“I think we can manage this without making our lives worse,” said Laz.

  “My life is already worse just thinking about people watching me have a poo,” said Ivy.

  “Why, do you do it differently from everybody else?” asked Laz.

  Ron interrupted. “I don’t want to hear the answer to that.”

  “Nobody does,” said Ivy.

  Ron stood up. “Well, that’s that,” he said. “Glad we could have this chat.”

  “Bullshit,” said Laz. “Not to put too fine a point on it. You wouldn’t have come this early in the morning for this. You would have called us in to see you in your office.”

  “I don’t like inconveniencing you,” said Ron.

  “But you don’t actually mind it,” said Ivy.

  “I know why you really came,” said Laz.

  “Then tell me why,” said Ron.

  “Because you just found out about the secret Portals I’ve been making, and you want me to give you a complete list and maps of all locations.”

  “Interesting,” said Ron.

  “And you want him to stop making them,” said Ivy.

  “I wonder why,” said Ron.

  “He’s playing coy,” said Laz. “It isn’t as cute as he thinks.”

  “We’d appreciate your continuing with the secret Portals,” said Ron, “but I’d like it if you consulted with us first about from where to where, and listened to our suggestions.”

  “No, and no,” said Laz. “If we tell you where the new Portals are, they won’t be secret.”

  “If we consult with you about where,” said Ivy, “it makes us servants of your regime.”

  “I don’t think of it as a regime,” said Ron, uncomfortably.

  “Everybody else does,” said Ivy.

  “How would you know?” said Ron. “It’s not like you know that many people.”

  “Human nature says that people always know who’s got the power to make their lives hellish,” said Ivy.

  “It’s not a regime. This is not a dictatorship,” said Ron.

  “What congress passes the laws that you enforce?” said Ivy. “What judges can overturn your decisions?”

  “Can we stop quibbling about the word ‘regime’?” said Laz. “And while we’re at it, we’ll skip over reign, monarchy, tyranny, dictatorship, or any of the other pretty darn accurate descriptions of Ron’s government.”

  “How about this, Ron?” asked Ivy. “We’ll make a list of where the new Portals are, and another list of what or where they connect to, and we encrypt them, so if we get killed, you can spend a few years and eventually decrypt them.”

  Ron gave a tired sigh. “What are these secret Portals for if not for Central Time to keep track of other timestreams even if the official Portals are closed? And aren’t you also making them to help prolong the stability of the connections between streams?”

  Laz had no answer but the truth. “Both right,” he said.

  “And who are you going to tell about them that is able to make good use of them?”

  “You,” said Laz.

  “Oh, Laz,” said Ivy, sounding disappointed.

  “Can we skip the encryption step?” asked Ron.

  “If your agents are caught somewhere, word will spread and every timestream will be hunting for our Portals,” said Laz. “Really hard to conceal them completely and have them still be usable.”

  “You two are both gifted pessimists,” said Ron. “If there’s a way for things to go all to hell, you’ll think of it.”

  “Thanks,” said Ivy. “It means we’re grownups.”

  “Grownups always think of what might go wrong,” said Laz.

  “I get it,” said Ron. “But that’s our job.”

  “You in the Central Time tyranny?” asked Ivy.

  “Committee,” said Ron.

  “Ah, like in the French Revolution, the ones in charge of the Terror,” said Laz.

  “Ron Robespierre,” said Ivy.

  Ron rolled his eyes and started for the door.

  “Better than Ron Marat,” said Laz.

  “Not by much,” said Ron.

  “We’re going to cooperate with you,” said Ivy. “We didn’t get a message telling us to stop helping you. That was the Zees.”

  “Thank you,” said Ron. “And I appreciate your keeping me guessing until right now, as I’m leaving.”

  “We aim to please,” said Laz.

  “And you knew we’d go along,” said Ivy. “Except about my bathroom.”

  “We’ll only have female agents monitor that camera,” said Ron.

  “Can you assign those female agents to my bathroom, too?” asked Laz.

  “They’re already on a waiting list to get that assignment,” said Ron.

  “Everything you’ve said scares me,” said Ivy. “And I don’t scare easy.”

  “Maybe being scared will keep you safe. Or at least safer.”

  “Maybe being scared,” said Laz, “will make me annoy Ivy with so much assiduous attention that it’ll make her want to run away and hide.”

  “That would be counterproductive,” said Ron.

  “I know,” said Laz. “You just can’t rely on Ivy to act rationally when I’m annoying her.”

  “Sadly true,” said Ivy.

  “Good-bye, kids,” said Ron. “I really do have a meeting of the committee. About how many guillotines to build.”

  13

  “TAKE ME THERE,” said Ivy.

  “Where?” asked Laz.

  “To the message in the dirt.”

  “You think I made it up?” asked Laz, his voice getting softer, because he had long since learned to not get louder when he was mad.

  “I know you didn’t, since Zero-Laz got a message too.”

  “So why do you need to go there?”

  Ivy touched his cheek very gently. “My dearest darling sweetheart,” she said softly. “I want to see what you saw, instead of having to just imagine it.”

  “When?” asked Laz.

  “The day has barely begun, Laz,” said Ivy. “Can we get there today?”

  “We can probably get a seat on a plane,” said Laz. “And then we’ll go up into the mountains and we’ll walk and walk until we come to the place where I saw the message. Probably by three in the afternoon.”

  “Then let’s get started. What should I pack for?”

  “For a return trip the same day,” said Laz. “Nothing’s going to take all that long.”

  “By the way, Laz, there’s nothing ‘probable’ about our getting a seat on an airplane.”

  Laz looked at her blankly, because he didn’t see the point.

  “Laz, when we ask for an airplane seat, they boot somebody else off the flight to make room for us.”

  “No,” said Laz.

  “Yes,” said Ivy. “But the people who have to wait for a later flight, they’re the ones most likely to be hoping to get a picture with us.”

  “I don’t want anybody kicked off a flight to make way for us,” said Laz.

  “Do you want to get seats on an airplane?” asked Ivy.

  “Yes,” said Laz.

  “But let’s say you have the seat, but the President of the United States shows up and they tell you that your seat is needed for a Secret Service guy to protect the Prez.”

  “I’d understand. I’d still be pissed off, but I wouldn’t bother arguing or saying, ‘Do you know who I am?’ ”

  “That would be the ultimate sign of neediness,” said Ivy.

  “But your point is that when people know who we are, they change everything for us,” said Laz.

  “I don’t know about ‘everything,’ I just know about airplane tickets.”

  “If they’d finish a rail line that goes where I want to go, I’d take the train,” said Laz. He didn’t mention how much he had wanted an electric train set as a kid, but neither residence had had room for him to set up the track. Instead, he said, “I don’t like flying.”

  “Since when?”

  “Let’s just go to the airport,” said Laz. “I’ll hold your hand really tight on takeoff and landing.”

  “What are you, five?” asked Ivy.

  “More and more,” said Laz.

  She held his hand on takeoff. He tried not to squeeze too hard.

  “You seem to think I’m tragically fragile,” she said, as the plane got up to cruising altitude and she let go.

  “Don’t want to break anything,” said Laz.

  “You’re a very kind man, Laz,” said Ivy.

  Laz kept his eyes forward, but he couldn’t help smiling a little, because it wasn’t often that she said something sincerely nice to him. “Thanks,” he murmured.

  “Here’s the problem,” said Ivy. “What if the message isn’t there? Zero-Laz’s message was rubbed out.”

  Laz agreed. “Then you’ll think I made it up.”

  “I won’t think that,” said Ivy.

  “You’ll wonder, though,” said Laz.

  “I wonder about you all the time,” said Ivy.

  Then it was time for them to lean their seats back a little and pretend to sleep while actually their minds would be racing through all the ideas Ron had mentioned and all the speculations they had had themselves. And any new ideas that might come up.

  “You can’t actually think creatively on an airplane,” whispered Laz.

  “Speak for yourself, genius boy,” Ivy whispered back. “I’m writing a novel in my head.”

  Laz smiled. “Am I in it?”

  “Like compost, yes—I’m killing you off in chapter one and after that I’m on my own, while your dead body gets eaten up by larvae and scavengers and bacteria until you’re ready to enrich the soil where I hid your corpse.”

  Laz decided he didn’t want to pursue the plot of her imaginary novel. She wasn’t writing one, Laz was almost sure. She had never shown the slightest disposition toward writing fiction. She was just making up this story on the fly, to provoke him. Provoking him was one of her favorite ways to pass the time, but he didn’t want to play.

  This time, walking up to the place where the message had been, Laz walked a lot faster, because he already knew where he was going. He heard Ivy breathing heavily and knew she was falling behind, but he also knew that if he waited for her to catch up, she’d yell at him and tell him not to baby her, she’d keep up or die. So he wasn’t moving as fast as he could have moved, because he didn’t want to wear her out.

  He recognized the path he had walked before, always following the line of least resistance. He led the way into the clearing, not so much as glancing to see whether the writing was still there.

  “Laz, get serious,” said Ivy.

  Laz looked at her. She was staring down at the cleared patch that held the message. There had been no attempt to erase it. She could see it. So what did she want him to “get serious” about?

  “Laz, this is your handwriting.”

  Laz immediately thought—does that mean that it’s my future self, coming back to warn me in order to avert some disaster? How else could it be my handwriting?

  “Laz,” she said, a little exasperated. “It’s scratched in the dirt with a stick. You wrote your diary in pencil. This can’t possibly be identified as your handwriting.”

  “So you were joking,” said Laz.

  “I think the term is ‘yanking your chain.’ ”

  “I really thought you had so much perception you could tell that it was my writing.”

  “And I thought you had so much perception that you could tell when I was saying something so stupid that it had to be ironic.”

  Laz shrugged. “I trust you more than you deserve, apparently.”

  “So, back to the topic of setting up housekeeping together,” said Ivy.

  The complete non sequitur took him aback, but if that’s what she wanted to talk about now, so be it. “We already share a house,” said Laz.

  “A house owned by Central Time,” said Ivy, “in a location of their choosing, and fully infested with listening and looking devices.”

  “Are you talking about when we get married?” asked Laz.

  “What do you know about housebuilding?” asked Ivy.

  “That it’s better left to people with the skills.”

  “I want a house with a huge pool underground. And an elevator and workbench and places for you to build your toys.”

  “My toys?” He flashed on an image of Geppetto, carving the marionette Pinocchio.

  “Men have workbenches,” said Ivy. “What are they supposed to do with them?”

  “I’m not Santa’s elf,” said Laz. “And I don’t have any carpentry experience. Unless you count wood shop in high school, which I don’t, since I ditched as much as possible.”

  “Didn’t your dad teach you?” asked Ivy.

  “How would he teach me something he never knew?” asked Laz.

  “So the only skill you have is side stepping,” said Ivy, sounding disappointed, as if it was a skill at the level of being a good flosser.

  “I also walked. A lot,” said Laz. “I knew most of Los Angeles County by foot. I knew every uphill and downhill. If I had become a cabdriver, I’d’ve already known where every street was.”

  “Okay,” said Ivy, walking a few steps away. “That’s a skill.”

  Laz followed her. “What about you? What do you do?”

  “Follow you around, handing you timestreams every time you want one.”

  He began to realize that she wasn’t just jerking him around. She was trying to get at something. “What is this about?” asked Laz.

  “You asked me to marry you,” said Ivy. “Would you be worth anything as a husband?”

  “No,” said Laz. “I just take long walks and side step, like everybody else.”

  “Just checking,” said Ivy. “You were a good stone-thrower once.”

  “Not in this body. I don’t know how to do anything I might get paid for.”

  Ivy shook her head and looked back at the message. Because she did, so did Laz.

  There wasn’t a cleared space among the leaf litter on the ground anymore. Leaves and twigs had been put back to cover the words.

  Without saying anything, they walked over and looked closer. They wanted to be sure they were looking where the message had actually been.

  Laz knelt down and cleared away leaves until he exposed the message again. Except it had been scuffed over, so only part of it could be read.

  “Did you hear the sound of somebody scuffing in the dirt?” asked Laz.

  “I didn’t hear anybody raking or shoveling up the leaves,” said Ivy. “My attention was pretty well devoted to you, as usual.”

  “How long were we not looking at the message?” asked Laz.

  “Why would they leave it there till today, if they were just going to erase it?” asked Ivy.

  “Maybe they wanted to make sure you believed me,” said Laz. “After that, they didn’t want anybody else to see it.”

  “I think we only took a couple of steps from the message,” said Ivy. “Not even a whole minute not looking at the message.”

  “But it was so fascinating,” said Laz. “Talking about my lack of skills.”

  “For jobs around the house. Like fixing a sagging porch, or grouting the bathroom tiles.”

  “So how are you at cooking and laundry?” asked Laz.

  “I don’t know,” said Ivy. “I’ve never tried it.”

  “Not even laundry?”

  “Laz, Central Time sends people to pick up my laundry and return it clean.”

  Laz had never seen this. But then, he usually ignored people coming in the house because Ivy dealt with all that stuff. “Why do they have a washer and dryer in our house if they’re just going to pick up our laundry? And why didn’t you say something when you saw me laundering my clothes and folding them up to put back in my room?”

  “I never said they’d pick up your laundry,” said Ivy. “And it’s so endearing to watch you doing housework.”

  Ivy could be so infuriating. Think about something else and don’t let her get under your skin. Laz looked back down at the place where the message had been.

  “Laz,” said Ivy, “the messengers scuffed and covered that message while we were standing right here, and we didn’t see them or hear them.”

  “Or smell them,” said Laz. “You do have a very sensitive nose.”

  “I don’t think this is funny,” said Ivy.

  Laz wanted to say, Then why were you sniping at me?

  “Why can they do this weird thing,” said Ivy, “when we can’t?”

  “I’m just as interested in why they even want to do these things. The message, leaving it till you got here, then trying to erase it and hide it while we were right here. Why?”

  “Did they follow us here?” asked Ivy. “Or did they come back here and wait for us?”

  “I don’t know,” said Laz.

  “What are they accomplishing?” asked Ivy.

  “They got the Zees to stop working with the Portals, and they kept me from opening a Portal from this point.”

  “Which maybe saved your life. Or it was of no importance at all,” said Ivy.

  “Or both,” said Laz.

  “If we don’t know what they’re doing, how can we try to figure out how to do it ourselves?”

  Laz shrugged. “Ivy, my love, you do understand that I don’t know a single thing about this that you don’t know, right?”

  “And vice versa,” said Ivy. “But you’re the scientific genius.”

  “I’m a clone of a genius, but I haven’t lived long enough yet to come up with any of his smart stuff. I’m still basically a kid.”

  “Are they trying to lead us to answers, or prevent us from finding them out?” asked Ivy.

  “Two interesting possibilities.” Laz found a nearby stick, cleared away more leaves to expose unbroken ground. Then, with the stick, he scratched out a message:

  What the hell!

  Ivy laughed out loud. “Laz, are you trying to be even more cryptic than they are?”

  “I think that my message conveys the idea of our frustration, our consternation, our flabbergastitude over this whole situation.”

  “Maybe,” said Ivy. “Any message I could think of would take half this clearing to write out.”

  “I tried for brevity, like they did.”