“Well, I’ve no idea. Not yet.” He pulled up an image of his own face on CNN. “I’m hoping that if I can tap into the interest in Kuiper, I’ll get resources to push some of these questions farther. For instance, there may be links between the core explosions and Earth’s past.”

“Links?”

“Possibly the explosions tie in with extinction events, for instance.”

“I thought an asteroid impact killed off the dinosaurs.”

“That was a one-off. There have been eighteen other events. You can see it in the fossil record. Eighteen that we know of . . .”

I lifted my mug to my lips, but found it drained of coffee. I put the mug on the computer table and stood. “I ought to start my day.”

He looked at me doubtfully. “I’ve gone on too long. I’m sorry; I don’t get much chance to talk; most people wouldn’t listen at all . . . You think I’m a crank.”

“Not at all.”

“Of course you do.” He stood, looming over me, and grinned. Again there was that disarming self-deprecation, and I sensed, uncomfortable again, that he really was glad to have renewed his connection with me, regardless of my reaction. “Maybe I am a crank. But that doesn’t mean the questions aren’t valid. Anyhow, you’re the one with the abducted sister.”

“That’s true. I ought to go.”

“Come back and tell me what you find.”

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Magnus sat cross-legged, hunched over the little wooden game board.

Magnus was a great bear of a man with a head the size of a pumpkin, it seemed to Regina, a head so big his helmet seemed to perch on top of it. But then, his helmet wasn’t actually his but had been passed on to him from another soldier, just as had his sword and shield. Meanwhile his cowhide boots and his woolen tunic and his cucullus, his heavy hooded cloak, had all been made in the village behind the Wall, nothing to do with military issue at all. That awkward secondhand helmet had a dent in it, big enough to have held a goose’s egg. Regina wondered sometimes if the mighty blow that had inflicted the hollow had been the cause of the original owner’s “retirement.”

For all his bulk Magnus was a patient man, which was why Aetius approved of him as a companion for Regina. After five years on the Wall she thought she knew her way around, but some of the rougher soldiers, she had been told in no uncertain terms, were not suitable companions for the prefect’s twelve-year-old granddaughter.

Magnus was a good man, then. But he was so slow. His great ham of a hand hovered briefly over the board, but then he withdrew it.

“Oh, Magnus, come on,” Regina pleaded. “What’s so difficult? It’s only a game of soldiers, and we’ve barely started. The position’s simple.”