‘In marrying all of you, am I not marrying Lazarus, too?'

Not necessarily. Both Hamadryad and Ira were members of our founding family group. But it took several years before Ira admitted that there was no reason for him not to marry his own daughter - Hamadryad just smiled and outwaited him. Then we held a special wedding ceremony just for them and what a luau that was! Honest, Mama Maureen, our arrangements are flexible; the only invariant is that everybody guarantees the future of any babies you pretty little broads give us. We don't even ask where you got them... since some of you tend to be vague about such things.'

Tamara interrupted to tell me that Ishtar watches such matters. (Galahad tends to joke. Tamara doesn't know how to joke. But she loves everybody.) So later that day I said my vows with all of them, standing in the middle of their beautiful atrium garden (our garden!) - crying and smiling and all of them touching me and Ira sniffling and Tamara smiling while tears ran down her face, and we all said ‘I do!' together and they all kissed me, and I knew they were mine and I was theirs, forever and ever, amen.

I got pregnant at once because Ishtar had timed it so that our wedding and my ovulation matched - Ira and Ishtar had planned the whole thing. (When I had that baby girl, after the usual cow-or-countess gestation period, I asked Ishtar about the baby's paternity. She said, ‘Mama Maureen, that one is from all your husbands; you don't need to know. After you've had four or five more, if you are still curious, I'll sort them out for you.' I never asked again.)

So I was pregnant when Theodore returned, which suited me just fine... as I was sure from past experience that he would greet me more heartily and with less restraint if he knew that it was certain that copulation with me would be solely for love - and sweet pleasure - and sheer, sweaty fun. Not for progeny.

And so it was. But at a party that started out with Theodore fainting dead away. Hilda Mae, the head of the task force that rescued me, had rigged a surprise party for Theodore, in which she had presented me to him, dressed in a costume of high symbology to him - heeled slippers, long sheer hose, green garters - at a time when he thought that I was still in Albuquerque mo millennia earlier and still in need of rescue.

Hilda did not intend to shock Theodore so sharply that he fainted - she loves him, and later she married Theodore and all of us, along with her husband and family - Hilda does not have a mean bone in her little elfin body. She caught Theodore as he fainted, or tried to. He wasn't hurt and the party developed into one of the best since Rome burned. Hilda Mae has many other talents, in and out of bed, but she is the best party arranger in the world.

A couple of years later Hilda was Director-General of the biggest party ever held anywhere, bigger than the Field of the Cloth of Gold: the First Centennial Convention of the Interuniversal Society for Eschatological Pantheistic Multiple-Ego Solipsism, with guests from dozens of universes. It was a wonderful party and the few people killed in the games went straight to Valhalla - I saw them go. From that party our family gained several more husbands and wives - eventually, not all in one day - especially Hazel Stone a.k.a. Gwen Novak who is as dear to me as Tamara, and Dr Jubal Harshaw, the one of my husbands to whom I turn when I truly need advice.

It was to Jubal that I turned many years later when I found that despite all the wonders of Boondock and Tertius, all the loving happiness of being a cherished member of the Long Family, despite the satisfaction of studying the truly advanced therapy of Tertius and Secundus, and at last being apprenticed to the best profession of all - rejuvenator - something was missing.

I had never stopped thinking about my father, missing him always, with an ache in my heart.

Consider these facts;

1) Lib had been raised from the dead, a frozen corpse, and reincarnated as a woman.

2) I had been rescued from certain death, across the centuries. (When an eighteen-wheeler runs over a person my size, they pick up the remains with blotting paper.)

3) Colonel Richard Campbell had twice been rescued from certain death and had had history changed simply to calm his soul, because his services were needed to save the computer that led the Lunar revolution on time line three.

4) Theodore himself had been missing in action, chopped half in two by machine-gun fine... yet he had been rescued and restored without even a scar.

S) My father was ‘missing in action', too. The AFS didn't even get round to reporting him as missing until long after the fact and there were no details.

6) In the thought experiment called ‘Schrõdinger's Cat' the scientists(?), or philosophers, or metaphysicians, who devised it, maintain that the cat is neither dead nor alive but simply a fog of probabilities, until somebody opens the box.

I don't believe it. I don't think Pixel would believe it.

But - Is my father alive? or dead? away back there in the twentieth century?

So I spoke to Jubal about it.

He said, ‘I can't tell you, Mama Maureen. How badly do you want your father to be alive?'

‘More than anything in the world!'

‘Enough to risk everything on it? Your life? Still worse, the chance of disappointment? Of knowing that all hope is gone?'

I sighed deeply. ‘Yes. All of that'

‘Then join the Time Corps and learn how such things are done. In a few years - ten to twenty years, I would guess you will be able to form an intelligent opinion.'

‘Ten to twenty years!'

It could take longer. But the great beauty about time manipulations is that there is always plenty of time, never any hurry.'

When I told Ishtar that I wanted to take an indefinite leave of absence, she did not ask me why. She simply said, ‘Mama, I have known for some time that you were not happy in this work; I have been waiting for you to discover it.'

She kissed me. ‘Perhaps next century you will find a true vocation for this work. There is no hurry. Meanwhile, be happy.'

So for about twenty years of my personal time tine and almost seven years of Boondock time I went where I was told to go and reported on what I was told to investigate. Never as a fighter. Not like Gretchen whose first baby is descended both from me (Colonel Ames is my grandson through Lazarus) and from my co-wife Hazel/Gwen (Gretchen is Hazel's great-granddaughter) - Major Gretchen is a big, strong, strapping Valkyrie, reputed to be sudden death with or without weapons.

Fighting is not for Maureen. But de Time Corps needs all sorts. My talent for languages and my love of history makes me suitable to be sent to ‘scout the Land of Canaan' - or Nippon in the 1930s - or whatever country or planet needs scouting. My only other talent is sometimes useful, too.

So with twenty years of practice and some preliminary research in history of time line two, second phase of the Permanent War, I signed off for a weekend and bought a ticket on a Burroughs-Carter time-space bus, one with a scheduled stop in New Liverpool, 1950, intending to scout the history of the 1939-1945 War a little closer up. Hilda had developed a thriving black-market trade through the universes; one of her companies supplied scheduled services to the explored time lines and planets for a bracket of dates - exact date of choice available if you pay for it.

The bus driver had just announced ‘New Liverpool Earth Prime 1950 time line two next stop! Don't leave any personal possessions aboard' - when there was a loud noise, the bus lurched, a trip attendant said, ‘Emergency exit - this way, please' - and somebody handed me a baby, there was much smoke, and I saw a man with a bloody stump where his hand should have been.