For All Those With An Eye for Legs

For All Those With An Eye for Legs...

(and with apologies to those who don't care for those legs to come along eight at a time...)

So we've had chance to wander up to the far north country, Comanche Nation in this case. If you're ever in the area, be sure and take a run by Meers Store and Restaurant, their burgers are great (and the cobbler's fantastic).

In our case, after we had a good feed at Meers, we then took a tour around the Wichita Mountains. Other than the prairie dogs, we thought that we'd end up busted on seeing any of the locals.

And then I spotted this lady (? I'm guessing, don't know the species well enough other than to go with the odds based on size) out for a stroll. A real beauty; my wife did the honors of shooing the lady in legs along to insure she didn't end up under anybody's tires.

(Picture is of a tarantula resting on pavement under a cloudy day's sun)

We did spot another, of a different coloration, but didn't have the opportunity given traffic to jump out and catch a similar pic. Still, I kind of like this, I think I did ok for an amateur. The important thing being that she gave me the chance to get in close and enjoy a momentary visit.

Sundays Were For...

It's necessary sometimes to turn and look behind in order to see what the road looks like ahead of you.

For this week's story, dear reader, let us see what the past has to show us. In particular, let us hear of what a young Dwight Thompkins used to know that...

Sundays Were For... an In Council story by M. K. Dreysen

Sundays had always been for Maw-Maw. Two little boys in clean white shirts, Mom and Maw-Maw each with one of their endless selection of hats and matching dresses, and the dinky little veils on them that DT had never been able to figure out the what for of. Long hot sermons with the Reverend just getting wound up when you were starting to fade into oblivion.

Singing standing and dancing and sweating along with Missus Phillips when she and her organ called the little congregation to it.

Sundays were for standing in front of the Reverend's little church, waiting for him to shake DT's hand, and Bubba's hand too, and tell Maw-Maw and Momma how proud they must be of "these fine little men."

Sundays were for the fish fry that came after the Reverend had done his best to bring them all a little closer to the Lord.

Sundays had always been about these things, so far as DT could remember. Last year, when he was into comic books and baseball cards and a young man named Willie Mays was tearing it up for the San Francisco Giants. The year before that when he'd found this book about something called a "hobbit" in the school library.

Momma would tear him away from the book, and the comics and the cards, and tell him to wash his face and put on his good clothes so they could all walk to meet Maw-Maw at the church. "And mind Bubba, he'll need your help," which DT always knew and did but Momma was forever reminding him anyway.

Only, this year, when DT had discovered another book at the library, this one on something called "circuits", Paw-Paw stepped in and changed what Sundays were for.

"I think I'm going to borrow DT this weekend, sister," Paw-Paw had told Momma Friday afternoon. He'd been waiting there when DT made his way into the kitchen with Bubba's hand firmly tucked into his.

Paw-Paw and Momma, home from her job at the little bank and sharing a pot of coffee with her daddy at Momma's clean little kitchen table. "Daddy, are you sure?"

"I taught him to swim, didn't I?" Paw-Paw asked. "He'll be fine." And that had been fun; not like Reggie, DT's best friend. Reggie's dad's idea of teaching his son to swim involved a deep water hole and a long drop from the bluff above it.

Paw-Paw had actually made DT learn to float first. And then shown him how to go, one hand over another. "Where'd you learn to swim, Paw-Paw?"

"Navy. Even if they wouldn't let me do anything but serve the Captain's table, they at least didn't want me and the rest of the mess drowning." Paw-Paw only talked about those things when DT was around, and nobody else.

DT figured it was Bubba's turn to learn to swim, this year or next, but he didn't think Bubba would ask the same sorts of questions. If DT got lost in books, his little brother got lost in music.

They'd discover, much later, how much alike they were, these two little rascals. But for now, DT thought the four years between them, and the differences in what Bubba spent his time on, to be as big and wide as the Old Muddy itself. They'd both be a while before they discovered that a mile and a half of relentless water could be as far a distance as from here to the moon, and at the very same time be just as little a thing as a walk down to church.

"I'll be here to pick you up first thing tomorrow morning, DT. You be ready to go with the sun, ok?"

"Yes sir."

DT spent the night staring out the window at the full moon, listening to the bugs through the screen. Not knowing that on the other side of the wall, Momma was doing the same thing.

And she was there with him the next morning, too. With her paper and a big green Thermos full of coffee. "You're wearing your oldest shorts?"

"Yes ma'am." And his oldest shirt and canvas shoes. Not just because of the gumbo mud, which stank to high heaven. But because of the blood and guts. And the slime. Catfish made the biggest mess.

Momma didn't tell DT to be safe. She just gave him the Thermos and a long hard hug before he went out through the screen door to meet his grandfather.

****

Senior year at Grambling and Dwight Thompkins heard something from a friend that tangled him up in memory. It was at one of those parties where the faculty tried to show the students how to hang out in society. "There's a fisherman who they say can charm the fish right into his boat," Ernest Wallis began the story.

Dwight didn't smile. He hid that behind his drink.

But he did listen. And remember. "Folks say that they jump right in whenever he sings. Catches all the best fish in the marsh. The white folk follow him, trying to figure out where he puts his lines, only he doesn't use any lines or nets because he doesn't need them."

****

DT had never had occasion to worry about just how it was that his grandfather filled the freezer. He, like the rest of their little community, just accepted it as given that when they were hungry for fish, or alligator or shrimp or duck meat or anything else wild that came out of the marsh, Paw-Paw would bring it back. Gumbo, fish fry, turtle sauce piquante, if someone could get Maw-Maw to say she wanted it, that's all that was needed.

DT did know about the white folk, though. Paw-Paw had told him about that, solemnly, quietly. "You might even see a couple of them when we come away from the swimming hole, son. The Campbells in particular, they've been following me for years trying to learn where I put my lines."

DT hadn't seen anyone on those trips to the swimming hole. Oh, sure, the trucks and the cars went by, but DT never caught anybody staring at an old man and his grandson.

Same thing that Saturday morning. Paw-Paw kept his little boat at the back of his house, where the bayou came through. He and DT put the ice chest in, DT grunting at the weight of it, then the lines and the hoop net, and then Paw-Paw climbed in. "Let me get the motor started, then you climb down with the rope."

"Yes sir." The little outboard chuckled to life on the first pull; DT climbed aboard and sat down for the ride.

Every little while, DT looked for the lines of the other fishermen, and the little bits of flag they put on those lines to identify them. Here on a stump, there a cypress root. And then when the bayou came to a larger channel, one of the delta's many routes to the sea, here came floating bleach bottles and milk jugs, and other custom floats that folks used to keep their lines identifiable.

And, somewhere behind them, another boat followed now. DT looked over his shoulder, trying to catch sight of them, but even with the sun now up enough to see floats and flags, the other boat was far enough behind, or slow enough, that DT couldn't find them.

Paw-Paw smiled, and shrugged. "Don't know that they're after us today, DT," he called over the motor's roar.

And they weren't, not that day. On other trips, as the fishing trips and the hunting trips that dominated the winter became more regular parts of his teenaged life, DT saw the folks who did try and follow his grandfather, "Sniffing my secrets" as the old man called it.

Today though, when Paw-Paw cut the engine way back and turned the boat into a little cut in the marsh, only their own engine noise accompanied the pair.

"I set this run of lines yesterday, while you were in school," Paw-Paw said, quieter now that he didn't have to compete with the motor as much. "A dozen or so, plus my other hoop net."

"Why'd you bring this one, then?"

"Once we run this line, I'll show you how to set up another one. Salt water for that one, though, your momma asked me for some flounder. Plus, Mister Roy Campbell loves redfish and speckled trout for his restaurant. Enough to pay us good cash money for anything I catch."

The wonders of the delta system; here, inland enough and the freshwater species, the channel and the blue cats dominated. Paw-Paw pulled the boat into each line in his set, close enough for DT to grab the high end. "Walk it down, that's right."

The first line, all the bait had been cleared off the first half dozen hooks. DT passed the line hand over hand, pausing while his grandfather baited the hooks with chicken livers. "I'll use cheese on the next one."

DT nodded, not that he knew which bait was better. Unlike Reggie and some of the other kids, they all had opinions. DT figured catfish had as much a right to change their menu as anybody else did.

The next three hooks came up empty, but the last one didn't. "Paw-Paw!" DT said, nerves rattling him and pushing him to yell.

"Good fish, son, you got him?"

A channel cat swung there in the water, jerking his head on the hook and pulling the line hard against DT's fingers. "I think so..." DT whispered.

All he could think of were the spines, the little sharp fins on the cat's side, waiting for some little fool to grab hold. But Paw-Paw talked him through it, and this fish ended up in the ice chest just exactly where he belonged. "About three pounds, just about right," Paw-Paw said when he slammed the lid on the first fish of the day.

He said that for most of the fish. The little ones, the ones that DT thought he wouldn't have trouble with but the little bastards were quicker than he could have imagined, those Paw-Paw threw back. "We'll catch them again when they're off the tit," Paw-Paw said, and DT laughed.

DT frowned the first time they caught a really big cat, this one a big blue that Paw-Paw said probably came out at fifteen pounds or better, a thick chunk of catfish. "Here, let me get him," Paw-Paw said. Then he reached down, gloves on for this one, thumbed the cat's mouth and pulled the hook loose to free the big fish.

"Why, Paw-Paw?" DT asked.

"I only bring them in for special occasions, and only for us," Paw-Paw said. "Just don't think it's necessary to pull in the old men and women, not when there are so many of the middlin' sized to catch. Besides, the three and four pounders are better for frying. That big old momma's good for a courtbouillon, but we're not cooking that this weekend. Let her go back to her hole and raise up another year's worth of her children for us."

The two filled the ice chest on the catfish set. "Plenty for the church," Paw-Paw said. "Now let's see if we can't make a little money."

Paw-Paw didn't sing the fish to the boat. He used lines and nets just like anyone else in the marsh.

But he did have his magic. DT saw it for the first time that Saturday morning. His grandfather pulled the boat just to the edge of the slough, passed his grandson a sandwich and the Thermos, and said, "Ok, give me a minute to hunt down the wind."

"Paw-Paw, what are you doing?" DT asked.

"Shh."

DT turned around, Maw-Maw's bologna and cheese sandwich in his hand, and watched.

His grandfather sat, his own sandwich on his knee, yet unopened, eyes closed. Nostrils wide and head cocked over at just a little bit of an angle.

'He's listening, and smelling,' DT thought. So, because he was, as his grandfather knew, at that certain age, DT copied his Paw-Paw. He put his sandwich down on his leg, trying to avoid as much as he could where the catfish had slimed his shorts. Then DT sat up straight, closed his eyes, and tried to listen.

The water. The birds. An alligator grunting. An outboard in the distance.

And the smells, too. That rough smell of decomposing vegetation, the marsh's constant background. The water and the mud and... salt. The sea. Somewhere close the marsh changed its character.

"Is that what you're smelling?" DT asked.

"Part of it," Paw-Paw said. "Wait a little more. And don't forget to listen."

DT thought it over. Everyone, most folks anyway, would know the smell of the salt, where the Gulf made its way and brought the redfish and the specks and the crabs with it. Paw-Paw searched for something else, though. DT wondered what.

The splash of a mullet jumping? Or the cry of an osprey chasing it?

The smell changed. Somehow, call it the alchemy of sun and wind and water, the salt smell opened and a faint whiff of a clean open world teased the back of DT's throat and the inside of his ears.

Then Paw-Paw hummed a little song, just a burst of a tune DT didn't know but he'd now remember for always, and DT heard a rush of...

"There," he said. And he pointed, out across the delta channel, off to the west and south a little.

"Yep," his grandfather agreed. Paw-Paw pulled the engine alight and eased the boat back out on the path his grandson had chosen. "Keep it in your mind, son. You're doing good."

DT discovered that day that his grandfather's magic didn't have anything to do with how the stories he'd later hear had it. Later that year, DT would discover that Paw-Paw could conceal himself and his little boat, and the channels where he'd set his lines, from those folks that tried so hard to learn his secrets. Today, though, he learned the heart of it.

The old man didn't charm the fish out of the river, he didn't whistle down the ducks when the cold fronts drove them down from the north. He didn't scoop shrimp from the marsh with his bare hands and fill the boat at his choosing.

No, Paw-Paw's magic told him where the fish swam and schooled. Where the cold current had shifted and the flounder with it. DT learned the essence of his grandfather's magic that trip.

And he also learned that he himself, little mister Dwight Thompkins, carried that magic as well.

****

Dwight Thompkins stood on the porch of his mother's house, a glass full of iced tea on the railing, and waited for his brother.

Leonard Thompkins got down from his car and straightened himself under his big brother's gaze. Suit, hat. The silk bag tied at his belt. When all was right, Len turned, expecting to make the walk under his brother's grin.

Dwight swept him up in a tight hug. All the years fell away; the heights, no different than a hand's breadth now but it still felt for both of them that they stood on the church steps again.

Bubba's face buried in his brother's chest. DT's chin on Bubba's head.

Len pushed his brother back, still gripping Dwight's shoulders though so he couldn't get away. "How's she doing this morning?"

Dwight's grin didn't fall, so much as it turned solemn and pained. "She'll be glad you're here. The pain came up hard yesterday. How long, do you think?"

"When's fall semester start?"

"Last week of August."

"Don't go home, big brother."

Dwight nodded, then tucked his arm over Len's shoulders. The two walked up the sidewalk and the steps, Dwight pausing only long enough to get his glass from the porch rail.

Dwight's own view of his mother's illness had matched up with his brother's. Mother Sorrow had been right, of course. As soon as Dwight set his eyes on Momma through air rather than the video phone connection, he'd seen it.

The stream of time winding around his mother faded to the shallows.

But Len had been here, made this walk every Sunday morning for the past six months. Came to visit his mother and to eat of her pain.

Len's magic lay in a different direction than his older brother's. Len would know more precisely when the end would come, Dwight knew.

Dwight set aside his tea and watched as Len pulled the mask from the silken bag.

When Len tied the false smile into place, he nodded.

Dwight turned to the swinging door between kitchen and living room, where their Momma lay in the hospital bed that had come into the home at almost the same time Dwight was stepping on the plane.

"Momma, the Laughing Man has come."

The Data As Given

When last we left Martha Hazard...

she and her mentor, Dwight Thompkins, were discussing a list of topics Professor Thompkins thought appropriate for Martha to study while Dwight took a couple of months to run home and visit his mother.

Of course, like many students, Martha went into her list with all the will in the world. But it was summer. A bit of slower time than usual.

And Dwight wasn't in the lab every day, giving her that long suffering look.

Martha really does intend to work on her list, dear reader. Right after she gets a few other things done first. Though, even within these other entertainments, as sometimes happens to the best of us, Martha finds herself having to shove everything else aside in order to deal with a more immediate crisis.

In this week's story, dear reader, let's discover how Martha Hazard adapts when her schedule turns to chaos.

The Data As Given, an In Council story by M. K. Dreysen

The first time Martha walked into her new lab space, she didn't sneeze.

Mercifully. Because if she'd started, she wouldn't have stopped. Fifty plus year of dust and old books and strange bits and pieces of hardware from experiments that hadn't really gone anywhere. Or just got forgotten, just as likely.

"It's turned into a bit of a garbage dump, I apologize," Dwight had told her. "You'll find that throwing stuff away gets harder and harder the longer you keep a lab going."

She'd nodded, which had been about all she could manage. Not that she needed to do much more. Neither of them could walk past the door, the piles in the barely more than a closet had grown too large for that. "So what do I do with all the stuff?" she'd finally managed.

Professor Thompkins had grinned as she shut the door against the steadily growing dust devils. "Keep what looks interesting, stick the rest of it in the hall. Unless it's really nasty, some of the chemicals you'll need to contact the disposal team."

She'd been more than a bit surprised at how quickly the bits and pieces had disappeared from the hall. Before the trash run, twice a week, Martha's fellow grad students picked the piles clean. Random glassware walked almost as soon as she turned her back, same thing with clamps and even hoses.

Which baffled Martha to no end. Glass, sure, you could clean it. Clamps, right, worst case you broke out a file and some paint. Hoses? The buildup alone...

Books hurt her, but those she gave herself time to do something with. In between sending email for pickup of the odd bottle of acid, Martha had stacked the books she didn't see a use for keeping in the hall.

But only after she'd checked them for Dwight's cramped handwriting. Sure, a random freshman physics book, even Dwight chuckling over the Lorentz transformations wouldn't have stood out all that much.

His notations in Carver's lab books, on the other hand. And the ancient Greek grammar with a sprinkling of phrases of power, nope, those needed to stay in the lab.

Once she'd dusted them, of course.

She discovered as well what Dwight had meant about accumulation of stuff. When she finally found counterspace, she'd carved the closet down to something like a third books, a third hardware, and a third kitchen. Almost, she had also made room for a chair, and a path to the coffee pot.

The hardware and the books fought her. She'd rebuilt and repurposed Dwight's ancient generator, which meant an extra roll or two of copper and silver wire, a handful of circuits of devious design. Brushes and bushings and an old laser Martha had torn down and remanufactured...

The books started multiplying again before she'd even attempted to order the piles. Here came a Baldwin, Dwight had picked that one up, couldn't make heads nor tails of it and passed it on to Martha with a "You might get more out of this one than I do." Newton's Extended Principles, the "unpublished" version, had shown up not long after that, and Martha had had to fight to keep Dwight from taking it on the plane with him.

The list he'd given her to investigate while he was gone sat folded and comfortable in the middle of Newton's book. "Just dig, carefully Martha. Nothing significant. And do not attempt to get close enough to see them physically. Or mentally for that matter. Just information, nothing more."

Not forgotten. Not completely, anyway. Martha did remember the list.

Usually. About the time she looked up from the bench space, absentmindedly reaching for a cup of coffee that had gone dry somewhere after lunch. That had become her habit within a day or two after Dwight had taken himself off for home.

Crawl into the lab, bleary eyed, set the coffee going, wander around telling herself "I need to read that, don't I, and I should dig a little into the first name, what's that, um, Osagi Aerospace, right..."

But then the glass would call.

Lenses. The little data locker she'd found the Rolodex in had been caught in Martha's mind. Not the purpose; the technique.

By the weekend after Dwight had taken himself away to home, Martha had lenses and prisms spread throughout her closet. Balanced precariously within clamps and stands.

And wired. Somehow. The wires were obvious, a network of thin, red yellow blue insulation, all leading back to the generator, an ancient iron and brass hand-turned thing that looked barely cared for, if the naive didn't know what they were looking at.

Such hypothetical naive viewer would have really scratched their heads over the other ends of the wires. The ones that disappeared into quartz and silvered mirrors.

But then, that hypothetical naive viewer would have had to take a good close look to see those connections. In truth, they'd have seen the wires wrapped around the brass, iron, and chrome bits of the stands that held the lenses. Martha had woven the wires around the stands, as much for stability as anything.

So precious few naive viewers would even have had reason to wonder how she'd managed to connect the lenses themselves to her wires, and then the generator.

They'd have recognized Martha's work habit, though. Coffee pot, oh it's finished it's business, pour the first cup, back to the generator, good, lens one, check, mirror one, check... lost in thought. Walking purposefully through her network.

Grinding glass. Soldering... well soldering something, even if the to-what wasn't clear.

All throughout campus, in little corner labs, Martha's fellow students conducted themselves in similar ways. And all of them had their special techniques, if for more mundane applications than those Martha pursued.

The not so hypothetical, not quite so naive viewer noticed this fact before any other. Here it was closing on ten at night, last class headed for the parking lot, halls empty.

And yet lights remained on in most of the buildings. Shadows and faces moved in front of them.

The viewer reminded himself of this fact as he caught the door into his destination building; a night class had let out, and he pretended he was just another student who'd forgotten something important at his seat, excuse me gotta get that or I'll be in trouble tomorrow.

He kept the fact that Martha Hazard may have worked by herself within the lab space he hunted, but she wasn't so very alone as that, firmly in mind. As he looked through the edge of the outer door, the one that opened to the main section, Dwight's working area of the lab, with the Professor's office directly across from the outer door.

And Martha's door on the right hand wall for the viewer.

He set his heel so that the door eased close on his foot, rather than the ancient wheezing hydraulic ram. Then, he slid himself along the wall, one hand out to trace the wall and keep his distance. Gotta stay out of view.

He walked the corner around, and while he saw the lights and the books and the random stacked hardware, our viewer didn't see Martha Hazard. He stopped at the edge of the door, then held his breath and focused his mind.

Nothing but lukewarm coffee and the faint smell of old electronics. Our viewer stuck his head around.

Verified the truth of his eyes and his mind, that the little closet of a lab was indeed empty of anyone but himself, and then wandered in to do a little snooping.

****

Martha enjoyed the fruits of too much late night coffee by spending a little time on the throne with her phone. Not that Osagi Aerospace would be hanging around the internet where enterprising researchers could dig dirt; that had been the point of that data locker, after all.

But one could, Martha reasoned, perhaps track the holes left by their presence. If one had a few minutes with nothing better to do, as it were. And besides, Dwight did have his expectations, and that Newton book didn't make good toilet reading, far too big...

The phone beeped at her just as she'd gotten into an interesting new contract let out by the Air Force, one of those "unnamed and carefully annotated, and no don't ask what it's even for" contracts where the officer in charge really wanted to call it "Garbage bins, custom" and the legal team had to rein them in a little for variety's sake.

"Huh," Martha muttered, and thumbed the little app closed. One of her own apps, as it happened.

For the laser.

****

All the business of internal plumbing taken care of for the moment, Martha wandered back to the lab, stopping only to pick up her bright and dangerous light hood from its hook next to her door.

Another pride and joy, this one. A welder's hood, with the self-polarizing glass. Of course Martha had tweaked that a little, adding a bit of this and that.

Plus the pink racing stripes over the gun-metal gray of the hood. Martha chuckled as she slapped the hood down and thumbed the glass to its "Yeah I mean it" darkest setting. "Enjoying the show?" she addressed her visitor.

Our viewer. The one who now found himself trapped behind a dancing fence of blue laser light that wove itself through the lenses and mirrors surrounding him. Also, the one who'd managed to burn the bare tip of not just one but two fingers before he'd realized that Martha's laser didn't moonlight as a Pink Floyd display on the weekends.

This laser was all business, so very little pleasure. And so our viewer had resigned himself to scanning one of Martha's books, a Franklin treatise our viewer's own mentor had told him to make time for but there just was never enough of that these days, now was there?

Martha eased her way between laser field and books to the generator. Once there, she thumbed her hood's glass to a bit lighter setting, then tapped at a few of the meters decorating the outside of the generator. "Huh, that's funny."

"What?"

Martha waited for the meters to reset themselves to a range she considered more realistic. "I think I need to change some of these. That, or you might want to schedule a doctor's visit." Martha shrugged, then put a hand on the generator's crank handle. "Ok, now that we've got that sorted..."

"Wait!" our visitor yelled. "You're gonna electrocute me, just like that?"

Martha giggled. "It's not really a generator. Well, not entirely. Just don't touch the field again, you're fine." And she started cranking.

The laser field flickered; the visitor gulped and whispered something under his breath.

And Martha cranked the generator handle like they'd made it illegal.

She kept her ear close to the coils, listening for... there. When the system hummed properly, and the meter gauges read the way she wanted them to, Martha stepped away from the generator.

The crank handle spun, a little slower, a little slower... but it didn't come to a halt. "Well, what do you know?"

Our visitor just shook his head.

Martha checked more readings, then pulled out her laptop. "And now for the show. What brings you here?"

The visitor started with denials. But the video on the laptop screen showed enough so that he eventually wound himself down to "No comment" rather than deny the pictures and the sound.

Our visitor, standing next to a nattily clad older man. "Christopher, I need you to track down what was stolen from us."

"This is about the gap in my memory?" our visitor replied.

"Exactly. The longer the information they took exists in written form outside of the locker, the higher the chance that it will be permanently released to the world. You need to recover the information."

Martha paused the video. "How do you know what to look for? There are so many ways to record something like that."

Christopher smirked. "Not with the locker still active. You had to write it down somewhere."

"I could have painted an obscure allegory?"

Christopher looked around the lab. Pointedly. "I will take your artistic skills as beyond repute. But I'll still bet on a nice handwritten list."

"Shit." Martha pushed the spacebar to let the colloquy continue.

On the screen, Christopher and his boss resumed; the rest of the discussion centered around just the sort of possibilities Martha had raised.

And one more rather interesting tidbit. "How did you discover her identity?" Christopher asked.

"The Council will always play their games. The thief's mentor underestimated my standing in one of them, and I won her identity as a consequence. Good luck, Christopher. Not that you'll need it, correct?"

"Of course."

In the lab, Martha chewed her lip while she reviewed the rest of Christopher's memories of her, his search to nail down her location, and the preparations that lead to their current situation.

Behind her, Christopher had decided on his next course of action. He did still have his messenger bag and the gear that he'd packed for the occasion.

He searched through it and pulled out a gadget.

One that Martha might have recognized if she'd been watching more closely. And one that Christopher might have hesitated over if he'd still had his memory of their first meeting. "As much fun as this is, I'm afraid it's time to move on to the next stage," Christopher said.

Martha grunted, still lost in thought.

Christopher pulled the trigger before she could return to the immediate.

His theory was sound. The electric discharge should have been relatively immune to the laser field.

And yet, the flow of electrons, at a disastrously higher speed than this makes it sound of course, flew out from the source, screamed the bare bit of distance from Christopher's outstretched hand to the blue haze of his prison.

And turned right around to come back home. Only, because the electric gun had no return feed, Christopher once again found himself on the receiving end of his own invention.

The sound of it, a crackle and a bitter smell of ozone, shook Martha from her revery. She turned to the aftermath. "What, again? You really should be more careful than that, Chris." Martha shook her head, shifted over to the generator and checked the meters.

Then she opened up a scope reader on her laptop; the waves from Christopher's brain drifted across the screen. "Hmm. When we're done here, I think I'm taking your toy away from you. It won't help your brain recover, but it might keep you from losing the memories you have left."

Martha shut the laptop, throttled the generator down, and then left the lab. She needed to park her car at the loading dock, and then hunt down the department's rolling cart.

****

Martin Reneau took three papers every morning, the Chronicle, the Post, and the Times.

One of his simple joys was to wander out into the dewy grass and track down where these various parcels had found their way to. This daily routine, and the faint smile that decorated Reneau's face as he engaged in discovering the slight madness of his paper deliveries, might have shocked his fellow counselors, given that they almost all assumed Reneau to be too uptight for such a relaxed view of the nature of the world.

Reneau didn't expect to find his apprentice snoring contentedly beneath one of the willow trees.

Nor did Reneau expect the note pinned to Christopher's shirt. "He's lost most of his memories of the last four years. You might consider asking him to work on something a little less risky to his mental state. M."

Reneau tucked the note into his pocket, then knelt down to spread his fingers across Christopher's temple and gauge the truth of Martha's statement.

When he'd confirmed it, Reneau whispered his frustration. "Damn."

Verification Procedures

It seems that this week is something of a continuing story; funny how those creep up on you.

This week, Professor Thompkins has set another task for his new apprentice, Martha Hazard. This one is a simple one: basically, find out what some of Martha's colleagues are up to.

Unfortunately, Martha discovers that sometimes you find peculiar answers to the questions you ask when you go through your...

Verification Procedures - an In Council story by M. K. Dreysen

"So, you're headed out for your first audit. Remind me?"

Martha Hazard parsed the list of facts she'd found. "Urban Perspectives, Consultants. They offer services for the discerning developer."

"Uh-huh," her mentor replied. "And those services being..."

"Everything from Feng Shui through dowsing for water, depending on the property and the developer's needs."

Dwight Thompkins leaned back in his chair; Martha knew enough of the professor's habits to understand the look on his face as his "Scrolling through the memory banks" habit. "Let's see, Urban Perspectives, that's... Leona?"

"Leona Haversham, and Regina Russell. They've been in business for, about twenty years or so?"

"And?"

"Leona's the scryer, Regina is the layout expert. They've also recently added a junior partner, um, Gene Waters. Says here he's an expert in social dynamics."

Dwight smirked. "They're offering some protection against future events?"

Martha shrugged. "They're more careful than that. Not protection, just forewarning. And a list of insurers who'll underwrite based on the probabilities Waters generates."

Dwight chuckled at that. "Meaning, they've found a reason to keep an ongoing fee service."

"There's a certain utility there."

"Agreed. So what do you look for to make sure they haven't crossed the line?"

The line the professor indicated had only a little to do with whether Regina Russell followed Feng Shui as its more traditional practitioners would understand it, how or whether Leona Haversham found water every time she should have, or the accuracy of the predictions Gene Waters drew up.

What the professor, and the Council, were most especially concerned with was one simple thing. Were Urban Perspectives coloring within the lines of the expertise they did claim? "So far as I've been able to find, in their literature they're straight with their customers."

No promises outside of their domains, and most certainly no use of the big words: Enchantress. Sorceress. Mage. The difference between the education the principals of Urban Perspectives definitively possessed.

And the more rigorous certifications which the Council withheld unless the willworkers in question had gone through a similar apprenticeship to the one Martha had signed up for. "What they put in writing fits the bill."

"So how do you plan on verifying what they tell their customers in person? Away from those pesky little written conditions?"

****

Gene Waters lived on computers. Contrary to prior generations and their cards, runes, entrails (shudder), Gene much preferred numbers and simulations.

Especially combined with his special recipes. Therein lay the magic.

He'd built apps, of course. Databases. Special networks, server farms. Anything and everything to give his customers just that little bit of extra peace of mind. Gene Waters lived in a magical, electronic world.

And security was, of course, essential. Only. While you'd think, and you'd be right, that a worker of will and bits would be imminently sensitive to bots and spam and social hacks. That he'd notice minor variations. Little things.

A small electron's volt difference here. A microamp there. Only, in a digital world...

and Gene Waters was very much a digital child...

it's funny how an analog approach can slip by unnoticed. That which is unlooked for and all that.

****

Minor variations in electro-magnetic life would, on the other hand, have alerted Leona Haversham within microseconds. Leona lived a life very much free of electronic entanglements. She carried no phones, she surfed not the web. She maintained no online presence in the ultra modern world.

Not on her own, anyhow; she paid others for that. No, Leona lived comfortably within natural fibers, between hand-carved wood beams and panels of well-established provenance. She had chosen each board, each gardenia, all three of the boulders and each handful of gravel and seed that had grown to enrich her yard and garden.

Leona Haversham dwelled within a quiet, well ordered space. And what electricity she did allow there behaved itself according to her exacting specifications.

If only she had such control over the flock of wild doves she'd spent so many years admiring and cooing over in their generational dance through her neighborhood.

****

Regina Russell, as might be expected, lived between these extremes. Where Leona avoided the office and its incessant connections, Regina reveled in her phone and its constant view of what the world was up to.

Not, perhaps, to the extent to which Gene lived the online life. But certainly Regina let the online waves surf to her that which they would.

She lived as well an offline life. One devoted to museum dinners, concert series at the symphony, ballet in the winter. Those places where beautiful creations alternated with pregnant conversation.

Such a life has its charms; it's also difficult to track, if your target, like Regina, possesses both self-discipline and a security staff to mind the phone's updates.

But Regina did require a wardrobe for the life she lived.

And, having found a handful of designers with just her taste, Regina Russell had fallen into the habit of frequenting them regularly.

****

Given the requirements, where their mundane brethren might have been audited within a few hours or, at most, days, Martha Hazard spent months listening to her various devices. Weeks sifting through data.

And a few days working up her nerve to talk to the boss.

"Ok, hit me. It's gotta be the new kid, right?"

"He's careful, Professor. He always lets the client know that his projections are subject to change, and that they're limited by the information he can gather. He goes over the risks exhaustively, and I've never heard him claim to be anything other than a specialized analyst of trends."

Dwight pursed his lips at that. "Huh. Leona's slipping, then?"

"Not even a little. She'd rather go without the business than promise them something she can't deliver."

Martha's professor sighed, then turned his swivel chair around so that he could look over downtown while his student gave him the bad news. "What's Regina done, then?"

"She's calling herself the Queen of Midnight."

****

Martha's surveillance had the added benefit of mapping out when Dwight Thompkins could drop in on Regina unannounced. No concerts, no games.

Just Regina Russell sitting in her office by herself on a rare night alone.

Frowning at the knock, and the unwanted presence looming beyond the door. "Councillor."

"Regina."

Dwight waited for Regina to step back, reluctantly, and allow him to find a seat. "Comfortable."

"We like to make our clients feel at home. Otherwise they wouldn't feel we were giving them value for the money. I take it you've audited us?"

Dwight Thompkins had met Regina and her partners only a few times over the years. If he remembered correctly, all of these meetings had been at Council, with Leona or Regina having questions related to their endeavors. He didn't know Regina's personality, not really.

Jumping immediately to the point of his call didn't exactly bode well. Or at least, Dwight mused, it meant Regina understood that she'd pushed the limits. "Midnight Queen, Regina? I'm fairly certain that's a title outside of your reach."

Regina slammed herself into her chair. "And that's an entire field of endeavor that's outside of your precious Council's purview."

"Expertise. But not purview. You well know how these things work."

"And I know you have no knowledge basis to accuse me of anything," Regina retorted. "You wouldn't even know where to begin. You've bought into their, their precious worldview, you've given up our ancestors' incredible birthright just so that you can sit there and..."

Dwight leaned forward while Regina wound herself up. Then interrupted. "And Mother Sorrow? Would you say these things to her? Or the Laughing Man? Would you call yourself the Midnight Queen when you stood in his court?"

Regina Russell sat across from the councillor who'd measured her, and come armed with such knowledge. Her lips mouthed but no words came. And no more words came. And then, "You wouldn't."

"We all live within the rules, Regina. Sorrow and Laughter may not sit Council, but we welcome them as siblings. And we provide them both the same justice which we provide the rest of our extended family."

"Justice." Regina spat the word. "How is this justice?"

"You'd prefer the Laughing Man weigh your claim?"

****

Dwight Thompkins opened the passenger door to Martha's little van, and sank into place. "She took it well."

Martha raised a skeptical eyebrow from the driver's seat.

From the back, an older woman's laughter came. "Damned straight she took it."

Martha looked at the mirror, and the lady's face framed there beneath a crown bun of snow-white hair. "Mother, do you think..."

"She'll behave. For long enough, that child's closer to retirement than she wants to admit. Look at Leona."

Dwight shook his head. "I'm worried at how much she loves the limelight."

Mother Sorrow chuckled again. "That's how she got into this mess. Started believing her own bullshit." Mother reached her cane, a gnarled sassafras taproot, and tapped the driver's seat. "Let's go back to my hotel room, young miss. I'm missing my stories."

****

At the hotel, a small very exclusive place just a short trip from the west side's equally small and exclusive private airport, Dwight stepped out to assist Mother Sorrow down from the minivan. "Thank you, ma'am."

"Of course. You've given me enough help, young pup, I owe you a time or two."

Dwight let Mother Sorrow hold his arm until the hotel's attendant arrived to take over. "You take care on your travels, Mother. And send me the bill this time, please?"

Sorrow chuckled, then turned before Dwight could get away. "When's the last time you saw your mother, son?"

Dwight Thompkins, professor and councillor, gulped. "I talked to her yesterday..."

"No, son. When's the last time you came home?" And, when she read Dwight's face. "Uh-huh. Make time, Dwight. She doesn't have much of that left."

Dwight climbed back into the van, and Martha and professor watched Mother Sorrow, hand gripping the young lad who aided her rather possessively, tap herself and her cane through the golden electric light of the hotel entrance.

"I guess that means you're taking a month or two off this summer."

"I guess it does," Dwight rumbled. "I'll need to put together a list for you to think over while I'm gone."

When My Brain Won't Let Me Not Write Of Something

So my brain won't let me get away without writing something about this.

This? Let me first say that Hugh Howey and company's SPSFC awards effort is, I believe, a good thing. Celebrating indie writers *cough* is unambiguously good.

That said: the Science Fiction Writers of America (and others) have long held that a novel weighs in at 40,000 words.

The SPSFC awards weight a novel at 50,000 words. You will immediately spot the problem: there will come a day where the SFWA awards a Nebula for best SF novel of the year to a 40,000 word indie-written novel, and it won't even be eligible under the SPSFC rules.

This is, as they say, an own-goal on the SPSFC's part.

But I'm not really much interested in the SPSFC's categories. Their award, they get to do with it what they will.

I care about the indie writers that are going to be caught by this.

Look: if you want to add 10,000 words worth of padding to make it fit the SPSFC's novel category, for money and fame? Please go ahead. You're in good company, Dickens and Hugo pioneered this art long long ago. And the authors of the 1970's did the same thing when their editors started demanding longer and longer works (that just happened to cut the per-word rate they were paying, huh how's that work?) to fill out the racks.

What if your story is what it is, though, and you're beating yourself over the head as to what to do?

Ignore it. Use the link to the Nebulas category liberally and move on down the road. 40,000's an industry standard, you're cool.

Oh, and your/our company here in this peculiar liminal space of labels? Doyle and McCaffrey and Moorcock and Zelazny and Orwell and Chesterton and Lewis and Stevenson and Moore and Kurtz and Conrad and....

In Council They Sit

Huh... Oh? Oh, nothing.

Just realizing that my brain handed me something, that's all...

For this week's story dear reader, I invite you to think of what it might take to keep certain types of information hidden from the world. Not the forgotten stuff that will never see a scanner, or the sorts of things a government will do so that a camera phone can never be in the same room as certain materials.

All that's needed for these sorts of things to hit the internet is five minutes and a curious somebody with a cell phone. No, what I wonder is, if you had certain sorts of power at your fingertips, then wouldn't you go to great lengths to insure that your protected documents protected themselves, always and forever?

From electronic eyes, anyway. But then, wouldn't those with similar means be very interested in what you'd taken all that trouble to hide away?

I rather think they might. Powerful folks tend to come together, for mutual protection, especially those of a magical bent in this cold cruel modern world. And wherever such folks gather, they will have purposes, often crossed. Come with me then, dear reader, and let us read of conspiracies that might be born among such powerful folk when...

In Council They Sit by M. K. Dreysen

Dwight Thompkins rode the elevator down from the council room, leaving his thoughts to array themselves as they would. He focused on the mechanics of the old beast, the brass rail and trim, the buttons that lit only occasionally when pressed. The hesitant stop and start motion as the car aligned itself, mostly, with the destination floor.

These very mundane elements of the world grounded him. Measured out the moments. Sure, he recognized that these weren't beats, heart nor metronome. Even his strides didn't pace themselves routinely. He walked through the open elevator doors, across the lobby, half grimacing half smiling at the way his heels thumped out of time against the marble tiles.

"Ah, of course," he murmured to himself. "Grace, how delightful of you to wait for me," he said louder, when he twisted himself free of the lobby's rotating door.

"Do you believe him?" she asked.

"Is this opportunity, you mean?" Dwight returned. "The Council has tabled the matter, for now. We'll discover soon enough. Or not, if I'm honest."

She frowned at that. "You're not worried? That's out of character."

"I said we may not learn whether it's an opportunity or not. I didn't say that there would be no consequences."

"Ah." Grace gestured to the parking lot. "Walk with me?"

"My pleasure."

Dwight waited, comfortable in the rush of hot air, exhaust fumes, and his unmetered strides. The pain in his hip and knee he could have done without, but these annoyances kept themselves below the intolerable level. For the moment.

His companion waited until they'd drawn alongside her car to speak further. "Your new student, Maria?"

"Martha," he corrected. "I don't quite know what to think of her, yet."

"You're normally so sure..."

And he was sure. Professor Thompkins took few enough mundane students; those whose non-mundane talents rose to the level of a Councillor's direct instruction came along so very rarely. But even so, Dwight had husbanded his reputation for turning down even the "promising" students, sending them on to the care of others where he felt them better suited.

Martha Hazard was, if he remembered correctly, his first apprentice in close to fifty years. No wonder that Grace Yung worried about his assessment of the new protege. "I'm well certain of Martha's character and her talents, Grace. It's simply her focus I'm waiting patiently to observe, that's all."

"Hmm. So you'll not be sending her out to keep an eye on things for you?"

Professor Thompkins chuckled. While the questions, and consequent directions, had yet to completely coalesce in his mind, he did have a broad outline for his next steps.

And those of the newly apprenticed Martha Hazard.

****

Martha rather enjoyed tennis balls. They did so very much, after all. They entertained the Mutt From Hell until both of them were exhausted. And then when the Foul Beast had chewed the fuzz completely loose, and she cut the remains into suitable chunks, tennis balls served admirably as table levelers and other necessities.

Yes, all in all, tennis balls, mundane rubber neon yellow fuzzy spheres were, in Martha's estimation, remarkably useful little objects.

Especially when, perchance, one were to whisper to such a little hairy ball. Suggest to it that, just perhaps, it would bounce once from the handplate on the opposite side of the hallway she knelt at the entrance of. And then roll back to her hand without any side adventures, or any particular weight that might impinge accidentally upon any of the various floor switches scattered through the hallway.

She tossed the ball, it flew along in a nice gentle arc to kiss the handplate just so, and then happily bounced back to her hand in a very improbable path, once on the floor, off the left wall, the right wall, once more on the floor just so. "Thank you," Martha whispered before tucking the ball into her backpack.

Martha let the brief surge of giggles fade away before she addressed the floor plates. The now open door at the end of the hallway could wait until she'd negotiated with the sensors.

Fortunately, since the alarm system had only ever been set off in testing, the weight sensors were happy enough to listen to her suggestions. It helped as well that Martha's conversation let her know where the sensors were, and thus didn't have to test directly whether the sensors had lied to her.

The room on the other side of the door didn't really have much place in a modern business. When did anyone need this many boxes of faded old parchment, crumbling books, index cards... an actual Rolodex? Martha shook her head at that.

And to try and shake the buzz of electrons from her ears. That was the little room's actual secret. The security theater was meant to protect the place, but surely...

She marveled. Someone had done a great deal of hard work indeed to build an interface between the computers of the outer world and these very tangible old documents, a one-way interface locking the information written upon them so that no electronic machine could ever read or store it. An electronic black hole of sorts, mouldering away in ink and dust.

Martha pulled what looked like a standard pair of welder's goggles from her backpack, slid them into place, then whistled when her eyes adjusted.

Each box, book, and card had now a line of light connecting it to the ceiling, floor, or walls. The Rolodex was wrapped into a photon spiral so tight that Martha wondered how it hadn't exploded into flame. Only the door she stood in contained no traces of the one-way connections flaring in her now-shadowed sight. Martha slid a pair of bull-hide gloves into place, complements to the goggles.

"Impressive, isn't it?" someone said from behind her.

Martha looked over her shoulder while she stretched her fingers within the well-worked leather. "Someone" was a tall drink of water, but indistinct otherwise behind the purple shade of the goggles. "Very much so. Your work then?"

"Absolutely. I can't tell you how happy I am to be able to show my work to someone who can appreciate it."

"And the time. How long did it take you to connect them?" Martha suspected the flip side of hiding the archive in this way.

Her interlocutor would have had to touch every single page. Only briefly, but they'd have definitely needed to know what each connection meant. Who, what, where, the information the thin web of light they'd constructed had come not lightly away from the ravenous the internet.

"Oh, you have no idea." The figure, still anonymous on the other side Martha's darkened lenses, shrugged. "Worth it though. Unfortunately, now that you've had your view of it, and I do appreciate a good audience..."

The figure had already brought their hands from where they been hiding behind their back. In the left hand, they carried something that looked close to a stun gun, though Martha rather doubted that simple electricity would be the only energy hidden within the tool's facade.

Her assumption was confirmed when a bolt of crackling blue, mingled electricity, light, and the incredibly strong suggestion to "Sleep" woven together, shot toward her face. Martha caught the bolt, redirected it, and threw it... carefully... into her opponent's stomach.

"How..." the other said, before slumping to the floor.

Martha twisted her gloved hands, then realized she was showing them only to herself, her newest aquaintance having passed all the way to wherever the bolt had sent them.

Martha knelt to wipe all traces of these moments, most especially anything to do with her own face, from the memory of the still figure. When the quartz stone she'd chosen as a receptacle glowed to her satisfaction, she returned it to her pack, then stood and considered the data locker. "Now, where were we?" she addressed the tangled weave of light. "Right."

Time to flip the Rolodex.

****

Dwight Thompkins extracted himself from his vanity; however much it pained him to climb out of the low-slung, vaguely European-style sports car, he enjoyed the ride that much more. And, he loved to admit, the puzzled scratching of heads that accompanied as casual observers tried to place the make and model. Unsuccessfully.

And, of course Grace awaited him at the car park's walking exit. "You look remarkably smug, Dwight. Tell me?"

"And here I'd gone to so much trouble to hide the matter."

"Confess, tall dark and handsome."

She backed it up with a smile, but Dwight had already decided to inform his oldest friend in the world of the list of names and contact information that Martha Hazard had provided.

"And you were worried that this wouldn't be an opportunity," Grace reminded him when he'd finished. "Plus, your apprentice?"

Dwight strode carefully across the lobby to the old elevator; waited for open doors and the half-hearted ping of the machinery's acknowledgement, and then the rise toward the upper floors before he responded. "She did well."

"What about Renau's apprentice? If Martha left any trace at all..."

Dwight smiled, nodded his assurance, but the doors opened with no warning and Martin Renau, president of the Council, rose from his seat in front of the Council's meeting room doors. "Ah, Dwight, Grace, how good to see you. I do hope you've both had a good month?"

Dwight winked at Grace, then turned and made his limping way forward to grab Renau's hand. "Of course, my friend, of course."