«Shhh. Not here.»

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

Treason

“Yes, I’ll sign for it. Wheel it in.”

Lesley signaled the bash’house security to let the postman wheel the box across the threshold. In the stress of the crisis, her doodles had strayed off the margins of her clothes to streak her skin with veins and spirals.

“Member Lesley Juniper Saneer,” he read off after she signed. “I thought I recognized you. I still remember that speech you made to the cameras after your bash’parents died. I showed that video to my little ones. ‘If you ever lose your ba’pas,’ I told them, ‘I hope you do something as brave and good for the world as that Lesley Juniper.’ ”

Lesley smiled at the postman, and at the signature tracks his Humanist boots stamped on the hallway carpet, quotes from Milton woven into branching spirals something between fire and a tree. “Thanks, that means a lot.”

Compliments aside, Lesley could not get rid of the outsider fast enough, and practically shoved him out across the threshold in her haste to be alone with the doll box, which now lay in the hallway like a festive coffin. “¿Cardie? ¿Are you in there?”

“Yeah.” Sniper’s voice was muffled by the packaging. “¿Could you give me a hand out? I’ve been drugged, not moving very well.”

She attacked the box at once. “¿Are you hurt?”

“Just groggy. ¿What day is it?”

“Still the twenty-seventh. You disappeared this morning, fourteen hours ago.” Something caught in Lesley’s throat as she found her celebrity bash’mate within, naked and wincing at the light. “¡Ockham!” she cried. “¡Cato! ¡Come here now! ¡And bring the first-aid kit! ¡And the crime kit! ¡Sniper’s back!”

Lesley eased Sniper forward gently, until it flopped against her, like a fawn learning to walk. “It’s not your fault if they got you to talk; with enough drugs and pain anyone will.”

“It wasn’t like that.” Sniper let its arms flop over Lesley’s shoulders as she eased it forward. “Just a crazy fan, nothing to do with the break-in.”

(I realize, reader, I should apologize for deceiving you in my first book, with Sniper’s pronoun. Before I received its chapter, I had not imagined it would consent to have its sex revealed, so, in the first half of my history, forced to choose between the standard genders, it seemed best to give Ockham’s rival and successor the same pronoun as Ockham.)

The cavalry arrived now, Ockham swift and grim with Cato in his wake, lab coat flying, armored with gizmos. Ockham brought only questions. “¿You’re certain it’s unrelated to the break-in?”

“I’ll be certain once we runbwa ba wff thhff…” Sniper sputtered as its head flopped forward into the massed twists of Lesley’s soft African hair. “Once we run a blood test,” it tried again. “If there’s nothing in my bloodstream that would mess with my memory, or make me blab in my sleep, then we’re safe.”

Ockham’s dark face grew darker. “Connected or not, anyone who targets one of us is a threat to the global peace and will be dealt with.” He wore his favorite shirt, sleeveless and so intricately layered with doodles that hardly a thread of silver gray still showed between the black.