Before Simon could formulate a plea for his life Sharkes asked in a conversational tone, “By the way, has it occurred to you to use sorcery to get me to take my hand off your throat? You should answer truthfully and not leave anything out. They taught me to detect liars in law school. My aversion to being lied to predates law school though, and despite my gentle exterior I sometimes get upset. I don’t like people who evade or ignore my questions either.”

The hand loosened a miniscule amount. Simon gasped out, “Well I couldn’t. You saw how sick I looked. Can’t do any more sorcery.”

Sharkes asked in a tone of casual curiosity, “So you overestimated the amount of sorcery you could do in a short period of time?”

To save wear and tear on his sore throat, Simon tried to answer as briefly as possible. He didn’t dare lie or withhold anything. “Didn’t think I’d need to. Didn’t think I was doing anything bad until you explained. Sorry.”

The lawyer said judiciously. “Well, that does work in your favor. As do your limitations, though you might not have thought so.”

The lawyer turned his head in a direction Simon could not see. “Alfred, I’m going to take my hand off his neck now, but don’t shoot him. Code Constantinople. You can go now.”

For an instant Simon wondered what the point of this overcomplicated and unnecessary bluff was, since Sharkes literally had the upper hand.

Then he heard a voice from behind him. “Are you sure boss? Because that was weird.”

Sharkes replied, “Yes I’m sure. Go now.”

Simon heard the sounds of footsteps behind him, and a door closing. He started to tremble at the thought of how close death had been, but it hurt his neck so he managed to still himself.

Then Sharkes let go of his neck. Simon breathed greedily, although his throat was still sore. He had never before appreciated how wonderful air was.

Sharkes said, “Perhaps you should rest a few minutes before you go. You don’t have to come back unless I call you.”

Simon said humbly, “Yes sir.”

He did as instructed. After a few minutes his various aches and pains had dulled somewhat. Although Sharkes had quietly gone back to work at his desk, something about that was feeling steadily more ominous.

He managed to get to his feet, and they were only a little shaky. He set about escaping from the office and the building and nobody stopped him.

The bus shelter was made of transparent plastic and did not provide much shade. The heat did not go well with his headache. Or perhaps it did, but he didn’t like the way they worked harmoniously to make him feel miserable.

The bus was hot and crowded as well.

Simon was very glad to get home and nurse his various aches and pains. The beer did not really help, but the shower did. He managed to get to sleep that night. There were no dreams, maybe Loki had given up on him.

The next day his aches and pains had faded. Life felt almost normal, and he could almost delude himself into thinking the whole thing had been a series of strange dreams.

Not quite though. He had to think, to see what he could do if he hadn’t already screwed things up beyond repair. Or did he? Sharkes might well decide this wasn’t his problem. Why couldn’t Simon do the same? Well, it might not be very heroic to decide humanity wasn’t his responsibility, but he wasn’t a hero. And humanity hadn’t really done much for him. On the other hand he really didn’t want to live on the civil war hellworld timeline. For the first time he tried to deliberately remember the nightmare, to see if he could tell how much older Adam had been. Of course the drugs had aged him some. It could even be within the next few years.

Simon had managed to get a decent nights sleep, and most of his headache was gone. On the other hand, a couple of people noticed his neck was stiff and asked him if he was OK. He said he was, not wanting to either tell the truth about his injury or take the trouble to tell a consistent lie. He managed to do his job with half his brain while thinking about bigger issues with the other half.

In theory he should be willing to sacrifice himself for even a small chance of helping billions of people. In practice there was no point in kidding himself, he just didn’t feel that way. Maybe he could work himself up to feeling guilty about it, but he knew he wasn’t going to go to jail in an almost certainly doomed effort to kill Adam, and he wasn’t quite sure success would even solve the problem anyway. It might leave them on a similar timeline with a dead Adam.

What would that take? Loki hadn’t told him that much, but then he hadn’t asked. That would be a good idea.

The idea that a hundred or so elders were sent through an unupgraded portal to lay the ground for a species to be contacted by the Eightfold was common. The idea that a smaller subgroup was desperate to hurry that contact, perhaps because of injuries sustained by travelling through an unupgraded portal to a world with no receiving portal, was also featured in several stories. Simon wished he could remember all of them.

The he thought of The Leonid Saga. Some of the elders had been injured passing through the portal, more from the green alliance than the blue alliance. If the Leonids were openly contacted a receiving portal could be built, and healers could come from all over the Eightfold to help the elders who were not sure they would survive a few hundred years until contact occurred in the normal way.

But there would probably be a price. Beings would come from all over the Eightfold and observe what had been done, study the history of the place and read the minds of some of the beings involved. If the species had demonstratably benefitted from the contact and it had been done legally, the firstcomers would be respected leaders of a new world. If not, they might gain little or nothing from the pains they had undergone and the risks they had taken.

Or was that wrong, in whole or in part? He only knew what he had read in various Eightfold media. Were the Eightfold truly forced to reveal themselves accurately to civilizations in such fiction, by their ancient traditions and the River? Or was the most critical part of the equation still hidden?

All Simon could think of is talking to Loki again, asking straight out what he could do. As the workday was ending he decided his distraction hadn’t been too evident, because he had only had a couple of questions about the evident stiffness of his neck.