A voice came from the platform of observers. “Hagia Sessaminiak is approaching from the other side! Please wait to enter the house until she is there!”

Param and Rigg waited outside the open door. They could see right through the large room to the door on the other side as it opened and light streamed in. There stood Mother, looking as she always had, and a step or two behind her, General Haddamander Citizen, a bit more posh than in his old People’s Army uniform.

Mother and Haddamander stepped into the room. “Please come in,” Mother said.

Param stepped forward, holding tightly to Rigg’s hand. If she had to slice time, she didn’t want to have to search for his hand before disappearing.

Mother and Haddamander walked to the center of the room. Mother held up a paper. “Here is our instrument of surrender. For all of us to sign.”

“Perhaps if we had a table, Mother,” said Param.

Haddamander turned and shouted toward the other door. “Bring in the table!”

“We wanted the room empty when you arrived,” said Mother. “So you’d see there was no trap.”

“Which means,” murmured Param, “that there’s a trap.” She spoke so softly that she couldn’t hear her own voice—but she knew that Rigg’s facemask would let him hear.

He squeezed her hand in reply.

A servant came into the room, carrying a very small table with only a single leg. He fitted it into a prepared notch in the floor.

Param wasn’t a genius of mechanical reasoning, but even she could see that the table would easily serve as a lever now, if there was some sort of control embedded in the floor. But could they really expect she and Rigg would fall for such an obvious device?

Well, yes, they could, because they were falling for it, not in ignorance, but with eyes wide open.

“What a clever little table,” said Param. “Mother, you planned for everything.”

“Come and sign, my dears. When the war is over, I hope we can sit and have a wonderful conversation.”

“That would be very nice, Mother,” said Rigg.

Param and Rigg now stood right up against the table.

Haddamander, reached across the small table, gripped the side nearest Rigg and Param, and pulled the whole thing toward himself.

There were sounds of shifting metal from the walls, the ceiling, the floor.

“Good-bye, Mother,” said Rigg.

Param took that as her cue, and began slicing time, not the way she used to, but so deeply that Mother and Haddamander were barely a blur as they threaded their way out of the room.

No one else came in. No one had to.