‘Not so!'

‘You said "Month after month -" Dagmar, I saw you last two weeks ago. Less than three. How long have you been here?'

‘Me? Uh... slightly over two years. Yours was a tough case - or so they tell me.'

After being in the Time Corps twenty years of my personal time, seven years of Boondock time, I should not have been surprised. Time paradox is no news to me; I keep a careful journal to keep me sorted out, Maureen's personal time versus times and time lines and dates for each of the places I scout. But this time I was the subject of the operation (Operation Triple-M = Mama Maureen is Missing). I had been gone (my personal time) five and a half weeks... but it had taken over two years to find me and rescue me.

Laz called Hilda over to straighten me out. She snuggled in between Lorelei Lee and me on my other side; the couch was getting crowded. But Hilda does not take up much space. She said, ‘Mama Maureen, you told Tamara that you were just going away for a day's holiday. She knew you were fibbing, of course, but she never contradicts any of our little white lies. She thought you were just shuttling to Secundus for some private fun and maybe some shopping.'

‘Hilda Mae, I did intend to be back here the next day, no matter how long I spent in research. I planned to spend a few weeks in the British Museum in 1950, time line two, soaking up as much detail as possible about the Battle of Britain, 1940-41. I had a fresh recorder implant for that purpose. I didn't dare go to England during that war without careful preparation; England was a battle zone - easy to be shot as a spy. I would have done the research and been back the next day, in time for dinner... if that time-twister bus had not broken down.'

‘It didn't break down.'

‘Huh? I mean, excuse me?'

‘It was sabotage, Mo. The Revisionists. The same pascoodnyoks who came so close to killing Richard and Gwen Hazel and Pixel on time line three. We don't know why they wanted to stop you, or why they chose that method; neither side was taking prisoners, and we killed too many too fast. By "we" I don't mean me; I'm the drawing room type as everybody knows. I mean the old pros, Richard and Gwen and Gretchen and a strike force from time line five commanded by Lensman Ted Smith. But the Circle had put me in charge of Operation Triple-M, and I did dig out information that led us to the Revisionists. I got most of it from one of my own employees, the pilot of that bus. I made a bad mistake, Maureen, in hiring that evil maggot. My poor judgement almost cost your life. I'm sorry.'

‘Sorry about what? Hilda Mae, my precious, if you hadn't rescued me in Albuquerque, years ago, I would be dead, dead, dead! Don't ever forget it, because I never forget it.'

‘Spare me your gratitude, Mau; I had fun. Both times. I borrowed some snakes from Patty Paiwonski and hung this oaf upside down over a snake pit while I questioned him. That sharpened his memory and got us the correct time line, place, and date - Kansas City in Gregorian 2184 starting at 26 June on a previously unexplored variant of time tine two, one in which the Second American Revolution never took place. It is now designated time line eleven, and is a nasty enough place that the Circle put it in the Someday File for cleaning or cauterising when we get around to it.'

Hilda leaned down and twiddled her fingers at Pixel, spoke to him in cat language; he came at once and settled in her lap, purring loudly. ‘We put agents into that version of Kansas City but they lost you the same day you arrived. Or that night. They traced you from Grand Hotel Augustus to a private home, from there to the Mayor's palace, and then outdoors into the carnival. And I lost you. But we had established that Pixel was with you... even though he was here every day, too. Or almost -‘

‘How does he do that?'

‘How does Gay Deceiver have two portside bathrooms without being lopsided? Maureen, if you insist on believing in World-as-Logic you will never understand World-as-Myth. Pixel knows nothing about Einsteinian space-time, or the speed of light as a limit, or the Big Bang, or any of those fancies dreamed up by theorists, so they don't exist for him. Pixel knew where you were, inside the little world that does exist for him, but he doesn't speak much English. In Boondock, that is. So we took him where he can speak English -‘

‘Huh?'

‘Oz, of course. Pixel doesn't know what a cathedral is but he was able to describe that one fairly well once we were able to get his mind off all those wonderful new places to investigate. The Cowardly Lion helped us question him, and for the first time in his life Pixel was impressed - I think he wants to grow up to be a lion. So we hurried back and sent a task force to get you out of the Supreme Bishop's private jail. And you weren't there.'

Dagmar picked it up. ‘But I was, and Pixel led them straight to me - looking for you. I was in the cell you had been in - the proctors came for me as soon as you escaped.'

‘Yes,' agreed Hilda. ‘Dagmar had befriended you and that was not a safe thing to do, especially after the Supreme Bishop died.'

‘Dagmar! I'm sorry!'

‘About what? "All's well that ends well", to coin a phrase. Look at me now, ducks; I like it here. So back they went to Oz, taking me along this time, and after I listened to Pixel, I was able to tell Hilda that you were being held in Grand Hotel Augustus -‘

‘Hey! That's where I started!'

‘And that's where you wound up, too, in a suite that isn't in the hotel directory and can be reached from inside only by a private elevator from the sub-basement. So we came in by the scenic route, and caught the Committee with their pants down:

Lazarus had joined us, and now sat on the grass at my knees, without interrupting - and I wondered how long his angelic behaviour would last. Now he said, ‘Mama, you do know how true your words are. You remember when we moved? I was in high school.'

‘Yes, certainly. To our old farmhouse, out south.'

‘Yes. Then after World War Two you sold it, and it was torn down?

(How well I remembered!) ‘Tom down to build the Harriman Hilton. Yes.'

‘Well, Grand Hotel Augustus is the Harriman Hilton. Oh, after more than two centuries not much is the same structure, but the continuity is there. We researched it, and that's how we located this VIP suite that is not known to the public.' He rubbed his cheek against my knee. ‘That's all, I guess. Hilda?'

‘I think so.'

‘What a moment!' I protested .'What became of that baby? And the man with the bloody stump? The one with his arm chopped off in that accident.'

‘But, Maureen,' Hilda said gently, ‘I tell you three times: it was not an accident. That "baby" was just a prop, a lifelike animation, to keep your hands busy and your attention distracted. The "wounded" man was a piece of grisly misdirection while they injected you - an old amputee with make-up; he wasn't freshly maimed. When I had my driver hanging over the snakes, he became downright loquacious and told me many details, mostly nasty.'

‘I'd like to speak to that driver!'

‘I'm afraid you can't. I don't encourage employees to sell me out, Maureen. You are a gentle soul. I'm not.'

‘The surgical teams will be' - we were gathered in a lecture room in Ira Johnson Hall, BIT, and Jubal had started his briefing - ‘matched as nearly as possible in professional background. Tentatively they are: Dr Maureen with Lapis Lazuli as her scrub nurse; Dr Galahad with Lorelei Lee; Dr Ishtar with Tamara; Dr Harshaw - that's me - with Gillian; Dr Lafe Hubert a.k.a. Lazarus, with Hilda; and Dr Ira Johnson with Dagmar Dobbs.

Dagmar, your match with Johnson Prime is not too close; you are over-qualified by a century and a half, plus whatever you have learned here. But it's the best we can manage Dr Johnson will not know that you are assigned to him. However, we know from library research and from quite a lot of oral history research - interviews conducted by field agents in Coventry and elsewhere in the years 1947-50, recording the experiences of persons who served in civil defence first-aid teams in that war - we know that team-up between surgeon and nurse could be last minute, scratch, either one of them not fully qualified. Battle conditions, Dagmar. If you get there first when the sirens sound - and you will - Dr Johnson will simply accept you.'