The Case of the Misplaced Hero, Page 4

be obedient, and for the sake of all, do not smile at them!"

  Episode 8

  Alex Gives Chase

  Thorny was not there.

  Alex looked wildly about. Where did he go? He couldn't have gone far. He was too drunk.

  Could he have staggered back to the water? No, he would have had to pass Alex to do that. He could have gone up into the rocks, but that looked like a more difficult climb. He probably went up onto the road.

  Alex climbed up and looked uphill, where the car full of soldiers had gone. The road rose and fell, and there were tall trees. He couldn't see beyond the first hill.

  He cursed Aunt Flavia. Why hadn't she told him this place was real?

  But she had. Many times. He'd taken it as part of the game. He thought it was the "If only you believe in magic hard enough, Tinkerbell will live" kind of real. Not the "nearly drowning in a waterfall" kind of real.

  He felt a wave of sorrow and he cursed himself for not listening hard enough, not believing well enough.

  But he had no time for that. He had to find Thorny and take him back. The man was so drunk he probably wouldn't remember it. He'd think it was a dream or an hallucination.

  If he didn't drown or get arrested first.

  Alex turned around and looked the other way, and saw a cluster of figures. Another car. Some soldiers and peasants. These soldiers seemed neater than the scruffy bunch who had bounced up the road a minute ago, with shinier boots, spiffier uniforms. They had someone on the ground and were kicking him.

  A man in a wet gray suit. Thorny.

  Alex broke into a run. He wasn't sure what he would do, but at least he spoke Awarshi. Some Awarshi. He tried to come up with the right the phrases: He's old, he's crazy, he's drunk. I'll be responsible for him.

  And who the heck are you? Where are your papers? he imagined the reply.

  He'd tell them they'd left their things by the river. He only had to convince them to take them back to the river, then he could grab Thorny and they could jump in... if that was how the magic worked. He was sure it was. It had to be.

  Alex pounded down the road at full speed, but it was too late. The car pulled away, and disappeared around a bend before he got there. Most of the peasants were gone too, but there was a man leaning on the gate of the nearest house.

  He looked at Alex with suspicion.

  "Where...?" said Alex breathlessly, trying to remember how to say it in Awarshi. "Where are they going? The old man is my friend. Where...?"

  The man didn't answer. He looked Alex over, taking in his dripping wet and muddy clothes. Alex realized that the hoodie and jeans he was wearing weren't exactly familiar.

  "Spies!" said the man. "That's what you are, eh?"

  "No!" said Alex.

  "That's what they said he was."

  "It's a mistake. He's just a crazy old man. A drunk. I have to take care of him."

  The man just kept squinting at him. Alex turned away to start running again. He would keep up as best he could and ask someone else.

  But then a woman came out of the house.

  "I told you," she said to the man. "They're just foreigners from the train wreck."

  "Foreigners are foreigners," said the man.

  "All the same, they might as well be foreigners together," said the woman, and she turned to Alex. "Follow the road all the way down. At the foot of the falls is the town. They've set up a headquarters in the inn."

  "Thanks!" shouted Alex, and he broke into a run again. At least he was going down hill, but he had no idea how far he would be running. Or what he would do when he got to the bottom.

  Episode 9

  The District Facilitator

  Captain Akio Rozinshura stood outside the inn and directed his people as they dealt with the victims and debris which had been salvaged from the train wreck up on the mountain.

  He was a great bear of a man, with shaggy eyebrows and a shaggier mustache which hid his mouth so you couldn't tell when he was smiling. His left leg, which had been shattered twice -- once in the second revolution, once in the third -- worked perhaps less well than a peg-leg would have, but at least he still had the leg. He lived in fear that some butcher of a field doctor would someday hack it off, so he kept the pain and trouble it gave him to himself.

  He dreamed that he would someday find a foreign doctor stranded somewhere in a war zone, a bone specialist who could save a leg if you paid an enormous fee, or put a gun to his head, or perhaps if he was merely grateful for rescue.

  As district facilitator, Rozinshura was the sheriff, mayor, tax collector, judge, as well as drinking buddy to the district. He had himself pioneered the drinking buddy aspect of the job -- back in the second revolution, when he had been assigned a hostile district which had still not accepted the first revolution. It worked so well, they wrote it into the policy book of the Revolutionary Committee of Bureaucratic Practices. Page 425, Rule 26.

  But at the moment, a nice drink in a pleasant atmosphere was not the solution to his problems. No, he had the delicate problem of a train wreck, if a train wreck could be said to be delicate.

  A train, full of important people -- diplomats from other countries returning from a peace conference -- had been derailed by bandits. A tragedy, an embarrassment to Awarshawa, and a threat to fragile new alliances they had only just made with several powerful countries.

  And by the telegrams which had been arriving constantly since word first got out, it was all Rozinshura's responsibility.

  "The wreck is not so bad," said his sergeant, who had just returned from the site. "The bandits set it to derail into piles of gravel left from construction of the bridge."

  "That was considerate of them," said Rozinshura.

  "But the people on the train were so important they travel with guards. The guards defended the train, and that's how we got most of the injuries." He paused. "And many of the victims ran from the bandits and are lost in the woods. We have lost a baroness, and two political secretaries, a brakeman... Tralkulo has the list."

  Rozinshura rubbed his bad leg and considered the bedraggled foreigners gathered in front of him. There were many more in the school, where they had set up a hospital.

  "We need more supplies," said the sergeant. "We need a car, or an engine to bring the worst injured down safely."

  "I know," said Rozinshura. He had sent his best scroungers down to rob the hospital in Vinschke, and perhaps to round up a doctor, preferably one who was both sober and competent. Or perhaps.... "If these people are so important, see if they have a doctor with them." Who knows, they might even have a bone specialist.

  "Oh," said the sergeant, recalling one more item, "and Colonel Pookiterin is here. He has a spy."

  "Pookiterin is always having spies," snapped Rozinshura. "Pookiterin is a preening, self-congratulating anti-revolutionary fushtir who is no use to anyone ever."

  The sergeant glanced apprehensively toward the shiny staff car, where the dear colonel stood, preening his mustache like a unblessed aristocrat. Yes, and as expected, he had a pretty peasant girl, and a poor soggy old man in custody. Well, it was not Rozinshura's business.

  "What does he want?" he asked the sergeant.

  "He wants an interrogation room and a cell to lock them up."

  Rozinshura used the inn's tavern room for interrogations, so he sent them there. And as soon as everyone had gone inside, he sent the sergeant to take the colonel's staff car.

  Who said Pookiterin never contributed anything of use?

  Episode 10

  Dr. Artemus M. Thornton, Professor of... Something or Other

  The advantage of four -- or perhaps five -- margaritas was that Thorny did not yet feel terrible, although the joy of the beverage was waning. He sat on a bench in a dark and dingy tavern, next to the poor peasant girl whose name he believed was Lina.

  Before him was that prissy, mustache-twirling officer, whose name was something like Colonel Pookie-w
ookie, but Thorny had learned not to call him that. Thorny rubbed his bruised and swollen ear, and thought he would like to fall asleep, but he knew they wouldn't like that.

  The colonel took his time examining the contents of Thorny's wallet, and then finally signaled to one of his men, who yanked Thorny to his feet and shoved him to stand by the table.

  "Your name?" asked the colonel.

  "Doctor Artemus M. Thornton, Full Tenured Professor!" declared Thorny, who was tired of being pushed around. "And I am a U. S. citizen!"

  The colonel, unimpressed, paused to take a note. There was a sound over by the door to the room, however, and Thorny turned to see if someone was impressed over there.

  Apparently so. That big Captain fellow made a small sound -- somewhere between "ah!" and "hmm?" -- and he ambled across the room with a rolling, limping gait that reminded Thorny of the pitching deck of a ship. And given the margaritas, Thorny realized the floor itself also reminded him of a pitching deck of a ship.

  "Doctor?" said the captain. "And professor? Then you are a specialist?"

  "Professor Doctor Artemus M. Thornton, at your service," said Thorny. "The M stands for... something that starts with an M."

  The fact was Thorny didn't have a middle name. His parents had been neglectful of that, and sometimes when Thorny was feeling vulnerable or inadequate, such as now, he added a letter at random just to sound more important.

  But no one questioned the M. The captain and Colonel Pookie-something were busy arguing in that funny language they spoke.

  Thorny staggered back to the bench and whispered to the