Mumbo seemed about to say something as Laz came near to him, but Laz didn’t wait to hear him out. He simply struck Mumbo a hard blow with his fist, right in the muzzle—nose and mouth—and Mumbo screamed in pain, his face suddenly a bloody mess, and Laz realized that his fist had not bounced back, but remained buried in Mumbo’s face.

  Mumbo hadn’t finished materializing, Laz realized. He was still seeping back into existence, so when Laz, with his fully material fist, bopped him in the face, Laz’s hand penetrated deeply, damaging every bone on the front of his head, knocking out all his teeth.

  Mumbo’s face slipped off of Laz’s fist and then Mumbo keeled over backward and landed on the floor with a loud thump. He was solid enough now. Maybe when you knock a strober unconscious they stop strobing.

  “What did you do that for?” asked Ivy, horrified.

  “I didn’t know it would be that gory,” said Laz. “I’ve never hit anybody like that.”

  “He wasn’t fully materialized,” said Ivy. “He was still soft and not completely substantial. So your fist could plunge right in amid the bone.”

  “That’s a good description of what I already know happened,” said Laz.

  “Don’t get testy with me. Kneel down and check to see if he’s breathing.”

  “Come on, Ivy, you don’t think I killed him, do you?”

  In reply, she silently knelt beside Mumbo’s body and laid her hand on his chest. “Not breathing,” she said.

  “Call for emergency help,” said Laz.

  “How?” asked Ivy. “It’s not 911 anymore.”

  Laz knelt next to Mumbo, across from where Ivy was. He began doing chest compressions.

  “You can’t do CPR,” said Ivy. “He hasn’t got a mouth you can blow into.”

  “Call for an ambulance and EMTs,” said Laz, even more quietly, biting off the words.

  Ivy finally seemed to realize that Laz’s request—command?—required action on her part. In a moment she was busy connecting verbally with Emergency Services.

  She hadn’t cut off the conversation when EMTs burst in through what had been a locked front door. “They’re here,” said Ivy into the phone and ended the call.

  The EMTs pulled Laz away from the inert body and began working on Mumbo. They had an oversized oxygen mask that fit over his ruined mouth, and proved that it mattered where you placed your hands during CPR, and how hard you pressed, because after only a few pushes, Mumbo gasped for air and he was, for the moment at least, alive.

  “What happened to this guy?” an EMT asked. “Did he try to eat a live hand grenade?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Laz. “No explosion.”

  Ivy took his cue and didn’t mention Laz’s participation in the injury.

  “You’ve got blood on your hand,” the other EMT said to Laz.

  “Of course I do,” said Laz. “I had to see if mouth-to-mouth was even going to be possible. By the time I realized there was no chance, my hand was covered in blood.”

  “And a tooth,” said the EMT.

  Laz looked down at his own hand and saw the root of a tooth sticking up out of the flesh of his second finger.

  “Why didn’t I feel that happen?” asked Laz, playing dumb and succeeding.

  “Shock. Adrenaline.”

  “Or that was the hand you used to punch him in the face,” said the other EMT.

  Ivy and Laz both looked at the guy.

  “How strong do you think I am, exactly?” asked Laz.

  Ivy explained, “They monitor us pretty closely. I’m sure there’s plenty of video that shows exactly what happened.”

  Mumbo was using his tongue to try to probe the damage in his ruined mouth. Mumbo even vocalized, but he had no way to shape the sound into vowels and consonants, so it was just an expressive moan.

  “We’re taking him to the hospital right now,” said the EMT. “His face is going to need about ten hours of surgery, and it still won’t look right.”

  Laz and Ivy watched them get Mumbo onto a stretcher and carry him out to the back of the ambulance.

  Laz spoke to Ivy only when the ambulance was pulling out. “Why did you bring up the surveillance video?”

  “Dim, do you think they didn’t know whose house this was before they arrived?”

  “Oh.” Laz realized that of course the EMTs knew. In fact, now that he thought about it, they had arrived way too quickly to be coming at Ivy’s call. The monitors watching everything that happened in their house had already seen the injury and called for immediate medical help and transportation.

  “Even as we speak,” said Ivy, “I’m betting Ron has guys doctoring the surveillance vids to conceal your completely unprovoked attack.”

  Laz turned to her, furious. “I told you I was going to punish him for his assault on you.”

  “You didn’t say you were going to kill him.”

  “Actually, I think I did say it, but instead I just punched him in the nose.”

  “You punched him through his nose and into his mouth, taking out his teeth along the way,” said Ivy.

  “I thought he had finished materializing,” said Laz. “How could I know he’d be so squishy?”

  “If he dies,” said Ivy, “I bet Nasty will rescind her offer to give us strobing lessons.”

  Laz slipped his feet into his shoes and stood back up. “If he dies, then I’m a murderer, lessons or no lessons.”

  “Laz, you’re not a murderer. You’re a voluntary manslaughterer.”

  “Lighter prison sentence?” asked Laz. “I didn’t mean to hit him that hard. I don’t even have the strength to hit him that hard.”

  “I’m sure the doctors can fix him.”

  Laz shook his head. “I know I can find a timestream where I didn’t hit him, or at least didn’t cause so much damage. But now we know that this timestream will still exist, and in this timestream I maimed him, maybe deprived him of speech for life—”

  “Now we’re back to you feeling guilty for the billions of people who died in every timestream where the Zees did not rescue humanity from the New Place.”

  “Negligent homicide, I think that’s called.”

  “Dim, you couldn’t save them all. And it wasn’t you anyway.”

  “If I remember it…”

  Ivy enfolded him in her arms. She pulled him down with her to sit on the edge of his bed. “Laz,” she said, “you’re a good man and I know you didn’t mean to hurt that piece of scum—”

  “Fecis,” murmured Laz.

  “But why not choose for us to live in a timestream where this didn’t happen?”

  “Why did he have to show up naked again?” said Laz softly. “It just… it made me so angry that he hadn’t learned anything.”

  “We knew he was an idiot,” said Ivy. “But I was mad, too. And I was also scared. I didn’t expect you to punch him out, I didn’t know you could physically stop him—”

  “Enough,” said Laz, extracting himself from her embrace and lolling back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. “If you comfort me any more I’ll have to turn myself in to the police.”

  “Ron will make sure there aren’t any police,” said Ivy.

  “So now I’ll be saved by his corrupt government?”

  “You’re not supposed to complain when the government is corrupt on your behalf,” said Ivy.

  “Maybe he won’t shield me,” said Laz. “Maybe he’s fed up with my stupidity. Maybe he already has a replacement Laz clone in the box almost ready to wake up and take my place.”

  “I don’t want a replacement Laz, I want this one.”

  “You want the one who isn’t grieving because he punched somebody to death or permanent disfigurement.”

  “They have amazing plastic surgery these days, Laz.”

  “Maybe they can give me a new face, so I never have to look at this one in the mirror again.”

  “I meant plastic surgery to reconstruct his face.”

  “I knew what you meant,” said Laz.

  “People do things on impulse that—”

  “Ivy. I didn’t do it on impulse. I had it all planned. Walk toward him like we were going to shake hands, then punch him hard enough to maybe even knock him down.”

  “A sucker punch.”

  “Yes, like that,” said Laz. “I didn’t think I could win in a fight with a guy who can dematerialize.”

  “You figured one blow was all you’d get.”

  “And it is all I got.”

  “We’ll sort this out when we know more.”

  “Like what Ron actually plans to do.”

  “Whether Fecis lives or dies,” said Ivy. “That’s what matters most, don’t you think?”

  “I hate Mumbo. AKA Fecis,” said Laz. “Just not enough to kill him.”

  “It’s statements like that that make it impossible for you to testify at your own trial.”

  “Now you think Ron will allow a trial to happen?” asked Laz.

  “We don’t know how much control he has over things,” said Ivy. “And I’ve decided Mumbo’s going to live, minus at least some portion of his stupidity.”

  “Punching people in the front of the head doesn’t make them smarter, Ivy.”

  “It makes them think twice about popping up naked in a girl’s bed.”

  “I see your point,” said Laz. “It makes them a little bit smarter.”

  “Not smarter. Scared. All his life he’s been untouchable. Never had to bear any consequences. And today he had to face the wrath of the fiancé of the threatened girl.”

  “And we’re not one step closer to figuring out who sent us those messages,” said Laz.

  “We also are not sure that finding our hinty friend will help us at all with the main thing,” said Ivy.

  “Help me. I apparently don’t know what the main thing is.”

  “Time travel,” said Ivy. “Possible. Not possible.”

  “Nice and succinct, just five words.” Laz nodded wisely. “I wonder, though. How did that become the main thing?”

  “If anyone else can do it, we need to be able to do it.”

  “So it’s an arms race.”

  Ivy sighed. “Not if we can’t figure out how to time travel. Then it’s just a defeat right out of the gate.”

  “We can’t strobe, so we’ve already lost the weird-ability race.”

  “Laz, the only strobers we know of are Fecis and Nasty. And neither of them used their power to kill us, which either of them could easily have done.”

  “And the message-leaver probably could have killed us, too, but instead he tried to help us.”

  “We don’t know that,” said Ivy. “We don’t know what might have happened if the Zees hadn’t gone on strike. Or what the result would have been if you had made that Portal where the message was ‘Laz No.’ ”

  “Well it was obviously a warning,” said Laz.

  “But was he saving you from a terrible consequence? Or saving himself from what you might have learned by making a Portal then and there?”

  “That’s just… perverse,” said Laz. “Contrarian.”

  “We made an unwarranted assumption about the message-leaver’s motive. For all we know, he’s our worst enemy.”

  Laz shook his head. “Probably just a regular human being, looking out for himself ahead of anybody else. Isn’t that what you’re really saying, Ivy?”

  “I’m saying that’s what he might be, and we don’t know if he’s for us or against us—”

  “And we never will until we figure out what we are for and what we’re against.”

  “Do you have the feeling that this is a massive struggle of good against evil?” asked Ivy. “Only nobody’s told us who’s on each team and where the goalposts are.”

  “Maybe everybody thinks they’re on the side of good,” said Laz. “And maybe everybody will do terrible, evil things before it all gets sorted out.”

  “What evil are we going to do?” asked Ivy.

  “Maybe smash a guy in the face so hard he may die from it,” said Laz.

  “Oh, that.”

  “For all we know, Mumbo could be potentially our greatest ally.”

  “Not likely,” said Ivy, “considering I hate him.”

  “He is an idiot,” said Laz. “But he might be a useful idiot.”

  “Well, I don’t think he’s going to enlist on our side anytime soon,” said Ivy. “And, having seen him naked twice, I hope you know that he does not represent any kind of threat to you as a male.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” asked Laz.

  “It’s just a mental reflex. I see a naked male, I compare him to other males.”

  “When I saw that particular naked male, I worried about the threat he posed to you.”

  Ivy looked abashed. “Well, yes, of course.”

  “And you compared him to me?” asked Laz. “How? It’s not like I parade around the house starkers.”

  “I’ve seen glimpses now and then. I haven’t spied on you—”

  “Fecis is in the hospital, fighting for his life,” said Laz, “and we’re talking about this?”

  Ivy laughed. “We’re both so… upset. Disconcerted.”

  “Ivy,” said Laz. “We don’t even know what our goal is with each other.”

  “Marriage,” said Ivy.

  “When?” asked Laz.

  Ivy was silent.

  “What are you doing, re-inventing the Gregorian calendar?” asked Laz.

  “I wonder if anybody’s checked to make sure we’re still on the same calendar in these timestreams,” said Ivy. “You know, length of each day, length of a year.”

  “When?” asked Laz again.

  “What I was thinking about was not calendars of any kind.”

  “You weren’t calculating the right day for our wedding?”

  “I was thinking, what about this afternoon? It’s not as if we’re going to invite any relatives who have to travel a long way.”

  “Ron?”

  “He’s going to know, so we might as well invite him.”

  “I wonder if he has a position in the government that gives him the right to perform marriages. Like a justice of the peace.”

  Ivy laughed.

  “If we ask him,” said Laz, “I’m sure he can get himself appointed to such an office before three thirty this afternoon.”

  “I suggest we get married today, and all of a sudden it has to be by three thirty?”

  “I thought we could get a bakery to assemble a cake for us,” said Laz, “and allowing for mixing time, baking time, cooling time, icing time—”

  “We’ll have cake right after the wedding ceremony.”

  “I can have the cake sent up to Ron’s office.”

  “You’re assuming he’ll let us hold the wedding there,” said Ivy.

  “Where else?” asked Laz.

  “The long wait is over,” said Ivy.

  “Well, what did you think we were waiting for? I already proposed,” said Laz.

  “All the grooms’ magazines say that once you’ve picked a date, all the decisions are to be made by the bride. And her mother, if she happens to have one,” said Ivy.

  “Grooms’ magazines? What are you talking about?”

  Laz held her and kissed her, sweetly and gently. “I was waiting for you to be ready,” he said.

  “I was ready back in Greensboro, Dim!” said Ivy.

  “And the Ivy who was in Greensboro already did marry the Laz who threw rocks at dogs.”

  “I came out of the coffin ready to marry you,” said Ivy.

  “How many times has that sentence been spoken aloud,” said Laz.

  “Outside of vampire and zombie movies, probably never,” said Ivy.

  “I’d like to invite OrigiLaz to our wedding. Just in case he’s not dead and might want to attend the ceremony.”

  Ivy laughed. “If he’ll consent to come, why not? If we’re inviting Ron, why not our time traveler? If he really is one.”

  “Let’s check in with Ron and also leave a note for OrigiLaz.”

  “Then we’ll probably find out the messenger is our time-traveling great-great-grandchild from the future, trying to keep us alive long enough to start the hereditary chain.”

  “At least then we’d know time travel is possible,” said Laz.

  “You keep filling all those bottles half full, and then you brag about how the glass is—”

  “Ivy, you’ve got to learn how to save jokes until the right time,” said Laz.

  “I don’t tell jokes,” said Ivy. “I blurt out witticisms and bon mots.”

  “It was funny. Bottles half full.”

  “Do you want to fill that bottle by getting married today?” said Ivy.

  “Are we sure that wouldn’t empty the bottle?” said Laz.

  “Another day.”

  25

  LAZ CHECKED ON Mumbo at least once a day. Critical but stable. Serious but stable. Apparently the operative word was “stable” since it meant that at least he wasn’t getting worse.

  Laz had no standing to ask Mumbo’s doctor, especially since Laz was the one who had punched the guy and exploded his face. But Ron had several flunkies who returned Laz’s calls and gave him the latest medical updates about Mumbo.

  Or, according to his ID, Fecis Anthemum. What was the deal with all this self-renaming? And why did they choose their names like rockers and rappers and hip-hop groups? Nasty Chrysanthemum would be a great rock band name. So would Mum Fecis.

  Laz listened to the updates warily. He constantly expected that when Mumbo got well enough to go back to strobing, he’d simply disappear. They’d come in to his hospital room and find a full bedpan, but no Mumbo. His hospital dinner had been eaten, except the inedible bits, but no sign of who did the eating.

  How long would it be after that before Mumbo invisibly snuck up on Laz to get revenge? Which would appeal more to Mumbo’s twisted mind, attacking Laz by punching an invisible hand into Laz’s belly and then letting it materialize? Or really pissing Laz off by doing something horrible to Ivy?

  I should have killed him. Before the EMTs arrived.

  No, Ron had everything Laz did on video. Laz couldn’t get away with a truly awful crime, because even if Ron didn’t do anything, his underlings would know that Laz was an evil bastard, and word would get out. It always did.

  And Ivy would hate Laz for killing somebody on her behalf.