“Not what we needed,” replied Jory, looking over Fringe’s shoulder to catch Danivon’s glance. He was standing a little distance away, staring as though his eyes would fall out, his nose twitching. Then he came forward in a rush.
“Who?” he murmured, thrusting in among them. “Now who’re these people, ah?”
“Jory,” muttered Fringe unwillingly, indicating the old woman with her free hand. “And Asner.”
“The people from noplace?” crowed Danivon. “Is that who you are? Ah?”
“Asner,” complained the old woman with a hint of laughter. “Did you tell the Shallow people that? That we were from noplace?”
The old man shrugged. “I might’ve,” he said. “When you’ve been as many places as we have, it’s hard to remember where you’re from.”
Danivon grinned and sniffed. “People from noplace. Now isn’t that strange. Someone I know received a rather peculiar … suggestion from noplace. Would you know anything about that?”
They turned on him looks of bland incomprehension, which he met with studied calm.
“What’s on your mind, boy?” demanded the old man in a grouchy tone. “Don’t fuss us, now. Don’t play about making conversation. I can tell there’s something on your mind.”
“How can you tell that?”
“How can you tell when it’s raining, boy! By the water on your head! Don’t waste time. You get as old as we, there’s no time to waste.”
Danivon sniffed deeply, smiled slowly, like a sunrise. “We’re planning an expedition upriver and you seem to be headed that way. Am I right?”
“Think of that,” Jory interrupted. “An expedition. So exciting, expeditions. Moving about, place to place, seeing new things, unraveling mysteries. Even when you think you’ve seen everything there is to see, there’s something else … beckoning.”
Asner regarded Danivon with a skeptical eye. “What’re you wanting, boy? Directions?” He looked up, his eyes widened, he nudged Jory and murmured, “Would you look at that?”
Nela and Bertran were descending the stairs in their synchronized fashion, Bertran’s arm around Nela’s shoulders.
“I do think that’s ziahmeeztwinz,” murmured Jory.
“Joined people,” said Fringe.
“What I said,” the old woman remarked. “Now isn’t that interesting. Wonderful how travel broadens one, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said he. “What’s ziahmeeztwinz?”
“Two babies born joined together,” she said. “Except they’re always two boys or two girls.”
“Not in this case,” said Fringe. “And how do you know about such things?”
“Oh, my dear, a person as widely traveled as I knows bits and pieces about a lot of things.”
“I’ve been in most places on Elsewhere,” said Danivon. “And I don’t know about ziahmeeztwinz.”
“But you haven’t been where I’ve been, boy. I don’t mean here,” said the old woman. “I don’t mean now.” She smiled sweetly at Nela and Bertran who had, by this time, joined the group. “I’ve never met a pair of ziahmeeztwinz before.”
“Siamese twins,” cried Nela. “How do you know that word.”
The old woman said something in a language Fringe could not understand. The twins replied in the same language. The old woman fumbled a bit with it, as though it might be a language she had not used for a long time. Still, the twins seemed to understand her well enough, and soon the three of them were babbling away like birds on a branch while the old man gloomed at them and the three Enforcers listened with their mouths open.
“Think of that!” Jory cried at last, turning to Fringe. “We’re almost countrymen. Virtually time-mates.”
“They got caught in an Arbai Door,” said Danivon, gesturing at the twins. “Caught and left in limbo forever. And you?”
The old woman cocked her head, regarding him with complete attention. “An Arbai Door! Isn’t the galaxy full of wonders! Now, what’s this about going upriver?”
Danivon’s nose twitched. She hadn’t answered him. She wasn’t going to answer him. His nose told him that. “Perhaps we need you to go along.”
“So lovely to be wanted,” she cried, clapping her hands. “We’ll go, of course. Won’t we, Asner?”
“If you say so, Jory. Whatever you say.” He sighed dramatically. “She’ll get her way no matter what I say, so I just give in right away to save trouble.”
“Now, Asner, that’s not fair.”
“Fair or not, that’s the way things are.” He winked at Danivon. “Women!”
Danivon, casting a glance at Fringe from beneath half-closed eyes, did not respond. She, however, grasped him firmly by one arm and drew him to one side.
“You have to be joking,” she said.
He shook his head at her. “Not.”
“Danivon! She’s … she’s old! Look at her! She doesn’t weigh as much as your left leg from the knee down. Bird bones held together by skin. First sniff of danger, she’ll be dead!”
He tapped his nose and said again, “Not.”
“Isn’t that thing ever wrong?”
“Hasn’t been yet. And what’s it to you? She wants to go. She isn’t your granny.”
Fringe flushed. The old woman wasn’t her grandma, or old aunty. And yet. Yet. “She’s something to me, Danivon. I may not have known it till this minute, but she is something to me!”
“They’re talking about you,” Nela was saying to Jory. “Fringe feels it would be unwise for you to go along.”
“What does she care?” asked Jory with a secretive smile.
Nela persisted. “She’s concerned about the danger to you.” Fringe’s concern for the old woman was welcome to Nela, who did not want to believe Fringe was the amoral monster her earlier words had made her out to be. “Quite frankly, I think she’s sensible to be concerned.”
“Child, you worry too much,” said Jory, patting Nela’s cheek. “I’ve lived a long time. Isn’t that right, Asner? You get to be our age, you don’t worry so much.”
“Doesn’t do any good when you do,” said Asner. “So after a thousand years or so you give it up.”
Fringe, meeting Danivon’s obstinacy, threw her hands into the air and turned her back on him to face the group once more. “Everybody’s crazy!” she cried. “Old woman, you mustn’t do this.”
“What’s this device?” asked Jory, paying no attention to Fringe’s remonstration as she ran her fingers up and down a shiny track on Fringe’s machine.
“It’s a Destiny Machine,”
