"Then maybe you should put in for vacation. I know for a fact that you haven't taken one since you came to the District."

"That's an idea too. And when was the last time you took off, Norm?"

Cash shrugged. "A long time ago. A week when my mother died." Michael and John had been eight, Matthew newly born. Cash started getting antsy if he were off more than a weekend. "Don't go copying me, John. There're better models."

He had a sudden, frightening intuition, and hoped he was wrong.

John was an only child. His father was a minister. His mother had divorced the man when John was nine. That had been a hard period for both John and Michael, neither of whom had understood. Since, till his marriage, John had lived with his mother, who had never remarried.

Within a year of the divorce, Harald had begun calling Cash "Dad." At the time, Annie and Norm had thought it both cute and pathetic. The behavior had faded when Cash had refused to reinforce it with a positive response.

Could that still be in John's mind, down deep where he didn't recognize it?

Harald always had been nearly as close as Michael, but Christ, Cash thought, this was a responsibility he didn't want. I never did that good by Michael or Matthew. How dared John put that load on him?

It was terrifying.

But flattering.

"You're not that bad, Norm."

"Crap."

"Except maybe you're too private. Know what I wish there was? A machine where you could go right inside somebody's head and figure out what they really think and feel."

"I'll tell you what I really think about that. It sucks, that's what. If some guy ever invents one, and you don't blow his brains out before he can tell anybody, bend over and kiss your ass good-bye. The Gestapo would be lining us up to find out if we're reliable or not."

"Yeah. Probably."

"You better believe."

"I never thought about it. I just thought, like, you could get to know people who mean something to you, because everybody hides from everybody, a little bit. Like, I could understand why Carrie gets the way she does. But, yeah, we could use it too. Round up all the bad guys and ship them out before they hurt any body."

"We're Gestapo enough, John. And I don't think we could resist the temptations. Get thee behind me." How did we get on to this? he wondered.

"Probably be no more reliable than a lie detector, anyway."

"Yeah. Even if you could get Carrie to be honest right now, I bet you couldn't get her to explain herself. She probably doesn't know either. Hormones."

"Bull. She's just trying to get to me."

"Bull to you too. Bet the way you're feeling right now has to do with hormones too."

"Yeah? Maybe."

"I'll tell you what I think. You and Carrie should probably get away from each other for a couple weeks. I mean, every time I see you together and one of you says black, the other one hits the roof screaming white. I don't say you're planning it, but both of you are picking fights. Whatever you do, John, don't end up like Hank."

"Hey, come on. It ain't me…"

"Crap. You think you try. You say you do. So does Carrie. But you don't, not really."

"Hey, this's getting a little heavy…"

"You're both lying to yourselves. What you're really doing is setting each other up to take the blame. Like this guy on the radio was saying the other day, you're not fighting fair. That's why I say get away from each other for a while. Let the scabs heal, think about the real issues. Maybe write them down and trade lists without talking about them."

"You know how jealous she is…"

"Right." Cash now wanted to end the discussion, so made no comment at all about Teri. He had said too much already. He was no Dear Abby. Lifting the lids on the trash cans of others' lives made him too damned uncomfortable. His concern for John had taken him past discomfort to outright embarrassment this time. "What about the case?"

"Why don't we, for Christ's sake, just shitcan the damned thing?"

"Not a viable option. And you know it."

"You threw Bible stuff at me. How about this? 'Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.' That used to be one of my dad's favorites, whenever a spanking was coming on."

"Okay. I already know you don't like it. Some of them I don't like either. But we don't get refusal rights. We have to go by the rules. You have to go after this one just the same as one you did like. I mean, you came up with some good angles already. We get a few more, we might start getting a picture, something that'll give us a handle on it."

"Yeah. We could get lucky." Harald responded with all the enthusiasm of a man asked to fly off a cliff by flapping his arms. "But what you want to bet we don't?"

XVI. On the X Axis;

1866-1914

The Austrian treasure lay exactly where Fial had predicted it to be. He took a small silver coin from the hoard.

"Fian, I'll flip you for who goes back to that last town."

"What for?" Fiala asked.

"We need pens, ink, and paper. To list the coins. Dates, values, mint marks, wear, like that. It'll be years before we can replace any of them. Memory won't do. And it'll have to be right, else it might change something."

"What about economic changes? Won't putting that money in circulation make changes? You didn't think about that, did you?"

Neither man had. Fian responded, "We have to take the chance. We need the capital. I can't see how a few thousand florins would effect history much anyway."

Fiala pursed her lips. They were compromising their resolve already. They would be able to rationalize their deviations any time convenience demanded it.

It was pretty much what she had expected. Anyone who attained any standing in the State machinery learned the trick early.

Fian lost the toss.

"Well, take a fistful," Fiala said. "I'm starved. And I could use some decent clothes. This thing must've been made out of a potato sack."

"She has a point, Fial. We'll end up in prison if we go flashing a fortune looking like this." He took a handful of small silver, studied the coins.

"Don't spend it all in one place. The more you scatter it, the less attention it'll draw."