“Love it.” Paulie winked at her. “Wait till I patent the business practice, ‘a method of making money by smuggling gold to another world and exchanging it for lost masterpieces’!”

“You dare—” Miriam chuckled. “Although I’m not sure we’ll be able to extract anything like the full value of our profits that way. I’m not even sure we want to—having a world to live in where we’re affluent and haven’t spent the past few decades developing a reputation as organized criminals would be no bad thing. Anyway, back to business. How’s the patent search going?”

“I’ve got about a dozen candidates for you,” Paulie said briskly. “A couple of different types of electric motor that they may or may not have come up with. Flash boilers for steam cars, assuming they don’t already have them. They didn’t sound too sophisticated but you never know. The desk stapler—did you see any? Good. I looked into the proportional font stuff you asked for, but the Varityper mechanism is just amazingly complicated, it wouldn’t just hatch out of nowhere. And the alkaline battery will take a big factory and supplies of unusual metals to start making. The most promising option is still the disk brake and the asbestos/resin brake shoe. But I came up with another for you: the parachute.”

“Parachute—” Miriam’s eyes widened. “I’ll need to go check if they’ve invented them. I know Leonardo drew one, but it wouldn’t have been stable. Okay!” She emptied the coffeepot into her and Paulette’s mugs, stirred in some sugar. “That’s great. How long until the cable guy is done?”

“Oh, he’s already gone,” Paulette said. “I get to plug the box in myself, don’t you know?”

“Excellent.” Miriam picked up her mug. “Then I can check my voice mail in peace.”

She wandered into the front office as Brill was leaving the shower, wrapped in towels and steaming slightly. A new socket clung rawly to the wall just under the window. Miriam dropped heavily into the chair behind the desk, noticing the aches of sleeping on a hard surface for the first time. She picked up her phone and punched in her code. Paulette intercepted Brill, asking her something as she led her into the large back office they’d begun converting into a living room.

“You have two messages,” said the phone.

“Yeah, yeah.” Miriam punched a couple more buttons.

“First message, received yesterday at eleven-forty two: Miriam? Oh, Sky Father! Listen, are you alright? Phone me, please.” It was Roland, and he didn’t sound happy. Anguish rose in her chest. Roland—she didn’t let the thought reach her tongue. “It’s urgent,” he added, before the click of the call ending.