Andrew Huff and
The Pool of Lost Souls

A Bildungsroman In Twenty Two Acts

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22

By
Alex Golub

© 2004. Some Rights Reserved

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

I

"I understand that as professional assassins, you probably don't have a particularly well developed ironic sensibility," I said, edging nervously away from them and towards the rim of the caldera, "but surely," I said gesturing towards the roiling sea of lava that splurped and hissed directly behind me, "surely you can see that this entire thing is just a little bit, how can I put it, de trop?"

"We're not assassins," spat one of the business-suited, sun-glassed, AK-47'd men advancing slowly towards me, "we're executive outcome professionals. We provide advanced morbidity solutions... enterprise wide."

"Because I mean really," I said, laughing nervously and trying to sound brave, "being forced to the edge of a lava-filled volcano in the middle of the Taklamakan desert as a dozen assassins advance menacingly towards me... I mean, can you really go through with something like this?"

The men in front of me took a moment and glanced questioningly at each other.

"Yep." said one.

I sighed deeply and made my light saber live.

"Well, don't say I didn't warn you."

I took a deep breath and charged towards the group of men. It was a little tricky catching the spray of their ammunition with my saber's blade, since they had automatic weapons and the bullets came so fast, but I managed to either avoid or deflect the rest. I cut down the first two and knocked down one more. Another tried to get behind me, but I pinned one of his feet (not easy to do when they're behind you, I'll have you know), and fell into him, turning a backwards somersault off of his body and coming upright with more than enough time to make sure he wouldn't do anything funny for quite some time.

And ok, I'll admit it: I pushed a couple of them into the volcano. I mean, I had warned them hadn't I?

But there were a lot of them - too many. One of them got a hold of my arm as I pulled back for a swing and, in the course of getting him off me, he managed to pry my light saber out of my hand. It fell into the warm sand and went dead. Another got hold of one of my legs. I had just managed to free myself from them when a third charged me and tackled me right at the hips. I staggered backwards and for one precarious second felt my body balanced on tiptoes, the arc of my inertia nearly balanced, trying to still my fall. For a split second I hung there, and then I fell over the edge of the precipice.

I hands caught the ledge and I scrabbled madly at the edge of the cliff, trying to keep hold of the edge as the sand slipped scratchily through my fingers. I felt my feet blistering with the heat of flames before me, and vaguely realized that my clothes were smoldering. My grip slipped and I felt my body shudder as I dropped a foot closer to oblivion. The world spun chaotically. I felt my fingers bleeding.

"Rex!" I screamed, helpless.

As I faded away into unconsciousness, I heard the sounds of combat as if from a distance - the sputter of rifle fire and the thrum of a light saber moving through the air. And the last thing I remembered was his face and his hand on my wrist, pulling me up and out of the abyss to safety.

* * *

"Anne, How many times do I have to tell you: no taking on large groups of professionally trained assassins when I'm not around," said Rex Masterson, sipping on his coffee.

"They weren't assassins," I sulked, "they were executive outcome professionals."

He stared murderously at me.

"I'm sorry." I said.

"Goddamn right you are. Jesus fucking christ - I told you to wait for me!"

"I saw them driving away with the codex. I was afraid they were going to get away." I said defensively.

"If they get away, they get away. We can always find them again. You get dead and how am I going to explain it?"

I had no response to that. We sat in silence for a second.

"How are your burns?" he asked.

"Better. I can walk now."

Rex looked up from his breakfast and looked at me, locking his eyes on mine.

"That guy you took from behind - you say you pinned his foot?"

"Yes."

"With the force?"

"Yes."

"From behind?"

"Yes."

"Motherfucker." said Rex quietly, before laying into his omelet again. Between mouthfuls he mumbled, "I've never heard of anyone do that before."

I blushed with pride.

"Well don't get cocky," he shot back grumpily, pouring more coffee, "if you were really so great you would have lifted yourself right out of that volcano."

I wilted again. He relented.

"Here, have some omelet," he said, scrapping some off of his plate and onto mine.

"I'm full." I said.

"What are you with the full?" he chastised.

"We Polynesians put on weight easily..." I protested.

"Weight? Look at you - you're bone thin. When was the last time you had a square meal? You don't eat enough. Here."

"But - "

"I don't want it. I'm fine. God forbid you should get a full meal every now and again. Here, have some more toast."

I sighed inwardly and began picking at the food he had put on my plate. Sometimes the best way to deal with Rex is to humor him.

* * *

It had been almost a week since we had come out of the Taklamakan, Rex on foot leading the camel he had strapped me to. We snuck into Kashgar by night and contacted the Uighur resistance there, who put us up in a small apartment above one of their member's shops. I hadn't been badly burned - the moko on my legs were intact, thank god - but I couldn't walk and the heat of the burns wouldn't go away. I spent my time meditating the pain away and watching the rusty ceiling fan turn in loose revolutions over my bed, churning the dry, hot air about in futile, uneasy circles. The windows were tightly covered to hide our presence and keep the room cool. Occasionally a strong breeze would lift them slightly, sending a shaft of bright mountain light slicing through the bowl of dates on the table by my bed.

By that morning I was feeling well enough to come to the table for breakfast.

"What's the plan?" I asked.

"Get that book identified, for starters. And then depending on what we find out, uh... I don't know. Something."

Typical.

"So then there isn't really a plan at all, is there?"

"Sure there is! Identify the codex, and then go from there. We'll be guided by like, you know, the force and shit."

As much as I respected Rex Masterson, I never ceased to be boggled by his flippant, gung-ho attitude. The only thing more irksome than his complete inability to plan more than three days ahead was how inevitably he ended up finding the exact right thing to do anyway. He lead a charmed life that way.

"It totally bugs you that we don't have a plan, doesn't it?" he said, reading my mind.

"Hey! Get out of there!"

"Your thoughts betray you, young Kawharu." he intoned with mock seriousness.

"Stop it!" I said, throwing a piece of toast at him. He stopped it in midair and let it hover between us over the table.

"Search your feelings - you know it to be true!" he grinned, egging me on.

"Stop it! Stop it!" I said, laughing now. I tore my toast into smaller pieces and tried to pelt him with them, but each one ended up hovering in the air until there were about six of them in front of us and I had run out of toast.

"Take them." he said, suddenly serious.

I felt his mind unwrap from around them. For one brief moment they started to sag and I caught them and held them there, balancing each of them in my mind, feeling something between them and I that would only hold them up if I let it. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate.

"How does it feel?" he asked quietly, so as not to break my concentration.

"It's... hard. To. Keep. Them. All..."

"Last week you were excited," he said carefully, "When people are trying to hurt you you get a rush - your feelings and instincts have an immediacy that's powerful. You have a natural aptitude for this sort of thing - stronger than I've ever seen in anybody. But you've got to learn to use it. You'll never get better if you rely on that rush, do you understand? Balancing small objects - like these bits of toast here - should be easier for you than what you did last week. But it's not, because what you did last week was instinctual - even if it was harder- and this relies on conscious control. If you work hard and learn to use what you uncovered last week, you should be able to hold dozens of these in the air. Do you understand?"

I nodded.

"Good. Now concentrate tell me: what is the name of the person who baked this bread?"

Before I had consciously registered a question I felt a short of stab at my consciousness that was simultaneously a small blue light and a clear tone. My eyes opened in surprise and my head jerked up even as the toast fell onto the table.

"Ali." I said, shocked at my certainty.

Rex nodded, smiling gently, "very very good, Anne Kawharu."

* * *

Since I had begun studying with Rex Masterson there were two things about him that never ceased to amaze me. The first was his ability to turn practically any situation into a learning experience. During my initial training in Rotorua I had gotten used to the idea that becoming a Jedi meant endless rote exercise and routine. Not so with Rex. He could take the most lighthearted moment and suddenly shift it into intensity, forcing me to attention when I least expected it. I found it off-putting at first, but I was soon amazed at how quickly I felt myself growing since I had begun studying with him.

The second thing was the world in which he lived and moved. You would think that being given your first light saber when you're five would inure you to the unusual and exotic. But it didn't. Sometimes I couldn't tell when he was joking with me and when he was serious.

"What do you mean, 'immortal'?" I asked incredulously.

"Well I suppose I mean something like 'he won't ever die of old age'."

We were walking through Kashgar to meet our contact, the mysterious man who was supposed to be able to identify the codex we had taken such trouble to acquire and who, Rex had just nonchalantly informed me, was immortal.

"I can't believe it!"

"Well you can imagine how he feels."

"Is he one of those...?" I asked, make a slitting motion with my thumb over my throat.

"Those guys?" Rex's face wrinkled in disgust, "Fuck them. They're the most narcissistic, incestuous, cliquish group I've ever seen. They're given the gift of immortality and they all waste it running around the planet trying to cut each other's heads off. It's like fucking Live Journal with katanas. 'There can be only one' my ass."

"Then how did he..."

"I'm a little unclear myself, actually. Something about... uh, Anne, is your spider sense tingling?"

I concentrated.

"No. Why?"

"No reason", he said, walking a bit more quickly, "nothing."

* * *

The store where we were supposed to meet our mysterious immortal codex-identifier was a ridiculously cramped antique store. From the outside, it looked like a small whitewashed house. On the inside, it was a riotous array of beaten copper, carved wood, rugs, and samovars. The subdued bright summer day was filtered in through lace curtains, casting a mottled spray of light on old clocks, disused sabers, and teas sets. Rex walked up to the owner, boisterously greeting him 'a salaam aleikum' and embracing him, first on one side and then the other. They talked in Uighur for a bit and the man disappeared into the back room.

"I thought you said our man was a book dealer. This man sells antiques"

"What?" said Rex, "weren't you listening?"

I blushed.

"What? What is it?" Rex demanded.

"I lost my babel fish." I mumbled sheepishly.

"You what?" Rex asked, his voice rising in exasperation.

"I, uh... I lost my babel fish."

Rex smacked his forehead and moaned.

"Awww christ. Where are we going to get you another one? The nearest Jedi Supply Store is in Calcutta!"

"It must have come out when I fell into the volcano," I pleaded, trying and failing to not sound like a bratty little girl, "it's not my fault, I swear!"

"Well I'm certainly not going to give you mine," said Rex, "and I'm not buying you another one. That babel fish was your responsibility, and if you want another one you're going to have to pay for it out of your allowance."

"Oh Rex, please... please please please please please! I was going to use that money to buy that cool rattlesnake skin light saber holder we saw in Amarillo!"

"That is my absolute last word on the subject - "

"But Rex..." I whined.

"- and if you keep on arguing with me, young lady, I'll ground you for a week. I'll go track down the secret of this ancient codex while you cool your jets at home doing light saber drills and watching Phantom Menace on the TV."

I shut up. Rex can be so mean sometimes.

The man peeked his head out through the door and said something. Rex nodded.

"Ok, he says we can see the man. Oh and Anne, there's one thing I forgot to tell you about dealing with this guy."

"What?"

"Don't say anything about the holster."

* * *

Ok. So. It turns out our contact was cute. And I mean like: really really cute. Even for a pakeha boy. He had these sort of fresh faced good looks and a dimple in his chin. He wore his hair in a big fifties-style dew and had fashionably long sideburns. He would have looked a little too much like a jock or a pretty boy, but he also wore a pair of horn rim glasses that gave him an intelligent, intellectual look. He was dressed in light summer pants, a collarless long sleeved shirt and a vest made of some coarse earthy fabric. As he stood to greet us, I saw what Rex was talking about. The man wore some sort of ancient looking six-shooter that he kept in a sort of bizarre holster. It appeared to actually be knitted, but it was too old for me to be sure - it was beat up and stained and frayed at the edge, as if it were a thousand years old. Which, based on what Rex had told me, could in fact be the case.

"Rex old man! Good to see you again. How are you? Sit down, sit down!" he said, shaking Rex's hand and pushing aside a pile of papers on his desk, "still adjuncting, eh? I thought that they'd have taken you off of the beat by now."

Rex shrugged, "spots on the Jedi Council are few and far between - only a few open up every year. If you want to get tenure you've got to work very hard and be very lucky. And I don't mind all the one-year assignments - I get to travel, it keeps me busy."

This was the biggest understatement of the century - Rex was one of the hottest young Jedi working today and everyone I talked to predicted that he was going to get placed at a frighteningly young age. I was incredibly lucky to be assigned to him - people said it was a sign thought was being given to my future.

"So they've still got you training people, eh?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Rex, "let me introduce you to my padawan. Andrew Huff, this is..."

While all of this was going on I was busy taking off the ridiculous veil Rex had forced me to wear in public to hide my moko. I got it off in time to smile at him, shake hands, and try not to say anything too stupid. But as he looked at me his look of greeting dropped off his face and turned into a look of utter shock and bewilderment.

"Anne?" he gasped.

Rex's eyes darted back and forth between us.

"You two have met?" he asked skeptically.

"Uh... I... no! Uh... I mean..." I said, sounding like a total moron. I ran my hand through my hair and looked at the ground, which is what I always do when I get nervous and which I totally hate doing.

Andrew paused for a second and then regained his composure.

"Oh, no. No. Of course not," he said, shaking his head, "I'm sorry. It's just with my... condition I've met a lot of people. I sometimes have trouble keeping all of them straight. I've probably just got you confused with someone else."

"Oh yeah," said Rex sarcastically, "I'm sure. Seventeen year old Maori girls with facial tattoos must come wandering through Kashgar all the time."

I kicked him in the foot. "Shut up!" I whispered angrily, "you're embarrassing me!"

"A lot of things come through Kashgar, my friend," said Andrew, sitting at his desk, "and I make my living knowing about all of them. Now. You say you have something to show me?"

II

Andrew slowly flipped through the pages of the ancient, leather bound codex. He held the binding up to his eyes and examined the stitching on the folios. He checked the end papers, and then put his nose into the book, sniffing deeply to take in its musty smell. Finally he looked up at us.

"This appears to be some sort of ancient, leather bound codex." he said seriously.

"Thanks a ton, Andy. For this I come to Kashgar?"

"Patience, Rex, patience. Where did you get this?"

"Anne and I knocked over a heavily armed MPAA convoy two weeks ago. It was coming out of Iran and heading towards Uzbekistan. Over the last two years the MPAA have had teams of archeologists running around the world looking for all kinds of religious artifacts. Valenti's a nut on the subject. Crazy. He's obsessed with the occult. The council was concerned. We checked it out and this is what we found."

"Well presumably if they wanted to take it back to Los Angeles they would have flown it out from Pers - uh, Iran. Why head towards Kashgar?"

"We hoped you would tell us that. I can't make head or tails of the writings. Do you recognize the alphabet?"

Andrew scrutinized the book for a couple of minutes, slowly turning the pages every now and again, occasionally muttering something under his breath.

"The script is very old indeed - possibly more than a millennium. But I don't think the characters are... no, this is gibberish. It doesn't mean anything. This is all... aha! I see... come here, Anne - and uh, yes of course you too Rex. Look at this!"

Andrew was pointing to one of the inner margins. In the areas between the characters, a faint trace of something else could be seen.

"Do you see? It's a palimpsest - something else has been written on this book previously, the vellum has been scraped clean, and something else has been recorded over it."

I felt my stomach twist - Jedi intuition.

"They did it intentionally, to hide something. Anne: spider sense check?" said Rex with certainty, obviously sensing the same thing I did. I nodded in agreement.

Andrew gave us a queer, disbelieving look. "Well," he said, "it's easy enough to find out. Typically you've got to use a CAT scan to clearly image something like this. But I've found that ultraviolet light, if tuned properly... let me see here..." Andrew wandered over to a drawer where he began rummaging around for something.

He returned with a small black device that looked like a fluorescent light in a frame with a bunch of knobs on top. He carefully fitted the frame, adjusted the bulb, and turned it on. It gave off a weird, eerie light and made the book glow strangely.

"If I just notch it down the spectrum a bit," muttered Andrew, wiggling the controls, "Aha! Yes yes, you see - there it is."

The lights deepened in color slightly. Now the surface writing was obscured and the writing below was faintly visible. Andrew ran his finger carefully under the newly revealed characters, sucking on his teeth in a sort of geeky-cute way.

"There's two scripts here. You see, how the orthography shifts..."

Rex hunched over the book in concentration.

"...this," said Andrew, pointing to one hi-lighted script, "these are ancient Altaic characters. The language is unfamiliar to me, but judging by the phonology, I'd say it was a chakobsa. Probably Bene Jesserit."

"What?" I asked.

Andrew looked up at me with a slightly puzzled look on his face, "It's... don't you...?" he shook his head, "Sorry. You just remind me so much of... well at any rate, a chakobsa - a sort of encrypted argot employed by certain secret societies that operate in this part of the world, modified for secrecy and encryption. But this other script," said Andrew, tapping regretfully at another part of the page, "I've no idea what this is."

"I do." grunted Rex.

We both turned to look at him. "What?" I asked.

"It's TeX."

"Excuse me?" said Andrew.

"TeX. it's a page description language developed before postscript or html became popular. Still gets used a lot in scientific circles. My Tex is pretty rusty, but I can still make some of this out - these are equations. From the look of it, complicated ones."

"Impossible!" snorted Andrew, "The text on top of the palimpsest is a thousand years old. A Bene Jesserit code, I could believe: the Bene Jesserit have been around as long as metal and irrigation. But how could this computer language of yours get beneath a thousand year old manuscript?!"

My spider sense started to tingle.

"Andrew," I asked slowly, "what would happen if you tried tuning the frequency of that light up instead of down?"

Andrew looked at me dubiously, but began slowly turning one of the dials on the machine.

The next thing I knew the room exploded in light. I instinctively dived forward to protect Rex, knocking him over and to the ground, where I threw myself over him to cover him. Squinting and blocking the light with my hand, I looked at the book, which was glowing like a small star, magnifying and amplifying the ultraviolet light the lamp shone on it.

"Uh... Anne?" asked a suspiciously Rex-sounding voice from behind me, "aren't you, as my like, padawan and everything, supposed to be protecting me at all times?"

I turned to see Rex standing, head cocked, eyeing me dubiously. It was right about then that I realized I was straddling Andrew.

"Ohmygod. Ohmygo - I'm so... I didn't... uh... I'm sorry. So sorry. Uh... I..." I said, hastily, getting off him.

"It's fine," said Andrew, standing up and dusting himself off. He looked at me with a crooked smile on his face, "you're a queer one, aren't you, Anne Kawharu?"

"I'm not, not at all. I mean. I'm. Not that I think that that sort of thing is wrong. Oh! But. You probably didn't mean queer like... Not that I mean. Like, you know. That you'd. You know. Care. About whether I liked. Because you're just like every other immortal codex identifier I've ever met. So I don't. You know. I mean..."

I was trying to desperately to remove my foot from my mouth (and doing that damn staring at the ground thing again) when the light flooding the room suddenly went dead. I turned to find Rex slowly shifting the pages of the codex up and down in the light. As he moved it it would flash brightly, but much of the time it just reflected the light normally.

"Fucking A!" he breathed.

As he moved the book around more carefully, it began redirecting the light from the lamp into a variety of holographs like an enormous psychedelic prism, shaping it into abstract figures floating ghostly in mid-air. Rex stopped at one - an irregular group of dots the size of golf balls hovering in mid air.

"What the fuck is this?" wondered Rex aloud.

"I have no idea." said Andrew, staring in fascination at the figures.

I looked at them. "It's Tama-rereti." I said.

They both looked at me.

"Tama-rereti. Uh... how do you say it in English? Scorpio. You pakeha say it's a scorpion, but we say it's a canoe. There - " I said, pointing to a star, "That's Rehua, which is, uh... Antares, I think. One of his wives is Puanga, which is Rigel, in Orion. His other wife gave birth to the fish that spawn in the summer which we used to catch and eat. The summer was Rehua's time. That's when the fish would spawn, so we'd say they were the children of Rehua." I said.

"Excuse me?" asked Rex skeptically.

"Well not all of us have forgotten our traditional culture, Rex." I said pointedly.

"Hey, shut up! I went to shul just last week!" he protested.

"Last week we were in Turkmenistan."

"Uh... I mean the week before that."

"The week before that we were in Amarillo."

"There are jews in Texas!" he protested.

"But were you one of them?" I asked pointedly.

Rex sighed with exasperation, even though I was totally right, and turned back to the book, shifting it around again. Another set of blobs whose shape was so clear I didn't need to identify them.

"Orion!" whispered Andrew.

Rex suddenly switched off the lamp and slapped the book closed.

"Andrew: what the fuck? It's like I'm a fucking magnet for ancient eldritch artifacts or some shit. First the Cue, now this... It's like they're attracted to me or something. You're the book dealer: what could make this book do that?"

Andrew pondered for a second.

"Well, I've read reports of R&D labs trying to develop complex pigments that could refract light like this. But they're all still in testing. It could be decades before they are capable of doing what we just saw."

"Great," said Rex, "so this book is either a thousand years old, or from a hundred years in the future?"

"I don't know!" said Andrew, "I just don't know, Rex. Maybe if we could read the palimpsest, but as it would take someone with a Ph.D. in mathematics and a deep immersion in the inner secrets of the Bene Jesserit to decipher the script!"

Rex grinned broadly. "Well why didn't you say so?" he asked, "because I..."

His face fell into a deep scowl before he could finish. At the same moment I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on edge.

"What is it?" asked Andrew, staring at both of us as we visibly shuddered.

"Do you ever have the weird feeling," said Rex, quickly slipping the book back into his robes, "that a couple dozen bad-guys are going to burst into your store and try to kill you?"

* * *

At that point a couple dozen bad guys burst into the store and tried to kill us. We heard them as they came into the main shop, turning over tables and generally making a ruckus. I figured we had about ten seconds before they found the door to the back room.

Rex made his light saber live and stood facing the door.

"Get Andrew out of here," he said quickly to me, "I'll meet you later. Go - now!"

"But Rex, there are so many of them..." I began, afraid for him.

"Just go!"

I turned to face Andrew.

"Well it's about time we used that secret exit of yours to get away." I said matter of factly.

"How did you...?"

"I'm a Jedi, Andrew. I know things. Let's go."

Andrew depressed a couple of books in one of his book shelves and the shelf popped open. I pushed him through the narrow entry and took one last look at Rex. He was rocking back and forth on his heels, like a tennis player getting ready to receive a serve. The door was slowly collapsing inward with their pounding. I knew that he was more experienced than me, and that he had done plenty of jobs by himself. But seeing him stand there I suddenly felt protective, as if I was abandoning him when all I wanted to do was stand there next to him and make sure he was all right. The door splintered and I watched a flash-bang roll in through the floor. I vaguely felt the detonation, smelt the explosive whine of the grenade, and could hear the tear gas curl around him. In my mind's eye I saw him put his robe up to his mouth and nose and charge forward. I started after him, but felt Andrew's hand pull me back. I ran away. We flew down a flight of stairs to some dark, dry place. I had been blinded by the grenade, and followed Andrew instinctively, trusting him to lead me and my feelings to keep me on my feet. I felt a dull ache in my heart as I realized the grenade must have had the same effect on Rex too, and that he was now fighting not just blindly, but alone.

* * *

"If we can get out of town, to the south, I know a small place, a farm, where we can stay," panted Andrew, running.

We came to a T-intersection, and Andrew turned to the left. I had a very bad feeling about left.

"No, let's go this way." I said, pointing him to the right.

"This way is quicker."

"But - "

"I don't have time to argue with you, Anne," shouted Andrew heatedly, "I know this city like the back of my hand. I've lived here for over a century. We should go this way!"

I relented and we ran down the narrow street. Ahead of us we saw a group of men dressed informally, but obviously marching in time. I glanced behind us - the men from the store were still pursuing us. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck raise. Andrew ducked into a side alley, and I followed him.

It was a dead end. We turned to find our only exit route choked with extremely belligerent men with automatic weapons.

"Don't worry, Anne, I'll protect you," said Andrew, pushing me behind him and drawing his gun out of his bizarre, knitted holster.

"Oh please."

I leaped over him, turning a somersault in the air, and pushed him behind me.

"This is my job, Andrew." I said to him. I turned to face them men in front of us. I made my light saber live and held it up to my barred teeth. In case you didn't know, we Maori are not afraid of a fight.

"I hope some of you speak English," I said to them slowly and purposefully, "Because I will only be saying this once: You are not going to hurt my friend, and, I assure you, you are not going to be able to hurt me. I don't wish any of you any harm, but unless you leave now, I am going to kill you all. Do you understand me?"

One of the men said something to his comrades, who began edging forward.

"Fine," I said, "Tika tonu mai - ki ahau e noho nei. I A HEI HA!"

The first two started to come towards me, but it was too late. I dove into them, leading with a strong thrust upward. I followed through twisting the energy of the uppercut back around into slice straight across me, cutting through one before I feinted to my left. As I peeled away, I felt them open up with their guns. Andrew returned fire, taking down a couple of men.

"Christ, Andrew - stop it! You're going to shoot me. Just get down!" I shouted, cutting the rifle off of a gun and twisting around to bring my blade up through its owner.

Soon the combat became a blur. I felt myself moving as if orchestrated, following a vauge instinct of motion, first here and then there, pulling myself forward by a thread of consciousness and a hint of intuition. I felt distorted faces, saw the drag on my blade that meant that I was cutting through bone. I was vaguely aware of the ache in my arms and legs, smelt the fear on the dwindling number of men remaining. I heard a bullet being fired, felt it slam into my leg, spinning me around with it's emotion. My visual field snapped back into focus. I saw two dozen men - reinforcements, probably, coming up from behind. It was then that I knew that I'd bitten off more than I could chew again - was outnumbered and out gunned. There were simply too many of them, and they knew it. I stared at them through the bangs that had fallen over my face. I slowly let my saber fall to the pavement, letting it spark crazily off the cobblestones. I felt my chest heaving for air. I spent a moment trying to gather my strength. I felt a sudden certainty that I was going to die. One of the men said something to me, laughing, and then barked out an order to his men. I took a deep breath and raised my saber once again, determined to go on fighting no matter what. I hadn't been raised to surrender.

At that moment, a plume of smoke shot out from above and behind me. It exploded in the crowd of men - a rocket propelled grenade. Two more came, tossing about men as if they were dull dolls. I turned to look behind me, only to catch a flash of black disapear behind a roof. Things became a blur for me. I remember cutting a few more down, I remember some running away. I remember feeling my body crash, endorphins drying up, knees turned to jelly. I remember gasping for air. I remember falling against a wall, trying to stand upright. I remember arms aching, thighs a spasm of exhausted pain. I remember realizing I was shot, and that my leg was bleeding. I remember Andrew taking my hand, and leading me away.

* * *

"For a seventeen year old girl you're extremely good at killing people, Anne."

I groaned and let my head fall back against the pillow.

"Oh god," I moaned, "I feel awful."

"You're telling me," said Andrew, the corner of his eyes crinkling with warm affection, "I think we owe the man with the RPG a sincere thank you. Things were looking bad there for a moment."

I turned to look at the room. My eyes registered floating furniture and shifting walls - a single exposed lightbulb hanging over a bare wooden table adorned only with bottle, glass, and a plate strewn with the refuse of the end of a meal. I waited a second, but the room refused to stand still.

"I wanna sleep," I mumbled, turning away and curling up.

"Not so fast," Andrew grabbed my shoulder and twisted me over, "we've got to change your bandages. Sit up. Sit up, I say."

I groggily acquiesced, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. One of my calves ached. I blearily rubbed my eyes. I felt disjointed and out of place.

"You're lucky. That bullet went in and out. It could have been far worse," said Andrew, carefully wrapping a new bandage along my calf. I could feel his breath on the inside of my knee.

"It'll be fine tomorrow," I said, "I can make it heal quick. Quicker. Ugh, how long have I been asleep?"

"About ten hours. It's midnight. You were exhausted. I was... worried, Anne."

I pushed him away and stood up. I walked unsteadily over to the table and sat down heavily in a chair.

"I'm hungry." I said. Andrew drifted out of my sight to return with a plate of cold rice. I wolfed it down while he sat in silence, watching me.

"Where's Rex?" I asked

"He can take care of himself. You should worry about getting better..."

"But he needs me," I said, "you don't know what he's like, Andrew. He just bounces off of things in the world, just spinning, with no plan. He could be hurt now for all we know. He was fighting blind back there. We've got to..."

Andrew put his hand on mine.

"Anne, I've known Rex for a long time. Longer than you, believe you me. I'm sure he'll be fine."

"Really?" I said through a mouth ful of rice, "When did you first meet him?"

"Oh," sighed Andrew, leaning back in his chair, "it's a very very long story. Let's just say we run across each other every once in a while."

Andrew poured a shot out of the bottle in front him.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Plum brandy. From Sophia. A shipment arrived the other day. There's good money selling it to Muslims since they aren't supposed to drink." He leaned back and drank it down in one fluid, practiced motion.

"Can I try?" I asked.

He chuckled softly, "Trust me Anne, you don't like it. You think it's too sweet, and burns as it goes down."

I don't like being told what I can do and what I can't.

"So is that a no?" I asked again, more insistently.

He smiled sadly and poured out a shot in the glass. He pushed it towards me. I screwed up my courage and drank it down. It tasted awful and burned like fire. I coughed fiercely.

"It's too sweet... and it bur - ah, nevermind." I said between coughs.

Andrew laughed, "you get used to it after a while. Trust me. Took me years. Decades, actually."

I looked at him, at his smooth skin and unwrinkled brow.

"How old are you, Andrew?"

He poured himself another shot and drunk it down, slapping the glass back against the table. He leaned forward and put his head in his hands, rubbing his face as if he was trying to get something off of it.

"Come here," I said, standing. I grabbed the bottle and glass in one hand and took his own hand in the other, "let's go." I said briskly.

"Where are we going?" he asked, puzzled.

"Outside."

* * *

After the fight Andrew had led me to a small, one room timber-frame house outside of town near one of the local farms. Outside sat two small chairs and a table. Even in the summer, the air had a slight undercurrent of mountain cold. I put the bottle and glass down on the table and made Andrew sit. I shivered and Andrew threw his coat over my shoulder. It was very chivalrous of him. The sky was fanstastically clear and drooped heavy with stars. Here on the other side of the equator, I didn't know the constellations, but found them beautiful in their strangeness. I poured myself another drink.

"I like it out here much better," I said before screwing up my face and downing the shot.

"I thought you said you didn't like that stuff," laughed Andrew, gesturing for the glass, which he filled with one of his own.

"You said I said that," I corrected him.

We sat for a moment. My lips felt a little buzzy and my face felt warm, and I still didn't feel like I had woken up. I don't really like to drink, but I felt I had to make a point. For a while we sat there staring at the stars, living in separate but parallel compartments.

"You're making this so difficult, Anne. There's something going on and I don't know what it is. I don't understand what's happening to me." said Andrew at last.

"I don't understand what you mean," I said, genuinely confused, "difficult how?"

He paused, "it's going to be my birthday next week."

Aha.

"You haven't answered my question," I said carefully.

"Twenty-nine."

"Excuse me?"

"Twenty-nine. I've been twenty-nine for over a century now. I never age, never get older. I'm transfixed, like a butterfly on a pin. There's something running through me that won't let me change. It keeps me intact - like a specimen." Andrew poured himself out another shot. I decided I ought to have another as well.

"It's strange," he continued, staring off into the distance "I've been waiting to be put back in motion. To be the kind of person capable of dying. I've met so many people in my life who fear turning thirty. But it's something I wish for, dream about. Sometimes I dream about my birthday, about the candles on my cake. They're normal candles but when I blow on them, it's me that goes out. Extinguished."

He snapped his fingers as he said the last words and sighed heavily. He poured another shot.

"It must be hard," I said quietly, staring at him now intensely, "to feel people you know slip past you. To sense them changing and... dying... while you stood there, stationary. Was there ever anyone who you...?"

He turned to look at me, "Why do you ask me to talk about these things, Anne? You know what pain they cause me. It was so long ago and she was so... Well. When I thought we'd grow old together, I was determined to spend a bit of my youth exploring the world. But I ended up staying young forever and she didn't and I lost her."

"Maybe you need to find some other way to change, someone else who could..."

He was leaning across the table now. I could see eyes, watch his mouth move as he talked. His eyes softened as he looked at me. I wanted him to kiss me, but I didn't know how to make him.

"I don't know," he said. "I hope every year will be different, but nothing seems to change. Everyone and everything treats me the same, and all the promise of change dries up. Do you know how that is? Does that make any sense to you?"

He put his hand on top of mine.

"Of course I do," I whispered, "Of course it does."

I took my other hand and ran the back of my palm down this cheek. It was hot to the touch.

"Of course," I said softly, "I'm trying to change to. I've spent the past three years trying to explain to people that I'm an adult now."

I suppose I was too stupid to feel the bubble burst. I didn't understand why he pulled away. I felt confused as I watched him bury his head in his hands. But then I could make out that he was laughing. I felt my face flush with confused shame.

"Anne Anne Anne," he said ruefully, leaning back and chuckling, "Sometimes you act like you're seventy, but sometimes you definitely act like you're seventeen. God! What was I thinking?" he stood up and slapped me on the shoulder, shaking his head, "Come on, let's go inside. We've both had enough to drink. And you need to rest so that you'll be healthy when you meet Rex tomorrow. Come on."

I felt my entire body go hot with angry embarrassment. I stood up now and faced him.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I cried.

"Nothing Anne, nothing. Come on, let's go inside."

"What do you mean, nothing?! What do you think I am, some stupid little girl? I saved your life today, Andrew! And what are you telling me? That you think I'm some child?"

"Now Anne, I didn't say that..." he said carefully.

But I was all ready too far gone. It was my turn to cry now. I felt my body starting to heave with huge, deep-down angry sobs.

"God I... I hate you!" I screamed, stalking into the house. I starting gathering my few things together and tried to stop crying, but I just couldn't do it. I heard Andrew come in behind me.

"Anne, what are you doing? Look, I'm sorry. I was wrong to say that. I - where are you going?"

"I'm going to find Rex," I said, putting on my shoes, "I don't want to stay here anymore. And he needs me!"

"Anne, be reasonable. It's one in the morning..."

"I'm being reasonable," I snarled, trying to sniff away some tears and dry my face, "you're the one who's being unreasonable!" I walked out the door and slammed it behind me. As I walked out into the darkness I heard him come outside.

"You don't even know the way back to town!" he shouted after me.

"I can get back without you just fine!" I cried over my shoulder with as much vindictive fury as I could muster, "I'm a Jedi in case you forgot!"

III

About four hours later I found Rex back in our rooms. He was waiting up for me, legs up on the table, taking a swig off of a bottle when I walked in.

"Yo Anne, what's up?" he said as if I had just gotten back from the corner store, "guess what? A crate of plum brandy from Sophia just made it's way into town. I even saved a bottle for you in case you... uh-oh."

Rex looked closely at my crumpled clothes and tear-stained face.

"Hmmm... my highly-honed Jedi intuition tells me Anne has a story to tell."

"Shut up." I said, sitting heavily at a chair across from him. He produced an unopened bottle and offered it to me.

"No thanks," I said, shaking my head, "it's too sweet, and it burns."

Rex looked at me more closely. "Must be some story, 'cause I'm getting serious 'Anne could really use some choclate right about now' vibes." he said. He reached with one hand behind my ear and pulled out an American chocolate bar. The oldest, stupid trick in the book. It was all I could do to keep a straight face. I'd been upset for too long, and my bile was pretty much spent. I was exhausted and unable to be as totally miserable no matter what as I had decided on being, if that makes any sense.

"Where did you find chocolate in Kashgar? Or do you just keep some on hand to placate your padwan when she gets emotional?"

"CIA stash I found in the course of my little exploits. Fucking spook pansies - equal parts chocolate, cigarettes, and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issues. I can't believe these are the people who are supposed to be covertly running my country."

I smiled a little.

"Uh-oh. uh-oh. Stop the presses - looks as if Little Miss Treaty of Waitangi might actually be in a good mood again."

"Shut up!" I said, failing at trying to keep up my gloomy mood. I opened the chocolate and broke off a piece for him.

"So you got all right, then?" I asked.

"Yeah." said Rex carelessly, as if I'd asked him if he could remember his own name, "what happened with y'all?"

I told him what happened, more or less, trying to cut out all the embarassing parts that would make it obvious how totally crushed out I had been on Andrew.

"Wow," he said when I finally finished, "it sounds like you're really crushed out on Andrew, huh?"

"You know I don't like white boys," I muttered.

"Even really really cute immortal ones?" he said, badgering me.

"A Jedi feels neither hate nor love," I repeated stiffly.

"Of course, but... the Jedi code doesn't say anything about being an eency teency crushed out on somebody now, does it?" he said broadly.

"Shut up!"

"Well," said Rex, taking another swig on the bottle and turning more serious, "there's definitely some wierd chemistry between the two of you. I mean, you don't have to be a Jedi to see that he had obviously thought that he had met you before. But you say you've never met him?"

I shook my head.

"You know what? I believe you. But still - hey, can I have more chocolate? Fucking Anne c'mon, I'm the one who gave it to you for chrissa - thanks. Ok. The way you jumped to protect him - that's not normal. You're too good at what we do to make a mistake like that. There was something at work there. But do you know what fucks me up the most? Do you remember what he said after you knocked him over and he got up?"

I didn't.

"He said 'you're a queer one, Anne Kawharu'."

"So?"

"I never told him your last name. He interrupted me when I was introducing you."

"What are you getting at?" I asked.

"I don't know. I don't know, Anne. That's the problem. This job has been really fucking with my head lately. I don't understand what's happening."

"When did you first meet Andrew?" I asked curiously.

"About eight years. Back when Chen was studying with me. It was in Lhasa. We'd got separated, and I was being chased by a gaggle of people. I was so busy fighting them I didn't see the huge fucking jeep trying to run me down from behind. Andrew made a diving tackle to push me out of the way. He saved my life."

"But before that, what was the actual first moment that you met?"

"That's what I'm saying. That was it. He didn't even know who I was - just dove right in. Then, you know, we had to kill all the ones that didn't get run over by the jeep. It was all very topsy-turvy. I did all of the killing, really. Andrew used to be pretty religious at one point in his life - I think maybe he was a priest or something. But he's a genuinely good guy. Helps widows and orphans and this kind of thing. There's a small health clinic in Bokhara that's all but named after him, with all the money he gives."

"Doesn't it seem odd to you that he'd just risk his life for you like that, sight unseen?" I asked.

"No. That's what I'm saying. He's gone to the wall a bunch of times for me. And I for him. It's like, the Jedi ethic and shit, you know what I'm saying?"

"And this woman he mentioned to me? Did you meet her then?"

"No," said Rex, shaking his head, "I've never met her. Andrew avoids women like the plague. The only thing is..."

"What?"

"Well that holster, obviously. He's been wearing that thing for a century at least. Obviously it's got major sentimental value. You'd have to be a moron not to connect it with this long-lost love of his."

"But who could she be?" I asked.

"Well I don't know Anne. I'm sure that she's a beautiful, intelligent, articulate, and skilled woman whose story deserves to be told, and whose history and fate will no doubt be revealed to us at some point in the course of our journey to unlock the secrets of this damnably enigmatic ancient codex. Let the force guide you and shit. If we're meant to find out who she is or was, we'll find out. Patience, young Kawharu."

"Ok, ok." I said, finishing off the choclate and levitating the empty wrapper off into the rubbish bin.

And... there's something else." said Rex hesitantly.

"What?"

"Remember when I asked you whether you sensed anything before we entered the store?"

"Yes. You sensed those men coming to attack us. I missed it. I'm sorry. I'll do better next time."

"No - that's the problem. I didn't notice them at all. I felt a disturbance in the force. A feeling I haven't felt in... a long time. This person who helped you, you're sure it was a rocket propelled grenade?"

"Yes."

"What did he look like?"

"I don't know. We didn't see him. Just the RPG and a flash of movement - it looked like he was wearing black."

"So you didn't actually see them?" Rex insisted.

"No, I..."

"And you didn't notice anything else, no..." Rex paused, "crowbars or anything?"

"No. He got away too quickly. I would have gone after him, but I was hurt and so... and so he escaped." I said, feelingly slightly ashamed.

"I think not," muttered Rex quietly under his breath, taking a particularly large swig of brandy, "I think not. Escape is not her plan."

My stomach did a Jedi-intuition flip flop.

"Her?" I asked, insinuatingly.

"You know I don't like schiksas!" said Rex defensively.

"Woah, wait a moment - you wouldn't happen to be a little crushed out on my mysterious savior would you?"

"A Jedi knows neither hate nor love." replied Rex stoutly, screwing up his face and crossing his arms stiffly.

"Oh yeah, but the Jedi code doesn't say anything about being an eency teency crushed out on somebody," I said, smiling like the cat that ate the canary.

"Shut up!" said Rex, blushing.

IV

"So what are we doing here again?" I asked. Our whirlwind departure from Asia - pausing only to pick up a new babel fish for me in Calcutta - and the flight across the pacific had left me a little discombobulated, even though Rex had splurged on the fancy airplane seats that folded out into cute little mini-beds. Even now, a whole day after we touched town at SF International, I was still a little unclear on the plan. If Rex had any at all, that is. As far as I could tell, we were standing in the middle of Berkeley in front of a rustic little mansion overgrown with vines.

"Getting our codex on," said Rex. "Remember how Andrew said we needed a person with a Ph.D. in Math and a deep knowledge of the inner workings of the Bene Jesserit to explain it to us? Well, he's in there. I can feel it."

"He lives here?"

"No silly," said Rex looking at me, "he works here. This is a restaurant. It's Chez Panisse."

"And he knows about the codex."

"Oh yeah, he knows about it," said Rex darkly, "the question is whether he'll be willing to tell us about it or not."

Rex began walking purposefully into the building. I followed him into the courtyard and up a flight of stairs. Once inside I saw that it was indeed a restaurant, and a very nice one at that. Well-groomed and taste-fully tanned Califonians stood around drinking cocktails and waiting for their tables. A woman - the hostess, probably - moved to intercept us, but Rex was in 'brook no delay mode'. He mubled out a mindtrick and she stepped out of our way with alacrity and he kept walking without breaking his stride. It's always really impressive and a little scary when Rex kicks into incredibly determined but not ruthless mode. We strode into a tasteful, understated dining room and, without so much as glancing at the guests, moved towards the swinging doors into the kitchen. The staff gasped in surprise as Rex strode through the door. A few surreptitiously slipped out the back, while the rest dropped what they were doing and stood waiting to see what we wanted. There was one exception, however - one man, who didn't so much as glance up from his work.

He was tall, with long hair drawn back in a pony tail. A cigarette drooped off of his lower lip and his brow knitted in concentration as he carefully carved up a huge haunch of raw meat. What was most striking was his outfit . He was wearing a skintight black bodysuit ribbed with capillary tubes - a Fremen stillsuit. Over that he was wearing an apron and a chef's toque so enormous that, combined with his height, it was sort of crumpled up against the ceiling. Rex pulled up directly in front of him.

"Rex," muttered the man distantly in acknowledgement, not looking up from his task.

"Graham, I need to talk with you." said Rex urgently.

"If you want to make a reservation you've got to talk to the hostess. I can't pull any strings, even for old friends."

"I don't want to eat at the restaurant."

"Well if you've come to buy pork, this isn't a good time either. Come catch up with me at the ranch tomorrow morning."

"I need your help."

Graham kept slicing.

"Dammit Graham, I need your help with something serious."

Graham finally turned to look at Rex.

"Look Rex, I'm out of the game. I've retired," said Graham, slowly but forcefully, taking his cigarette out of his mouth and stabbing it at Rex, "I do pork now, Rex. Pork. Prosciutto. Ham. Tenderloin. Bacon. Gammon. Sausage. The most thinly sliced of carpaccios. I've settled down. I don't worry about vampires and demons from other planets and phenomenologists able to shoot evil black lightning out of their hands."

Demons? Vampires? Obviously Rex had been holding out on me about the adventures of his past. And what in god's name was a 'phenomenologist'?

"I do pork. Pork." he emphasized his point by picking up a piece of the meat he was working with and jiggling it back and forth for emphasis. Rex wrinkled his nose in disgust but pressed on.

"Then why are you still wearing that ridiculous stillsuit?" he asked.

"Hey - don't be fucking with my precious bodily fluids, Masterson. I'd like to help you with whatever it is, but I can't. Sorry."

He turned back to his meat. Rex pulled the codex out of his Jedi robes and held it up to Graham's nose.

"So you don't know what this is then?" he demanded.

Graham glanced at the codex and his mouth slacked to an 'O' of surprise, cigarette falling to the ground.

"The Codex of Lost Souls!" he breathed in shock and awe, "where did you get that?!"

"Oh, so now we're not Mr. Narrowly-Tref-Focused all of a sudden now are we, eh?"

Graham's posture shifted radically. He glanced wildly around at the exits. He wiggled his one of his wrists and a small, flinty-looking knife suddenly materialized in the palm of his hand.

"How long have you had it? Good christ, man! I'm surprised that you're still alive! We've got to get out of here before they arrive en masse!"

Graham grabbed my hand and pulled me through the door to the dining room.

"Oh by the way, I'm Graham Leuschke," he said, gazing at me seriously, "Pleased to meet you."

* * *

Graham preemptorily took an empty table and, without asking, seated all of us. He snapped his fingers and hurriedly ordered a bottle of 1999 Araujo Cabernet Sauvignon. He was already poring over the pages of the book as the waiter uncorked it and gave us each a glass.

"Good god! It's just as I always thought, always dreamed." breathed Graham.

"Actually all that stuff on top is just a pamplemousse or something," said Rex, trying (and failing) to sound erudite.

Graham looked up at him.

"Palimpsest," corrected Graham, "Palimpsest. Obviously Rex. I've heard a great deal about this codex, of course, but I never dreamed I'd be able to - yes! Here it is!"

"What is it, Graham? What's in the book?"

"I've no time to explain now - they'll be here any minute," said Graham, running his fingers over lines of near-invisible characters, "you're in grave danger. There's only one thing I can do that might save you. You can - heh heh - thank me later if you ever get the opportunity."

"What are you talking about?" I asked him.

But Graham was - oddly enough - already on the floor on his knees with tbe book open in front of him. He began tracing intricate patterns on the page while chanting away in an atavistic, gutteral tongue. As he moved, he began tapping individual characters, which began to glow with the same blue light I had seen in Kashgar. The light increased in intensity as Graham's chanting grew louder. A nimbus of the stuff gathered around his hand. He closed his eyes in concentration and suddenly jabbed his hand upward.

Amazingly, the light followed, tracing a razor-thin beam behind it. Carefully and with great force he moved the hand up, standing as he drew, and eventually formed a a right angle with the beam slightly above his head. He continued tracing, bringing the beam back down to the book, where it shot back onto the characters as if someone had turned on the 'snap to grid' option on the world. The result was a a seven-foot tall rectangle with its base in the codex. In a moment, the rectangle filled with a gauzy, blue light.

"What the hell is this?" demanded Rex.

"That's far enough Masterson!" cackled a voice with a strong Italian accent from behind us. We turned to find the rest of the restaurant guests crouched in terror under their tables. In front of us was a seedy-looking man with bright red hair pointing a pistol directly at Rex's head.

"At last, after all these years, the honor of my ancestors and of my house will finally be avenged!" he said, cackling wildly and shooting indiscrimintly into the air, Saddam-like, "tonight, Rex Masterson, old scores will be settled and the evils you have done to us will be erased forever!"

"Dude, I don't even know who the fuck you are!" yelled Rex, "What have I ever done to you or your patriline?"

The man was about to respond when his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he fell to the ground, unconscious. Standing behind him was a bespectacled middle-aged man with a thin chin and a round face. He was holding a sap in his hand, which he had just used to knock the mad Italian unconscious.

Graham and Rex stared in amazement at the man.

"Good god - Lawrence Lessig! What are you doing here?" asked Rex, dumb-founded.

"What? What do you want? Please don't hurt m..." replied one of the patrons, a man hiding from underneath a table. He slowly stood up, hands in the air. He was bespectacled, middle-aged, and had a thin chin and a round face. He looked, in fact, like the twin brother of the man with the sap.

"Oh. Shit." said the man with the sap, gesturing imperiously to the man getting up from the table, "what are you doing here? Sit down Larry. Sit down! And remember - you never saw me. Never ever, got it? And sweet jesus, don't try to touch me."

"Stop! All of you!" said a voice from the door to the kitchen. He turned to see a man in an Abraham Lincoln suit with huge sideburns and a sawed off shotgun. Behind him a dozen or so less-talented though similarly-appareled look-alikes stood poised, grinning menacingly.

"Finally," said the man, "the chase has ended. And so you too, Rex Masterson, will meet your end this day."

"Oh christ, and who the hell are you?" groaned Rex, putting his hands on his heads.

"My name matters not. All that matters now is your death, Masterson!" announced the man, taking aim with his shotgun.

He was about to fire when a black blur of movement interposed itself between the man and Rex. We heard a crack and the man dropped the gun suddenly and started sucking on his knuckles where they had been hit. The blur tore its way through his cronies, a whirlwind of destruction that cut through them the exact same way a ginsu knive can cut through a tomato, even after it has just sawed through an aluminum can. They either fell or fled, and the next thing I knew I saw the Abraham Lincoln lookalike caught in an extremely nasty looking chokehold that involved a crowbar laid directly across his adam's apple.

Holding the crowbar was a small asian woman in a tight black dress, stockings, and spiked high-heels. Frankly, the crowbar was just about as big as she was. Do you know how sometimes you see someone and just looking at her makes you feel like the fattest, ugliest person on the planet? Well one glance at this girl made me feel pretty much like that but twice over. She had the body of a dancer or a professional athlete. And you had got a pretty good idea of it thanks to that dress, let me tell you something. It was one of these things that boys think is cute and alluring but which every girl in the room knows is actually totally slutty and impossible to ever actually wear.

"Kathy? What are you doing here?" exclaimed Rex, stricken.

"Saving your ass. Again. You know, Rex, you look like a total moron dressed in those jedi robes," said the woman nonchalantly.

"And you look ridiculous in that party dress!" shot back Rex.

"Hey, I won the USABDA Latin Dance syllabus in this dress," she sniffed.

"I know," growled Rex angrily, "I was there - remember?"

"I do remember something about it vaguely," she spat accusingly, "it's not like you remember what things were like back then!"

"Well it's not like you remembered to... like, uh, call me or anything." said Rex, suprisingly and obviously out of sorts.

"Masterso..." squeaked the man she was restraining. The woman gave the crowbar a squeeze and he began gurgling inarticulately.

"Because let's face it," the woman said, dropping her voice to a slow, sultry drawl, "you stil love the dress, don't you Rex? Maybe deep down inside, even after all this time? Maybe... just... a little...?"

"Er... uh... I..." said Rex, speechless, as if a psychic crowbar had been applied to his emotional adam's apple.

I made my lightsaber live and stepped between them.

"You had better tell me who you are and what you're doing here right now." I said to her darkly.

We heard the rumbling sounds of mass troop movements outside.

"Rex, get out of here, for all our sakes!" Screamed the Lawrence Lessig with the sap.

"What the hell is going on here?" screamed the Lawrence Lessig without the sap.

"I admit, time to go bye-bye out the dimensional portal." said the woman, jerking her chin in the direction of blue rectangle Graham had made.

"It is your only way out!" urged Graham, "go quickly, and may Shai Hulud be with you!"

"Wait. Wait. Wait! What the fuck is going on here? Why are there two Lawrence Lessigs? How did either of them know who I was in the first place? Who are the side-burned bad guys? What about the carrot-top on the floor? And Kat, what are you doing here after all of these years? And helping me? I refuse to budge. I demand answers! Answers, I tell you..."

Even as he said this the room was filling with men in body armor and automatic weapons. They were all taking aim at us even while Rex was ranting on. He was clearly out of it, sputtering in confusion, demanding explanation.

The woman - Kathy - looked at me over her nose in a 'shall we?' sort of gesture. I didn't know her, and, given Rex's reaction to her, I didn't trust her. But at that point the force seemed to agree with the 'dimensional portal' idea. I gave the smallest of nods, letting my light saber die. We both charged Rex, tackling him and driving him backwards and through the portal.

As I fell into the blue light I felt my body suspended, suddenly unstill, the plummeting sensation of my fall suddenly twisted and abstract. My eyes burned with a million blue runes uncurling like enormous, endless sheets of music. I experienced falling without height and immersion without depth. My movement smelled like honeysuckle and ozone. And then I blacked out.

* * *

I awoke and rubbed my eyes. I sat up and felt warm sand run through my hands. A few feet away from me Rex was already up, staring out at the horizon.

"Where are we?" I asked blearily.

"Well, I don't know exactly, but I can't help but notice that it looks suspiciously like the Taklamakan desert," said Rex glumly, kicking the sand.

I heard a sudden crash to my right and turned. Something had fallen from the sky and landed heavily right beside me.

It was the Codex of Lost Souls.

"Motherfucker." sighed Rex.

V

"Well, this certainly looks like Kashgar," I said, surveying the tumbledown heap of shacks at the edge of town.

"Yeah, but I don't know," said Rex, scratching the day's growth of stubble he'd accumulated walking out of the desert with me, "still seems kinda off. Didn't we come this way before? I don't remember the irrigation canals being so clogged."

"We didn't really get to know Kashgar that well, Rex." I reminded him

"Tell me about it. I'm getting major 'outsider' vibes," he said, glancing nervously at the people around us. We were used to getting the occaisional long look, but this was out of control. People were whispering back and forth amazed at our appearence. It made us both feel extremely uneasy.

"Ok. Here's the plan," said Rex, pulling his hood over his head and disappearing into its depths, "I'll find our Uighur contacts. Their operation is always close to getting busted down by the Chinese authorities, and even though they put us up last time they may not be that happy to see us back here again. You find Andrew and bring him back to meet us at our apartment. We need to talk to him, if you know what I mean."

Rex starting walking quickly away.

"Uh, Rex," I asked, unsure, "how am I supposed to do that without getting, uh... recognized?"

"Just focus on appearing inconspicuous. Use the force and shit. Remember, Anne: killing everyone in sight isn't the solution to every problem."

* * *

It took a little getting used to, but after a while I grew accustomed to going unnoticed, bending my body to shadows and keeping my head down, keeping a part of my consciousness dipped shallowly into the web of attention that surrounded me to avoid its whirls and eddies. The entire town felt different to me, full of a fractious aura of fear and uncertainty. But soon enough I felt a small tug in the back of my brain that could only have been Andrew. I followed it until I caught site of him: dressed in traditional Uighur garb (!) and striding quickly through the crowd. I felt that he was going somewhere in a hurry, and was attracting a bit more attention than he thought he was.

I came up behind him and tugged on his sleeve.

"Andrew," I said urgently, "it's me. I need to talk to you. Now."

His eyes focused on mine and his face went through a series of stages: incomprehension, incredulity, and finally anger. He caught me by the elbow and muscled me down the street and into a small house. Once inside he threw me roughly against the wall, drew his ancient pistol and pointed it squarely at my chest.

"Good god, woman! What in god's name were you thinking?! You could have killed us both!"

I was nonplussed, to say the least, but tried to keep the surprise out of my voice.

"Andrew, what are you doing? It's me."

"I know it's you," spat Andrew, cocking his gun, "what I do not know is the sincerity of your intentions."

"Intentions? But I, what are you..." I realized with a start that he wasn't wearing his holster.

"Although I must say," said Andrew, running his eyes up and down me, "I wasn't expecting you to be so young, or to be so... native."

I bristled at that.

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean, 'native'?" I snapped back, "when did you turn into such a fucking racist, Andrew?"

"Such language," said Andrew, chiding me, "I thought you Brits were supposed to be better mannered than that. And I'd certainly expected someone as originally celebrated as you to be more subtle than this, Cinnamon."

"What?" I asked, genuinely nonplussed, "I'm not a covert agent. I'm not even British for Christs' sake! Who the hell is 'Cinammon'?"

Now it was Andrew's turn to appear nonplussed.

"What? Do you mean...? Is this to say that you're not Cinnamon?" he gasped in amazement.

"What is going on? Don't you even recognize me, Andrew?"

Andrew's jaw clenched and he raised his gun to my head.

"I'm sorry. I've made a terrible, terrible mistake," he said, swallowing hard, "and I am afraid you must be the one to pay for it. I don't know who you are, and I don't take life lightly, but my mission and the good of my country comes first, supplanting in conscience even my christian morals. You simply can't be allowed to escape."

And then he shot me in the head.

* * *

At this point I was like: whatever. I made my lightsaber live a split second before he fired and caught the bullet in a short foward swipe. Then I clocked my blade back around and came in with a short roll off my wrist, cutting his pistol in half. Before he could respond I trapped one of his feet and swept the other, sending him sprawling to the floor. I got one foot on his windpipe and pointed my lightsaber about three centimeters away from his right eyeball.

"'Cause you see, Andrew," I said sweetly, "when you start using words like 'native' it kinda upsets me."

"Damn you Cinammon!" spat Andrew, "I should have known better than to take you into my confidence! Kill me if you like, I will never betray my country! The devil take you, and - God bless America!"

I was about to resort to some major Jedi mindtrick action to get to the bottom of all of this, but at that moment I heard the familiar thrum of a lightsaber inches from my head. It would have been a comforting sound, except that I felt right away that it wasn't Rex. I turned very slowly to see the business edge of a double-bladed Jedi bo staff about three centimeters away from my right eyeball. Holding it was a bespectacled, heavy-set man wearing khakis and a button-down shirt.

"Do not injure that man," he said in a heavy Quebecois accent, "the future of the entire universe rests on his shoulders."

* * *

I straightened up slowly, keeping my lightsaber live.

"And just who are you?" I asked, trying to sound self-confident.

"Ghyslain Galland," said the man easily, "assistant Jedi extraordinarius seconded from the council to special service for WIPO. And who might you be?"

Now it was my turn to swallow hard. I didn't know what WIPO was, but I was as familiar as anyone with the Jedi ranking system. This Ghyslain was tenure track on the council - outranking not only lowly padwans like me, but Rex himself. A moment of doubt did slip into my head, however...

"...Isn't that a golf-ball retriever?" I asked, eyeing his weapon skeptically.

"Shut up. I'm the one asking questions here. Who are you?"

"Anne Kawharu. Padwan first class, sir." I felt myself automatically stiffen to attention, training kicking in.

"Ah, a padwan. And who is your master, Anne?"

"Rex Masterson."

Ghyslain snorted.

"I've never heard of him," he said, "there hasn't been a Jedi in history of the council with that name. Tell me the truth at once!"

"Peace, Ghyslain, peace," said a voice from the shadows, "perhaps there is more here than meets the eye."

I turned to see who it was. Even through the dim light I could make out his profile as he strode towards me: round cheeks, thin chin.

"Hello, Anne Kawharu. I am Lawrence Lessig," said the man, extending his hand, "pleased to meet you."

* * *

"Lawrence, what are you doing here?" I said, now thoroughly confused as I shook his hand. His grip carried the firm warmth of someone who was on the right side of every major issue in digital copyright.

"Please, call me 'Larry'," said Lessig, steepling his hands in contemplation and pacing with unearthly serenity across the room. "I know our presence here must be shocking to you, just as I know that what I have to say will disturb you: Anne, Ghyslain and I come from the distant future. We have traveled back 144 years in time to visit your era in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to save the entire universe."

"But I just saw you at the restaurant! How did you get all the way to Kashgar so quickly?"

Lessig smiled sadly and looked indulgently at me, "I'm afraid you are mistaken, my dear. I will not be born for almost one hundred years."

"Well then what were you doing at Chez Panisse?"

Ghyslain and Lessig glanced at each other and shifted uneasily.

"I'm afraid you are mistaken," said Lessig nervously, "Chez Panisse will not be built for almost one hundred yea..."

"And there were two of you!" I insisted, "what were you doing there with another Lawrence Lessig? Or does Ghyslain transform into your twin brother or something?"

"There were two of me?" coughed Lessig politely, clearly undone, "My dear girl, what are you talking about? And how could you possibly know about Chez Panisse?"

I glanced at them suspiciously. Something was going on here, something that made me deeply uneasy.

"Do you really expect me to believe that you're from the year 2147?" I asked.

"2147?" Ghyslain guffawed.

"No no," chuckled Lessig, "No of course not, my dear. We come from the year 2023."

"What?" I asked darkly, "That's only twenty years in the future."

"What?" Said Andrew, Ghyslain, and Lessig at once.

"Andrew, tell them the date." I said

"May 12th." he replied, completely floored by what he was witnessing.

"Not the month, the year." clarified Lessig.

"But it's 1879 of course," said Andrew.

"See!" crowed Ghyslain trimuphantly.

"What year do you think it is?" Lessig asked me curiously.

"duh," I said, "It's 2003."

"Oh my," said Lessig, sighing deeply, "we do have a problem, don't we?"

* * *

We all sat there for a moment staring dumbly at each other - some more dumb than others. Andrew clearly had absolutely no idea what was going on. I was so frustrated. I felt like just - I feel a little guilty admittting it now - like just making my lightsaber and killing everyone, hey? But that obviously wouldn't do any good. Instead I tried to remember what Rex had taught me. I took a deep breath, relaxed and let the force float over me. I closed my eyes and let myself drift off. I was about to drop deeper into meditation when a realization hit me like a ton of bricks and my eyes snapped open.

"Andrew," I asked, "when do you turn thirty?"

Andrews eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"In two weeks," he said, trying to figure me out, "how did you know I was turning thirty?"

Now Ghyslain ran his eyes over me with a certain gross boy-eyeing-meat look in his eyes.

"The force is strong with you, Anne." he said appreciatively.

I made my light saber live and pointed directly under his nose.

"Hey watch it, buster. I've already got a boyfriend, ok?"

"But of course." he said, making mollficatory gestures with his hands.

"And I don't even like white boys. Remember that." I said, waggling my jedi blade warningly.

"Of course. A jedi knows neither love nor hate. You know that Anne."

"Yeah," I said under my breath, "but the jedi code doesn't say anything about getting a little crushed-out on someone." I turned back to Andrew.

"Who is this 'Cinammon'?" I asked.

"I swore an oath..." he began timidly.

"Andrew, just look at us." said Lessig persuasively, "we all claim to be from the future. Ghyslain and Anne are using weapons of a sort beyond your wildest imaginings. Anne just dodged a bullet fired point blank to her temple. I would like to suggest to you that if there were any situation in which your vow to secrecy might be compromised, this would be it."

"I... I..." said Andrew hesitating. After a long moment he sighed and broke down, "I'm from Lake Zurich."

I rolled my eyes. Like that helped.

"I am afraid my story will take some time to tell..." he said continuing quickly. We all bent forward to listen.

VI

"I'm from Lake Zurich," said Andrew importantly. We all sort of stood around in awkward silence for second.

"You mean like Germany?" I finally asked.

"No. Not Germany. Illinois. I'm from Lake Zurich, Illinois. I'm an American."

"And what are you doing here?" asked Lessig.

"It is well you should ask. Indeed, until I met you, Lawrence - I may call you Lawrence? - I considered myself the first American and only the second white man, to have penetrated this deeply into the heart of the Asiatic continent."

"He sure talks likes he's from 1879." muttered Ghyslain under his breath.

"I'm a fellow American," said Lessig, smiling broadly and laying it on thickly, "I'm here on special assignment from the government and..."

Andrew stood up and dusted himself off and stared Lessig suspiciously in the eye.

"The government, eh? And why would the US government send two agents to this desolate land?"

"Two?" asked Lessig.

"Yes two," said Andrew, "You as well as I. I Am a special covert agent from the diplomatic corps, choosen by President Hayes himself and entrusted with a top secret mission."

"A mission?" asked Lessig urgently, producing a small black box from his robes and holding it up to Andrew's head, "about copyright?"

"Copyright?" said Andrew, clearly confused, "Er... no. What would make you think that?"

Lessig clicked a button on the box in his hand, and it began whining loudly. A series of indicators and dials began maxing out.

"Well my friend, I don't know why you think you're in Kashgar, but according to the Copyright Destinyatronamaton, you hold in your hands the threads of fate which, when gathered together, will determine the course of artistic freedom and consumer choice for decades, nay, centuries to come."

"Is that why you're here? To secure copyright?" I asked Lessig.

"Yes. Ghyslain and I risked life and limb in an experimental planar portal to travel back in time and change the course of history. However obsessed this young man may be with 'penetrating the Asiatic continent', all of our equipment indicates that the future of intellectual property lies in his hands. We've been tracking his IP tracefor the past week.

"If you are also from the future," Said Ghyslain, looking me over, "surely you must be here for a similarly important purpose?"

"Well, uh, I... er... we were kinda just at Chez Panisse," I said, tucking a loose curl of hair behind my ear and focusing on the ground, "and there was this girl, uh, with a crowbar..."

"Crowbar?" asked Lessig

"And, uh, a guy with red hair. Uh..."

"Red hair?" asked Ghyslain.

"You mean you traveled across empty wastes of space and time on accident?" Asked Lessig incredulously.

"Well see Rex is really bad about making plans, so...."

That was when Rex showed up.

* * *

Rex flew into the room, turning a triple-sommersault before landing between me and Lessig. He pushed me behind him protectively, made his lightsaber live, and faced the others.

"'Kay, I know this is gonna sound wierd," he said hurriedly to me, "but we've been transported back in time to - "

" - 1879?" I interrupted him.

"Yeah. You figured that out? Well done, Anne. Oh and," he glanced meaningfully at Andew, "Ixnay on the immortalitynay. An'tcay uinray his utrefay estinyday."

"Who in the name of God are all of you?" screamed Andrew. All the flying around and lightsabers had badly damaged his nerves.

At this point Rex registered Lesig and Ghyslain. He studied them both, eyes widening.

"Lawrence? And - Ghyslain? Holy shit! What are you doing he - " he paused and reconsidered. "scratch that. Let me guess. Time travel?"

Ghyslain pointed at his nose, "Exactement. You're Rex, non? The Padawan's teacher? I've never heard of a Jedi with your name. Perhaps you are not what you appear to be?"

"You've never heard of me?" laughed Rex, looking Ghyslain up and down, "You're the guy with the fucking golf ball retriever, dude."

"Excuse me?" Said Ghyslain, making his lightsaber live and putting his face right up into Rex's, "I'm the Jedi on tenure track, mon ami, and don't you forget it."

Rex glanced at the lightsaber, at Ghyslain and back at Lessig again.

"Uh-oh." he said, holstering his blade and pacing back and forth.

"What?" asked Lessig, eyeing towards him curiously.

"Uh... I think we may have a problem here. You two are from the future too?"

"2023."

"Ah fuck. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" asked Rex.

"Alternate dimensions?" replied Lessig, "It would certainly explain why we've never heard of you."

"Yeah. 'Cause in my world Ghyslain is just a high school ki - "

"Stop! Stop it! Don't tell us!" said Lessig, putting his hands over his head. "If we give too much away about who we are we could cause the cosmic skeins of fate to twist and warp in cataclysmic ways! And remember the first rule: if you see yourself..."

"Don't touch them and get the hell out. Gotcha. You actually kinda mentioned that to me already."

"So Anne tells me. Perhaps's we'd better do a reality check," said Lessig, "DMCA?"

"Passed." spat Rex with disgust, "Harry Potter?"

"Own all thirty seven."

"World Trade Towers?"

"Had dinner at Windows on the World just last week."

Rex gulped.

"Whoah. Now we're getting somewhere. John Ashcroft?"

"Aschroft? The crazy canola-oil-annointing guy? Don't tell me someone takes him seriously in your dimension?"

"Oh man. George Bush?"

"President. 1989-1993."

"No, I mean George W. Bush."

"George W. Bush?" Lessig scratched his head, thinking hard, "uh, he ran for governer of Arizona or something right? No. I'm drawing a blank on that one. How about the aliens?"

"Uh... excuse me?"

"When did the aliens land in your reality?"

"Aliens?"

"Yeah sure. You know, the aliens?" asked Lessig as if Rex was being particularly dense.

"Aliens? You mean like 'unexplained crop circles' aliens or 'take me to your leader' aliens?"

Now it was Lessig's turn to gulp, "uh, as in 'I am your leader now', actually. Humans haven't ruled the earth in my dimension for over two decades. Why? What's the name of the Supreme Alien Overlord in your reality?"

Rex exhaled loudly and rubbed his head - something he always did when he was perplexed or his mind was blown.

"Now we're really getting somewhere." he said.

"I suppose so, if you are still ruled by members of your own species in your dimension. At some point some action, some fatal intervention, some heroic act took place that has split the world from which I come off from the alternate dimension in which you live. I think I've got... hold on..." Lessig dug about inside his robes and produced another small black box.

"This is a Destiny Potentiameter," he continued, "It measures the ability to fork possible futures off from one another. Quite handy really. I warn you, each one of us, with our knowledge of our respective futures, will probably send this thing off the charts."

Lessig clicked the device on. Unlike the Copyright Destinyatronamaton, this one worked like a geiger counter, clicking as Lessig moved it towards him. He then held it up to Ghyslian's chest, where it continued to click.

"You see - we must be very careful. Planar travel carries many heavy responsibilities."

He slowly swung the Destiny Potentiameter across Rex's brow, and it began to click more insistently. Finally he ran it over me, and it began clicking furiously, almost making a single tone. It made me feel really nervous.

"Looks like Anne has got a bigger role in shaping world history than us." remarked Rex.

"Shut up!" I whispered, kicking him in the foot, "you're embarassing me!"

"That's as may be," said Lessig easily, although a trace of confusion tinted his voice, "Of course, people from this time do not have the same potential that we planar travelers do." he said, turning the device over Andrew's head to demonstrate.

But Lessig did not get the results he expected. The clicks increased in speed until they were a steady whine. Then the machine started smoking. Lessig moved it away from Andrew, but it was too late. Smoke from burning transistors was coming out of the box. Finally, it exploded.

We all stared at Andrew.

"Oh la vache!! What's going on?!" exclaimed Ghyslain, wide-eyed.

"Andrew," said Lessig slowly and with great gravitas, "the fate of the entire planet - indeed, the fate of a couple different versions of the entire planet - appear to rest on the shoulders of both you and Anne here. This matter appears to go beyond realms of intellectual property, however important they may be."

"Well," said Andrew immodestly, "I was appointed by President Hayes himself."

"And just what were you appointed to do?" Asked Ghyslain, one eyebrow raised.

Andrew's eyes narrowed and he dropped his voice to a whisper.

"I'm here to find Cinammon." he said.

* * *

"Cinammon?" I said. The name itself made me sick with Jedi foreboding in a way I can't explain. I glanced at Rex and Ghyslain, and one look at their faces told me that they had felt it too.

"I am not surprised that you haven't heard of her," said Andrew, "Her origins are shrouded in darkness, her true name a matter of deepest secrecy. Not a single daguerreotype of her is known to exist. She is the originally celebrated and quite simply greatest covert agent that the British Empire has ever known. Her identity and activities remain a closely guarded secret known only to the Prime Minister and Queen Victoria herself. Russia and France have sent their best against her, and received only corpses in recompense. She can move through the backstreets of Chinese cities like a ghost, blend in with the population of Persian oases like a native. Her ruthless drive is matched only by the ferocity that her British masters demand of her. From Guandong to Lhasa she has seen that the will of the undemocratic and monarchical British Empire is ruthlessly enforced. And yet for all her lethal effectiveness, we know precious little about her. Nabobs and Shahs mysteriously sicken and perish, files disappear from embassy archives, insurrections flare up in far-off provinces, men die with her name on their lips and a knitting needle - the tell-tale and yet enigmatic sign of her presence - through their hearts. But who is she? Where does she come from? What will she do next? We know nothing about her. Other, of course," coughed Andrew politely, "then that she won the Queen's Award for Industry in 1874."

"A female secret agent in 1879?" laughed Ghyslain, "that seems rather unlikely!"

"Unlikely? Yes. Devastatingly effective? Beyond a doubt. For years this Cinammon has been the black hand by which British policy has been enforcecd in Central Asia. "

"And you...?" prodded Rex.

"And I... I was sent to Asia. My country has interests to protect..."

"Interests in Asia?" asked Rex, pupils rolling up to the top of his eyes, a sign that I recognized through experience with him as 'data withdraw' mode "What interests do America have in China in the late nineteenth century other than continued trade? And why would they be opposed to British intervention, since American and Britain both seek to keep the treaty ports open?"

"Rex, I can tell from you accent - you're an American as well, aren't you?"

"Yes," said Rex, "I'm from California."

"Then surely you understand the dangers America faces! Over 200,000 Chinese have entered California alone in the past thirty years. The yellow menace threatens to overwhelm the brave pioneers who seized California from the indolent Spanish and brought forth the blessings of that bounteous land through Yankee industry and ingenuity. There's even been talk recently of an Exclusion Act to stem the tide of Chinese immigration..."

"Whoah! Hold on Andrew. I like you. I really do. I even consider you - for reasons I'm sort of not allowed to explain to you right now - one of my closest and oldest friends, even though we've, er, just met. Those 'brave pioneers' seized California in an imperalistic land-grab of the worst sort, and that 'yellow menace' you're talking about played a vital role not just in constructing railways, but in creating the start of a middle-class in California. What you call the 'yellow menace' is just the inefficiencies of your beloved 'industrious yankees' being competed out of the nascent service sector of California!"

"Rex, I am sympathetic to what you have to say," said Andrew, "indeed, as a Sinologist myself I can not help but feel a brotherly regard for the migrant Chinaman. But consider this as well: The Ottoman Empire has been a mere diplomatic formality since the Crimean War, and in the past thirty years the Ching dynasty has suffered a series of reversals that have weakened it to the point of collapse - the Taiping rebellions, Muslim unrest here in the far west and so forth. With the Queen now firmly installed as Empress of India, British influences paramount at the Sublime Porte, and the Ching compromised by internal dissent and foreign domination of the economy, is it not inconceivable that America should worry about the unchecked ascendancy of the British in the affairs of Asia?"

"But surely with Bismark's unification of Germa - oh, sorry, that's not going to happen until next year, is it? Er, well, I guess I can see how the US would want to keep a hand in. But still, I've never heard about..."

"Of course," said Andrew smugly, "Open conflict or diplomatic discord would be madness, since as you point out American and British business interests on the coast are essentially harmonized. But beneath this facade lies the world of covert action to which I have been assigned by President Hayes himself."

"So you keep saying. And hence... Cinnamon?" asked Lessig, hands steepled in concentration.

"Yes. I was charged with locating and, uh, neutralizing the British covert agent known as Cinnamon. I first caught her scent in Hunan and have been moving north and west, tracking her activities, for the better part of a year now. Only my immersion in Chinese culture and lifeways has allowed me to proceed as far as Kashgar undetected. At first, I sought to find and, as we say, eliminate Cinnamon as a threat to national security..."

"But then?"

"But then, slowly, I began communicating with her. At first it was just the odd ideogram painted in the blood of her victims every now and again, just to let me know that she knew that I was following her. But her calligraphy..." Andrew paused momentarily before continuing, "even when executed in sanguinary materials, it was both mysterious and gracefully executed, as Tu Meng might say."

"Tu Meng?" Ghyslain asked.

"A scholar from the Tang," said Andrew absently, "It is of no importance. But when I saw her calligraphy I knew somehow, with an undoubtable surety, that she was not what she seemed. Not merely some agent of terror and destruction. The firmness of her hand, the delicacy of her production. Soon she left entire messages on paper, mostly poetry. She seemed to prefer the early Soong. We began..." Andrew swalled hard, "corresponding across cities and through intermediaries. She would quote Su Shi, I would respond with Lin Po. I began to sense the person that this Cinnamon must be..."

Looking at Andrew at that moment, I saw something in his face that I had seen before, or thought that I had seen. He gazed off into the distance, his face oddly clear of expression, but his eyes full of a turbulence of emotion.

"Our correspondence became more... intimate. She told me of her misgivings. She wrote to me of the suffering she had seen the British opium trade inflict upon the Chinese people. Finally the sensitivity of soul that I detected in her writing was matched by a compassionate empathy in the words that she wrote. Our talk began to turn, always tentatively, to betrayal, loyalty, fate, and consequences. Eventually I followed the wake of her poetry to Turfan. It was there that I realized it might be possible to convince her of the error of her ways, to show her the way out of the life of assassinsation and subterfuge that she had been engaged in. I began to imagine myself and...." Andrew removed his glasses and wiped at his eyes, "I cannot say what I began to imagine. But to help save this woman from herself, and to serve my country in the process - it all seemed so possible. And so I was drawn to Kashgar..."

"And so when you saw me...?" I asked quietly.

"Who else but Cinnamon would know my true name? Be able to penetrate my disguise? I naturally assumed that she had made the first move... made that fateful decision to look into my eyes, to confront me face to face, to put an end to calligraphy and stanzas and other people's poetry and..." Andrew paused.

I moved towards him, intending to put his hand on his arm. But the explosion from the cannon outside and the sudden influx of hired assassinss made me decide, a touch regretfully, to make my lightsaber live instead...

VII

The men streamed into the room - dozens and dozens of them. I had just enough time to see Rex and Ghyslain make their lightsabers live before the wave of late-nineteenth century mercenaries washed over me. I began working my way through the writhing, murder-intent mass over to Andrew, who appeared to be fending them off with some sort of absurd-looking form of Victorian boxing. I pulled a man off of him and then turned to knock down another who had intended to jump me from behind. I tried to get him with a short swipe of my lightsaber, but he was too fast and caught hold of the hilt, pushing it towards me. We struggled momentarily for control, his face inches away from mine with my blade sizzling between us.

"I suppose," I grunted, trying to get a grip on the meat of his thumb, "that you're going to tell me you're an executive outcome professional?"

"Executive outcome professional?" said the man, truly nonplussed, "Why no, I'm a hired assassins."

"Well it's good to know people are more straightforward about what they do back in 1879," I said, taking advantage of his temporary confusion to step on one of his feet and, with a mental jerk, pulling his other leg off balance. As he fell over I twisted his hand away from my saber and sent him sprawling.

"You're Uighur is excellent" shouted Andrew over his shoulder as I threw myself against him and we took on the mass of killer back-to-back, "where did you learn?"

"It's the fish," I replied, grunting as I caught another one in the groin.

"The what?" he shouted again, shooting me a strange look.

As I turned I took in the room to try to locate the others, and what I saw drew me up short. About four dozen men lie either groaning or unconscious on the ground. Rex was watching my progress with interest, Ghyslain was idly smoking a Gitane, and Lessig was munching away on a half-unwrapped tuna sandwich he had produced from beneath his robe.

"What... what happened?" I asked, bewildered and exhausted.

Ghyslain looked slowly around the room before letting the smoke from his Gitane drift out of his nostrils.

"Two jedis and a lawyer happened."

"What took you so long?" asked Lessig, producing another home-made tuna sandwhich from his robes, "sandwich? Don't worry, it's dolphin safe."

"Hey, nice move on the footwork," said Rex, coming over and punching me on the shoulder, "Do you see what I mean about finessing it? That was real classy, don't you think, Ghyslain?"

"C'est chouette ca" said Ghyslain drolly, taking another drag on his cigarette, "You've trained her well, Rex."

"Yes, quite well done. Good work Rex." agreed Lessig around a mouthfull of tuna.

"Uh, hello," I said exasperated, "I'm in the room too, you know."

"You're her teacher, Rex?" asked Andrew, catching this last bit, "did you teach her to speak English? Is she Uighur? I don't recognize the, er, tribal markings" he said distastefully, eyeing the moko on my mouth and chin. He shot his eyes over Rex's Jedi robes, "are you some sort of missionary or something?"

"For god's sake, I grew up speaking English - I'm from Auckland," I said, now totally exasperated, "I'm Maori."

"Maori?" said Andrew, eyes widening, "a savage from the south seas?!"

"Oh. My. God." I rolled my eyes, "Andrew, when did you get to be such an asshole?"

"Let me handle this," whispered Rex as he pushed past me to talk to Andrew, he's just a typical late-nineteenth century white man. He doesn't understand this kinda stuff he added in my head.

"Andrew, you are right," said Rex, "but you must understand, Anne is..."

This was too much. Who was he to tell Andrew about my heritage? I pushed past him and looked Andrew right in the eye.

"I know you may not be able to follow all of this exactly," I said, fixing him with the most serious look I could and starting in, "I'm Maori. I'm a New Zealander with full citizenship like everyone else...."

"...she's from a far-flung island!" insisted Rex, trying to butt in.

"...in 1840, nearly a hundre... uh... forty years ago, a group of Maori leaders signed the treaty of Waitangi, in which they ceded their kawangatanga to the crown while retaining their rangatiritanga for themselves. Basically, they agreed to become subjects of the Queen in order to normalize relations with white settlers - particularly in relation to land sale - but they did so on the condition not only that they retain all rights and powers over the land, their rangatiritanga, but that the Queen would actively protect those rights and their chieftanship. As we found out afterwards, the English language version of the treaty was slightly differently worded...

"...their land was ruthlessly stolen by the undemocratic English...!" piped up Rex again, hopping over my shoulder to speak. I stepped hard on his foot and he simmered down.

"And yes, it's true - my father is the leader of my iwi, which you would call the 'lineage' or 'clan' of my people, ngati whatua. He has worked for a decade on the tribunal which has attempted to resolve the legal issues arising from the treaty and has always spoken strongly for the rights of Maori to their land and country. And for the record, my family is highly educated. My father holds a Ph.D. from Oxford and several of my brothers and sisters also hold doctorates. I am the youngest member of my family and was sent to study with Rex here to develop certain, er, unique talents which are quite rare and require special training."

"...she's a princess whose father, the former king, was over-thrown by the conquering imperial power and she is forced to live in exile, traveling abroad to be educated in the ways of the enlightened white race!" Rex finished triumphantly.

I'm very much my father's daughter - I was raised on the politics and culture of my people and have been lecturing pakeha about it since I was a little kid. By this point I had the thumbnail sketch down to an exact science. But no matter how clear I was, I could never quite tell whether people would be able to break out of their prejudices and really listen to what I had to say, or whether they wouldn't get it at all. But still. Even if he was living in a different day and age, this was still the Andrew that I had met in Kashgar, the same man who sat with my on the porch, watching the stars shine above the desert at midnight. Surely he could break out of the racist assumptions of his own time and culture.

"So let me get this straight," said Andrew, brow knotted in concentration, "Anne is a princess from a far-flung island in the south seas; her father, the former king, has had his land stolen by the undemocratic English; and she now lives in exile, traveling with you to be educated in our enlightened white ways?"

I groaned both inwardly and outwardly. White boys: what can you do, really?

"Yes that's it exactly!" enthused Rex, clapping Andrew behind the back.

Something beeped inside of Lessig's robe. He pulled out yet another futuristic hand-held device and examined it closely.

"Rex, something important to the time-space continuum will soon happen in this place. It is not safe to talk here. Ghyslain and I have established ourselves outside of town, in an abandoned Bene Gesserit coven depot beneath the karez south of town. We must away there before the situation grows too dangerous. Once we are settled we can this at length. Andrew, it would be well if you came along."

"But of course."

We made our way cautiously to the entrance of the building. We were about to leave when Lessig pulled us back dramatically.

"Just a moment. One last thing. The tapestry of time is subtly woven and easily unraveled. Any anachronistic acts on our part could cause massive disturbances to past, present and future. When in sight of others, you dare not use sabers or other weapons, if you have them. Everything from the future, even clothing, must be kept carefully concealed...." Lessig paused a minute to gulp down the last of his tuna sandwhich, folded up the saranwrap, and then carefully tucked it back into his robe, "ok. Everybody ready? Let's go."

* * *

We walked briskly down the narrow streets of Kashgar, going as fast as we could without attracting too much attention. I could practically smell Rex in the air, the way he was using the force to deflect attention away from us. Ghyslain was hovering around the edges of my consciousness as well and yet... Was I just more attuned to my master, or was Rex really more together than the pudgy Quebecois, despite the fact that he was on his way to a tenure-track position on the counsel and Rex was still adjuncting? These and a million questions raced through my mind: how would we get back to the present? Why did Lessig consider me so important to world history? And why did I continue to think Andrew was so cute, even after he proved to be a total racist?

The narrow streets opened up to a large plaza. Lessig looked around for a few moments, and nodded at one of the streets on the opposite side. We began walking circumspectly around the edge of the large, clear area, avoiding wicker bird-cages and the stalls of men selling peaches and grapes. Suddenly a voice shot out from behind us:

"You! Halt! NOW!!"

We all froze and turned slowly around.

As we did, we all breathed a sigh of relief which quickly turned into bewilderment. The sharply issued command hadn't been addressed to us at all. On the other side of the square, facing away from us, was a tall white man dressed in an Abraham Lincoln suit. He had stopped a small woman with a basket on her hip and was glaring at her. Her head was completely covered in hoods and veils - obviously an extremely orthodox Muslim. Behind him were a group of asian-looking men. They weren't dressed in uniform, but their careful organization in a semi-circle around the woman and the alacrity with which they watched her gave away their military background.

"Yes, lord?" asked the woman, the sound of her voice muffled behind her veil.

"You will come with us at once!" barked the man.

"Remarkable!" whispered Andrew to us, "he looks just like our great President Lincoln!"

"He does. And I could swear I've met someone like him somewhere before, eh Anne?" said Rex

"Lord?" asked the woman, clearly scared and confused.

"Come come, don't be coy," said the man, moving towards her and stroking the edge of her veil. She turned her head away, demure and terrified.

"My lord, please," she pleaded, inching away from him, "I am just the daughter of a weaver. I have done nothing wrong..."

"We'll be the judge of that," laughed the man cruelly, "now come. If you don't come along willingly, we'll lock you in irons."

"But..." the woman sputtered, "you are are a ferengi, a foreigner... you are not an officer of the imperial army..."

"I am not a servant of the Chinese Emporer, but there are other empires," his voice mellowed to persuasiveness, "Kashgar is quite far from Peking, you know. Who knows into whose hand it may next fall. You're not Han - perhaps it would be to your advantage if the oasis towns were ruled by another. Peking is far from Kashgar, but Moscow..." his voice trailed off suggestively.

"China will never be ruled by a foreign power," said the woman with unexpected strength, "especially not your Russian Czar."

"A strange sentiment for a Muslim," said the man, seeimingly making up his mind about something, his voice growing hard again, "too strange. I've had enough of this witty banter. You'll come with me now, whether you will it or no..."

The soldiers began to move forward as the man reached for the woman's wrist. For a brief second, he had hold of her, and then she moved with unbelievable speed, her robes a rustling mass of motion. In the blink of an eye, I saw something metallic flash through her hands, and the next thing I knew the man was staggering back groaning in pain, holding his hand - a sharp silver needle impaled directly though it, perpendicular to his palm.

Her hands moved so quickly through her robes they almost whistled around her. The guards closest to the women fell to the ground, a single cable knitting needle through each of their eyes.

The woman planted herself firmly on both feet and slowly and deliberately pushed aside her cloak at the hip, as if in challenge to the men in front of her. Beneath it I could see some sort of orange yarn woven into something like a holster. It was a bit like the one I had seen Andrew wear back in 2003, but this one was new and clean while his was old and dirty. And while his held a single gun, this one was littered with gleaming bits of metal stuck in amongst the yarn some of the pieces I could recognize and some I couldn't. A galaxy of lethal sewing notions glittered at her hip.

For a moment the men accompanying the white man in the black suit stood stock still. And then, all in a moment, they charged at once.

In an instance the woman's hands were full of needles, three in each clenched fist. Men fell, screaming in agony around her as she threw them with deadly precision. The first man to reach her tried to punch her. She blocked, pulled a seam-ripper our of her holster, tossed it in the air, caught it ripper-side down, and buried it directly into a very sensitive pressure point between his collarbone and shoulder. The man fell, the entire right side of his body paralyzed. In an instant the woman replaced the seam ripper in the holster and produced two double curved embroidery scissors, spun them around in her hands until she held them in an icepick grip, and tore savagely through the torso of the next man to face her.

"Is that who I think it is....?" ventured Lessig, watching in awe.

One man reached for the woman, pulling her head covering away to reveal a shock of bright red hair.

"Cinnamon!" exclaimed Andrew.

"Drat!" muttered the woman, quickly pulling the hood back over her head and moving towards an alley.

"She's curiously strong," observed Ghyslain as Cinnamon improbably lifted an adult camel over her head and threw it at a group of attackers, pinning five of them beneath the indignant bactrian.

"She's beautiful," breathed Andrew softly.

The men began advancing towards her when a horn sounded behind us. From the street to our backs marched an entire platoon of Manchu bannermen into the square with military precision, led by a mounted officer. They were equipped with ancient muskets, but those would still do the trick if push came to shove. The men attacking Cinnamon took one look at the army and scattered. She was left, scissors in hand, facing the bannermen.

"This town is under the benevolent rule of the Qing Emporer!" roared the officer outlook, "public disorder and rebellious Muslim uprisings will not be tolerated. Give yourself up or we will be forced to put down this disturbance!"

Cinnamon look first left and then right while the leading row of bannermen pointed their muskets directly at her. She was at least five feet away from anything that might provide cover. Slowly the bannermen lowered their muskets, taking aim at her.

I felt the next moment, which I obscurely realized was the future, in a blurry slow motion. The world sped down as if it were underwater. I heard the shot of bannermen muskets, saw the anguish on Andrews face as he ran towards her, screaming. Behind me I felt something important happen, and twisted around to see a thin line of smoke stretch between the roof behind the bannermen and the manchus on the ground. For a moment I wondered idly at the power of the force as I felt the entire scene zoom down below me like a map, the life-force of the everyone in the market pulsing an odd emerald green. I realized somehow that the man in the stall to my right was selling his brother-in-law's peaches. I felt a black presence on the roof and inside of it I felt Rex's thumb on my spine. And then - then I snapped out of it.

"No!!" Screamed Andrew, diving forwards towards Cinnamon. A split second later the bannermen fired on the unarmed British secret agent. A split second after that something screamed off the roof behind the bannermen and exploded into them.

"What the hell was that?!" screamed Lessig, staring up at the source of the explosion.

The bannermen were reloading and glancing uneasily around at the roof. I wanted to answer Lessig but found that I was already running after Andrew. I found him cradling Cinnamon's body in his arm. She was bleeding in several places and was grievously wounded, although she had obviously somehow miraculously managed to avoid most of the musket fire.

"We've got to get her out of here," shouted Andrew urgently, cradling her in his arms and looking at someone behind me, "We've got to get her to safety!"

I turned and saw Rex behind me.

"Aren't you her arch-enemy?" he asked, "weren't you sent here to kill here?"

Another explosion rocked the square.

"Someone's using rocket propelled grenades!" exclaimed Lessig, agitated. Ghyslain was crouched in a fighting stance, protecting him, "What do you think this is, a fucking Dr. Who episode?!?!" he shouted up to the anonymous presence on the roof, "do you want to cause a complete and total temporal collapse?!"

"We've got to get her out of here!" repeated Andrew heatedly.

Cinnamon moaned, shaking her head back and forth slowly as she returned to consciousness. With eyes still closed, she coughed twice, violently. Blood dripped crimson from the edge of her mouth.

"Is that you?" she said weakly in a polished English accent, "it seems so dark to me now..."

"Yes, It's me. I'm here," said Andrew, holding her head in his hands gently.

"I'm sorry... I tried to change things..." said Cinnamon, coughing up more blood.

"I know," said Andrew, tears welling in his eyes, "I know you did, Cinnamon."

"In case this is the end..." she said, coughing up more blood.

"Don't talk like that! We're getting you out of here and straight to a doctor!" cried Andrew, tears now rolling down his cheeks.

"I want you to know it wasn't purely professional... I... I..."

"Yes?" asked Andrew. I could feel his heart breaking in his chest.

"I've always secretly loved you..."

"God!" moaned Andrew, burying his head in her red hair.

"...Jasper!" she finished, passing out.

* * *

Rex looked at me with one eyebrow cocked.

"Who the hell is Jasper?" he asked speculatively.

VIII

Ok, I'll come clean: I'd die to have skin as clear as Cinnamon's. Even passed-out unconscious and recovering from a musket wound she still had this sort of glow of health that I always assumed existed only on the faces of airbrushed models in Jane. And don't even get me started on her hair. It's like the gods of luxuriance had smiled on it or something.

I'd been watching her sleep for about an hour or two. We had made it to Lessig's subterranean hide-out, some sort of Bene Jesserit coven thingie in the underground canals that ran through the fields outside Kashgar. Andrew had gone back into town to see what he could find out about his contacts and Rex and the others were in the adjacent room hashing out their next move when she woke up.

"Urgh..." moaned Cinnamon, sitting up. She caught sight of me and froze. Her eyes darted around the room, examining her situation. Finally she took me in, staring closely at me for a moment.

"He aha to pirangi?" she asked me suspiciously in a polished English accent, "Ko wai tou ingoa? Ka mohio ranei ki te reo Ingarihi?"

My jaw just about dropped to the floor.

"Ko Anne ahau and yes, of course I speak English. You... how did you know I was Maori?"

"Well, the moko did rather give it away my dear," said Cinnamon, sitting up and gently feeling her ribs.

"And you... you speak Maori?"

"I've spent a little time on the south island," replied Cinnamon enigmatically. She stook up and stretched tentatively, glancing around.

"Hmm. Rather odd for a Maori girl to spend time in a Bene Jesserit supply coven. Even one which, judging from the state of these plinths, has been abandoned for some time." she smiled but fixed me with a gaze so full of self-confident competence that I was reminded that I was dealing with the deadliest covert agent in the British empire.

"Well thank you so much. I'd love to stay and chat but I really must be going," she said, walking towards the door.

"I'm sorry, but I can't let you do that." I said, interposing myself between her and the door.

"Why there's nothing to be worried about dear," she said smiling angelically while casually moving the thumb of one hand impercetibly in the direction of a particularly sensitive pressure point on my wrist.

"Not so fast, Cinnamon," I said, stepping back and making my light saber live, "I'm afraid I can't let you leave."

Cinnamon stared in amazement at my lightsaber, at my face, and then back at my saber again. She paused for a moment and sat down sulkily on her cot, produced a small silver cigarette case from within her robes, and lit one up. She held the case up to me.

"Cigarette? No? Well, I suppose it isn't very ladylike. Tell me, why didn't you just say from the beginning you were Jedi?"

"You - you - know what a Jedi is? That I'm a Jedi?"

"Yes of course," she said, shaking out her match and inhaling, "the light saber did rather give it away, dear. You're a padawan, aren't you? Where is your master? We have things to discuss."

* * *

"It's just not cricket Rex," protested Cinnamon, "the British Empire has received repeated reassurances from the Council that it would strictly limit recruitment from subject races pursuant to article five of the Jedi-British accord of 1874. For god's sake, what are you doing training her up? She's got rangatiri written all over her. Do you know how detrimental it would be to my government's interests to have a full-blooded Maori chief trained in the ways of the force? Disraeli and Yoda worked for over a year on that accord! How dare you throw it away now!"

"Looks like your playmate woke up?" asked Rex, eyebrow raised, as I walked in behind her.

"And you!" said Cinnamon venemously, pressing her index finger into Ghyslain's chest, "if this is some French deception..."

"Tabernac" swore Ghyslain softly to himself, "this is no, as you put it, 'French Deception'. I too am Jedi."

Cinnamon looked at his khakis and button-down shirt.

"If you're a Jedi, why are you armed only with a golf ball retriever."

Ghyslain made his light saber live and held it up to his eyes. Cinnamon was visibly impressed.

"Good lord! Two Jedi? On one a single assignment?! And that mysterious new force power I saw earlier - I've never seen anything like it," her eyes narrowed in suspicion, "what is that inscrutable Windu up to now? Why are you in Kashgar?"

"Force power?" asked Ghyslain.

"Yes - that explosion that scattered my attackers - like a precisely aimed cannonade. Are you using Chinese Turkestan as some sort of testing ground for new Jedi powers? A training ground for new Padawan?"

Before we could answer we heard a low sultry laugh from the shadows and a low mettalic clang as a grenade rolled into our midst. I instinctively reached forward with my mind to push it away, sending it scuttling back across the floor. It landed in the darkness and rolled to a stop in front of a pair of black stilletto heels. A small asian woman in a smaller black dress stepped out of the shadows. It was Kathy - the woman Rex and I had met in Chez Panisse. She picked up the grenade and tossed it easily up and down in one hand. The pin was still in.

"Kathy?" gasped Rex, "what are you doing here?"

"You know her?" exclaimed Lesig, "you told us there were only two of you! How dare you withhold information from us, Rex! And you, whoever you are, do you know what you're doing to the space-time continuum?!"

"Don't worry Larry, I know exactly what I'm doing." said Kathy, putting the grenade back into a small black purse.

Cinnamon watched the exchange intently and with growing confusion.

"What is going on here?" she demanded.

"I'll tell you what, Cinnamon. Why don't you tell us what you're here and then we'll decide whether to let you in on our little secret?"

It's a good play said Rex in my head, get her off balance and then pressure her for information. Let's go along for now

I don't trust her responded Ghyslain on Jedi conference call mode but we'll go along for now

Lessig started to say something, but Ghyslain subtly touched his hand and said to Cinnamon, "that's right - you are outnumbered, you endangered our lives, and then we saved yours. Surely you didn't think we let you live merely out of kidness."

"Why we're here is beside the point," said Rex angrily, "what matters is why you are here."

"Ooh," oozed Kathy silkily, "looks like the boys want to play ball. The question is, Cinnamon," said Kathy, tapping her crowbar in one hand, "whether we do this the easy way or fun way."

Cinnamon looked back and forth at us, started to say something, and then stopped.

"Very well," she said finally, "I don't suppose you've ever heard of the codex of lost souls?"

* * *

"The codex of what?" said Lessig with an unbelievably convincing look of total innocence, "Excuse me?"

"No you wouldn't have of course," said Cinnamon, pacing slowly back and forth and smoking her cigarette, "well suffice to say that it's an extremely rare book, and I was sent to find it."

"Jasper told you to find it," I said, before I even realized it. What can I say? The force does that to you sometimes.

"Jasper?" said Cinnamon quizzically, "I don't know anyone named Jasper."

I started to feel real stupid and that I had spoken up at all and must have started making my pouty face because Rex put up one hand and crinkled his eyebrows.

"Not so fast Cinnamon," he said, "your feelings betray you."

I tried to supress a smile - Rex loves using that line, and works it into conversation whenever possible.

"I'm afraid I really haven't the slightest..." began Cinnamon.

"Oh good," said Kathy, noticeably tightening her grip on her crowbar, "we do get to do this the fun way."

"I... I swear I really... Fine. Fine. Although," said Cinnamon, pointing her finger threateningly at us, "I want you to know for the record that I've spent three weeks being tortured by the Turks in Syracuse without revealing this information."

"Trust us." said Lessig appealingly.

Cinnamon snorted.

"Three lightsabers in an enclosed space wounded? I don't much figure that. I know what you Jedi are capable of. Fine then. Yes. I was sent by Jasper to retrieve the codex."

"And who is Jasper?"

"I am not surprised that you haven't heard of him," said Cinnamon, "his origins are shrouded in darkness, his true name a matter of deepest secrecy. Not a single daguerreotype of him exists. He is the originally celebrated and quite simply greatest covert agent that the British Empire has ever known. His identity and activities remain a closely guarded secret known only to the Prime Minister and Queen Victoria herself. Russia and France have sent their best against him, and received only corpses in recompense. He can move through the backstreets of Chinese cities like a ghost, blend in with the population of Persian oases like a native. His ruthless drive is matched only by the ferocity that his loyalty to our great Queen Victoria demands. From Guandong to Lhasa he has seen that the will of the great and noble British Empire is sternly enforced. Nabobs and Shahs mysteriously sicken and perish, files disappear from embassy archives, insurrections flare up in far-off provinces, men die with his name on their lips. Jasper is quite simply the greatest and most brilliant mind at work in the British empire. After Mycroft Holmes, of course."

"Uh... wait a sec. I thought you were the greatest secret agent working for the British Empire."

"Me?" snorted Cinnamon, "I am merely his eyes and... hands. No, Jasper is the true mastermind of British covert policy."

"But Andrew said..."

"'Andrew'?" asked Cinnamon scornfully, "Do you mean Dr. Huff? Yes, of course he doesn't know about Jasper. Few do. In fact," she said, surveying the five of us, "I believe the number may have just doubled."

"Andrew is smarter than you know," I said impulsively, "he's been following you for weeks!"

"Yes, dear," she said, batting her eyes in a way that was at once demure and beguiling, "of course he has."

"Then all of the things he told us, all the letters, they were just...?"

"As you have seen, the Russians obviously have some sort of covert force operating here in Kashgar. I knew in a few days more I'd need someone to fob someone off on them to conceal my activities. Who better than Huff - a mere epigrapher unwisely recruited by Hayes for some cockamamie mission to China. We've been trying to separate Russia from her detente with the United States ever since the Crimea. What better way then to have the Czar believe the Americans are sniffing around their Eastern flank? Especially now, what with tensions in the North Pacific what they are since the Yanks have consolidated their control of California. Although I still don't understand why all the Russian agents dress like the American President Lincoln." sniffed Cinnamon.

"So you set Andrew up to be your fall-guy in your attempts to locate the Codex of Lost Souls. Fiendishly clever." said Rex admiringly.

"I try," said Cinnamon, smiling winningly at him, "and now," she said, growing more serious, "what are you doing here?"

IX

"I try," said Cinnamon, smiling winningly at him, "and now," she said, growing more serious, "what are you doing here?"

"Yes - that was something we were going to ask you actually," said Lessig, eyeing Kathy suspiciously, "Was that a rocket-propelled grenade you used back there? You must be from the future as well!"

"Future...?" began Cinnamon uncertainly.

"That's right," said Kathy easily, "I came through the dimensional portal with Anne and Rex."

"Dimensional Portal!?" gasped Cinnamon.

"With them?" Lessig said, dragging incredulously over the words, "Rex, you never told us this!"

"The last thing I remembered was her tackling me, and then I woke up in the desert... I... I didn't know she..." he glanced at me.

"Well she did." I confirmed glumly.

"I thought it wouldn't be such a good idea landing right next to you two, so I moved a few hours ahead and a couple of miles away from you when I was in the portal." said Kathy.

"You moved?" asked Lessig, "You can control you fall through the inter-planar nexus?"

"Can't everybody?" asked Kathy, batting her eyes at him ditzily in a way that suggested anything other than a lack of cunning.

"Just a moment," shouted Cinnamon, holding out her hands in a 'stop' gesture, "Time travel? Dimensional portals? You do know about the Codex of Lost Souls!"

"Oh sorry," said Rex wryly, pulling the codex from beneath his robes, "did you mean this codex? I thought maybe you were talking about some other ancient codex."

For a moment Cinnamon was perfectly still. The next she dove for the book in a blur of motion - almost as quickly as Rex when he really turns the Jedi speed thing on. I caught a glimpse of Cinnamon lunging towards Rex, then of his hand twisting her wrist, then his face twisted in concentration with his tongue kinda hanging out the way it does when he's playing Counterstrike. And then Cinnamon was spinning wildly away from him. She landed on the ground, coughing.

"The force is strong with you, Cinnamon. But even the second most deadly covert nineteenth century secret agent on the planet is no match for a fully-trained Jedi warrior. So could you just like chill, ok?"

"Why are you here?" demanded Lessig of Kathy.

"That's easy enough," she said, checking Rex's reaction out of the corner of one eye, "my mission here is simple. I work for the IBDA."

Rex let loose a low moan, as if he had been stabbed in the belly.

"No! Oh no. Oh god. Kathy you couldn't.... you... you went over to them?"

We all stared at Rex, who was bent over as if he had been struck in the head.

"Section thirteen." she confirmed with a grim satisfaction.

"Went over...?" I asked slowly.

"Section 13?" said Ghyslain.

"They tried to recruit me...us... before... but I told them... Oh god, Kathy how could you."

"How could she what?" I asked, a bit panic'd now. I'd never Rex act this way before.

"I am here in my official capacity as a representative of the International Ballroom Dance Association." announced Kathy, "and I'm here to make the world safe for Dance Sport."

* * *

"While other sections of the IBDA focus on certifying instructors or defining official dance regulations, occasionally the threats to well-ordered partner dance become great indeed. That's where section 13 comes in." said Kathy.

"You're a black ops operative for ballroom dance? The International Ballroom Dance association has been experimenting in planar travel?"

"We will spare no expense to ensure the safety of the future of partner dancing," said Kathy, "or it's past. You can't imagine the constant danger that a pure and properly-refereed dance sport faces. We're under constant threat of corruption from illegitimate and uncontrolled forms of dance."

"You traveled backwards in time to the nineteenth century to stop discos?" asked Ghyslain.

"Discos?" snorted Kathy, "Hardly. The alienated, solitary bouncing the goes on in those clubs is of no importance to me. No. But the world is full of unregulated partner dancing. It is the sloppy polkas at Polish weddings that frighten me, the new and unlicensed forms of tango. Bachata. Sloppily led under-arm turns, imprecise cross-body leads. Dangerously unsupported dips." Kathy shuddered, "we at section 13 will do anything to maintain the rigorous purity of strictly orthodox ballroom dance."

"What a farce," said Rex, spitting out the words with disgust, "don't you get it, Kathy? The life blood of dance is in street dance. Where do you think the tango came from? Or Salsa? Or, hell, the waltz for that matter. You and the IBDA are living some sort of wierd paranoid fantasy of purity that's just... just..."

As Rex was reaching for his final words, Cinnamon made another try for the codex. This time Ghyslain caught her and put her arm in a lock.

"I shall have the codex. I shall!" insisted Cinnamon, wincing in pain as Ghyslain juiced the submission hold.

"You are getting reptititve." said Ghyslain

"You're pathetic, you know that Rex?" said Kathy, looking him over, "you could have been someone once. You could have had it all. You and I could have been running section 13 by now. And now look at you."

"I didn't want it then and I don't want it now. And I don't want you anymore either." said Rex quietly.

"That's not what you said in those mewling love letters you constantly sent me from that Japanese monkey lab place." said Kathy coldly.

"That's the Nagano Snowmonkey Research Institute..." said Rex, voice cracking in emotion. I could have sworn he was about to cry - something I never thought I'd see in my entire life.

"Enough of this," said Lessig, "the important point thing is to find out why you've came here, to 1879. What is your mission?"

Kathy was distracted, watching the emotions playing across Rex's face in almost sadistic pleasure.

"Oh, I don't have one, really. I was just following Anne."

"Following me?"

"Yes," said Kathy, turning now and producing a small cylinder from her purse, "with this."

"A really slutty-looking frosted lipstick?"

Kathy sighed and twisted the lipstick and it a small light at it's base began flashing and it began beeping. She waved it towards me and it began beeping furiously.

"A destiny potentiameter!" gasped Lessig.

"Yes. We've been tracking Anne for the better part of a month - every piece of instrumentation we have tells us that Anne holds the future of ballroom dance and, by extension, the universe, in her hands."

"Me? So you weren't following Rex at all?"

"Rex?" Kathy said scornfully, glancing over at his slumped figure, "Please. He's just a washed-up has-been with a couple of national titles under his belt. No, I've been assigned to make sure you do the right thing, Anne. I only pushed us through the portal since it seemed to be the only way to keep you safe."

"There must be some mistake," said Lessig, "the hackers at Source Forge all agree that Andrew holds the future of the universe in his hands."

"I admit that it is interesting," said Kathy, eyeing me carefully, "what is your relationship with Andrew anyway, Anne?"

"Uh... I... Andrew?" I said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind one ear and studiously staring at the ground, "oh, um, we're just friends you know."

"I shall have the co - " began Cinnamon.

"Christ de plote sale!" swore Ghyslain, now clearly very fed up, "will you shut it, woman? We're trying to talk!"

"Just friends...?" began Kathy, smiling insinuiatingly.

"They're just friends," said Rex, standing up wearily and walking over to me, "leave her alone Kathy. You may have ruined my love life, but I won't let you ruin hers as well."

"You're embarassing me," I muttered under my breath, kicking him in the foot.

"As a matter of fact, you can leave us all alone," continuined Rex, "Between Ghyslain, Lessig and I Anne will be perfectly safe."

"Oh really?" said Kathy, walking slowly past Lessig and Ghyslain, "what do you know about them really, Rex? That Ghyslain is a Jedi? But there are lots of different kinds of Jedi, aren't there? And Lawrence Lessig - what has he really told you about himself?"

"This is ridiculous!" interjected Lessig.

"That he comes from another dimension?" Kathy continued, undettered, "That in his existence the world is ruled by Aliens? But what else has he told you about? How well do you really know him? How far would he compromise his morals to institute reasonable copyright laws?"

"I am outraged, outraged..." said Lessg again, trying to cut in.

"Shut it, Larry," Kathy snapped, carrying enough command in her voice to actually quiet him down, "you're pathetic 'creative commonners' aren't the only people who have dabbled in planar travel. And as for the canuck," she was standing directly in front of Rex now, running one finger slowly down his chest and looking up at him with big dreamy eyes, "you've seen him in action - the force is stronger in you than it is in him. So why does he have a tenure track spot while the council's still got you doing one year adjuncting gigs?"

"I shall have the co - " screamed Cinnamon shrilly.

I was about to dive towards her to protect Rex when I felt a wave of something sickly purple brush past me and towards her. I looked to see her hanging a foot in the air, her wrists scrabbling madly at her neck as she choked and gurgled. I turned to see Ghyslain, arm outstretched, levitating her by her larynx. He twisted his wrist slowly and pulled his fingers into a fist, and the sounds of her suffocation increased.

"Quiet, cherie. The adults are trying to talk." he said angrily through gritted teach. And then he tossed her against a wall. She collapsed in the heap in the corned, gasping desperately for breath.

"Oh. My. God. Dude. That was so... so dark Jedi." said Rex to Ghyslain, adding with a quiet angry intensity, "you know we're supposed to lay off the whole grip thing, man. What's gotten into you? Kathy tell me what you know abou..."

He turned to address only to find her gone, slipped away into the night.

X

"Dammit, I hate it when she does that." said Rex, murderously eyeing the passage down which Kathy had disappeared.

"I'm sure she won't go far. She'll stay nearby, watching us," said Cinnamon appreciatively, "She seems quite intelligent, actually. She's certainly got you off balance."

"And you guys," said Rex, ignoring her barb and moving towards Ghyslain and Lessig, "You haven't been completely honest with me. what's a tenure-track Jedi doing pulling under-the-belt sith feats?!"

"But please - everyone gets a little, how do you say, hot over the collar some time." Protested Ghyslain.

"Perhaps it is merely a slight difference in our dimensions...?" began Lessig placatingly.

"What are you folks doing here again?" asked Rex, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"I told you," said Lessig, straightening his robe, "we're here to prevent changes to copyright in 1879."

"But there were no changes to copyright law in 1879!"

"Well, yes, of course...." said Lessig without missing a beat, "and we're here to make sure that it stays that way."

"Well we're here by accident," said Rex, taking my hand, "and what we're going to do is find a way to get back to our own time." he said. I nodded in agreement.

"And we'll help you," said Lessig, "despite what sort of doubts that devious leggy asian champion ballroom dancer may have sewn in your mind, we wish nothing but your goodwill. We will follow you and make sure that Anne... er, you and Anne... are returned home safely."

"As shall I," said Cinnamon, "and please don't mistake my enthusiasm for greed. It is only because I have sworn to Jasper that I bring him the codex that I act so beastly rude. Even if I cannot possess the codex by force, I can at least assist you until you reach your goal. Perhaps when you no longer need the codex you may be willing to give it to me."

"Well it'll be a bit before that happens," said Rex, "this book is what got us here, and what's going to get us out. What we need is someone who can tell us how this book works."

They all turned to look at Cinnamon.

"Well don't look at me," she protested, "I'm a covert agent, not a philologist."

"Then who can help read the book?" asked Rex.

"Well I suppose if you gave it to Jasper he'd be more than good enough to - " she broke off after catching the glare that Rex was throwing her way, "fine, fine. I suppose if you had to ask anyone - other than Jasper, that is to say, then Dr. Huff could help you."

"Help with what?" said Andrew, walking into the room after finishing his recconoiter around Kashgar.

"This book," said Rex, showing it to him, "we believe it contains certain... incantations. Can you read it?"

Andrew opened the pages and looked over it curiously. He bit his lip in a cute, geeky sort of way and looked up at Rex.

"Looks like gobbeldy gook to me," he said, "where did you get it?"

"It's kinda a long story," said Rex, "if you can't read it, do you know anyone who can?"

"This?" said Andrew, holding it up to the light, "hmmm.... difficult. It's not only written in an ancient language, it's been encrypted as well. Still, I suppose I do know one or two men who could assist us."

"Great," said Rex, "Let's go then."

"It's not that simple," said Andrew, "they live in Bukhara."

"Bukhara?!" errupted Cinnamon, "you can't expect us to enter Russian territory? Cross the Tien Shens? The journey can mean death, even in the summer. And for what? To be arrested by Cossaks? You're insane, Huff! Insane, I tell you."

"Bukhara has been the silk road's central market for books and manuscripts from time immemorial," said Andrew stiffly, "I have contact there who could be most helpful. And for the record it is not part of Russia - Bukhara is an independent kingdom under the protection of the Russian - "

"Protection?" laughed Cinnamon, "The way Tashkent was protected? The way the Jenghri was protected? The only reason the Emir rules Bukhara is because the Russians haven't yet decided to take it. Mark my words, it's just a matter of time. They're only a few hundred miles from the border of India, and nothing would please them more than to snatch the subcontinent away from England!"

"Regardless," said Andrew with quiet determination, "Rex asked me a question and I answered it. I know someone who can read this manuscript, and they live in Bukhara."

"Then that's where we're going." said Rex determinedly.

* * *

"You can't just go around invading countries where ever you like in the name of peace and democracy!" protested Andrew, sitting uneasily atop his camel and panting in the thin air of the mountain pass, "That's not democracy, it's blatant imperialism."

"India was ruled by tyrants and despots before the arrival of the English," retorted Cinnamon, "And now, thanks to the peace and prosperity secured by the British Empire and its free trade practices, it's flourishing as never before. Union with Great Britain has meant the opening of new financial markets - business opportunities for everyone! Increased health services and infrastructure thanks to the ingenuity of British engineers, and a chance for the Indian people to begin to participate in the benefits of a free and open democracy - after they're ready to assume the burden of self-government, of course."

"But it's not right for one country to suddenly decide it's a global policeman and start invading other countries whenever it felt their internal policies were unjust," protested Andrew, "America would never go so far as to forget the heritage of liberty and democracy that is its birthright and begin to just start taking places over, against the wishes of the international community of great powers, just because it felt like it."

"Tell that to the Sioux," muttered Cinnamon darkly.

"What? What was that?"

"Oh nothing, Dr. Huff. But no matter what you feel about our unilateral foreign policy and the nicieties of international law, we're bettering the conditions of the average person. Even if you consider our actions illegal, don't you recognize this is for the greater good?"

"I wish I could tell you that I had enough faith in an occupying power to believe it could simply snap its fingers and remake a country," said Andrew glumly, "but ousting one unelected regime doesn't mean your replacement will be any better."

I hut-hut'd my camel away from Andrew and Cinnamon and pulled up alongside Lessig and Ghyslain, who were watching them from a safe distance.

"Disgusting." said Ghyslain, rolling a cigarette between his two fingers.

"Like children on a school yard." agreed Lessig.

"What?" I asked them.

"Cinnamon and Andrew," said Lessig, "it's so obvious it's disgusting."

"Disgusting?"

"How crushed out they are," he said, "god, if they were any younger he'd be pulling on her braids on the schoolyard and then running away."

"Oh yeah?" I said, suddenly feeling defensive for reasons I couldn't entirely explain, "they seem to me not to like each other too much at all. What makes you say that?"

Ghyslain sighed, stuck his cigarette in his mouth, and gestured towards them with it before lighting up.

"Is too!" shouted Andrew.

"Is not!" shouted Cinnamon.

"Oh l'amour," said Ghyslain whistfully, taking a grateful first drag on his smoke, "she is - how do you say? - a thing of many splendours."

I couldn't take it anymore. I spurred my camel on and caught up with Rex, who was plodding along a little behind the group. He has this huge 'I'm pretending like I want to be left alone, but for god's sake cheer me up' vibe going on, slumping over his camel like he was falling asleep in the saddle.

"Hey," I said.

"I want to be left alone," he said.

"Your thoughts betray you, Masterson," I intoned seriously, "You seek to be cheered up. Search your feelings - you know it to be true."

Rex smiled wanely.

"What'cha doin'?" I asked.

"Thinking."

"About what?"

"Oh, this and that. The past I guess."

"Kathy?"

Rex smiled again.

"I said 'the past', didn't I?"

"You're not worried about getting through the Tien Shens?"

"This?" said Rex, gesturing at the high peaks that crowded around the small mountain pass we traversed, "naw. This is small stuff."

We rode along in silence for a moment.

"How long have you known her?" I finally asked.

Rex took a deep breath. The clop of the camels' hooves filled the space in our silence.

"When haven't I known her?" Rex finally replied, "Kathy and I - well, it's been a long time. Her family and my family, they go way back. Certain things were expected us of. Dancing was... well, dancing was the least of it."

"She said something abut her winning something, and you...?"

Rex gave a small, sad laugh, "Yeah. That's the least of it. She used to be my partner. We won the Adult Latin Dance Syllabus in 1995. We were officially the best Latin Dancers in the United States."

"Well that's good," I said, trying to be encouraing.

"Sure. Good. Great. More sequins than anyone. More precise turns, the smoothiest Cuban motion. Everyone loves us.. except that at nights I'd go out to the clubs and see people dancing who could blow us away. Not proper. Not dressed in ridiculous and exoticized costumes. Just in love and dancing. Married, most of them - for ten, fifteen, twenty years. They did everything wrong - nonregulation turns, spins out of order, illegal wraps. They didn't care about judges, about appearing to be in love. They just were."

"And so eventually Kathy practiced more, worked harder...?"

"Worked harder?" Rex laughed sadly, "Please. She's a skilled dancer. Technically, she's incredible. But artistry and emotion? She's an empty husk filled full of regulations where her heart ought to be. I kept her afloat for years before I finally decided to get out. No, there's no beauty in her - just raw technique and insatiable ambition. She'd never have won without me."

"But the way she talked - "

"Well of course she doesn't tell it like that. Not Kathy. Not little Ms. Perfect. But why do you think she joined Section 13, Anne? If she was such a contender, why didn't she stay on the circuit and pick up the titles she wanted so badly? Compete internationally? No. She's lying to herself with these stories she tells."

My mind ran over the events that had taken place two days ago.

"But the way she was talking, and the way you looked. I thought you couldn't keep up, that you escaped because of the pressure..."

"Me?" asked Rex, "Hah! No. But I do feel guilty. Guilty about..."

His voice trailed off into a silence I refused to fill.

"I guess I feel guilty," he finally continued, "for letting her fall into Section 13. Maybe if I'd cared more, spent more time with her, not given up on her... maybe if I'd done all that, she'd be the person she always longed to be. Maybe I feel guilty about letting her down. Because I was the only person on the planet who could make her a champion. And I was the only person on the planet who thought there was something more important than her winning."

"Rex, come on, you've got to be exaggerating..."

"Anne, did I ever tell you what I did before I became a Jedi?"

Rex's eyes were blinking. I realized, later: with tears.

"No."

"Should I be telling you this at all?"

"Why not?"

"Because I'm your teacher... because... because I'm supposed to be strong for you. To provide a good example, not to - "

"Te manu e kai ana i te miro - nona te ngahere. Engari te manu e kai ana i te matauranga - nona te ao," I said, "My father said that to me once like his father told it to him. It means... it's hard to say to paheka what it means. I guess it means that when you live somewhere, it's easy to eat what grows there. But in order to live fully, you must eay the foods of all different places, so that you can grow with all of them inside of you, making you strong. Does that make sense to you?"

Rex smiled.

"Have you ever heard of Kosho Shorei Ryu Kempo Jujitsu, Anne?"

I admitted I hadn't.

"It's an ancient and idiosyncratic school of martial arts," said Rex, "My father, Honorable Headmaster Laszlo M. Masterson, was one of the greatest living practicioners of the art. He oversaw the training of hundreds of new instructors, first in Hungary and then, after he emigrated to LA, in the states. He lead them through the 36 Chambers where they faced the trials that would determine their fitness as instructors of the way of true Kosho Shorei Self Defense. He was a great and well-respected man. But ultimately he could never ascend to head of the school. Only the hereditary founder of the school, the son of the son of the son of the patriarch, could become Great Honorable Headmaster. But that man, the Great Honorable Headmaster Edmonton Yang, did not have a son."

"He didn't?"

"No. He had only one child."

Lights went off in my head.

"Kathy?"

"Like many emmigrant Asian Americans to the United States, he sought respectability the only way he knew how - admittance into the upper middle class followed by a rigorous and unrelenting regime of violin, ballet, and singing lessons for his daughter. And as an observant Jew I could not begin my training for the 36 chambers until after my Bar Mitzvah. Well, you can see the angles. A union of our two houses would mean a destiny of greatness for the Mastersons and the Yangs. And even if we couldn't practice martial arts together, we could at least dance."

"So when you were thirteen...?" I began.

"Thirteen?" scoffed Rex, "Please. I can't remember when I started dancing with Kathy. Certainly before I could tie my own shoes. We would practice Tango with a single strand of silk and a ruler. If our bodies separated far enough to allow the silk to fall, he would hit us with the ruler."

"Rex that's awful!" I said, genuinely horrified, "I can't believe they did that to you!"

"It seems harsh, I know," he said, smiling wanely "But in time I learned to take it. And it was excellent practice, I suppose."

"But when you were an infant, the council must have found you and told your parents....?"

"Yes, when I was an infant, the Jedi told my parents of my potential - that they should take me away. But there was no way he would give me up. I was bred and raised to be the greatest martial artist and ballroom dancer ever produced by the tribes of Judah. The news from the council merely whetted my father's appetite, confirmed in his mind that I would succeed."

"And so that's why you're an adjunct and not on tenure track?" I said, finishing the story from him, "because you started your training so late?"

"By all rights I shouldn't be here at all," he confirmed, crumpling up, "the council took a chance on me, when no one else would. I owe them everything. It's why I don't complain - even when I see people like him," he said, gesturing to Ghyslain, "I owe them that much."

I schooched my camel closer to Rex's and laid my hand on his arm.

"I think you're wonderful," I said, my voice trembling with emotion, "You're a great person and a great teacher. I could never be who I am today without your help."

Rex patted my arm sadly.

"Thanks Anne..." he said distantly, inconsolable, staring out at the distance.

"What makes this martial art of yours so special anyway?" I asked him, "you've trained in it? I've nver seen you use it."

He laughed bitterly, "I don't like to live in the past. You've never seen me cha-cha either. And... trained in it? I suppose I'm it's greatest practitioner now that my father has retired, for all that that counts. Kosho Shorei is unique among other martial arts - a pariah. While most of the Japanese and Okinawan styles can ultiamtely be traced back to Chinese roots (and particularly the second, or southern) Shaolin temple, Kosho Shorei has other, obscure origins."

"What other origins?" I asked eagerly.

"Well," said Rex, "It's hard to separate truth from fiction. But the story goes that it was originally developed not in China, but in Tibet, by an ancient ninth century monk known as Gyangsen Norbu...."

Before Rex could truly start his story he was interrupted by Lessig, who rode up excitedly, casting dust everywhere.

"Rex," he said, "we've encountred a problem up ahead. Some ancient monk named Gyangsen Norbu. Said he wanted to have a word with you...?"

"Christ," spat Rex, "it's like: could my past even ever come back to haunt me more?"

I looked at him with through arched eyebrows.

"On second thought - don't answer that," he said.

* * *

The summit of the Tien Shens opened out to a small, dusty clearing. Someone had stuck a split length of bamboo into the mountainside, funneling clear mountain water into a sort of nineteenth century central Asian water fountain. It was a resting point, and you could see why. A split in the mountains below cracked open a breathtaking view of the Jenghri basin. Sitting on the dirt on the side of the road were two unusual characters. One was an ancient Asian man. He was wearing unusual saffron colored robes, but what was most noticeable about him was his hair - although his head was shaved clean this was more than compensated for by the whispy white beard growing off the tip of his chin, which must have been about two feet. Even more remarkable, though, where his pure white eyebrows, which were themselves at least a foot long and blew loosely in the breeze. His hand were arranged in some strange position, as if he were playing cats cradle without string and had then suddenly stopped. His eyes were closed as if in concentration, although his face seemed perfectly relaxed. Standing besides him, staring out at the vista below, was a young, pale-faced man dressed up like Abraham Lincoln.

I felt a small red tear behind me and knew that Ghyslain had made his lightsaber live and would in a moment dive for the young man. I had seen enough as well. I didn't know who these Abraham Lincoln impersonators were, but I new what to expect from them. I leapt from my camel and made my lightsaber live as well.

In a flash the old man's eyes opened, just in time to see three very fine gauge needles fly from Cinnamon's hand. I felt my ears crackle wierdly.

"Buddha's sleeves!" cried the old man in a resounding voice as he flung one arm forward. The sleeve of his robe shot forward about fifteen feet and folded over the air around Cinnamon's needles, catching them fast before returning almost instantaneously into his robes.

"Impressive," I muttered, shouldering past him and towards the young man, "but you'll excuse me if I have a few questions I want answered."

Ghyslain was catapulting over the old man, and I had just touched his shoulder when he shouted again.

"Gusts of Righteousness! Tail of the Dragon!"

Then he was moving at a blur so fast not even my Jedi eyes could follow him. I felt a sharp blow to my solar plexus and blacked out.

* * *

I came to a second later, lying prone on the ground with the wind knocked out of me. Ghylain was lying crumpled up a few feet away moaning softly. Beyond him, sitting exactly as I had found him was the old man. As my breath started to come back to me I gasped - not in gratitude for a breath of fresh air, but in amazement. He was holding both of our lightsabers in his hands. I felt that strange crackling in my ear again.

"Hmph," said the old man grumpily, "your kung-fu is pretty fierce. But still."

I turned behind me, looking to Rex for help, but he was just standing there, staring at the old man who had just defeated two Jedi without breaking a sweat. And he didn't seem the least bit surprised at what had just happened.

"Rinpoche," said Rex humbly, "my friends meant no disrespect."

The man looked at the two of us and then at Rex. My ears crackled.

"I am damn satisfied to be addressed respectful by you. These bastards should learn respect."

I saw Rex stick his finger in his ear as if trying to get something out of it.

"Rinpoche?" asked Rex doubtfully. He turned to me. "Anne? Are your ears buzzing?"

"Yeah," I said, standing up and dusting myself off.

"It must be the language he's speaking. Sometimes the Babel Fish has trouble."

"Trouble? I thought they were supposed to be able to translate anything!"

"Sometimes they have difficulty. Extremely nuanced languages, like High Court Javanese, throw them for a loop. As do exteremely stupid language like Esperanto or non-human languages like Basque or achaic languages like the one this man must be speaking. What does it sound like to you? English?"

"He sounds like a badly-dubbed seventies martial arts flick to me." I said.

"And I," he said. He turned to the man and made a complex gesture with his hands - a sort of fist, then hands steepled in prayer, ten a sort of triangle.

"Ah," said the old man sagely, stroking his beard before improbably producing a small teapot and two cups from within his robes, "have some tea. It's my free policy for great warriors like you."

Rex sat down opposite the man and accepted the tea. After a sip he said, "Are you truly Rinpoche Gyanseng Norbu?"

"I am," said the man, sipping on his tea and then wrinkling his mouth into a wry smile, "and this is the Russian monk Pilgram Klaasen."

"I'm not a monk," protested the man in the Abraham Lincoln suit peevishly, "I keep telling you that."

The man walked up to me and shook my hand warmly. Even under the Abraham Lincoln suit there were major indications of cuteness.

"Hi. I'm Anne," I said, "Sorry about that. It's just that I've had several bad experiences with people who look like you.

The man nodded sagely, "Eppians most likely. Are you coming from the Tarim basin? I hear they've been active all along the silkroad south of the Tien Shens."

"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" asked Lessig.

"I work for Section 13." said the man, a bit proudly. The more I looked at him the more I realized how young he was. Underneath the sideburns and the big hat he couldn't have been twenty three, if that.

"You're a little short for a ballroom dancer." I said, trying to arch my brow in a cynically entrancing way like Princess Leia.

"Ballroom dance?" said the man, confused, "No. I'm from Section 13. Section 13 of the Imperial Russian Forestry Service - Mennonite Special Services."

"You're a Mennonite?"

"Of course," said the man, gesturing to his outfit, "What do you think? That I'm an Abraham Lincoln impersonator?"

XI

Sarah turned her round, freckle-speckled face towards me.

"Mennonites?" she asked incredulously.

"What can I say? That's how it happened," I grumped, trying to get out of my chair. She stood up and gave me her hands, helping to pull me up.

"I just don't think it's appropriate for the head of the Jedi Council to publish such... such... salacious things in her memoirs. It'll cause a scandal. I mean it's obvious you're going to end up sleeping with this Andrew person."

I let my eyes twinkle madly for a second, "Is it?" I asked her.

I began walking towards the kitchen, feeling the dull arthritic crackle of my knees.

"You know," said Sarah from behind me, "there are computer programs you can use for dictation now. You don't need to make me do it."

I had reached the prep table in the kitchen now, and stopped for a moment to put on my far-distance glasses.

"Do you really mind it so much?" I asked her, looking imperiously over my hornrims. I'd learned decades earlier that there was nothing better for intimidating Padwans into submission than good old-fashioned School-marmism and a pair of hornrim glasses. I could see Sarah visibly stiffen to attention.

"A padwan's duty is to obey at all times." she responded primly.

"Trust me I know," I said drolly, "but honestly - do you really mind it so much?"

"Well I sure will if you don't end up sleeping with Andrew." she said, letting her eyes twinkle this time.

I chuckled - dryly, as I always did these days - and pushed a strand of curly, grey hair behind one of my ears.

"You're embarasing me," I muttered, turning to the tomatos as I was supposed to.

"Didn't padwan talk to their masters like this back in the upper neolithic, when you were still in training?"

"Rex and I? Never. He was always very inhibited that way. Are these the tomatos from the garden?" I asked, pretending to be looking at the wicker basket full of tomatos on the table in front of me while glancing surreptitiously at my watch.

Thirty seconds.

"Yes. I brought them in this morning, during your 2pm conference call to the UN. I think they came out wonderfully, don't you?" said Sarah, puttering up around the living room, cleaning up after me. She's really very devoted, "Old Rex Kenobi. Gosh - I can't believe you actually knew him. He's like a legend to all of us at the academy. Some say he still does the odd job for the council."

"Oh yes, he's still around. Spends most of time these days on Mars," I said, taking a plate down from a cupboard, "lighter gravity and so forth. Easier for the bones. We still see each other occasionally."

I glanced down at my watch: Fifteen seconds.

"You know one thing that Rex always taught me?" I asked her.

"What?"

"That every experience in life is a learning experience. Cut these up, will you?" I said suddenly, throwing two tomatoes and the plate at her.

I saw Sarah's eyes widen in surprise, and then watched her whip out her lightsaber and make it live. She caught the plate with her mind four feet off the floor and held it there, deflected the tomatoes upwards, and thrummed her lightsaber in the air. The tomatos fell in paper-thin slices on the plate in front of her.

Five seconds.

"That wasn't very fair of you," she said, pleased at her success but unhappy with my dirty trick.

Three seconds.

"Life sometimes isn't fair. The point is simply this, Sarah: Never be caught off guard."

Now.

The room exploded in the sound of piano wires dragged across kitchen knives. In the center of the living room a brilliant blue rectangle shot up and a young Maori girl stumbled out of it.

"Anne!" I shouted, "Don't worry! Everything is fine!"

Her clothes were singed, she smelt of ozone, and she grimaced in confusion. But to me she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Young, happy, healthy, with her whole future in front of her - a wonderful vibrant person with a raw-rubbed optimisim that hadn't been tarnished with the death of loved ones and years of politicking.

"Ohmigod," she said, eyes fixing on my as she backed away, "Omigod. Omigod. Don't touch me. Whatever you do. Don't touch me. Omigod. Omigod."

I laughed, and I think I started crying a little.

"Oh little sister," I said to her in Maori, "You look beautiful Anne. Really, you do."

"I'm... I mean, you're. Ohmigod. Ohmigod. I... er... uh, so... where do I start? Uh, so like, everything's ok?"

"Oh darling, you don't know the half of it. It's quite a life we've managed to lead. Wonderful."

Her eyes got even wider, and I could tell she had finally noticed my moko.

"You're... I'm... My face - it's covered."

"Oh yes."

"Wow," she said, smiling a little, "oh wow - that's so cool."

"Can't fill you in on the details, dear," I said, taking a few things out of my pocket, "temporal collapse and all that. But I did put together a little care package for you." I tossed her the note with the exact time she'd come through the portal, the mousetrap, the empty bottle of perfume, spare knitting needles, and bag of individually tatooed herring (oh, how I remembered those herring!), and some Arnott's Biscuits.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" she asked.

"Well, I hope you'll be a good girl and share the biscuits with your friends when you get back. As for the rest, well.... let's just say you'll know what to do when the time comes."

"What's this for?" she asked, looking at the note.

"Oh, it's so I'll know when you're coming. In a fit of pique in your old age you decide to use this momentous event as the half-way point in your memoirs, and to teach your padwan a lesson into the bargain."

"My padwan?" she asked, grin turning wolfish, "wow - I get a padwan?! How cool is that."

"Sixty four of them, actually."

"Oh man, I totally rock." she said. Then her brow crinkled, "wait a sec - how did you know the exact second I would appear?"

"I don't know," I said, "you're the one who gave the note to me... uh... I mean I gave to you... Hmph. I see what you mean."

I - I mean the younger me - started glowing a tell-tale blue.

"And one more thing!" I shouted at her as she grew more and more indistinct.

"...what?.." she said in a voice sounding more and more underwater.

"Don't be a fool you silly girl! Kiss him when you get the chance!" I screamed after her.

There was a bright flash, another caterwauling explosion, and she was gone.

I savored the picture of her face in my mind's eye and slowly began laughing. For a moment I could forget the testimony my knees and knuckles gave to my age and remember what it felt like to be sixteen years old and awash in life, bewildered in Bukhara and loving every minute of it.

I turned to look at Sarah. The plate had shattered at her feet where she had dropped it, tomato and ceramic a mingled mess of white and red.

"Like I told you," I chuckled, my dry lungs bringing the reality of the full weight of my age back to me, "never be caught off guard."

"I... I mean Anne, you were so beautiful."

I looked over my hornrim glasses at her.

"And what do you think I am now, child? Ugly?"

Sarah began sputtering in confusion.

"Never mind, never mind," I said, chuckling and walking slowly back to my recliner, "clean up that mess and let's get back to work. The next chapter is going to be a little hard to work into the plot line, but don't worry darling, I promise to describe you as 'really very devoted'."

Sarah sat down next to me and picked up her pen and paper.

"It's a bit more interesting a story to you now, isn't it?"

She nodded seriously.

"All right then," I said, running my hands through her hair and carelessly straightening a mis-fallen curl, "let's begin then, shall we?"

I settled back in my chair and let my memories wash over me.

"'Sarah turned her round, freckle-speckled face towards me...'" I began slowly.

XII

"We left Germany for Russia one hundred and twenty years ago," said Pilgram, idly stirring up some embers in the fire with a stick, "Catherine the Great promised us freedom to worship in our way and exemption from military service."

We had arrangd out tents in a circle around the fire to try to keep the wind out, but even without the wind the night air of the Tien Shen's was more than enough to take your breath away. I sipped on my tea, pulled my blanket even closer around me, and continued to listen.

"The Russians had just begun their sweep across the steppes. We were sent to the Volga. It was a golden time for our community - the farmland was rich and we were left to ourselves. We Mennonites are simple people, Rex. We want nothing more than to live a decent Christian life."

Rex nodded sympathetically.

"But soon troubles began. Our century-long amnesty freedom from military service was revoked and, to compensate, we began to work in the Imperial Forestry Service. Other people came to settle in our areas - people who smoke and drank and swore. People who thought of nothing but money and pleasure - and were more than willing to cheat us out of the first if it meant they could get the second. For the first time, we realized we must have Mennonites who would be willing to enter the larger world in order to protect our interests, no matter how repugnant that world might seem. And so Section 13 was born. We chose 'thirteen' because we thought it sounded mysterious. Do you think it sounds mysterious?" he asked hopefully.

"Very," said Rex.

"Well, at first we only needed a few people - just to keep an ear to the ground. But soon we realized the entire heart of Asia was riddled with secrecy and subterfuge! Agents of all of the Great Powers intrigue to achieve supremacy in the hinterlands of British India."

"You don't say?" asked Cinnamon sarcastically, sipping at her tea and pursing her lips, "oh, what I wouldn't give for some proper tea."

"It's not easy being a Mennonite secret agent," reflected Pilgram philosophically, "in fact its quite difficult to engage in espionage when you're a pacifist who doesn't smoke or drink and who considers lying highly immoral."

"I've met some people like you before," said Rex carefully to Pilgram, "but they didn't seem like pacifists to me."

"Those 'Abraham Lincoln impersonators' as you put it?" spat Pilgram, "Eppians. Followers of Klaas Epps. He's a mad man. He believes the End of Days is at hand, and has gathered a group of fervent fellow-believers. They've sold everything they own, given up their land, and plan to move to Russian Turkestan and await the coming of the Messiah - and I've no doubt he intends to establish himself as the leader of the poor innocents he has duped. I was put on the case, try to reason with them. I tried to speak with Klaas, but he's resorted to the basest sorts of violence and mind washing in order to spread his cult of personality. Definitely not a good sort of fellow."

"Sounds like someone who could inspire a movement even centuries after his death," said Rex, staring me in the eye, "They'd probably still dress just like him."

"Probably," said Pilgram, "At any rate, I couldn't stop him from trying this arduous trek to Tashkent. So I'm on my way to Kashgar to see whether the new ruler of Greater Kashgaria will at least allow them to enter his country on terms similar to Catherine's."

"The ruler of Greater Kashgaria?" asked Cinnamon, "that insane Tadjik Yakob Begh? His flash-in-the-pan hegemony of the Tarim basin crumbled last year. Kashgar and the oasis towns of the Taklamakan are under Ching control again."

"And they're very touchy about it," added Lessig, "we've run into them one more than one occasion."

Pilgram's face turned pale.

"Then all my hopes... my plans...?"

"They were crushed by Ching troops who were fed with undemocratic Russian grain," said Cinnamon.

"And British weapons." added Andrew sharply.

"You can't prove that..." began Cinnamon.

"Whoah, hold on, settle down," said Rex, trying to calm them down before Cinnamon and Andrew got involved in one of their lengthy arguments about geopolitics, "I know it's bad news, Pilgram. But don't worry. I'll help you find some way to talk some sense into this Epps guy."

"You will?" asked Pilgram, smiling hopefully.

"Actually," said Rex, grinning broadly, "I already will have done. And judging from how pissed off they were at me in Chez Panisse, I did a good enough job that they're still itching to even the score a hundred and twenty years later."

* * *

"Well it's good to know I've a friend I can count on," said Pilgram, shaking Rex's hand, "Jaansen here has been a guardian angel to me, but..."

"Gyangsen," corrected the old monk pointedly.

"...but it is good to have more friends."

"A Buddhist priest and a Mennonite travelling together. I admit it does make a certain sort of sense." reflected Lessig.

"Yes. Our faiths are remarkably similar. But there are differences. Have you seen their churches, Lawrence? They're so... worldly."

"My comrade seeks enlightenment without mala, thangka, incense, or prayerwheels." noted the monk dryly.

"And he's much better than me at hurting people." shot back Pilgram affectionately.

"Hmn," snorted the ancient monk in a dubbed-over, Shaw-Brothers produced kung-fu voice, "Martial arts training. Good for Buddhist discipline. You talk so mighty but still. My kung-fu is more than a match for you."

"Rinpoche Norbu," said Rex calmly, "what are you doing here?"

"I was in hermitage. Meditating on Buddha. Then I receive secret message of vengeance for Yarlung Emporer btsang Langdharma. So I thought 'Ok, I'll do that.' Now I'll kill those T'ang bastards dead."

"The T'ang? The T'ang dynasty has been extinct for centuries," said Andrew, confused, "and Yarlung? I'm an expert in the history and philology of the Chinese and Russian Turkestan, but I've never heard of 'Yarlung'."

"I'm not surprised," said Rex, "It will take over a hundred years for the first English-language history of the Tibetan Empire to make it into print."

"Tibet?" laughed Cinnamon, "as in 'Shangri-la'? It's only a myth. Even our best covert agents in Nepal have only made tenative forays east of Nepal. The usual sort of traveler's stories: cities made of gold, fantastic temples full of frankicense and myrrh. But really - what sort of civilization could possibly exist in the barren mountain ranges between Tashkent and Kathmandu?"

"Well, I'll leave that to history," said Rex, "just take my word for it, for three hundred years the rulers of the Yarlung valley controlled a massive Tibetan empire that reached across Central Asia. Kashgar itself used to be under Tibetan control. At the time, Buddhism had only just reached Tibet, and it entered into a rich syncretic relationship with the indigenous shamanistic religion practiced there. The result as we know it was Lamaism. But back in the day, Buddhism was enrolled in the state-building project of the Yarlung rulers who acted as its patrons. Hence Tibetan Buddhist warrior monks - religion is the opiate of the masses meets special forces storm troopers. They were all purged when the empire declined and Buddhism took on its usual pacifistic tone. But that was... god. King btsang Langdharma? He was assassinsated in 842."

"1842?" asked Andrew.

"No dude - 842."

"Are you trying to tell me this wizened Tibetan warrior monk is over a thousand years old?" asked Cinnamon wryly.

"It was a very long hermitage." said monk, taking another sip on his tea and smiling quietly, "and after all, my kung-fu is very fierce."

* * *

We struck camp about an hour before dawn that morning. Rex shook Pilgram's hand warmly and bowed to Gyanseng Norbu.

"You're sure you want to continue on to Kashgar?" he asked them.

"We've got to see the original plan through," said Pilgram, "Who knows? Perhaps I can reason with the Chinese. Regardless, I'll return to Tashkent before long. Perhaps I'll see you there?"

"We have business in Bukhara first," said Rex, "but yes, we'll come to Tashkent just as soon as we can."

"Excellent. Oh, if you find yourself in trouble in Bukhara, I suggest to you talk to Syvestro D'Alogna. He's the Russian advisor to the Emir. He's the true power in Bukhara."

"D'Alogna? Doesn't sound like a Russian name."

"No, I believe he's some sort of renegade Italian cavalry officer. An adventurer - Ragusan or something of that sort. You know the sorts of people who fill these commissions in the frontier. I've never met him myself but... well, you know how heavily Russian concerns weigh on the emirates of Transoxania. And we Mennonites have many friends in Russian Turkestan. If there is anyone who could help you, it would be him. You can mention Section 13 if you think it would help."

We shook hands again and parted ways, they towards Kashgar, while we continued on to Bukhara.

* * *

A week passed.

"Are we there yet?" I asked forlornly

"No." responded Rex wearily.

We continued trudging along.

"Are we there yet?"

"No."

"You know, you could have told me Bukhara wasn't exactly right on the other side of the Tien Shens."

"You didn't ask."

"You could have told me we had to cross Kyrgyzstan."

"You didn't ask."

"And the Pamirs."

"You didn't ask."

"And Samarkand."

"You didn't ask Anne."

We continued in silence for a moment.

"Are we there yet?"

* * *

"I don't like the looks of this," I said, nudging Rex uneasily, "this place looks really sketchy."

We were sitting around a large table in a small house in Bukhara. At one end a squatty, hunchbacked little man was scrutinizing the codex. Across the room Cinnamon was attending to a Russian samovar, preparing tea. Andrew was standing over the man, following intently as his finger traced across the lines of text on the codex's pages.

"Ah yes..." said the man, "I've heard rumours of course, but yes! Here it is!"

"You can read it?" asked Rex eagerly.

"Oh yes. Well, not all of it," said the man carefully, "there are words within words in this tome - stories on top of stories, alphabets running intermingled. But yes, I can make out much that is in it."

"So some major palimpsest action?" Rex asked.

The man chortled, "oh indeed. Languages the nations have forgotten. Words that the world has not yet spoken. They all lie within the codex."

"And you know how to get us out? Send us back to the future?"

"Future, future, future," the man mumbled, turning over pages. Finally he found a spot and looked up at us, "yes - this is about the future. Just the two of you? Would you like to try to visit the future?"

Rex nodded and looked at me. I nodded at him back.

"Just a quick test," he said, "we have some business in Tashkent to attend to before we go whole hog on the time travel stuff."

"Ah, well then, perhaps just a dip into the pool of lost souls, then," said the small man off-handedly, starting to work.

A chill went down my spine.

"What did you say?" I asked him.

"The pool of lost souls?" said the man, chuckling again, "who are you people to possess the Codex and know not of the pool? It is the Codex's source of power."

Rex and Ghyslain were both paying careful attention now, and I could tell they were experiencing the same intuitive foreboding I was.

"This pool - it's a place?" asked Ghyslain.

"There are a million stories and it is a million different things. It is an oasis in the desert from which the book emerged. It is the lapping waves of ours souls' unconscious. Some say they can see its waters in the blue light that sometimes streams forth from the tome. 'To read the Codex of Lost Souls is to travel through the Pool of Lost Souls' - the Codex weaves destiny through the power of the Pool. It is everything and nothing - a rumor or illusion like the Codex itself. Except of course," chuckled the man again, "I have today for the first time seen the Codex with my own eyes. Do you still wish...?"

Rex nodded.

The man began chanting in a low, gutteral tongue, tracing an intricate pattern on the page of the book. It began glowing a bright halogen light. Suddenly, an enormous doughy mass of blueness seemed to swell up from the page. It surged out at Rex and I, wrapping pseudopodia of sticky brightness around us.

"Rex I don't like this," I said, trying to squeeze free from where it had wrapped itself around my waist, "something's wrong..."

"Oh my," said the man, making for the door, "that wasn't supposed to happen!"

Suddenly an extra limb shot out of the light that encircled me, thrusting it's way into one shadowy corner of the house. I heard a gasp and saw the time-tentacle dragging Kathy out of her hiding place by her ankle. Then the next thing I knew it was splurging hydra-like across the room, enwrapping Andrew, Lessig, Ghyslain, and Cinnamon in its grasp. I tried to reach for my saber but the next thing I knew I felt my vision blank out and my body sublimate back into the falling indeterminacy of dimensional rift. And then...

* * *

Well you know what happened then. Suffice to say a few minutes later I found myself back in some dingy bookseller's shop in Buhara with my arms unexpectedly full of Arnott's biscuits and a bag of tatooed herring. With the exception of the bookseller, who was staring in awe at the events that had occurred, the room was empty. Then I heard a sharp crackle and Ghyslain reappeared, clutching a live light saber and turning around agitatedly, searching for an enemy.

"Suis-je...?" Ghyslain began in surprise before realizing where he was.

There was another crack and Andrew reappeared, crouched on all fours.

"I... Anne...? You'll never believe where I just was. We were talking and..."

"Andrew? What happened? Are you alright?"

"I must... I... I travelled through time and space, Ann," he gasped.

"Feels wierd, doesn't it?"

A few feet in front of me Rex sizzled into existence. He lurched drunkenly, catching himself on the table and swaying uneasily back to his feet. I was about to rush to help him when I realized the source of his disorientation.

"Is that a Pina Colada?" I asked, eyeing the fake coconut with the pink straw and green paper umbrella poking out of it that he held in his hand.

"Uh... no. Of course not, it's, uh..." he said, trying to find a place to hide the coconut. Finally he gave in and fessed up, "Dulce de Leche," he clarified.

I looked him over more carefully. He was wearing a lei around his neck, and...

"Rex - is that lipstick on your face?!"

"What? Lipstick? What? No of course not. What are you talking about?" he said quickly, trying to wipe it off his lips.

My eyes narrowed and my voice lowered to a suspicious hiss.

"Oh. My. God. Is that a hickie on your neck?"

"Hickie?" said Rex is desperate embarassment, closing the clasp on the neck of his Jedi robes, "No. I. Um... hair curling? I was curling my hair, and I uh..."

A moment later Lessig appeared, looking around wild-eyed.

"I had the strangest dream!" he exclaimed, "and you were there... and you were there..." he said pointing at each of us, "I was back in Chez Panisse - back before they had redecorated it. And you were there Rex, with Anne and Kathy and some tall man who looked like an extra from Dune. And then the next thing I knew there was some little red-headed man threatening to kill you. So I knocked him unconscious, but then I saw, uh... me. I told him not to touch me and..."

"And then Kathy and Anne pushed me through a dimensional portal?" asked Rex.

"Why yes. How did you know?"

"I was there, remember?"

"I must have been thrown a few days into the future as well," said Andrew, recollecting, "I was in the bushes in the fields outside of Kashgar. I was walking along and then I came upon a farm house. And... I saw myself and Anne there. We were sitting and watching the moon and talking. And we were drinking too - some sort plum brandy, like the sort they make Tirana...."

I started blushing intensely and staring at the ground. I felt like I had a million strands of loose hair that needed to be tucked behind my ear.

"Uh yeah right," I said, "probably that was just a few days in the future or something."

"And then we got into some sort of agument. She stormed into the house, got her ligthsaber and left."

"You didn't say anything to yourself?" asked Lessig.

"Well no," said Andrew, "I'm new to all this time travel stuff compared to you folks, but I figured the farther I was away from myself the better, so I..."

At that moment the room gave off a mighty yalp and Cinnamon sprang into existence. Her long red hair was unruly and matter, her clothes dank and musty. She had wrapped her arms around herself and was shivering and moaning softly. She looked around the room and fell instinctively into Andrew's arms.

"Oh Andrew!" she said, suddenly sobbing into his shoulder, "Oh god, it was horrible..."

"It's fine, everything is fine," said Andrew, whispering into her hair.

"I..." she said, coming to herself. She pushed herself away from Andrew and wrenched herself out of his grapst, "unhand me, Huff! No gentleman you, it seems!"

"But Cinnamon, I...!" he implored.

"We should attend to Cinnamon - " said Rex, turning towards her.

"Not so fast, Masterson," I said firmly, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him back towards me, "I think you have a little bit of explaining to do yourself. You can't just go around drinking fruity tropical drinks and getting hickies without telling me about it."

"But Anne, Cinnamon obviously needs hel - "

"We have a relationship Rex. Doesn't that mean anything to you? We go through life and death circumstances together all the time. You can't just go around getting hickies and not telling me!"

"But Anne, I just...!"

I made my 'Anne is about to cry' face.

"All right. All right. God. Just... don't tell the others, ok? They have a kinda Victorian sensibility about all this stuff, if you see what I mean."

I looked at him down my nose.

"Ok. Christ. Um, I came to on a barstool in Cancun. And I met this woman... uh. Yeah. And we danced the night away. God," he breathed softly, "she's a great dancer."

"You just let some woman you've never met before give you a hickie because she's a good dancer?"

"It was Kathy," said Rex, swallowing, "and we were in Cancun celebrating our fifteenth anniversary."

"What?" I asked, suddenly feeling obscurely jealous, "She went forward in time with you?"

"No," said Rex, his eyes frosting over, "this Kathy was graying. She was... kind to me. She said we had decided the best possible anniversary present we could give each other was an hour or two alone with the young person we had first fallen in love with. And that they'd known we were coming to Cancun since... since that was where they had been. But I don't understand. Kathy and I fell out of love, and not into it. Unless in the past, I mean their past, in our future, unless if we were going to...?"

"But if you were with future Kathy, then who was our Kathy with?"

The space above the table sizzled and Kathy appeared. She was lying on prone, one leg arched, her body propped on one shoulder, the straps of her dress fallen idly down around her arms. With one hand she caressed a head that was no longer present. Her neck bent supplicant to receive a kiss that was now centuries away.

"Oh Rex..." she breathed.

For a second the spell held. Then she realized where she was, and in a flash she disappeared into the shadows.

"Wait - Kathy - we've - we've got to talk...!" shouted Rex at the space she had once inhabited.

"God. I hate it when she does that," he said, shoulders sinking into a slumping mope of defeat.

* * *

"I know what we all saw was very distressing," said Lessig, "but we've got to stay calm and try to approach this rationally. If we can just piece together where we all were and what we all know about our situations, I'm sure we can make sense of it all..."

We were all sitting around the table. Cinnamon had made tea and we were all sipping pensively.

"Rex? Care to start?" asked Lessig.

"Nope. Not me. It's personal."

"Anne?"

"I don't think I'm supposed to tell you guys what happened to me. Important future revelations and stuff," I said, "oh - but I brought biscuits for the tea." I said, passing them around.

"You went to the future and retrieved biscuits for tea?" asked Lessig incredulously.

I shrugged

"Ghyslain?" asked Lessig.

"Sith. Lots of them." he said sullenly.

"Cinnamon?"

"Nothing. Just... blackness. Darkness imprisoning me. All I could see was... absolute horror. I was trapped inside myself, as if my body was a holding cell." she shivered again.

"So Rex and Ghyslain aren't talking. Andrew and I and - apprarently - Kathy saw a future involving the people present in this room. But Cinnamon, you were...?"

"I was nowhere," she shrugged, "I was just nowhere. And it hurt."

I felt something grey scuttle across the Jedi intuition.

"You were dead." I said.

"God Anne that's depressing," said Rex.

"You were dead," I said with dull surety, "I'm certain of it. You went to visit a future in which you no longer existed."

"Ridiculous," said Cinnamon, trying to scoff it off.

"Search your feelings, Cinnamon," I said seriously, "you know it to be true."

Her eyes widened, and I could feel thoughts probing her soul. Then her mouth hardened and she looked at me again.

"Well that's as may be," she said harshly, "but history has yet to be written, and with the Codex in my posession I intend to write it exactly as I choose."

"I told you, Cinnamon," said Rex tiredly, "we're not giving you the Codex. Sorry."

I was about to say something but stopped, my head swimming. I turned to look around the table to find my vision was suddenly blurry. I was seeing double, but I could see well enough to realize that Andrew and Lessig, lacking Jedi fortitude, had already passed out.

"The tea!" said Rex thickly, leaning forward and trying to make for his lightsaber.

"Taber - " began Ghyslain, falling to the floor halfway through his Quebecois obscenity.

"You... Cinna... but I even gave you... biscuits...!"

"Oh yes thank you. They were lovely, really," said the unsteady pool of crimson that wobbled in front of me, "but I think it's about time that this game was played by my rules, don't you?"

And then I passed out.

XIII

I knew I was waking up because I could hear myself groaning. I tried to rub my
eyes, which was when I realized that I was in chains. I paused concentrating, to
let the force find itself into the stength of my arms, and then pulled as hard
as I could.

And then I found I still couldn't rub my eyes. That's when I figured out they had put me in Jedi-strength chains.

With a little bit of effort, I could get my eyes open, and in a few moments they even stopped seeing in double. I was in some sort of old-fashioned sitting room or parlor or something. Or maybe not old fashioned at all since, as I had just remembered, I was in 1879. Big overstuffed chairs, thick rugs, a roaring fire in a fireplace with a wrought-iron grill, little tables of dark wood with lace doilies with pictures of Queen Victoria on them. And Cinnamon.

Cinnamon looked well rested. Her hair was done up conservatively and she was wearing long red dress - one of those old fashioned types of ones that look like you'd have to get your floating ribs removed in order to get in and out of them without suffocating. Except of course she looked great in it, as usual. While plotting my escape I silently cursed the fact that she had the good fortune to be blessed with the kind of neck that would make any nineteenth century dress look good as long as she had her hair done up. And behind her was...

"What in god's name is that?!" I spluttered out loud.

Behind her was an enormous, test-tube shaped device. It was huge - at least ten feet high and forty feet wide. It ran parallel to the floor, anchored in its center on a massive brass tripod with rich reliefs of sailors fighting giant squid and explorers plotting points on maps. The entire cylinder was copper color and covered with an elaborate, roccoco labyrinth of wires, tubes, and gears. The entire apparatus hissed and wheezed like a drunk carnival ride.

"Dude," said Rex from beside me, also in chains, "that's so steampunk. What the fuck is that?"

Arranged in a row next to me were Lessig, Andrew, Ghyslain, and Rex. We were all chained to the wall - the non-Jedi in conspicuously less thick chains than those of who were light saber equipped.

"I hate it when they use the Jedi-strength chains," muttered Ghyslain.

"Awake are we?" asked Cinnamon, speaking at last, "yes - we Britons have enough extensive experience keeping Jedi under control."

"Oh yes - you must mean Oscar," spat Rex disgustedly, "you know, I mean really. For just once in the entire career of the council, a Jedi with genuine talent decides to turn his hand to literature. And what do you do? Excoriate him? Imprison him? Disgusting."

"Wilde is a pervert and a criminal and deserves what he gets." said Cinnamon primly.

"Yeah - but you should see him work with a double-bladed lightsaber." retorted Rex.

"Regardless, Mr. Wilde is likely to suffer as unhappy a fate as you," said Cinnamon, back and forth in front of us and surveying each of us in turn, "I assure you it's nothing personal. I've grown to respect your abilities and integrity in the course of our time together. But I have a mission and a purpose, and unfortunately you four got in the way."

"But what do you want with us?" asked Lessig, "you have the codex. Why not just let us go?"

"The question is not what business I have with you," said Cinnamon, smiling exquisitely, "the question is what sort of information Jasper wants to get out of you before we dispose of you."

With her words the hissing and whirling of the enormous cylinder increased dramatically. Slowly, it began to turn on its axis. As it swung around I saw that the opposite side was completely different - it was an enormous elongated glass bubble, filled with water and hermetically sealed like an incredibly distended gold fish bowl. Floating within the water was a fifteen foot long Beluga whale improbably clothed in a satin vest and frock coat. An elastic band secured a top hat to its head just beneath it's blow hole.

The whale surfaced to the narrow band of air at the top of the tube within which he was imprisoned, shooting a fine spray of water through his blow hole. Then he began a steady stream of high pitched screeches and clicks. The mechanism within which he was encased began to whir even more quickly, and then a deep, reverberant voice was projected from a small speaker on the top of the cylinder that looked just like the wierd blossoming thing on record players that you see in those old pictures of the dog listening to the phonograph with one cocked ear.

"Rex Masterson," said the voice from the speakers, "what a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance."

There was a moment of silence.

"Ok. Maybe I'm having some issues of some sort," said Rex slowly, "because God knows I've been under a lot of stresss lately. So please do correct me if I'm wrong. But I have the distinct impression I was just addressed by a whale in an enormous fishbowl dressed up in a fucking Chuky-e-Cheese outfit."

The whale chittered again and the speaker horn on its life-support bubble said calmly:

"Of course my attire will seem comical to you. But many of the humans of this era find my wardrobe comforting - it assures them of my humanity, if you will," said the translation macine, even managing a lugubrious laugh.

"This must be confusing to you," said Cinnamon, stepping forward, "perhaps I should explain. In the aftermath of the Crimean war, our top scientists began experimenting with high frequency sound - much like that used in whistles to train dogs. We called the secret new technology 'sonar'. Originally we wanted to use water-propogated soundwaves as a method of communicating between ships. Although a few eccentrics believed we'd somehow someday use this so-called 'sonar' to detect enemy ships. Ridiculous. At any rate our top scientists, developed a device that could transmit and recieve these high-frequency sounds with great precision and accuracy. You can imagine our surprise when we began recieving signals not just from our ships, but from dolphins, whales, bats, and other creatures.

"Well that bats turned out to be a dissapointment indeed. And the dolphins, however splendid they were, ultimately had nothing to communicate to us except maudlin poetry and a strong desire for herring. But we found the sonic broadcasts of Beluga whales to be inexplicably complex. After two years of non-stop research Mycroft Holmes, Britain's greatest intellect, constructed an elaborate device that could decipher the elaborate sonic language of Belugah whales."

Cinnamon paused dramatically.

"And what did they say?" asked Ghyslain, taking the bait.

"The first guarenteed accurate communication between two separate species was a moment of great solemnity. The first words of a truly sentient non-human species to us were..." said Cinnamon, speech slowing down to a dramatic climax, " 'one no'."

There was another moment of silence. Then Lessig and Rex began laughing hysterically.

"What?" I asked, irked and in chains, " 'one no'? What's funny about that?"

"As you can imagine, we had no idea how to respond at first. We continued transmiting regularly patterned sonic pulses. The next three responses we got were 'pass' 'pass' and 'one heart'."

Lessig and Rex were now beside themselves with laughter.

"Tabernac!" swore Ghyslain, "what's so funny?"

"Finally the breakthrough moment came," said Cinnamon reverentially, "when we finally received the fateful message that allowed us to crack their code: 'do you play Blackwood?' "

"As you can imagine, we Belugah were shocked to find the first communication we recieved from a legged species were a series of Bridge bids," said Jasper, the whale-in-a-bottle, "and even more surprised to find that they did not play with one of the most popular conventions of the past forty years..."

"Wait a moment," asked Andrew, "what's 'Bridge'?"

"A form of whist that will become popular in the future." clarified Cinnamon.

"Yes," boomed Jasper's voice impressively, "for it was then that my species had been drifting through time for the entirety of our existence."

"Time traveling beluga whales?" asked Lessig, "it seems unlikely you wouldn't have noticed earlier."

"We live in an ocean. We eat fish and octopi. We battle the giant squid for control of the ocean depths. We spend our spare time developing incredibly elaborate rules of ettiquette and solving problems in advanced commutative algebra. Every couple of months we pass a sailboat, a nuclear submarine, or an Alien patrol pod. Occasionally a dissafected teenager offers to go as a volunteer to join the exiled ones who live in the human Aquariums. We don't really bother to keep track of where you are in the evolutionary scale."

"So then - what do you want with us?" asked Rex.

"Naturally we became curious when we first contacted the English. We made overtures to the Americans and the Russians as well, but their lack of reserve and tact was abhorrent to us. No, only the English demonstrated the necessary decorum to deal with us. We signed several strategic alliances - they would apply diplomatic pressure to hasten the demise of the whaling industry, and we would second members of Section 13 to the British secret service."

"Beluga whales are Mennonite?" asked Rex, amazed.

"Mennonites? Why do you say that? No. 'Section 13' is the name of the small group of Beluga scientists such as myself who specialize in studying the behavior of human culture. Planning and implementing British covert operations while imprisoned in a watery cell is a small price to pay for the opportuntiy of living in a human community."

"So let me get this straight - you're a super intelligent time-traveling secret agent Beluga whale anthropologist?" asked Rex.

"That is essentially correst," said Jasper, "we Beluga have a mental capacity of which you humans could not dream. In my time on land, I have absorbed the entirety of human cultural patrimony, such as it exists. And this is in addition to what I learned during my tenure time-traveling. Above all I learned of the existence of the codex. With the codex, my people could finally control the temporal drifting that we undergo. We could even control it. Now let me see..."

I felt something invisible brush over me. Next to me, Rex's robes lifted and the Codex floated out of it and across the room, until it came to hover in front of Jasper.

"You're using the force!" I gasped.

"You noticed that, did you?" observed Jasper wryly.

"But why? Levitation? How?"

"Well if your species didn't have any hands, what would sorts of force skills would you develop first, the blue lightning stuff? You Jedi are so jealous of your monopoly on the force. And your focus on violence is so disturbing..."

I felt a jerk on my belt and my lightsaber flew across the room until it hovered next to the codex. Jasper made it live and rotated it slowly in front of him."

"I see," he said politely, "pink. What an... interesting choice."

"I know what you're thinking," I said warningly, "and it's not girly. It's sassy. They're two very different things."

"Regardless, you are not here at the behest of the council. Your actions are in direct violation of the Beluga-Jedi treaty of 2053, and hence your lives are forfeit. You and your companions will be killed. I would kill the American agent, but Cinnamon has convinced me he may yet have strategic value for us."

"But this treaty you speak of won't be signed for another two hundred and twenty years!" protested Rex.

"The ethics of a time travelling super-intelligent species are, of course, beyond your comprehension. Suffice to say, I consider the treaty binding since I was alive when it was signed. No, I'm afraid without direct Council representation there's no way out for you. In fact it would take no one less than the head of the Jedi council to convince me to spare you. And frankly, I think the chances of your being saved by Grandmaster Anne Kawharu are miniscule indeed."

For a moment the room was very still.

"Oh! Oh! Me! Me!" I said, raising one manacled hand and waggling back and forth like a sixth grader who has just been asked who in the classroom can spell 'sarcophagus' the quickest, "That's me! I'm Anne Kawharu. And I, uh, demand that you like, let us go, you know?"

"Dude. I am so. Tripped. Out." said Rex, shaking his head as to shake off a punch.

A mechanical arm popped out an enormous magnifying glass in front of Jasper's case. He swam up to it and one magnified, distended Beluga eye scrutinized me closely.

"You don't look like Anne Kawharu," said Jasper doubtfully, "but then again, I suppose you could be a younger version of her. I have such trouble detecting age difference in you humans. Your skin is smoother than Grandmaster Kawharu's. That's a sign of youth, isn't it?"

"But I am her. I mean, she's me. I promise!"

"Ridiculous. If you were truly Grandmaster Kawharu, you would have been versed enough in Beluga ettiquette to bring a formal message of introduction."

That was when I had a major Jedi intuition thingie. I pulled myself up as best I could and tried to speak confidently.

"I have them upon my person."

I felt a riple of energy shoot rifle through my body. A tendril of white energy wrapped itself around the ziplock bag in my pocket that contained the tatooed herring. In a moment, a floating circle of herring turned slowly beneath Jasper's magnifying glass.

"I see," he murmured, "this is indeed a formal diplomatic message written in the diplomatic register of my species. But tell me - if you are Grandmaster Kawharu, what are you doing here, and why do you have the codex?"

"We're... we're looking for the pool of lost souls!" I extemporized.

In his bubble Jasper began clicking and squeaking sapsmodically. A moment later, the translation emerged from over the speaker: gut-busting laughter.

"The pool of lost souls?" said Jasper when his merriment was spent, "but surely you know there is no such place."

"It's meaning are various..." began Lessig, backing me up.

"It's meaning is clear. See here," said Jasper, floating the book open and holding a page up in front of us, " hachotpa' - it's Bene Jesserit. It means 'pool' not in the sense of a body of water but... let me see, how should I put it? Pool as a discrete grouping or unit, a collective of some sort. The codex has a will of it's own and ruins lives to see its will done - if it wishes to be found, it is found. If it wishes to be moved, it is moved. Those people unfortunate enough to have their destiny twisted in order to be the book's servant travel with it and through it. They are its guardians - the forsaken ones who have lost their souls to fulfill the book's will. Don't you see?" said Jasper, laughing again,

"the pool of lost souls is you!"

XIV

“Well at least they didn’t kill us,” said Rex hopefully.

“At least not yet. When that whale decides that Anne is not the same Anne as the Anne he knew, then he will be killing us,” Ghyslain said despondently, “they took my light saber. I hate it when they take my light saber.”

Cinnamon had had Jasper towed out of the room, codex afloat besides him, and we were left alone to listen to the roaring fire, contemplate a profile of Queen Victoria, and ponder our fate.

“We may still have a chance. Anne - can you lift the medallion I’m wearing out from underneath my robe?”

I closed my eyes and concentrated. I could feel it - it was some sort of strange metal.

“I feel it,” I said, “but I don’t know if I can lift it. Why can’t you do it?”

“I’ve spent years training my force skills to avoid incoming objects like axes and knives and shit. I do the instinctual-deflect thing. I don’t have the sensitivity to move small items I can’t see. No one does but you Anne - you’re a natural with the levitation stuff.”

I took a deep breath and tried again. I felt the medallion, let myself stop wanting it slip upwards, sensed my lack of desire conjure forth a force from a sympathetic universe, released my will even further as I felt a bubble of non-ego doing what I wanted it to on it’s own accord. At least that’s what I felt. Everyone else just saw the medallion inch up above Rex’s robe and flop face-up onto his chest.

“Well that’s handy,” said Lessig, eyeing the amulet.

It was a small, silver-colored disc with a large, multifaceted red jewel set directly in the center. The metal felt strange in my mind - half plastic and half titanium. Engraved in the silver base encircling the jewel were a series of messages written in different alphabets, some of which I recognized and some of which I didn’t. The english language part of the engraving read ‘in case of emergency press red button’.

“It’s a gift from an old friend who owes me a favor. I think getting us out of this mess would count. The only problem is, he won’t owe me the favor for another two hundred years. Or, depending how you look at it, he’s owed it to me for the past forty million years. Frankly I’m a little curious to see what will happen. But its probably our best bet.”

“Forty million years in the past?” asked Andrew, eyes widening in the way eyes only widen when your timeline of the universe owes more the Genesis than Stephen Hawking, “you’re not one of these atheists who believe in this newfangled ‘evolution’ idea, are you?”

Rex sighed deeply.

”Christians. Anyway, Anne - could you do me a favor and press the big red button?”

I closed my eyes and concentrated. I knew it would be harder than moving the amulet before. I concentrated, gave the button a good wallop.

”Gah! Christ Anne, I asked you to push the amulet, not give me CPR. Less is more, you see what I’m saying?”

“I can’t do it,” I said forlonly.

“You can do it,” said Rex, more gently now, “remember the toast in Kashgar? Remember that night on the volcano? The only thing that’s keeping you from doing it is this crazy idea you’ve got that you can’t. Now, try again.”

I took a deep breath and did my best to try to slip out of my own head. I felt my mind drift into that uneasy waiting room where dreams come to take you away to sleep with a gentle, insistent pull. I felt my future memories swirl through me - blurred vagaries of long falls into emptiness, my ears filled with blue blood, a bald barking dog, the clicking of some jewelry I remembered once, long ago…

I was shocked back to reality by the small steady whine coming from Rex’s medalion, which was now flashing red.

“You rock Anne,” said Rex softly, smiling at me. I could feel the way he would have toussled my hair affectionately if we weren’t well, you know, in chains in a secret British safe house in the middle of nineteenth century central asia.

We all waited, not knowing what to expect.

“Now what?” asked Lessig

“Uh… now we wait,” said Rex, “It’ll take Commander Plaza a while to get here. He hangs out in a secret hide out just north of Tashkent.”

”Tashkent?!” exploded Andrew, “Tashkent is a three day camel ride from here!”

“Oh don’t worry,” said Rex, chuckling, “Commander Plaza ain’t riding a camel.”

At that moment an alarm sounded - a very old-fashioned claxon like a real hammer hitting a real bell, really loud.

“That must be him now,” said Rex with satisfaction, crossing his arms in a point-proven sort of gesture - or at least crossing them as well as he could while in shackles.

We waited a few more moments and then a group of about six asian men with shaved heads and dressed in grey monk’s robes ran through the room, stopped for a second to stare at us, and then ran on.

“This ‘Commander Plaza’ is a Chinese monk?”

“That wasn’t him. What the hell’s going on here?”

At that moment there was a deafening crack as the wall across from us exploded into a thousand particles. Out of the billowing clouds of ash and vaporized dust emerged an amazingly gigantic figure of a man. He floated three feet above the ground, the air beneath his feet rippling with heat and whining with the sound of the jet engines in the soles of his mighty combat boots. His body itself was composed of metallic, bulbous armour that tapered off at each joint. Although originally smooth, the armour was now pitted with nicks, bullet scratches, and laser beam burns. In one hand he held the largest and most impressive gun I’d ever seen - a massive weapon with a four foot long barrel that was at least a foot across. In the crook of his other arm was a small, white dog that wouldn’t stop barking. Perched at the top of the massive body, a small human-sized and vaguely Fillipino looking head protruded from the top of the armor.

DO YOU REQUIRE EUTHENASIA SPACE MARINE? boomed out the man’s voice, while he pointed his massive rifle at Rex’s head.

“Er… hello. No, actually. I was wondering if you could just maybe free my friends and I?” asked Rex unctiously.

THERE IS NO SHAME IN DEATH ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE. THERE IS ONLY SHAME IN CAPTURE BY THE ENEMY. YOUR GLANDS WILL BE REUSED TO FURTHER THE GLORIOUS GOALS OF THE IMPERIUM said the man as the dog in the crook of his arm continued to bark. His head swiveled to look at the dog for a moment and then swiveled back to fix on Rex.

POPPY WANTS SNACKIES. SNACKIES FOR POPPY. SNACKIES FOR POPPY!! DO YOU HAVE SNACKIES FOR POPPY?

“Poppy?” I asked Rex under my breath.

“Poppy - the immortal interstellar Lake Land Terrier,” clarified Rex under his breath to me before directing his attention back towards the others, “Umm… it might really help things along if we could give Poppy a snack, folks. I kinda have a continuing need for my glands, if you see what I’m saying.”

“Er, I have half a tuna sandwhich in my pocket,” said Lessig to the man before us.

The dog began barking particularly shrilly and straining out of Commander Plaza’s arm towards Lessig.

YOU ARE NOT A SPACE MARINE. HOW DID YOU ACQUIRE THE REMOTE DISTRESS BEACON? asked the man, temporarily ignoring the dog and refocusing on Rex.

“I am in fact a Staff Sergeant of the Third of the Fifth Imperial Fusilliers and was created a Pasha by the Sultan himself.” said Rex, sounding slightly hurt.

IF YOU ARE A SPACE MARINE THEN WHERE ARE YOUR ARMOR AND COUP-CLOAKS?

“Oh yes, well, that’s a bit harder to explain. See I won’t be all of those things until a hundred and twenty years from now, at which point we’ll travel back millions of years of time… uh… hey, what are you doing…?”

Rex was now smiling ingratiantingly and sweating visibly as Commander Plaza’s eyes narrowed with suspicion and he brought the barrel of his massive weapon to rest lightly on Rex’s left temple. God knows what he was about to do then, since Commander Plaza’s attention was distracted by Poppy’s barking rising to a fever pitch. The dog was now focused on Lessig, who had managed despite his manacles to pull half a tuna sandwhich out of his robes and was waving it enticingly back and forth in front of Poppy while making cooing noises.

SNACKIES FOR POPPY! SNACKIES FOR POPPY! Roared Commander Plaza, aiming his gun at Lessig.

“Not much honor in that, Commander Plaza,” said Rex quickly, “What sort of space marine steals food from helpless earthlings to feed his Lakeland Terrier? I’ll tell you what - why don’t you free us, and in return we’ll give Poppy the tuna sandwich.”

Commander Plaza’s head swiveled to Rex, Poppy, Lessig, and then back to Rex again. There was a massive series of explosions, and the next thing I knew, I was rubbing my newly-freed wrists while I watched Commander Plaza soar to the top of the room and feed half a tuna sandwhich to the dog clutched in his arms.

“Before you go!” yelled Rex, “Just remember this - in one hundred and twenty years from now when you find a younger version of me tied to an unholy underground altar beneath the streets of Spanish Harlem about to be sacrificed to a super-intelligent twenty-foot albino alligator with a Mexican accent named Luther remember: I told you so!”

PERHAPS WE SHALL MEET AGAIN said Commander Plaza as he screamed out the smoking hole he had used to enter a few minutes before NOW POPPY NEEDS TO MAKE POOPIE. POPPIE FOR POPPY! POOPIE FOR POPPY! he yelled as he flew away into the distance.

“Well,” said Rex, standing up and dusting himself off, “that was easy, huh?”

* * *

While we were still trying to get our bearings, two more large explosions rocked the room. We swayed back and forth, grabbing onto furniture like extras from the Old Star Trek trying to look convincingly discombobulaed by the lousy special effects meant to convey the trauma caused by the direct hit of a Klingon photon torpedo strike.

“What’s going on?” shouted Ghyslain over the furor.

“I don’t know,” said Rex, “but first things first - we need to find our weapons.”

If there’s one thing that a Jedi can find easily, it’s their light saber. Those things glow in our force-sense HUD about as large as a 747. We ran down a hall and were just about there when we ran smack dab into Pilgram, the Mennonite secret agent.

“Pilgram, what are you doing here?” asked Rex, bewildered, “We were supposed to meet you in Tashkent!”

“Evil… grey robes… really bad… really really bad…” panted Pilgram, obviously out of breath.

“Slow down, slow down - what’s going on here?” asked Lessig.

“The source of ‘Chinese contamination’ that Norbu was going on about - we found it. There’s dozens of them. They’re fighting him… in the next room… I tried to get them to sit down and talk it over…”

“Where?”

Pilgram led us down the corridor. As we approached we heard the sound of voices growing ever louder as we approached.

“One thing about Norbu,” said Pilgram, grinning, “you can always hear where he is…”

We entered an enormous, column lined room. In front of us was a massive pitched battle. Four of the grey-robed monks were locked in mortal combat with Norbu Rinpoche. The entire place was filled with the echoing roar of their screams as they attacked one another - “Dragon tail sweeps the sea!” and “King Kong Buddha Fist!” - As they richochetted off the wall and flew at each other in best Jet-Li wire-work style, a more quotidian battle raged below. A troop of British soldiers in - get this - actual red coats formed a small infantry square in the center of the room, where they desperately fought off a massive mob of seedy-looking hired bad buys. They looked determined, but their haggard looks and blood-stained uniforms hinted at their frayed nerves and physical exhaustion. But while I took all of this in in an instant, the one thing that drew my attention more than anything else was the large padlocked chest on one side of the room - Ground Zero for our sabres. Ghyslain ran over and yanked on the lock.

“Damn these Jedi-strength locks!” cursed Ghyslain, kicking the chest angrily.

The alarms were still sounding, the explosions more frequent, and all hell seemed to be breaking loose. I was about to ask Rex what we should do, when the sound of a voice from the doorway behind me sent shivers down my spine.

”You!”

It was Cinnamon. She had just pushed her way out of the center of the British infantry formation and was heading directly towards us. Her chest heaved with exertion, and her eyes shone with a fatal manic energy from beneath bangs drooped over a head bent low in exhaustion. Her dress was in tatters now, and her hair in scraggily disarray. Soot and blood covered her face, and her now-familiar sewing notions holster was wrapped around her waist. It was disgusting - after what was obviously prolonged periods of combat she should have looked all grungy and nasty from all the blood and gore. But basically it just made her look like deeply determined and sexy in a deadly sort of way like the girl in La Femme Nikita (Anne Parillaud and not Bridget Fonda, thank you very much) after the fight in the restaurant. I mean honestly.

”You!” she exclaimed, “You’re behind this aren’t you! Who are your friends? How did they know you were here?” she spat furiously at us over her shoulder as she turned back to rally her men. At that moment the room was flooded with yet another massive wave of turban’d and scimitar’d bad-guy cannon fodder. Before we could protest two men armed with sickle-shaped knives came at her from behind. In an instant she turned to face them, hands flashing to her waist. It wasn’t until they began slumping to the ground, dead, that I realized there were two knitting needles in their backs.

“Fix bayonets! To arms!” screamed Cinnamon, diving into the fray with her men.

I know that a paragraph ago I said that all hell broke loose, but trust me - this time all hell really broke loose. Ghyslain and Lessig clawed crazily at the locked chest. Rex moved between me at the fight in a futile attempt to keep me safe from the roiling maelstrom that filled the room. And Andrew - Andrew walked slowly and deliberately into the fray.

“What are you doing?” I exclaimed, grabbing him on arm, “you’ll be killed!”

“I can’t let them kill her!” he said simply to me.

“But you can’t do anything about it, Andrew! They’re outnumbered three to one! You’ll be killed!”

Andrew took my hand slowly off his arm, gave it a sad squeeze, and then smiled sadly at me.

“You know Anne - I honestly don’t know if my life would be worth living if it didn’t involve chasing Cinnamon around.”

My mind flashed back to that night in Kashgar, before we traveled back in time, when Andrew and I sat on the porch of a house at the edge of field. I remembered watching him watch the stars, and the tired, dead look I had seen on his face.

“You know what Andrew,” I said, squeezing his shoulder, “I don’t think it would be. Good luck. We’ll be in to help as soon as we can.”

Andrew waded into the fray, pushing his way past the Red Coats and taking Cinnamon’s hand in the center of the infantry square. He drew his pistol and, back to back, they tried desperately to turn the tide of battle.

I ran over to Lessig and Ghyslain, who sat scowling at the locked chest. Lessig was poking at it with a pencil.

“We need that chest open now,” I said as forcefully as I could.

“The lock is a snap to pick,” said Lessig, examining it, “the mechanism is centuries out of date for me. But I don’t have any tools. Goddamn it.”

“If you don’t get your weapons back then we’re all dead.” shouted Rex, losing his Jedi diffidence.

I felt my eyebrow arch incredulously as I watched Lessig poke at the lock, ”You know how to pick locks?” I asked skeptically.

“I’m sorry,” said Lessig, firing off his retort with Menckenesque sang-froid, “did you just ask a lawyer if he knew how to steal?”

“Well would this help, then?” I said, nonchalantly producing the spare needles my older self had given me.

“Good god - they ought to do the job. Where did you get them?” said Lessig, putting two in his teeth and using another two to jimmy the lock.

“It’s a long story. I thought they were meant for Cinnamon, but maybe they were meant for yo-”

At that point the lock clicked open and Lessig threw back the top of the chest. I didn’t even realize I had reached for my lightsaber and the next thing I knew it was back in my hand. I heard the familiar flame-on sound of Ghyslain and Rex making their sabers live.

“Oh man, I am so ready to be hating on playas,” enthused Rex, practically glowing with an energy that I didn’t entirely like.

We were about to dive in when there was a sudden rush of wind and nine more grey-robed figures literally flew into the room, landing ready for battle in all sorts of elaborate kung-fu poses.

“Shaolin monks!” exclaimed Rex, “just like in the movies! Wow - cool. Hey guys, why are you fighting the good-guy Tibetan monk? You need to help us fight evil and stuff.”

“I should have known,” shouted Cinnamon, “you are in league with them!” Cinnamon leapt sideways out of the way of one of her attackers, landed, rolled, and reached back towards her hair. Silver flashed, and the next thing I knew, a knitting needle was an inch away from one of the monks’ eyes - caught firmly in his hand.

“Hmph,” sniffed the monk, “your kung-fu is no match for me.”

He lobbed the needle back her way. Cinnamon tried to dodge, but wasn’t fast enough. She screamed in pain as shot into her left arm - exactly where her heart had been an instant before. She shrieked in pain and collapsed into Andrew’s arms.

“You’re supposed to be good guys!” exclaimed Rex.

“They are not ‘good guys’,” said a strong voice from behind us, “They are my employees.”

A man wearing an Abraham Lincoln suit stepped out of the shadows. The monks immediately moved to form a protective cordon around him. In a very significant plot development, he had the Codex of Lost Souls in one arm.

“Who are you?” exclaimed Andrew protectively.

“I? Why, I am Klaus Epps - the future messiah. And you are about to die.” he said, laughing with a sort of manical gusto that left no doubt in my mind that we had finally found The Big Bad Guy.

“Not so fast, Epps!” shouted Pilgram, straightening himself to his full height, “Your mad dreams of apocalypse will never come true! Give up these vain fantasies and return to the community so we can, you know, forgive you and stuff.”

“Vain?” Boomed the man impressively, brandishing the codex, “Mad? Impossible? How impossible are my dreams with this in my arms? How little you know about the true power of this codex, Pilgram! With the Pool of Lost Souls under my control, my prophecies will become reality!”

“And we’ll become immortal,” said one monk, licking his hand and running it lewdly over his shaved head, “and the only thing better than being a renegade evil Shaolin monk is being an immortal renegade evil Shaolin monk!”

“I knew I was awakened from my hermitage for a reason,” spat Norbu with a stereotyped fury that I knew was babel-fish induced, “you are bastard betrayer monks! I must defend the honor of my kung-fu style!”

“Fume as much as you like Norbu,” expostulated Epps grandly as if he was, in a moment of bad-guy hubris, about to reveal his entire secret evil plan to us, confident in our imminent demise, “but in a mere eighteen hours the pool of lost souls will once more surge to the surface of this planet, and I shall achieve immortality!”

“Wrong dude,” said Rex, trying to be as deadly serious as anyone with a strong Californian accent could be, “like, we’re the Pool of Lost Souls.”

“You?” scoffed Epps, “who told you that? Jasper? Do you really take that over-blown haddock seriously? The thing wear a hat with a rubber band around it, for Christ’s sake! No - The Pool of Lost Souls is just that: the waters of eternal life which percolate to the surface of our planet only once every twelve decades. Slowly, the sunken city of the ancient ones works its way up to us amidst fire and smoke, as was foretold in - ”

“Wait a sec,” I asked, “fire and smoke? You mean like volcanos?”

“Well,” said Epps, scratching at his chin momentarily, ”yeah. But more importantly, the ancient Temple of the Lost Souls where I am fully prepared to carry out the eldritch ceremony which - ”

“One hundred and twenty years?” I pressed, “does this volcano emerge in a desert?”

“We’ve been tossed from one emergence of the pool to another,” said Rex, putting the pieces together, “from that volcano in the Taklamakan to now, when the pool rise again. Surely Valenti meant to use the pool for his own purposes! What could be better than an immortal lobbyist arguing for immortal copyright terms? And now, with the pool rising again…”

“That would explain my presence,” said Lessig grimly.

“But only if we’re the pool of lost souls - the people whose destiny is the plaything of the codex,” I pointed out, “if the pool is really a pool…”

“Silence!” screamed Epps, furious that his expositional monologue had been interrupted, “That’s funny like funny ha-ha, but unimportant. Imagine what you will, but I know the location of the emergence, and I have the codex. You cannot long survive against the overwhelming forces I have weighed against you - even you Jedi cannot prevail against the monks of Shaolin when they attack in force. Fare well, Rex Masterson - may your death be slow and painful!”

With that Epps turned away sharply, the tails of his Abraham Lincoln suit swirling menacingly about him, and marched down the hall, a small group of monks his bodyguard. There was a moment of stillness as the remaining monks and Epps’ hired hands stared at us across the room. Then a man with a scimitar charged forward and in one instance all hell broke loose.

“After them!” shouted Rex, turning a double sommersault in the air and landing in the entrance of the passageway through which Epps had escaped. With a few strong strokes of his saber he had cleared a path through the crowd, joined by Ghyslain.

“Anne - come on!” shouted Rex, gesturing to me.

“But Andrew is - ” I began, looking desperately at the rising tide of humanity weighed against him as he and Cinnamon fought desperately on.

“We’ll take care of them!” shouted Pilgram, taking Lessig by the hand, some how still remaining jovial, as he and Norbu began wading through the enemy and towards the small, embattled group of British shoulders.

“But - ” I protested.

”Now Anne! That’s an order!”

With great misgivings I turned away and left Andrew and Cinnamon to their fate. We followed the dark passage upward, ever upward. Ghyslain poured on the speed and I felt Rex’s stride quicken as well, fueled with a Force whose flavor verged too much on obsession for my liking. I put my head down, let myself relax, and tried to let the force pull me along. But Rex and Ghyslain were in another place - a place where desire muddied purity and achievement tainted intent. I couldn’t - or didn’t want to - keep up.

“Rex…” I panted, running as fast as I could, “I can’t…”

He cursed, grabbed my hand, and made me run faster.

The next thing I knew the ceiling above me had dissolved into night sky. We were outside now, in the courtyard of a private estate. Our stride broke abruptly as Rex and Ghyslain dove into crouch, rolled, and sprang up with live sabers and barred teeth. The three of us faced four Shaolin monks who were fighting a rearguard action - Epps’ coach was already rattling away into the distance.

“Attack!” shouted Ghyslain, leaping into the midst.

“Get them, Anne!” shouted Rex, juking to the left, spinning, and coming down hard with a strong over-hand attack.

“But…” I began. Just then I felt my body involuntarily roll to the ground and away to my left a split second before a fist came smashing down where my head had been a second before.

Before me, a really evil looking Shaolin Monk waggled his tongue lewdly and aimed a kick right at my teeth. I did a hand spring up, leapt sideways to avoid him, and came down with my lightsaber live. I was going to feint and come at him from my off-handed side, but the next thing I knew I was dodging first to my left and then to my right as two quick punches came right at me.

“Rex… help… please…” I said, struggling to catch my breath, shooting my hand in front of myself to deflect a punch to my solar plexus.

“Get them Anne! Get them! Kill!” I heard his shout over the thrum of his lightsaber.

The monk came in low with a kick to my shins. I staggered backwards, wincing and feeling tears coming to my eyes. Jedi feel things before they happen - that’s why we have such great reflexes - and I felt myself crying before the kick even landed. But my body was in molasses - too sluggish in the present to avoid what I knew was going to come. A second after I registered the pain of my shin splitting, I had jumped backwards, and only then did he actually make contact.

The world turned into a lightning wide blur. I felt myself on the ground, twisting and turning to avoid blows. Three feet away, I could smell the image of my windpipe shattered beneath the monks imagination of his foot and my throat. I rolled away, got back on my feet, and limped backwards.

“Hmph,” said the man dismissively, “Why do I have to kill the apprentices?”

“I’ll show you what it means to fight,” I said, wiping the sweat from my brow and trying to sound brave.

“The only thing you’ll show me is how you die,” he said, shuffling in as if to come in with a high kick and then putting in a syncopated step and nailing me again in my injured shin.

Everyone has a point where desperation overwhelms them - when your inmost self lapses into infancy and, in an attempt to deny the unfair world around you, begins crying for its mother. Being an adult means pushing that point as far back as you can, and Being a Jedi means pushing it back even farther - making distant that point where emotion takes you over and turns you into its automaton. For fourteen of the sixteen years of my life I had been trained to seek a silent calm place in the welter of emotions that overwhelmed me when the world threatened to snuff me out with its extremity. Now I tried desperately to cling to that inner calm, to make the remaining shard of strength within me grow into something large enough to hang a plan on. But I just couldn’t do it. He was stronger than me, and both of us knew it. And no matter how long it took, he was going to corner me, cripple me, and then kill me. And no one on earth would do anything to save me - not Rex, not my father, not Andrew, not anyone. I had faced death before, but never at a time when I was able to so clearly realize what it meant to die.

I fell to the ground and tried to stand again, thinking to run away. But my leg was dead to me now, unmoving and unmoveable. I grabbed it in my hand and tried to make it pull me up, but all I felt were waves of pain. I slowly, awkwardly used my other leg to lift myself up. The monk just watched and gloated.

Then I heard a sound behind me. I turned to see a horse-drawn carriage come tumbling to a stop before me. A door flew open and a man in a dark suit appeared, grabbing me by the arm.

“Anne! Get in!” he yelled.

And I did.

XV

I found myself in the interior of a largish horse-drawn coach. My head was still dazed with pain as I watched a tall, gaunt man with a briefcase handcuffed to his hand stretch over me and get out of the carriage.

“That’s right, boychick - go get ‘em. We’ll see you in a bit.”

My hand reached instinctively to my shin as I began trying to massage it back to life. I took in my surroundings in one drunk swallow - a dark, leather interior, over-stacked bookshelves stuck on the walls, two incongruous mini-fridges, one with a huge ‘F’ on it, the other labelled merely ‘M’. As strange as my surroundings were, my company was even more bizarre. Across from me sat a red-faced, round-cheeked jovial-looking man in a dark suit and hat. He had those long braid things that I always associated with super-religious Jews - you know, like those Quaker version of Jews.

“Aleksa!” shouted the round-cheeked man, banging on the roof of the carriage with a cane he held in one hand, “Onwards! Onwards!”

I felt the carriage jerk forward into motion. The man now fixed his attention on me began bubbling over.

“Annle! Oy, what sweet little girl you are! Look at you!” He wiggled my chin and pinched my cheek before turning to rummage around in a plastic bag besides him, producing a small object wrapped in aluminum foil.

“You must be hungry. How about a nice cornbeef sandwich?” he half unwrapped it and waggled it enticingly in front of me.

“I’m ok, thanks,” I said uneasily, still trying to figure out what was happening.

“How about some nice cholent,” he said, smiling widely and gesturing to a huge pot balanced precariously on a hot plate that shifted uneasily from its place on top of one of the refrigerators as the carriage drifted back and forth.

“Cholent?”

“It’s been stewing all shabbes,” said the man, winking broadly as if this were an obvious selling point.

“Thirsty? Celery soda maybe? I got Dr. Browns. No? But look at you all skin and bones. I bet that Rex never cooks for you. Here take a knish. Take it, take it! It’s a mitzvah for me to give. Is it the end of the world you should have something to eat?”

He thrust a round, warm, pastry ball of some sort and looked at me expectantly. I looked down at it and - just to please him - bit into it experimentally. On the inside it was full of potato. After I’d taken another, less tentative bite the man beamed with obvious pleasure and started in again in with his yiddish-accented, babbling-brook locquacity.

“But I’m being rude. I should introduce. I’m Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov. But you can call me Rabbi Izzy. And you’re Anne Kwaharu. What a pleasure to meet you. A real pleasure. The famous Anne Kawharu. Incredible.”

“I… you… who… were… how do you know who I am? And, er, do have have any more of those potato things?” I said, looking down and realizing I had completely consumed my knish. Fighting had in fact made me ravenous.

Nothing could have pleased Rabbi Izzy more. The next thing I new I had three more knishes in my hands and Rabbi Izzy was - against my strenuous objections - attempting to get me to try some celery flavored soda.

“You want, I got,” said Rabbi Izzy, “Tell you what darling, you eat and I’ll talk. We’ve got a little bit between stops.”

“Biftwhin shtps?” I asked, my mouth knishified.

“We’ve got to pick up one more person before this meeting can get underway. And as for how I know you - who doesn’t know you? The Jedi Master who holds fate itself in her hands. The power behind the influence behind the plan. Of course that’s a little in the future for you, I know. But me, well, let’s just say I have extensive travel experience. Are you going to eat this corned beef do you think? Because I already unwrapped it. No? Sure? Well there’s more knishes if you want them. You should try the cholent too. Well anyway, I know it’s very bad form to be bringing all of this up - what with the temporal collapse possibilities and all - but since you’re already a bit of the time traveler I thought it wouldn’t hurt. And anyway we need to have a little heart to heart abou - ”

Something caught Rabbi Izzy’s eye out of the window of the carriage and he began pounding furiously on the roof of his carriage again.

” - Aleksa! Stop! Stop! Stop at this corner!”

The carriage drew to a halt and Rabbi Izzy popped the door open. A thin black man dripping with necklaces and rings and dressed in a light pink leisure suit with a purple shirt and socks hopped in next to Rabbi Izzy and shut the door. Without missing a beat he whipped off his enormous tinted sunglasses and socked Rabbi Izzy familiarly on the arm.

“Hey hey the big BST!” enthused the man, “hows it hanging brother? Good to see you baby!”

The man saw me, stopped as if thunderstruck, and then slowly took my hand and kissed it chivalrously without his eyes leaving mine, which I have to admit I found pretty sexy even if totally overdone.

“And who is this lovely young morsel of female pulchritude that graces our presence this evening, BS? Could this possibly be Anne Kawharu?” he purred, oozing warm machismo, “But she’s even more beautiful than I had imagined - and I’ll tell you baby I can imagine an awful lot. A pleasure indeed to make your acquaintance. I’m Sammy Davis Jr. and I just want to say what a pleasure it is to finally meet you.”

Rabbi Izzy began banging on the roof of the carriage again and urging ‘Aleksa’ - his driver, presumably - to get going.

“Look I’m very happy to meet the two of you and that you’re both were so, uh, happy to meet me. And I’m glad you saved my life and everything but I’ve got to get back. Rex needs me - Andrew needs me. They were in big trouble. Those evil Shaolin monks are tough to beat, even for real Jedi and I’m afraid…”

“BS, is this true?” asked Sammy, sympathy for my plight welling up in his eyes, “you didn’t leave Rex in the lurch did you?”

“Don’t worry Sammy, don’t worry. I sent The Diamond Dealer to help things out. If worse comes to worse, we’ve got a couple of Assault Golems stashed just outside of town.”

“Well that should be ok then shouldn’t it,” said Sammy, patting me on the knee to console me, “they weren’t using blunt weapons, were they? No? Well there you go.”

“The Diamond Dealer?” I asked, now totally confused, “Assault Golems?”

“The Diamond Dealer’s a friend of mine - a real macher - he sometimes helps us with otherwise unresolvable issues. He got out when you got in,” said Rabbi Izzy, winking, “don’t worry - your friends won’t mind if we have a little chat. And anyway we should get started. We’ve only go a few more minutes before dawn and I’ve got to get back to Lvov before the turn of the century.”

“Ok ok but just one moment my friends,” said Sammy, reaching into the refrigerator marked ‘M’ and taking out a bottle and an enormous glass goblet filled with crushed ice, “before we get started I’ve just got to relax. And what better way to relax than a tall cool goblet full of Manischewitz Cream Black Cherry Cordial.”

Sammy poured a thick, cream-in-coffee colored liquid from the bottle into the glass with the sort of relish you normally only see in people doing commercials.

“Mmm mmm mmm - that pleasant mouth feel and smooth finish, that smooth cherry flavor with hints of black currant and almonds,” said Sammy, licking his lips in obvious relish, “Man oh Manischewitz what a drink! BS you want to try some?”

“Please Sammy,” said Rabbi Izzy, clearly distressed as he turned to shield his corned beef sandwich with his body, “I’m with the fleischig over here.”

“Oh ho ho, sorry about that,” guffawed Sammy, sipping his drink and shifting it to his other hand so that Rabbi Izzy could return to a normal sitting position, “Well perhaps we should get started.”

* * *

“You see Anne,” said Sammy, “the Baal Shem and I represent a sort of special interest group if you will. We try to make sure that certain of our co-religionists are well looked after, if you see what I mean. Assure that their destiny goes according to plan. Kapish?”

“Me, Sammy, Harris The Space Jew, a few others. Elijah’s our main go-to-guy since it’s easiest for him to move about. Just to keep an eye on things, you know?”

“Let me guess,” I said wearily, “and you call yourself Section 13?”

“It does sort kinda mysterious, doesn’t it?” enthused Rabbi Izzy.

“But what do you want with me?” I asked.

“Well Anne,” said Sammy, “We’re a little worried about Rex.”

“Rex? What’s wrong? You just said that - ”

“Oh he’ll get past those evil monks just fine,” said Rabbi Izzy, waving off my concern, “we’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

“We can’t see so far into the infinity of possible futures and pasts as you can, Anne. Or at least not as far as you will be able to. Everything that we know, though, tell us that 99.995% of the time Rex leads a basically happy life, careens from one adventure to another, helps keep the forces of evil at bay, and dies happy at a ripe old age.”

“But lately,” said Sammy, taking up where Rabbi Izzy had left off, “lately things seem to have gone wrong. Rex’s soul is clouded in darkness. He seems sad, angry.”

I thought for a second and nodded slowly, “I know what you mean. He seemed positively bloodthirsty a moment ago - and this whole thing with Kathy is getting him really down. I’ve never seen him so sad.”

“That’s what we mean. Something is wrong - very wrong. And we think you’re the only one that can help. You’re the most powerful Jedi to be born in a millennium, Anne. Surely there’s something you can do.”

“Help? Me? But I’m not a powerful Jedi - I’m just a padwan. I’m just sixteen years old! I don’t know anything about anything! I don’t know what you think I’ll become or who I’ll be but I - I mean I can’t…”

Rabbi Izzy looked at me, suddenly cool.

“Three years a bas mitzvah and you don’t want to take responsibility for what you’ve done?”

“Done? What have I done? I haven’t done anything.”

“Time’s been out of whack lately Anne, and I think everyone in this carriage knows whose responsible.”

“It wasn’t me! It was the Codex. The Codex of Lost Souls! And the Pool,” I said desperately, trying to convince them that I wasn’t guilty, “this is the Pool of Lost Soul’s fault.”

“The ‘Pool of Lost Souls’?” scoffed Rabbi Izzy, “Come on, Anne, we all know that that pool doesn’t exist. The pool of lost souls is you - and Cinnamon, and Andrew. You’re the people responsible for the Codex and what it’s done - the people whose fates are intertwined with it.”

“Wait a sec,” said Sammy, now confused, “the Pool of Lost Souls is a pool - the eldritch sea of energy that surges to the surface of the planet once a century.”

Rabbi Izzy shot him a look.

“Are you meshugganah? ‘Eldritch Pool’? Who told you that? Did they have a bridge to sell?”

“No it’s right here - ” said Sammy, reaching over me to pluck a thick tome from the bookshelf behind me. He muttered a brief prayer, then opened the book, flipped through it, and pointed to a passage in it.

“What do you think this is about?” he said, crowing triumphantly.

Rabbi Izzy looked over it briefly and looked at Sammy with eyes full of weary skepticism.

“That’s about how to dredge out a mikva without making it ritually impure.”

“Well… yes,” said Sammy impatiently, “on the surface. But look at what it says here…”

He took another volume down from the wall and pointed to another passage.

“The Shulhan Arukh?” said Rabbi Izzy, “For proof of an eldritch pool you go to the Rambam? Please! That guy thinks food taboos are about hygeine! Rabbi Gamliel said in the name of… just a second…”

Rabi Izzy pulled down another book and opened it.

“See here! Right there! There’s an etymology of ‘pool’ for you.”

“Rashi? Your source is Rashi? You’ve got to be kidding me, BS! Pace that insane Frenchman, that reference to the Pool isn’t mishnaic no matter what he does to it!”

“GUYS!” I yelled, “what are you talking about?”

“She’s right,” said Rabbi Izzy, turning serious, “and time is running out - we’re almost back to Bukhara. Look, Anne, whatever interpretive difference my friend and I may have, the fact remains that something has gone wrong. Seriously wrong. The universe is out of whack, and as far as we can see, the only person who can get it back into whack is you.”

“Things are coming to a head, Anne. Important decisions will have to be made soon - and you’re going to be the one who will have to make them.” said Sammy.

“But I…”

“No ‘buts’ Anne. When the time comes, you’re going to have to do the right. You won’t have a second chance.”

The next thing I knew Sammy was kissing me on the cheek and wishing me good luck and Rabbi Izzy was banging on the top of the carriage. The door flew open, and I winced involutarily at the sudden sunlight. I felt Rabbi Izzy push me out of the cariagge as someone else - The Diamond Dealer, presumably - climbed in over me. And then I was back on the ground. The dust of Bukhara invaded my senses, obscuring my vision and filling my nose with old and ancient smells. By the time I stood up, the carriage was just fading away into the distance.

XVI

“Anne! There you are - are you alright?” asked Rex, picking me up and dusting me off.

“Yes, I’m fine - I’m fine. How are you?”

Rex was clearly not doing all that well. His face was smudged with dirt and dust, and a small cut had opened above his left eye and was trickling blood down into one eyebrow. Behind him stood Ghyslain, Lessig, Andrew, Norbu, and Pilgram.

“Oh I’m just fine,” he said, trying to laugh nonchalantly and not really pulling it off convincingly. His eyes narrowed dubiously: “Is that a knish you’re eating?”

“Knish?” I asked innocently, swallowing quickly and trying to keep from choking as the too-hot mass of potatoey goodness worked its way into my stomach, “why no - where would I get a knish? Uh… so we won?”

“We won, all right. Thanks to Norbu and the Diamond Dealer. I mean I’ve been in scraps before but Jesus Christ those guys can rumble.”

“Hmph,” grumped Norbu, straightening out his robes from their fighting-induced disarray, “eight hundred years ago I’d have been able to defeat all of them. I suppose my age is starting to tell.”

I looked around at the entire group - they all looked pretty beat up. While Norbu and Rex were able to laugh it off, Ghyslain was clearly winded, and Andrew had recieved more than a few good socks to the jaw. Lessig and Pilgram were both clearly out of sorts - although not fighters themselves they had obviously had to scramble out of a scrap or two.

“Where’s Cinnamon?” I asked.

“I lost track of her in the fighting,” replied Andrew, walking up to where Rex and I were standing - I realized one of his arms hung limply at his side, “I’m worried about her. I… She… that monk got her right in the arm with one her own needles.”

“Well it looks like you could use some looking after yourself,” I said, realizing he was hurt even worse than Rex. “We’ve got to get you out of here… get somewhere safe.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” said Rex, “Let me see here…”

“I know a place we can go - an abandoned farm on the outskirts of town. The owner lets me use it sometime when I’m, er, visiting here.” suggested Andrew.

“Fine,” I said, “let’s go.”

* * *

“Urgh,” moaned Andrew, “how long have I been asleep?”

“Six hours,” I said, standing over his bed, “I was beginning to get… worried.”

“I feel awful,” said Andrew, rolling over and curling up into a small ball.

“Not so fast,” I said forcefully, taking him by the shoulder and twisting him over, “we’ve got to change your bandages. Sit up.”

He groggily acquiesced.

“My arm hurts.” he said dazedly as I wrapped a fresh bandage around his kneee.

“It was dislocated. I had to pop it back in place.”

“I don’t remember that,” he said, confused.

“I know,” I said curtly, rolling him back on the bed and tucking a blanket around him, “I made you forget.”

He started for a moment, but was too tired to pursue the question. He curled up in bed and pulled the covers tighter over him and drifed off in a Ferris-Bueller-pretending to be sick kind of way I found totally adorable.

“Do you think she’s all right?” he asked me as he faded away into sleep.

I didn’t have to ask him who he meant.

* * *

I pulled up a chair, twisted it around, and sat down, leaning forward on its back.

“Well what are we going to do?” I asked.

“Just give me a minute, I’m working on a plan…” said Rex, trailing off in thought.

“I’ve hear that before,” I said, already regretting the angry tone in my voice.

“Do? Do what? You tell me Anne - what are we trying to do here?” asked Rex, uncharacteristicaly animated, “Go back in time? Return to the future? Save people? Avoid my fucking ex-girlfriend? Do you have any ideas? Do you?”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, “I didn’t mean… I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Goddamn right.”

There was a moment of tense silence before he relented.

“Look, I’m sorry. This entire job has just kinda knocked me off balance a little is all. I… I’m just sorry.”

“It seems to me our goals are basically similar,” said Pilgram quickly before the awkwardness could settle in, “I’m trying to find and stop Klaas Epps, and Norbu is trying to find and stop the monks who have befriended him. I’m not sure what the rest of you want - but whatever it is, I’m sure it involves the codex, and right now Epps has got it.”

“Yes - since our encounter with Epps I’ve been running temporal diagnostics with some of my equipment,” said Lessig, “the destiny potentiameter is running off the tracks - there’s going to be a major disruption in the time-space continuum, and it’s going to happen in less than three days, if that. We’re here to make sure that all the copyright laws come out straight when it’s over. So yes - Ghyslain and I are with you, Pilgram.”

“And Andrew?” asked Pilgram, “Is he still asleep?”

“Yes,” I said, “he’s exhausted and hurt - not all of us are Jedi. He needs rest and lots of it. But I don’t think you have to be a genius to see what he’s after. Cinnamon is after the codex, and Andrew is after her. He’ll go along with whatever we plan, so long as it brings him closer to that book.”

“And as for Anne and I,” said Rex, rubbing his eyes tiredly, “I’m not sure why we’re here. But if we ever plan on getting back to our present, we’ll need the codex.”

“It does all come down to that book, doesn’t it?” I asked quietly, “Jasper was right - our whole lives are twisted up around it. Whether we like it or not, it’s got us in it’s spell. We are it’s pool of lost souls.”

The room was still for a moment.

“The codex is like food, like clothing, like love,” said Norbu calmly, speaking for the first time, “it calls out to you. The question is not whether we are a part of this world or not. The question is what we make of this participation. All of our souls are lost to something. How far we should follow it - that is the question.”

As Norbu spoke I felt the force wrap around the small house where we stayed and felt in amazement how bright his presence was. Ghyslain glowed a pale, cool blue just outside the realm of the tangible. Rex pulsed, an unsettled flux more removed than I’d ever felt him - even more than when we first met. Behind me, Andrew’s sleep tickled the back of my consciousness. Somewhere inside my head I could feel his dreaming. It was happy and warm, and very far away from where we were now. And I realized that if it were up to me, he would never have to wake up.

“I know why I’m here,” I said quietly.

Norbu laughed lightly, and began preparing more tea.

* * *

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Lessig asked Pilgram as we entered the palace courtyard.

“I’m sure it’s our only choice,” Pilgram replied, “let’s face it - at this point the Emir is a mere figurehead.If the garrison at Tashkent were larger, they’d have just marched on Bukhara directly. The Russian advisor is the true power in Bukhara.”

“But will he help us?” asked Andrew, limping slightly behind us.

“If anyone has kept track of Epps, it will be the Russian administration. And this D’Alogna is rumoured to have eyes and ears spread across central Russia. Building up his own little empire here. The question is not whether he knows of Epps whereabouts - it’s whether he’s inclined to tell us what he knows.”

“D’Alogna - doesn’t sound like a particularly Russian name,” I murmured as a group of soliders led us into the palace proper.

“You know how it is with the Russian army - the Czar has swallowed up Central Asia so quickly it’s given him indigestion. Russian officers are needed in the capital or in the Amur. There’s an enormous shortage. They’ll take anyone they can get. And now with Russia so intoxicated with European culture, they’re swamped with distaff nobility trying to make a name for themselves in the Czar’s army.”

“Is that who this ‘Syvestro D’Alogna’ is?” asked Rex as we headed towards the throne room, “Distaff nobility?”

“Word on the grapevine is that he’s Northern Italian - youngest son of a noble family, etc. etc. ” replied Pilgram, “But a cultivated sort - I’m sure if we present our cause sympathetically he’ll help. Why on earth would he want to shelter an insane cult leader like Epps?”

* * *

“Heh heh heh,” chortled Syvestro cloyingly, “the question is not whether I know of Epps’ whereabout - it’s whether I’m inclined to tell you what I know.”

Then he farted.

Even seated in his official robes in his throne, Syvestro couldn’t escape looking like a cross between a bar of rancid, melted butter and a toad. His bright red haird curled unkempt into greasy locks and his ivory-white complexion was a welter of zits in various stages of tumescence, rupture, and healing.

“Your honor, surely mere supplicants such as ourselves…” began Lessig, bowing ingratiatingly.

“Har har har ach glugr,” laughed Syvestro sickeningly, trailing off in a cough as his merriment got the better of him. He took a moment to recover.

“I don’t even know who you are - much less what you’re doing here,” he said, “I mean look at you - one geriatric monk, three americans, one Frenchman, and some nigger bitch that they’ve dragged along - ”

I came about this close to making my lightsaber live and clocking him upside the head but I restrained myself. Rex his hand on my wrist and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“Oh I’m sorry,” said Syvestro, sensing my discomfort, “I didnt’ offend you, did I?”

Then he farted again.

“Bring me more cannoli! Cannoli, goddammit!” shouted Syvestro to a servant who scuttled quickly through the curtain behind his throne, “As far as I’m concerned,” he said, turning his gaze back towards us, “the only person I’m inclined to take seriously is Pilgram here - at least he’s a loyal Russian citizen.”

“They mean no disrespect your honor,” said Pilgram, falling to one knee, “But please - Epps is a madman, and his insane prophecies could lead to the suffering of all who believe in him.”

“Would it help,” said Rex, stepping forward, “if I told you that we were… Jedi?”

There was a moment of silence as Syvestro stared at him.

“What the hell is a Jedi?” he laughed, guffawing. His servant returned with a plate of three canolli, which Syvestro proceeded to stuff into his face with unseemly haste and an indecent amount of pleasure.

I glanced at Rex.

“Hey, we keep a low profile - sometime’s it works, sometimes it doesn’t.” he said shrugging.

“No wait - I’m quite interested in what you have to say,” said Syvestro, whipped cream dripping down his chin, “What is ‘Jedi’ - some new state in your American Union, perhaps? Some town in… how do you say… Mississippi?” he chortled gleefully at his own joke.

“Wow,” said Rex, blinking, “I’ve never really had to do this before. Sucks to live a century before Lucas I guess. Um… put it like this: Ghyslain and I are members of an extremely select organization with a strong emphasis on keeping the universe in balance. Our speciality is solving problems up close and personal. Occasionally we levitate shit, ok?”

“Oh really,” said Syvestro, wiping the cream off his chin with his fingers before sticking them into his pimply maw to suck them clean, “that sounds like a threat to me. And just how do you intend to accomplish that?”

Ghyslain glanced at Rex, who nodded to him. In one smooth motion he took out his doublebladed golfball retriever lightsaber and made it live.

“No threats,” said Ghyslain, “we bear you no ill will. Just a statement of fact.”

“I see,” said Syvestro, rising and walking slowly towards Ghyslain, his attention fixated on the French-Canadian’s lightsaber, “I see - a weapon of unsurpassed power. These rumors I have heard are true. And is it true that even such a one as you seeks my help to defeat this Klaus Epps?”

“Normally, we wouldn’t put you out,” said Rex wearily, “It’s just that we’ve kind of got issues about this guy, you know?”

“You believe that you cannot defeat him?” asked Syvestro, his greasy face twisting into an unpleasent smile.

“Uh… no dude - we believe we cannot find him.” replied Rex.

“heh heh heh hee hee he oh now,” said Syvestro, walking back towards his throne, “I believe I can help you with that without too much trouble at all.”

He reached towards the curtain and pulled it aside to reveal Klaas Epps, smiling smugly.

“Darn you Epps!” yelled Pilgram, “fooled again!”

“In cahoots with him, are you, Syvestro?” asked Andrew warily.

“You’ve proven yourselves quite adept in combat,” replied Epps, “but I need not resort to violence to put an end to you. Syvestro will deal with you.”

“You see, we’ve made a deal,” splurped Syvestro.

“You’re mad D’alogna - Epps plans on ruling the world, you know!” shouted Andrew.

“Yes that’s the deal - he rules the world, I get to be immortal. Maybe get to be vice-something. Overlord or Regent or something. In a few hours the pool of lost souls will begin it’s ascent to the surface, and then my triumph will be complete.”

“Um, actually,” said the ever-punctilious Lessig, “I think we’re coming down on pretty firmly on the ‘pool of lost souls is us’ side of the equation.

“And if you think some cannoli-obsessed midget Italian is about to ‘deal with us’, I think you’re about to be rudely disillusioned,” added Rex.

“Oh, I don’t need to ‘deal with you’,” said Syvestro, pacing back in forth in front of us, “Imperialism is so complicated, you see. The Czar has realized that brute strength is such an inefficient way to defend his frontier. A true diplomat knows that you win the game before the first move is made. To have to resort to… tee hee… violence is a sign that you simply haven’t prepared properly. And I’ll tell you, Jedi, that I didn’t get this far without preparing properly.”

Syvestro reached one hand into the air and snapped his fingers. Two women stepped out from behind the curtain to face us. One had pale skin, almond eyes, and long black hair and was dressed in what I can only describe as an ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ outfit. The other a strawberry blonde dressed even more improbably in some sort of tribal-leather getup with lots of buckles and a helmet with two enormous antlers sticking up out of it.

“What is this?” exclaimed Ghyslain, “some sort of subterfuge?”

“You won’t us so easy to trap, D’alogna!” snarled Lessig defiantely.

“Uh… is that chick wearing antlers?” asked Rex aloud.

“Oh my,” exclaimed the woman in the hoky harum get-up, taking off one of her earrings and dropping it on the ground, “I appear to have dropped one of my earrings. Could one of you gorgeous men help me?”

I watched incredulously as Andrew and Lessig’s eyes glazed over for a moment. Then they dove towards her, and fell on their hands and needs, fighting with each other over posession of the earring. Ghyslain took a step forward, shook his head, and stopped.

“That’s the wrong trick for an old man,” chuckled Norbu.

“Yeah really,” said Rex, “bushleague succubi stuff? Please. I’m a Jedi. I’ve got like, mental discipline and shit, you know? Also I’ve been working through a lot of shit about my ex, so I’m really not in the mood for forming new attachments right now.”

“Why thank you boys,” purred the woman, tucking Andrew under the chin with one red-nailed finger and lifting him up to eye level.

“Least I could do, ma’am,” he said, eyes round in adoration, “if there’s anything else…”

“I’m sure I could be of service,” said Lessig pushing him out of the way and interposing himself between Andrew and the woman as if he were in some badly-blocked production of Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“Why boys, no need to fight over little old me…” oozed the woman.

“That is really disgusting. Really disgusting.” said Ghyslain, rolling his eys, “Now you will release them from this spell or else we will be killing the all of the you here.”

“I told you it wouldn’t work,” said Epps out of the corner of his mouth to Syvestro.

“Ah, but their strength is also their weakness,” said Syvestro, clapping his hands with joy, “you’re just too easy to target…” he clapped his hands twice, and the woman in the antler get-up raised her hands, looked heavenwards, and intoned a short spell.

I felt a blinding white heat in my head, as if my pituitary gland had been put in a vicegrip. I glanced at Rex, Ghyslain, and Norbu. Norbu smiled sadly, sat in a lotus position, and closed his eyes. Ghyslain was holding his head in his hands and trying not to moan. I turned to look at Rex.

“Rex - you’re bleeding,” I said.

“I am?” he asked, pain etched in his face as he felt his mouth and nose with his hands.

“No,” I said, growing suddenly more afraid, “your eyes.”

Blood flowed from the corners of his eyes were tears should have been - as if someone had taken a straight razor and slashed clean across his pupils.

“I…” said Rex, staggering, before he let out an ear shattering scream and collapsed to the ground. Ghyslain was already unconscious, blood pouring from his mouth. Norbu sat, perfectly calm, as blood began trickling out of his ears.

Everyone at the room - except Andrew and Lessig, who were still preoccupied with the woman - stared at me.

“You said her head would explode!” exclaimed Syvestro disappointedly and slapping the antler’d woman on her arm, “I wanted to see her head explode! I’m very disappointed.”

I staggered against a wall, putting one hand against it to steady myself. I tried to will the pain away, tried to concentrate.

“She’s a mere padwan,” said the antlered woman in a gritty, accented voice, “she is less poweful than the others, perhaps - it will probably take an hour before the spell takes hold of her in earnest. Even these Jedi will last an hour or so before I bleed them dry.”

“Oh well then,” sniffed Syvestro, “why didn’t you say so? It might be fun to watch her die slowly. Especially if I can eat a cannolli while I’m doing it.”

“Oh course, darling,” oozed the woman who had bewitched Lessig and Andrew, “Andrew - go fetch Syvestro some cannolli.”

“Of course - immediately!” he said with alacrity, scuttling out of the room.

“I’m not… I’m not going to… let this…” said through clenched teeth, trying to keep the room from spinning.

”…happen?” Epps finished for me, laughing, “how are you going to stop us? You can barely stand.”

I turned to make my way out the door.

“Guards - take her,” I heard Syvestro call out as an after thought, “I do so enjoy a slow, painful death - when it’s not my own, that is.”

I staggered through the door and somehow managed push the pain away and shut it closed. The world turned small and hurtled away below me. From far above, I could see two men in uniforms put there hands on me. I saw one reach to repoen the door I’d just closed. Then I felt my consciousness reach it’s apogee, felt the arc of my height slow, still, and then felt myself plunging back down. I heard a hiss, a crunch, a gurgle, and a scream. I felt myself hustled away to a dark corner.

I watched Kathy give one of the guards an extra bang on the head with her crowbar for good measure before she turned to lift me off the ground and cradle me in her arms.

“Well Anne,” said Cinnamon grimly as she wiped the blood off of the two knitting needles she had just recovered from the guards and replaced them in her knitted holster, “it looks like all the boys have up and got themselves caught.”

XVII

“Well Anne,” said Cinnamon grimly as she wiped the blood off of the two needles she had just pulled from the guards and replaced them in her knitted holster, “it looks like all the boys have up and got themselves caught.”

“She needs help badly,” said Kathy, her face peering down into mine.

“We need to get out of sight.” agreed Cinnamon.

“Right. I had a look about earlier. This place is ancient. There are at least two levels of tunnels underground - mostly servant’s quarters.”

“Let’s get her there, then.” said Cinnamon. She reached down to lift me and then grimaced in pain, “can you move her?”

“I’ve got her,” said Kathy, lifting me easily into her arms, “let’s go.”

* * *

“You’re doing pretty good for someone whose head was supposed to explode, kid,” said Kathy when I regained consciousness. I cold tell it was false bravado.

“Why are you helping me,” I said weakly, “you hate me.”

“Hate you?” she asked jocularly, tucking a strand of hair that had come loose back behind my ear, “I’m here to help you. Make sure you don’t get into too much trouble.”

I tried to laugh - it came out as a low moan.

“Make sure I don’t… that’s Rex’s job.”

“Yeah, well you can just cancel that shit. Rex has cocked up royally - as usual. My assignment is to keep you from getting killed or destroying the world of ballroom dance, got it?”

I did manage to laugh this time, but it turned into a spasm of coughing.

“I haven’t heard you talk a lot before. You talk like Rex,” I said weakly, smiling.

Kathy’s mouth twitched with controlled emotion, and then her eyes hardened.

“Don’t ever say anything like that to me again. Ever.”

She looked up at Cinnamon.

“What’s wrong with her?”

Cinnamon put the back of her hand on my forehead and put her other hand on my wrist gently.

“She’s getting cold - the energy is draining right out of her. We don’t have much time. I don’t even think we can move her again.”

“Rex needs our help.” I whispered.

“Fuck Rex.” said Kathy bitterly.

”You need our help right now, young lady,” said Cinnamon, business like, “I’ve seen this before, when I was stationed in Sweden. Saami blood magic - usually they used it for political assassinations. I’ve never seen anyone resist it for this long, however.”

“Then I guess I should be glad that I’m just a ‘mere padwan’,” I croaked.

“I don’t think so. As a padwan, you shouldn’t be any easier to find - just easier to dispatch.”

“Then why isn’t she bleeding out like Rex and the others?” asked Kathy.

“Look at these marks,” said Cinnamon, running her finger gently over the moko on my lips. Her hands were soft.

“She’s ariki - noble. I suspect our Anne’s made of sterner stuff than Rex and Ghyslain put together.”

I was a haze of pain. Images and sensations of my surroundings faded blurrily in and out. Kathy dissolved into a mass of green tendrils. Cinnamon was a tawny red, wispy edges of her bleeding out of one arm, and a swirl of tangled skein churning uneasily in her belly.

“You’re hurt,” I said, comprehending.

“I’m fine.” she said stoically.

“Your arm - the bone’s fractured. Your stomach… The insides are torn again from fighting - you’re bleeding… you need help…”

“I’m fine,” she said grimly, sitting up straight and wincing in pain. One hand went involuntarily to her side, “this is not about me. It’s about my mission - and you. After the fight with Epps, Kathy and I consulted, and we both agree we need you healthy if either of us are going to get what we want. We thought it might be a good idea to follow Andrew and the others from a discrete distance. It appears we were correct.”

“What do you want? The codex? The pool? It’s us, Cinnamon - don’t you get that?”

“Well Syvestro and Klaas think it’s a pool, and that it’s coming here soon. If you’re right I’ve already found it. If they’re right, then the pool is coming here soon. Either way, this is where codex is going to be. Anne? Can you still hear me? Listen - these primitive shamanic sorts usually have their magic tied to an object of some kind - typically a grimoire. If we can find it we you stand a chance. That’s what we’ve got to focus on now.”

I lapsed into a spasm of coughing. There was blood in it this time.

Kathy and Cinnamon glanced at each other, obviously worried.

“How long do we have? Hours?” asked Kathy.

“Rather less than that, I’d say.” replied Cinnamon, avoiding my eyes.

Kathy sighed and kneeled before me. She took a deep breath, concentrating. She curled the fingers of one hand into an elaborate pose and laid them against my cheek. She lifted the other hand in a similar, equally familiar gesture and held them gently in front of me.

“What are you doing?” I said nervously, trying to sit up and failing.

“This will help you, Anne,” she said.

“How did you know how to do that? You shouldn’t know how to do that…”

She just stared at me. Her eyes softened - I could almost feel the sadness behind them.

“Rex and I went out for a long time,” she said softly, “he… taught me things. Things I’m not supposed to know. This will help. You’ve got to.”

“No. I - No - ” I said urgently, pushing her hand away from me, “you’re not supposed to know how to do this. It’s not allowed - I could be expelled for doing this with you… it’s secret… at the academy they said…”

Kathy grabbed my hand and began pushing my fingers into the same gesture determinedly.

“You could be hurt… could die…” I continued, afraid.

“You are hurt. You will die. Anne…” she said, staring deep into my eyes, “Anne, just do what I tell you.”

Reluctantly, I took her hand, and then felt my body go limp. From overhead, I saw her tense, and then I was gone.

* * *

The room faded to an overexposed white, and then disappeared altogether. I felt Kathy’s resistance end as the membrane between us snapped. She flowed into me, her pent-up essence released, her health flooding over my soul. The heat dissipated, spreading into her. I felt her give way as the pain washed across and I panicked, trying desperately to take back what I had lent her. Then I felt her weakened self steady. A falling reprieve and I was back.

* * *

I blinked my eyes opened. Kathy got up and teetered unsteadily over to the wall. Then he leaned over and vomited.

“That wasn’t so bad,” she said bravely, wiping her mouth with a Kleenex from her purse and throwing it away in disgust. Beneath her courage her face was ashen, “how are you?”

“How are you?” I said, smiling weakly at her.

Cinnamon’s gaze darted back and forth between the two of us.

“What just happened?” she asked.

I stood up slowly.

“Well I think I was just expelled from the academy, for one thing. But it worked.”

“I know,” she said, shuddering, “I can feel it.”

“I feel like hell too, and that headache is still there, but I feel better.”

“You won’t for long,” said Cinnamon.

“That’s right,” said Kathy, “it’ll keep growing inside you - and if I try that again I will die. Christ, I feel half dead already. Let’s make this right while we still can.”

I smiled involuntarily.

“You sound just like…”

Kathy glared warningly at me.

I took her by the arm and all three of us began walking down the corridor.

“Come on,” I said, “let’s go rescue the men.”

* * *

The palace truly was enormous - even once we left the rough-hewn stone passages of the lower level, we were presented with a labyrinth of passages.

“Servant’s quarters - a harem of some sort. That’s where they’ll be.” murmured Kathy as we walked along.

“This place is huge,” I said.

“And well appointed,” said Cinnamon, “Syvestro spares no expense. Look at this,” she said, turning to a handled shutter in the wall, “dumbwaiters - the latest technology. It’s like a little piece of Europe right here in…”

Cinnamon’s voice trailed off and her ears perked up. She shushed us silently with one finger. She grew totally still and then suddenly jerked open the door of the dumbwaiter and, in one fluid motion, pulled out the body of the person who was hiding within. The two women - for the person Cinnamon had revealed was indeed a woman - wrestled on the floor. Kathy hefted her crowbar, and I thought about making my light saber live, but they were too tangled up for me to risk hurting the wrong person. Finally Cinnamon got the upper hand, pinning her opponent against the wall with a knitting needle poised a hairsbreadth away from her Adams apple.

“What are you doing here?” both women asked each other at once.

“What the hell…?” spat Kathy.

I could see why she was confused - the two women appeared to be mirror images of each other, excepting the sandy blonde hair, slightly more pungent smell, and extremely slutty harem get-up of Cinnamon’s opponent.

“Cinnamon?” asked the woman, eyes wide in surprise.

“What the - ?” began Cinnamon incredulously.

“Oh sis, how terrific to see you!” exclaimed the woman, smiling brightly and throwing her arms around Cinnamon in a bear hug.

* * *

“Cumin? Cumin?” Cinnamon sheathed her needle and grabbed Cumin by both shoulders and shook her, “you’re supposed to be in school in Cheltenham! What in god’s name are you doing in the middle of central Asia? Mother and father will murder me! How dare you!”

“Oh well,” said Cumin, sulking prettily. She reached inside her bra to produce a slim silver case, extracted a cigarette and put it to her lips, “do you have a light, sis?”

“Proper ladies don’t smoke.” chastised Cinnamon severely.

Kathy and I stared at her incredulously for a full five seconds before she relented.

“Yes yes, of course I’ve got a light.” she said, relenting and producing a small lighter and lighting up her sister’s cigarette, “but that’s not the point - and it doesn’t mean that proper ladies don’t smoke. It’s just that, well… some of us are in Her Majesty’s service, you know. When employed by a super-intelligent whale, one must make exceptions - ”

Cinnamon was about to continue when Cumin cut her off by grabbing each of us and hugging us warmly.

“And you,” she said hugging me, “and you,” she said, hugging a somewhat taken-aback Kathy, “well, if I know my sister you must be unwitting accomplices. Unwitting accomplices, Cumin. Cumin, unwitting accomplices.”

“she’s… you’re…” I spluttered.

“I assure you,” said Cinnamon icily, “the fact that we are twins does not for one instance mean that we share any common characteristics.”

”Ooohhh” said Cumin, pinching Cinnamon’s cheeks familiarly and growling in the sort of friendly, teddy bear voice usually reserved for scratching dogs on the tummy, ”Sis is so ashamed! Sis is so ashamed! Look at her! Look at her!”

“Stop it! Stop it!” said Cinnamon as she slapped Cumin’s hands away, more out-of-sorts than I’d ever seen her before, “stop it! Good god, what are you doing here? You’re meant to be in Cheltenham!”

Cumin’s aspect darkened and then brightened again - I could already tell that constancy was not her strong suit.

“Oh sis - I’m in a harem!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands with excitement, “isn’t it fantastic - just like Captain Burton’s translation of the karma su - ”

Cinnamon blushed scarlet and put her hands desperately over Cumin’s mouth.

“Why. Aren’t. You. In. Gloucestershire.?.” said Cinnamon through gritted teeth.

“Well I was in London during Christmas, and they were having auditions for this wonderful new comic opera and I thought that, well, it would really be much more interesting than the next term was going to be…”

“Theatre?” gasped Cinnamon, “Cumin, do you have any idea what class of woman involves herself with the theatre?”

“Oh don’t worry sis, it was very artistic - H.M.S. Pinafore, by Sullivan and Gilbert.”

“Sullivan and Gilbert?” Cinnamon asked, trying to dredge up a memory, “the people who did ‘Trial by Jury’?”

Kathy’s eyes narrowed skeptically.

”You were in the world premiere of HMS Pinafore?”

“Oh no, I didn’t get into the show, but Mr. Carte has several other ideas for me,” she said brightly, “he suggested that I try the international circuit, so I got booked into this wonderful Russian circus.”

“CIRCUS?!”

“They had these fantastic bears that danced in little tutus,” said Cumin, getting up and turning a pirouette, “and there was a sword swallower,” she said swallowing, “and then, well, one night in Minsk some Cossacks had a bit of a difference with the manager and, I… well…”

“Out with it.” commanded Cinnamon.

“Well,” said Cumin, wincing, “I was sort of sold into white slavery a little.”

“WHITE SLAVERY?”

“Well it wasn’t my idea, and I was only in white slavery for a little bit, I promise sis really I do. Most of it was actually quite picturesque. And at any rate, it turns out Syvestro is really a very nice sort of person to have in charge of your harem…”

“You’re in D’Alogna’s harem?! Do you mean you’ve actually had… relations with that rancid little dictator?!” Cinnamon said, the color draining from her face.

“Well,” said Cumin, grinning wickedly, “actually he tends to prefer…”

“I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you,” said Cinnamon, clamping her hands over her ears, “we will not discuss this again ever. Ever.”

“Wait a second,” I said, “you live here?”

“Yes.”

“In the harem?”

“Yes.”

Kathy lifted Cumin up by the arm, dusted her off, and began turning on the charm.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen two women - one with antlers, the other who gives off strong ‘male mind control’ vibes?”

“Antlers? You mean Elvira?” said Cumin. Then her eyes widened in recognition, “oh - you must be after those two American boys that Baklava bought home the other day. Have you seen the younger one, sis? He’s so dishy.”

“Huff? Why no, I don’t know what you mean.”

Cumin ran her eyes over her sister, then looked at us, and then looked at Cinnamon again.

“My, someone’s got quite a crush.” she said, teasing her sister.

“Do not!” protested Cinnamon in exactly the way that Shakespeare must have had in mind when he wrote that line about ladies protesting too much.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen some sort of magic artifact… a grimoire perhaps…?” I asked.

“You mean the source of Elvira’s power? Good lord, she hasn’t been up to the blood magic again, has she?” Cumin sighed and peered into Kathy’s face, “you look like you’ve got a touch… no wait - ” she took my hand and looked into my eyes with an incredibly empathetic gaze, “ah - you’ve got it. I say, rather good of you help her,” she said to Kathy, “Hmm… I see how this goes. My sister is up to her usual no good, ropes together a bunch of Americans, a lady celestial and, er, are you a red Indian dear? And now you’ve got your friends to rescue, but Syvestro has asked his lady friends to lend a hand?”

“Wow,” said Kathy, “you’re good at this.”

“I’m very perceptive,” said Cumin with gay self confidence, taking our arms and leading us down the hallway, “Cinnamon gets it from me. Well this whole rescuing thing sounds quite the adventure. Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

XVIII

“Careful!” chided Baklava as Andrew accidentally smeared some nail polish on the flesh of her big toe.

“Sorry! Sorry!”

“Larry,” said Baklava, “go peel me some grapes.”

“Yes of course at once.” said Lessig with alacrity, hurrying out of the room.

“Disgusting.” said Cinnamon, staring at the scene from behind the grate where we were secretly observing the action in Baklava’s chamber, “pathetic.”

“Men,” agreed Kathy, “can’t live with them.”

She didn’t finish the other half of the truism.

“Oh c’mon,” I snorted with disgust, “you only think it’s disgusting because they’re not fawning all over you!”

“What does that mean?” asked Cinnamon turning to me.

“you didn’t mind it one bit when he was chasing you across Asia!”

“Ridiculous.”

“The only thing that I think is ridiculous,” said Cumin, biting her lower lip like a child denied cookies and staring fixedly at Andrew, “is how he’s still completely dressed.”

“I’ll admit that men have their place,” said Kathy to me, “and I’d say fawning over me is definitely about 80% of it. Who else would you want them to fawn over? Life is like a well-danced foxtrot. You need a man to set the tempo and provide the framework within which you can look fabulous.”

“Your life philosophy is derived from foxtrot?” I asked incredulously.

“Well what’s yours derived from?” she said, looking me up and down contemptuously, ”Whalerider?”

“Keisha Castle-Hughes deserves that Oscar…” I began heatedly, but I suddenly found myself doubling over in pain as a flash of something white and razor sharp slashed through my head.

“Anne - ” said Cinnamon, coming to my side.

“She doesn’t look very well.” said Cumin, putting her hand on my forehead.

“I feel fine,” I said weakly, standing and wiping the sweat from my brow.

“Well we’ve got to get some help for you and soon. You can’t hold off the blood magic forever.” said Kathy, “Cumin - what’s going on here?”

“Elvira, Baklava, and I share quarters here in the harem. Baklava is some sort of gypsy seductress type - men follow her like bees to honey. I think it’s a relatively simple enchantment actually. She keeps on promising to show it to me but never does. Elvira is more formidable. Quite the raving berserker Scandinavian that one. But as I said before, if we can get to her grimoire we can make Anne and her friends right in no time.”

“Well we should free Andrew first.” said Cinnamon determinedly.

We all turned to look at her.

“And Lessig.” she added, “Andrew and Lessig. Lessig and Andrew. Because we need help. More help. In order, uh, to save the others.”

Cumin smiled and tousled Cinnamon’s hair.

“Despite her remarkable aptitude for lethal violence, sis really does have a heart of gold.”

“That’s a pity,” said Kathy, “I was just getting to like her. Now - what’s the plan?”

* * *

“Are you sure this is going to work?” I whispered to Cumin as we hid behind a curtain so gaudy that it looked like it belong in a harem, and thus matched the rest of the decor perfectly.

“It’s simple,” said Cumin, “Baklava can only enthrall her victims until they’re exposed to something that they care about more than her. That’s why she keeps them in the harem - it would be quite messy indeed if they came across any loved ones. It’s really the most craven of enchantments.”

“I think this entire thing is ridiculous,” whispered Cinnamon, fidgeting in the middle of the room, “I mean,” she said, blanching, “what if he doesn’t really like me?”

“Wow,” said Kathy, “and I thought I had vulnerability issues.”

“Ssshhh!” whispered Cumin.

We fell silent from our places behind the curtain as Andrew entered the room, whistling merrily and carrying a small plate with a jar full of color that was, I imagined, the nineteenth-century Central Asian equivalent of toenail polish. Cinnamon stood squarely in the middle of the room facing him.

“Cinnamon,” said Andrew, eyebrows furrowing, “what are you doing here?”

“Oh, uh, nothing.” she said,

“I see… I mean, I’ve got to go!” said Andrew, as if suddenly remembering something, “Baklava told me to tell her at once if I saw you!”

He turned on his heel and made for the doorway he had just come through.

“No wait - ” said Cinnamon. Andrew turned around slowly and watched her curiously.

“Uh, I mean, actually I, uh…”

“Good god woman, out with it!” moaned Kathy under her breath.

“I mean, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Ask me something?” said Andrew uncertainly, “Well, I don’t know… I’m supposed to be turning you in right now…”

“Well uh,” said Cinnamon, tracing a nervous pattern on the table next to her with one finger and scrutinizing it intensely to avoid looking at Andrew, “well, remember when I assassinated that army general in Dunhuang? Well, I stopped by the cave temples afterwards and took a few rubbings before I moved on. And, er, a lot of them were in devanagari and I really only know Sino-Tibetan languages and so…”

“Has she really never done this before?” Kathy asked Cumin incredulously.

“Well,” admitted Cumin, “she does rather tend to rely on the ‘remarkable aptitude for level violence’ thing in dealing with others, to be perfectly honest.”

“Devanagari? That’s most unusual.” said Andrew, oblivious to our presence, as he stepped forward and away from the door.

“So I thought, you know, maybe some time if you were free or something, we could maybe as it were, get together and maybe, uh, you know, go over some of the epigraphy or something.” said Cinnamon in a halting manner that was half torrent of words and half uneasy silence.

“I mean, if you’re not, uh, busy or anything.” she ended, lamely.

Kathy was so disgusted she had covered her eyes and had a pained expression on her face. Cumin was nodding vigorously in unseen encouragement for her sister. Personally, I thought it was about the cutest thing I had ever seen in an unbelievably awkward way.

The expression in Andrew’s eyes seemed to clarify as he stepped towards her.

“Yeah sure, I mean, it’s not like it would be a date or anything,” he said.

“No! I mean, of course not. Just, you know, epigraphy.” replied Cinnamon, smiling a little shyly.

“Good lord!” said Andrew, looking in surprise at the plate he held in his hands, “why in God’s name would I want to paint Baklava Kerpushkin’s toe nails?”

XIX

“Ok, now this is insane,” I said.

“Trust me.” said Kathy, gesturing ‘gimme’ imperiously.

I scrunched up my face and prepared to make my ‘Anne is About to Cry’ face that always proved so effective on Rex. Kathy, I quickly realized, was much harder to sway.

“But it’s insane!”

“Shut the fuck up and hand it over.” While my mind boggled at the idea that Rex and Kathy had ever gone out, my short time with Kathy had more or less convinced me that she wore the pants in the relationship.

I reluctantly handed over the small plush handbag I kept my tampons in.

“If you even think about opening that…” I warned Kathy.

Kathy’s eyebrows raised in a question.

“It’s just private is all.” I sulked.

“Wait a second - ” said Andrew, “maybe I’m still a little woozy as a result of that enchantment, but… who is this ‘Winnie the Pooh’? Some foreign agent?”

“This,” said Kathy, pointing to the beaming face of my favoritist bear, “is Winnie the Pooh.”

Everyone gathered around for a look.

“My,” said Cinnamon, looking concernedly at Eeyore, “that donkey seems rather unhappy, doesn’t he?”

“The tiger is quite enthused, though!” added Cumin chipperly.

“Ok ok you get the idea,” I said, snatching it away from their prying eyes and blushing a little, “what are you going to do, Kathy? Will Lessig’s love for Eeyore overwhelm his concern for Baklava?”

“Not exactly. Here,” said Kathy, placing my bag prominently on a small side table, “Andrew - you call them in. We’ll hide.”

We ducked behind yet another large curtain, Cinnamon complaining under her breadth about how she’d decorate a harem if she wanted to secure it.

“Oh Lawrence, oh Baklava!” shouted Andrew, “can you come in here for a moment?”

After a few seconds Baklava Kerpushkin swept into the room in a flutter of transparent textiles. Lessig trailed along attentively behind her.

“Andrew?” she asked, looking around, “what’s wrong?”

“I think you left your bag here, uh, my dearest.”

Baklava looked in perplexity at my bag and I felt Kathy squeeze my shoulder.

“Repeat after me:” she whispered, ” ‘Oh yes this is my bag.’ ”

I understood what she wanted at once. I closed my eyes and tried to relax.

“Oh yes this is my bag.” I said softly.

“Oh yes this is my bag.” said Baklava.

I was about to continue, but I felt another wave of pain shoot over me - the blood magic was growing stronger in me, I could feel it. I tried to fight down the wave of nausea and continue.

Baklava walked across the room and picked up the bag, obviously startled by both its appearence and her unmotivated claim to ownership. She held it up and examined it, eyebrows narrowed in puzzlement.

“I… that’s… that’s a Winnie the Pooh bag!” said Lessig, clearly startled.

“Yes - it’s Baklava’s. Haven’t you seen it around here before?” said Andrew.

“But Winnie the Pooh won’t be invented for another fifty years or so. How…?”

I concentrated and willed Baklava to turn to face him.

“That’s what you think, Larry.” she/I purred.

“But…”

“Oh Syvestro and Klaas have been up to quite a lot,” I/she said, running one finger down his chest before continuing, “this may just look like a colorful bag to you, but it’s our future fortune.”

“Fortune?” asked Lessig, the corner of his mouth twitching.

“Yes - once we copyright these images we can sell bags like this across the world. Klaas has a wide assortment of items gleaned from his first experiments with the Codex.” Baklava said.

“Taking retail merchandise from the future… and copyrighting it now? But that’s… that’s… pure evil.”

I tried to get Baklava to say something, but she was too busy purring over Lessig’s use of the term ‘ pure evil’. When she was done I made her say:

“Evil - and lucrative. And with Syvestro’s connections in the British parliament, our copyright will never expire.”

Lessig’s face was turning beat red and his mouth was twitching uncontrollably.

“We’ve got a whole room full of items in the back,” said Andrew, playing along. I reached out with my mind and gave him a small kick to consciousness, “Baklava, some day you’ll have to tell me who originally invented that ‘Mickey Mouse’ character you just got a hold of.”

“NOOOOOO!!!!!!” Lessig exploded in a primal, animal roar of protest at unfair intellectual property regimes. He rushed Baklava and pushed her up against the table with one hand on her throat.

“NOOOOO!!!! THE MOUSE…” gurgled Lessig in an incohate rage, “FREE THE MOUSE!!! MUST FREE THE MOU - ”

Lessig’s thumbs moved onto Baklava’s Adam’s apple. We sprung out of our hiding place and Kathy and Cinnamon dragged him off of her. She collapsed in a massive pool of gasping-for-breath with occasional ripples of choking. With obvious relish, Cumin tied her up and gagged her.

“No! You don’t understand!” screamed Lessig and we restrained him, “She’s got the mouse! She’s got Winnie the Pooh! She’s probably got a hundred unix patents with the words ‘GNU Public License’ crossed out and the words ‘SCO’ written in in crayon! For all I know she’s going to copyright Shakespeare! We’ve got to stop her… stop them… this is why I was sent back in time… I understand now…”

“Larry, calm down…” began Kathy.

But Lessig was raving and incosolable. Cinnamon looked him over, decided there was nothing for it, and delivered a strong, short blow to his solar plexus. Lessig went down instantly, the wind knocked out of him. Cinnamon also yelped with pain and bent double, reaching for her side. Andrew rushed over to her.

“Good god - ” he said, looking at the unmistakable red stain that slowly began soaking her clothes, “you’re hurt. You can’t exert yourself! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m fine,” grunted Cinnamon, “That should… calm him down…”

“You need a doctor!” Said Andrew, “Let me help…”

He moved to touch her side and a moment later found a knitting needle making a gentle but threatening depression in the flesh immediately adjacent his windpipe.

“Cumin, do us a favor would you?” she said, retreating into the other room with her sister, “I could use some help… away from prying eyes.” she said, staring at Andrew accusingly - and with maybe just a hint of something else slightly less hostile as well.

“I… that wasn’t unchivalrous was it?” said Andrew, casting his eyes around the room looking to drum up support for his cause.

“Unchivalrous?” said Kathy, “Andrew, the last time I gave Rex a look like that we were in a situation which involved finals week, homemade brownies, and a 1.75 liter bottle of Jim Beam.”

“Who’s Jim Beam?” asked Andrew. Kathy sighed. I walked across the room to the table.

”Now can I have my bag back?”

XX

We found them in the dungeon - a dark, airless space dripping with water. The torch that Cumin held to light our paths was too dim for me to see the floor, but I could smell - smell - the blood on the floor around us. Hung spread-eagle against the wall were Ghyslain, Norbu, Pilgram, and Rex. Their bodies slouched tracing a curve against the wall that terminated at the cruel manacles that held them up. I heard a low, incessant murmur - it was Pilgram. I realized with a start that he was praying.

“God good!” said Lessig, shocked at the sorry state of the prisoners.

“Rex what the hell are you doing hanging up there are bloody and sad looking like?” spat Kathy as she moved towards him.

“Heh…” laughed Rex lowly with what appeared to be all the energy he had, “the last time you saw me you told me to drop dead.”

“Well I didn’t think you’d up and do it,” said Kathy, disgruntled, as I cut Rex and the others free of their chains with my light saber.

“Oh look at the poor cute little injured Jewish boy!” said Cumin delightedly as she took Pilgram from his chains and laid him carefully on the ground.

“He’s Mennonite, not Jewish.” I corrected.

“He’s not?” asked Cumin, obviously crestfallen.

“They both wear the weirdo suits, but the Jews have the funny hair,” I said, making peyot-like corkscrew motions around my ears with my fingers.

“Well,” said Cumin, as if making her mind up about something, “he’s still very injured and very cute. How do you feel, dear?” she asked, mopping Pilgram’s brow.

“They tried magic… torture… nothing worked…” he moaned feverishly.

“No wonder,” said Kathy expertly as she looked over Rex, one eyebrow cocked skeptically as if torn between helping him and kicking him in the crotch, “Mennonites have unbelievable savings throws. Magic, cold, breathweapons, you name it.”

”Breathweapons?” asked Lessig, wide-eyes.

“You see a lot of things when you’re the world’s number one operative for ballroom dance espionage. Trust me. Someone out there is looking out for them - I saw a guy named Horst take it full on from a Silver Dragon once and the only thing that was singed was his bible.”

Rex tried to say something but coughed up blood instead and his head fell back on the floor, lolling blankly to one side.

“Ah Christ Masterson,” said Kathy with an air of resignation, setting down her crowbar and putting her purse under his head, “don’t die on me, ok?”

“Ghyslain’s got almost no pulse,” said Lessig, feeling his friend’s wrist.

“We’re all going to die,” croaked Norbu.

I rushed over to his side.

“Rinpoche,” I said fiercely, “I’m not going to let that…” was about to continue but gave a yawlp of pain instead as the Saami blood magic ran through my head again. I saw red and recovered a minute later to find myself on my kneed, clutching my head.

“Anne are you all right?” asked Cinnamon concernedly.

“It… hurts…” I whimpered.

“We’ve got to do something,” said Cinnamon to Kathy.

“Well what the fuck are we going to do? We can’t leave the others in this condition!” shot back Kathy heatedly, looking up from where she was stroking Rex’s forehead.

“I’m ok,” I said, standing uneasily. I felt myself totter and reached for the wall to hold myself up.

“You’re pale as a ghost dear - we need to do something and soon. If I were in better condition…”

“You’re not going anywhere!” said Andrew, coming to her side and staring imperiously at her. He was about to touch her but she waved him away. She met his glance, wavered, and then looked down and took his hand, squeezing it.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do.” she confessed.

“We’re going to fix this,” I said with determination, “and you, Norbu, are going to be fine.”

Norbu laughed dryly and a thick vein of red ran from his mouth.

“We’re are all going to die. Today, tomorrow, in the future. The question is not whether we will,” he said, turning over and beginning to crawl on all fours over to Rex and Ghyslain, “but what significance our life will have, and what we will be in the next.”

He put his hands on Rex and Ghyslain’s head and looked up at me.

“The question is not whether we are attached to the things of this world, Anne Kawharu,” he mumbled weakly, echoing the words he had said to me before, “the question is how much it comes to matter to us.”

He closed his eyes, and began chanting softly. I felt a wave of something purple wash through the room, and then he collapsed.

“Norbu!” I cried, running over to him, “Norbu!”

I turned over his fallen body. He wore a small smile on his face, and he was dead.

“Norbu!” cried Pilgram, stumbling over to him. He took his friend’s head in his hands and began weeping uncontrollably.

“There there,” said Cumin, coming up behind him and comforting him, “there’s nothing you can do now. There there.”

I was about to go over to her, but stopped in amazement as I watched Ghyslain’s eyes flutter open.

”Tabernac,” he swore softly before collapsing into a fit of coughing, “I don’t have very long to live, Lawrence.”

“No my valiant francophone comrade, you don’t,” said Lessig looking at us in wonder as he realized what had happened, “but longer, perhaps, than you once did.”

“Oh man,” moaned Rex with a sort of strength, “I feel like shit.”

“Rex? Rex?! Do you feel better?” exclaimed Kathy.

“A little he confessed,” smiling and taking her hand.

“Good,” she said, standing up abruptly and letting his head fall out of her lap and back onto her purse. She looked down at him, had a second thought, and snatched her purse out from under him.

“Oh! God Kathy!” swore Rex as his head hit the hard stone.

“You bled all over my new purse Rex,” said Kathy, chastising him, “this is Prada! Do you know much this sort of thing costs?”

“Well it looks like you’re back to normal too,” said Rex, standing up slowly. He made it to his feet and then began to fall. I caught him.

“Well it looks like there’s someone I can depend on,” he said, smiling at me weakly as I held him.

“Hmph.” hmph’d Kathy, crossing her arms and looking away sulkily.

* * *

“We should have kept Baklava with us,” said Cinnamon, worried, as we walked down the hall, “how will we find Elvira now?”

“Oh we’ll find her,” I said, turning left at a t-intersection, “I know exactly where that bitch is.”

“Language!” warned Rex from my arms.

“Let me handle this, Rex,” I said, surprised at the command in my voice as I made another turn. We had come to a huge wooden door with an impressively thick lock on it.

“Oh boo hoo,” I said grimly, making my light saber live, “looks like it’s locked.”

I slashed an X through the door with my blade and then held out my arm. I narrowed my eyes, concentrated, and the door flew inward in a massive explosion of splinters.

”Mon dieu,” said Ghyslain, who was limping along with Lessig’s help, “how did you teach a Padwan to force-push like that?”

“I didn’t,” said Rex, slightly amazed, gazing up at me.

I strode through the door. Inside it was like a Marilyn Manson video, all candelabras, inky darkness, and gauzy curtains. Elvira was sitting at her desk, without her antler-helmet this time, poring over an enormous book. She turned in surprise and looked at me.

“YOU!” I said, handing Rex to Andrew and walking towards her. She stood up in surprise. As soon as I reached her I slapped her with the back of my hand so hard that she went sprawling.

“You killed Norbu!” I said, grabbing her by her neck and arms and throwing her across the room. She slammed into the wall so hard that dust fell from the ceiling.

“You hurt my friends!” I grabbed her by her hair and tossed her to the floor. She skidded to a stop about three feet away from me.

“My hurt my teacher! My best friend! The man I look up to like a father! And you nearly. Killed. ME!” I grunted, grabbing her and tossing her away as she inched, wounded, back towards her book.

“Anne…” said Rex in a low, warningly voice.

“And I’m not going to let it happen ever again.” said, taking the book from its stand and tearing it in half.

The room shuddered and moaned as a crackle of black-blue lightning sizzled around the book before dissipating around the room. The pain I had been fighting to keep in the back of my head was gone. I glanced at Rex and the others. Cinnamon took his head in one hand and stared into his eyes. With her other hand she felt his pulse with two fingers, like Chinese doctors do.

“It’s better,” said Cinnamon, “but they’re still weak - they’ll need days to recover their strength.”

Elvira had hunched herself up against a wall. One arm hung useless at her side, a bit of bone poking up through a vicious tear at her shoulder. Dazed, she reached up with the other and felt the blood flowing from her jaw. She pulled her hand away and looked at it.

“Bleeding?” I said, mocking her cruelly, “how does it feel?”

“Anne!” said Rex, “don’t. Don’t get angry. Don’t do this, Anne. Don’t do it.”

“Shut up!” I spat back at him, “I’m tired of your complaining. I just saved your life - don’t you dare tell me how to live mine!”

Elvira looked up at me and smiled twistedly.

“You are pathetic,” she said in an uneven, deeply accented voice, “you use anger like a virgin uses a man. If I had your skills you all would have been dead the moment I first met you. You may have taken my book, but there’s still one last thing I can do to you…”

She began chanting gutturally. Even from across the room, I could feel her throat in my hands. I turned to look at them, already closing into a grasping half-fist, bent at two digits. I felt her windpipe, felt the cartilage giving in softly in my grasp, amazed at my own power. I slowly raised my outstretched arm up. Across the room I saw her stop chanting abruptly and begin scrabbling madly at her throat. Drawn by my power her body, puppet-like, began lifting up against the wall as if lifted by some invisible force. I exulted to know it was my own.

“Anne,” I heard Rex’s voice in my ear, and felt his hand on my shoulder, “Anne - don’t.”

Then I snapped out of it. Elvira dropped to the ground like a rag doll. I began crying, sobbing, and now it was Rex’s turn to hold me in his arms. And that was the closest I’ve come, back then and even now all these years later, to ever going over to the dark side.

“You’ve broken my body,” I heard Elvira say from behind me, “you’ve destroyed my power. But there is one curse you can never avoid, never escape. I swear, Anne Kawharu, that you will die - and soon. This is my death wish.”

She closed her eyes and finished the final lines of her incantation. As she let loose a wild howl a massive bolt of energy leapt out of her and enveloped my body. For a moment I was wracked with an all-enveloping pain more intense than any I had ever experienced in my life. Her body collapsed, limp and dead, against a wall.

“Anne, how do you feel?”

I couldn’t even hear her, the pain was so intense.

“Anne?”

Slowly I reached into myself and pushed it down as far as I could. My bones still ached with whatever she had done to me.

Then the room shook. At first I thought it was me, but I saw the others looking too.

“What was that?” asked Lessig, eyeing the ceiling dubiously.

“Whatever it is, we’ve got to get out of here,” said Kathy firmly.

“No,” I said with certainty, “it’s the pool. It’s coming. Epps and D’Alogna… they’re summoning it. We’ve got to find it. Except,” I said, weakly, “I can’t walk on my own.”

XXI

We staggered down the corridor, a sad group - Rex in Kathy’s arms, Ghyslain in Lessig’s, Pilgram in Cumin’s, and I in Andrew’s. Cinnamon walked in front of us, bloody but unbowed.

The ground shook beneath us again and a spray of fine silt drifted downward from the ceilings and into my hair.

“What’s going on?” Asked Cinnamon, looking up at the ceiling and squinting as the dust fell into her eyes.

I felt something electrical shoot through me - and I felt Ghyslain and Rex feel it too.

“The pool,” I said, “it’s here. It’s coming.”

“She is right,” said Ghyslain, shaking his head, “it’s filling my mind.”

“I thought,” said Rex, panting uneasily in Kathy’s arms, “I thought we were going to go with the ‘Pool of Lost Souls is Us’ option.”

The ground shook again, so hard that we were thrown to the floor. We tried to get up, but the tremor continued unabated, until finally the walls around us cracked and the ceiling buckled precariously.

“That option seems increasingly unlikely,” said Lessig, walking to one wall, “look!”

Between the cracks in the stone corridor where he pointed, a small but visible smudge of ultra-bright blue appeared. It welled slowly out of the stone and then began dripping thickly towards the floor.

“My god,” said Andrew, walking towards it, “look at that.”

It wasn’t the first time that I had seen that color but it was the first time I’d seen water from the Pool of Lost Souls. It was like an optical allusion, the visual equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard. The more you tried to look at it, the more you had to look away.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Andrew, slowly extending one finger towards the wall to scoop up a smidgeon. The instant his finger made contact he yowled and pulled back, the water eating away at his flesh with an audible hiss. He shook his hand quickly, but already the heat-welt was starting to rise on his finger, as if he has stuck it into a fire.

“keep moving,” I said weakly, “just keep going down. We’ll find it in the depths of the palace.”

* * *

Eventually the hallway widened out into a largish room with a sand floor. Above us the ceiling faded away into infinity, the pale beams of illumination that shone down from the skylight overhead gave only the hint that somewhere up above us was daylight. A narrow grooved channel like a bowling gutter ran along the edges of the room, and enormous spikes of some unidentifiable metal burst from the floor in irregular intervals. Across from us was a massive stone wall with an elaborate abstract series of grooves carved into it. They glittered with a swarm of small blue sapphires that shone at the vertices. Standing in front of the wall were Klaas Epps and Syvestro D’Alogna along with several monks. Epps was chanting, half-entranced, rocking slowly back and forth with the Codex of Lost Souls in one hand as his other hand darted across the carving, touching first this gem and then another. As he touched each, they began glowing with a soft, interior light that was, quite simply, otherworldly.

“Oh my!” exclaimed Syvestro, “Look what we have here! Party poopers! Intrepid party poopers, don’t get me wrong, but still…” he glanced up at us, “doomed, I think.”

“Shut it, D’Alogna,” I said, “You tried to stop us once and failed. The games up. Give up now before its too late.”

The room shook like a bad Star Trek special effect and I struggled to remain standing. With an enormous crack, the walls of the cavern shattered. From the gaping wounds in their stone, a hundred thin spouts of ever-blue water burst and flowed into the gutters along the edge of the room, where they dripped downwards, through the gate. Epps’ chanting increased, and the jewels began to glow a brighter blue.

” ‘before it’s too late?’ ” he asked, laughing, “Oh really? My dear girl, do you have any idea what’s going on, or what we’re about to do? The Pool of Lost Souls is filling even as we speak - it is coming and we are to meet it! Beyond the Gate of Lost Souls lies my final triumph and immortality itself! But don’t worry - you don’t have to wait for me to kill you. I’ll have them do it for me.”

He gestured to the monks, who grinned broadly and drew their swords.

“If you think…” I began.

”Think?” said D’Alogna, “Think what? You barely escaped death the last time you faced my Buddhist allies. And now look at you - two wounded Jedi, one stripling Padwan and a few minor characters? Without that damnable Tibetan Monk you’re no match for us! It would take a dozen more Jedi too…”

D’Alogna was about to continue when the room exploded in light and sound. I turned away and instinctively shielded my eyes with my forearm. Two hooded, robed figures appeared in front of us. They walked towards me and then dropped to one knee.

“Reporting for duty, Ms. Kawharu,” they said in unison.

“Duty?” I asked.

They paused and then glanced at one another. One was a young man, barely a teen-ager, with unruly blond hair and devilishly handsome features. The other was an equally young redheaded girl with a wide, pale face full of freckles. I realized with a shock that they were both wearing Jedi robes.

“Wow,” whispered the girl out of the side of her mouth, “she really is our age.”

“We’ve still got to do whatever she tells us to…” began the boy, casting his eyes up at me. Then they hit on something behind me and fixed in fascination.

”Dad?” asked the young man, amazed.

”Willem?” asked Lessig, moving forward, “good god - but you’re only one!”

“Well I…” he began.

In a well-practiced gesture that I had never actually done before, I reached out with both hands and grabbed their ears and twisted, raising them slowly up my eye level.

”What is going on here?” I asked them imperiously, glancing fiercly at one and then the other.

“It’s definitely her, Sarah.” winced Willem Lessig.

“Well Ms. Kawharu you weren’t very clear on the details,” began Sarah, the girl, “you said something about how you needed a ‘deus ex machina’…”

“What?!” I roared, twisting even further.

“You told us you needed help…” said Willem, squirming.

”… made us promise not to tell the council…” confessed Sarah.

”… I thought you were kidding when you said you had a key to the clean room where they stored the portal…”

“That should be interesting to see,” said Epps, “three exhausted Jedi, an injured Padwan, and two of her friends versus a dozen Shaolin warriors? I hardly think this is the deus ex machina you were looking for, Kawharu.”

“We’ll see about that!” I said defiantly, trying to ignore the migraine-pain in my head, “I’m not injured.”

Epps raised an eyebrow.

“What?” I asked, nonplussed.

“Anne - you’re bleeding.” said Kathy quietly.

I stopped, confused, and then felt my eyes watering. I lifted my fingers up to them, and when I pulled them away they were coated in blood.

“Kill them.” said Epps simply, turning again to the door.

* * *

The monks came on with a fury that was beyond what I had experienced at our first meeting. Sarah, Willem, and I tried to form a perimeter to defend the others. Kathy and Ghyslain helped ward off the occasional close call - the others were too hurt or tired to defend themselves. Meanwhile, Epps began chanting again. As our combat continued his chanting grew to a fever pitch. Suddenly there was a tremendous crack as the walls within the chamber split, fracturing again into thousands of hairline cracks which, wound like, poured steady thin streams of bright blue water down their side and into the rapidly-filling gutter around the corner of the room.

The monk I was tussling with took advantage of my distraction and nailed me in the calf, paralyzing my leg and sending me sprawling to the ground. I tried to stand up, but the blood-magic coursing through my veins had already weakened me. The monk grabbed the back of my neck and shoved my face just centimeters above the gutter that was rapidly filling with the water of the pools of lost souls.

I felt as if I were somewhere else - a million miles away. As he ranted about my death, all I could do was watch with abstract fascination as the blood from my eyes dripped down into the gutter beneath me, a sizzling muddying crimson polluting the pure blue-on-blue of the water of lost souls.

“And now that the pool has come, you will die - and we shall become immortal!” he crowed triumphantly, sadistically pushing my face even closer to the water of pool.

“The Pool. Of Lost Souls. Is…. us!” I managed to grunt. I got one hand free and scooped it into the waters, splashing them onto the leg and torso of the monk behind me.

I remember him screaming and I even remember him dying, although I can’t tell you exactly how it happened. The pain from my own hand was too intense - the water from the pool burned me all the way through to my soul. I felt as if my hand was one giant cavity-ridden tooth stabbed with an ice pick. I stared at it in horror as it hissed and smoked. The skin stretched and retracted as my hand grew wrinkled and liver-spotted and then as smooth as a newborn’s.

“Is that so?” said a voice behind me. I turned to see another Monk. I reached for my light saber, but it was gone - he held it in his hands and tapped it lightly as he lectured me.

“Yes,” I said, “It makes sense. It has to. Everything I’ve seen so far has proved it - meeting Andrew, going back in time, everything. We are the Pool of Lost Souls.”

“I’m going to enjoy killing you,” he said, walking towards me, “so stupid. So stubborn. Look all around you - the Pool of Lost Souls has arrived!”

Then something snapped in my brain. My one remaining good arm reached into my robes and pulled out the empty perfume bottle that my older self had given me earlier. It was slipper in my hand, I realized, because they were covered with my own blood. I vaguely realized it was from the blood running from my ears and down into my robes.

I woozily reached over and dipped the bottle into the pool, filling it with the water of lost souls.

“Don’t make me hurt you,” I said thickly to him, tasting blood flowing into my mouth now.

The monk laughed as he looked down at me.

“I can’t decide which I will enjoy more - killing you myself or watching all of the blood flow out of your body on its own accord.”

“This entire time,” I said, feeling myself nodding and struggling to regain consciousness before continuing, “We’ve only ever heard two different sto… stories.”

I swallowed heavily, tasting iron and salt as I did so.

“Is the pool of lost souls the people who wa… watch over the Codex, or is the waters from which I… we… from which it gets its powers. No one knows which one it is…”

A haze of red covered my eyes now.

“But I think,” I said, lifting the perfume bottle to my lips and swallowing, “I think it’s both.”

At first I felt nothing. Then I felt as if someone had poured molten lead into my skeleton. My vision faded away into a blue first cobalt and then cerulean, and then white, whiter, and white again. My ears roared with the sound of my own blood and then, ever stranger, the sound of nothing at all. Then I was gone altogether.

* * *

I awoke to find the Monk staring into my face curiously as he held me up in the air by my throat. He rotated my head around as if examining a broken doll.

“That’s odd…” he began, fixating on my eyes.

“No,” I said, feeling a surge of strength through my body, ”this is odd.”

I reached forward with one hand - now unburned - and reached for a pressure point beneath his jaw. He yowled and dropped me to the ground. I punched him hard in the windpipe and still had enough time to retrieve my light saber from his grasp before he crumpled to the ground, dead.

The scene had changed. Epps and D’Alogna had disappeared, and things had gotten much worse. Kathy was struggling bodily with a monk while Willem and Sarah, panic written on their faces, tried to keep the two monks that remained away from the rest of the group. I made my light saber live. The monks felt me coming and turned to face me, dodging, but it was too late. The world jumped and I saw where they would move to. I sliced through one, followed through on the withdrawal, pulling my light saber through the air where the other would - and did - land. I grabbed the wrist of the monk struggling with Kathy, twisted the wrong way, and sent him flying to the ground, clutching his sprained hand. A few more tried to come at me, and I watched in slow motion as they dove, sidestepping leisurely and slashing through them. The ones who could, fled. The remained laid on the ground, moaning in pain.

“Anne!” said Andrew, staring wildly at my face, “What’s… what’s happened to you?”

I put my hand to my mouth and looked at it. I was still bleeding, but now the blood was a pure blue-on-blue.

“Well,” said Willem Lessig, dusting himself off jauntily as if he were solely responsible for our victory, “now all we’ve got to do is follow them.

He walked up to the wall full of glittering blue stones, “now all we have to do is get this door open. I saw them do it. It’s all a matter of getting the right combination…”

He turned to me and winked, cock-sure, “I can’t remember the combination they pressed. But I’ll just use my Jedi powers, like you taught me… er… will teach me.”

He reached forward and touched a series of jewels. Each glowed as his fingers made contact. When he touched the last one, a bolt of blue light shot forth from them and burned him to a crisp. The flesh dripped from his skin as his lifeless corpse fell to the floor.

“NO!” I cried in horror.

The world jumped around me.

He turned to me and winked, cock-sure, “I can’t remember the combination they pressed. But I’ll just use my Jedi powers, like you taught me… er… will teach me.”

“No Willem, don’t!” cried his father, rushing towards him.

He reached forward and touched a series of jewels. Each glowed as his fingers made contact. When he touched the last one, a bolt of blue light shot forth from them and burned him to a crisp. The flesh dripped from his skin as his lifeless corpse fell to the floor.

“NO!” I cried in horror.

The world jumped around me.

“I’ll just use my…”

I grabbed his hand and pulled it away.

”Don’t touch that.” I hissed at him.

“Yes Ms. Kawharu…” he said, instantly deferential.

I pushed him roughly away and limped towards the portal. I spat out a thick wad of blood that fell sizzling to the ground where it burrowed, acidic and blue, into the sand to find the pool that was its source.

I stared at the portal and pressed the first stone, and then the second and then third and then the fourth. I felt the bolt of blue light hitting me and eating away at my skin and then the world jumped around me.

I pressed the second and then the… I pressed the fifth, then the third, then the second… I pressed the third and then the fourth… I felt futures and pasts jump jitteringly beneath my hand. I watched myself press the second… I felt myself die… I pressed the first, the world slipped away below me and snapped up again. I pressed the fourth, then the second, then the fifth, then the third, then the first. With a rumbling wave of movement, the gate of lost souls ground open for me.

“Well that was easy,” said Willem as he and the rest of the group walked past me.

* * *

The roar within the cavern was deafening. Wind from nowhere whipped our hair. Our feet slipped coltish on the smooth black-glass floor. Razor sharp stalagmites thrust up from the floor while above us stiletto-like stalactites dripped lethal blue drops. They slid off the smooth floor and ran down to the ground and up and over the razor-sharp jags that thrust up, forming a wide lip. Beyond them a massive sea of turbulent, blinding blue roiled angrily and lit the cavern with an eerie blue glow.

“Willem, Sara,” I said, turning to them. But the minute they entered the cavern they dissolved in an ghostly light, first real, then images, then nothing at all, as the pool, furious that they had ventured out of their own time, sent them back to it.

A fair distance away from us, I saw Klaas Epps kneeling and facing the shore, chanting. The Codex lay at his knees and beyond him, a beam of light shone down into a whorling vortex of water in the Pool of Lost Souls. Carefully, Epps took a long-handled silver pan and dipped it carefully into the Pool, retrieving a hissing, boiling sample of its waters for his own personal use.

“There he is!” said Cinnamon, pulling a pair of embroidery scissors from her knitted holster and walking determinedly towards him.

“Cinnamon - wait!” cried Andrew following after her. I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach. I felt sure, somehow, that I had been here before.

“Andrew!” I yelled, running after him and abandoning the others.

“Andrew don’t!” I yelled, slipping on the smooth glass floor as I struggled to catch up with him, “don’t!”

I grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to a stop.

“She’s badly injured - she could die if we don’t get her to a hospital. I’m not letting her face them on her own.” he said impatiently, tearing his arm out of my grasp.

“No Andrew don’t you see that something terrible is going to happen!?”

I grabbed his arm and pulled him towards me.

“Don’t you see this is how it all started, right here - in this cave? Whatever it is that happened to us - to you - this is where it all started.”

Andrew looked at me, eyes screwed up in disgust. He shook me off him angrily and turned to run after Cinnamon. He was about ten feet behind her when she caught up with Epps. She was about to grab him when Syvestro appeared out of the shadows, a long stilletto in one hand. As Cinnamon made a swing for Epps Syvestro got one arm around her neck and buried his weapon in her back. She screamed in agony. Her limbs were twitching in their death throes when Andrew caught up to her. As Andrew approached, Epps took the pan full of water he held and flung it at Andrew’s face, smiling in sadistic pleasure as he did so. Andrew doubled over in pain, hands scratching madly as his face. The camera of my consciousness pushed forward into his writhing face, and I watched as he clutched, screaming, at his face full of fire even as one drip of water burned its way slowly down into his throat. The pain on his face eased as he stood up, startled by the new sensation that I recognized as his immortality. He watched in horror as Syvestro took Cinnamon’s body and shoved it rudely into the Pool of Lost Souls. Andrew struggled vainly at the shore to reach her. He finally grabbed a hold of her knit holster and tried to pull her to him, but it snapped as her body sank sizzling slowly into the pool. Andrew held it, tears running down his face, staring at the only remaining memory he would ever have of her.

The world jumped.

I grabbed his arm and pulled him towards me.

“Andrew - I don’t have time to explain,” I said urgently, “but this is where it all happened, all the events you had lived through when you first met me in that bookstore in Kashar. This room, this place - everything that’s about to happen to us, the holster you wore when I first met you! It was what you remembered when you first saw me this day, these are the memories you didn’t share with Rex and I when we first appeared. This is why you first helped him all those years later when you met him, and he didn’t remember. I didn’t know at the time but I do now. Don’t do it…”

Andrew looked at me, eyes screwed up in disgust. He shook me off him angrily and turned to run after Cinnamon. He was about ten feet behind her when she caught up with Epps. She was about to grab him when Syvestro appeared out of the shadows, a long stiletto in one hand. As Cinnamon made a swing for Epps Syvestro got one arm around her neck and buried his weapon in her back. She screamed in agony.

The world jumped.

I grabbed his arm and pulled him towards me.

“Andrew, I don’t have time to explain,” I said, starting to cry, pushing him aside and running as fast as I could towards Cinnamon. But it was too late. She screamed in agony. I pushed D’Alogna away and grabbed her body. From behind me I heard a scream. I turned to see Andrew clawing at his face.

The world jumped.

I ran towards her… she screamed in agony. The world jumped. I dove towards where I knew Syvestro would be hiding, but I was too late. She screamed in agony. The world jumped. I struggled to reach Epps before Andrew did, but tripped and fell. He clawed his face. The world jumped. Futures slid in and around me as I plummeted forwards, trying to reach her and Andrew before it was too late. I spent an infinity of discrete instantaneous moments pressing forwards, moving first here and then there, but the velocity of the future was too great, and the more I tried the more her fate hardened into immutability. After eons of trying

the world jumped

I grabbed his arm and pulled him towards me.

“Andrew,” I said, crying, “I can’t save her. I’ve tried. But I can’t. There’s nothing I can do - ”

“What are you talking about?” said Andrew, confused at my apparently reasonless hysterics and concerned to protect the woman he loved.

“Andrew,” I said, collapsing into his arms, “I can’t,” I sobbed, “I’ve tried. She’s going to die. But you don’t have to mourn her for eternity. Don’t chase her. Don’t be forced to live forever with her memory in her head. Don’t…”

“Good god, Anne!” said Andrew, pushing me out of his embrace and throwing me to the floor. He ran towards Cinnamon. She screamed in agony. Her knit holster snapped as her body sank sizzling slowly into the pool. Andrew held it, tears running down his face, staring at the only remaining memory he would have of her. I felt the world settling into its routine, foregone conclusion. But I resisted. I felt its edges close around my soul, but I pushed, and it jumped.

* * *

I grabbed his arm and pulled him towards me.

“Andrew,” I said tears streaming down my face, taking his face in my hands, giving myself up, “I’m so tired. I’ve had to be so strong for so long now. I can’t do it anymore. I don’t know what the right thing to do is. I don’t know how to save the day. I just know how I feel. And I know I don’t want to loose you. Don’t go.”

I wrapped one hand around the back of his head. My fingers buried themselves in his hair. I pulled him towards me. From behind closed eyelids my intuition watched his face grow round with astonishment, and then relax as he gave himself up to my kiss. I felt him in my mouth, and then watched him jerk as he turned away. He was shaking as if he had been awoken with a sudden start. For a brief second, I saw his skin glow a soft, subcutaneous blue.

“Anne - what… what did you just do to me?” he asked. He wiped one lip and stared in amazement as the blue water of the tainted blood that had filled first my mouth and then his. It wriggled, struggling to return to the pool. It didn’t hurt him at all to hold in his hand.

After a moment’s hesitation he realized where he was. He turned to run after Cinnamon. He was about ten feet behind her when she caught up with Epps. She was about to grab him when Syvestro appeared out of the shadows, a long stiletto in one hand. As Cinnamon made a swing for Epps Syvestro got one arm around her neck and buried the other in her back. She screamed in agony.

Her limbs were twitching in their death throes when Andrew caught up to her. As he approached Epps took the pan full of water he held and flung it at Andrew’s face, smiling in sadistic pleasure as he did so. To Epps surprise, Andrew brushed off the water as if it had come from the tap. He grabbed Epps, lifted him up by his lapels, and threw him into the pool. The cries of Epps’ slow, agonizing death filled the chamber as Andrew turned to faced Syvestro. Syvestro through Cinnamon’s dying body into Andrew’s arms as a distraction and dove for Codex of Lost Souls, which lay open on the shores of the pool. At that moment an enormous tremor shook the cavern. I fell to the ground. When I looked up, I saw Syvestro lurch, off balance, at the edge of the Pool of Lost Souls, teetering on the brink, Codex in hand. He hung there for a moment, grabbing madly at the air. As he fell slowly backwards, he caught Cinnamon’s hand. Andrew refused to release her, and all three of them fell into the pool of lost souls. I screamed in horror as I watched them sink into the Pool of Lost Souls while only the codex itself, as if mocking me, floated for a moment before it, too, descended into the depths of the Pool.

I felt a desperate, clawing panic in my lungs. I felt loss tear through my skin and into my soul. I screamed desperately, crying airlessly, heaving, sobbing, shuddering, against fate. I was not going to let this happen. I wished, willed, demanded that it did not. No longer a woman, and now just a helpless little girl, I rallied against fate, denying reality, demanding that there be a happy end.

And then the world jumped.

XII