Quinton rattled the pill case. "Go on. Take them. You look like you owe money to two guys named Guido."
Collins imagined he had to look a fright, bruised from head to toe, coated in travel grime, scrawny even before he skipped a few meals. He accepted the case and flicked it open to reveal four enteric-coated tablets of the proper size and shape. They even had Advil clearly written across each one, which fully allayed his suspicions. He dumped three into his palm, put one back, then popped the two remaining into his mouth. Quinton refilled his goblet, and he drank them down with the full contents. His belly felt stretched, but the meager calories in the two drinks only aroused his hunger. "Thanks." He thought back to something Quinton had said, "Once I find what I came for, you're no longer trapped. We can go home."
Quinton met the news with none of the excitement Collins had anticipated. "Is that what Zylas told you?"
Shocked by her knowledge, Collins stammered. "Wh-what?"
"Zylas. The white rat." Quinton studied his expression. "Or did he give you another alias?"
Quinton fumbled at the chain around her neck. "This is what he sent you after, isn't it?" She dangled an irregular peach-sized hunk of bluish-hued quartz from the necklace."
Collins could not find his tongue. "How could you…? How did…?" He licked his lips. "What…?"
Quinton answered one of the unspoken questions. "I was working alone in the lab, and I followed a white rat here. Sound familiar?"
"Very," Collins admitted.
Quinton dropped the stone back down between her breasts, giving Collins a casual glance at well-shaped cleavage. "What did Zylas tell you it was for?"
"It?" Collins probed, averting his eyes too late.
"The stone."
"Oh." Collins turned cautious, bewildered by the situation. "He said it would get me home."
"It won't."
The abrupt cold pronouncement sank Collins' hopes and raised too many quandaries. "How… how do you know?"
Quinton smiled. "I'm still here, aren't I?"
"Yes, but," Collins started, then caught himself. He had suspected that his companions had withheld information, but he had trusted them enough to believe it nothing significant. Now, he knew they had lied outright. Zylas had claimed no one from Collins' world had come to Barakhai before him, yet he sat talking to evidence of that deceit. Unless she's the one who's lying. Lives might be at stake depending on what he revealed. He shoved aside rising irritation. It made no sense to get angry until he knew for certain who had betrayed him. "You're still here, indeed," Collins finished lamely.
Quinton crossed her legs. "Zylas told me he needed that stone to rescue innocent people from the king's brutal regime."
"He did?" Collins clamped his hands over his spinning head, the abrupt movement awakening a whole new round of pain. He tried to sift logic from a sea of bewilderment, to find the truth hidden amidst so many lies. He studied Quinton. "Can you prove you're who you claim to be?"
Carrie smiled. "He's good, isn't he, that rat." She reached into the folds of her dress and extracted a battered wallet. She tossed a handful of cards into Collins' lap.
Setting aside the goblet, Collins sifted through the pile. Among Visa, Hallmark Gold Crown, and PetCo P.A.L.S. cards, all in the name of Carrie A. Quinton, he found two with picture identification. A Missouri driver's license showed her with shorter hair and a crinkled, quizzical expression. The student photo ID held a more flattering picture of a smiling Carrie Quinton with permed hair and the familiar pale eyes. No doubt, this was the same woman. Collins gathered the cards and returned them.
"Convinced?"
Collins nodded.
"Bill Clinton was president when I left." Quinton stuffed the cards back into the wallet. "You'd have a new one now."
"George Bush," Collins said.
"Again?"
Collins opened his mouth to explain, but Quinton waved him off.
"Kidding. I know it's gotta be George W. And no surprise, there. They knew that years before the election, before I left. Not sure why we even bother to vote."
Collins wondered what Quinton would think if she knew about the legal and political wrangling that had resulted in that squeak-by victory, but decided not to broach the subject. They had more important things to discuss, matters of faith and survival.
Quinton continued to vocalize proofs. "Before Clinton was Bush, Reagan before him, and Jimmy Carter the smiling peanut guy was president when I was born. And you and I are the only ones in Barakhai who know the difference between a dominant and a recessive gene."
"All right." Collins made a gesture of surrender. "You're the real deal. Now tell me how you wound up here."
Quinton gathered her cards, replaced them, then shoved her wallet back into its pocket in the folds of her dress. "I told you. I followed a white rat. He gave me this." She withdrew a hunk of white quartz from another pocket and deposited it on the arm of her chair. "I assume you have one, too?"
Collins did not reply.
Quinton continued, "He convinced me to try to steal this." She inclined her head downward to indicate the crystal. "I got caught, found out the truth, joined the right side." She shrugged. "Been here since."
Collins gripped the sides of his chair, the implications sinking deeply into him. He ran a finger along the stone. "It's a translation stone?"
"The guards searched you but didn't find yours." Though not a question, it begged answering.
Collins thought fast. Just because Quinton came from his world and time did not mean he could trust her with information that might harm people who, though more alien, he had come to consider friends. She would never buy that he had learned the language so quickly, and she apparently did not know about Prinivere. Recalling Falima's early dilemma, he tried, "I… swallowed it."
Quinton reclaimed the stone. "You did?"
Seeing no reason to swear to a lie, Collins shrugged. "The guards didn't find it. Did they?"
Quinton studied the rock. "I just didn't know it could work that way."
"Try it," Collins suggested.
The woman's features remained pinched with doubt. "Doesn't it… well… eventually come out."
Worried they might start collecting and examining his excrement, Collins shrugged. "Mine hasn't. Maybe it got stuck, but it hasn't come out. At least, not yet." Needing to change the subject, he questioned. "So you're saying Zylas-?"
"Maybe I will try it." Gaze still fixed on the stone, Quinton did not seem to realize she had interrupted. "As soon as I'm with someone who can't understand every word I say without it." She smiled. "You don't know how long I've waited to talk to someone in English. I mean real English. And to hear the answer in good old English, too."
"Real English?" Collins laughed. His aunt and uncle had once visited Great Britain, returning with quaint stories of loos and lifts, windscreens and tellies. "I'm not sure anyone outside the United States would call what we speak 'real English.' Not enough u's, for one thing. Slangy and sloppy for another."
Quinton smiled. "It's real enough for me." She slapped the stone down on the arm of her chair, deliberately not touching it. She stretched luxuriously, showing off a long, lithe, and very feminine figure. It seemed almost impossible that she and Falima came from the same gender and species, though, in a way, they did not. "So," she purred. "How is Zylas doing?"
Collins shrugged, too vigorously this time. The movement ached through his body. "He seemed fine, but I have nothing to compare it with."
"Too bad."
Collins' brows rose. "You don't like him, I take it."
"No," Quinton admitted, then clarified. "Oh, he's charming all right. Friendly, easy to get along with, seems like a real straight shooter, right?"
Collins recalled times when he thought the rat/man might be hiding things from him; but, for the most part, he found the description accurate. "Yeah. Are you saying it's an act?"