The Taken regained control, rose clumsily, drifted away.

I knelt by the messenger. He was little more than a boy. He was alive. He had a chance if I got to work. "A little help here! One-Eye."

Manta pairs ripped along the boundary of the null, blasting away at the second Taken. This one evaded effortlessly, did nothing to fight back. "That's Whisper," Elmo said.

"Yeah," I said. She knows her way around.

One-Eye grumbled, "You going to help this kid or not, Croaker?"

"All right. All right." I hated to miss the show. It was the first I had seen so many mantas, the first I had seen them support us. I wanted to see more.

"Well," said Elmo, while calming the boy's horse and going through his saddlebags, "another missive for our esteemed annalist." He proffered another oilskin packet. Baffled, I tucked it under my arm, then helped One-Eye carry the messenger down into the Hole.

Chapter Ten:
BOMANZ'S STORY

Croaker:

Jasmine's squeal rattled the windows and doors. "Bomanz! You come down here! Come down right now, you hear me?"

Bomanz sighed. A man couldn't get five minutes alone. What the hell did he get married for? Why did any man? You spent the rest of your life doing hard time, doing what other people wanted, not what you wanted.

"Bomanz!"

"I'm coming, dammit! Damned woman can't blow her nose without me there to hold her hand," he added sotto voce. He did a lot of talking under his breath. He had feelings to vent, and peace to maintain. He compromised. Always, he compromised.

He stamped downstairs, each footfall a declaration of irritation. He mocked himself as he went: You know you're getting old when everything aggravates you.

"What do you want? Where are you?"

"In the shop." There was an odd note in her voice. Suppressed excitement, he decided. He entered the shop warily.

"Surprise!"

His world came alive. Grouchiness deserted him. "Stance!" He flung himself at his son. Powerful arms crushed him. "Here already? We didn't expect you till next week."

"I got away early. You're getting pudgy, Pop." Stancil opened his arms to include Jasmine in a three-way hug.

"That's your mother's cooking. Times are good. We're eating regular. Tokar's been…" He glimpsed a faded, ugly shadow. "So how are you? Back up. Let me look at you. You were still a boy when you left."

And Jasmine: "Doesn't he look great? So tall and healthy. And such nice clothes." Mock concern. "You haven't been up to any funny business, have you?"

"Mother! What could a junior instructor get up to?" He met his father's eye, smiled a smile that said "Same old Mom."

Stancil was four inches taller than his father, in his middle twenties, and looked athletic despite his profession. More like an adventurer than a would-be don, Bomanz thought. Of course, times changed. It had been eons since his own university days. Maybe standards had changed.

He recalled the laughter and pranks and all-night, dreadfully serious debates on the meaning of it all, and was bitten by an imp of nostalgia. What had become of that mentally quick, foxy young Bomanz? Some silent, unseen Guardsman of the mind had interred him in a barrow in the back of his brain, and there he lay dreaming, while a bald, jowly, potbellied gnome gradually usurped him… They steal our yesterdays and leave us no youth but that of our children…