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23

"Hello, Bitsy," said the stranger with Aristide's face.  "It's been a long time."

He thrust the broadsword toward the cat.  Bitsy leaped; there was a crack; and the end table behind her disappeared.  In Aristide's arms, Shenai gave a nervous leap.  The lamp that had sat atop the table crashed to the ground, the shade tipping wildly.

Bitsy dived under a sofa, and with another whipcrack sound a coffee table set before the sofa vanished.

Pablo turned back to Aristide with a rueful smile.  "I seem to be having a little trouble controlling your weapon," he said.

"No point in shooting Bitsy now," Aristide said. "She sent the alarm the second she became aware of you."

Pablo tilted his head and looked at Aristide curiously, as if judging an item of clothing perceived in a mirror.

"I'm sure alarms are going off everywhere," Pablo said. "It won't matter, as I have loyal soldiers stationed in this building who will keep the police at bay long enough for me to . . . accomplish my mission."

Aristide gently released Shenai and guided her toward the door.  She stared at Pablo in complete bewilderment.

"Pablo," she said. "Who is this?"

"This would be Vindex," Aristide said.  Her eyes widened, and she stared at Pablo in wonder.

"His appearance has changed since I saw him last," Aristide added, "and I'm not sure how he got here."

"I wanted to fool any biometric devices designed to protect you," Pablo said. "And as for my arrival—well, once you hid half the solar system in a bubble, I knew what was coming as well as anyone.  I knew I'd lost.  I set out to find out how you'd done it, and what Courtland discovered was a method of projecting wormholes from one universe to another.  I'd planned to lead an invading army into Topaz, but unfortunately you destroyed Courtland, wrecked Pamphylia, and wiped out my army before I could move against you.  I and my personal guard survived only because we were in a hardened research facility."  He looked at Shenai and frowned.  "Who is this exactly?"

"An old friend.  Shenai Ataberk."

Pablo's eyebrows lifted.  "You've changed."

"So have you," said Shenai, more cuttingly.

"And by the way," Aristide said, "I'd like to register an official complaint at the way you've been interfering with my love life.  It really is your most annoying trait."

Pablo's eyes shifted back to Aristide. 

"This will be the last time," he said. "I promise."

Aristide took a cautious step away from the door, farther into the room.  The sword's point followed his movement.

"What are you doing here?" he said. "You've got the technology now.  You could be confronting the Inept at this moment, and instead you're here talking to me."

Scorn glittered in Pablo's eyes. 

"I'm an outlaw, a refugee with a few dozen followers," he said. "The Inept, whoever they are, are hardly likely to take me seriously.  No—" His eyes narrowed.  "The Inept are safe from me.  I suppose I can take comfort in the likelihood that someone will probably seek the Inept eventually."  He scowled.  "Possibly even you."

"The idea has its charm," Aristide said.  "Would you like me to represent you?"

He took another step into the room.  From outside the hotel the sound of sirens was faintly heard.  Pablo took a sideways step to maintain the proper distance from Aristide.

"I doubt you'll approach them with the proper disdain," he said. "And besides—you'll be elsewhere."

Aristide took another step.  The sound of gunfire echoed up from street level. 

"Stop that creeping!" Pablo commanded. "What are you trying to do—get to a weapon?  It won't work."  He took another gliding sideways step into the room to match Aristide's movement.

"I was trying to get away from Shenai," Aristide said. "So she wouldn't be hurt."

"I don't intend to hurt anyone."  Pablo's features glowed with triumph.  "You forget that my motivation throughout this entire adventure has been the desire for revenge.  And that while my feelings for the Inept, due to their remoteness, necessarily partake of a degree of abstraction, my feelings for you, who have thwarted me at every turn, are entirely concrete."

"Oh, come off it," Aristide said.  "If you kill me, they'll just reload me from backup.  There's hardly any point to it at all."

Tecmessa's point described a small circle in the air.  "I have no intention of killing you.  While it is likely that I may spend the rest of my existence in prison, allowed to die of old age with no backup and no resurrection, or to have my brain rearranged to a more socially acceptable norm, I will in the interim be able to comfort myself with the knowledge that by using this weapon I can send you to a place—Holbrook, is it?—occupied entirely by individuals who hate your guts and who will want to see you suffer the most painful death—or life—imaginable."  Eyeteeth glimmered in his smile.  "What did you say was in the place?  Tubers and cruciferous vegetables?"  His smile broadened.

"Bon appétit," he said.

The lamp swung violently on the end of its boom and connected with the back of Pablo's head.  He took a staggering step, and a black-and-white form streaked from beneath the sofa, electricity arcing from bared fangs.

Bitsy bit Pablo on the ankle, and his body straightened with the shock.

Aristide stepped forward and wrapped his left arm, snake-style, around Tecmessa's bare blade.

The sword was, after all, a lever.  Whoever had the best leverage controlled it.

He slammed Pablo away with the palm of his right hand and pulled the sword away with the left. 

Shenai stepped forward and hit Pablo on the head with a vase she'd plucked from the chest of drawers.  Pablo staggered, and as he recovered Aristide shifted the sword to his right hand and ran Pablo through the heart.

Vindex fell, his face fixed, an expression of baffled fury.

Aristide looked critically at his left forearm, which was bleeding rather freely after having wrapped the sharp-edged weapon.

He and Bitsy had planned the whole thing, Aristide communicating silently on his implant.

Shenai was gazing at Pablo's dying form with sick anger.

"Don't look," Aristide advised. "The sight won't be pleasant."

She turned away and put her head against his shoulder.  After a moment's hesitating, Aristide put his bleeding arm around her shoulders.

Gunfire rattled the windows. 

"It shouldn't be long now," he said, "before we're rescued."

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Framed