The epidemic faded. Slowly the Reapers returned home – some not so slowly, as the Branches they had been sent to pushed them out; suddenly they were too expensive to feed and house, or too foreign to tolerate. Portals which had been closed to them, to keep them from leaving, were flung open to send them away; if not home, at least elsewhere. Mister Spears, from his imposing new office on London's upper floors, directed the London Lab to seal those portals.

Ten Hagen spoke to Cole, over an excellent ale at the Scythe and Skull. "Is he issuing commands you can't cover? You know you can protest to Madame."

"Not a problem. I'm not a nice person – Franklin handles all the 'nice' for the Lab. People are careful not to anger him, because then I get involved. If Spears says East Weaselpants has dumped Les' girlfriend's team over the border and told them to start walking, then I am happy to disconnect their long-distance portal from the network."

"But if they are isolationists anyway, why should they care?"

"Asshole tax. They're not living in a vacuum any more, and word spreads rapidly. Supplies cuts them off. Maintenance pulls out. Admin stops completing and filing their paperwork. Scythes starts billing for repairs. The Cafeteria shuts down for renovations. Sooner or later, Blithering-Up-the-Road reports to Uriel that they are picking up extra Reaps and Reapers because there's a problem next door. Suddenly East Weaselpants is under new management, one that understands its responsibilities to the Realm. These days, mistreatment of one Division's personnel is mistreatment of all personnel. The Divisions are now members of a community. Don't know if you remember this, but it's why Humphries started the Thursday Nights at the Scythe and Skull; to get people to talk to people they'd not otherwise meet."

Ten Hagen laughed, a dry, rasping sound. "Labor unions. By the Highest, Alan created a labor union right under Spears' nose. Just by inviting everybody to come in, work together, help each other out. Eric probably told him about the Miner's Federation sometime last century. All you need is a boss like Spears to condemn a defender like Alan. Instant solidarity."

"Social time bomb, activated by an event. Clever. We talked about that sort of thing once, here on a Thursday night, Slingby and a group of us Researchers, with Humphries listening in. Dangerous little man. I notice Gather Master Hobart's taken over Thursday Nights duty. Gonna be a Gather this year?"

"Maybe next year. The Angels don't want to shut down the Academy hospital or move it off the Gather grounds. The Academy doesn't either. The school is our most vulnerable site, so the Angelic presence is important. The original tents are being replaced with permanent structures. The Academy proposes to extend their campus to the north. They plan to build a better gymnasium and two training fields with bleacher seating. Beyond that will be the new grounds for the Gather. They want to keep the same dates, so graduates and Divisions can meet in a job fair. That shuts up the conservatives who think the whole Gather idea is far too much like fun and shouldn't be allowed. Other Academies are showing interest in having their own events. D'Acres and Brock are encouraging Hobart to help them plan. Peabody is stepping up to let Brock take a few classes in architecture from Maintenance. They want him to write a book on London's office defenses."

"I hear D'Acres is a good man."

"Very good. London's running as it should. He's respected and well liked. He's given several long-deserved promotions. Spears refused to promote, partly out of miserliness, but mostly to keep his best people from advancing. Result was stagnation. Now the older teams can move up to management of smaller Branches and their apprentices can succeed to their desks. Alan's missed, of course. Eric also, even though he was getting a little crazy himself."

"How are you doing at Alan's desk?"

"Not too badly. I have no idea how he survived that workload with Spears running off all his aides. I've recruited a bunch of returning Reapers who find their normal city duties unfulfilling after the epidemic and battlefronts. There are eight of us now, if you count Bradshaw who's half-Admin, and Knox who comes in to report on employee concerns weekly. Eric's newspapers still arrive, and we do our best with them, but I think we're all too inexperienced to draw conclusions like he did."

"Wait for an elder Senior to show up on the Injured list?"

"That's the idea. Somebody with a long history to look back on. Avram won't do it. Says it's too depressing."

Cole cackled. "Listen. You need to get another Reaper into the Academy to rescue all the students like us. The ones with bad grades in the Reaping classes. Bad combat skills. Bad eyes. Unappreciated non-Reaping talents. The instructors who would have culled us both are still there."

Sam Terry put down his glass. "Working on it. Classes will resume in June. They need an instructor for Advanced Retrievals. We've got an expert who's been serving as a Visiting Lecturer. They also need Combat and Technique instructors, which we can supply, along with a number of Admins with practical wartime skills to teach. In the meantime we're just waiting for the Ethics Department to violate a copyright they don't know exists. When they do, and when we point that out, we'll put Avram in there to replace whoever they blame it on. Once they figure out he can also lecture in Inter-Realm Relations and Exceptional Conditions, they'll think they got the better of the deal."

"Listen, if he agrees to give a talk on the Retreat From Moscow, let me know? I'd like to attend that one."

"I'll tell him. We've moved several very good people into Personnel part-time, just so Avram can teach without working double shifts like Alan did. They are happy, Avram's happy, the Academy has no inkling yet of how much they are going to love him, and troubled students will have another professor who will listen."

"That's great, Sam. I want to start bringing in some talented trainees, a couple each year if any qualify. Lovers of maths and physics. Ordinarily I would talk to Slingby, who told me we have twenty years before the Human Realm explodes again. Who do I talk to now?"

"Mainwaring, the Visiting Lecturer. In June, I'm in for basic scythe handling, which gives me access to the new recruits. Probably Roberts, Quirke, and Harmon by October, teaching combat to the upperclassmen. Once we have Avram installed, check with him occasionally. You'll have some competition. Scythes is recruiting too."

"They can have all the born mechanics. I need some theoreticians. No egotists. Regardless of how brilliant they are, they have to be able to work well with others. Probably we'll be exchanging apprentices with Scythes and the Scientific subdivisions over the years, as they all decide what interests them most."

Spears barely missed a day. Or maybe it was a week; he was a little foggy on that. At first he slept too well and could not rise, and there were discussions round his bed which kept him half-awake and rather confused until they finally went away.

He was given a new, larger office. Not on the fifth floor anymore, but that did not matter. It was very bright and bare. His maps were provided, and all his communication devices. Nothing concerning the Branch was included. Somebody else was seeing to all that, he was told; that's not important; the worldwide Reaping of the Pandemic was his to manage. All Reapers were his Reapers. Dealing with faceless masses of Reapers was much, much easier than dealing with individuals, each with his or her own ideas, demands and arguments. During the day, the Aide must stay at his side because he occasionally stumbled or fumbled.

The Lists came in; the Reapers were dispatched; souls were gathered and dealt with properly. He experimented with the most efficient use of his troops, and discovered on his own that overworking them was suboptimal. (Somebody had told him that before, but he preferred to believe his own data.) His Aide kept him to a strict schedule, over shorter hours than before. His headaches had eased.

Twice each day (thirteen hundred, eighteen hundred), when his neck and shoulders began to tighten up, he would be escorted to a small but select Cafeteria and encouraged to choose from a rather more extensive display than he was used to. His Aide presented tiffin midmorning and midafternoon. At first these interruptions angered him. He learned quickly that the doctors disapproved of anger, while the Aide was indifferent. A little more slowly, he realized that these interruptions were a chance to sit back and review his work or rest his eyes. In the evening he returned to his bedroom – he was no longer in Housing, and he missed that, but this was necessary, they said sternly. He had been ill. He needed to be where his health could be monitored and emergencies dealt with immediately.

They asked him how he felt about this or that. He mostly did not feel anything but a desire to get back to his work. Also, speech was difficult. His tongue stumbled. Words perched just out of reach and flew away when he needed them. Those sessions left everyone equally frustrated and were discontinued.

There was a visitor almost every night. She spoke quietly of things that had no meaning. She once had tried to come close but he had automatically moved away. She seemed sad sometimes. Sometimes she shouted and cried. He wondered why she visited if it made her unhappy. People were odd and he did not understand them very well.

There was some negotiation. Whenever his Aide broke his concentration, he went to the windows until he was urged away. It distressed his caretakers – he was a jumper, is he trying again? He told them his pigeons could not find him. They did not understand. He managed to sneak a slice of bread from his midday meal – not the best fare for them, but all he had – and he learned that the windows set off alarms if he tried to open them. There was a great fuss. He repeated very carefully to many upset people that he had to open the window. There was much argument between all the people until a sharp voice intervened – did he not know that voice from somewhere? He could not recall – and he was given a small parcel of seeds. While they all watched, he went to a window, waited while the alarm was disconnected, raised it a very few inches, sprinkled seed on the outside sill, and closed the window quickly. He explained how important it was to keep the window closed, for if a bird got inside it might injure itself in panic before it could be put back outside. In three minutes the first pigeon arrived. In five minutes, seven more had come to clean off the sill. All were in good condition. He relaxed, returned to his desk, and let all the bothersome people chatter while he reviewed his troop dispositions for the next day. He always proofed his work at least twice, for he knew that his brain was foggy at the edges. The Aide proofed them as well. Mistakes were rare and usually involved spelling or omitted words.

Some significant time later, he was visited by a tall grey woman. Every instinct sprang to attention in recognition of the genus Superior Officer. She asked questions he did not understand and could not answer. She said rather a lot which did not make any impression except to worry him, and went away unsatisfied. Over the next week the heavy rubbery feeling in his face faded and his mind began to venture beyond his desk and maps and windowsill. Memories began to surface.

He began to have hectic, brightly colored dreams that left him wearier than mere sleeplessness. The people, no, the Doctors who muttered in the background, argued for a bit. The dreams became quiet things that were not remembered after waking. He managed to retain some of the words the doctors said. They were medicating him. They'd tried something new which didn't work as planned, then gone back to the previous treatment. They were beginning to reduce dosages. Somebody had once told him about medicines given by Judicial and Medical never let them team up against you. It had been very important at the time.

The work was the important thing now. Do the work, eat the food, review the Lists and maps, assign his Reapers accordingly; be careful and obedient; let his Aide proof his work; and…and…the pills. Find ways to avoid swallowing the pills and see if his memory sharpened? No. They would notice disobedience, and increase dosage. They were doing what he wanted, weaning him off the drugs. Some drugs could not be abruptly discontinued – the third doctor said that. Why he was on the drugs? Obviously he had broken down. Mental breaks were not unknown among Reapers. Not many were treated for it, even if they were found alive. So his work must be important, because here he was, being fed and tended rather than punished or abandoned. Or perhaps he had volunteered for a new experimental treatment?

The next day he started a list of memory fragments. Then he added his deductions and hid it at the back of a drawer. He would read it every morning. If he had forgotten it all, then they were upping his dosages; if he had memories to add, they were still decreasing them. If he forgot that the paper existed, then all he could do was work. But if he remembered enough, then escape might be possible. If escape was even desirable. Insufficient data. Someone else had once complained of insufficient data. The memory fled, but not before he had written down gather all possible information before making a judgement/decision. Little man/bolo tie.

The epidemic was moving like a battlefront. Once it had killed all who were vulnerable or all who lived, it followed all who had fled. Branches sometimes turned on their borrowed Reapers once the wave had passed, wanting them gone, forgetting or not knowing - that little man, who is he, he said – that there would be a third wave when help would be needed again. The saviors became unwelcome foreigners with dangerous philosophies. Spears made a point of moving his Reapers forward with the spreading disease, but once or twice when he allowed a group to rest before redeployment, the host Branches kicked them out.

Mistreatment could not be allowed. There was someone who could punish that in memorable ways. He gave himself quite the headache trying to remember. His evening visitor asked what disturbed him. He managed talking was so difficult, words darted away like little fishes to tell her his problem. She looked thoughtful, laughed, helped him write a letter. The next evening he was quite pleased to tell her that a reply had arrived; that he remembered writing the letter. The fog was retreating. He asked about the little man. She said he was gone, and became quiet when he responded that the loss was regrettable.

One day he woke feeling much better. Sharper. At his desk he quickly reviewed his previous week's work and was relieved to find it well done. At lunch he had an appetite. He asked his Aide if this was not a most unusually luxurious sort of Cafeteria and understood at last that he was on an Upper floor. He waited to return to his desk to think that one over. That night he paid attention – yes – definitely he crossed through a portal. His bedroom was in an Infirmary. Was the red-haired visitor a nurse? But the nurses were strictly confined to gray and white uniforms; this person was extravagant…unconventional…free…

Beautiful…

He peered at her until she asked if his eyes were bothering him. Always take care of your glasses.

"Grell?"

That night they both wept as his memories cascaded through his helpless head.