“Well, this place you go to—it’s either in the past or the future, or somewhere else, right? I think we can probably rule out the past or future options. If it was the past, you wouldn’t have run across a village the way you described it; and as for the future, there’d still be some sign of Boston, wouldn’t there?”

“Depends how far in the future you go.” Miriam frowned. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s funny; when I was a little girl I always figured the land of make-believe would be bright and colorful. Princesses in castles and princes to go around kissing them so they turned into frogs—and dragons to keep the royalty population under control. But in the middle ages there were about a thousand peasants living in sordid poverty for every lord of the manor, who actually had a sword, a horse, and a house with a separate bedroom to sleep in. A hundred peasants for every member of the nobility—the lords and their families—and the same for every member of the merchant or professional classes.”

“Sounds grimly real to me, babe. Forget Hollywood. Your map was accurate, wasn’t it?”

“What are you getting at? You’re thinking about…What was that show called: Sliders? Right?”

“Alternate earths. Like on TV.” Paulette nodded. “I only watched a couple of episodes, but…well. Suppose you are going sideways, to some other earth where there’s nobody but some medieval peasants. What if you, like, crossed over next door to a bank, walked into exactly where the vault would be in our world, waited for the headache to go away, then crossed back again?”

“I’d be inside the bank vault, wouldn’t I? Oh.”

“That, as they say, is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Paulette commented dryly. “Listen, this is going to be a long session. I figure you haven’t thought all the angles through. What were you planning on doing with it?”

“I—I’m.” Miriam stopped. “I told you about the phone call.”

Paulette looked at her bleakly. “Yeah. Did I tell you—”

“You too?”

She nodded. “The evening after I told them to go fuck themselves. Don’t know who it was: I hung up on him and called the phone company, told them it was a nuisance call, but they couldn’t tell me anything.”

“Bastards.”

“Yes. Listen. When I was growing up in Providence, there were these guys…it wasn’t a rich neighborhood, but they always had sharp suits. Momma told me never to cross them—or, even talk to them. Trouble is, when they talk to you—I think I need a drink. What do you say?”

“I say there’re a couple of bottles in the cabinet,” said Miriam, massaging her forehead. “Don’t mind if I join you.”