. . .

Tom opens the door. He comes home. He looks from Bertram to Lucy and he frowns.

“Oh?” she asks. She turns.

He is displaying an extraordinary variety of expressions. Finally he goes and he kneels beside Bertram Gulley’s corpse.

“Ignore that,” she says. “Boy. Let’s play rock-paper-scissors.”

But he shakes his head.

“It’s a fair game,” she says.

Tom is staring into Bertram’s eyes. He is frowning. She walks over. She slaps him. He catches her hand. He flings her over. He lands kneeling on her stomach with one hand on her throat. “I know you,” he says. “We met in the future.”

She pulsates. She diffuses into a black cloud of malice. She blasts him back against the wall.

She holds him there.

She recoalesces. She flips up her umbrella one-handed. She levels its tip at him.

“You were saying?” she says.

Tom’s eyes blaze. For a moment, he is almost a science adventurer again. He sees how to do it. Knee her in the stomach. Take the umbrella. Thumb it to anti-aerated weaponry. Stop her from throwing any rock-paper-scissors moves —

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