Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103

Gorgeous photos! Proud of you, dear heart! Retirement is ... different ... but I'm sure you'll get used to it!

PERSUASIION "Sheriff, what is the most difficult part of your job?" the pretty woman across from him asked. Jacob knew the era of a table or a hand held microphone, and hand-carried or dolly-mounted news cameras were a thing of the past: cloaked camera drones were standard, and he knew he and the reporter were both being viewed by multiple drones simultaneously, allowing an editor to switch from one to another, depending on who was speaking, or what action was taking place. Jacob considered, smiled, just a little: then he frowned, tapped trimmed fingernails delicately against the tabletop, looked back up at the reporter. "I'd have to say," he replied, his voice gentle, "the disappointment." Of the several replies the reporter expected, this was not one of them. "Disappointment?" she echoed. "I don't understand." Jacob smiled, almost sadly. "I know everyone here," he said. "I'm pretty much on a first name basis with every last colonist here, and most of 'em in the other two colonies. Everybody knows me" -- he grinned -- "my Gammaw complained once that she might respond to a situation and there's all kind of family and friends gathered, and she's the only one in uniform ... everybody remembers her, but she's seen so many folks in those situations, she doesn't remember everyone she's run into!" The reporter smiled a little and nodded her understanding. "The hardest thing is disappointment. I know everyone, or just damn neart. When I have to respond to something, and someone I know has done something they shouldn't have, why, it's ... just a terrible disappointment to me." He looked frankly, almost sadly, at her. "I want to think the best of folks. I know just about everyone is good and decent and upright and honest, and those that aren't ..." His jaw slid out and he shook his head. "That's the hardest part. Someone I know, goes bad." "Is it difficult to arrest someone you know?" she pressed. "No," Jacob said firmly. "Once they cross the line and become a criminal, I tend that detail no matter who 'tis and no matter how influential they are, politics be damned." Marnie and Angela sipped tea and watched the Inter-System, watched the interview clip. "He sounds just like Daddy," Angela murmured. "Mmm," Marnie hummed in agreement, lowering her teacup. Victoria sat, silent, eyes swinging from one big sis to another, just taking it all in. "Did you hear about Uncle Will?" Marnie asked, draining her teacup and setting cup and saucer down on the round, cloth-covered table top. "No, what happened?" Angela asked, a note of concern in her voice. Victoria's eyes widened: she looked sharply from Angela to Marnie, waited. Marnie gave Victoria a motherly look. "It's okay, you can breathe," she whispered, and Victoria exhaled, her face reddening. Marnie looked back at Angela. "He caught someone trying to Slim Jim open a truck door." "O-kaaay," Angela said slowly, setting her own cup and saucer on the table. Victoria drained her teacup, followed suit, waited, pale eyes wide and unblinking. "The perp reached into the truckbed and pulled out a machete." "I see," Angela murmured, looked over at Victoria's solemn face. "Victoria, have we been notified of a line-of-duty death?" "No." "Have we been called home due to injury of a family member?" "No." "What may we conclude?" "Uncle Will is either unhurt, or he's so stubborn he's forbidden anyone from notifying us." Two older sisters looked at one another and laughed. "She's got him down pat, doesn't she?" Victoria looked worried: she closed her eyes, took a long breath, let it out. "Turns out this fellow wanted to steal a heavy four-by so he and his buddy could rip an ATM out of the concrete." "Oh, my!" "Trouble is, the new ones have an underground cash box. You can break off the above ground part and all you get is electronics. These guys must not've known that." "What about the machete?" Victoria asked quietly. "Evidence," Marnie said simply. "Uncle Will's not hurt." "No." Angela's voice was quiet and serious as she looked at Marnie and asked her only question. "When do they bury the guy that pulled it on him?"

ANGEL ONE, ON STATION A shining, spotless, hand-waxed, absolutely immaculate Dodge Charger whispered promises of speed as it turned, as it reversed, very precisely, very exactly, into a parking spot behind the fire house. A really nice set of legs emerged from the car, accented by a feminine pair of heels, by a pleated, knee length skirt, by a set of shining pale eyes and the healthy complexion that comes of clean living, and growing up on a small ranch in the mountains. A feminine smile preceded the confident young woman who emerged from the car. Deputy Sheriff Angela Keller, RN/Paramedic, locked the turbocharged Dodge, closed the door quietly: she went to the opening trunk lid, pulled out a small sign she'd had custom made, placed its weighted base on the stone wall behind her car, closed the trunk lid. Fitz looked through fragrant steam rising from his sizable, glazed-enamel coffee mug, his eyes smiling at their corners. It was a standing joke. When Angela parked, she put a sign up, RESERVED FOR ANGEL ONE, with a cheerfully cartooned, warty amphibian wearing a dunce cap, and beneath this, VIOLATORS WILL BE TOAD. As the sign never appeared until after Angela was parked, there was never any danger of violators actually becoming a lumpy dunce, but it did make a fine standing joke. Angela came smiling into the firehouse, eyes shining, skirt swinging: she stopped as the door closed behind her, she stuck a leggy pose, looked at Fitz with mischief in her eyes and said "Hey, sailor, buy me a drink?" -- Angela skipped over to the man, dancing over on her toes, she seized the laughing fire chief, taking his hand, coffee mug and all, putting her other arm around him and dancing a few steps: Fitz was always quick on his feet, literally and figuratively, and a laughing Fire Chief and a gorgeous Nurse-Paramedic sang a delightfully obscene Irish melody as they glided in mountain sunlight slanting through crystal windows, whirling circles between the stainless-steel sink and the just-polished kitchen counter. Angela spun out to arm's length and back, her skirt flaring: she came into Fitz's arms, her shoulders across his chest, her head leaned back against his shoulder, looking up at him with bright and laughing eyes. Angela spun away, releasing his coffee mug, and the hand that held it -- not one drop of genuine Liquid Firehouse Wakeup had spilled -- she put her hands on her hips and teased, "And you thought I'd forgotten you!" Fitz put a dramatic hand to his breast, and in an absolutely terrible mock-Irish accent he lamented loudly, "Forget me? Forget me, the sexiest man ye've e'er met? Ye wound me, darlin'!" "Yah, a hot woman and a cold glass 'a' watter an' ye'd die of a heart attack!" the German Irishman called from the cab of the first-out pumper. "Yah, whatta you know," Fitz snarled, swatting the comment away with a dismissive air-slap of his go-away palm. Angela drew a gurgling, steaming mug of coffee, tilted her head and looked at the Chief, who was, to be honest, divided between openly ogling her stockinged legs, and wondering just how in two red handed hells she'd gotten so womanly, so damned fast! "Mama's out on a run?" Angela asked, drizzling milk from a murdered-open cardboard carton, into her big, heavy mug: she took an experimental sip, grunted, wiped the dribble from her chin and the grabbed a nearby dishtowel to wipe her mug, her hand, and her chin: "Mmm!" she grunted. "Scalded the hair off my tongue!" "Careful," Fitz deadpanned, "that's just freshly brewed." Angela raised an eyebrow and lowered her head, set her mug on the table and wagged her Mommy-finger at the Chief: before she could come up with a snappy comeback, the overhead door chuckled open and they heard the suddenly-loud backup alarm as their first-out squad backed into the far bay. Angela waited until they were inside, waited for the mileage to be read off and noted down, waited for the shutdown sequence, waited for doors to open and crew to emerge. She even waited for the exhaust duct to be plugged onto the squad's exhaust pipe, for the shoreline to be plugged in and checked, then she yelled "Mommeeeee!" and ran with the arms-wide, laughing abandon of a happy little girl: she hugged Shelly, laughing, turned and seized the Captain in a jump-up-and-hug-him-tight embrace -- "Gampaw!" -- and every last member of this modern day Irish Brigade either grinned, or laughed quietly. Crane set his shining-faced granddaughter down, brushed her cheek with the back of one finger like he'd done since she was a wee child: "Darlin'," he said quietly, "you are as gorgeous as your Mama!" Angela took her Mama around the waist, hugged her hip-to-hip, looked at her and then at her Gampaw: "I guess I get it honest!" she said with wide-eyed innocence, then mother and daughter looked at one another again, and both of them laughed. "Does your father know you're here?" Shelly asked quietly. Angela raised a finger and winked, then skipped over to the multi-phone: she pressed the intercom button, lighting it up; she picked up the hand mic -- "Dispatch, Firehouse, she called. "Firehouse, Dispatch, go." "Angel One is on station, would Firelands Actual be there?" "Ah-firm." "Please advise." "Roger that." Angela clicked off the intercom, hung the heavy GE mic back on its steel clip. She turned, put her hands on her waist, gave her Mama and Grampa an impish look. "I ordered in," she said. "Boneless garlic wings, onion rings, hard boiled eggs and beer!" Shelly dropped her face into her hands: "Oh, Gawd," she groaned, "I'll have to sleep in a gas mask!" "Okay, maybe not beer," Angela amended, "we are on duty!" Sheriff Linn Keller sat with his wife, his daughter and his father in law, happily chowing two of his favorite things -- the garlic chicken and the onion rings -- Shelly nibbled delicately at hers, glaring at her husband. "You'll find out what a cork feels like!" she threatened. "What, and cause a gas explosion?" Linn countered innocently. "I'll just open a window." "You'll flip a switch, throw a spark and blow the roof off the house," Shelly muttered darkly. "I ought to have 'Hindenburg' tattooed across your backside!" "Promises, promises," Linn grinned as he bit down on an onion ring. Angela smiled quietly: "I suppose you're wondering why I called you all together today." Linn swallowed, set down the uneaten half of his fried, breaded onion ring, and gave his pale eyed daughter his full attention. Angela looked at Shelly. "You know Victoria was grabbed." Shelly's face betrayed what she felt: she nodded, once, going from a sudden, cheek-flaming flush to going white to her lips. "You know Victoria stopped the attacker." Father and father-in-law looked at one another, faces professionally impassive, though if one sat at the table with them, one would see both men's fingers closed, slowly, as if wishing they were closing about a neck, or perhaps fisting up before an attack. "Victoria is a dancer, and she has a dancer's strength and coordination. Victoria is an equestrienne, and she has the trunk and leg strength of a horsewoman. Victoria has pale eyes and blood to match, and Victoria seized and broke fingers on both her attacker's hands." Angela's voice was quiet, but there was something in her eyes that told the others at their table that her unspoken rage was running deep and hot. "Victoria was still wearing her hard dancing shoes. "Victoria kicked him twice in the jaw. It was broken in two places and he lost at least two teeth. "Victoria was attacked in her dressing room after a performance. "She came out of her dressing room as her attacker limped away -- he couldn't run, she'd gotten him in the knee with those hard little shoes, and she skipped along behind him as he fled, kicking him in the backside as gracefully as if she were still performing on stage." Linn took a long breath, his eyes closed: he deliberately opened his eyes, nodded. "Daddy." Angela looked very directly at her father. "You told me once there's only one cure for a sheep killin' dog, that once they get the taste of blood they never quit and the only cure is a bullet." Linn nodded, once. Nobody saw how she'd brought it to the table, but Angela flipped her fingers like she was rolling a coin between them, only instead of a coin, her thumb swept against the cross lug and snapped open a knife Linn knew, a knife he'd given her. Angela held it up, inspected its edge closely, her voice quiet, a slight smile on her rich, healthy lips. "I've made a study of methods of torture," she said, her words precise, measured: "I've dissected corpses and I've butchered animals for the table, I've skinned for furs" -- the blade snapped shut with a wipe of her thumb, the knife disappeared, and she opened her empty hand, a magician's move -- "as satisfying as it might be to skin him alive, or to remove certain offensive parts of his anatomy, I didn't do that." "Why not?" Shelly asked quietly, her voice tight: her father looked at her, surprised, for this was a side of his daughter he'd never seen. Anger. Deep, boiling, soul-deep, quiet, controlled, motherly, rage! Angela looked at her Mama, that quiet smile still on her face. "I brought in a priest, Mama. I gave him a chance to repent. I don't know if he did or not and I don't really care." Angela's eyes were pale now, very pale and very hard and polished like glacier ice. Linn could feel the cold cascading off her soul and flowing across the table as his beautiful daughter spoke, her words quiet, gently framed, as she raised her hand, as that knife appeared again, as it snapped open with the metallic snap of the lock engaging. "I killed him," she said simply. "I drove this blade through his brainstem. "He died instantly, he felt nothing at all. No torture, no screaming, no violence, just" -- the knife snapped shut -- "gone." Angela looked at her Daddy, at her Mama, at her Gampaw, then she smiled and reached for the big plate in the middle of the table. "Dig in," she said cheerfully, hooking two onion rings and raking them onto her plate. "I'm hungry and we don't want this to get cold!"

DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATIVE Michael's visit was well timed. By design or by accident, when he rapped on my closed door and brought in a basket of good smells and the meal to go with it, he was a most welcome interruption: I needed to look at something other than screen and paper work, and I needed to do something other than push a pencil and burnish my backside on the office chair's padding. Now Michael is getting some height to him, he's still skinny and he's still rangy and he's still stronger'n hell -- I've been told that hand-to-hand practice with him is like trying to wrestle a chimpanzee, he's all cords and lean muscle and he's fast, God almighty is he fast! -- and he's like I was at his age. He's a walking appetite on two hollow legs. We sat down together and just plainly devoured a double bacon cheeseburger apiece, he got us both a half-and-half -- fries and onion rings both -- and he got me a guilty pleasure I'll indulge in once a week at most, a cherry Coke -- the only sound between the two of us was the crystal hiss of salt sprinkled on fries from torn open paper packets. Not a word passed between the two of us until we'd plainly inhaled our meal. Likely Shelly would give us hell for eatin' like that, but it was just us two, so what the hell. Once we'd finished, once we wadded up waxed paper and stuffed it in our empty drink cups and packaged everything up as compact as we could, Michael leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and looked at me, so I leaned forward with my elbows on my own knees and I looked at him. "Sir," Michael said seriously, "I found out why Victoria got careless." I nodded and I felt my face mask up. I've practiced that Innocent Expression and it hadn't worked yet, I'd practiced the Poker Face and that worked with everyone but my wife and my daughters -- it didn't work with Mama, rest her soul! -- anyway, I nodded once and Michael's bottom jaw slid out a little as he considered just how to say what was on his mind. "Sir, you asked Victoria if something happened, and she didn't exactly answer you." I nodded, once, slowly. "Something happened, sir, and it put the fear into her." I stopped. I've been told when I stop like that, silence cascades off me like cold air slides down a shadowed mountainside. I felt myself near to glare at Michael, then looked away. I did not want to throw up any walls. Was he bold enough to come to me with something this serious, I wanted to hear him out! I looked back. "Sir, you recall Victoria dances Irish hardshoe." I nodded: many's the time I'd marvel at how she just plainly levitated and glided across the floor, or so it seemed, strong young legs doin' things that are impossible according to the Known Laws of Physics. "She was dressed for the part and she'd brought a half dozen girls from the Firelands colony with her, and afterward she said a fellow tried to get improper with her. "She set him to rights in short order and I'm told she genuinely took his measure." I waited while Michael frowned and rubbed his palms together. "This was backstage, sir, in the dressing room area. I wasn't back there then." I waited, considering his phrase "I wasn't back there ... then." Michael took a long breath and said, "Sir, I took witness statements. The only thing everyone agreed on was that fella that wanted to ... handle ... her, changed his mind at the top of his lungs, and when he finally got out of there, why, he was missin' some teeth, his jaw was broke, his ear was split, he'd a broken finger or two and Victoria was behind him as he went a-limpin' out, she was dancing up on her toes like she does, like a ballerina, only every other step she was kicking his backside a-doin' it." I waited. Michael ran two fingers into a vest pocket and pulled out a folded paper, stood, laid it on my desk blotter. "If you want him," Michael said, "there's his particulars. Marnie said she'll arrange you an Iris." I felt my bottom jaw slide out and I let my face frown, just a very little. "Does this Jack Doe know who Victoria is?" Michael's eyes were pale and unblinking under his Stetson. "He does now, sir. I visited him at the doc's office where he went, and I allowed as he'd picked on that pale eyed Sheriff's little girl." "Did you take any... action?" I asked quietly. I never knew it was possible for a boy of thirteen years to smile and look that much like a God's honest wolf. "I did worse than that, sir," he said quietly. "When I told him he'd just tried to maul the darlin' daughter of that pale eyed hell raisin' Sheriff that rode Death's pale horse and skint men alive for the fun of it, why" -- he raised a hand, thumb and forefinger squeezing an invisible rubber bulb -- "the color ran out of his face like red ink out of an eye dropper." I nodded. "Michael," I said quietly, looking at the folded paper, "thank you. You've done well." I considered for a moment, looked up. "Does Marnie know?" Michael grinned. "Sir, they're sisters. They know." "I wonder who will get to him first, Marnie or Angela." "My money's on Angela, sir," Michael said without hesitation. He was right.

Back in 19 and 68, back when dirt was young and so was I ... back when I was young and skinny ... (Yeah, yeah, get to the point!) (harrumph) My seventh grade teacher told us of an enterprising huckster who made a surprising amount of money. He ran an ad that said "SURE FIRE WAY TO HOLD DOWN YOUR BILLS EVERY MONTH, SEND ONE DOLLAR, NO STAMPS." The luckless souls who answered the ad received this Sure Fire Method. A hand written note that said, and I quote: "Place bills on table. "Place brick on bills. "Bills are now held down." (Sorry ... that was the stray memory that came floatin' up when Alpo mentioned The Pet Brick!)

Oh dear God I am ROLLING!!! The Birthday Dirge I've long enjoyed, thank you for that, it's still worth listening to ... but I am making the vigorous sounds of a chicken laying a METEOR, listening to your clip of The Irish And Lent! 🤣😂😋😂🤣

Well done and delighted to hear this!

A MAN, ALONE "That's good string," I said quietly, throwing a quick bowline in the line: I pulled off about a yard of string, handed the factory wound spool to the boy, nodded him to back up: he backed, and so did I. "Notice the wind is to your back," I said, "that means it's pulling on this kite -- now when I toss this up, you run backwards and let the wind catch it, okay?" A little boy's eyes shone with delight as I threw the colorful diamond into the air, as the wind caught it, pulled, soared. He ran backwards a few steps, stopped. String spooled off by accident -- he looked at the spool in his hands and realized he hadn't intended to let lit slip like that -- I saw the light of discovery in his eyes and he paid out string -- too much, the kite flattened out and started to drop -- He pulled, the kite recovered, the wind caught it again, and a little boy's imagination soared into the clear mountain air, pulled aloft by a diamond of paper and wood. Apple-horse came head-bobbing over to me and I caught his saddlehorn and vaulted aboard and I'll tell you, I felt pretty good, for I remembered what it was to teach my boys how to fly kites. I didn't know this little fellow from Adam, I didn't know what facet of God's will steered me here. Hell, maybe this snapshot in time was for my benefit as well as his, I don't know. I do know I'll not forget even white teeth and a delighted, apple cheeked face, a child's happy laugh in the sunshine! I turned and saw his Mama watching from a little distance away: I lifted my Stetson to her and she waved, and Apple-horse and I cantered off, for we had business elsewhere. I'd no idea what the business was, nor where it was, but so far my day off was turnin' out pretty good. Now I could have stayed home and worked, there's always things that either need done, or will need done, and a man can work himself plumb to death was he inclined. Mama told me once "They'll work a willin' horse to death." Warn't nothing critical needin' done, and I felt a need to get off by myself: Shelly was pulling an extra shift today -- we usually had our days off together, I'd likely take her and our Irish Brigade something from the Silver Jewel for supper, I routinely did that when she worked an extra shift. I rode a little ways into the back country, the high country, and I recalled from maps and from generations of Journals, fragments of What Had Been. Yonder, across the valley and off to the right, there used to be a little spread, don't recall its whole history but that's where a man sent his son hell-a-tearin' for help because his wife and his widowed sister in law both went into labor at the same time. As I recall, one or t'other of 'em had twins and I laughed a little inside as I recalled readin' Old Pale Eyes' account of that big blacksmith-handed Sean Finnegan, the big Irish fire chief, just a-poundin' this poor fellow on the back, congratulatin' him at the top of his Irish lungs for sirin' his young in litters! I turned, frowning, hooked my fingers and pushed up on my vest pocket. I consulted my watch, smiled, thumbed it back in as a steam whistle shivered in the darkness, screaming defiantly against granite cliffs and the twisting wind. The Lady Esther, I thought. Right on schedule. Hell of a lot of history there, too. I thought of Old Pale Eyes and how deep his grief ran when his niece Duzy died. She'd damn neart died on the train -- I forget just how it happened -- someone shot her, he had the engineer lay the coal to 'er and as I recall, they set a speed record on that particular trackage, gettin' Duzy to help. I felt my eyes sting -- I know what it was to lose folks, I know what it is to be so damned helpless you can't do one single solitary thing to fix it -- and I felt that same ache when I read his words, how he knelt beside her and held her hand with one of his and pressed a cloth over the hole in her chest and how he whispered -- he begged -- Don't leave me, darlin'! I'd said those same words, and I'd said them to people I never met before, I held a woman's hand and whispered those same words to her as she was cut out of a bad and bloody wreck. Her hand was dead white and stone cold and warn't much life left in her and she made it, God Almighty knows how 'cause I sure as hell don't ... another wreck, a girl with really minor injuries, deader'n a hammer and I have no idea why one lived and the other didn't. I taken me a long deep breath of good cold air and when I breathed out, I did my best to breathe out them memories, or at least the unhappy part. There's just an awful lot I don't know. In my line of work, a man can soak up way too much stress and unhappiness and if you don't find some way to get rid of it, why, it'll kill you from inside, slow and sneaky. There's times I've addressed the heavy bag and done my level best to honestly kill it, barehand. There is no satisfaction in shooting a personal enemy. It's too easy. There is much more to be had with the laying on of hands. I have tore into the heavy bag with fists and feet, elbows and knees, I have tore into it hard enough to tear it down, I've ripped the screw eye out of an over head beam, I've torn through the heavy canvas cover -- it took a good while to do it and I'd punched it with the short end of a PR24 baton and drove a hole in it, my own stupid fault -- and when I laid into the heavy bag, 'twas needful for me to get rid of that much rage so I'd not slip and let it come blazin' out at the wrong time and at the wrong people. I considered that as Apple-horse moved under me, as I moved with him, as the sun warmed me through my Carhartt. Now you can train dogs to sniff for cadavers, explosives, drugs, illicit food products at the airport, you can train a dog to track, attack, retrieve, sniff out cancer, seizures, diabetes. I reckon if you had a dog trained to sniff out stress, it could've trailed me easily. When I swung my leg over Apple-horse's saddle, I was feelin' as pleasant and friendly as a honey badger after an IRS audit. Ridin' off with nowhere pa'tickelar to go and no pressin' task to be tended, ridin' forth and bein' steered to where a little boy was trying to figure out how to get a kite in the air, ridin' through lifetimes of memories, why, I reckon big chunks of stress fell off of me like I was sheddin' broken glass. It's not that often I get off by myself that-a-way, but py Gott! when I do, it feels pretty good!

JOHN HOLLISTER, IS THAT YOU? Jacob Keller caught the punch coming in. Literally. He turned and caught the flying knuckles with the palm of his hand -- he seized the fist with a work-hardened hand, turned, grabbed the attacker in a fast and unexpected bear hug, hauled him off the ground -- Jacob was young, fast, lean, rangy, a hell of a lot stronger than his he appeared to his attacker -- Jacob's grin was broad and genuine, he slacked his crushing embrace, pounded the man's shoulder, yelling happily, "JOHN HOLLISTER IS THAT YOU! YOU DOG, HOW IN THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN!" -- he turned, thrust two fingers into his flannel shirt pocket, slapped his palm hard onto the stained, damp-ringed bar -- "BARKEEP! THIS MAN'S MONEY IS NO GOOD HERE! GIVE HIM WHAT HE'S HAVIN'!" Jacob turned, delight in his eyes and deceit in his heart -- "DAMMIT JOHN I THOUGHT I LOST YOU THERE! REMEMBER THAT BANK JOB UP IN WISCONSIN? YOU DOG, YOU TOOK THAT CUTE LITTLE TELLER AND KEPT HER FOR A WEEK! HUH? HUH? YOU DOG!" -- Jacob grabbed his own drink (Co'Cola, straight) -- took a hasty gulp. The two sat -- the stranger cautiously, a little puzzled, but as he watched the barkeep swipe up two Jacksons and replace them with a fresh beer, he realized maybe a short-tempered punch just bought him a night's drinking. He had enough of a load on that the reference to a bank job didn't sink in until he took a long pull on his refilled Brown Pop. He frowned, puzzled, looked at Jacob and said "What bank?" Jacob's grin was bright, delighted, his voice loud: "YOU REMEMBER! WE BEEN ROBBIN' BANKS ACROSS THE STATE AND THAT'S THE LAST JOB WE PULLED OFF BEFORE WE MOVED INTO MINNESOTA! BY GOD NOW THOSE WERE THE GOOD OLD DAYS!" A confused hand made a patting motion: "Not so loud," he protested, looking around uncomfortably. "WUZZAT? CAN'T HARDLY HEAR NO MORE, JOHN! THAT LAST JOB WE PULLED -- MINNESOTA, Y'REMEMBER? THE SAFE BLEW BEFORE I COULD GET AWAY FROM IT! BEEN DAMN NEAR DEAF EVER SINCE!" Jacob grabbed the man's shoulder, shook it happily: "DAMMIT JOHN, IT'S GOOD TO SEE YOU! LIKE OLD TIMES, HEY? HEY?" Jacob waved at the barkeep, slapped another twenty on the bartop: "GIVE M'FRIEND HERE SOMETHIN' GOOD! TOP SHELF!" Jacob turned back, watched as three brain cells fired at the same time and the man he'd kept from slugging him, decided something was rotten in the wood pile, and got up to leave. He didn't get far. Two undercovers grabbed the man, got him in irons and frogmarched him out the door while another came over and sat cautiously on the recently vacated barstool. Jacob folded the twenty he'd never released, handed it to the undercover officer, who was shaking his head. "That," he admitted frankly, "was not what I expected!" Jacob shrugged. "It worked back home. Figured it would work out here." "Colorado?" Jacob nodded, handed the man his ID wallet. The undercover opened it, smiled quietly, nodded, handed it back. "Any relation to Willamina?" Jacob grinned -- sudden, bright, the grin of someone with a very happy recollection. "My grandmother." The man thrust a hand at Jacob, and Jacob took it: "She saved my father's life over there." Jacob nodded: he didn't have to ask where "over there" was. "I appreciate the help tonight." "Glad to. Beats listenin' to drunk college students throwin' up green beer in the gutters." The undercover shook his head, sighed: "Yeah," he admitted. "If we hadn't been after this guy" -- he hooked a thumb over his shoulder -- "I'd probably have been down there, bustin' underagers." "Fun fun," Jacob sighed, nodding sympathetically: he tilted up his unadulterated soda pop, drained it, stood. The barkeep looked at him, his face serious. "You two robbed a bank?" he asked cautiously. Jacob grinned. "Nah," he admitted. "Lied through my teeth." "You stopped a barfight," the barkeep said appreciatively. "He's caused me trouble before." Jacob winked at the man, nodded: the undercover stood, looked around. Two lawmen, anonymous in blue jeans and flannel shirts, left the little riverbend bar, each alert, each scanning, each dedicating a part of his mind to formulating the report he'd write about the incident. "Pa?" Jacob blinked, grinned, looked at the lean little boy seated close beside him on the upholstered couch. "Yes, Joseph?" "Pa, did you go to University?" Jacob grinned, nodded: "Yes I did, Joseph. I had that miserable experience." Joseph frowned, puzzled, looked back up at his Pa. "I thought University was where you learned stuff. Like school, only more of it." Jacob nodded solemnly. "It's like anything else worthwhile," he explained. "You get out of it what you put into it, but you have to go to a good high grade University to get good high grade results." "Didn't you go to a high grade, Pa?" "Parts of it were," Jacob nodded. "My Gammaw went there." "Gracie went there too!" Joseph declared, bouncing with the happy enthusiasm of the young. "Yes she did," Jacob nodded, remembering Gracie telling him about knifing two attackers in an Ohio University alleyway. "She got as much good out of the place as she could, but she didn't really think much of the place." "Oh," Joseph said, frowning a little. "Once I got as much good out of the place as I wanted, I came home again." Joseph considered this, frowning at the opposite wall as his young mind worked. "Pa," he said in a cautious voice, "do I have to go to University?" "You don't have to, no." "What if I wanta go?" "Then we'll arrange it." Joseph folded his hands, rested his upper lip on two steepled fingers. Jacob waited: he was inclined to rest a fatherly hand on his son's hunched back, but thought better of it, not wanting to hurry his son's conclusion. Ruth watched; she was almost in arm's reach of the pair: she'd positioned herself so their son could not see her, but she could hear their discussion. Joseph leaned back, looked at his Pa, his young face serious. "Pa," he said, "might I think on it a while?" Jacob's expression was serious as he pretended to consider his son's question. It is to the man's credit that he did not laugh; an earlier generation would have made some condescending remark, but Jacob did not. "Joseph," he said gently, looking over his son's head and winking at his wife, "my Pa tried to teach me at a tender age that 'Hurry Up is brother to Mess It Up' -- he stopped, looked very directly at his son's solemn gaze, raised an eyebrow for emphasis and finished, "and y'know, it's plum a-MAAAAAzing how often I proved the man right!" Jacob winked at his son and Joseph winked at his Pa, and Ruth turned a delicate shade of scarlet as she pressed a lace-edged kerchief to her lips and turned away, trying hard not to laugh, trying hard not to spoil this moment between father and son.

WILD IMAGINATION Victoria walked with all the prim propriety of a well-dressed little girl who knew she was well dressed, who knew she was girly and pretty, and was indulging herself in the self-centered feeling of being a pretty girl. She looked around with a pleasant smile and bright eyes, as if expecting all the males, old and young alike, to prostrate themselves before her natural beauty. That lasted about two and one-half seconds. Ten minutes later, Victoria Keller stomped into the Mars infirmary, a sour look on her face, her bloodied glove to the back of her head, a wadded-up kerchief against a bloody and rather painful wound that she knew was entirely her own fault. Investigation was swift and discreet, remedial measures were taken, the wound was decontaminated, closed, dermal regenerators used to resect the wound from its depths, outward: even the tickling touch of a tool Victoria saw used before, something with a long and fancy name, would guarantee not only would there be no scar, but that her hair would grow naturally over the injury, until no trace remained. It would take sensitive equipment indeed to divine the skidding damage to her skull from something sharp, something driven with intent to kill. When Marnie came back into the infirmary, she thrust into the dressing area: Victoria held her dress by its collar, examining the back of the collar for something: she looked at Marnie with innocent eyes and announced, "The blood came out." Marnie stopped, tilted her head, regarded her youngest sister with a maternal eye. Was Victoria her daughter, she might've inherited a backhand across the cheek: Victoria knew this, and stiffened a little, her jaw and her eyes hardening rebelliously. Marnie closed her eyes, took a long breath, then opened her eyes and sat, gracefully, as elegant in a pleated cheerleader skirt and red cowboy boots, as if she were wearing her trademark McKenna gown. "Victoria," she said softly, "we need to talk." Victoria Keller lifted her chin haughtily. She did not skip like a little girl, she did not strut like she used to as a child; no, she flowed with the grace of a truly beautiful child of transition, moving smoothly from girlhood to womanhood, feeling as if it was her rightful place in Creation to be the one most beautiful female in existence, and letting the world and all its inhabitants know by her walk, her carriage, her appearance, that she expected everyone and everything to make Royal Obeisance to her accordingly! This lasted until she came to the end of the railcar, where a man of her acquaintance was bent over, quietly profaning a greasy automatic coupler, setting a flat-end punch against a recalcitrant pin and driving it with a single Jack. Victoria's peripheral caught movement. Something swift, black, manlike leaped over the railing of the passenger car, something gunlike in hand: a streamlined, black-sheathed arm took the railroader around the neck, Victoria heard the whining scream of a hand drill, and the attacker made as if to ram the drill bit through the back of the railroader's skull, in that assassin's spot where the spine rises to meet the foramen magnum. Victoria's soul lit up. She did not remember drawing her revolving-pistol from its hidden pocket. She remembered seeing the serrated ramp, bright and orange, drop like a rock with a solid unmoving THUMP! into the rear notch and she wondered momentarily Who in the hell just fired my gun? and the black Ninja dropped drill, railroader's neck and all bodily control. Victoria tried to whirl as she sensed an attacker behind her -- she wasted a tenth of a second witih a silent profanity, directed at herself -- even white teeth bit hard into the forearm that tried to take her around the neck, something sharp grated against her skull and only after hearing that nails-on-the-chalkboard sound of an icepick scraping against bone did she feel the pain of its tearing through the skin at the back of her head. She brought her pistol down, drove a round through her attacker's knee, seized a finger, tore it back until it touched the attacker's wrist: she whirled, fired twice into the second attacker's head, she turned, snarling, a second revolver appearing in her free hand. Victoria crouched a little, no longer full of immature vanity and juvenile pride. Now she was what she felt like she really was. Something inside her sang for joy, a terrible dark destructive seductive JOY, that she was capable of VIOLENCE, that she could bring JUDGEMENT! -- Victoria turned, straightened, looked around again: a sophisticated enemy that knew her, might wait for her to complete her initial threat scan, might wait for her to straighten and take that long, cleansing breath, might wait for this dropping of her guard. She waited, alert, almost vibrating, an injured animal, ready to attack. Something trickled down the back of her neck. Victoria holstered her left hand revolver, opened the cylinder of her right-hand, airweight Chief's Special, smacked the empties out, twisted full-wadcutter rounds from the rubbery loading strip, into the empty chambers. She holstered her right-hand revolver. "Save and end," she said, and the underground training chamber returned to its usual empty, stone walled appearance. Marnie waited until Victoria was dressed, until she'd brushed her hair and replaced her fashionable springtime hat and pinned it in place. "Victoria," Marnie said quietly, "that was an ... interesting ... training scenario." Victoria waited, suspicion in her eyes and stillness in her posture. "How did you come up with ... Ninja assassins ... on a Colorado railroad?" "You've looked at the file." Marnie nodded. "That's just one scenario." "So I saw." "I'm not ..." Marnie frowned, not wanting to sound like a scolding mother. "Victoria, I'm ... concerned." Victoria raised an eyebrow. "Oh?" she said quietly, and Marnie wasn't sure if her little sister reminded her of her long tall Daddy, with that raised eyebrow, or if that single skeptical syllable reminded her more of her Mama in a moment of maternal displeasure. "You turned off the safeties." Victoria shrugged. "I wanted it realistic." "Victoria ... with the safeties off, you could have been killed." Victoria's eyes were unblinking as her hand started to raise, as if to touch the recent injury to the back of her skull. "I know." "If that icepick bit instead of skidded, you'd be ... damaged." "I know," Victoria said with a dismissive wave of her daintily-gloved hand, then she planted rebellious knuckles on her slender, girlish waist and gave Marnie a challenging look. "What about everything I did right?" Marnie hesitated. "Second attacker," Victoria pressed. I was behind the curve and I still came out on top. Good reactions. Threat scan afterward, ready through a moment when my guard would normally be down." Marnie nodded, almost reluctantly. "There ... is, that," she admitted. "You told me ... no, not you. Hans." "Hans?" Marnie frowned, turned her head a little as if to bring a good ear to bear: now it was the younger sibling who saw a Daddy-habit in her older sister. "Hans. He was teaching the Valkyries. He said the Japanese air force in the Second War trained with pain, if they screwed up they got the bamboo across the backside, and he said pain is a very powerful persuader. Daddy said the same thing after his kidney stones and after he fell off a horse and hit a rock." Victoria indulged her hand its exploratory rise, her fingers their exploration of where something sharp tore her scalp open and scraped a gouge in her skull. "Not to mention the sound," she whispered, then she blinked and gave her sis a patient look. "Lesson learned. Between sound and pain, I'm not likely to repeat that mistake!" "Does that mean," Marnie said, trying to sound gentle, trying to sound persuasive, "that you'll stop turning off the safeties?" Victoria's pale eyed glare was answer enough. A father often does not realize the influence he has on his child. A father, too often, has absolutely no concept of how deeply a careless word can wound, nor how well a positive comment can influence for the good. When a long, tall, pale eyed father picked up his pretty young daughter and stood her on a bale of hay so she was closer to eye level with him, she knew this was because he was trying to show without words, that he didn't want to talk down to her like she was a little girl. She knew when his bent forefinger caressed the softness of her healthy-pink cheek, with his other hand lightly gripping the outside of her other arm, he was reflecting on her beauty and how much she really meant to him, and Victoria -- young though she was -- knew that in this moment, her father -- this hard man who'd stared down large and angry people bearing a variety of weapons -- this callus-handed man who'd tamed horses, who'd thrown men through a window or into a horse trough, this man who'd picked up and packed off weights (when necessary) that would make a normal man cringe -- that her Daddy, in this moment, was open, and vulnerable, and her best bet was to give him her very best Innocent Look, in hopes of heading off any fatherly lecture on not inheriting Ninja icepicks in the back of the skull. "Darlin'," Linn said quietly, his normally pale eyes a light but distinct blue, "I have a confession to make." Victoria did not expect this -- in a way, she did, something like this, but not ... not sustained vulnerability, not a confession! -- her eyes widened a little more -- "You," he said softly, "are my youngest daughter." She nodded, hesitantly, realizing that he was showing her his heart, knowing he could be very easily bruised, knowing she had to tread very carefully indeed! "No matter how old a daughter gets," Linn said with an uncharacteristic gentleness, "no matter ... a girl, a young lady, a woman, a wife, a mother, a matron ... it doesn't matter ..." Linn's hands were on her shoulders now, light, warm, strong, reassuring ... A Daddy's hands, she thought. Not a father's hands. A Daddy's hands! Linn swallowed as if he were suddenly nervous, and Victoria realized she was seeing what her Daddy must've looked like when he and her Mama first met, and he was suddenly uncertain, adrift in an uncharted sea. "Darlin', it won't matter how old you get, nor how old I become," he said firmly, his hands tightening only slightly, to emphasize his words: you will always, always! -- be Daddy's Little Girl!" Victoria laughed uncertainly as her Daddy hugged her quickly, almost desperately, and she realized he was realizing she was coming into maturity, that she was leaving girlhood and entering womanhood, and he didn't want to let his Little Girl go. "I wanted to put you on a high shelf," he whispered as he held her, "and drop a glass bell jar over you, and keep you young and beautiful and pure and undamaged forever." He released his embrace, leaned back a little, took her soft young hands in his big callused, scar-traced ones. "That is neither practical nor is it possible, darlin'." He bit his lip and frowned a little, as if he was suddenly uncertain, then he looked at her and said quietly, "Don't ever forget that, darlin'. You will always be Daddy's Little Girl." Victoria felt her eyes stinging and she squeaked, "Oh, Daddy," and threw herself into him, held him with all the desperation of a scared little girl, and her Daddy ran an arm under her backside and around her back and picked her up, and held her, and in the quiet of a Colorado barn, a father and daughter shared a moment that neither of them forgot, for the rest of their lives. Marnie watched, hidden, shadowed, one hand on a black Bear Killer's shoulder. She'd followed Victoria, she'd listened, she'd watched, she'd waited for their pale eyed Daddy to admonish Victoria for her foolish choice, she'd waited for his fatherly admonition about how unwise it was to disable the safeties in the simulator. She'd expected him to -- -- to what? Scold her? Turn her over his knee and spank her? Marnie blinked, swallowed, they she keyed an Iris and stepped back, and The Bear Killer backed into the portal with her. Marnie sat with her sleeping child leaned against her. She'd been reading to him, after supper, and like his father, Littlejohn got his belly full, he got warm and relaxed, and he'd fallen asleep. Marnie closed her book, smiled a little, her arm around their little boy. She remembered how her Daddy told her much the same thing, about how she would always, always! be Daddy's Little Girl, and she was never to forget that, and she remembered the times when -- even after she was a grown woman -- there were times when she needed her Daddy's arms and her Daddy's voice and at times, her Daddy's help, and how he'd never, ever! failed to give them. Marnie stroked her son's fine hair, remembering how her Daddy offered not one single word of remonstration to her unreasonable little sister, and she smiled. Somehow her Daddy did a better job of advising caution, by standing her sister up on a bale of hay, than Marnie could possibly have managed with an hour's womanly scolding.

NIGHTTIME ON THE MOUNTAIN Joseph Keller sat beside his long tall Pa. Joseph's pale young eyes were busy, studying the distance. Joseph's eyes tightened a little at the corners, they way they did when he was pleased. Joseph's pink-scrubbed hand, dangled down at his side, was being happily laundered and taste-tested by a curious coyote pup. Jacob Keller had not the strong dislike of heights of his own father, and he determined to instill this same lack of fear in his own son, for he saw it as an impediment. Jacob would program the exercise deck on Mars with narrow ledges on a sheer cliff-face: he fabricated the High Lonesome, where father and son sat now, so when Jacob and young Joseph rode up to the Firelands Museum and stabled their horses in the restored, functional and working stone stable adjacent, both climbed the hidden, twisting, narrow path that (for some odd reason) nobody outside the family ever seemed to really see, not on maps, not in person. They sat on what might have been a stone bench carved from native granite by a giant's hammer-and-chisel: they each brought a foam seat cushion, for both padding and insulation; Jacob wasn't sure which discomfited his bony backside faster -- the hard surface, or sucking the heat out of his hip pockets. High Lonesome had a narrow cave, one that opened as you got deeper: Jacob brought The Bear Killer here, on his fourteenth birthday, brought his old and dear friend's carcass: it was a task, bringing that much dead weight up that narrow path, but he did it: The Bear Killer's bones were back in the deepest recess, wrapped in a favorite blanket. Jacob interred The Bear Killer with sorrow and with grief and with the gift of unashamed tears, soaked into the blanket, there in the still and the dark: Jacob emerged, Jacob stood, Jacob raised fisted arms and took a breath clear down to his boot tops and Jacob screamed, once, long, powerful, blasting every bit of sorrow and of loss and of misery into that one, long, sustained, shivering cry, and then he went to his knees and sobbed, his face to the cold rock. A pale eyed man heard that one long scream, and he too leaked water from his eyes, for he'd done the same, in his time, and for the same reason. Now the son of that pale eyed man, and his own son, sat on a shelf where generations before them had come, to be alone, to sort things out in their mind, to consider and to think, away from distraction and away from interruption. The cave was a den -- this year, a Mama Coyote had her pups in the defensible safety of its depths, and while she skulked and bristled and growled, nose and eyes barely visible, one of her cubs -- curious, as are all young -- came out and partook of meat Joseph stripped from his sandwich. He'd tossed chunks toward the suspicious mother, who glared and stared and finally nibbled mistrustfully at the offering. Her cub had no such misgivings. Joseph's fingers tasted like beef, and Joseph's eyes smiled as the cub scrubbed flavor from his fingers, and his Pa laid his own sandwich on Joseph's lap, and so cub and Mama 'Yote both ate more. Jacob came here, time and again, just to relax in a familiar place: he routinely solicited the wise counsel of his beautiful bride, of his brother in law, of others there in the Colony whose wisdom was proven: he'd climbed Firelands Mountain, looking for a good place to sit and think, and the only time he found a good place to park the backside of his atmosphere suit, early in his term as Sheriff, he'd nearly been run over by two screaming kids on a plastic sled, tobogganing down-slope of the ancient, extinct volcano in one of the Colony's favorite daredevil sports. No, there was something about home ... something about the Shining Mountains where he'd grown up. Jacob knew there were more cubs inside, and he knew the mother was watchful. Jacob was called into a conference on Planet Texas, where a formal, diplomatic request was made to introduce buffalo, prairie grasses, and coyotes: apparently the idea of Yodel Dogs serenading two moons was well ingrained in the popular imagination. Jacob would need more than one Mama 'Yote and three cubs to establish a healthy breeding population, but he also knew what happened when rabbits and cactus were introduced to Australia, what happened when Asian carp escaped their impoundments. Jacob made specific mention of several instances of such meddling. As much as he enjoyed hearing canid serenades, he counseled against introducing a non-native species. Here, tonight, father and son sat together, relaxed, looking into the distance, while snarling Mama 'Yote snapped at her returning cub, glared mistrustfully at Joseph, and retreated into the den after her adventurous young.

A CHILD'S LAUGH Littlejohn stood on the depot platform, eyes wide and wondering as The Lady Esther coasted into station, her stack clean, steam wisping white from the pop-off valve, from the classic diamond stack. The Lady Esther commanded attention as she came in, powerful, breathing easily, hissing with contained power, radiating an animal warmth from her boiler as she passed, as she eased ahead, as she stopped with the passenger cars perfectly placed for disembark, with the boxcar in position to have the heavy bridge dropped into position to roll a heavy cargo onto the depot platform. Littlejohn was not gazing in awe at the engine -- he would, of course, for he'd stared, fascinated, by the steam powered underground locomotives that ran under the Martian surface, connecting the widely separated Colonies -- no, Littlejohn stared at something bigger, more powerful, more majestic than this living creature of cast iron and brightwork. Littlejohn stared at the mountains beyond. Ever since his first trip to his Gampaw's ranch, Littlejohn had shown an affinity for the high country, for holographic reproductions of what his pale eyed Mama called "Back Home." Littlejohn felt a sense of awe, of wonder, of distance -- something so very lacking with the underground colonies of his homeworld. Anyone watching would think him a child entranced by the Baldwin locomotive, and they may be forgiven for this assumption: The Lady Esther was honestly beautiful -- not only was she brightly painted, hand polished, buffed up and bright, she was also built to be pleasing to the eye: few things in the railroad world match the classic profile of the early Diamond Stackers of the American West. Littlejohn was, of course, a child, and like most children, his attention span was often measured in negative numbers: he happily jumped off the end of the Depot platform, landing flat footed, laughing: after the train was pulled out and gone, chuffing importantly up the tracks, he hunted over the coarse gravel ballast until he found the telltale grey that meant flint, and he spent delightful moments striking these sharp-edged treasures at a long angle against the rail, throwing sparks and laughing. Littlejohn tossed the rock back onto the roadbed, turned, ran on sturdy young legs and breathing easy. His Mama kept their quarters at 1.25E -- one-and-a-quarter Earth-gravities, which meant that here on Earth, Littlejohn had no trouble running and exerting himself -- the Colonies also operated at the reduced atmosphere as Firelands: the colonists' bodies acclimatized accordingly, which was thought to improve their survivability in the event of partial depressurization. Here, though, it meant that the laughing little boy chasing around the Depot was not inconvenienced in the slightest by Earth gravity, nor by the high altitude. Littlejohn squealed with delight as his Gampaw grabbed him under the arms and swung him high in the air, as he swung back down and up again, as a little boy laughed in the sun and an older man with an iron-grey mustache laughed with him. Elsewhere, behind a locked office door, father and son embraced: the Doctors John Greenlees sat and caught up -- a viewscreen is fine, but when the son visits the father, there is much good talk, and talk they did, at least until the increasing sound of a giggling little boy penetrated the locked door. Dr. John Greenlees the Elder opened the door to find a grinning Sheriff holding a red-faced, laughing little boy by the ankle. The Sheriff came in, the door was closed: a laughing little boy was flipped around, raised up until his unruly hair just touched the acoustic tile overhead, then dropped down, fast, and stopped just before his feet touched the carpet. Sheriff Linn Keller grinned at a father and another grandfather and said quietly, "Nothing brings out the damned fool in a grown man like a little child!"

SWORDS ARE EASIER Ambassador Marnie Keller hugged her surprised-but-delighted Mama with all the ferocity of a daughter who was beyond words. Ambassador Marnie Keller felt animal warmth behind her and turned quickly, seized her Daddy in the same crushing embrace. Ambassador Marnie Keller did not know which felt better, the maternal arms of her mother, or the strong and protective arms of her pale-eyed Daddy. Linn looked over his daughter's head, lifted his chin just a little, and Shelly moved in, pressed herself against Marnie's back: they both felt Marnie's stress running off her like water from a soaky-wet- saturated blanket, felt her tremors as she was finally able to give up whatever had her wound up like the proverbial eight day clock. Sheriff Linn Keller was, by his own unashamed admission, a Certified Old Softy. More times than one, he'd confided to the few he truly trusted, that his daughters each had him wound around her cute little finger so tight he had a standing appointment with that Chiropractic Bone Cracker, to get his back bone un-knotted on at least a weekly basis! When Marnie turned and seized him like she was drowning and he was a float, he followed the advice he'd given young men whose wife birthed them a little girl-child: wife or daughter, if she's upset, hold her as long as she wants held, however long that might be. In this case, he held both his wife and his daughter: he had no idea a'tall what Marnie had been into, but he knew she was his little girl -- for all that she was a grown woman, a wife and a mother and an Ambassador as well, she was still his child. No matter how old a man becomes, his daughter will always be Daddy's Little Girl. And on some level, no matter how old or how mature a woman becomes, she will always be Daddy's Little Girl, even if she is hidden deep within, unseen and carefully hidden. Marnie took a long breath, smelling her Daddy, strong and manly, smelling her Mama's shampoo, smelled beans simmering on the stove, smelled the kitchen, just the way she remembered it smelling when she was a little girl in pigtail and red cowboy boots. Shelly murmured, "Oh, the beans!" -- she slacked her arms, pulled a little: Linn loosed his own long-armed envelopment, he smiled down at Marnie -- she looked up into his eyes, that light blue she saw when he was being Daddy, and not Sheriff. Shelly picked up a flat steel spatula and stirred the beans carefully, the bit edge of the spatula hard against the bottom of the pot, making sure nothing was sticking: several careful, turning passes, to make sure she covered every square centimeter of the bottom surface, before she brought it out, tapped off the excess. Marnie patted her Daddy's uniform shirt front and whispered, "Thank you, Daddy," then she turned and helped her Mama set out bowls and plates and heavy ceramic coffee mugs. It wasn't until after Victoria and Michael arrived -- Victoria scowling, looking like Storm Cloud Number Nine, not until after Michael came in with an air of satisfaction and almost-familiar blossoms as he stepped through the Iris. Marnie automatically went to her little sister, steered her into her Daddy's study where they could talk: Linn pretended not to listen as Victoria spoke angrily of short-sighted misogynistic half-baked myopic wire-rimmed sandal-wearing academic incompetents, and he and Shelly looked at one another and bit their bottom lips to keep from laughing as Marnie said sympathetically, "Don't mince words, Victoria, tell me how you really feel!" Victoria seized Marnie's arm, turned her away from the kitchen, leaned into her and spoke quietly, urgently: Marnie listened, nodded; they held their hushed conference, then turned and came back into the kitchen. "Victoria," Linn said quietly after their initial assault on their well filled plates, "you looked like you could bite the horn off an anvil." Victoria gave her Daddy an uncertain look. "Darlin', I have a shotgun, a backhoe and forty acres," Linn continued in a gentle voice. Victoria's bottom jaw slid aggressively forward and she looked at her Mama, then at Marnie. "Victoria and I have a meeting with a certain University Administration," Marnie replied for her. Linn looked at Marnie and then at Victoria. "My offer stands," he said, suddenly serious. "What happened?" Victoria swallowed, lifted her chin, obviously trying to look Very Grown Up -- Linn considered she was coming into that delicate part of her life someone once described as being "Between the Ages of Thirteen," and he considered several possibilities, then shoved them all aside, preferring to hear his daughter out. "Daddy, I ... all I want to do is get an education." Linn nodded, slowly, once, his face solemn. "The professors asked me if ... I was told children are not allowed in University classes, that I was obviously someone's little sister and I had to leave." "Did you?" She gave him a hard look -- startling, from a young lady of so few years, and such natural beauty. "I will have a conversation with them," Marnie said quietly, "and I will remind them just how much funding Victoria gifted to their University, prior to enrolling. If that doesn't work" -- Marnie's eyes hardened -- "I will challenge whoever I must, to a duel of honor. Somehow those elitists tend to pull in their horns when they're faced with sharpened steel." Linn nodded, frowned a little. "Marnie, what about you? What happened, darlin'?" Marnie took a long breath, sighed it out. "I spent a week" -- her voice was quiet as she stared a hole through the sugarbowl -- "an entire, bloody, week! -- convincing a world that their metals refining was ... that we'd be happy to take care of all their waste of all kinds. "It took the full week! -- I showed them videos, slides, 3D holographic projections, I showed them ... Daddy, we can take care of all their stack gas, all their slag, for free, no strings -- I finally got them persuaded ..." She leaned back, rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, groaned tiredly. "Honestly, swords are easier." Linn's gaze shifted to Michael, who was busy practicing invisibility, or trying to. "Michael?" Michael swallowed. "I sold another two dozen pianos, sir, and I hired piano players to go with them." He looked across the table at his sisters and admitted, "I didn't have it anywhere near as bad as they did!"

THE LINCOLN METHOD Michael Keller dismounted carefully. Michael Keller was still in grade school, but not for much longer: until he passed the specialized exams that attested to his superior performance, until he was officially graduated far earlier than the school board wanted to allow, he was still a student, and he was still doing his fifth-grade lessons the same as the other students. He was also curious, well-read, and he was his father's son. Michael Keller read where Old Railsplitter himself used to do his lessons on the back of a shovel, with a charred stick, as books were rare, and paper even moreso, and for this reason, Michael Keller brought in a flat bottom shovel one fine morning. The class ran, skipped, walked, dawdled, laughed, chattered, whistled and otherwise brought a wonderful confusion into what had been a still and empty classroom a moment before: the teacher gave Michael a curious look, planted her knuckles on her waist and asked, "Michael, whatever have you there?" Michael Keller was his father's son. Michael Keller blinked and gave his teacher his very best Innocent Expression. Unlike his pale-eyed father, Michael could actually pull that one off. "Mrs. Hern," he said, shining eyes wide and sincere, "I read in Lincoln's biography where he did his lessons on the back of a shovel by the light of his family's fireplace. I thought if it's good enough for Old Railsplitter, it's good enough for me!" His little-boy grin was bright and contagious: Fern Hern (she could still kick her parents for naming her that) waved the class down into their seats: like any good teacher, she saw an opportunity for a classroom-wide lesson. "And how did that work out for you, Michael?" she asked. "Not very well," he admitted, turning the shovel over and showing her the backside. "I had to scour it clean with sand before I started, and we don't have a fireplace so I used a charcoal briquette. I did it out on the front porch so Mama wouldn't bless me for gettin' dirt in the house" -- he looked ruefully at his hands -- "and it was hard to scrub all the charcoal off. I should've worn gloves but Lincoln didn't so I didn't either." "I see." "Then I thought, what if I make a mistake, so I tried rubbing out what I'd written and that made a big smeary mess and I had to scrub that part with sand again to get it clean and that's kind of hard on the fingers, so I allowed as I'd not make any mistakes, but then I thought what if everyone in class did their lessons on a shovel and came to school with dirty hands and stacked their shovels here under the blackboard -- you'd have a whole row of dirty old shovels and they'd drop dirt on the floor and make more work for the janitor, and he works hard enough the way it is, so I just gave it up for a bad job!" Michael's rapid patter, his long and run-on sentence pronounced in a little boy's innocent voice, his sincere expression and animated gestures (just like his pale eyed Pa, couldn't talk without his hands!) all conspired to bring a smile to the teacher's grandmotherly face. "I see," she murmured. "And what have we learned from this?" Mrs. Hern looked over the class. "Anyone?" A hand went up: "Yes, Barbara." Barbara brought her hand down, stood. "Use chalk instead of charcoal," she said brightly. "Lincoln didn't have chalk," Michael said almost sadly. "Use a board?" a voice rose from the back row. Several more hands, several more suggestions: Mrs. Hern raised her palms and smiled gently, nodding a little, then turned to her student, still holding the flat bottom coal shovel. "Michael," she said, "what can you tell us about the shovel itself?" Michael grinned, hefted the flat bottom coal slinger. "Pa said Uncle Pete worked for the Z&W Railroad back when, and when he left, this shovel came with him. It still has the Z&W stamp, just the letters. Pa said the railroad's mark is a rose and he said that's kind of hard to just stamp and a shovel is not worth engravin'." "It doesn't look too dirty," Mrs. Hern said hesitantly. "No ma'am. I knocked all the loose off but I left my homework so you could read it, only I figured you didn't want to handle a dirty old coal shovel so I did it the usual way on paper." Michael parked the shovel in front, against the chalkboard. "Might I take my seat now, ma'am?" "Yes, Michael, thank you." Mrs. Hern looked over the class and smiled. It wasn't how she'd planned to start the school day, but she reasoned that Michael might be right. If it's good enough for Old Railsplitter, it's good enough for him!

THE WHITE BRIGADE Sheriff Linn Keller's pasture was flooded with white. Laughing young ladies in white winged caps, white uniform dresses and stockings, and white ... ... cowboy boots ... I never knew they even MADE white cowboy boots! he thought, watching laughing young women with shining eyes and expressions of utter delight coo, murmur, stroke, admire, whisper -- and laugh -- Every last horse in his pasture, all of them -- the mares, his stallion, the half-dozen white fire horses, the colts -- had two, sometimes three pretty, apple-cheeked ladies in white, paying attention to them. More drifted in from the far end of the pasture, until each lovely young lady had a horse she was doing her level best to turn into a pet. Every last one of his horses was willing to give them about a week to stop that. Linn had no idea how many worlds were represented here. He remembered the first time she'd done this. He hadn't the foggiest what his darlin' daughter was up to. He did know he trusted her, he did know she'd been the spark plug behind getting "Equestrian Therapy" started, and he did know -- he felt his ears redden as he rolled this one over in his mind -- he did know he'd considered the whole idea hokum, until he saw the actual benefit, until his darlin' daughter explained that children have a natural affinity for horses, that horses were gentler around children (with exceptions, and he didn't have any exceptions in this pasture, that was the next pasture over) -- that children naturally fell into a horse's rhythm, they moved with the horse, this improved their balance and their coordination and strengthened their trunk muscles, and Linn looked down at the ground and felt half ashamed that he'd been skeptical in the first place. Now, she had a whole crowd of nurses in his pasture, spoilin' his saddle stock, and at this stray thought, he smiled, quietly. They were honestly doing en masse what he tried to do, one on one. He didn't have saddles enough for all the ladies to ride, but knowing Angela, she'd have 'em ridin' ... he didn't have to worry, something that looked like a stainless-steel shoebox hummed out of an Iris, towing another shining-steel shoebox, and Angela went over to it and proceeded to refresh her (oh God how many are there!) nurses or students or whatever-the-hell-they-were, how to saddle a horse, by virtue of having everyone grab a saddle blanket and throw it on the horse like this, and she was like a butterfly in a field of flowers, skipping here to there to someplace else, her voice quiet -- Linn blinked as he realized all these beautiful young ladies were wearing an earpiece with a whisker mic -- he slipped his own into his ear and listened, smiling a little: Angela was talking to women, she was talking the way women will talk to one another, free of the constraints of addressing those logical, factual minds inside men's skulls. He'd watched her do this before, and he reckoned she'd done this with these selfsame ladies-in-white, and he knew Angela liked to refresh important procedures. Like saddling horses. The Sheriff set a polished boot up on the bottom rail and watched as Angela's quick hands smoothed out a blanket here, gave another a twitch, caressed a velvety nose and a warm neck and pronounced this blanket well set, she spoke of wrinkles and saddle sores and then she led the flowing white crowd back to that low-floating shoebox. "Saddles are heavy," she reminded, "and kind of awkward, but there's a trick to it. Watch." Angela threw the near stirrup over the saddlehorn, her gentle line of patter smiling in her Daddy's ear as she did: she described, she demonstrated, she turned and swung and the saddle rose and dropped very precisely on a gelding's back. It took a while for the cautious, uncertain, apple-cheeked young ladies to get their mounts saddled: Angela was never in a hurry, but she was never still; she personally checked each girth, she made very certain each and every saddle was properly placed, well secured, and in spite of her swiftness, her efficiency, she never hesitated to caress each and every individual horse, as if that one equine was her absolute favorite in all the known worlds. The Sheriff considered his lifetime of semi-pro girlwatching. Was I still young and single, he considered, I'd likely make a damned fool of myself here! Angela had the -- nurses? Students? -- form a circle around her, the horses' noses to the center, toward where Angela and her saddled gelding stood, and she showed them how to mount, and dismount: her moves were easy, showing the result of many years of happy practice. Linn knew every one of these ladies had done all this before, but he also knew Angela liked to be thorough, and he knew Angela had that peculiar gift of being able to go over familiar ground and seem neither insulting nor condescending. Some of her novices blushed furiously as they brought their horses over to the mounting block very near where the Sheriff watched from outside the tall, whitewashed fence, and Linn allowed himself the momentary thought that perhaps they were blushing because they thought him a genuine stud ... right before he laughed, silent behind a poker face, and admonished himself. Stud? Hell, a hot woman and a cold glass of water and you'd die of a heart attack! Linn turned, shaved several coarse curls from a plug of molasses cured tobacker, fed to his shining- black racer. "Glue Hoof," he murmured, "you ready to have those kids at the hospital maul you ag'in?" Glue Hoof sniffed at his middle, where he'd shoved the plug back into its foil package and into his vest pocket. "You bum," Linn murmured. Sheriff and mount walked together to the gate. The latch clacked a sharp note as Linn's gloved hand slid it open. Most of the Sheriff's riding stock filed out, all but the vigorous mounts in the back pasture: horses are herd animals, and his herd was used to this maneuver, though never all at once: they fell into a single line behind Angela on her Daddy's spotty stallion. The Sheriff waited until the long string was passed, then he swung the gate to, shot the latch and mounted up. "Tail End Charlie, bringin' up the rear," he sang quietly, a snatch of an obscene marching song that was one of the few things he really remembered about his Uncle Pete. A school bus was waiting in the hospital's back parking lot, students and patients were coming out into the springtime sunshine, knowing the horses would soon arrive. The Sheriff grinned. He scheduled one day a week to participate in this, and with the sun warm on his back and the sight of a string of horses -- and their lovely mounts -- ahead of him, why, he had a grin on his face broad as Kenworth's front bumper. "Dispatch, this is Six," he called. "Six, Dispatch, go." "The White Brigade is on the move."

... yeast ... that was it ... Packets of Fleischmann's Yeast that, until I read your timely reminder ... I think those envelopes were something like twenty years old! Sound and timely advice and thank you both for that!

SHARP AS AN ADDER'S TOOTH The Sheriff was a pale eyed man with an iron grey mustache, a short temper and a simmering sense of humor that tended to surface when lesser men would resort to a punch or a profanity. The Sheriff was a man with fast reflexes and had sent more souls sent to the Eternal than most communicable diseases. The Sheriff was a man who believed firmly that violence begets violence, and when another man begat him violence, he begat right back, faster, harder and more thoroughly, until the begetter sincerely regretted begetting. As a result, the entire male population of Firelands County and territories beyond, knew the utter folly, the absolute stupidity, of laying a hand on this quiet voiced lawman. When he was grabbed without warning by a local woman and dragged away from the Silver Jewel's mahogany bar and down the hallway out of sight, it was a remarkable moment -- had a man done this, the Sheriff would doubtlessly have continued progress in that general direction, but the miscreant would have preceded him outside, by virtue of being thrown through the back door, without benefit of opening the portal first. This did not stop a woman from invading, from violating, this particular lawman's personal space. Daisy Finnegan, the red-headed, green-eyed, sharp-tongued wife of that broad-shouldered, good-natured, knuckle-scarred Fire Chief, seized the Sheriff by his necktie and towed him away from the bar and down the hall toward her kitchen, her heels loud on the clean-swept boards. Daisy shoved the Sheriff hard against the wall, planted her knuckles on her belt and glared at the lawman. Linn blinked, reached up as if to smooth down his insulted necktie. Daisy swatted his hands aside, muttered something in Gaelic, frowned as she rearranged carefully-knotted silk, straightened his collar and smoothed down his coat lapels. "There," she snapped, then shoved a finger at his chin, her eyes spitting green fire. "Ye've caused me a problem!" she declared, scowling. Linn looked down at the bristling Banty hen of an Irishwoman, considered her for a few moments, then replied mildly, "What did I do this time, darlin'?" Daisy's finger snapped up again, shook itself viciously at his Adam's apple. "Don't you darlin' me, you long tall womanizin' rake!" "Would you rather I called you apple pie?" "And that's another thing!" she shouted. "Ye're lookin a' me wi' those damned innocent eyes!" "But darlin'," the Sheriff blinked, "I am innocent!" Daisy shook her fist threateningly at his collar bone as she hissed, "Ye look s' damned innocent ye've got t' be guilty o' somethin'!" "I spoil my wife," Linn said softly, "and I just bought Angela a new saddle --" Daisy threw her hands in the air, half-turned, turned back. "Now there ye go! Ye ha'e no idea wha' ye've done!" Linn gave Daisy a patient look, knowing their voices were conducted efficiently down the hall and to ears that were elaborately pretending not to be listening: men were hiding grins behind beer mugs, mustaches were stroked to hide their expressions behind work-callused hands. "There's a woman who's ashamed t' speak t' ye!" "Oh?" " 'Oh?' " Daisy snapped. "Is that a' ye ha'e t' say? She's ashamed t' show her face i' thi' daylight an' all ye can say is 'Oh?' " Linn spread his hands helplessly. "Darlin'," he said, shaking his head, "I don't read minds and I don't have a crystal ball. You'll have to fill me in." Daisy hauled off and punched the Sheriff, hard: she glared up at the man and spat, "Damn ye f'r bein' s' damned honorable!" "Now you've got me just all kind of confused," Linn said in a gentle voice. Another woman emerged from Daisy's kitchen. Linn recognized her. He removed his Stetson. "Mrs. McGillicuddy." Sheriff Linn Keller knocked. His stallion grazed behind him, indifferent to anything but tender spring grass and the feel of sun, warm on his shining gold hide. A woman answered, regarded the Sheriff suspiciously. Linn held up what looked like a stack of trays, with two cloth-wrapped bundles on top. "Welcome," he said. "You're expectin' me to pay for that?" the woman said sharply. "I know your kind! You'll try and get my confidence and you'll --" Linn shoved the stack against her middle, his eyes changing. She took it, surprised: he turned, walked wordlessly back to his stallion. She almost threw the delivery after him, then she caught the welcome scent of coffee -- fresh, fragrant -- she looked down, lowered her head, sniffed. She looked up, at the rider's retreating shoulders. Young eyes regarded her solemnly as she carried the unexpected delivery to the nearby table, set it down. She picked up one bundle, lifted it to her nose, took a long, savoring smell. Coffee, she thought. She set this one aside, picked up the other, flatter, lighter bundle. She pulled the string, set it aside -- it was good string, she'd have use for it -- unfolded the cloth. Her eyes widened as her fingers sorted through this unexpected wealth. A half dozen spools of good silk thread. Two papers of pins, a paper of sewing needles, a needle holder, and a note. She set this aside. Beneath, a flat box, and in the box, a handful of pencils, four lumps of chalk, and under this box, like a tray, three framed slates. She looked at her three children, at three sets of solemn, watchful eyes. She stacked the slates, placed the chalk atop them, unfolded the note. Welcome. We're glad you're here. No signature, just ... Welcome. She read the word, she heard the man's voice as he'd handed her this stack. His voice was gentle, warm. Welcome. She remembered how she'd rewarded his kindness with harshness. She closed her eyes, her cheeks burning with shame. There was only one soul in town she knew, and somehow she knew this one soul would know who did her this kindness, and maybe -- just maybe -- she could make this right. The Widow McGillicuddy spun her shawl about her shoulders, spoke quietly to her children: she handed each one a slate and a lump of chalk and told them to get their wraps, she was walking them to school. "You've reason to be mistrustful," Linn continued as the woman's face positively flamed, as her eyes fell, as she drew the shawl tighter around her shoulders. The Widow McGillicuddy opened her mouth, tried to say something: the Sheriff fancied the woman wished the floor would open up and swallow her. The Sheriff winked at Daisy, turned, pushed open the back door, his Stetson settling on his scalp as he crossed the threshold: sunlight, bright and blinding, seared against wood-paneled walls, then it was surprisingly dark as the door shut again. Daisy shook a fist at the closed portal: "An' ye've no' th' decency t' hear a puir woman out!" she shouted, leaning forward a little, her voice echoing back in her face.

Yeah, well, out of flour is my fault. Multiple attempts at breadmaking. If I'd persisted and had more flour, I could have mixed up mortar and laid up a rather durable wall. I believe I'll delegate future efforts to those who actually know what they're doing!

TATER SOUP, WITH A WALKING STICK This recipe and its execution isn't something I'd planned, it just sorta happened. My wife collided with the wall -- hard -- and very nearly fell, and we think she may have a stress fracture of the metatarsal arch. That's a separate discussion and bears on this recipe only because she's hobbling slowly and carefully with the help of her sainted Grandmother's walking stick. She's complained often that I spoil her and she wants to spoil me, but I'm so damned self sufficient she has a hard time even trying. She spent all day yesterday trying, until her near-fall, until she retreated to her "office" -- the bedroom -- and (wisely!) put her leg up. Until that moment, she'd busied herself prepping ingredients to make one of my favorites, potato soup. To wit: (Always wanted to say that. I think I'm using it right. If I'm not, it's just another example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing!) She peeled, diced and boiled a sack of small taters, drained, cooled, bagged & refrigerated. She dumped a medium sack of baby carrots onto the cutting board: diced, boiled, cooled, bagged & refrigerated. She took a pound of bacon out of the freezer and put it in the fridge to thaw overnight. All this before the Great Fall. When I fell on my backside down the basement stairs (broke my tailbone -- zero stars, do not recommend!) -- I wise cracked to the X-ray tech that it registered a 2.5 on the Richter scale. I've not dared to say anything of the kind about my beautiful bride's making what the pilots call an Unplanned Descent! Anyway -- She put on her contrary hat this morning and hobbled painfully into the kitchen and said it hurts too much to stand and make potato soup, if she sat in a chair and gave orders, could I tend that detail. I already had the thawed bacon diced before she made it to the kitchen; she came into a fragrant cloud of frying bacon. I fetched diced, cooked taters out of the fridge and dumped in a big kettle. Dumped in the diced, cooked baby carrots. Whisked a handful of Bisquick into two cups of whole milk, as we are out of flour but Bisquick will conceal a multitude of sins. Excavated a can of peas from the pantry (it was hiding beside the canned chicken and under a can of chicken noodle soup) -- drain liquid, add peas to kettle. Sprinkle a good dose of parsley, Rosemary-Garlic seasoning (memo to self, get more, that's our last container), grind in pepper and shake in less than half the salt I would normally add. Add Bisquick slurry, it should be thin enough to pour. If it's too thick you can use it for patching plaster. I stirred this fragrant mixture while heating over medium flame. I looked at the crock pot. My wife looked at the crock pot. We looked at one another. Turn off fire, dump most of contents of kettle into crock pot. Dump remainder into soup bowl. Heat bowlful in microwave while I plug in crock pot, add lid and proceeded to ignore it until this evening. My wife and I tasted this pioneering bowlful and we both pronounced it good!

A SEASON OF GIVING Michael Keller grinned as he crossed the threshold of a one room schoolhouse. Confederate worlds were anywhere from lightly populated to very thinly populated, even lo these many years after aliens abducted Southrons, intending to create a hybrid-trained, disposable, mercenary force to use against their advanced-technology opponents. After overthrowing their captors and annihilating their dying civilization to the last living soul in a collective detonation of utter rage, after finding themselves set upon by the civilization they'd been meant to fight and finding themselves obliged to visit utter, absolute, merciless, unforgiving war upon these new attackers -- after destroying this rival interstellar civilization -- Southrons threw themselves outward, onto each of the planets, through the predecessor of the now-improved Iris technology. Some planets were barely populated as a result; industry was developing, and so you had some worlds where repurposed, reverse-engineered alien technology created gleaming spires and glass-and-steel cities with paved streets and culture developing from what men remembered, to much less advanced worlds. Michael carried a stack of books, a gift for the school. These were reprints of four editions of McGuffey's Eclectic Readers: he'd consulted with the schoolmarm, and he'd shown her the editions, and he'd delivered these directly from Earth into her hands. Other copies -- master copies -- were being duplicated in the planet's capital city, but these ... these were straight from Earth. The schoolhouse emptied out behind him, children staring at the massive, fanged creature with silky-blond hair and lightning streaks chasing the length of her sculpted, muscle-defined carcass: she was bellied down, blinking sleepily, content to sun herself: hard up against her right ribs, a Fanghorn colt; on her other side, hidden from the common view, another, cuddled up just as close. Michael stopped, planted his knuckles on his belt. "Thunder," he said in a scolding voice, "you're right in my road!" Thunder, an orphaned Fanghorn colt abandoned by the herd when its dam died of unknown causes -- Thunder, adopted by Lightning, raised his head, looked drowsily at Michael, opened its fanged jaw and gave a heartfelt, relieving, generally resounding and quite length, belch. Michael raised spread-finger hands to the heavens: "At least excuse yourself!" Lightning rolled over, fencepost-thick legs waving, inviting a belly rub. Michael turned, spread his hands helplessly: "I'm gonna need some help here!" -- and Thunder, arched his back and his neck, paddling at the air as at least ten pair of young hands began happily scratching his warm, fine-furred belly. Cyclone's head poked up over Lightning, her chin draping over the saddle: if it's possible for a creature that eats both grasses and bloody meat, a creature with fangs and a matured voice that was as loud and as harsh as an industrial steam-whistle, if it's possible for a creature that can lower its bone-bossed head and drive through a brick wall, to look at once innocent, and wistful, Cyclone did, probably because Cyclone was a girl, and girls know how to use those big dark eyes with those long, sweeping eyelashes. Laughing schoolchildren split and ran, laughing, around Lightning: Cyclone rolled over to receive her belly rubs as well, happy as a Beagle dog. Michael stood beside the schoolmarm and laughed a little. Last time he'd been here, this same identical scene played itself out, much to the delight of two Fanghorn colts, and several enthusiastic schoolchildren. Angela smiled. She remembered a young lady in a white winged cap and a white uniform dress, hand cupped over her mouth. Angela remembered how she'd looked back at the paper she held, its envelope falling forgotten to the floor. "I got the posting," she whispered, her eyes huge: teacher and student embraced, each hugging the other with the fierceness of someone who'd gotten exactly what she wanted. Savannah, Angela's student, had gotten a posting on Planet Ten, where she'd interned: she looked at the confirmation again, looked at Angela, blinking, unsure whether to jump up and down and scream, or just stand there and vibrate. Angela saw something cross behind her eyes, a look of momentary uncertainty. "What is it, Savannah?" Savannah looked up at Angela and asked, "If I'm a working medic, do I still wear my cap?" Angela gripped the shoulders of Angela's puffy-sleeved uniform dress and lowered her head a little, as if looking over a set of nonexistent spectacles. "Savannah, what does it say?" "That I am assigned to House Twenty-Seven as a nurse paramedic." Angela smiled quietly, nodded. "That means," she explained, "you will most certainly wear your cap. You earned that, the hard way. You will also be a blueshirt medic, because you earned that, the hard way." Savannah nodded solemnly. "If you're at a fire scene, your cap comes off and the helmet goes on, and trust me" -- Angela raised a hand, rubbed careful fingers into her scalp as if massaging a tender spot -- "you'll WANT to wear that helmet!" She remembered how she'd tilted her head a little and shared a secret smile, then whispered, "I have something for you." Savannah watched as Angela bent over and picked up a cardboard box from behind her desk, set it on the corner, opened the flaps. She remembered how Savannah's jaw dropped open as Angela pulled out a brand new fire helmet -- blue it was, with a reflective arch that said MEDIC: the six-armed blue star under the arch, and centered on its forehead, a white-reflective, white-winged-cap. "Savannah," Angela said softly, "you are without any doubt at all, the one most capable student I have ever taught. You earned this!" Savannah swallowed hard, took the helmet -- gingerly, as if she was afraid it would break -- she turned it, saw her name, black letters on a reflective white band across its back. Angela remembered how Savannah looked at her, how soft her voice was as she said, "Thank you." Angela stood in the empty classroom and smiled as she remembered Savannah's controlled pace as she left the classroom. Angela started counting as her student crossed the threshold, turned, went down the hall. "Dirty second one, dirty second two, dirty second three ..." Nurse-Paramedic Instructor Angela Keller laughed aloud as the hallway's academic hush was absolutely shattered by an honest, full-voice, top-of-the-lungs "EEYAAAHOOOO!" Dana's uniformed presence in the high school had nothing at all to do with law enforcement. She was between calls, she remembered hearing something about the band director needing repairs made to a failed solder joint on a French horn, and she'd intended to pop in, see if she could arrange for repair or replacement. She hesitated as she came past what she knew was study hall: on impulse, she slipped soundlessly in the back door, looked at the teacher, smiled, put a finger to her lips. The teacher, surprised, nodded: she watched, but did not rise from where she'd been seated, grading papers. Angela bent over a student from behind, whispered, "You doing okay?" He nodded, sighed, tapped his paper with the eraser end of his pencil. "I'm not getting this," he muttered. Angela looked at his work, nodded. "You're on the right track," she said quietly, pulling a pen from her pocket and using it as a pointer. "See here -- that's right -- now we need to isolate X." Her whispered voice smiled as she continued, "Formulae are like children. If you give candy to one, you'd better do the same for the other, or they'll throw a fit." "Sounds like my little brother." "Yeah, I got one of those too. So what we do to this side of the formula, we have to do to the other. In this case" -- her pen moved to illustrate -- divide this by sixteen. Go ahead." He did, wrote down the value. "Now do the same for the other side of your equation." "One-X." "Or X. That's the key. Isolate X." She gripped his shoulder, thrust the gleaming-silver pen back into her uniform blouse pocket. "Congratulations, you just solved it!" Dana straightened, waved at the teacher, turned and slipped out of the study hall. She'd been noticed, but it wasn't until her departure that the student realized it wasn't a teacher that just handed him the hammer he needed to knock the obstructing mental block out from under his mental gears. Ambassador Marnie Keller sat across from her father, looking both elegant and dangerous in her tailored McKenna gown. Elegant, because she was a genuinely beautiful woman; dangerous, because she was looking at her father with that half-smile that told him she'd been up to something. "There is a question in your eyes," she said softly. The Sheriff nodded, leaned forward, crossed his forearms on the coffee-ringed desk blotter. "Darlin'," he said quietly, "I've faced up to and faced down large and angry people carrying a variety of weapons." Marnie nodded, that quiet, I-know-a-secret smile on her lips, in her shining, pale eyes. "You know I've waded into situations that sane and rational people were running away from just as hard as they could go." Marnie nodded again, tilted her head a little, the way she did when she was interested. "Darlin', there's all kind of movies made about space aliens and fleets of alien ships." Ambassador Marnie Keller nodded once more, unblinking eyes steady on her father's face. "How true is that?" Marnie blinked a few times, frowned a little, then she rose slightly, scooted her chair a little closer to the Sheriff's desk. She folded her forearms on the desk and hunched forward a little, the very mirror of her father's posture. "You want the truth?" she said, her voice quiet, flat, the voice of someone who knew what she was saying and was deciding whether to be circumspect, or to give a full disclosure. The Sheriff nodded, once. Marnie blinked a few times, took a long breath. "There are three that we know of," she said, her voice flat, expressionless. "There's Earth. That's one. There's the Confederacy. That's two." "What about Mars?" "That's a little of both. There is only one other alien civilization that we know of." "How much of a threat are they?" Marnie considered for several long moments. "They are far enough away that Earth's radio signals, its lasers shot into space, everything, will take another couple of centuries to reach them. Earth is safe." Linn nodded solemnly. "I am the Sheriff," he said finally. "This is my county. If I needed to know if I should negotiate for planetary defenses." "Not yet," Marnie said softly. "If it comes to that, we will ..." Marnie smiled, looked down at her white, lace-edged cuffs, looked back up at her pale-eyed Daddy. "Humans are still the most dangerous animal we know of," she said softly, "and in the Confederate mind, Earth has tall guardians on shining gold stallions who keep it safe." Marnie smiled, just a little, as her Daddy's ears reddened. "We've had to have understandings with the only other civilization we know of. Space is big enough that they stay in their territory, we stay in ours, everybody's happy." Linn took a long breath, blew it out, nodded. "Good." "You have a significant tactical advantage." "Oh?" "One ancient shipload of cybernetic Berserkers attacked our colony. I'm told it was the last of the doomsday weapons the aliens deployed just before they raided Earth for mercenaries." Veils dropped behind Marnie's eyes and her face went absolutely expressionless. "Their powered exoskeleton suits were armored against energy weapons." The Sheriff's expression hardened. He knew these Berserkers were what killed his grandchildren, and part of him still wanted to personally hunt them down. "They are not proof against ..." Linn's eyes dropped to the engraved Smith belted snugly around Marnie's slender waist. Marnie's smile was wolflike, her eyes were pale and without any trace of warmth. "I give you the gift of safety," she whispered, "and the gift of knowledge: they have no defense against the weapons you command!"

3/3: ONE HELL OF A NIGHTMARE Ambassador Marnie Keller opened her eyes as Dr. John Greenlees placed the last delicate little suture into her laceration. “Welcome back,” he said quietly, tied off the suture, cut it with a quick slice of the curved, edge-honed needle: she felt him do something to her numbed forehead, felt him press something against her throat, heard the quiet hiss of an injector. Her headache eased off. “The pilot –” she began. “Is fine,” Dr. John said quietly, his hand on her shoulder. “What happened?” “You’ll be debriefed. Now lay still, you’ve a concussion.” “Daddy?” she blinked. “He’s been notified that you’re fine,” her husband said reassuringly, his hands professional and his eyes concerned. Marnie groaned, closing her eyes, remembering … She’d looked up at her Daddy, she’d looked up at Jacob, she’d wondered what ever got them out of their jurisdictions, and then she saw Esther. Esther? Marnie looked back up at the pale eyed man with the iron grey mustache, down on one knee beside her, pressing her left hand between his callused palms. She looked to her right, looked at Jacob, down on one knee, holding her hand between both his palms, his hands as strong, as warm, as reassuring, as… Sarah blinked, confused, looked over at Esther. Esther’s eyes smiled with a secret understanding as she raised a finger to her lips. Willamina Keller read her very-great-grandfather’s hand-written account, frowning a little as she did. Beside her, her granddaughter, Marnie Keller, scrolled slowly through census records, making occasional notations on the yellow legal pad under her right hand. Marnie looked over, saw her grandmother’s fingers were steepled, saw the older woman frowning thoughtfully at the open book in front of her. “Did Old Pale Eyes get into something interesting?” Marnie asked quietly. Willamina nodded slowly. “I just found something I was looking for.” She looked at Marnie, her expression thoughtful. “I’m going to leave you a key. It’ll be in my secondary safe deposit box.” “O-kaaay,” Marnie said uncertainly, turning to face her grandmother. “You will know the right time to access it. Until then, it’s in your name – it won’t be touched upon my demise.” Willamina turned, faced her granddaughter squarely, leaned forward with a serious expression. “You will know the right time, Marnie. Wait for that moment.” Marnie nodded, her fourteen year old face serious. Marnie looked up at this man who was the living, breathing twin of her pale eyed Daddy. She looked at the absolute clone for her younger brother. The Bear Killer snuffed at her bloodied forehead, laid down with his chin warm and firm on her shoulder, gave a worried little sound, sighed. “I see where you tried to start a fire,” Linn said quietly. Marnie swallowed. “Yeah,” she managed to gasp. Something black, broad and elliptical opened. Several men in shiny white suits stepped through, men with boxes on their heads, boxes with windows in front of their faces. Neither Jacob, his father, nor his mother could move. The Bear Killer lifted his head, his tail thumping a greeting. A woman approached – a woman in a whorishly short skirt, a woman in white stockings and shoes, with a blue cape and a white winged cap: another woman, in a uniform – a man’s uniform! – they approached the paralyzed trio. They were surrounded; they could not move; they did not feel panic – somehow they knew they were in no danger – Marnie looked up and smiled a little and said, “Took you long enough!” “You hit a cosmic string, dipstick,” the uniformed woman said: she knelt at Marnie’s head, looked very directly into the Sheriff’s eyes. “Dear God,” Dana whispered, “you’re him!” Dana unbuttoned a blouse pocket, slipped in two fingers, withdrew a card, thrust it into the Sheriff’s coat pocket, then drew back and looked at the man as Marnie was moved – somehow, he was paralyzed, he could not see what they were doing – Where are you going with my daughter! he screamed mentally, unable to move. Dana bit her bottom lip, whispered quickly, urgently. “My name,” she said, her lips forming feminine sibilants in the chilly moonlight, “is Dana Keller. I am your descendant. You look enough like my Daddy to be his twin, and he’s Sheriff of Firelands County. That” – she hooked a thumb toward the serious-faced young woman with the white winged cap – “is my sister Angela. She’s … medical.” Angela looked up. “Concussion,” she said in a businesslike voice. “Let’s move!” Dana hesitated as the white-uniformed team rose, started for the Iris. “That,” she thrust a bladed hand at the retreating hover-litter, “is my sister Marnie. She is Ambassador for the thirteen star system Confederacy, and she is the very image of Sarah Lynne McKenna.” Dana followed The Bear Killer, and The Bear Killer followed the litter, at least until they disappeared into the Iris: he stood, tail swinging, then looked back as Dana stepped into its enveloping darkness, as the Iris closed, and was gone. Sheriff Willamina Keller read her ancestor’s words. She waited until Marnie left, then she unlocked a drawer, removed a long, slim, string-tied cardboard box, drove to the bank. She needed to open a safe-deposit box in her granddaughter’s name. Dana handed Marnie the contents of the safe-deposit box. Marnie motioned to a chair. Three sisters looked at this one Journal that had never made print, this original that their grandmother kept away from common knowledge: it was a smaller book than the others, entirely hand written. A business card was still in it. They read Willamina’s note. Marnie, If you’re reading this, you are reading what already happened to you. If it hasn’t happened yet, don’t read this. W. Three sisters read the note, looked at one another. Marnie picked up the Journal, opened it to the bookmark, withdrew a business card. “Dana,” Marnie said, “this is yours.” She handed Dana one of the professional business cards she carried as a Sheriff’s deputy back home. It was yellowed a little, it was very slightly wrinkled, as if it were … ... old … Marnie picked up the knife, blinked. It had been a gift from an asteroid miner. Damascus steel, refined from asteroid iron: on the blade, carefully if crudely hand-chased, Ambassador Marnie. Her hand went to where the knife usually lived, hidden in whatever garments she wore. Yesterday, she thought, this was bright, clean ... now there's just a trace of ... not rust ... Age? Marnie looked at the scars on its spine, ran delicate fingertips over them, remembering how she’d found a likely rock, how she’d raked fire from the back of the blade to try and start a fire, how she’d gotten dizzy and dropped both rock and blade and then collapsed. Quick fingers paged through the only account in this heretofore-unknown Journal. “It’s like … it was important enough for him to write it down, but maybe he didn’t think anyone would believe him.” “I like the last line.” Two sisters hung over the shoulders of the third, and they read the last line, silently, together: If that wasn’t real, it was one hell of a nightmare!

2/3: THE SHERIFF AND THE SHEE Whether it was a quantum disturbance, whether her Diplomatic shuttle crossed a dark-matter string within the Iris, whatever the cause, it seized the stout, inflexible ship and shook it like a terrier shakes a rat. Normally the ship would fly into the Iris and instantaneously reappear elsewhere, having slipped between dimensions. At least that’s how Marnie though it worked. This time, though, when it shot into the Iris, the ship groaned like a lost soul, alarms started and cut off just as quickly. The Diplomatic shuttle could withstand a proximity detonation from a high-yield fusion device, with absolutely no damage. This very shuttle withstood the slap of a magnetostar’s swinging arm. It was one of the toughest, the most durable, one of the most survivable ships, in the entire Confederate space service. Marnie thrust herself back in her seat, pulled desperately at her flight harness, trying to secure herself. Marnie felt the ship separate like an amoeba – for a moment it was two separate shuttles – then she was alone. She looked over at the pilot’s empty chair and realized they had no lights, no power, she had no pilot, they were falling, and she had no idea how to restart their engines. She released the ends of her flight harness as both the lights and artificial gravity went out. She looked at the empty, dark screens, the dead control panel. The red emergency lights came on. She leaned forward, hit the shield retractors, shoved her hands hard against the panel to push herself back into in her seat. Panels retracted from the transparent metallic windows and she swore, loudly, sharply. She was right, they were falling. Marnie gritted her teeth, leaned forward, reached to her left, hit the one control she knew would work. A hatch blew free atop the shuttle, a small rocket ignited, launched, pulled a drogue free, then a genuinely huge, colorful parachute with it: another rocket fired, at an angle away from the chute, its built-in distress beacon screaming into the ether. Marnie barely made it back into her seat when felt the ship almost stop in mid-air. She had weight again. She knew the parachute was efficient. This one was extremely efficient. She hadn’t been wearing her flight harness – why should she, it was a milk run, like driving your car from one parking space, straight forward into the next parking space. She was trying to find the ends of her harness when she looked out the front windows and saw she was far lower than she’d realized. She remembered the control panel coming at her, fast. Marnie rose slowly, standing, swaying a little, holding the cold and wet kerchief firmly against her throbbing forehead. She looked around. “Well good, kids,” she muttered, “where’s my shuttle?” She twisted, the world rolled out from under her and slammed up against her back. Her teeth clicked together as the back of her head hit sandy dirt. Two Aladdin lamps cast bright, harsh light on the kitchen table. Esther watched as Linn smoothed the hand drawn map out on the immaculate tablecloth. He looked up at his wife. “You saw where she was.” Esther nodded. “What was your impression of where she was?” “I can take you zere,” a familiar voice said. Husband wife turned suddenly to see what looked like an old European peasant-woman, standing in the kitchen doorway. “Good enough,” Linn said, his voice clipped, businesslike. “What do we need?” “She iss hurt,” Daciana said quietly, backless clogs silent on the kitchen floor. She went to a cupboard, withdrew a teacup, set it on the stove: the teakettle was warm, but not hot – she tapped it with the backs of her fingers, nodded. Crushed, fragrant herbs trickled from her fingers into the cup; warm, steaming water gurgled over the thick mat of crushed herbals. Daciana set the teakettle down, picked up the cup, carefully, holding it with both hands. She turned. Daciana, a Gypsy trick rider, herb woman and friend to the ladies of Firelands, turned: she was no longer the diminutive, soft-spoken soul they’d long known: she turned, her face shining as if illuminated by a shaft of moonlight – pale, majestic, cold, beautiful … … commanding. Daciana glided forward, one step, another, moving with an almost ceremonial grace. She lowered the teacup to the table, released it: she passed her hands over it twice, then she picked it up. She did not so much turn as … … to the hard-eyed Sheriff, it was as if she was suddenly a statue, animated marble, turning on a platform instead of a human turning with muscle power. She rotated, the cup swinging to him: she stopped, suddenly, mechanically. He almost expected to hear a metallic click! of some hidden mechanism. Her eyes were dark, compelling. She was beyond unmoving: her stillness was unnatural. Esther watched, knowing in her eyes. Linn took the teacup, drank. He closed his eyes, shivered. Esther felt Daciana’s fingers, light and cool, touching her behind the earlobes, letting her see what her husband was seeing. Apple-horse’s hooves were loud in the chilly moonlight as Jacob powered him up and across the road, toward his Pa’s house. He knew his Pa was not alone, and he knew all was not well. Jacob knew his green-eyed mother was a Wise Woman, he knew she had the Second Sight, even if she never admitted to it when he asked her – she’d only smiled, that secretive smile a woman has when she knows a secret has been guessed. Jacob had been told, years before, some skills, some knowledge, were the property of the Distaff, there were powers and gifts no man would ever command. He’d been given the impression the Second Sight was one of these gifts. He also knew stopping blood with the Word, and blowing fire, were two gifts that were supposed to be beyond the ability of any man to either use, or even remember. He knew his Pa had done both, and his Pa was sure as hell no woman! Jacob also knew his Pa was not alone, and all was not well, and Jacob came off his Apple-horse, rifle in hand, and he came up the steps and across the porch and into his Pa’s house, dead silent. He recognized Daciana, standing behind his mother, her fingers touching the back of his Ma’s neck like she was rubbing out a persistent headache like she’d done before. His Pa, though … His Pa stood, holding a teacup, staring straight ahead with the expression of a man ready to go to war. Linn heard it, not far away. A woman’s lament, wavering, not a scream, not yet ... sorrow it was, a voice that grew into the scream he expected, a voice that fell into sobs and sorrowing. Rage detonated, ignited, erupted in his chest. He gripped the wire-wound handle of his fighting knife, looked around, drew the blade free. This was the Banshee, and any who heard the Shee, heard the lament of someone who was about to die. I can take you, Daciana whispered. I can take you to someone who knows. She will not tell you willingly. He moved, swift, silent – he seized the old woman, kneeling by the stream, seized her by her white hair. She will not tell you willingly. He pulled her head back, put his knife’s edge to her throat. His voice was half-snarl, half-hiss from between clenched teeth: “Damn you,” he snarled, then he shouted: “DAMN YOU, WHERE’S MY DAUGHTER!” Three horses streaked across moonlit terrain. Something like a wrinkled, twisted, metal box with a hole torn in its side, lay with a colorful silky cloth draped over it – only the box was the size of the Mercantile, and the cloth draped over it would have completely roofed the Silver Jewel. They came over a rise, drew up, searching. One of the three, frowning, eased his stallion forward – a walk at first, then as Apple-horse felt Jacob’s excitement, as The Bear Killer bayed and streaked ahead like the black arrow from Death’s bow, Apple surged ahead. Jacob was out of the saddle before the stallion was halted: he landed, boot heels driving into the sandy soil. Marnie felt a firm hand grip her shoulder, felt herself being rolled over onto her back. She felt skilled fingers brush gently against her aching forehead. Marnie opened her eyes, looked up into a set of pale eyes. “D-d-daddy?” she asked in a tiny little voice.

1/3: DAMN YOU, WHERE’S MY DAUGHTER! It was a bad night. I woke up. No. No, my eyes SLAMMED open and I seized Esther’s wrist as if I were afraid she was about to fall down a bottomless well. My green-eyed bride convulsed, twisted: we seized one another and I am not the least little bit ashamed to admit we grabbed one another with raw, God’s-honest, FEAR. Sheriff Willamina Keller blinked as she read these words, her eyes wide, unblinking. Willamina knew men of her very-great-Granddad’s era were hard men, men with the bark on, so to speak – and for such a man to admit fear, meant that he’d been beyond terrified. Willamina herself had seen grief, loss, terror, death, war, destruction that civilized people politely denied ever existed: war had given her a twisted sense of humor and a warped view of reality and of propriety, and war had given her a survivor’s mind. She rubbed her forehead, took a long breath, swallowed. “Granddad,” she whispered, “what did you see?” Daciana had been a trick rider with a circus. Now she was wife to the town’s telegrapher, she was a “Yarb Woman” who consorted with native healers, learning from them, brewing nostrums and decoctions that eased women’s cramps, men’s headaches, she knew the healing herbs. A few – a very few – knew she had her Grand-mère’s crystal ball. These very few saw her peer into its crystal depths, her face inverted, distorted: no hand, save hers alone, had ever touched it, not since the day her Grand-mère wrapped it in a scarf and gave it to her, and then picked up a heavy set of shears and handed to her. Daciana took the shears, startled: when her fingers closed about the big, heavy finger loops, something seared into her, something like a minor bolt of lightning. Ma vue est la vôtre, she’d murmured in that wise, gentle voice of hers: she’d kissed Daciana, formally, on both cheeks: “my sight is yours. Go, now, child.” Daciana stared, wide-eyed, afraid, at the shears, at her Grand-mère, knowing with a sudden, shocking clarity, that this was the last she would ever see the woman alive. Daciana seized the older woman in a desperate embrace, her voice a muffled sob, and she felt the beloved old woman’s hands, warm, gentle as they’d always been, on her back: again, the whisper, “Go,” and Daciana turned, ran, crying, clutching the scarf and its spherical gift to her stomach. Thus had an old Gypsy grandmother transferred her Second Sight to her chosen recipient: the old woman smiled quietly as the child ran, knowing she ran with fear, fear of the terrible knowledge she’d just inherited, and Daciana felt the old woman walk, slow, pained, to her narrow cot, felt her lie down, felt her surrender her essence to the Almighty. Daciana woke the same night the Sheriff and his wife woke. She woke suddenly – she slipped out of bed carefully, so as not to disturb her husband – she thrust her feet into backless slippers, whispered quickly to the next room, where moonlight seared through a cold, barren sky to blaze, silver and harsh, on her kitchen table. Daciana reached up, lifted a covered object from a shelf, placed it in moonlight’s silver: she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, lifted the scarf, passed her hands over the ancient crystal sphere. She placed her hands flat on the immaculate tablecloth, opened her eyes, stared into shimmering depths, eyes wide and unblinking. Daciana saw a man on a golden horse, riding furiously through a twisted, hostile landscape, barren trees with branches like claws, illuminated by flashes of lightning: clouds glowed and muttered overhead as the man raged at the darkness, and beside him, something black, swift, silent, something with blazing red eyes and shining ivory fangs. Even his shining-gold stallion had red eyes, the eyes of a predatory beast. She heard him, and perhaps that was the most frightening of all. “WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER, DAMN YOU! WHERE IS SHE???” A pretty young woman with pale eyes squeezed cold stream-water from her kerchief, pressed it firmly against the corner of her forehead. She’d taken a blow – she remembered falling, then impact, she woke – Blood on the ground – She had no idea where she was, she had no memory of how she got there, and she ached in places she didn’t know she had places, but she was alive, alive! – She heard a snarl, menacing, threatening, and her hand closed about the wire-wound hilt of a blade she did not know was there. It took her another moment to realize the snarl she heard was from her own throat. A husband’s fingers were gentle against his wife’s cheekbones. The window was beyond her, the moon well beyond his wife: she could see his face, his grim expression, she felt his breathing – controlled, powerful, the breathing of a predatory animal. She felt his fingers trembling slightly as they brushed her cheek bones. “You, too?” he murmured. Esther swallowed, nodded, knowing her shadows face would be a dark mask to his eyes. Covers were thrown back, bare feet thrust into fur lined moccasins: he hesitated, slipped out of his moccasins, dressed with the swift efficiency she’d long admired and had seen many times. This time, though, he moved with a deadly purpose. Esther dressed as quickly: he waited for her to finish before turning to the bedroom door, gunbelt around his middle, shotgun in hand. He turned back toward her. Her hand touched his, his hand gripped hers. Whatever was going on, whatever nightmare roared through both their nighttime slumbers, they would face it together. Daciana’s breath caught. She recognized the woman in the blue gown. She saw her thrown about like a beetle shaken in a match-box. She saw the box break open, she saw impossible blossoms and she felt herself shaken, as if yanked from behind, and she felt herself hit something – Daciana raised her hand to her forehead, expecting to find a gash, expecting to feel blood, hot, wet, sticky – She lowered her hand – Nothing, she thought, surprised. She looked at the crystal ball, looked into its depths again, her face pale. Jacob Keller fed his stallion a thick pinch of molasses cured tobacker shavings, saddled the dancing Appaloosa, swung into the saddle. He had possibles enough in his warbag for a few days afield. He had no idea what in two hells was going on, but he knew where to go to find out. Jacob Keller rode across his pasture, through the back gate, down a mountain path, a swift-running Deathbringer on a pale, spotty horse.

IVORY 88 Victoria hissed. Victoria was old enough to travel off-planet. She'd found she really didn't want to, not all that much, unless it suited her, of course. Girls are like that. Linn managed to work the hand sewn quilt over her and around her a little, but he didn't work the quilt in between them. Victoria was sound asleep, and leaned up against her Daddy, and she was sound asleep, and the pure-white Mountain Mastiff was piled up on the couch beside her, curled up, her muzzle on Victoria's thigh.. Had it been Michael, asleep and cuddled with ol' Pa, he would have snored. When Michael's pale eyed Pa slept, he snored. Linn snored fit to rattle the windows. Shelly threatened to have a shelf built outside her bedroom window so she could set an unmuffled lawn mower outside the window pane and let it run so she could sleep at night, for without her husband's nocturnal chain saw, she couldn't get to sleep. At the moment, though, Linn draped his arm over his little girl -- who wasn't as little as she used to be -- he was quite pleased with knowing his darlin' daughter wanted to stay at home with her big strong Daddy. Victoria wrinkled her nose, sighed, cuddled against her Daddy, still sound asleep. She hissed again. Shelly could tell from the look on her husband's face there was nowhere in the entire world he'd rather be. Michael Keller, on the other hand, was in a saloon, with a beer on the piano and a grin on his face, with a Derby hat cocked rakishly to the side and ruffled sleeve garters halfway up his wiry biceps, and he was happily thumpin' a mean tune on the ivory 88. He'd asked the owner if he could try something that might improve the saloon's business. Metallurgy, metal refining and metalworking, had not progressed to the point where this world was fabricating something as complex as a piano -- they were casting iron, steel refining was not well advanced, but it wasn't far behind. When this happened, there would be metal piano frames and wire strings and wound sttrings. Until then, there were legends of the upright box called a "Piano" that made music. Michael had one delivered to this particular saloon, chosen because it didn't really have that much business, though it had a fair location: Michael wasn't the world's best piano player, but he had a good ear, he was good at chording, and he'd learned enough saloon grade tunes that -- after the saloon opened that evening, after the barkeep asked what in two hells did that glorified coffin do, after the curious came in, attracted by honest to God music -- the saloon ran out of beer and had to make an emergency run across town to fetch in kegs and bottles of Barley Pop for folk who came in to marvel at this exclusive wonder. Michael discreetly recruited ladies, most of whom weren't all that young, who could either play piano already, or could learn fast: those ladies who could play, he explained in due time, were mostly from Earth, were mostly souls who'd tried to make a good go of life, but they'd been thrown curve balls or run into misfortune they hadn't planned on: they were more than happy to leave the life they knew, behind, to put their particular talent to use, and they were quite happy to wear the feminine styles of the particular world they were on. Michael neither misled them, nor did he lie to them: he didn't tell his Pa what he'd done, he'd just gone looking, recruiting the way he'd learned his Pa conducted an investigation, only instead of finding suspects, he found widows, he found women with a damaged past, he'd found women who wanted to start over, he'd found women who could play piano. Michael set up a half dozen of these adventurous souls, one to a city, each with their own piano, in a saloon, with the understanding that these piano playing women were not to be mishandled in any manner whatsoever, that their pianos would be maintained and tuned and the pianos themselves were not to be harmed, and when the saloon-owners saw how much their business improved for the installation of this upright music maker, they were inclined to keep both the piano and the piano player from harm. Michael, occasionally, relieved his piano player: Lightning waited patiently outside, her adopted young waiting with her; they were not tethered -- they were backed up against the front of the building, or against the walkway, all three of them, Thunder and Cyclone angled out a little, very evidently backed up so nothing hostile could get behind them, while they watched forward. Michael grinned up at the patrons, male and female alike, who clustered around this marvelous music machine. Michael had the gift of disconnecting the piano playing part of his mind from the conversation part of his mind: one of the spectators complained that they were lookin forward to seeing a Sweet Young Thang in a ruffly dress and stockings, and another asked Michael, "Why'nt you wear a dress for us when you play?" and Michael laughed, dropped a quick "Shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits!" on the ivory keyboard, thrust a declarative finger toward the ceiling and shouted happily, "NO!" -- then went back to playing, at least until his feminine relief arrived, wearing a frilly dress and stockings: she came in beside Michael, they looked at one another and began playing a brisk, four-handed version of Chopsticks, Michael rose and relinquished stool and red-velvet cushion to the smiling, older woman, and he slipped over to the bar, where more men waited, wishing to purchase a piano for their own saloon, from Michael, the only piano dealer on planet. Michael came home, but not before taking a long, hot shower, not before donating his clothes to a laundry hamper somewhere other than home: he was not about to come home smelling like tobacco, like beer, like a saloon. He came through the door, wearing his usual tailored black suit and an emerald-green, puffy silk necktie with a square ruby stickpin the size of his little fingernail: he came in, left his boots in the boot tray, saw his Pa with Victoria sound asleep against him, and a huge white plume of Snowdrift-tail sticking out from under the draped quilt. His Pa was asleep, too. Michael crept sock foot into his Pa's study. He knew where his Pa kept what he needed. He eased the broad center drawer open, removed a sheet of note paper, turned it over so the blank backside was up. Michael Keller hooked two sharpened pencils out of the pencil tray. When he was done, he went on upstairs and went to bed, content knowing Lightning was pastured with her young, knowing the interference-fields would keep anyone from seeing a Fanghorn mare and two Fanghorn colts in amongst his Pa's horses. He left a pencil drawing of a little girl, her head laid over against her Daddy, he left the drawing of a Daddy, sound asleep, one arm protectively draped around over the quilt, hugging his child into him, and Michael drew the aft half of a mountain Mastiff, stuck out from under the hand sewn quilt.

OLD TORNADO Ambassador Marnie Keller was on her feet and moving fast. She ran over to where a server stood, shocked, white-faced, horrified. She'd been carrying a tray worth more than her entire net worth. A careless diner rose, bumped her elbow. Fine glassware was not yet within this world's technological ability: four delicate, thin, graceful, crystal wineglasses fell over, fell off, tumbled in horrified-to-the-beholder slow motion to the floor, shattered, wine spraying across floorboards and onto trouser cuffs and the waitress's long apron. Marnie saw the server's face go pale, saw her start to stagger back in shock. Marnie didn't try to catch the tray as it, too, flipped over and began its slow-motion tumble to the deck: instead, she caught the server, turned her, hugged her quickly, ranch-trained arms holding the girl's weight as her knees collapsed, equestrienne's legs planted to take the sudden weight. Marnie turned them both, leaned the girl back against the back wall, her pale eyes bright, intense. "It's all right," she whispered. "I have more!" The waitress looked at her -- at this famous, pale-eyed Ambassador, a public figure of influence and politics, a creature of near-legend -- Marnie pulled out a chair, sat the girl down. A manager came over, blustering, loud: Marnie stopped him with an upraised palm, as effectively as if she'd thrown up a glass wall. She took the waitress's hand, patted it between her gloved palms. "I saw what happened," she murmured. "It wasn't your fault." Marnie's wrist-unit buzzed, then gave a harsh, discordant tone that commanded her instant attention. She tapped the screen to silence it, frowned a little as she read the message, read it again. She looked back up at the trembling waitress. "Is there a basement banquet room?" she asked quietly, her voice urgent. The waitress nodded. "How do we get there?" The waitress swallowed, blinked. "There's a stairway, just down this hall." "How big is the room downstairs?" "Twice ... twice as big as ... this," she stammered, swallowing. "I need you to lead all these people down there, now," Marnie said, her voice urgent, then she stood, pulling the girl to her feet. Ambassador Marnie Keller, the dignified, feminine, beautiful, controlled, composed representative of thirteen star systems and its coordinating government, stood quickly, pulling the server to her feet: she placed two fingers to her lips, whistled. Marnie practiced that whistle from earliest childhood, ever since she saw (and heard!) her pale eyed Daddy whistle, loud and commanding, the sound carrying to the furthest corner of his longest pasture. Marnie took a deep breath, feeling the power focusing through the lens of her diaphragm: she'd sung opera, she'd sung with power and control, and she put that power and that control into what she announced into the shocked-silent atmosphere. "ALL HANDS, NOW HEAR THIS," she shouted. "THIS IS NOT A DRILL. WE HAVE A TORNADO INBOUND. IT'S HEADING STRAIGHT FOR US. I NEED ALL OF YOU TO FOLLOW THIS YOUNG LADY TO THE DOWNSTAIRS SAFE ROOM. NO QUESTIONS, ON YOUR FEET, FOLLOW HER AND DO IT NOW!" Marnie bent her wrist, spoke quickly, urgently, into her wrist-unit: she looked at the server with eyes that were no longer warm and understanding, eyes that held neither comfort nor sympathy. The server saw the hard eyes of a polished marble statue, as cold as the frozen heart of a mountain glacier, and for a moment she knew the meaning of fear as those eyes drove cold into her soul. "Get them to safety," Marnie said, her voice low, urgent, then she turned and strode purposefully for the front door, bent wrist to her lips. Gracie Daine lay supine on her flight couch, relaxed, mind-linked with her ship. She heard Marnie's call, she reached out to her flight-sisters. An Iris opened ahead of the silver Starfighter. A sleek, powerful, dangerously silent ship -- with the nose art of a screaming girl in cowboy boots and a flannel shirt, a Stetson and gunbelt, with a revolver out-thrust and flame from its muzzle, a warship with GUNFIGHTER in aggressive lettering underscoring the hand-painted insignia -- disappeared. Marnie shoved the doors open, squinted as wind drove sandy dust into her face: her personal shield activated automatically -- she still had to push against the wind -- she raised a hand reflexively, then lowered it, as if to use her hand to block debris from scouring her cheeks again. She looked up, then out, ran into the middle of the street and swore, quietly, inelegantly. Green sky, she thought, then she looked at clouds and at what was circling under the clouds, and she swore again, considerably louder. Her wrist-unit vibrated and she heard Gracie's amused thought: Coming in for a landing, dearie, get out of the street! Marnie leaned against the wind, staggered toward the front of the meeting hall: something long and silver descended, its needle nose into the wind like a weathercock: it hovered, unaffected by the gusting wind. Silvery, articulated legs and broad rectangular feet extended. Gunfighter touched down easily, with an almost inaudible whine of atmospheric turbos running down. The winds stopped as if turned off with a switch. Marnie, no longer leaning into the wind, walked up under what she suspected was an antenna, thrust forward from the pointed nose: this big silver interstellar bird opened its bottom jaw into the still air, and a figure in a black skinsuit stepped out, reached up, gave the spherical black helmet a twist, a pull: the helmet hovered in midair, then floated back to the bird's open jaw, found its berth, docked automatically. "How big do you want the force-dome?" Gracie asked. "Cover the town." Gracie smiled a little; she felt her sister pilots appear -- they were a mile apart, flanking the town and facing the tornado, their overlapping fields protecting the capital city. Marnie consulted her wrist-unit, looked at Gracie. "How directly will it impact us?" "You couldn't have steered it better with an engineer's T-square and a fiddlestring," Gracie said bluntly. "If you hadn't called us, this town would be toothpicks." "I had everyone get to the basement," Marnie said. "I'd better get in there before they murder that poor little waitress!" "Good thing you did," Gracie murmured, smiling a little as she looked up into the tornado as it came twisting angrily over them, frustrated by the force-dome that denied it the destruction it desired. Ambassador Marnie Keller clattered downstairs, intentionally making three times the noise necessary: she swept into the basement room, raised her palms for attention, then brought her wrist-unit in front of her, manipulated the screen. A floating image of their city materialized in the room, sudden, spectacular, glowing. "This," Marnie announced, "is where we are. This red arrow" -- a pointed indicator appeared, bobbing a few times, then disappeared -- "is specifically where we are. "Outside, three Starfighters have landed and have their force domes overlapped over the city to keep it from being torn apart." "What happened?" a voice called, and Marnie smiled. Something spinning, cloudlike and genuinely ugly came twisting into the room: silent, menacing, without substance, but real enough people pulled back quickly. "A tornado came straight for us. We have a relief force inbound to assess damage and treat casualties. This is a serious tornado, folks, I've seen what they can do and this one has already caused damage and once it's past us, it'll continue." Marnie looked around, saw a drab figure in a waitress's uniform in the far corner. Marnie thrust a bladed hand toward her, motioned her over. It took a little for the waitress to thread and weave her way through the crowded room. Marnie turned her, faced her toward the assembled: she stood beside this uncertain-looking young woman, one arm across her shoulders and gripping the woman's far shoulder, the other hand gripping her near shoulder. She turned to the waitress, whispered "I'm sorry, we've not been properly introduced. I'm Marnie." "I'm ... I'm Katherine," the waitress stammered through a suddenly-dry throat. "Folks," Marnie announced, her voice pitched to carry to the far rows, "this is Katherine and I've known her for quite a long time now" -- Marnie's quick smile added just the right humor to her good-natured fabrication -- "had we not had two Starfighters to throw a force-dome over the city, this building would be reduced to kindling and toothpicks, but you down here would be safe." She squeezed Katherine's shoulders. "Thanks to her, your safety is guaranteed. I never rely on only one thing, whenever possible I have a backup. I had no idea if the Starfighters would be close enough to respond, and they were. If they had not been, Katherine here would have kept all of you alive." It became a hallmark of this particular meeting-house that it served its beverages in tall, delicate, fragile wineglasses, gifts from a particular pale-eyed Ambassador: once the tornado was past, after dignitaries and politicians and men of commerce and influence returned upstairs, following the furiously-blushing waitress who was suddenly the object of approval and unaccustomed attention, they found the broken glass and spilled wine, gone as if they'd never been -- the tray was spotlessly clean and laid on a staging-table -- and at each table, at every occupied position, a chilled glass of a truly exquisite vintage stood: delicate, long-stemmed crystal, just starting to sweat with condensation, and in the meeting-house's wine cellars, two crates were found that no one remembered ordering or receiving. The first crate contained wax-sealed, gracefully-tapered, green-glass bottles with labels bearing the image of a red-headed woman in a Stetson and skirt, cowboy boots and gunbelt, extending a flame-muzzled revolver, with the words GUNFIGHTER RED beneath: its vintage was rose-colored and flavorful, pleasant to the nose and palate. The other crate contained square-cornered, dirty-grey bottles of heavier glass, with a black-glass stopper: the contents were potent, dark, and the label bore the image of a conical cloud scouring buildings from the earth, and beneath this, in aggressive black letters against a yellow band, OLD TORNADO.