash.

Part of it, of course, was that Erin was hovering about a foot and a half over the bar, with no more

visible means of support than a bass player. Another part of the problem was probably that she had just

Transited—traveled home from some other ficton, some other place-and-time. For technical reasons I

don't understand, living and dead matter can't Tran-sit in the same load ... so those who travel that way

necessar-ily arrive stark naked.

But I think the icing on the cake must have been that whatever ficton Erin had just been visiting, they

had a war going on there—well, that doesn't rule out many, does it?—and she was soaked with blood,

apparently so recently spilled that it still qualified as living matter. Even I found the sight unnerv-ing, and I

knew for sure that none of the blood was hers.

Small wonder Field Inspector Czrjghnczl suffered system crash and fell over backwards into the pool.

Other people hurried to pull her out. I was way too busy. I had five or ten seconds max to bring Erin up

to speed. This was going to get ugly, now, and fast.

Fortunately my little girl has always had a tendency to hit the ground running. "Tell it, Papa."

"That splashing behind you is a government employee—"

"Which agency? NSA?"

"No, no, state educa—Why would you expect the NSA?"

"Later, Pop, later. She's here about homeschooling, then?" She got the hose, adjusted the sprinkler

head to hold still, and began sluicing blood off herself. "But why? We're current with the state."

I shrugged. "Beats me. You know I don't speak Bureau-crat."

In another year or two, long hair would become very important to her, but at thirteen she was keeping

hers cut short enough that rinsing it took no time at all, and afterward all she needed to do was shake her

head and let the sun do the rest. Clothes appeared next to her, Transited from her nearby bedroom; she

began dressing. "How bad is it?"

"She started out by talking about maybe removing you from our custody. From there, the situation

deteriorated."

Erin grinned, visualizing it. "She demanded that you produce me forthwith, and then when she suddenly

found my bare bum in her face, she went for a swim."

I nodded. "You have the thing in a nutshell. Be careful: surprises frighten her."

"You said she's a bureaucrat. What's her name?"

I told her.

Erin frowned. "Accent on the rjgh?" she asked, and I nod-ded. "Aha," she said.

I heard her, but it didn't register right away; I was dis-tracted.

God damn it.

I really don't want anyone but friends in my pool.

No, I mean I really really don't want anyone but friends in my pool—and certainly not enemies.

"There's a corpse down there," she screamed as she broached. "A dead bod—" and by then she

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