“Which is?”
“Which is a non-goblin customer making a deposit.”
“Which is what I am, dummy.”
Foaly flinched. “What?”
“Dummy. Your machine is a dummy.”
“Yes. Absolutely. I will have it disassembled immediately and reassembled as a toaster.”
Caballine bit her lip and could have conceivably been holding back a smile.
“That’s a start. But you still have a long way to go before we’re done here.”
“I understand. If you have any capital crimes in your past, I could wipe them from your record. In fact, if you’d like to disappear altogether, I could arrange that.” Foaly rethought this last sentence. “That sounded like I was going to have you killed, which I totally am not. The last thing I would ever do is have you killed. Quite the opposite.”
Caballine took her handbag from the back of a chair and slung it across her fringed blouse. “You are quite fond of opposites, Mr. Foaly. What is the opposite of having me killed?”
Foaly met her gaze for the first time. “Keeping you happy and alive forever.”
Caballine moved to leave, and Foaly thought, Stupid donkey. You blew it.
But she stopped at the threshold and threw Foaly a lifeline.
“I do have a parking ticket that I did pay, but your machines seem to have it in for me, and they swear I didn’t. You could have a look at that.”
“No problem,” said Foaly. “Consider it done and that machine compacted.”
“I’m going to tell all my friends about this,” said Caballine, already leaving the room, “when I see them at the Hoovre Gallery launch this weekend. Do you like art, Mr. Foaly?”
Foaly stood there for a full minute after she was gone, staring at the spot where Caballine’s head had been when she’d last spoke. Later on, he had to rewind the suite’s surveillance footage to make sure Caballine had kind of, sort of, asked him on a date.
And now they were married, and Foaly considered himself the luckiest dummy in the world and, even though the city was mired in a crisis the likes of which had never before been visited on the subterranean metropolis, he had no hesitation in taking a moment to check on his gorgeous wife, who would probably be at this moment at home worrying about him.
Caballine, he thought, I will be with you soon.
Since their wedding ritual, Foaly and his wife had shared a mental bond like the one often experienced by twins.
I know she is alive, he thought.
But that was all he knew. She could be hurt, trapped, distressed, or in danger. Foaly did not know. And he had to know.
The ARClight Foaly had dispatched to check on Caballine had been built especially for that purpose and knew exactly where to go. Foaly had months ago painted a corner of the kitchen ceiling with a laser that would attract the bug from hundreds of miles away if need be.
Foaly shunted the other ARClight feeds to the main situation room, where Mayne could monitor them, and then concentrated on Caballine’s bug.
Fly, my pretty. Fly.
The modified dragonfly zipped through Police Plaza’s vent system and out over the city, darting through the chaos that permeated the streets and buildings. Fires flared in the piazza and on the freeway. The billboards that lined every street had been reduced to carbonized frames, and floodwater filled the sunken open-air amphitheater as far as Row H.
Mayne can handle that for five minutes, thought Foaly. I am coming, Caballine.
The ARClight buzzed beyond the central plaza to the southern suburb, which had more of a rural feel. Genetically modified trees grew in small copses, and there were even controlled amounts of woodland creatures that were carefully monitored and released aboveground when they multiplied to nuisance levels. The dwellings here were modest, less modern in their architecture, and outside the evacuation zone. Foaly and Caballine lived in a small split-level with adobe walls and curved windows. The color scheme was autumnal throughout, and the décor had always been a little back to nature for Foaly’s taste, though he would never have dreamed of mentioning it.
Foaly pulled his V-board toward him and expertly controlled the little bug with numerical coordinates, though it would have been easier to use a joystick, or even voice control. It was ironic that someone who was responsible for so many technological breakthroughs still preferred to use an ancient virtual keyboard that he had made from a window frame when he was in college.