The bus rumbled on till we came to a big house with a surrounding wall and a metal gate, just after we started to see people on the street again. The gate opened, and Paula drove through. She pulled around two big trees and into a wide, horseshoe-shaped drive, and stopped. “All out,” she said. “Here’s where you’re going to sleep all this off.”
We staggered inside and Paula guided us to bedrooms, all of which came off an upper gallery. With a discreet glance at me, Paula asked about sleeping arrangements. I indicated with a half-nod that Helen and I should go in one room, and Ulrike in a room by herself. Paula, with a puckish little smile that made me almost giggle, probably more from tiredness than from any real humor, indicated she approved of my choice.
The bedroom had brick walls, a high window with bars, and a big old four-poster bed. There were robes hanging on hooks, and a genuine chamber pot under the bed. As soon as I got Helen, who was still staggering and hadn’t really awakened between the bus seat and here, onto the bed on one side, and made use of the chamber pot, I fell across the other side of the bed and was instantly asleep. It occurred to me that this was truly one hell of a way to try to cope with jet lag.
I didn’t wake up until three in the afternoon, by the clock on the wall, and when I did, I felt incredibly nasty and dirty from having been in my clothes for so long and from sleeping with my mouth open. Beside me, Helen was still snoring, the bulge of her shoulder holster still visible. I figured she knew more about that pistol asleep than I could possibly know about it awake, and let it stay where it was. I stripped out of my sweaty, foul-smelling clothes for the moment, used the pot again, put one of the robes on, and carefully opened the door.
Down below, on a couch in the great room that the gallery overlooked, looking much too fresh and comfortable, Colonel Roger Sykes looked up and said, “Aha. First one up besides me, Paula, and Esmé, and of course we’re old campaigners and can’t stay in bed late if you pay us to. Bring your clothes down; you can wash them in the basement, and we’ve got your suitcase from the jump boat. Hot shower, too, coffee, and some stuff to eat. Oh, and don’t forget the chamber pot.”
I staggered down the stairs, handed off my clothing and the chamber pot to a maid, and got a small pot of coffee, a cup, a towel, and directions to the shower. Half an hour later, I emerged, feeling like I was no longer distinguishable from human. I got a good thick ham and Swiss sandwich and an orange and took the food upstairs with my suitcase, so that I could alternate between eating and dressing. It felt good to be clean, good to be dressed, and nice to get food into my belly. If I had just had the foggiest idea what was going on or what had been happening to me for the last few days, I could even have been happy.
Helen was stirring, too, so I steered her to the robe and down to Roger, who sent her through more or less the same process I had just passed through. Ulrike emerged about the time I heard Helen’s shower start running, but it turned out that there were multiple bathrooms, and so she was guided to the next one. She looked like she’d spent part of the night crying, which might be typical for Ulrike or not, but was utterly understandable in the circumstances.
With that much taken care of, I sat down to another sandwich and more coffee, and asked Roger, “So where are we?”
“We’re in the house of Esmé Sanderson. Not the one that had arrested you and was going to kill you, another one. Besides being on our side, this one has the further advantage to us of having a great pile of inherited wealth. Coincidentally we’re in the house of the one who was going to kill you—she, like Billie Beard, was an extremely corrupt cop, and therefore could afford a place like this—but that isn’t the one who is acting as our host now. I know it’s confusing, and I’ve had Paula go over things with me a couple of times.”
“And what exactly are we doing?”
“Waiting for the others,” Sykes said, turning a page in his newspaper, and looking things over. “Hmm. Since I left home yesterday the history of Mexico seems to have changed completely three times. I don’t read Spanish all that well to begin with, and now I don’t know the context either. But for some reason all the comics are the same.” He set the paper down and took off the small pair of reading glasses he was wearing. “When everyone is comfortable and dressed, then Geoffrey Iphwin has promised to pay us all a large sum of money to go to a particular cafe—why that cafe, I have no idea—and wait until other people, who I guess we’re supposed to know, turn up. Once we are there, we’re to wait for instructions. Me, I’m just too curious to let all this slide by.
“I guess you two work for Iphwin, and so does Miss Nordstrom. I couldn’t tell you what Paula and Esmé’s motivations are—those two were the two best XOs I ever had, and therefore they made sure that I never had the foggiest idea what they were thinking; all I knew was what they wanted me to think. That’s why everything ran like clockwork. Based on past experience I would say that whatever their reasons for doing whatever they’re doing may be, we will know in good time, when they want us to, and not a second sooner. Jesús Picardin is also coming along, because he’s mercenary, curious, or both.”
After a while, Helen went upstairs in her robe, a towel wrapped around her head. Shortly after that, Ulrike followed and went to her room. Meanwhile I looked at the paper, briefly, and was reminded again that I didn’t know Spanish. Surely there were worlds in which I did? And in those worlds, did I know that I knew, or did I have to check, as I had just done?
It was almost five by the time we were all assembled and ready to go to the cafe. “It’s not far away,” Sykes said, “or so I understand.”
The only person in the room I didn’t recognize was a tall brunette with an abundant scatter of freckles, who nodded and glanced around the room. “I’m Esmé Sanderson. You must be Ulrike, Lyle, and Helen,” she said. “I guess some of you have had bad run-ins with other versions of me, and I’ve had at least one very negative encounter with one of you. Now that we know we’re all on the same side, or at least all invited to the same parties, I hope we can put all that aside.”
Paula, seated in the corner, snorted and said, “ ‘Very negative encounter’ is Esmé’s way of saying one of you shot her. But she made me promise not to say which one. And I think we have to declare a general truce, which is a good point Esmé isn’t making strongly enough. Try to remember that the person you knew may not be the person you’re dealing with, all right? Good.” She got up. “Anyway, there’s plenty of room in the transport, and there’s a real good reason to take it, and not anything else, according to Iphwin. Saddle up, load in, and get rolling. We have a place to be.”
“Should we take our stuff with us?” Ulrike asked, pushing her still-damp hair back from her cheeks.
“I guess everyone should take at least a bag,” Esmé said, “just to be on the safe side. Give priority to medicine, weapons, and ammo, in about that order, plus anything that’s really going to make you miserable if it gets left behind.”
We all scattered back upstairs; my bags were small enough so that I could carry the whole works, and it was the same for Helen. It looked like everyone had reached the same decision, downstairs, and Paula laughed at us. “I don’t want to think about what our teeth-to-tail ratio is,” she said.