Death by Chocolate (10 page)

"Just not physical time travel," Guber said, sharing a grin with her. "See, all action is not
ephemeral, there and gone, like most people think. Actions and words involve energy, and
energy is not destroyed. One of the Fae laws of thermodynamics. Whatever is done and said is
preserved, because it's energy. The trick is just unraveling all the multiple permutations of that
energy, to see what was done ten years ago, a thousand years ago."

"Some trick." Lanie frowned at the banks of monitors filling three of the four walls of
the massive basement room of the WBC building. "So, does thought come under that category?
It's energy, right? Could you technically read someone's mind, using this same thing?"

"Sure. But who'd want to?"

"I wouldn't want to read my own mind," Epsi said, coming over to join them. "Have you
ever sat down and really tried to track down the thoughts going through your head? Talk about
the tangled web we weave!"

"The more intelligent the mind, the more talented the person," Angela offered with her
trademark serene, slightly smug smile, "the more tracks the mind follows at any one time.
Geniuses often have no idea where they got their flash of insight, because their minds move on
so many tracks at the same time. It might drive them insane to try to control the traffic, so to
speak."

"So for those who do read minds?" Epsi prompted. "How do they do it, and how do they
filter out one stream of thought?"

"They guess." Guber chortled when she gave him a narrow-eyed look and frowned at
him. "Yeah, they pick up a lot of clues, and they know what they're looking for, and they
guess."

"You've done it?"

"Ain't got the patience, babe." He was delighted when her eyes widened for two
seconds, then she burst out laughing. The relief he felt, knowing Epsi understood, that she
thought like he did, that she caught on, was a little frightening. And gratifying. And comforting.
Which didn't really make sense. He liked Epsi. If they spent every day working together like this
for the next dozen centuries, he'd be the happiest man on the planet--and the thirty contiguous
dimensions of reality.

* * * *

After weeks of recording and filtering and webbing and tracking and pinpointing, Kevyn
and his team of forensic advocates came up with enough evidence to not only catch the murderer
of Queen Mellisande red-handed, but cover him with enough red paint to drown him.

Using simplistic freezing, blinding, and memory-wiping spells, the culprit caught up
with over three hundred Fae who had bought chocolate as gifts for the new queen. While each
person was temporarily disabled, he inserted small quantities of carob into each gift. Never
enough to disrupt the taste or texture or smell of the chocolate. However, the poisonous qualities
of carob remained in the body longer than chocolate did, and if enough was eaten, it could build
up to dangerous levels.

In some of the test subjects, the allergic reaction to carob created a craving for more
chocolate, which led to a larger build-up of the substance in the blood, which led to a stronger
craving, in a vicious cycle. Since many Fae tended to turn to dark chocolate first as a cure-all for
any slight physical or mental or emotional ailment, it turned into a recipe for disaster.

"At first," Epsi said, explaining the report to the rest of the team, "the healing properties
of chocolate were protecting the queen. But she was one of those who were hyper-sensitive to
the build-up of carob. The more she ate, the more she craved it, the more damage it did, and the
less help the good chocolate did her. Kind of like the episode of 'The Trouble with Tribbles',
where the tribbles were eating poisoned grain. The more grain they ate, the less good it did them.
She literally starved to death, gorging herself on what should have helped and healed her--in this
case, a vault of chocolate instead of a storage bin full of grain."

Whoa,
Guber thought, gazing at Epsi through a golden and purple haze of
admiration.
She is definitely my kind of girl. Classic Trek all the way!

After weeks of filtering the records of activities and the traffic through the various
portals to Earth, the pattern was obvious enough that even his most ardent--or blackmailed or
intimidated--supporters agreed that the murderer was indeed guilty.

Theodosius, former Administrator King, was guilty of causing the death of Queen
Mellisande IV.

Since the queen's poisoning had been done by stealth, over time, and spread out over
large quantities of chocolate, Theodosius's punishment would be carried out the same way. The
judiciary panel was convened and judgment handed down in a private, need-to-know,
secrecy-to-protect-the-community-from-emotional-damage session. An elite team of Fae commandos
infiltrated the holding dimension where Theodosius and only a dozen or so of his closest
supporters were still sequestered. He was rendered unconscious and taken under cover of
darkness, and a good silence-and-darkness spell, to the warehouse. Then he was sealed in with
all the queen's chocolate gifts, good and bad, pure and tainted, with all the tags and labels and
wrappers removed, so it was impossible to tell what chocolate had come from whom. His fate
was to stay in the vault until all the chocolate was eaten. He could confess, saying he knew about
carob and what it did and how allergic the queen was, and he knew what had killed her.
Confessing would get Theodosius the standard punishment of time in the dungeon dimensions,
disbarment from all public office for life, and denied access to the Human realms as well as all
Human-oriented forms of entertainment. Theodosius was addicted to French art films, and to be
deprived of them might be the worst punishment imaginable.

Which might have been why he didn't confess. He probably decided to take his chances
with the carob, banking on the pure chocolate to protect him from whatever carob he ingested.
So he stayed silent, ignoring the communication opportunities that came once each day during
the first four days of his incarceration.

Those involved in the investigation would never know how allergic Theodosius was,
because on the fourth day of his imprisonment, the monitors reported that he had thrown himself
into the swimming pool of chocolate syrup and drowned.

Review of the security recordings, which were now standard practice, thanks to Guber's
invention--and the royalties would provide him income for life--revealed that Theodosius had
started his sentence by eating Epsi's chocolate boat. Within two hours of devouring the unicorn
figurehead, Theodosius broke out in purple and green spots, and sneezing that blew him from
one side of the warehouse to the other. His tongue swelled up so badly that he couldn't speak
clearly. This was a benefit to those who had to review the recordings, because it was obvious
from his face and tone of voice that he was venting the most horrific, rancid curses imaginable. It
also explained why he didn't respond when communication channels were opened between the
sealed warehouse and the authorities monitoring his incarceration.

Obviously, Theodosius knew what was happening to him, and the cause, and decided to
end his misery.

"Ironic, isn't it?" Epsi said, as she walked into the basement room at the college with
Guber. The team was supposed to show up in another hour to begin dismantling all the
equipment. "Death by chocolate for the queen, as well as for her murderer."

"Kind of cosmic, poetic justice, if you really think about it." He snapped his fingers and
the strips of blue-tinted light came on across the ceiling. "This is gonna take forever to
dismantle." He gestured at the shelves full of equipment, silent and dark now.

"Yeah." She decided there was something sad about all those screens without any
movement on them, no blinking lights, no statistics scrolling across the ceiling, counting down
all the Fae still being monitored and those who had been taken off the suspect list. "I really liked
working with you. Wish it didn't have to end."

"Doesn't have to." He looked up at the ceiling and scraped the toe of his sneaker across
the floor.

She wondered for a moment what he was doing. Then it occurred to her that he was
doing a bad imitation of a little boy trying not to look guilty.

Which made her wonder what he
was
guilty of.

"What do you mean, it doesn't have to? Like, work with you? Go into security work?"
Epsi thought maybe she could like that. Not the security work exactly, but she'd put up with a lot
worse to be able to spend every day with Guber. He wouldn't be an all-work-and-no-play
bureaucrat, like a lot of other Fae men who had grown up a little too much for her taste. Even
three centuries from now, he would still be an off-beat, overgrown little boy playing
Star
Trek
and watching really badly done special effects British science fiction TV shows.

"Nah, not security." He met her gaze for two seconds, and blushed so hard that a red
plaid haze covered him from the top of his head to nearly his waist. "Just...with me. Together.
Y'know?"

"Yeah. I know. Like...a lifetime?" Her voice cracked and broke, because she had never
thought she would use that word in relation to a Fae man. They were just so immature, even the
eight hundred-year-old ones. Human males, even those touched with Fae magic, were a whole
lot more mature, reliable, but still stayed fun.

"Sorry. Lifetime has been cancelled," a voice rasped from the ceiling.

Which started to move downward toward them.

The racks and racks of shelving stopped the ceiling before it lowered more than two
feet.

"Smooth move, Ex-Lax," Guber chortled.

"And that's exactly why we have to put an end to this hereditary throne!" the same voice
roared, making the monitors and other equipment rattle. With a flash of blue and green and
yellow sparks, four Fae popped into the room.

"Y'know that water cannon game at the county fairs?" Guber said, as he grabbed Epsi's
arm and led her in a hasty, backwards retreat to the storage room at the far end of the
basement.

"Yeah," she lied. Epsi called up the quick-access addendum of the Ether Lexicon. In
four steps, she had an image of what he referred to. She nearly laughed, wondering if he was
thinking specifically about the open mouths on the clown faces.

"Flight is useless," the leader of the four Erasers growled. The walls shimmered through
several sour-tinted shades of yellow and green, revealing a bubble now enclosed the room,
sealing them all in.

"Hope you're a good shot. We want to get the flower all the way to the top of the pole."
Guber ducked into the storage room and came out two seconds later, carrying enormous
super-soakers, and put one into Epsi's hands.

"Resistance is futile," their enemy shouted, his voice about fifty decibels louder. He was
probably peeved that Guber ignored him.

"Yeah, yeah. I will be assimilated. Blah de blah blah. I know the drill. Didn't you learn
anything when the Borg went up against the Federation?"

Epsi muffled a giggle at Guber's reference to the half-machine aliens on
Star
Trek
. Then she laughed aloud when the four Erasers paused, confusion momentarily wiping
away the grim determination on their scowling faces.

"Now, baby!" Guber shouted, and pulled the battery-operated trigger on his
super-soaker.

A brown stream shot out, and Epsi realized in that split second before she followed his
lead, that had to be pure carob. The man was a seriously warped, demented genius.

He hit the leader of the Erasers while his mouth was open, just like shooting a stream of
water into the clown's mouth to make the flower rise to the top of the pole to get the prize at the
county fair games booth. Epsi went for the woman next to the leader, whose mouth dropped open
even more in shock at the brown stream hitting him in the face. The other two behind them let
out shouts--and a heartbeat later, Guber and Epsi, in perfect teamwork, shifted their streams of
carob to them and their open mouths.

The intra-dimensional intruder alert went off, lights streaming through the spectrum and
alarms whooping. Epsi giggled when Darth Vader announced, "I feel a disturbance in the Force,"
at a volume loud enough to make the floor and ceiling tiles rattle. That was a Guber addition,
definitely.

All four Erasers were thrashing on the floor in brown puddles, scratching and choking
and wailing as they vainly struggled to clear their faces, when the newly created Purple Blood
Protection Detail Special Forces team arrived. They were accompanied by a HAZ-MAT team
that was still undergoing training in handling carob.

Guber put his arm around Epsi and they retreated to a clean corner of the room, to watch
and wait until the authorities had cleaned up the mess.

"Are we gonna have to put up with that kind of trouble for the rest of our lives?" she
mused.

"Yeah, probably. Or at least until they get a new Administrator King or Queen elected
who can push through that legislation to rewrite the royal genetic code." He waved his free hand,
opened up a dimensional pocket, and brought out two frosty cans of diet cherry cola. "Until then,
I'm gonna be rich from all the royalties on those carob cannons I'm designing and selling.
Correction." He popped the tops on the cans with flickers of light. Epsi rather hoped it was so
that he wouldn't have to remove his arm from around her waist. "
We
will be rich.
Because you're part of this."

"I just suggested automatic machines to shoot the liquid carob. I didn't say anything
about cannons or how to do it," she protested.

"Yeah, well, that's teamwork. I kinda like it, y'know?"

Was it her imagination, or did his arm tighten around her, and did he lean a little
closer?

"Yeah, I do, too." Was that her voice, getting husky and low? Epsi had never thought
she could sound like that.

Guber certainly seemed to like it.