§ § § - January 7, 2007

They had plenty of "later" in which to think about it, for it was close to lunchtime before they heard from the Lincolns. They strode in trying to look dignified, although Veronica was limping slightly, Roarke noticed. "What may I do for you?" he inquired warmly.

Without bothering with any of the niceties, Arthur Lincoln planted his palms flat on Roarke's desktop and said, "I have come to the conclusion, Mr. Roarke, that you are solely responsible for every incident, accident and mishap that occurs on this island, even if it appears to have been directly caused by…well, something else." He turned to his wife. "Roll up your shorts leg." Veronica did so without a word, showing a neat oval of pink tooth dents in her skin. "You're very lucky it wasn't worse than this, Mr. Roarke. After we returned the horses, we took my wife to the doctor, who concluded that the skin isn't broken and she should heal without any trouble at all."

"What caused the bite?" Roarke asked curiously, knowing full well what they would tell him, but interested in their viewpoint.

"Some…creature," Arthur said, giving his head a couple of quick shakes as if trying to jar something loose in his brain. "I don't know what kind of crazy experiments you're performing on this island, but I can tell you, you've created monsters. This…thing looked like nothing so much as a fusion of Homo sapiens and Equus—"

"…ferus caballus," Roarke finished for him, leaving him standing there with his upper teeth clamped down on his lower lip to form the sound of F. He raised his eyebrows with genuine surprise. "Surely you've heard of centaurs?"

Arthur and Veronica both stared at him, and for the first time she spoke. "Should we have? After all, it's not possible to fuse a man and a horse that way."

Roarke chuckled. "There are many tales of centaurs throughout the ages. Apparently, in all your studies, you somehow neglected the fantastical."

"Why should we waste our time learning anything about creatures and objects that don't exist and aren't remotely possible?" Arthur wanted to know. "Mr. Roarke, my point here is that you are responsible for that thing that bit my wife. Fortunately for you, we've changed our minds about suing, since the injury isn't as bad as we thought. We decided we would drop by and let you know our decision."

"I sincerely appreciate your generous gesture," said Roarke, without the slightest irony. "But if you don't mind, Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln…please, sit down. I'd like to speak with you for a few moments." Looking puzzled, their guests seated themselves, and Roarke rested his forearms on the desktop, regarding them thoughtfully. "What did your daughter say about that centaur bite?"

"She had quite a time at our expense," Veronica noted through a sigh. "She said we wouldn't know a centaur if it bit us." Her voice became plaintive. "Can we really help it if she was right?"

Roarke smiled briefly. "Should it not tell you something, that Sylvia knows about the creatures that seem to baffle the two of you? It should at the very least suggest to you that she is learning about more than merely the tangible, physical world."

"Well, she does read a lot…" Arthur said uncertainly.

"And well she should," Roarke said. "Whether they be real or not, even mythological creatures and other apparent figments of the imagination have a place in this world. To be able to dream up such seemingly impossible creatures as centaurs and mermaids allows the imagination to take its owner places that might otherwise remain unexplored. You see, if a child's imagination is allowed to take free flight, the child comes to understand that it is permissible to consider concepts that don't seem feasible. While it may seem frivolous, it can in fact be very useful in the real world, even in the very tangible world in which you two toil every day. Are you not aware of how many discoveries have been no more than happy accidents? There are any number of substances we take for granted in modern life that might never have come about if it were not for those accidents, or for the imaginations of their discoverers, who let their minds roam freely beyond the physical to consider things that didn't seem possible."

"Such as what sort of 'accidents'?" Veronica asked, looking horrified.

"Nylon and artificial sweetener are two things that come to mind. And even penicillin was discovered quite by accident." That got their attention, Roarke saw; they exchanged startled glances. "And tell me, where would modern medicine be without penicillin?"

"You have a point there," Arthur admitted in a small, soft voice. "You know, now that you mention it, I remember studying the discovery of the stuff in college…and over the years I forgot all about it."

Veronica remained a stubborn holdout. "Mr. Roarke, there's no room nowadays for that sort of 'accident'. We work in closed labs, carefully sealed so that no outside contaminant has a chance to get in and ruin our work. Otherwise, how are we to know if any one substance truly works on the organisms we're combating?"

"There is certainly nothing wrong with that," Roarke assured her. "But it eliminates the possibility that something no one would otherwise ever have considered might be the factor that makes or breaks the experiment." He smiled, an impish, conspiratorial little smile. "I have sometimes secretly wondered whether that may be one reason it's been so difficult for modern medicine and science to beat back certain ailments that have been with us for so many centuries—particularly cancer and the common cold. Because laboratories are often so carefully sealed against random elements, and because of the extremely careful and heavily thought-out process of choosing the agents that seem to have promise in beating these diseases, only certain substances are ever considered for testing—and no room is allowed for serendipity."

Arthur and Veronica sat in dumbfounded silence for several minutes, slowly digesting this heretical concept; Roarke patiently waited them out. It was so quiet that he heard the thrashing of something in the vegetation behind the house long before the Lincolns, lost in thought, became aware of it; and a few seconds later, one of his New Zealand guests burst in through the French shutters, clutching a very odd-looking flower in one fist and waving it triumphantly back and forth. "Mr. Roarke, Mr. Roarke—you did it! Our fantasy is fulfilled! Look at this!" He brandished the flower under the startled Lincolns' noses, and they instinctively drew back in their seats, gawking at him as if heralding a madman. "The extract from the petals of this flower is going to cure the common cold!"

"Impossible!" Veronica blared out before Roarke could speak. "Have you even tested it in a lab? Have you had a subject with a cold who could serve as a guinea pig? Has there been time for side effects? Do you have any proof of this?"

The New Zealander straightened to his full height and stared down his nose at her; she glared back, nothing daunted. "Madam, I assure you, I am a scientist, and a very accomplished one at that. Just because I work in Invercargill and you somewhere in America, does not invalidate my testing or my conclusions. And I can promise you I've tested this thing as thoroughly as I possibly can across this weekend."

"But you know side effects can sometimes take weeks or even years to become apparent," Arthur put in, sounding more reasonable than his excitable wife. "You've worked with this for just two days, and I know you haven't been here that long—I remember seeing you on the plane. I, uh…would you mind if I took a look at that?"

The New Zealander backed up a step or two when Arthur arose, and turned to Roarke with a somewhat outraged look on his face. "Who are these people?"

Roarke smiled. "May I introduce Arthur and Veronica Lincoln, from Massachusetts in the United States. Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, meet Mr. Branton Hartiswoode, of Invercargill, New Zealand. Like the two of you, he is a scientist, and had a fantasy."

"What was yours?" Arthur asked, interest piqued, while Veronica stared on with a distrustful look on her face.

"I wanted to find a substance that would finally provide a cure for something that's defeated worldwide research for decades," Hartiswoode explained. "And I tell you, this flower is it." Roarke smiled again, watching as Arthur leaned over to peer more closely at it. The bloom was quite large, about six inches across, and bore a multitude of distinctive sky-blue petals with broad pink stripes running lengthwise in the middle of each petal. The center of the blossom was a peculiar, and very memorable, glittering silver. "You see the center here? This is where the curative properties are housed. The nectar from this will set the human race free of common colds for now and evermore."

"Oh?" Arthur peered at the flower. "Where'd you find this?"

"Evidently it grows only on this island," said Hartiswoode. "I've found only two specimens so far. If I could just have the seeds from this…"

"But you just said it grows nowhere but here," Veronica said. "How can you hope to take home any seeds and get it to grow in New Zealand? We might as well try planting it in a petri dish in our labs in Boston."

"The Lincolns do have a valid point, Mr. Hartiswoode," Roarke pointed out gently. "Less so about the scarcity and location of the flower and its proliferation, but about the testing period. I recall that your daughter Caryll had quite a nasty cold when you first arrived yesterday morning. And now you say the cold is gone?"

"It certainly was last night, and Caryll was just fine this morning," Hartiswoode said, sounding defensive. "She felt well enough to take a lie-down at the beach, actually."

"Have you seen her since then?" Roarke asked.

Hartiswoode, about to reply, snapped his mouth shut when the inner-foyer door opened and Leslie came in, supporting a teenage girl whose skin was so red even Roarke was alarmed. The girl clearly wasn't able to walk without Leslie's help. "Caryll!" Hartiswoode cried. "Are you all right?"

The girl's head shot up and she gaped at him with plaintive eyes. "Godda thunburn onna beat'th," she slurred thickly. "Tho bad I can'even walk. My tongue'th thwowen wike a bawoon, an'it tathe'th like my mouth'th fuwwa fwowerth. I think ith that thing you got there, Dad. Thith burn'th gonna make me thick."

"What?" Hartiswoode blurted in horror.

"She says she got a sunburn on the beach, as you can see, and her tongue's swollen, very badly," Leslie translated. "And she says her mouth tastes like it's full of flowers."

"Side effects," Veronica announced with self-satisfaction. "There, you see?"

Hartiswoode glared at her. "Mrs. Lincoln," he said with precise enunciation, "no one on earth likes a person who takes such pleasure in saying 'I told you so'."

"Father, do we have anything that can help with Caryll's burn?" Leslie asked. "It's not her fault nor her father's that this happened…I think this falls under 'mitigating circumstances'. And it really is the worst sunburn I've ever seen."

"Obviously the drawbacks outweigh the benefits," Arthur commented, not without sympathy. "Shame."

"I have something that will ease the burn greatly," Roarke said. "If you'll all excuse me for just one moment…" He arose and hurried out of the room toward the kitchen.

"Well," Veronica said, zeroing in on Leslie. "My husband and I were just here to tell Mr. Roarke we decided not to sue, since my bite didn't break the skin."

"I see," said Leslie, carefully hiding her immense relief. "Well, we appreciate that."

"What bit you?" Hartiswoode asked.

Arthur and Veronica looked at each other; then Arthur cleared his throat and leaned in Hartiswoode's direction. "Um…tell me something, have you seen anything…uh, strange on this island since you got here?"

"Well, this flower for one," Hartiswoode said, eyeing him oddly.

"Not so much flora as fauna," Arthur said, flicking a glance in Leslie's direction.

Hartiswoode shrugged. "To tell you the truth, we weren't really looking at much beyond the plant life. Why do you ask?"

"I tell you, that thing you're holding isn't the only peculiar life form on this island. That bite you see on my wife's leg comes from a centaur."

Leslie watched while Hartiswoode peered at him in squint-eyed curiosity, as if trying to assess Arthur for sanity; then he made a perplexed face and looked away. "If you say so."

"Thentaurth aren'd reaw," said Caryll incredulously.

"That's what we thought, too," Veronica said, "but no lie, the thing bit me. The evidence is right here." She pointed emphatically to the teeth marks.

Roarke came back just in time to see her do this. "I have something to ease any pain you may be feeling from that bite, Mrs. Lincoln," he offered.

"No thank you, the doctor at the island hospital gave me something," Veronica said, a little disdainful. She watched dubiously while Roarke handed Caryll a small vial and told her to drink the whole thing straight down in one gulp. While Caryll followed his instructions, Roarke resumed his seat behind the desk.

Before he could speak, though, Hartiswoode said, "Mr. Roarke, that bite on her leg…they say a centaur gave it to her. Looks like a plain old human bite to me, though."

Roarke regarded him thoughtfully, then smiled a little. "If a flower that cures colds, albeit with side effects, is possible here, then why not a centaur, Mr. Hartiswoode?"

Hartiswoode blinked, then considered this. "You know, perhaps you're right."

Caryll let out a deep sigh then and smiled gratefully at Roarke. "Thank goodness, I feel much better now. My tongue's back to normal and that flowery taste is gone. Thank you so much, Mr. Roarke. What about the sunburn?"

"That will fade gradually throughout the day," Roarke assured her. "What of the cold you had when you first arrived here yesterday?"

"That's gone," Caryll said, looking a little surprised. "I mean, it didn't come back or anything. It's just that…well, I'm not sure the side effects are worth it."

Hartiswoode frowned. "I won't give up," he muttered. "There must be a way to isolate the substance in this plant that cures colds. Mr. Roarke, might you have a lab somewhere I could borrow for the day?"

"You aren't really going to let him work on that," Veronica exclaimed. "He'll have to test it over and over again, and one weekend is hardly enough time to give that flower a fair trial. It's going to be years before he can market his cure, if ever."

"But I have something to work with," Hartiswoode fired back indignantly. "I must say, I'm glad I don't work with you. If you belittle all your colleagues' efforts as you're doing mine, I feel very sorry indeed for them." He gestured at Caryll, who smiled sheepishly at Roarke and Leslie before following him out.

Arthur glanced at Veronica, sighed, and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Is this what you meant by serendipity?" he wanted to know.

Leslie glanced at her father, who winked surreptitiously at her and then addressed Arthur. "Let me put it this way. Would you ever have thought of trying to find a cure for any ailment in a flower?"

When Arthur hesitated, Veronica walked right into the opening by snapping, "Certainly not! Especially not one that looked as—as unearthly as that one!"

"Indeed. And there you have it," Roarke said simply.

"Look for possibilities in unexpected places," Leslie put in. "That's all there is to it."

Veronica made a scoffing noise, but Arthur looked very thoughtful. "Hmm," he mumbled, almost inaudibly. "Well…all right then, thank you, Mr. Roarke…you've given me some food for thought. Come on, Veronica, we shouldn't leave Sylvia too long." He nudged his wife, who was now gawking at him as though he'd betrayed her.

"Arthur, have you completely lost your mind?" she demanded, even as she rose and followed him out the door. "You know perfectly well that random factors…" The door closed on the rest of her words, to Leslie's relief.

"You might have one convert," she remarked, "but I think Veronica Lincoln's gonna be an especially tough nut to crack."

Roarke just smiled. "Time will tell. Now suppose you give Christian a call and invite him for lunch; I believe Mariki will have it ready now."

After the noon meal Christian accompanied Leslie to Paloma Esperanza's bungalow to let the actress know that he'd taken care of the bug in her computer. She was delighted to hear it, and came along with them on the walk to his office to pick up the laptop. "You managed it so fast!" Paloma remarked to Christian, impressed. "I didn't think I'd see it again for at least a week."

Christian grinned. "That's one of my specialties," he said. "I generally leave the hardware repairs to my specialists, and I stick with the software and programming aspects, although I can repair and build computers as well."

"You sound like a computer genius," Paloma said, and he shrugged, looking pleased. She winked at Leslie. "I've envied you for a while now, to tell you the truth, Leslie. But I might not have to anymore."

"How come?" Leslie asked curiously.

"I think I've found someone," Paloma confided, eyes bright. "Of course it's early days yet, but it looks promising, and…" Her voice trailed off and she stopped short to stare; Leslie and Christian followed her gaze and saw Sylvia Lincoln and her father chasing after what looked like small green rats running around on two legs. "What's going on over there?"

"And in the town square too!" Christian said, staring at Leslie now.

"Well, geez, heck if I know," Leslie said, wondering why he seemed to expect her to know everything the second she saw it. Her voice, raised slightly with a touch of impatience lacing it, caught Sylvia's attention and she sprinted over to them.

"How did you get those little elves to come visit us, Mrs. Enstad?" she cried delightedly. "They're so cute! I even got to talk to them, but they're a little leery of my father, and they won't even look at my mother. If we even mention her they put their noses in the air. But I think they're adorable!"

Leslie grinned. "Elves, huh? If they hear you telling them you think they're adorable, they'll come over and bite you. Literally."

"I think we've had more than enough bites around here for a weekend," said Veronica Lincoln's sour voice from behind them. "I suggest, Mrs. Enstad, that you call off those trained hamsters, or whatever little animals you're disguising there, and stop perpetuating this ridiculous charade you and Roarke are trying so hard to pull off."

"There she is!" squealed a tiny, high-pitched voice a few feet away.

"Time to make ourselves scarce," announced another one that reminded Leslie of the Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz, and she looked around just in time to see the elves vanish. They fled so fast that she wasn't entirely sure she knew where they'd gone.

"And you can turn off the tape player, or whatever you've recorded those little voices on, too," Veronica added stridently.

"They're not hamsters, Mother!" Sylvia yelled, exasperated. "Why can't you stop being so pragmatic and so…so…pedantic, just once in your life!"

"I can't believe I saw them," Paloma said in wonder. "That little girl's right, they were cute! Do you think they'll come back?"

"Not with my mother around," Sylvia griped, looking thoroughly disgusted. "If we could get away from her, maybe they'll agree to come back. But you have to believe in them."

"I hope you and Roarke don't decide to conjure up Santa Claus or Ichabod Crane," Veronica snipped at Leslie. "Really, the two of you should advertise a fantasyland for children, not a tropical paradise for adults."

Christian gave the woman a sharp look and pointed out with an edge to his voice, "I may be repeating something someone else has told you, but I think it could use saying again. This island, madam, is called Fantasy Island for a reason. If you have a problem with it, feel free to cut short your vacation and go home."

"Well," Veronica began, then squinted at him and suddenly recognized him. "Huh, you're that prince, aren't you, the one from that tiny little Scandinavian country. I'm not even going to bother trying to pronounce it. If you're going to keep up the charade with Roarke's daughter here to continue to hold your country in the spotlight, like you did when you two got married—"

"Mother, shut up," groaned Sylvia, turning brilliant crimson.

Christian's voice grated. "I married Leslie because I love her. If you knew anything about me at all, you'd remember that I shun publicity, rather than seek it out. Love and no more than that, lady—that's why I married her. I'll say it again: L-O-V-E. Love. Does that concept register with you, or do you have as little belief in that as in any other item you can't actually wrap your hands around?"

Veronica stared at him; Leslie smiled wryly to herself, noticing that Paloma wore almost the same startled, faintly intimidated expression that Veronica did. After a moment the latter woman spluttered, "Oh, for Pete's sake…of course I know love exists. But even love has to follow some rules. Now take a look here." She gestured through the windows of Christian's nearby office, where they could see Damian Mullawney loitering in front of the receptionist's desk talking to Darius Langford. "I overheard Miss Esperanza here talking to you about thinking she's found someone. Of course it must be Mr. Mullawney there; after all, they're both actors, and they know each other so well, having worked together on an old television show. So they'll have plenty of common ground to build a relationship on. You've probably got at least one intra-office romance as well—again, common ground in an interest in computers. And my husband and I share the same interest in science and in eradicating terrible diseases, so of course we agreed that we were compatible, and therefore we were married. You see?"

Christian and Leslie looked at each other in astonishment; then Leslie peered at Paloma. "She's right, you did mention thinking you've found someone…so is it Damian?"

Paloma had been eyeing the oblivious Veronica with a very peculiar look indeed; now she snorted, then broke into laughter and shook her head. "Good grief, no. Damian and I've known each other forever. Way too long. We just never got that spark, and it was the same way between me and Mason Chen. No, actually, I had dinner with Darius last evening, and he's such a gentleman, and so charming. He's fascinating too. He was full of funny stories about his years in the Air Force. And he was telling me how much fun it is working for you, Your Highness. He says you must have the best rapport with your employees of any boss anywhere on earth."

Christian chuckled. "I think the 'fun' was unintentional, but I'm glad he enjoys his job so much. I think of him as a friend, and he's a damned hard worker too. Very dedicated. So you two have an interest in each other?"

Paloma nodded, then speared Veronica with a glare. "What you don't seem to understand is that it takes more than having something significant in common to get a relationship off the ground. But since you apparently got married solely because you and your husband are both in the same professional field, I'm sure you wouldn't understand that." She glanced apologetically at Christian and Leslie. "Excuse me, Leslie and Your Highness." They nodded, and she strode toward the office.

"Impossible," Veronica said finally, gaping after her for a long moment before turning to Christian and Leslie. "They have nothing in common."

"Just because they don't work in the same profession doesn't mean they have nothing in common," Christian said. "You certainly have a strange view of what makes a relationship work. Maybe you'd better take a good, hard look at your own marriage. Well, my Rose, are you coming with me? I need to get Ms. Esperanza's laptop for her."

"Sure," said Leslie, and started to follow him; but Veronica stopped her and she ended up waving him on ahead. "I'll catch up, my love." To Veronica she said, "Did you want something?"

"What holds you two together, anyway?" Veronica wanted to know, now looking genuinely curious rather than critical. "I mean, look at you—the two of you have nothing at all in common. He's a prince and he's used to the best of everything, and probably takes being wealthy and renowned for granted. And you—you're a commoner, an orphaned middle-class all-American kid who benefited from the unusual charity of a man known all over the world for the cloud of mystery that surrounds him. How could you and a prince find any way to connect?"

Leslie regarded her for a long twenty seconds or so, before frowning slightly. "It's a very long story, Mrs. Lincoln. But one thing I can tell you is that Christian was always looking for an escape from his relentless notoriety. He was born famous, and it drives him nuts most of the time. Ideally he wanted someone who'd never heard of him, but failing that, he hoped for someone who wasn't hung up on the fact of his royal status. And yes, I was an orphaned, middle-class American girl, but Father took me in and raised me, fulfilling my mother's fantasy the way he'd promised. He deals with all sorts of people, and I got used to meeting everybody over the years—from blue-collar workers to Wall Street billionaires, maids and janitors to presidents and monarchs. I very quickly stopped being impressed by fabulous wealth and social standing, and I think Christian sensed it."

"But you still have nothing in common," Veronica protested.

"Don't we?" Leslie asked with a tiny smile. "You're not looking deep enough, Mrs. Lincoln. Sure, the prince was looking for a commoner, even if it wasn't necessarily the other way around. But that by itself would never have been enough to sustain a relationship between us. I'll never forget our first date. Christian took me out to dinner at the pond restaurant a few days after we met, and we started asking some of the usual mundane questions about each other…and then somehow the conversation just took off. The more we talked, the more we found out we had in common. No, not the prince versus the commoner. It was the inner stuff: our ideas about raising kids, likes and dislikes, hobbies and pet peeves, all sorts of things. We talked so much the restaurant started closing around us." She grinned, then focused on Veronica. "Surface things don't really mean that much in the end. As the old saying goes, it's what's inside that counts. Not only did Christian and I see eye to eye on all kinds of stuff, I discovered that he's a genuinely nice person, down-to-earth and friendly and personable. He came across as a regular human being, not some snobby, stuffy royal who couldn't be bothered with the lowly subject." She shrugged. "We connected on so many levels, it stopped mattering that he was born royal and I wasn't. He was willing to give up being a prince in order to be my husband, and I would probably have moved to his home country with him, except he beat me to the punch by offering to move here."

"Good Lord," mumbled Veronica, clearly overwhelmed.

Leslie smiled again. "That's what love is, Mrs. Lincoln. At least, that's one example of what love is. It helps if there's a mutual physical attraction too; otherwise what you've got is one heck of a close friend, which is nothing to sneeze at either. Long story short, love's a lot more than having a profession in common." She waited, but when Veronica seemed speechless, she smiled a little once more and offered, "Excuse me." Veronica nodded dumbly, and Leslie left her standing in the square.