Ray

The black man in the black suit stared back across the desk at Ray.

Ray could not possibly have spoken another syllable if his favorite bodily organs depended on it.

Eventually, the other man nodded. "Keep going," he said.

Ray remembered to breathe. "Zeddmore," he said. "Or possibly Zeddemore, depends on the reality-"

"The first one." Zedd's eyes narrowed. "What else?"

"United States Army, 82nd Airborne Division, older sister named Coranna, parents were Aaron and Luanne Zeddmore-"

Zedd held up a hand. "Enough," he said. "Where did you find out?"

"My native continuum. Where, I might note, neither you nor I has anything to do with this organization, and where we have a pair of partners by the name of Dr. Peter Venkman and Dr. Egon Spengler."

Zedd gave this a moment's thought, then gestured to the chair opposite his desk. "Sit down. You don't mind if I call P back in here, do you?"

"Not at all, sir." In fact Ray wasn't entirely sure he was going to get out of that room without having something bright and flashy stuck in his face, but he didn't think it would be a very good idea to say so.

Zedd nodded and tapped a button on his desk. As P entered he said, "All right. Mind telling me exactly what happened here? You first, P..."

The taller man eased himself into the chair. "Well, sir- as soon as the battleprince blew apart the wall of the men's locker room I knew there was going to be trouble. Didn't know Agent Rho was in there until the battleprince got hold of him-"

"Actually, that was me at that point," Ray muttered behind one hand.

P lifted an eyebrow. "Seriously? Aw, man... Anyway, sir, the next thing I know the newbie here pulled out a homegrown energy weapon and sliced off one of his NIbs' tentacles. Which would've been okay if it weren't for the fact that the battleprince proceeded to blatter all over the locker room. The backspray went clear out into the hallway."

"And I suppose this has something to do with why you didn't realize this was the wrong man?" said Zedd, who was being very careful to keep his voice neutral.

"Well, sir, you try telling apart two men of the same size and build with that kind of acid burn over ninety percent of their exposed skin."

Ray shuddered.

"He was in front of Rho's locker and a quick blood check confirmed a DNA match, so I got him down to the infirmary and had 'em do an epithelial reset to Rho's last scan parameters." P shrugged. "Didn't realize we had a rogue portal I was supposed to be looking out for, sir."

"Don't you take that tone of voice with me," Zedd snapped back. "The fact that the battleprince got as far as the locker room at all's not exactly a gold star on your record. Just be glad all he caused was property damage and one lost agent."

As one, Zedd and P turned to look at Ray.

"I... suppose this is the point where I try to explain myself, huh?"

"Actually, this is the point where you give us a good reason not to wipe out everything you've learned in the past three hours and leave you on a street corner in Westchester somewhere," Zedd said. "Start talking."

The portal level was screwed up. There were rogue portal manifestations in an otherwise highly sensitive building. Clearly, the local dimensional instability index was pretty damn high.

Ray had one chance...

He swallowed. "Yes, sir," he said. "If you'll just give me a pencil and paper."

Zedd and P

As Ray closed the door behind him, P and Zedd exchanged glances. "Well?" said Zedd.

P stood a little straighter, both arms behind his back. "Sir, I've been serving with this organization for the last six years, and I have to admit- I have no idea what to do."

Zedd sighed. "That makes two of us," he admitted. "You know, you drill and drill and drill for every kind of dimensional irregularity and possible incursion, up to and including mirror universe infiltration, but it never really prepares you for a situation like this."

"If you ask me, sir, we ought to isolate him-"

"Not flash him?"

"I wish, sir." P shook his head. "We're short on manpower right now. After what happened with the Terblincks and Mauna Kea-"

"Don't remind me." Zedd grimaced. "We're just lucky they were as good as their word and got the flow diverted. I was not looking forward to getting a city's worth of weregild out of them."

"None of us were, sir," said P quietly. "The 'gild on X, F, and Kappa was bad enough."

There was a moment of silence. There was always a moment of silence.

"You're right, though," Zedd said. "The situation's bad enough without locking down someone who's a functional equivalent to at least half of what Rho did."

"Frankly, sir, this Stantz guy's way more than that. You saw the dimensional work he's been doing."

Zedd glanced down at his desk and picked up one of the papers. "You really think he can fix a portal disjointure problem it took an entire team of Pilantroids half a year to stabilize?"

"He built a portal, sir," said P. "With one collaborator- a human collaborator, I might add- and a single textbook. And that containment field of his-"

"Mostly the local doppelganger of Spengler's work-"

"Doesn't matter, sir. He knows how to do it. That kind of d-physics is outside even Rho's capability. I say we isolate him and have him take a stab at doing real design work as long as he's here. If it works out- fine. If it doesn't- flash him and drop him on Spengler's doorstep."

Zedd nodded. "Fine," he said. "But there's one other thing you're forgetting."

"Field work," said P with a slight grimace. "I know. We still can't-"

"Actually, I think we can. Anybody who can think on his feet fast enough to whack off a battleprince's primary grappling arm's got a lot going for him. Especially if he's really done the kind of snatch-and-grab you say he says he's been doing for the past two years."

P blinked. "Oh, hell no-"

"Hell yes," Zedd returned with a slight smile. "Go on. Get him and Sleeb down to Reverse Engineering. Have Sleeb show him the ropes-"

"Sir, there is no way I’m gonna take an unclassified, untested newbie-"

"He's only a newbie in terms of the details. He knows the work. Get Sleeb to walk him through the designware and have him start in on the d-portal and containment field work. When he's done, I want to see you and him at the practice range. And I want you two ready for business." Zedd sat back, satisfied.

"With all due respect, sir, up yours."

"Yeah, like I haven't heard that before. Chop chop, P."

Ray

"Yo, Rho!"

"I keep telling you, Sleeb," Ray said without looking up from the design terminal, "I'm not Rho. I'm Ray."

"Same difference," said the Worm.

"You got mad when I called you Neeble."

"Yeah, you humans. . ." Sleeb muttered something Ray didn't spare the brain cells to comprehend. "Hey, you listening to me? Food time! Eat!"

"Huh?" Ray pushed away from the machine. "Didn't we just have lunch?"

"Hours ago. You gotta get out more!" Sleeb hopped down from the desk, trotting across the floor, pausing now and again to gesture impatiently. "C'mon!"

Ray rolled his eyes and got up to follow the Worm. "You guys make really crummy lunch, you know that?"

"You gotta problem? Send out for Chinese."

They rounded the corner and stopped; Agent P was waiting in the center of the hallway, arms crossed, feet apart. Ray blinked. "Something wrong, sir?"

P held up a single finger. No, not that one.

Ray and Sleeb exchanged glances. Eventually, P cleared his throat and lifted his head.

"It would seem," P said, with the struggling air of an actor reading a horrible script, "that we're out of time."

"Oh, oh," said Sleeb, skittering towards the wall. Ray blinked, and almost said Out of time for what?, but P held up the finger again. This time he pointed it at Ray.

"Zedd was satisfied enough with your performance on the target range to clear you for-" A muscle rippled along the side of P's jaw, as if the big, burly fellow were gritting his teeth. "-Active field duty."

Ray risked a glance at Sleeb. The worm was flattened against the wall and looking like he wished he were a Chamelloid.

"Oh, oh," said Ray.

"Oh oh is right," P answered. "Come on. We got a Korilian on the rampage."

"Where?"

"Columbus Circle."

"Oh hell."

"Yeah."

They started off down the hall together; Ray glanced over his shoulder. Sleeb was waving. "Yo, Sleeb!" he called out. "Make sure Zedd gets those diagrams, okay?"

"You got it, Rho!"

"My name's- oh, never mind."

The Worm beamed and scampered off. Ray scrambled to catch up with P. "Uh, quick question before we go any further-"

"You can eat lunch in the car. You're not allergic to Tolasian squirtpacks, are you?"

"Would someone have told me if I was? That's not the question."

"No?'

"No. Um, I can't help noticing that most of you guys have Roman-alphabet designations. How come mine-"

P sighed. "I wasn't here when he got recruited," he said, "but I'm told there was a…. problem…. with the original."

"What, there was already an R in your organization?"

"No."

"Some kind of taboo or objection?"

"No."

"Then what?"

The muscle rippled again. "Apparently," he said, "he didn't take it seriously."

Ray blinked. "I don't see how-"

"Zedd doesn't like it when agents insist on introducing themselves as "Agent Arrrrrrr"."

It was everything Ray could do not to burst into laughter.

"Yeah, about that? Don't pull that in public. C'mon, we need to get you a sidearm."

Rho

Fourteen years of every kind of wonder and horror the galaxy can throw at the third rock from Sol is a long time. Four days of being challenged, questioned, prodded, and reprimanded at every turn, sometimes, can be even longer.

There's a breakdown on the runway and the timeless flights are gone
I'm a year ahead of myself these days and I'm locomotive strong
My city spread like cannon fire in a yellow nervous state
I can't cut the ties that bind me to horoscopes and fate

He's been thinking. You can't not, after a sequence like that. It would take a deader man by far to avoid it. Every year there's been a Christmas, and every Christmas there's been a questioning, and every time, the answer's been the same. Yes. Keep doing it. It's worth it.

This ain't Christmas.

And I won't break and I won't bend
But someday soon we'll sail away
To innocence and the bitter end

The letter helped. The letter helped a lot. In its own way, so did the argument with Dr. Venkman, if you could call it an argument. It's one thing to instinctively feel why you made a decision, but instinct's a lousy guide sometimes, and you have to let the brain have its say. If you didn't you'd still be grubbing around in the mud, the same as every scavenger ancestor of the human species.

And I won't break and I won't bend
And with the last breath we ever take
We're gonna get back to the simple life again

Aughra had been another story. That... well... he had no answers there. So she'd said look, and see, and what do you see. Which was harder than it looked, not to put too much of a pun on it.

When we break out of this blindfold
I'm gonna take you from this place

What did he see? People. Tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions- no. No, that wasn't right, not really; what he saw was four people, four particular people, and while he knew the rest were there it was those four that mattered. Catherine. Alex. Joey. Egon. Two his age, his generation; the others...

Until we're free from this ball and chain
I'm still hard behind the eight

The boys would grow up into the world he was trying to preserve. What would happen if one of them turned out to be like him? Attracted the notice of someone like Raj, or like K or Zedd? Would anything be any different? Were they going to inherit any kind of a world at all? That was the problem... for all that Aughra was right, that he moved in the kind of shadows and silence nobody ought to ever have to live through, taking that shadow away wasn't going to help.

My city beats like hammered steel
On a shallow cruel rock

Sometimes the light blinds. The darkness isn't any kind of place to stay, but the light can blind and the sun can burn. Something has to temper that if the seedling's going to grow into a tree without being scorched into uselessness. The dose makes the poison, and the finest natural fertilizer is, so far as he knows, bull shit.

If we could walk proud after midnight
We'd never have to stop

Humanity's not ready for the Galactics, but the gap's too great to be bridged without help. If they had someone who could start slipping that help to them, one at a time or two or three or hell, even four- without being noticed- here, there, anywhere on the globe, the right person at the right time, who would remember what they needed to know without remembering where they got it from or why-

Well, you can do a lot with tactics like that. You can change a whole world, if you really try.

And I won't break and I won't bend
But someday soon we'll sail away
To innocence and the bitter end
And I won't break and I won't bend
And with the last breath we ever take...

And hey, who knows. Maybe one day, he'll get to go home.

We're gonna get back to the simple life again.


Italic text is the song "Simple Life", music by Elton John, lyrics by Bernie Taupin.