wandered back into his body and looked for his missing hand but it was still missing. The pain returned but it was faint, like an echo. He focused his eyes on his right wrist and saw the bandage was gone. He had to look away from the raw flesh he saw. The man picked him up from the floor easily. His face came to within inches of the stranger's face and Percival realized he was looking at an android.
"Hello, there," the android said. "Are you feeling better?"
"Uh, I am! Just a little weak, that's all. I lost a lot of blood. I was going to the hospital when I heard the voice of the Quiet One."
"What is your name, and can you help us now?"
"Percival. What is yours?"
"Freddy. Fred! Ok, Fred or Freddy. Your choice. We can take you to a hospital after you tell us where the admiral is."
"Admiral?" Percival asked. "Ow!" He felt a sting in his leg and saw the gatekeeper withdraw a pointed shape back into itself.
"We are looking for a woman and a boy, and there may be two others with her," the gatekeeper said impatiently.
"You're a gatekeeper!" Percival said fearfully. "You kill people for She Who Must Not Be Named. I'm sorry! I won't answer your questions! Ow!"
The gatekeeper punched Percival again with a sharp extrusion. "I don't have time for dogma! I need to rescue Samson again, along with his chosen guardian. Why were you summoned to our aid, if you can't or won't answer our questions?"
"You weren't sent by She Who Must Not-?"
"We were not sent by the Lady in the Mirror! We were sent by a person named Milly, whom I've known for about four hundred years."
"But you kill people!"
"I've never intentionally killed an organic being!" the gatekeeper responded impatiently. "But, God knows, I've wanted to! I send them to another place."
"Where?" Percival asked fearfully.
"You want to find out? Tell me where the woman and the boy are!"
"I don't know!" Percival replied, backing away, until the android grabbed his arm in an unbreakable grip. "It's the truth! The woman sent me away when the Fleet invaded the museum. Then I saw the portrait the old man - Rafael! - painted of her, and I knew then I should not have left them! But I was afraid, before I saw the portrait, and then I knew I had failed the Quiet One! I am so miserable! I thought this would be my chance to correct my mistake, although, what could she expect of me? I could barely walk out of the museum."
"That sounds true to me," the android said, perhaps even sympathetically.
"It probably is," the gatekeeper said. "We'll have to do it the hard way. Ok, Percival, which hospital do you want to go to?"
"I don't know," Percival replied. "I would have gone to the one down in the maintenance neighborhood. But that's where I took the Rhyan. I told the Fleet I took him there. If they found him there, they may have punished the hospital and I'd be responsible."
"Daidaunkh is also our responsibility," the android said to the gatekeeper. "We should go there and find out what happened."
"I wouldn't mind damaging a few tough guys to see if they know where Samson is," the gatekeeper mused. "Let's cluster and pop. There's a local gate I can call up."
The android and gatekeeper moved closer to Percival and a moment later the entrance of the hospital appeared. Percival started to move in that direction but a nursing station inside the hospital blinked into existence. They were inside the hospital. They had gone though a gate! This really was a gatekeeper! They were legendary, but no one had seen one for a very long time. Maybe the horror stories are not true, Percival thought, just tales told to frighten children.
The android named Fred or Freddy stepped toward a reception desk. The people behind it backed away, probably having seen the gatekeeper, which was transforming into a cylindrical pillar beside Percival. Percival could feel heat radiating from the gatekeeper and see dark circular spots that rotated around the upper end of the pillar, as though they were eyes keeping watch in all directions.
Fred waved a summoning hand and two female medical persons, perhaps nurses, looked at each other and slowly approached the counter, a grim set to their expressions.
"I seek a certain Rhyan patient of yours named Daidaunkh," Freddy said, looking from one to the other with a slight turn of his head. "Is he here?"
"What do you want with him?" the older nurse asked. "You have a lot of weapons."
"Yes, I have many weapons. I wish to accompany the Rhyan out of here, if he's able to leave."
"We don't allow weapons in the hospital," she said, meeting his gaze and not blinking.
"Sorry," Freddy replied. "It won't happen again. We have a new patient for you. Someone cut off his hand. If Daidaunkh is not here, tell us where he went."
"He's still here," the younger nurse answered, getting a frown from her fellow nurse. "But the Fleet told us to hold him."
"Well, then, what shall we do?" Freddy wondered aloud.
The gatekeeper moved forward, burning the floor, until it touched the counter, which also began to smoke. "Bring him to us! This is the business of the Lady in the Mirror!"
Both nurses were clearly dismayed by the gatekeeper but also gasped in reaction to the phrase Lady in the Mirror as though it was a potent curse. They quickly fought to consult the same data display device. The younger one then hurried off. "She will bring him," the remaining nurse explained, backing farther away.
"You made me think you were not in the service of the evil one!" Percival complained to the gatekeeper.
One of the black discs in the column of the gatekeeper rotated to regard Percival. "It will become the business of the Lady in the Mirror soon enough. I suggest you stay here and keep quiet!"
"No! I want to go with you - if you really are working for the Quiet One."
Freddy turned to the gatekeeper. "Is Milly this Quiet One? And can you keep from burning down the hospital?"
"I try to avoid theology," the gatekeeper replied. "It's too messy for any logical discussion." It backed away from the counter. "I don't usually get this hot. I have all four fusion reactors on-line, kind of in an emergency mode."
"The Quiet One is named Milly?" Percival cried, uncertain if he had heard blasphemy.
The younger nurse returned, leading a limping Rhyan, who understandably paused when he saw the gatekeeper, but then looked with recognition upon Percival and also nodded to the android.
"Old Fred," Daidaunkh greeted. "Why are you here?"
"I'm retrieving you. Please choose a weapon with which to arm yourself. I must warn you that I can't allow you to harm Admiral Demba or the others. Please promise not to do so."
"Do you know where the admiral is?" Daidaunkh asked.
"Not yet. Have your injuries been repaired? And how about promising not to hurt the admiral?"
"I am somewhat repaired," Daidaunkh answered. "And you obviously don't understand how difficult it is to hurt the admiral. What is this thing?" He indicated the dark glimmering column that was the gatekeeper.
"A friend of mine," Freddy responded. "She's a gatekeeper. She can move us in an instant to wherever we wish."
"I'm not a she!" the gatekeeper objected. "But I hadn't considered such a designation before. Interesting. Ok, we have your Rhyan friend. You think he's capable of helping us?"
"He was a military man," Freddy replied.
"Where do you think they have gone?" the gatekeeper asked.
"You ask me?" Daidaunkh asked. "They left with this young man. What happened to your hand, Percival?"
"A Fleet officer cut it off," Percival replied. "Oh, I wish I had stayed with the woman!"
"The Fleet may already have them," the gatekeeper said. "They might take them to their headquarters, which is outside of Oz. Pardon me, while I reconnoiter." The gatekeeper morphed into a cube, backed away, and disappeared, leaving another foreign circle in the floor.
"I still haven't heard a promise," Freddy said to the startled Daidaunkh. "You won't get one of these pistols until I hear you promise."
"I do not intend to kill
the only person who may be able to keep Rafael and the boy from harm!" Daidaunkh snatched a weapon from the collection attached to Fred's butler's uniform and checked it.
= = =
Black-uniformed soldiers burst through three of the six doorways into the observation room. They fanned out, weapons drawn, but hesitated in their deployment when they realized how many broken ones stood on either side of the great window-on-space with weapons in hand.
Fidelity turned around from the window, holding Samson in her arms. The gleaming jade sphere of the Big Ball dominated the view behind her. Rafael put a hand on her arm and sadly sighed. Olivier immediately walked toward the Fleet officers and stopped. He was unarmed. A Fleet captain, pistol in hand, came forward, glaring at the ranks of armed warehouse workers dressed in their gray coveralls. He stopped, leaving a long space between him and Olivier in the center of the room.
"Explain this!" the ranking officer ordered.
"They're special guests of ours," Olivier answered, indicating Fidelity, Samson, and Raphael. "They wanted to see from that window."
"The woman is wanted by the Fleet. Get out! Leave them!"
"Cut the crap, Captain! She just defended herself! She came to Oz through a gate, so she's important to someone. You want to get into trouble with the Lady in the Mirror?"
The captain's eyes widened in shock. "Are you trying to get us all killed?" He turned his head in two directions, as though looking for something.
"I wouldn't mind seeing the Lady in the Mirror before I die," Olivier stated with a grim smile. "I've never seen her. No one's seen her for a while. You gotta keep