----

They drove to Wendy's sublet, helped her mother bring the luggage inside, saw her settled with "my other daughter" Lacey. Wendy must have said and done normal things; no one was looking at her strangely. But her mind was a whirlwind of rage and betrayal. She couldn't really express herself until they were alone in the Middlemobile again. "It's the truth, Dubbie," he said quickly. "I'd never heard any suggestion that your father was a Middleman. And I know the detailed histories of all of us this century. I didn't join as an apprentice until five or six months after the date of his disappearance, but..."

Wendy hit him. Not a punch to the jaw but in the stomach, neatly centered under the sternum. Some red-fanged part of herself was proud of her form and follow-through. He didn't block it.

"You sat right there," she said. "I didn't know you real well when I told you about my dad. It made sense you were still keeping secrets. But when I said Dad would be proud of me in this job, you said 'maybe he still is.' You didn't just keep quiet. You said he could still be alive."

"I didn't know."

Wendy showed her teeth. "How the hell could you not know?"

"I don't know that, either." The Middleman let some of his own frustration show. "That's clearly the first answer we need. Dubbie, how could you think..."

"I trusted you." Wendy's anger was subsiding, leaving nothing but the loss. Two losses. "All the way. I never thought you would lie to me."

"I didn't lie to you."

Wendy sat silent, not looking at him. Then her eyes came into focus, though their expression wasn't pretty. "If you really didn't know about Dad -- I know who did. Who had to."

"Ida couldn't lie about a direct operational matter like that." The Middleman's voice was shaken, though. "Surface personality clashes are one thing. Actual harm to a Middleman or apprentice would break every precept of her core programming."

"She tried to take us both out not so long ago."

"Under the influence of an alien computer virus. That wasn't an act of will on her part."

"Maybe this is a computer virus. Maybe she's just a bitch," Wendy said flatly. "If she did this to me, I have to know. And I have to do something about it."

The Middleman nodded, a little numbly. "I won't stand in your way."

------

"Hey, Skynet." There were things in the armory that could destroy Ida, at least temporarily. The Middleman wouldn't let Wendy have any of them. She understood his worry. "Minute of your time. Don't dick me around, you listen on the Middlewatches all the time unless one of us stops you. My father."

Ida sat back in her desk chair, sneering a little. "If you think..."

"Answer her." The Middleman was suddenly looming between them, eyes locked on the android. "It can be a priority override if you insist. Convince me we can still trust you. Try hard."

"Start with why you had a two-inch dossier on me that said what I was doing at age five but didn't say 'Oh, by the way, your dad was a Middleman.'"

"Captain Peter Allan Watson, US Navy, was never a Middleman," Ida said flatly. "I never met him, he was never at headquarters, he's not on the rolls. You two didn't get the information because it wasn't there." She eyed Wendy. "But I have a line on what did happen. Depends on whether you care more about the truth or kicking my ass." She snorted. "As if."

Wendy leaned back a little. "Make it quick, make it good."

"I cracked into the base computers after you folks had your little heart-to-heart," Ida said. "You're welcome. Solid fact number one; that second body they found in the plane is Middleman 1999. No question, x-rays and DNA both check out." Ida glanced at her boss. "There is no solid fact number two. But you could have gotten a hint, since you're the one who obsesses whenever she gets a hangnail. My last contact with 99 was thirty-eight hours before her Daddy dropped out of sight. Not a time match, but damn close to one."

"And he was looking for a replacement apprentice when he died." the Middleman said thoughtfully.

"Two points for the guy in the crappy jacket." Ida shrugged. "So yeah, I probably missed some connection between Papa Bear and three Middlemen ago. Sue me. I'm checking again."

Wendy knew that past Middlemen were referred to by their death or (rarely) retirement dates. "What happened in 1999?"

He took on his this-will-be-on-the-test tone. "First, the Middleman and trainee of that time barely managed to circumvent a cross-dimensional incursion. The trainee was nearly killed. Multiple compound fractures of the left leg, and partial poisoning by a self-replicating organic chemical. Between the two factors he was in and out of a coma for months. Middleman 1999 had no alternative but to look for another apprentice. Until he disappeared himself. Ida's right, that was within days of your father."

"Eight rounds of surgery and I still had pieces left over," Ida remarked. "Every time, we didn't think he'd come out of the anesthetic. Kid had guts, no question about that."

Wendy had the energy to spare for a sympathy wince. "Poor guy."

"He was my Middleman," hers said. "When his mentor disappeared, he had to move up regardless of his condition. He investigated the disappearance, of course. When he hired me a few months later, we both did. Ida's last contact with Middleman 1999 was an ordinary phone call, saying that the Middlewatches weren't working but he'd be back at headquarters shortly. He wasn't specific, but we had to conclude he hadn't been dealing with any crisis when he disappeared."

"World didn't blow up without him," Ida said. "Sometimes that's all the news we get."

"Does that make it a regular plane crash, then?"

Ida glared at Wendy. "Yeah. Because that's how Middlemen get killed. The watches went out, genius. Throw a nuke at them, they keep working. One of you's suddenly on Mars, they keep working. You get the picture. We did a detailed search in a hundred-mile radius of that pay phone, never got another sign of him. Just a fax -- dirt-stupid technology, again -- that he sent at the same time."

An image came up on the big viewscreen, enlarged several times. Dot-matrix lettering and stray dots of toner-static showed that it was a fax. The original had clearly been a handmade sketch, done with some care and a neatly inked ruler along one side to show scale. "He's trained, but not as an artist," Wendy said absently. "Draftsman maybe, or engineering drawing."

"Save the Sherlock Holmes," Ida snarled. "People a whole lot smarter than you have poked into this and come up empty. It was the last thing he asked me to do, research that for him."

The sketch showed a squat, ugly statue, ten inches high by six wide if the scale was accurate. It was posed like a seated Buddha, but without the charm. The wide, lidless eyes were something besides human. The skull came to a backward-sloping point. The fingers had too many joints -- or none -- and a hint of claws. "We couldn't link it to any artistic or cultural tradition," the Middleman said. "Including a few from off Earth. This is where the trail ended."

"Only it didn't," Wendy said thoughtfully. "The Y2K Middleman finds himself carrying this thing around, without a wing man and without his gadgets. My dad has an oldie-but-a-goodie airplane and some flexibility in his flight schedule. He gets given a Middlewatch -- but the watches weren't working by then. So why?"

"My predecessor may have learned what was interfering and expected it to be temporary," her Middleman said. "Or ... symbolic value. Your father was covered in your own background check, Dubbie. He would have made a good Middleman. If the offer was made, if he accepted it."

"Instead they get a one-way dive. And I get a temp job." Wendy stared down at her fingers, her connection to the conversation waning. "Funny thing."

The Middleman put his hand on Wendy's shoulder. "Dubbie." When she didn't respond, his concerned look got worse. He looked up. "Ida. I assume that artifact was not found in the remains of Captain Watson's plane."

"Not my first day on the job, here. No artifact, part of an artifact, picture of an artifact, nada."

He nodded. "One part of the job won't wait. I need layout and schematics on that Naval base, especially their forensics department. The watches..."

"Have to be retrieved, alien technology, Prime Directive. I'll fake up something you can leave in their place. Cat burglar time. I said I know my job."

"Excuse me. I've got to sit down." Wendy disappeared toward the archive room.

"Dubbie?" She didn't stop.

"Oh, wonderful," Ida snarled. "Melting down like soft-serve ice cream. Go do the big-manly-shoulder thing or we'll never have time to do the mission."

The Middleman was already following Wendy. "'Thanks, Ida,'" the android said to the empty control room. "'You do a great job putting up with meatbags who flake out every ten seconds. I don't know what I'd do without you.'" Ida turned back to HEYDAR.

------

The Middleman didn't see her at first. The table and chairs in the center of the library were empty. But when he held his breath he caught a faint snuffling between the stacks. Wendy had curled up at the back of the aisle between two rows of shelves, trying to be silent. The Middleman sat down on the floor at arm's length from her.

"Sorry." Her voice was choked with tears, barely audible. "I'm a dumbass. I bet Navy SEALS never do this stuff."

"This is probably the worst day of your life. At least, I'd hate to look forward to a worse one." He handed her a neatly folded cotton handkerchief.

The kindness cracked her open. Wendy curled up in something like the fetal position and howled. When the Middleman touched her, she clung to him desperately. He didn't try to talk.

After the first flood, Wendy was trying to fight it back down. "It's not." She took a breath. "It's not that he's, dead. It's that. We were." She put more willpower behind the words. "We were going to lose him anyway."

The Middleman looked blank. Wendy shoved at him. "He wasn't going to be Peter Watson any more," she snarled. "Sooner or later. If he wouldn't be Peter Watson, he wouldn't be my Dad." Hearing herself say the words hurt. She closed her eyes and froze, trying to get some distance so she wouldn't cry again."

He leaned his forehead against hers. "You're wrong, Dubbie." A whisper. "Not being able to maintain a life outside the job ... that's not a universal. That's my particular weakness. It's hard to do, yes. That's one reason men with close ties, like your father, aren't often asked. But when the commitment already exists ... if he'd been willing to leave his family to be a Middleman, he wouldn't have been fit to be one. Don't judge him by what I did."

"You haven't done anything wrong."

"Not directly, but I haven't spelled out what's necessary to the job and what's my personal limits. More Middlemen than not have kept some degree of outside lives. Probably your father would have retired from the Navy and said he had a civilian consulting job with unpredictable hours and confidentiality agreements. Very much what you tell people." He sat back in a more comfortable position without taking his arms from around Wendy. "You're not going to end your friendship with Lacey when you have my job. Imagine how strongly a good man like your father would feel about you and your mother."

She wasn't happy, but the acute distress subsided a little. "You're my mother's worst nightmare, if she knew it," Wendy said. "Not you personally, but The Middlemen. This job cost us, cost her, my dad. One bad day, one bad break, and she could lose me too."

"Yes. I know." That was inherent in their work. The Middleman had coped for years by refusing to have a relationship with anyone. Until Wendy slid past his defenses, and not having one became intolerable.

They'd been around the full circle. She could leave the job, and him. She could try to leave one and somehow stay connected with the other. In theory the Middleman had the same choices, but he'd never use them. A perfect life, or a painless one, wasn't an option. They'd tried to make the rewards worth the risks; they'd succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. But her mother wasn't in line for any of the rewards.

"I'm cold." Wendy snuggled closer.

She was in a state close to shock, which was appalling in a woman who'd faced monsters and demons without batting an eyelash. "You should go lie down."

Wendy snickered in spite of herself; he didn't join in. "Nothing that interesting. I'm afraid. I'll be busy tonight. We can't let the Navy have access to Middle-technology; there's a real chance they might understand part of it. I'm going to exchange those watches for something innocuous. If I do my job right they'll never know anyone was there."

Wendy sat up. "I'll go too."

"Not this time. If we get caught, you'll have signed your real name to a federal felony. Also, you'll have made them even more suspicious about your father." The Middleman knew which argument had a chance of working. "Trust me, there'll be another death-defying adventure along soon enough."

"Okay," Wendy agreed. "This time. Anyway, if I leave my mom alone with Lacey too long I won't have any secrets left."

"I'm also putting Ida to work on a cover story," the Middleman said. "Give us a few days, we'll have a plausible reason for them to release Middleman 1999's remains to his soi-disant next of kin. I'll make sure that story also explains the suspicious parts of the crash site. We can't let the military know how your father died -- assuming we can discover that ourselves. But we can prevent an unfair stain on his record."

"Thanks. I was wondering about that."

"Punching people isn't my only crisis-solution mode," he said dryly.

His humor was low-key to the point of subterranean, but Wendy could spot it now. "Jerk." She looked more thoughtful. "I hadn't thought about that, the old Middleman. Are there hundreds of us buried in the basement like Arsenic and Old Lace?"

"Not as many as you'd think. Most are with their own families. Ida will have to check the instructions 1999 left."

She sat back a bit further, looked seriously at him. "What about you?"

"Originally I asked to have my ashes scattered on my parents' graves back in Michigan. Closing a circle of sorts."

"Slightly more sentimental than being put out with the recycling, I'll give it that."

"I revoked those instructions a few months ago. We'll talk something out when things are calmer."

Wendy shook her head. "That's a big 'we.' I keep thinking I've got a grip on this whole thing, with you. Not just the job but the actual hard-core partnership. Then something new whips around and hits me."

His smile was a little shaky. "Me too. Don't assume I know what I'm doing. I've never been married either."

They'd consciously decided not to have a ceremony or legal status or even full-time living together. Funny how little difference that made. "I'll go deal with my Mom," Wendy said. "You go deal with my Dad."

------