"What does the government get out of this?" Tinker unrolled the spiral coffee roll, tearing off bite-sized pieces. "I know there's a price hidden in there somewhere."

"The U.S. gets insurance that the Chinese don't get a land-based gate first."

"Why does the U.S. want a gate?"

"Part of it is that they're used to being the ones with the new toy, and it annoys them to no end that the Chinese have something that they don't. But there's also a fear of what a land-based gate can and can't do. What if it lets you travel through time, or to several dimensions? If the Chinese get it first, they're not going to share information any more than they've shared details on the gate."

"I'm not going to leave my cousin," Tinker said.

"He could come with you," Durrack said. "We set him up a new ident.i.ty. He could pick out a name nicer than Orville or Oilcan. He could go to college too. I hear he's an intelligent young man-it seems a waste for him to spend his life as a tow truck driver when he's got the smarts to be anything he wants. It could be a great opportunity for him."

Durrack would say anything to manipulate her, but it didn't make it any less true. While Oilcan occasionally stated that Earth had been too big and crowded, he complained about the lack of people their own age and temperament. He hovered around the Observatory, drawn to the women postdocs, but was never able to do more than watch them come and go.

The NSA agents waited for her response.

"Let me talk to my cousin. See what he says."

"We can take you over to his place."

"Oh, stop pushing," Tinker said. "I'm going to take a shower, and then go shopping for clothes. I've got a date tonight." And Nathan wasn't going to be happy about any possibility of her leaving town; his whole family clung to Pittsburgh, refusing to leave. "And I've got lots of hard decisions to make. So just go away; leave me alone to figure out what I want in life."

Tinker took the well-worn path down through the steep hillside orchard, carefully avoiding the beehives, to Tooloo's store at the bottom of the hill. The store itself was a rambling set of rooms filled with unlikely items, many ancient beyond belief. One section was secondhand clothes, where Tinker often found shirts, pants, and winter coats. Some of the clothes were elfin formal wear that Tinker drooled over from time to time but never found any reason to buy. Even secondhand they were pricey.

There was an odd collection of general goods, but the main focus of the store was food-often the rarest items to find in Pittsburgh. In an area behind the store, Tooloo had an extensive garden and various outbuildings: a barn, a henhouse, and a dove coop. She had fresh milk, b.u.t.ter, eggs, freshwater fish, and doves all year. During the summer, she also sold honey, fruit, and vegetables.

Tooloo herself seemed to be an eclectic collection. Locals referred to her as a half-breed, left over from the last time elves visited Earth. Tooloo certainly had the elfin ears, spoke fluent Low and High Elvish, and could be counted on as having in-depth knowledge on matters arcane. Unlike any full elf, she looked old, a face filled with wrinkles and silver hair that reached her ankles. Her elfin silks were faded and nearly threadbare, and she wore battered high-top tennis shoes.

Whereas Lain was a known quant.i.ty, comforting in her familiarity, Tooloo refused to be known. Asked her favorite color, it would be different each time. Her birthday ranged the year, if she would admit to having one. Even her name was unknown, Tooloo being only a nickname. In eighteen years, Tinker had never heard Tooloo mention anything about her own parentage.

If Tinker's grandfather was the source of Tinker's scientific thinking, and Lain the source of all common sense, then Tooloo was her font of superst.i.tion. Despite everything, Tinker found herself believing a found penny meant good luck, spilt salt required a pinch thrown over the shoulder to ward off bad luck, and that she should never give an elf her true name.

Thinking about what she'd say to Oilcan about the NSA proposal and her date with Nathan, Tinker wasn't prepared for Tooloo's reaction to recent events.

"You little monkey!" Tooloo swept out of the back room that served as her home, shaking a finger at Tinker. "You've seen Windwolf again, haven't you? I told you to stay away from him."

Tinker turned her back so she didn't have to look at the scolding finger. "You've told me lies."

"No, I haven't. Only bad will come of this. He'll swallow you up, and nothing will be left."

"You said he marked me with a life debt." And as Tinker said it, she realized that Tooloo had told the truth, only the half-elf had twisted it somehow. "You didn't tell me that he was in debt to me."

"It's a curse, either way." Tooloo came to rub the mark between Tinker's eyebrows. "Oh, he's got his hands on you now. The end begins."

"What do you mean?"

"What I've said all along-but then you've never listened. You come asking again and again for the same story and go away not listening despite how many different ways I tell you."

"It can't be the same and different at the same time."

"Windwolf is dangerous to you," Tooloo used the scolding finger again. "Is that simple enough for you? I've tried to keep you hidden all these years from him, but he's found you now, and marked you as his."

Tinker realized suddenly that as one of the few people in Pittsburgh who spoke High Elvish, Tooloo would have certainly been the one asked about Tinker's ident.i.ty after the saurus attack. "I don't understand."

"Obviously." Tooloo snorted and moved off to rearrange stock.

From years of dealing with Tooloo, Tinker recognized that the conversation had come to an impa.s.se. She changed the subject to the reason she was at the store. "I have a date with Nathan Czernowski. We're going to the Faire."

"Ah, what is with you and fire?"

"What does that mean?"

"It's dangerous to offer a man something he wants but that can't be his."

"Why can't it be his?"

Tooloo caught her chin. "When you look at Czernowski, do you see your heart's desire?"

"Maybe."

"You know your heart so little? I don't think so. You do this to satisfy that little monkey brain of yours. Curiosity is a beast best starved."

"Nathan wouldn't hurt me."

"If only the same could be said of you."

Tinker stomped to the clothes, trying to puzzle that warning out. Was it something in the water that made older women impossible to understand?

At Tooloo's she found an elfin jacket. Or at least, on an elf it was a jacket. On her it was a duster, coming down nearly to her ankles. The sleeves were slightly long, but she could fold them back. A mottled gold silk, it had a purple iris hand painted on the back. She fell in love with it but could find nothing to complement it, so she took her hoverbike into Pittsburgh in search of an older self.

Kaufmann's was a Pittsburgh tradition, the oldest department store located downtown. It had withstood flood, suburbia, the invasion of foreign department stores, and being transported into the fey realms.

"I need some clothes to make me look more mature," she told the saleswoman in an area marked "Women's," who pointed her firmly toward "Pet.i.tes." She found a push-up bra that made the most of her chest, a clingy black slip dress, and high-heeled shoes.

"I need a cut that makes me look older," she told the hairstylist, who eyed her hacked hair with slight dismay.

"Did you tattoo yourself, sweetheart?" the stylist asked, gingerly touching Windwolf's mark on Tinker's forehead.

"Umm, ah, it's a long story." Remembering Nathan's reaction to the mark, Tinker raked her hair forward with her fingers. "Is there any way I can cover this with my bangs?"

"What bangs?" The stylist found the longest lock and pulled it forward to show that it fell short of the mark. "Sweetheart, at this point all you can do is wear it proudly."

In the end, the stylist could do little more than even out the length of her hair and then rub a gel into it so it stood up in little spikes. "It's retro chic," the stylist chanted. "Very elegant."

The makeover woman eyed Windwolf's mark and p.r.o.nounced it extremely cool.

"Is there anything that will cover it up?"

The woman laughed again. "Not without an inch or two of concealer. Why would you want to? It becomes you; it makes you very exotic looking."

"The guy I'm dating tonight doesn't like it."

The woman swabbed the mark with cleanser and shook her head. "He better learn to like it; it's there to stay."

"Can you make me look older then, like I was in my twenties?"

"Why does every woman under twenty want to look over it, and every other woman in the world wants to look under it?" She resoaked the cotton ball, took Tinker's face in one hand, and started to clean her face gently. "Men, that's why. Honey, don't be in a rush to change for a man. You might make him happy, but most likely only at the cost of making yourself miserable.... You've got wonderful skin," she cooed.

"I've got freckles."

The makeup woman tsked. "Here's the secret, honey; you've got what men want. You're young, and pretty, and nicely padded in all the right places. You might be saying, 'Oh, my hair isn't down to my ankles, I have freckles, and my ears aren't pointed,' but men see the chest, the hips, the b.u.t.t, and the pretty face-in that order-and little else. You can have any man in this city, so take your time and be picky. Make him him work to get you." work to get you."

Perched on a bar stool, Tinker spent nearly two hours and nearly a hundred dollars learning the arcane skill of applying makeup and dealing with men.

To some degree, she managed to achieve looking older than her real self. How much older, she wasn't sure, but she felt a little wiser in the ways of the world. She detoured on her way back to her bike for condoms and a can of mace for "protection, just in case of any emergencies."

It wasn't until then that she remembered Riki.

Someone had been busy while she was gone. Her workshop trailer was back into place, square and level as if it had never been moved. All the various power links were reconnected, and the air conditioner was even back in its slot. Someone had also gathered up all the blood-soaked bandages into a plastic garbage bag and then scrubbed the floor and worktable clean of blood until the air smelled sweetly of peroxide.

She would have suspected Oilcan of the progress, except that the flatbed was missing and Riki's motorcycle sat next to the office door. When she found the offices empty, she wandered through the sc.r.a.p yard, wondering where the grad student was. Had he gone with Oilcan on some errand, or just taken a walk?

Finally something drew her eye toward the crane, and she found him at last, perched on the boom, sixty feet straight up. Still dressed in the black leather pants and jacket of yesterday, he sat on the end of the boom, a black dot on the blue sky.

"What the h.e.l.l?" Tink scrambled up the ladder to the crane's cage. What was he doing out there? Was he planning on jumping? How had he even gotten out there? She leaned out the window and saw that with the boom level, it was basically a straight walk out from the cage.

"Riki? Riki?" she called in a low pitch, trying to get his attention without startling him.

He glanced over his shoulder at her, the wind ruffling his black hair. "Oh, there you are."

"Sorry that I was late. I got busy and forgot about you." She winced. Maybe that wasn't the right thing to say at a time like now.

"Your cousin was here." Riki stood up and casually picked his way back along the narrow boom. He had her datapad with him, and it caught the sun and reflected it in blazes of sheer white. Blackness and brilliance, he moved through seemingly open sky. "Oilcan called Lain, and she let him know I was legit."

She drew back from the window, gripping the operator's chair. Just watching him made her suddenly afraid of falling. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing out there?"

"I have a thing about heights." He leaned in the window. Unlike yesterday, he seemed relaxed and pleased, a lazy smile on his face. "They clear my head. I think better when I'm high up."

"Get in here; you're making me nervous."

He laughed and swung his long thin legs in and sat framed in the window. "Sorry. I forget how much it bugs people. The sky was too perfect, though."

She looked out the other window. The sky was a stunning deep blue, with ma.s.sive stray clouds dotting it, huge and fluffy as lost sheep; only when you gazed at them, you saw how complex they were, with lines so crisp they were surreal. A cool wind scented with the endless elfin forest just beyond the Rim moved through the blueness, herding the sheep. It was the kind of sky she had sat and stared at as a child. "Yeah, it's perfect." When she turned back to him, he was watching her, head c.o.c.ked to one side. "What?"

"Just that you gave that thought before you pa.s.sed judgment."

"Thanks. I think."

He held out her datapad. "I was reading over your notes. They're brilliant."

She blushed as she s.n.a.t.c.hed it back. "I really didn't mean for other people to see them." She glanced down at the pad. He had her theory for magic's waveform pulled up. In the scratch s.p.a.ce, he'd worked through her equations, double-checking her work. "You followed this?"

"Mostly." He held out his hand for the pad.

She reluctantly surrendered it back.

He closed her doc.u.ments and enlarged the scratch s.p.a.ce, clearing out his work. "If I'm understanding this right, the multiple universes can be represented by a stack of paper." He drew several parallel lines. "Earth is at the bottom of the stack, and Elfhome is somewhere higher up." He labeled two of the lines appropriately. "Now magic is coming through the entire stack as a waveform." He drew a series of waves through the stack. "Since both the stack and the waveform are uniform, the point where the wave intersects the individual universe is constant; it always. .h.i.ts Earth at N and Elfhome at N+1."

"In a nutsh.e.l.l, yes." Tinker looked at him in surprise. She had tried to explain her theory several times, but never using this model. It seemed so clear and simple. Of course, one of the reasons it was easy to understand was that Riki had ignored the fact that the universes weren't stacked like paper, but were overlapping in a manner that boggled the mind. To reach out and touch a point meant that your finger would almost be touching a zillion identical points across countless dimensions, separated only by that weird sideways step that made it another reality. Of course, only in the nearby realities were you touching that same spot. Farther away you were touching another position, and farther away, like on Elfhome, you never existed because at some extremely distant time life took a different path and elves came about instead of humans.

"This is what I don't follow." Riki pulled up her notes again, scrolled through them, and found what he was looking for. "I came here to see if I could wrap my brain around it."

"It's not fully formed." She sighed unhappily at it. "I hate it when there are things in the universe that I don't understand."

"It looks like you're trying to figure out how to reach other dimensions."

"Well, the real question is: Why do we always return to the same Elfhome? At least, we seem to. All indications are that we return to the exact dimension."

"Well, the gate generates the same field."

"Consider all the universal changes. We start on Earth, which is spinning with the gate in orbit over China, so the veil effect has to travel through the Earth's core. Then the planet is slowly wobbling through the precession of equinoxes. We've got the Moon's effect on Earth, and then the Earth moving around the Sun, which is moving around the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

"We're talking about numerous vectors that we're traveling in at any one time. That Pittsburgh returns to the same Elfhome, again and again, indicates something other than just dumb luck."

Riki grasped what she was talking about. "Like we're dealing with a universal constant. If you can travel from one dimension to a second dimension once, you'll always be able to?"

"Yeah, some commonality between the two dimensions."

"So how do you make a gate to a third dimension?"

"A third dimension?"

"Well, with countless dimensions available, why only travel to just one?"

"Two seems to be plenty for us to handle right now."

"Well, surely there are more than just two dimensions with the same commonality. You'd expect something more like a string of pearls, linked together on a silk thread."

"Oh, that's elegant." Tinker gazed out at the perfect sky, but she was looking at a strand of planets strung together in a black universe. Earth. Elfhome. Worlds unknown. "But what's the thread?"

"The gate traverses the thread."