RESET
NEVER AGAIN

The Fairfax Hotel was a solid, square, three-story wooden building standing by itself amidst overgrown, rat-infested, vacant lots. The hotel's remoteness from the center of the San Francisco earthquake and the flexibility of its wooden structure had enabled it to survive the earthquake. This was not true of adjacent brick and hollow tile buildings that had been condemned by the city after the earthquake and torn down. One lot was the site of pre-earthquake redevelopment, but no work had been done on it since.

The hotel had a large marquee in front, and a vertical sign with "Fairfax" painted in large white letters outlined in black against a red background. Inside, the lobby was decorated in the typical Victorian style of middle-class, middle price range hotels in the western United States--plush blue velour sofas and chairs with curved armrests, here and there a Versailles chair, heavy blue and green drapes on the windows, three garish landscapes on the walls, numerous potted ferns, a Macarthur palm outgrowing an oxblood china bowl planter, and an imitation Persian rug, its convoluted colors and designs a mixture no Persian would confess to, even under torture, covering the floor. The place was stuffy, with an underlying odor that suggested someone's bad breath, perhaps emanating from the two spittoons.

As they entered the lobby, Joy sniffed the air and told herself again, "This place is so ugly and smelly it has to be on purpose. I bet it's so guests don't linger."

Once they were all packed into John's second floor hotel room, one of the largest in the hotel as befitted the owner, Joy turned to the woman, bowed slightly, and said, "I am sorry for being so rude. My name is Joy Phim." She introduced John as their boss and owner of an import-export company, and each of the three guys as fellow workers.

John said, "Nice meeting you."

Hands and Dolphy nodded and touched their cap rims; Sal waved his greeting with a grin, giving Jy-ying an open-eyed look.

Jy-ying bowed to each of them and then looked at Joy. "I am Khoo Jy-ying. I am from Tianjin, China. Where in China are you from?"

"I'm from Vietnam; no one knows my true ancestry, but it's probably Sino-Vietnamese, by my looks. My name comes from Tor Phim, who adopted me. More later. We have some things to do first."

She turned to John and, eyes narrowed, hand out, asked, "Could I see the attacker's gun that you have?"

He pulled it out of his pocket, saw that it was encrusted with mud, and turned to Jy-ying. "You no longer need my handkerchief for your nose. Could I have it back?"

"No, no," she said, "I will wash it."

"I'll give it back after I wipe the gun. Okay?"

She nodded, took it out of her purse, and handed it to him. He started to wipe the gun.

Joy jerked her head close to his ear and hissed, "The safety, John!"

He looked up at her with a Charlie Brown smile, flipped up what must have been the safety, knowing Joy would tell him if it weren't, and finished wiping the gun. He handed it to her.

She saw mud that John had missed, took the handkerchief out of his hand, shook her head, and wiped the remaining dried mud off the gun. She laid it on the bed next to the one she had recovered from the store window. Then she started to disassemble them.

The three guys watched what she was doing with huge eyes, as though she were performing a magic trick. Jy-ying stood off to the side, brows furrowed, and watched Joy easily disassemble the guns.

Sal asked in surprise, "You know about guns?"

"Sure. Ask me anything about guns and I'll give you an answer."

Hands responded, "I used to shoot with my uncle's old Civil War rifle when I was a boy." Smirking, he asked, "What was the rifle musket 1863 Type 1?"

Looking up from the guns on the bed, she replied, "Answer."

"What?" Dolphy asked.

"Answer."

"What kind of answer is that?" Hands asked.

Joy gave him a broad smile, and pointed out, "Well, I told you I would give you an 'answer,' and I did, didn't I?"

Sal chuckled and Dolphy waved his finger at Hands.

Hands crossed his arms over his chest and chided Joy, "You don't know, do you?"

Joy's smile turned to a grin. "The 1863 was based on Colt's Special Model 1861. Springfield modified it in four ways--made a flat S-shaped hammer with faceted sides; shortened the flat-faced bolster without a clean out screw; included round clamping barrel bands; and eliminated the band springs--a ramrod spoon held the ramrod in the stock. Despite all that, it was still a musket."

Good thing the guys had shoes on, or as their jaws fell open, they would have crushed their toes. Even John goggled.

Jy-ying's eyes narrowed further. She began to look carefully around the room, and at John and Joy's clothes. When they spoke, she was also unusually attentive, like a cat eyeing a bird on the ground.

As the guys tried to put their jaws back in place, Joy turned again to the guns on the bed. Accentuating her movements a little more than necessary, she ejected the magazine from each, took out a cartridge from one and looked at the bullet. Then she sat next to the gun pieces with a sigh and said, "These are good weapons. Our attackers are not cheap gangsters or thugs. They are professionals."

Jy-ying stepped over to the bed, picked up the weapons, and carefully examined them, holding each of the parts in her hands and eyeing them closely. She put them down and looked Joy in the eye, a curious light in her own. "You are correct. You are a weapons expert also. Yes?"

"And so are you," Joy said, surprised. She belatedly closed her sagging jaw. Jy-ying was not only her double, she also knew martial arts. And weapons. Christ. This is beyond probability, she thought. Some god is playing with us.

Hands looked from Joy to Jy-ying to John and back. "I can't believe you people, especially the ladies. But even you, boss . . . can I be frank?"

John mumbled something incredulous about "another Joy" before focusing on Hands to jerk his head up and down in a nod.

Dolphy put his hand on Hands' arm and whispered, "He's the boss and we got jobs. Don't ruin it."

Hands ignored him. "I've never worked for someone like you. Although you've been our boss as of this morning, you are very relaxed with us. You're more like a coworker than a boss. Same with Miss Phim. And although she's a woman, you treat her like you do us. And forgive me Miss Phim, but Mr. Banks told us you are his assistant and translator. What do you assist Mr. Banks in doing? Beating up your competitors? Buying guns?"

Sal and Dolphy went stone still.

Jy-ying stood back, her face intent and eyes focused on Joy as though only she existed.

John combed his unruly, carrot-colored hair with his fingers and glanced at Joy, who just sat on the bed looking down at the guns beside her and rubbing her arm.

A door slammed down the hall, and voices passed by the room. Outside, a steam-powered automobile coughed its way down the street.

Just as Hands waved his hand as though to apologize, Joy began with, "I help--"

John interrupted with a cough and a wave in Joy's direction. "She's my Girl Friday." His smirk broke through his attempt to hide it.

"What's that mean?" Sal asked, winking at Hands. "Does she do something special on Friday?" His grin looked suspiciously like a leer.

"She does whatever needs to be done for me," John said, finally achieving a poker face.

Joy stared at him. Doesn't he know what he is saying? Correction, with his stupid ego, maybe he does.

John's face turned red, and he took sudden interest in the gun parts on the bed. He tugged at his earlobe as the three guys grinned at Joy. Joy had to stop it. She glowered at John for a moment and then fixed the three guys with her stare. "In business, you guys. Don't get any ideas." She flashed another cold look at John, and continued. "And as far as my knowledge of guns is concerned, I'm just your ordinary woman who took up weapons to protect herself. Goes to show you, you never know what you're getting into when you mess with a woman."

With a grin that created those dimples at the corner of his mouth that Joy hated so much, John looked up at her. Hiding his mouth from the guys with his hand, he silently mouthed, "Getting into," and raised an eyebrow.

Joy realized what she had said. My God. My face feels so hot. I must be blushing. Me, who attended a Chinese school of the erotic arts when I was seventeen, blushing? John is going to have insufferable fun chiding me about this. The beast.

Joy was speechless for a few moments before she insisted to the room, "Let's get back to these guns. As I was saying, this was an attempted professional hit."

Jy-ying looked amused, but not distracted. She seemed to listen especially to John's voice and study his gestures.

Hands and Dolphy looked at each other, and Sal took out his Abajo and put it in his mouth. He pulled a wooden match from another pocket and scratched it against a nearby ceramic pillow ashtray that had one rough side for that purpose, and "Fairfax Hotel" stenciled on the opposite side. He applied the flame to his cigar, puffed, and put the match in the ashtray. When he looked back at Joy, he was startled by the black look she was giving him.

He gave her a "what did I do?" look, shrugged, put his foot on the room's only chair, and leaned on his knee.

She turned away. I've got to remember what age this is, Joy reproved herself. Almost twice as many cigars are sold as cigarettes, and John said that each day, eighty percent of all American men smoke one or more cigars. Still stinks no less.

John again looked at the disassembled guns for several seconds, and that drew the guys' attention back to them. Their demeanor changed and Hands loudly repeated the question Sal had asked on the street. "What have you gotten us into? You just hired us this morning, and now somebody wants to kill you two."

Emboldened by Hands' question, Dolphy went further. "I don't know whether what you're paying us is worth the risk. Why were you attacked . . . ah . . . boss?"

John sat down next to the guns. He rested his elbows on his knees and, leaning his chin on them, gazed at each of the guys in turn. When the guys began to fidget, John replied in a deep tone, "The why, we don't know. These may be killers hired by crazy people. They may have been hired by someone out east who felt our business robbed or cheated them when it was there, or by competitors who have heard of our company's success before coming here, and are afraid of our competition. This is still the wild frontier, you know. Anyway, I don't think either of us got a look at their faces. Can you describe them, Jy-ying? You saw them head-on."

As the guys turned their heads to look at Jy-ying, she answered, "They both are short and look a mixture of Caucasian and Oriental with strong, dark features. The shorter one looked almost effeminate, and may be a disguised woman. They might have seemed clumsy as they ran toward me, since one tripped and almost fell on the boardwalk, and the other held him up for a moment, but they actually moved well, almost gracefully. They were dressed in ordinary clothes, even to their hats, which they managed to keep on somehow. As I mentioned before, I think the way they attacked me indicates they are also trained in the martial arts."

John looked impressed.

"What's a martial arts?" Sal asked, taking his foot off the chair and standing up, shoulders back, to face Jy-ying.

Joy answered, "It's a form of person to person combat, either hand to hand, or weapon to weapon. There are many forms, such as judo, ka--"

"Yes," John interrupted, "I'm sure that Joy will teach you more about it some other time, but--"

Sal exhaled cigar smoke, smoothed down a tobacco leaf sticking out of the side of his cigar, and asked, "So, why are you and, ah . . . Jy-hing--"

"Jy-ying," Jy-ying corrected.

"--into martial arts?"

Joy looked at Jy-ying to answer first. Jy-ying gave Sal an intense look, then said, "My father was a teacher of wing chun, a form of kung fu martial arts, and when my mother was gang raped and killed when I was very young, he started to teach me wing chun so that I could protect myself when I grew up." She stopped and looked at Joy.

Joy's shoulders slumped. She swallowed several times, and gazed down at a finger that was fidgeting with one of the gun parts next to her. The memory of her mother was too fresh, too painful, and the question brought it all back--her leaving her mother forever, the last good-bye forever. Forever--less than a day ago. Her eyes moistened; she fought back tears. I don't want to cry. Not here. Not now. Not with all these people around. She felt her face flush.

John put his hand on her shoulder, and answered softly for her. "She was found alone and almost dead on a Vietnamese boat when she was four. She was taken to a hospital, and her story got into an American newspaper. Tor Phim, a Cambodian immigrant, saw the story and adopted her. She herself had suffered under a dictatorship--its thugs killed her husband, and she barely escaped alive. She adopted Joy, and had her trained in the martial arts so that she could always defend herself against the thugs of this world. Joy left her loving mother to come here with me. She died a couple of days ago."

Joy let out a quiet gasp and buried her face in her hand.

John quickly put his arm around Joy's shoulder and pulled her toward him. He whispered in her ear, "I'm sorry, baby."

Joy pushed gently away, shook her hair back from her face, tightly pressed her palms together on her lap, and looked up at nobody.

"Thank you, boss, for telling us," Hands said softly, with a slight bow of his head. Straightening up, he looked at Joy and then Jy-ying. Gesturing toward each, he said, "I think I speak for my friends, Sal and Dolphy. We're very sorry about what happened to you. If you need a shoulder to cry on, ours are free."

Dolphy and Sal nodded.

Joy finally focused her eyes on them and nodded in return.

Jy-ying moved to where the three guys could easily see her, and bowed to them from the waist.

John was getting to like these guys. They were strong-willed and independently-minded, but sensitive. Just the kind of employees he wanted. He was also surprised by Hands' speech. Although he did not have much of an education, he had learned much as a professional baseball player.

John held up his hand to still further comments. Pointing to the guys, he said, "I want to see your muscles. Take off your shirts and whatever you have underneath."

"Hey," Dolphy responded immediately, "we're not into that stuff."

Leering at Jy-ying, Sal blurted, "Speak for yourself. Girls first."

Hands grinned and asked, "In front of the ladies?"

Joy looked at John with raised eyebrows. He chuckled, and said, "Nothing like that. Just take your shirts off, not your pants--although I don't think you have anything that would surprise them."

"John!" Joy exclaimed, giving him a look from which a tiger would slink. But she confounded the look with the giggle that followed. Finally shedding the look altogether, she playfully leered at the guys' chests, one after another.

John thought, This was just the humor moment she needed.

"Ah, shucks," one of guys whispered under his breath. John guessed it was Sal, who at that moment was trying to put out his cigar in the ashtray so he could save it.

When the three guys had their shirts off, John walked around them looking at their physiques. There was no fat on any of them. Sal was lean but sinewy. Hands was the most muscular.

John then put his hand out to each in turn and said, "Grip my hand as tight as you can." Only Joy probably saw the pain in his eyes when Hands complied. "Very good," John said to Hands, his voice even. "Your baseball background is showing."

John then looked at each of them and said, "You guys have the physiques for what I have in mind. Do you know how to use handguns?"

"Yes," they responded together, as though John were asking them whether they knew how to pee.

"I will triple your pay if you will be our guards."

"Wow," Sal exclaimed, "that's a lot of money. What do we do for it?"

"You go with us wherever we go, and you keep an eye out for the killers. I don't want you jumping in the way of a bullet meant for us--no way. I want that understood now. Your job is more to scare the killers off than actually engage in a shoot-out. But you should be armed. Aside from Sal's knife, do you have weapons?"

"We just don't have the money to buy guns," Dolphy replied.

John reached into his wallet, took out $100, and gave it to Hands. "Use this money to buy the best guns. Not engraved grips and such, but the best mechanical ones. And a couple of boxes of cartridges. Now, go. And come back here when you've bought them."

Just as he was about to leave, Sal turned at the door and asked John, "What do you need us for? You got Miss Phim to guard you, us, your company, San Francisco--"

"And the United States," Dolphy interjected.

Joy laughed and replied, "Because I can't protect the United States alone."

Smiling, Sal pointed at Jy-ying. "You should hire her also."

John shooed them out with his hands. After they left, he turned to Jy-ying, who had been standing all this time. He invited her to sit on the cushioned wicker chair by the side table, while he and Joy sat on the edge of the bed facing her.

John told her, "Thanks for trying to help us. I'm sorry your nose got bloodied as a result."

Jy-ying looked for a second at the footprint Sal had made on the seat, glanced at the mud on her dress, and sat down. She leaned toward John. "Oh, excuse me. May I have your handkerchief back? I will wash it for you."

While John handed it to her, Joy asked, "Where do you live?"

"I just came here from Oakland yesterday. I did not want to stay there after my father died. I'm living here temporarily at the All Nations Hotel."

"Do you have a job?"

"Not yet."

"Well," John said, "I'm looking for good people. I just moved my company from the east coast, as you heard, and I'm hiring. Would you like to work for me?"

"Thank you, but what would I do?"

Joy held her hand up to John to stop him from answering. She turned to Jy-ying, and asked in Mandarin Chinese, "Do you know much about China?"

Jy-ying answered in the same major dialect, "Yes, I was born and grew up there, and I've traveled there often with my father. And I have studied China in college."

Joy tried Shanghainese. "Do you understand me?"

"Yes, I know that Chinese."

Joy tried Cantonese, and then two other Chinese language groups. Jy-ying knew them all.

Brows raised and eyes wide, Joy turned to John and announced, "Her Chinese is excellent. She can work under me. I'll need all the help I can get in our future business with China. As you told me, this will be our major business for a while."

"Okay," John said. He smiled at Jy-ying.

She couldn't believe it. Her heart began to flutter, and she felt warm. Distracted, she didn't hear the first words he said.

" . . . most useful skills, I will pay you a professional salary of . . . ." John hesitated, took a notepad out of his coat pocket, and did some quick calculations. Finally he asked, "How about an annual salary of $1,100?"

She unconsciously licked her lips and leaned back, pushing out her chest. "I accept, John. Thank you. You treat this humble person with such honor."

"Very good. I'm in the process of getting organized. When I'm ready to start work, I will give you a call at your hotel the day before. In the meantime, your salary starts now. Do you need an advance?"

"You are too kind, but no," Jy-ying said, smiling into his eyes and holding them before looking away. Then she looked back. "I must go now."

She sprang up, faced Joy, and bowed. Joy stood, looked at her with raised brows and tight lips, bowed, and said nothing. Jy-ying turned at the door, smiled at John again, and left.

Jy-ying walked thoughtfully down the hallway to the stairs. When she reached the stairs, she pursed her lips and looked back at the closed door to John's room. Warmth rushed through her. She fluffed her hair and almost bounced down the stairs wearing a happy, satisfied smile.

She stopped at the reception desk and registered for a room. "I'm a friend of John Banks," she told the clerk. She got the room she wanted.

She returned to John's room and knocked on the door. John answered it; before he could say anything, she informed him that this hotel was so much better than the shabby one that she was staying in that she'd decided to get a room here. "I will move into it by evening."

"Oh, good. Convenient. I should have thought of that," John said, as Joy nodded--too abruptly.

As John was about to close the door, Jy-ying announced with a smile she could not help, "I will be right across the hall from Joy."

John had to use the bathroom on their floor; when he returned, he found Joy frowning as she studied the pieces of the disassembled guns. He sat down next to her on the bed, turned her head toward him with his fingers, and asked, "How did you know about that 1863 musket?"

Just the right question. Her frown turned into a grin that felt as though it had split her face in two. She asked in return, "Why dearest, am I not a weapons expert?"

John made beckoning motions with both hands while giving her a "who are you kidding?" look.

"Oh, okay, spoilsport. One of my weapons teachers collected Civil War weapons, and would occasionally bring several of them to the weapons range so that his students could handle and shoot them. The 1863 was among the last line of muskets. It was one of my favorites. I learned to take it apart and put it together again. Young boys tinkered with cars; I tinkered with guns."

"I thought young girls played with dolls and doll houses."

Joy's face turned dark, and she glowered. "Not when my parents had been murdered by pirates. Not when my dear adopted mother's husband had been murdered by the Khmer Rouge, and my godmother had her loving husband murdered in Mao's Cultural Revolution. Not when they barely escaped with their own lives. Not when most of the other adults I loved in my youth had suffered similar horrors in the Holocaust, Stalin's forced Ukrainian famine, Rwanda's Great Genocide, and World War One. John, you were almost killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Towers; your cousin was. You should understand."

John held his palms up toward her and said apologetically, "I'm sorry, sweetheart." He sat down next to her and rubbed her back. "Okay, Miss Weapons Expert," he said, changing the subject, "tell me about the attackers' guns."

Joy just looked down at her lap, at her clenched hands. The mention of her mother had flooded her with the emotional pain of their separation. Again. It overwhelmed her and this time she didn't fight the tears. They coursed down her cheeks and dripped onto her lap.

John saw them. He put his arms around her, held her close. "I'm really sorry, baby. I'm so stupid, causing you to think about your mother again."

Joy soon disengaged herself, leaned over, and picked up an edge of the bed cover. She wiped her face and dabbed at her wet eyes. She sighed, put her hands back in her lap and kept her eyes on them as she said softly, "Not your fault. I'm still just too close to our good-byes." She put her head in her hand and waved John away. "Give me a moment," she whispered.

Nearby was the inevitable porcelain water pitcher of the era on the universal hotel chest of drawers. John poured Joy a glass of water from the pitcher and gave it to her. She took a few sips, then shook her head as if to clear it. "I'm okay now. On to the guns," she murmured. She cleared her throat and narrowed her eyes. "Ah . . . " She made herself speak normally. "I've never seen this kind of gun before."

John's eyebrows jerked up.

Getting into one of her favorite subjects gave Joy the focus she needed. She looked up at John and noted his astonishment. "I'm not saying I don't know anything about the guns, only that I've never seen them before."

"Oh, stupid me," John replied, shaking his head.

Joy was now into it. "I can tell that they are both 9mm double action, each with an ambidextrous manual safety, automatic firing pin block, combat-style trigger guard, and loaded-chamber indicator. They have a strange, but clever, rackable slide and firing mechanism. The plaque on the bottom of the grip says 'Shultz 703 Hanover.' The magazine carries sixteen rounds." Her voice now firm, she added, "The bullets are a type of hollow point I haven't seen before, either. But, I know they would leave a hole larger than a fist where they exit a human body. If they had shot us in the head or body, no matter. We would be dead."

John turned to look at the gun parts. Suddenly, his voice a mixture of amazement and fear, he asked, "The guns were produced . . . when?"

Her almond eyes widened as what she was going to say finally hit home. She gulped, turned her head to look at John directly, put her hand on her cheek and, enunciating each word, announced, "They were made in the 1990s, or thereabouts."

"Thereabouts?" John nearly shouted. "You don't know the date of manufacture or more specifics about the gun?"

"No. I don't need to be more specific, damn it. They are from the future, John."

It was automatic with John. No matter whether his attempted humor was atrocious or ill timed, it was his cigarette or drink in time of stress. "Good thing the guys aren't here," John said, raising an eyebrow. "With your confession of ignorance on such an important matter, they would think less highly of you, Miss Phim."

"John. I'm not amused."

What Joy said electrified his mind. It was impossible. No, he realized, it wasn't. The hair on his arms bristled, and he was surprised his voice didn't waver as he repeated, "The future?"

"Certainly. The far future."

"No chance of being wrong."

"No! John, this is serious."

"Jesus Christ." John took a moment to control his voice and draw out the implications of what Joy had said. He put both his hands on his head, and groaned, "They are from our time. They followed us here. They are trying to kill us. And they have modern weapons, and who knows what else, to use against us." He lifted his hands from his head and shook them at the ceiling. "Holy shit!"

Joy glanced behind her at the disassembled guns on the bed before again looking at her hands on her lap. She called on her training to calm herself so that she could think this through. She took several deep breaths and visualized her muscles relaxing, beginning with her toes.

After a few minutes, she looked up at John's pale, sweaty face. "First," she said, "they could not have happened on us accidentally. They had to know where we would be at a certain time. That place was the bank. Second, they had to have some kind of road map of our activities after we arrived. Third, there is only one way the attackers could have gotten that, which is from the Survivor's Benevolent Society that sent us here."

John jumped up. Hands clasped behind him and head down, he began pacing a circuit of the room. Joy knew he needed this, and waited. Minutes later, and now much calmer, John pointed out, "But the attackers wouldn't know that we were going to Bank of California today to buy the warehouse."

"Still," Joy said, "the Society has to be the key. With a knowledge of the time and place to which we were sent, and the name of the Tor Import and Export Company we were to set up, someone who had access to information about our mission through the Society could reason that we would soon visit the bank to buy the warehouse."

John shook his head. "No one in the Society would talk."

Joy shook her head as well. "You're forgetting how our time travel happened. That FBI SWAT team that rushed into the Society's headquarters to search for the time machine forced us to leave months before schedule."

John nodded. Joy knew he was remembering the circumstances of their departure. The SWAT team had just reached the lab when her mom had hustled them into the machine, and they'd been sent off with barely enough time to say good-bye.

"Supposedly, the equipment and notes were to be destroyed right after our machine left," Joy continued. "Perhaps the scientists were prevented from doing that. Maybe notes were found. Somebody down the line talked. I don't know who, but the Society has to be the only source."

Scowling, John replied, "I don't believe it. But okay, let's assume that, as distasteful as it is." He waved his finger at her. "But then, they can't know about this hotel, because we didn't know we were going to be here until it was suggested by one of the guys. And the attackers couldn't know the details of any of our other movements. They will know in general, however, that we probably want to prevent the bloodbath of the Mexican Revolution, the First and Second World Wars, and so on. They will know the timing of these interventions."

"And that raises the big question," Joy said, too involved to really notice his hated finger shaking. "Why are they trying to stop us ending war and democide, and promoting democracy? I would think any sane person would be for this."

John shook his head as he waved his finger again. "You know better, baby. Think fanatics. Think Nazis, communists, radical Islamic terrorists. Think what power it would give any of them to be able to go back into the past and, with their knowledge of events and historically critical people, promote their ism, and assassinate those in the way."

"Yes," Joy said, unthinkingly waving her finger in return. "Just the opposite of our mission. Well, we're safe here, and they don't know about our warehouse or the precise time of our arrival. Otherwise, they would have killed us as we stepped out of our time machine. I thought we wouldn't have to arm ourselves until we traveled to Mexico for our first intervention, but we'd better do so now."

John put his finger on his chin, brows knitted. "There is an error in our reasoning. If it's through the Society that they knew we were going to buy the warehouse, then they should have known the time and place of our arrival. And if they knew that, it doesn't make sense for them to have waited until we went to the bank, as public a place as that is, to kill us."

"You're right. We need more information. Meanwhile, dearest, time for our weapons." She froze for a couple of seconds. "By the way, Jy-ying likes you."

"What healthy young woman wouldn't?" he replied, seeming relieved at the chance to make a joke.

I should've known better, Joy chided herself.

At the New California Resort, in their small room above the bar, Hadad and Carla sat on the double bed with Hands' Mission Humanity, a biography of Joy and John, and John's Remembrance between them. They'd just gone through a printed summary of the details in both books, to refresh their memory.

Carla gripped the Remembrance so tightly, her knuckles were white. Her eyes flashed at Hadad, and she snarled, "How could you forget? We memorized this stuff. Did that woman also hypnotize you? It's clear in printout--they did not start wearing armor until the thugs from that stupid anti-Oriental league attacked them. I should have shot John in the back instead of listening to you."

"If you are so smart, Carla, how come you did not remember they wore no armor? Huh? Why did you listen to me?"

As Carla's eyes glinted steel and the corners of her mouth headed toward the floor, Hadad shrugged his shoulders, looked down to avoid her eyes, and waved it away. "Nothing lost, anyway," he muttered. "We know where they are staying, and they don't know we know that. We also know about the three guys, as they call them."

He tilted his head back, raised his eyebrows, and met her eyes. "So, Carla," he declared, "I have a plan."