“Fleas! Away with you!” Paulette held her nose. “How did it go?”

“I’ll tell you in a few minutes. Over a coffee, once I’ve made it to the bathroom—oh shit.” Miriam stared up the staircase at Brilliana’s vanishing feet. “Well at least that’s sorted.” She dropped her pack onto the carpet; it landed with a dull thump. “’Scuse me, but I am going to strip. It’s an emergency.”

“Wait right there,” said Paulie, hurrying upstairs.

By the time she returned, bearing a T-shirt and a pair of sweats from the luggage, Miriam had her boots off and was down to outer garments. “Damn, central heating,” she said wonderingly. “There’s nothing to make you appreciate it like three days in a Massachusetts winter without it. Well, two and a half.”

“Did you got where you wanted to go?” Paulie asked, pausing.

“Yeah.” Miriam cracked a wide, tired grin.

“Give me five, baby!”

High fives were all very well, but when Miriam winced Paulette got the message. “Use the living room,” she said. “Get the hell out of those rags and then go up to my bedroom, okay? You can use the bedroom shower.”

“You’re a babe, babe.” Miriam nodded. She pulled a face. “Oh shit. I think I’m coming on.”

“That’s no fun. Look, go. I’ll sort the mess out later, ’kay?”

An hour later Miriam—infinitely warmer and cleaner—sat curled at one end of Paulette’s living room sofa with a mug of strong tea. Brill, wrapped in a borrowed bathrobe, sat at the other end. “So tell me, how was your walk in the woods?” Paulette asked Brill. “Meet any bears?”

“Bears?” Brill looked puzzled. “No, and a good thing—” she caught Miriam’s eye. “Oh. No, it was uneventful.”

“Well then.” Paulie focused on Miriam. “You had more luck, huh? Not just a walk in the woods?”

“Well, apart from Brill half freezing to death while I was trying not to get arrested, it was fine.”

“Getting. Arrested.” Paulette picked up the teapot and poured herself a mug. “You’re not getting away with that, Beckstein. Didn’t they accept your press pass or something?”

“It’s Boston, but not as we know it,” Miriam explained. “Uh, about two miles southeast of here I found myself on the edge of town. They speak English and they drive automobiles, but that’s about as far as the similarities go.” She pulled out her dictaphone and turned the volume up: “Zeppelin overhead, with a British flag on it! Uh, four propellers, sounds like diesel engines. There goes another steam car. They seem to make them big deliberately, I don’t think I’ve seen anything smaller than a fifty-eight Caddy yet.”

Paulette closed her mouth with a visible effort. “Did you take photographs?” she asked.

“Uh-huh.” Miriam grinned and held up her wrist. “You’ll have them just as soon as I get my Casio secret agent watch plugged into the computer. I knew those Inspector Gadget toys would come in handy sooner or later.”

“Toys.” Paulette rolled her eyes.

“Well, now we’ve got a whole new world to not understand,” said Miriam. “Any constructive suggestions?”

“Yep.” Paulette put her mug down. “Before you go over again, girl, we work out what you’re going to do. You need a lawyer or business manager over there, right? And you need money, and somewhere to live, and we need to find a place on the far side that’s away from human habitation in Brill’s world and we can rent on our own side. Right? And we need to understand what you’re messing with before you get yourself arrested. So spill it!”

Miriam reached into her bag and pulled out two books then dumped them on the table with a bump. “History lesson time. Watch out for the one with the brown paper cover,” she warned. “It bites.”

Paulette opened mat one first, looked at the flyleaf, and sucked in her breath. “Communist?” she asked.

“Nope, it’s much weirder than that.” Miriam picked up the other book. “I’ll start with this one, you start with that one, then we’ll swap.”

Paulette glanced at the window. “It’s nearly eleven, for Pete’s sake! You want I should pull an overnighter?”

“No, that won’t be necessary.” Miriam put her book down and looked at her. “I’ve been meaning to raise this for a while. I’ve been staying here, and I didn’t mean to. I really appreciate you putting Brill up, but two guests is two too many and—”

“Shut up,” Paulette said fiercely. “You’re going to stay here till you’ve told me what you’ve seen and gotten your act together to move out properly! And hit the deadline,” she muttered under her breath.

“Deadline?” Miriam raised an eyebrow.

“The Clan summit,” Brill explained tonelessly. She yawned. “I told Paulie about it.”

“You can’t let them do it!” Paulette insisted.

“Do what?” Miriam blinked.

“Move to declare you incompetent and make you a permanent ward of whoever the Clan deems appropriate,” Brill explained. She looked puzzled. “Didn’t you know? That’s what Olga said Baron Oliver was muttering about.”

Iris raised the cup of coffee to her lips with both hands. She looked a little shaky today, but Miriam knew better than to make a fuss. “So what did you do next?” she asked.

“I went to bed.” Miriam leaned back, then glanced around. The level of background noise in the museum food court was high and all their neighbors seemed to be otherwise preoccupied. “What else could I do? Beltaigne is nearly five months away, and I’m not going to let the bastards stampede me.”

“But the other place, this new one—” Iris sounded distracted—”doesn’t it take you a whole day to go each way, even if you have somewhere to stay at the other end?”

“There’s no point going off half-cocked, Ma.” Miriam idly opened a tube of sugar crystals and stirred them into her latte. “Look, if Baron Hjorth wants to declare me incompetent, he’s going to have to come up with some evidence. He might shove it through if I’m not there to defend myself, but I figure the strongest defense I can get is proof that there’s a conspiracy out there—a conspiracy that murdered my birth-mother and is trying to murder me, too, not just the petty shit he and my—grandmother—are shoveling at me. A second-strongest defense is evidence that I may be erratic, but I’ve come up with something valuable. Now, the assassin’s locket takes me to this other world—call it world three—and I’ve got to wonder. Does this mean they’re not part of the Clan or families? They’re working on the other side and in world three, while the Clan works on the other side and here, call here world two and Niejwein is part of world one. I’m, I guess, the first member of the Clan to actually become aware of world three and be able to get over there. That means that I can see about finding whoever’s sending the killers—see defense one, above—or see about opening up a whole new trade opportunity—see defense two, above. I’m going to tie the whole story up with a bow and hand it to them. And mess up Baron Hjorth’s game into the bargain.” She rolled up the empty sugar tube into a tight little wad and threw it at the back of the booth.

“That sounds like my daughter,” Iris said thoughtfully. She grinned. “Don’t let the bastards realize you’ve got the drop on them until it’s too late for them to dodge.” She put the smile aside. “Morris would be proud of you.”

“Um.” Miriam nodded, unable to trust her tongue. “How have you been? How did you get away from them tonight?”

“Well, you know, I haven’t had much trouble with being under surveillance lately.” Iris sipped her coffee. “Funny how they don’t seem to be able to tell one old woman in a motorized blue wheelchair from another, isn’t it?”

“Ma, you shouldn’t have!”

“What, give some of my friends an opportunity for a little adventure?” Iris snorted and pushed her bifocals up her nose. Slyly: “Just because my daughter thinks she can go haring off to other worlds, running away from her problems—”

“It’s the source of my goddamn problems, not the solution,” Miriam interrupted.