last—time, before the Search Engine.
There was a sudden movement, halfway up, right behind the boiler. Something emerged, a little like a head, a little like a shadow.
"You comin' up?" The voice rolled down to me like syrup, with an afterbite of cheap bourbon.
A ladder made from what looked like human thighbones rattled down in its wake. Reluctantly, I started to climb.
"I need to find something," I shouted when I was nearly at the top.
"Don't they all!" screamed the shadow. Inside the great cylindrical boiler, something crashed like an ocean liner hitting an iceberg.
The Search Engine started to move again, quickly, all at once. The ladder was hurled backwards; grimly I clung on, crawling hand-over-hand along the last few rungs until something like a claw grabbed my shoulder and hauled me inside the cab.
The thermometer dangling outside the cab read ten degrees shy of absolute zero. I watched as a tiny bird made from cosmic string perched briefly on the bracket before darting off into the void. Inside the cab it was hot as a furnace.
The driver turned to me and spoke with something like a mouth.
"So, pilgrim, what ya searchin' for?"
I shivered. If I'd stuck the thermometer into that voice the mercury would have dropped another six degrees.
I held up the hat.
"I need to know where this came from," I said, working hard to keep my voice level. I am a professional, after all.
The driver threw me something like a grin and bore down on a lever the size of a small crane. The Search Engine barrelled left, towards a nearby darkness.
"That everything ya want to know, pilgrim?" shouted the driver, standing suddenly tall on something like legs. With a mighty inhalation the Search Engine plunged into the blackness of the Tunnel of All Ends.
Okay, so I'd seen the dame before. We went back a long way, she and I. Not as far as the coffee-machine, and she couldn't even compete with the filing cabinet. But it was a long way, all the same.
It was seven years ago she first walked into my office. Same curves, different sweater. She must have seen the look on my face because the first thing she'd done was flash me the ring on her left hand, warning me off. But she'd also flashed me her legs when she sat down. And all through the conversation her eyes had bored into mine. Sometimes you just know, you know?
The case had been simple enough. Her husband, who'd spent most of their marriage using her as a punching bag, had gotten himself locked away for his part in one of the biggest vault heists this side of the River Lethe. I knew his gang—everyone in the business did. They'd knocked off a score of places before finally coming unstuck at the Silverlode. The Silverlode is just the other side of the street from the Still Point of the Turning World, which is why they wanted to get into it so bad. A haul from the Silverlode is a good enough haul, but nobody's ever broken their way into the S.P.T.W.—I mean nobody . This gang figured if they could break into the Silverlode, maybe they could tunnel their way across the street into the S.P.T.W. Nobody knows what they might have come out with if they'd succeeded but one thing's for certain, they'd have been treated like gods. Well, maybe not gods. Titans, at the very least.
They didn't even make it as far as the end of the street.
All these places are on the Street of Fools and there's not many get past a Fool. No sooner had Cerberus started barking (and barking, and barking) than the tall guy who puts down pennies on the sidewalk sniffed them out and called down the thunder-birds. After that, they practically handed themselves in. Cerberus you probably know, but there's not many have heard of the guy with the pennies. I'll tell you about him another time; suffice it to say, if you ever see a penny lying on the sidewalk, my advice is to ignore the old rhyme and cross to the other side of the street. Preferably move to another town. Don't, whatever you do, pick it up.
But I was
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