Wargs, Windwolf, Maynard, interdimensional smugglers, and Nathan Czernowski were all pushed out of her mind at the sight of the loaded picnic tables. The competitive spirit of the scientists had produced amazing culinary feats. On the slim excuse of alerting people to possible food allergies each dish had the maker's name and the list of ingredients. The most elaborate dishes had the name first. The very simple donations had the makers listed last.
Even Lain was not immune to the competitive nature of the cookout. Her dish of fresh strawberries, spinach, walnuts, and homemade vinaigrette managed to be simple yet elegant.
Tinker loaded her plate with Lain's salad, dill potato salad, German coleslaw, three-bean salad, a linguine salad, a tortellini salad, baked beans, a sweet bean bun, a brownies, something made with pine nuts, and a cream cheese pineapple Jell-O salad.
She found Oilcan playing grill master, trying to smoke out his forming harem. Something about being stranded on a strange world combined with Oilcan's spry, puckish good looks seemed to make her cousin irresistible as a safe elf substitute to Earth women wanting to experience Elfhome to the fullest. Oilcan dodged the more aggressive attention, especially from the married women; he tended to be very moral in that regard. Still, Oilcan liked people, clever conversation, and playful flirting, so he went through something close to juggling fire sticks to attend any party at the Observatory. Already two women hung at the edge of smoke, laughing at his witty remarks.
"Hey." Tinker braved the smoke to eye the meat on the grill.
"Hey!" Oilcan hugged her soundly. What had happened that suddenly everyone was hugging her? The harem eyed her with slight dismay. Oilcan chose not to introduce her, probably as a tactic to get rid of the women. He edged some of the food threatening to topple over the edge back onto her plate. "Think you got enough food?"
"I haven't had food since dinner yesterday." Tinker pointed out the largest hamburger on the grill. "Can I have that one cooked to medium?"
"Okeydokey." Oilcan patted it with a spatula. Red juices welled up in the slots. "It will be done in a couple of minutes. I came back to get you, and they said you'd left with Maynard. I tried calling you. Is everything okay?"
"I left my headset in the trailer." She balanced her plate in her left hand and ate with her fingers. "Where's the forks? Have you tried Lain's salad? Boy, is it good!"
"Here you are, little savage." Oilcan handed her a dormitory fork, unknowingly echoing Windwolf. "Try the stuff with the corn, if there's any left."
"I don't think I have room for more." Still, Tinker turned to scan the picnic table for the "stuff with the corn." "What about you? I couldn't get through to you."
Oilcan looked embarrassed. "I busted my headset on Shutdown. I had taken it off after it started to rain and put it on the seat next to me."
"We sat on it?" she guessed.
"No!" He laughed. "That would have been too simple. It fell out onto the ground at the yard sometime, and it got run over. I found it pressed into the mud, but in a thousand little pieces."
"Oh, crap, Oilcan, do you know how hard it is to get those things in Pittsburgh?"
"I know. I know. I knew you would be pissed, so I tracked down another one. You'll need to integrate it into my system for me."
"What? Where'd you find it?"
He glanced to the women still hovering on the edge of their conversation and dropped into Elvish. "It was probably stolen merchandise. Someone was selling headsets out of the trunk of their car down in the Strip District. The box was beat up, like it had been dropkicked. I do not even know if the thing will work, but I only paid ten dollars for it."
Tinker pondered the possibility that the headset was part of Maynard's mystery shipment, wondering whether she was obliged to tell the EIA or not.
One of the harem women took advantage of Tinker's silence and pointed out that Tinker's burger needed to be flipped. Having recaptured Oilcan's attention, the women laughed with him as he flipped the burger and pressed it down onto the blackened grill, the dripping grease making flame leap up. Tinker ate and thought.
The Veterans Bridge crossed over the top of the Strip District; a box dropped over the edge of the bridge would land on a rooftop or street. Depending on the packing, the box and contents could survive fairly intact. Oilcan had seen all of the men dressed as EIA guards, so he would have recognized any of them; thus the person who'd sold Oilcan the headset most likely found the box. Telling Maynard would probably result in having the headsets seized and the unlucky finder questioned and possibly jailed.
The important piece of information was that the smugglers had brought a box of headsets to Elfhome. Headsets themselves were useless without some kind of service plan, but once you had air connection they could tie together anything from a home/work/user tri-base to a multiuser network like the police ran to link together their officers.
Tinker heard her name spoken and looked up.
Oilcan had lost one of his harem girls and was finally introducing her to the remaining woman. "I told you about my cousin, the mad scientist."
"I am not a mad scientist."
"Yes, you are. You like to make big machines that make lots of noise, move real fast, or reduce other objects down to little pieces."
"You're only saying that because you know I can't hit you at the moment." Tinker considered throwing food instead, and then decided it was a waste of good food.
Oilcan grinned smugly at her as if he had guessed that she would decide against throwing food.
Recognition of Tinker's matching nut-brown coloring and slight frame dawned in the woman's eyes. She put a hand over her mouth to catch a laugh. "Oh, I'm sorry, I was expecting someone—"
"Older," Tinker guessed.
"Male." The woman winced. "I, of all people, should know better." She gave an honest smile. Not only was her left ring finger unadorned, there wasn't even a slight band of pale skin—honestly single then. "Hi, I'm Ryan MacDonald. Glad to meet you."
"Glad to meet you." Tinker bobbed a slight bow over her full plate. "Sorry for butting in earlier, but life has been a little insane for the last few days."
"Speaking of which," Oilcan said, "we really left the yard wide open. I bolted two metal plates over the workshop doorway, locked up, and padlocked the gate as we went out, but we took the whole security system with us. Someone broke in during Shutdown."
"Oh, shit." Tinker tried not to think of everything scattered haphazardly through the offices. At least her most expensive equipment was in her workshop trailer. "Were we robbed?"
"No. Whoever it was broke all the way in, and then walked back out without taking anything. They might have been looking for Windwolf." Was that supposed to make her feel better? "I went over to Roach's and picked up Bruno and Pete to keep an eye on the place until you get the security system back online."
Bruno and Pete were two elfhounds, on par in size with the Foo dog wargs, bred for intelligence, courage, and loyalty.
"Oh, that's horrible," Ryan said. "They said that Pittsburgh was safe."
The cousins looked at her and after a moment of silence said in unison, "If you don't count the man-eating animals, yes."
Ryan looked startled. "Are there a lot of those?"
"The elves patrol the woods around here." Oilcan waved his spatula at the Earth scrub trees slowly being overrun by elfin forest. "But you shouldn't go into the woods without a weapon."
Tinker ate a mouthful of the Jell-O salad before adding, "And if you hear an animal moving around outside, don't leave the building you're in, even during the day. Call nine-one-one, and they'll send someone to make sure it isn't a dangerous animal."
"Don't leave doors ajar," Oilcan said. "Always shut them firmly."
Tinker considered which of the other common safety practices Ryan should know as she polished off the Jell-O salad. "Stay out of the swampy areas unless you have a xenobiologist with you who can spot the black willows and the other flesh-eating plants."
"Oh!" Oilcan waved his spatula at Ryan. "And the rivers aren't safe for swimming. The water is clean enough, but some big river sharks come up the Ohio."
"River sharks? Flesh-eating plants? You two are teasing me, right?"
"No," the cousins both said.
"There's a list of safety procedures that they usually hand out," Tinker said. "If you didn't get one, it's posted on the dorm's bulletin board. You really should read it; this isn't Earth."
Ryan glanced about the picnic grove with the red-checkered tablecloths on the picnic tables, the teams of scientists playing volleyball, and a portable stereo playing neon rock music. "Actually, things don't seem any different."
"Give it time." Oilcan cut Tinker's hamburger, peered at the center, and lifted it off the grill. "Here you go. Medium cooked."
"Are there buns?"
"Picky, picky, picky." Oilcan went off in search of a bun for her.
Ryan watched him go with a look that made Tinker view her cousin with a new eye. One had to admit he had mighty fine assets.
"Can I ask you," Ryan said hesitantly, her eyes still following Oilcan, "if your cousin has a girlfriend?"
"Look, you seem nice, but you're not staying. It might seem fun to you, to go to Elfhome and date a cute local, but it's not fair to Oilcan. Thirty days is just long enough to break his heart."
Ryan turned to consider her. "You've given this speech before."
"Every thirty days."
"Sorry," Ryan said. "They said that the elves don't socialize much with humans; I suppose it would seem like the same thing to them—here today and gone tomorrow."
Tinker winced. Did Windwolf view her the same way Oilcan saw the astronomers?
Oilcan came back with a bun lying open on a paper plate. "There. Tomato, lettuce, spicy brown mustard, chopped red onion, and real Heinz ketchup—the stuff made on Elfhome, not that new plant on the other side of the Rim on Earth."
"Oh, you know me so well it's scary." Tinker paused, considering the bun and her still overflowing plate. "Excuse me." She took the second plate. "I'm going to have to sit down to finish."
Lain slid onto the bench beside Tinker as she finished the hamburger. "How's your hand?"
"Good." Tinker licked her fingers clean and showed Lain her palm.
Lain examined it quietly, nodding at the pale scars. She closed up Tinker's hand, ending the examination, but continued to hold it. "I want to warn you about elves bearing gifts."
"Huh?"
"Windwolf gifted me with a new garden."
Tinker looked without thought in the direction of Lain's house, but the swell of Observatory Hill was in the way. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
"Yes, that is the question, isn't it?"
Tinker winced at her carefully neutral tone. "What did they do?"
"They were very considerate in putting everything they dug up into pots. And I have to say that the specimens they planted are stunning. I dare guess that I have a garden to rival the queen's now."
They'd dug up Lain's flowers? Lain's work made it almost impossible for Lain to return to Earth. In Pittsburgh, she was as much an exile as she would be on Europa. And more importantly, the garden of Earth flowers she loved was a salve for not being in space.
"Oh, Lain, I'm sorry."
Lain hid away some of the pain in her eyes. "I can't say I'm completely displeased. Much of the garden would not have survived the root damage that the truck did. It would have taken me weeks just to fill the ruts. The new plants are all extremely valuable; it would have taken me years of wheedling to get any one."
"But it's not your garden of Earth flowers."
"No," Lain admitted. "It's not."
"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."
Lain gave her a small, sad smile that vanished away before a look of true worry. "I'm nervous about what Windwolf might gift on you."
"Me?"
"There's no telling what he might decide to give you."
"I doubt he'll give me anything. There's still the matter of the life debt. Windwolf said that we weren't even." Tinker choked to a halt. We drove all over Lain's flower beds . . . I told her I would go to college to make it up to her . . .
Oh, gods, he didn't replace the flowers because of what I said—or did he?
"Tinker?"
What else did I say? But she couldn't even remember exactly what she had said. The conversation was a feverish blur. Had she asked for anything for herself? Old fairy tales cautioning against badly worded wishes loomed suddenly large.
Lain watched her, worry growing.
"Can I turn it down?" Tinker asked. "Anything he might give me, if I don't like it?"
"Windwolf might not give you a chance to say no."
Tinker thought about it. What could he possibly give her that would be bad? "What do you think he might give me?"
"I'm not a superstitious woman, but our legends never have good to say about gifts from the fey."
"I'm not sure he's going to give me anything, Lain. He says we're not even."
Lain's eyes narrowed. "Did he say it in Elvish or English?"
Tinker paused to think. Windwolf had woken her up in the trailer, and they'd shouted at each other. But in what language? "English."
"Then it might not mean what you think it means, Tinker."
She thought it had been fairly straightforward, but Lain had much more experience dealing with elves. She recounted the conversation the best she could remember and ended with, "So, what do you think he means?"
"I'm not going to hazard a guess," Lain said. "But be careful around him. He meant well with my garden, but it was done in the arrogance of an adult catering to a child. He believes he knows what is better for us."
"Oh, great. I've got enough of that type of people in my life already."
"Tinker." Lain gripped her hand tightly. "I know I've pushed you into this college thing; I did it in the name of your own good. I've had a taste of my own bullying, and I'm sorry. Of all people, I should have realized that I was asking you to go alone to another world. If you don't want to go, you don't have to. I release you of all pledges."
The elves said that: I release you of all pledges. The irony of it kept Tinker from cheering. Knowing Lain, though, it might have been her reason for using the phrase. So Tinker said, "I'll think about it."
Dusk fell slowly. As the sky darkened and the stars started to peek out, the conversation turned from the world left behind, the experience of Startup, and the rustic amenities that the scientists found in the dormitories, and focused on the sky itself.
First Night was always fun; it was like watching children discover Christmas. Since it always rained during Startup—the warmer returning Earth air colliding with the chillier Elfhome climate—this was the scientists' first real sight of Elfhome's stars. Their faces were turned upward at the winking lights, and they murmured reverently, "Oh, wow!" Once Tinker's eyes adjusted, she could see the upraised hands, pointing out sights. As always, the cry of "Look at Arcturus!" went up. The elves called it the Wolf's Heart, on the shoulder of the constellation they called the First Wolf. One of the brightest stars in the sky, Arcturus was also the fastest moving; there was a fifteen-degree difference between the star of Elfhome and Earth.
"I can't believe this is the same sky we were looking at two days ago," someone close at hand said with awe. "A twenty-mile drive south, and all the constellations shift. Look at Corona Borealis! It doesn't look anything like a C anymore."
"Twenty miles south, and a side step into another dimension," another voice corrected the first speaker.
Because they would need to share the big telescopes, they all had personal telescopes set up. After minutes of fiddling, they excitedly swapped views.
"There are new stars in the star formation region of the Eagle Nebula—"
"Where?"
"M16—in Serpens."
"Look at the alignment of the planets. They'll be in full conjunction on Friday."
They ohhhed, and ahhhed, and talked about constellations that up to that point had only been textbook learning.
* * *
Tinker spent the night at Lain's. Oilcan picked her up in the morning and they headed over to the scrap yard. He went over the schedule he'd planned for the day. As usual, he was spending the days after Startup doing running, tracking down supplies and goods they needed. Tinker gave him a full report on her meeting with Maynard, Lain's garden, and finally the mystery calls on her home system.
Oilcan stopped at a red light at Route 65 and looked at her sharply. "I think I should leave Bruno and Pete with you."
"Please, no. I think it will be a while before I can deal with large dogs again."
"I don't like you being alone when everything is so weird."
"The weirdness is over," Tinker asserted.
"Someone is trying real hard to find you, Tinker. They're searching the neighborhood for you. Someone tried to kill Windwolf."
"Can't be the same people." She wished he wouldn't dwell on it—it was scary enough without him talking about it. "Windwolf was attacked on Elfhome before the Shutdown, and the calls started from Earth after Shutdown."
"So? Whoever's trying to find you is still on Elfhome."
"Whoever it is has nothing to do with Windwolf being attacked." Tinker could see where this was heading, and stopped it. "I'll arm the office security system first thing. My home security system is still running. I'll be okay."
Oilcan grumped a while longer but gave in, promising to check in with her often. No doubt he'd also find a way to let Nathan know.
Tinker tried to detour the conversation. "Can you do me a favor and see if you can track down some peroxide this morning? Lain says it's best for cleaning up large amounts of blood. We need to replace all the first-aid supplies, and I need pads."
"I restocked the first-aid kit," Oilcan said. "I also got you groceries. They're at my place. But you've got to get your own female stuff."
"It's not like they bite, Oilcan, and everybody knows they're not for you."
"It's embarrassing. Besides, I didn't know what type to buy."
"I used most of them to bandage wounds. Any kind will do."
"You get your own," he stated firmly. "Do you want me to bring the rest of the stuff over to your place tonight?"
A bid to make sure she was okay. Once there, he'd probably stay late.
"Nah. I'll eat out—get a pizza and some beer. Just bring it with you tomorrow."
He looked unhappy, but he let it go at that.
Windwolf came to the scrap yard late in the morning. One moment he wasn't there, and the next he stood watching her.
She stood looking back. She had been running in tight circles all morning—not wanting him to show, eager to see him, terrified of him appearing, cautioning herself that he might not come, and as the day wore on, nearly sick with the thought that she had read more into the situation and he wasn't coming. Now that he was here, she had no clue to her heart. That tight circle just spun faster, emotions whirling too quickly to latch on to.
Pick one, idiot, she growled at herself. Happy. I'll be happy to see him. Her happiness welled up so quickly and strongly that she suspected it was the truest of her emotions. She walked out to greet him then, a smile taking control of her face and refusing to give it up. "Hi!"
Elegantly dressed in elfin splendor, he looked out of place in the grimy scrap yard of rusting broken metal and shattered glass. He seemed a creature woven out of the glitter of sunlight on the river. Behind him, and well back, were armed elves—his bodyguard.
Windwolf nodded in greeting, an inclining of the head and shoulders that stopped just short of a bow. He presented a small silk bag to her. "For you. Pavuanai wuan huliroulae."
It was High Elvish, something about talking together—at least that was what she thought pavuanai meant. She didn't recognize the word huliroulae.
Tinker eyed the bag suspiciously, thinking of Lain's garden and the xenobiologist's warning, but it didn't look dangerous. "What is it?"
"Keva."
"Oh." Tinker took the bag, opened it, and found indeed the golden cousin to soybeans. Genetically altered for millennia, keva beans were the elfin wonder food. Raw, roasted, fried, ground for flour, or even candied, keva beans were at the base of all celebrations. These were roasted with honey, one of her favorites. Still, this was her reward for saving his life? She noticed then that one of the guards held a fabric-wrapped bundle that looked for all the world like a present. Maybe this was a weird gift-giving appetizer. "Thanks."
Windwolf smiled as she popped one of the mild nutty beans into her mouth. "You said you would teach me horseshoes."
She laughed in surprise. "You really want to play?"
"Do you enjoy playing?"
She nodded slowly. "Yeah, it's fun."
"Then I wish to learn."
"Well, okay. Let me grab the shoes and the keys."
The keys were for the gate between the scrap yard and the small wood lot next to the scrap yard. Pittsburgh had many such pockets of wildness, places too steep to build on, full of scrub trees and wild grapevines. The lot was a series of level steppes between steep drops, stairs cut into the hillside leading from level to level. There she and Oilcan had set up regulation-sized horseshoe pits.
"It's a simple game. You stand on one end, here, and throw the horseshoes at the stake. Like so." Tinker made sure she wasn't going to hit him with her swing, and tossed the horseshoe with a well-practiced underhand pitch. The horseshoe sailed the nearly forty feet and clanged against the stake in a single clear ringing note. "A ringer! That's what you're trying for." Her second shoe hit and rebounded. "But that's what normally happens."
He took the second set of horseshoes from her. He eyed the large U-shaped pieces of metal. "Are the horses on Earth really this big?"
"I don't know. I've never left Pittsburgh."
"So Elfhome is your home?"
"I suppose. I think of Pittsburgh as my home, but only when it's on Elfhome."
"That's good to know," Windwolf said.
And while she tried to decide what that meant, he copied her underhanded throw. He gracefully missed the stake by several feet. "This is harder than it appears."
"Simple doesn't necessarily mean easy," Tinker said.
They crossed the playing field to the pit to gather the shoes.
"Are you and your cousin orphans in this place?"
"Well, close. Oilcan's father is alive, but he's in prison. When he gets out, he won't be able to immigrate."
"Will Oilcan want to see his father?"
Tinker shook her head and concentrated on throwing the horseshoes. "His father killed his mother; not on purpose—he just hit her too hard in anger—but dead is dead." Not surprisingly, Tinker missed the stake. "Oilcan works hard at being the antithesis of his father. He never drinks to the point of being drunk. He doesn't yell or fight, and he'd cut off his hand before he'd hit someone he loved."
"He is a noble soul."
Tinker beamed at Windwolf, inordinately pleased that he approved of her cousin. "Yes, he is."
"My family is unusual among elves." Windwolf's horseshoe landed closer to the stake this round. "We elves do not life bond as readily as you humans, and I think sometimes it is because of the manner in which we are raised. Siblings are usually centuries apart, fully grown and moved on before the next becomes the focus of their parents' attention. We are basically a race of only children and tend to be selfish brats as a result."
"You're blowing my preconceived notion that you're a wise and patient race."
"We appear patient only because our conception of time is different. Amassing oceans of knowledge does not make you wise."
They collected horseshoes with oddly musical clangs of metal on metal.
"But your family is different?" Tinker prompted Windwolf.
"My mother loves children, so she had many, and she did not pace them centuries apart. She thought that when a child was old enough to seek out playmates on his or her own, it was time for another. Amazingly, my father put up with it, mostly. Perhaps their marriage would not have survived if we were not a noble house with wealth and Beholden." Tinker knew that Beholden were the lower castes that acted as servants to the noble caste, but she wasn't sure how it all worked. "The Beholden gave my father the distance he needed from so many children."
Given that his mother could have spent centuries raising children, Tinker blinked at the sudden image of the old woman who lived in a shoe, children bursting out at the seams. "How many kids are in your family?"
"Ten."
"Only ten?"
Windwolf laughed. "Only?"
"I thought maybe a hundred, or a thousand."
Windwolf laughed again. "No, no. Father would never submit to that. He finds ten an embarrassment he suffers only for Mother's sake. Most nobles do not have any children." Windwolf's voice went bitter. "There is no need for propagation when you live forever."
"Well, it keeps your population from growing quickly."
"The elfin population has only declined in the last two millennia. Between war, accidental death, and occasional suicide, we are half the number we once were."
That did put a different spin on things. "That's not good."
"Yes, so I try to tell people. I had great hope that with this new land would come a new way of seeing the world."
"Had?"
"The arrival of Pittsburgh was unexpected."
Tinker winced. "Sorry."
"It actually has been beneficial," Windwolf said. "Enticing people to an utter wilderness was difficult; few wanted to suffer the ocean crossing for so few comforts. Human culture, though, is attracting the young and the curious—the ones most likely to see things my way."
"Good." Tinker focused back on throwing the horseshoes. That's what she liked about the game. It encouraged a flow of conversation.
"What about you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Do you desire children?"
She missed the stake completely, only the chain-link fence keeping the horseshoe from vanishing into the weeds. "Me?"
"You. Or would you rather be childless?"
"No." She blurted out the gut reaction to the question. "It's just I've never thought about kids. Sure, someday I'd like to have one or two, maybe as many as three, but hell, I've never even—" She was going to say kissed a man, but she supposed that wasn't true anymore. "You know."
"Yes, I do know," he purred, looking far too pleased, and it put a flash of heat through her. Her and Windwolf? Like her dream? Suddenly she felt the need to sit down. As if he were reading her mind—gods, she hoped not—Windwolf indicated the battered picnic table beyond the horseshoe pit.
As she clambered up to sit on the tabletop of the picnic table, she wondered what it would be like to be with him, as they had been in her dream. "How old are you?"
"For an elf, barely adult. For a human, I am ancient. I'm two hundred and ten."
Or 11.6 times older than she was. Nathan suddenly seemed close to her age.
"Is that too old?" Windwolf asked.
"No, no, not at all." Tinker struggled for perspective. Elves were considered adults at a hundred, but until they reached a thousand, they were still young. Triples were what the elves called them, or those that could count their age in three digits. Windwolf could be compared to a man that just turned twenty; only he'd been born in the 1820s.
And she was like one of Oilcan's astronomers to him, staying only long enough to break his heart.
First Nathan and now Windwolf. Well, didn't her choice of men suck?
"Have you ever played ninepins?" Windwolf asked, breaking the silence.
"Bowling? Yeah. But only with humans."
"I am much better at ninepins."
"Tooloo says humans should never play ninepins with elves. It always ends badly for humans."
"This Tooloo is a font of misinformation. She was completely wrong about the life debt."
"How so?"
"The debt between us is not yours. It is mine," Windwolf said.
"Yours?"
"How could the count be any other way?"
"During the fight with the saurus . . ."
"You saved my life. I was dazed, and you distracted the saurus by putting out its eye at great risk to yourself."
She blinked at him, stunned as the events now rearranged themselves in her mind. "But the spell you placed on me?"
"If I did not survive the rest of the fight, I wanted others to know you had acted with courage. You were to be adopted into my household and cared for."
"Oh." She didn't know what else to say.
"We looked for you after the fight, but we thought you were a boy. We asked about 'the boy,' and no one knew who we were asking about."
How could Tooloo have gotten it so wrong? Or had Tooloo been lying all this time? But why? Tinker struggled to keep faith in the crazy old half-elf; Windwolf could be lying to her now. But why would he? His version of the events certainly matched what she remembered better, and made more sense.
"I must go. There are days when, even for elves, there is not enough time." Windwolf waved the guard with the present forward, took it, and banished both guards back to the scrapyard. "Last I saw you, you were a child, and now you are an adult. I want to grasp this moment before this too slips away."
He held out the present.
The keva beans had been harmless enough, and this gift looked no larger than the last. "Is this for me?"
"If you desire it."
Why did elves make everything seem so dangerous? It was just a small fabric-wrapped bundle. "What is it?"
"I thought it best to stay with the traditional gift for the occasion."
Trust elves to have a traditional gift for saving one's life. She unwrapped it tentatively. She was glad he had told her it was a traditional gift. Certainly it wasn't what she expected. She wasn't even sure what it was. It seemed to be a metal bowl, intricately worked as one expected of an elfin work, yet it stood on three legs anchored to a disc of marble. It had quite a heft to it, and what impressed her most was that Windwolf had made it seem so lightweight. She tried not to compare it with Lain's entire garden. The child in her, though, wanted to cry, That's it?
"Do you accept?"
"Yes."
He smiled. It was like the sun coming out. He spoke a word in High Elvish and kissed her on the forehead. The touch of his lips seemed to sizzle on her skin.
Tinker called Lain from her scrap yard. "He brought me a bowl."
"A bowl?"
"Well, I think it's a bowl." She described it at length to Lain, who identified the gift, after some thought, as a brazier, and explained that one burned incense or charcoal in the bowl, and the legs anchored into the marble made it stable and protected whatever it was sitting on from the heat.
A brazier? "Well, it's certainly not what I expected." Tinker eyed her gift. "I'm trying to figure out what the catch is."
A click of keys came from Lain's side of the connection. " 'Braziers are a symbolic gift.' " Lain read from something. " 'Great importance is made of the wrapping of the gift, which must be extravagant, and the presentation, which must be subtle.' Yes, but what does it stand for?"
"I don't know. He just said it was traditional for the occasion."
"Not you. Barron. He released his anthropology paper on the elves this spring, but don't ever repeat that. The elves don't study themselves and certainly don't want us studying them either."
"I was never sure why we compulsively study ourselves."
"How else are we going to learn and grow?"
"If the elves don't study themselves, does that mean they don't change?"
"Possibly. We certainly haven't been able to pry any information out to indicate that they have." There was a pause, and Lain murmured softly, skimming the info in front of her. "Tinker, what did you talk about with Windwolf?"
"I'm not sure. You know how it is to talk to them. It's worse than talking to you. Why?"
"The brazier is a customary gift for what Barron only terms as 'delicate arrangements.' I don't know what the hell that's supposed to mean. Apparently, accepting the gift implies agreement to the arrangements."
Tinker yelped, as the only delicate arrangement that sprang to mind was sex. "W-w-we didn't talk about any arrangements. At least not that I can remember. Doesn't this Barron list anything?"
"He says that this information was told to him in passing, and that when pressed, the elves stated that it wasn't a ritual that would occur between elf and human."
Tinker made a rude sound of negation. "Maybe Barron has it completely wrong."
"What did you talk about?"
"Horseshoes. Oilcan. His family." Tinker glanced in the mirror and yipped in surprise at her reflection.
"Tinker?"
"What the—" A triangle of blue marked where Windwolf had kissed her on her forehead. The spot wouldn't rub off, even with spit. "He marked me—somehow—after I accepted."
There was a long silence from Lain's side, and then, "I think you should come over."
Tinker and Oilcan had laid claim to an old parking garage between her loft and the scrap yard, thus convenient and inconvenient to them both. It easily held the flatbed, her hoverbike, and whatever miscellaneous vehicles they'd picked up and refurbished.
Tinker went round to the first bay and coded open the door. Her honey baby waited inside, gleaming red. She'd traded a custom-built Delta model hoverbike for a custom paint, detail, and chrome job at Czerneda's. Oilcan bitched that she was ripped off, because the detail job was so simple—gold pin striping—on a redshift paint job, but hell, it was perfection. She suspected that he bitched mostly because her own custom Deltas were the only serious competition she had on the racecourses, and every custom job she did chipped away at her odds of winning. Oilcan's loyalty wouldn't let him bet against her, but he liked to win.
Well, he'd have to get used to it. The Gamma models were being mass-produced by a machine shop on the South Side, kicking back a royalty to her for the design. At the moment, she was the only one who seemed able to grasp all the physics involved to make modifications. Sooner or later, someone would be able to bend his or her mind around the whole concept and beat Tinker at her own game. It was how humans worked.
She swung her leg over the saddle, thumbprinted the lock, and hit the ignition button. Ah, bliss—the rumble of a big engine between one's legs. She eased down on the throttle to activate the lift drive. Once the Delta actually lifted off of the parking studs, she retracted them and walked the Delta out of the garage. Once past the door sensors, she clicked the door shut.
She opened up the throttle. The Delta soared up and forward, the lift drive providing altitude while the spell chain provided the actual forward torque. Simple physics. Sooner or later, someone would twig to what she'd done.
Tinker set the dish of whipped cream beside her bowl of strawberries. Lain was the only person who seemed to understand the correct ratio of topping to fruit, which was three to one. "Have you found out anything more about the brazier or the mark?"
"Well, there's this." Lain put a slickie down in front of Tinker. "These are photos taken during the signing of the treaty. Look closely at the elves."
Tinker thumbed through the slickie's photos, dipping the strawberries into the whipped cream and idly licking it off. Despite the president's acting career, the humans looked positively dowdy next to the elfin delegation. It did not help that the humans kept to the stately solids of navy, black, and gray, while the royal party dressed in a brilliant riot of colors and sparkled with gems and gold. So vivid was the elvish beauty that it crossed the line of believability and became surreal, as if the images next to the drab humans were computer-generated art. It was a cheap slickie, so most of the photos were two-d, allowing no panning or rotation. The centerfold, however, was full three-d, and she rotated through the photo, zooming in on the faces of the elves.
Four of the thirty elves wore the same style of forehead marks. All four were female. Tinker frowned; the sample size was too small to use as a base for any good conclusion, but the marks certainly seemed to be a female thing only. Put there by males?
All four marks were of different colors—red, black, blue, and white—and shape. As she studied the one in blue, she recognized the female as the high-caste elf at the hospice, the one who had called her and Oilcan wood sprites. In the shadows of the parking lot, Tinker had missed the mark. What had her name been? Sparrow something or other.
Tinker dipped her current strawberry for the second time and studied the blue mark on Sparrow. Was it the same mark, or just the same color? "Do you have a mirror?"
Lain went off to her downstairs bathroom and returned with a small hand mirror. They carefully compared marks.
"No, they're not quite the same," Lain announced after several minutes.
Tinker grunted. "What do you suppose it means?"
"I don't know," Lain said. "But you seem to be in good company. This is the royal majesty herself and her court. They're the world leaders of Elfhome."
Good company or not, she didn't want to be part of it. In her book, elves made colorful neighbors but she was glad not to be one of the family. She'd seen enough of their stiff formality and causal cruelty between castes to know it would drive her nuts.
Tinker started at another familiar face. "This is Windwolf."
Lain leaned over to check the photo. "Yes, it is."
Tinker realized that despite a growing awareness that Windwolf was important in the local politics, she didn't know exactly what his title was. "This might be a silly question, but who exactly is Windwolf?"
"Lord Windwolf is the viceroy of the Westernlands."
Viceroy? Before Tinker could ask what that meant, the doorbell rang.
"Looks like I have company," Lain said, reaching for her crutch.
"What am I? Sauerkraut and kielbasa?" Tinker muttered.
"Hush, my little pierogie," Lain called back as she limped up the hallway to the front door.
Tinker considered the photo of Windwolf as Lain answered her front door. Tinker had thought him stunning the few times she had seen him, but now she knew she hadn't yet seen him at his best. The creature in the photo seemed as untouchable as a god.
Lain's visitor, in a deep raspy male voice, introduced himself as the son of her fellow crew member who had died in the training exercise that crippled Lain. "I don't know if you remember me at the memorial. I was about five at the time."
That drew Tinker out of the kitchen. Lain stood, apparently rendered speechless by the sudden appearance.
The man was in his early twenties, tall with a shock of black hair and a long sharp nose. He was in biking leathers, wore a pair of sunglasses, and had a helmet tucked under his arm.
Tinker recognized him with a start. He was the motorcyclist she and Oilcan had seen nearly hit on Shutdown Day. "I thought you might be a half-elf."
He looked at her, frowning, and the frown deepened. "No. I'm not, lady. You're mistaken."
"Tinker!" Lain admonished with a single word, then turned her attention back to the man. "I remember you. My, how you've grown, but children do that, I suppose. You were such a grieving little boy; I don't think I heard you say a single word that day."
"It was long ago. I've moved past that," he said.
"Riki was your name, wasn't it?"
He nodded. "Yes, you do remember me. I was afraid that you wouldn't."
"Your mother spoke a lot about you before the accident." Lain indicated Tinker. "This is Tinker, who is very worth knowing."
Riki turned to look at Tinker. She reflected in his sunglasses. He nodded and turned back to Lain. "I was hoping you could tell me about my mother."
"You stranded yourself on Elfhome just for that?"
"No. I'm going to be attending the University of Pittsburgh once fall classes start. I've got a grant from Caltech as part of my graduate studies. I showed up a little early so I'd have a chance to experience Elfhome fully. It would be exploring an alien world, just like my mother hoped to."
Lain clicked her tongue over what she certainly considered the folly of youth. Tinker had heard the sound often enough to recognize the thought behind it. "Pitt is a shadow of what it was; it's barely more than a community college right now. Well, there's not much to be done about that now. You're here. The question is, what is to be done with you now? Do you have a place to stay? Money enough to last?"
"I have the grant money." Riki tapped a breast pocket, making paper inside wrinkle loudly. "It's supposed to last me six months, but I've got to make it stretch to nine. I'm hoping to find a job, and a cheap place to stay."
"Housing shouldn't be too hard; it's summer—just find someplace that looks empty and squat," Lain said, and limped back to the kitchen. "Come have something to eat and drink, and we'll consider work."
Riki followed Lain, glancing around with vivid interest, pausing at the doorway of the living room to scan it fully. "It's a nice place you have here. I expected something more rustic. They talk about how backward Pittsburgh has become, cut off as it is. I half expected log cabins or something."
Lain laughed from the kitchen.
Tinker had stayed in the foyer. She picked up her helmet and called, "Lain, I'm going to go."
Lain came to the kitchen doorway. "You! Stay! Into the kitchen."
Tinker put down the helmet and obediently went into the kitchen. One didn't argue with Lain when she used that voice. "Why?"
"All the positions up here on the hill are government funded; all hiring has to be written out in triplicate and approved in advance. You have more contacts than I do down in the city."
Tinker winced. "Lain, I'm not an employment agency."
Riki regarded Tinker with what seemed slight unease. It was hard to tell with the sunglasses. "You seem too young to be anything but a high school student."
Tinker stuck her tongue out at him and got smacked in the back of the head by Lain.
"Behave." Lain filled the teakettle and set it onto the gas range. "Tinker is much more than she seems. She's probably the most intelligent person in Pittsburgh. Now if she could learn a bit of common sense and get a more rounded education . . ."
"Lain," Tinker growled. "I don't want to beat that horse right now."
"Then be nice to my guest. Offer him a job."
"I doubt if he wants to do demo work at the yard," Tinker said. "He certainly doesn't know anything about magic, and it's nearly as unlikely that he knows anything about quantum physics."
"I've got a master's degree in quantum physics," Riki said.
"Eat crow, little girl!" Lain cried, laughing at the look on Tinker's face.
Riki startled at Lain's reaction.
"You're kidding," Tinker said.
"I'm going to do my doctorate on the quantum nature of magic. No one has done research on magic in its natural state. That's why I'm studying at Pitt."
"If you want to learn about magic, you need to work with Tinker. She's the expert."
"No, I'm not; elves are."
"True, true, their whole society seems to be based on the ability to cast spells." Lain laughed, putting out cups. "But that does him no good, not as closed mouthed as they are."
"What do you mean? Anyone can cast spells."
Lain looked at her with surprise. "Tooloo has never explained why the nobles rule over the other castes?"
"I'm never sure when Tooloo is telling me the truth," Tinker said. "She's told me that nobles can feel ley lines and can cast certain spells with gestures and words instead of written patterns . . . which might be true. Certainly the spoken component of spells is merely setting up certain subtle resonance frequencies. I'm not sure about the hand gestures. Written spells follow a logic system similar to the and/or gates of computer circuitry, creating paths for energy to follow toward a desired effect. The only way I could see it working was if somehow the noble's body replaces the circuitry. . . ." She fell silent, thinking of energy following fingertips while the hands moved through the pattern of a spell. The ability to feel ley lines could result by simply bioengineering an organ like the inner ear that was sensitive to magic. How would you manipulate magic with your hands? She looked at her own oil-stained hands, the left one with its new patchwork of pink scars. With what she knew of biology, it was unlikely that they fitted new organs into their fingertips, unless it was on the tip of the bone, or perhaps their fingernails. She flexed her fingers as if typing. She supposed fingernails would work, although if one could engineer it so each finger bone had a separate function, then each finger could perform three functions instead of just the one. . . .
"Tinker. Tinker." Lain interrupted her thought process.
"It might work that way," Tinker conceded. She added, "Tooloo also tells me stories about elves making gems or frogs falling out of people's mouths when they talk, and unless you have an N-dimensional space filled with frogs, it couldn't work. Besides, what would the frogs eat? How would you deal with the heat they generated packed together like that? I suppose you could use that energy to move a frog into our dimension."
A smile spread across Riki's face. "I like how your mind works."
That startled Tinker into silence. No one had ever said that to her.
"If you hire him," Lain said, pouring tea out, "every minute he frees up, you will have for fiddling around with your inventions."
Tinker opened her mouth and shut it on a protest. She remembered the condition of the offices—her workshop still on the back of the flatbed and thoroughly splattered with blood. Suddenly the idea of having help, and thus more time, was seductive—and Lain knew it. "That's not playing fair."
"I don't like wasting time."
Tinker frowned. The words "sucker for strays" on her forehead were coming into play. "Well, I could offer part-time at minimum wage, but nothing more than that. Tooloo might have some work."
He looked at her for a minute, and finally said, "I don't know if this is rude—I don't know elf customs—but what's the mark for?"
Speaking of casting spells with just a gesture. Tinker rubbed at her forehead, wondering how exactly Windwolf had marked her. "I don't know. We were just trying to figure that out."
Lain looked troubled. "That worries me. Why don't you see Maynard about that? You should find out why Lord Windwolf marked you."
"The viceroy?" Riki asked.
Tinker got up, annoyed that this newcomer knew more about Windwolf than she did. "Look, if you want the job, show up at my scrap yard tomorrow morning. Lain can tell you how to get there. And I'll need to see your papers. I'm not getting into trouble with the EIA for hiring an illegal immigrant."
Lain gave her a look of disapproval, but Tinker clumped out. She'd had enough motherly scolding for the day.