“Come back, Bridger!” I shout-whispered. “Stay! There’s no point hiding when the world’s already seen you. You’re here for each other, don’t you see? Out of all the points in history This Universe’s God could have chosen to show Himself, He did it when you could meet Jehovah and Jehovah you!”

Jehovah hushed me with a soft, black glance, then, in five perfect words selected from the six languages both He and I commanded, He ordered me to fulfill the purpose for which This Universe’s God had forged me, by finding and protecting Asclepios son of Apollo, kindest of the gods, who, in his zeal to help mankind, would even break Zeus’s law and raise the dead. It was a far better name than the one the child had chosen for himself.

Caesar, the Censor, Bryar, Papa, even Aldrin seized me as I tried to rise. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I must find Bridger.”

“Not in your condition.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine, you’re having a heart attack.”

I tried to pull free. “It was just a little spasm, not a full attack. I know the difference.”

Their hands only grew tighter around me, and I could see the Censor’s face and Caesar’s darken with that concern mingled with rage which my constant self-neglect so often caused.

Papa frowned most gravely. “This happens every time you slip your tracker, doesn’t it?”

“Their tracker?” Caesar repeated.

“This is how they slip it. I figured it out this morning when we caught one of their accomplices. Mycroft rewired their pacemaker to let them synchronize their pulse to someone else’s, then they can slip their tracker off onto the other’s ear without missing a beat.” Papa reached down to the notch Saladin had bitten from my ear, the skin below sensitive where the tracker should have rested. “That’s what this is for. We caught one of the other Servicers today wearing Mycroft’s tracker in addition to their own, and they and half a dozen more of Mycroft’s little friends have a nick cut out of the ear they don’t wear their trackers on, so they can slip on Mycroft’s. Problem is, messing with Mycroft’s pulse like that damages their heart. Every time.”

I forced them to let me sit up at least, eager to prove that I was ready for my task. “It doesn’t spasm every time, Papa. Just sometimes. I’m okay, really. This is important. Let me go!”

Bryar Kosala’s swift restraining hand was strongest. “We’re taking you to a hospital, Mycroft,” she announced with the unimpeachable authority of Mom. “You too, Jed, no objections. You were shot through the head. We won’t believe you’re okay until at least three doctors say so.”

The Utopians closed possessively around the most promising medical miracle in history. “Our hospital is close.”

She who oversaw forty-four of the hospitals in the city frowned at the mention of the forty-fifth, but knew when not to argue. Utopia’s Nowhere Princes already crowded around Jehovah, scanning Him and the gore on the ground around with every instrument they carried, but snakes and sprites and Pterascanadons were nothing to the infinity of electric senses possessed by that block-long golem of distilled science we call a Utopian hospital. Kosala had to yield. “Fine. Papa, is it safe to move?”