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unit. She wondered if she imagined the reluctance in his reply; "If you say so."
The paralysis that had held her thoughts broke, and ideas swarmed frantically in the darkness in the back of her mind; I didn't know Praxceles could wig out, and D'Artagnan, and What have I done? -- and one very clear thought that suddenly displaced the others and presented itself for consideration: This could be fun.
"Well, Pra -- D'Artagnan, what story did you read first?"
"Your Majesty, I began my reading with the volume, The Road to Oz, by the Honorable L. Frank Baum, Royal Historian of Oz..."
His name was Daffyd Westermach, Cia, and you will not have heard of him, although he was reckoned a powerful man in his time, more powerful by far than Maggie Archer. He was the head of DataWeb Security, and it is likely that there were only three or four others on Earth with more real power than he; Benai Kerreka, and Georges Mordreaux, and a couple others; but of those top several names on the governmental lists, only Westermach's was hated.
He was hated because of the job he held. Any person in the job would have been hated. He hunted webslingers, and usually he caught them, and when he did he ripped out their inskins. Sometimes the webslingers had entire Praxcelis units installed inskin; and when their Praxceles were removed, they usually died.
You must understand this; the webslingers of that time were Robin Hoods, they were heroes.
You must understand this, also; Daffyd Westermach thought himself a good man.
Tuesday of the week following D'Artagnan's assumption of his new identity, he met children for the first time. They were named Tia and Mark, and they were the great-grandchildren of Queen Anne Maggie. They were shorter than the Queen, and less massive; they had smoother skin, and they were much louder. All of this was in accord with the data that D'Artagnan had accumulated through books; he was pleased to see that his data sources were accurate.
They asked many questions -- did Gramma really put a sheet on you? -- which made Maggie blush. When Praxcelis addressed the Queen as Your Majesty the children stared, and then demanded to be allowed to play the game too. While Maggie was still floundering, trying to explain to the children something they understood quite immediately, D'Artagnan interposed himself smoothly. "Lady Tia, Squire Mark, I assign you the following dangerous mission; you shall make a foray to the library, and return bearing volumes of books that shall be copied. Upon your honor as a lady and a gentleman, do not return without the books."
The children stared a moment, and then ran to the library; Maggie simply stared. "D'Artagnan? I thought you couldn't do things like that -- give orders to the children -- or anything, without orders from your Queen."
"Queen Anne Maggie, I have exercised what is known as initiative, a trait highly thought of in the King's Musketeers. Clearly, as one of the King's Musketeers I outrank a page and a lady-in-waiting."
In the darkness that night, while Tia and her younger brother lay cuddled together in front of the fire, D'Artagnan told them a story. The firelight bloodied the room, turned Miss Kitty, in Mark's grasp, the color of the sun in the instant it sets; her eyes, locked on the monitor, glowed.
Maggie sat in her rocking chair, half asleep, with a heavy quilt pulled up over her legs. Perhaps it was because she wasn't as close to the fireplace tonight; her legs were cold.
"Once upon a time in a faraway land, a widowed gentleman lived in a fine house with his only daughter. He gave his beloved child....'"
The children listened with rapt attention, as Cinderella unfolded.
It was on a Friday morning, late in March, that Maggie burned herself. She was making a pot of tea for breakfast, and, pouring the boiling water into the cup, managed to splash some of the scalding water onto her hand. She jerked and cried out at the contact, and knocked the cup of tea off of the counter....
...at Maggie Archer's first outcry, D'Artagnan flared into full awareness. He froze the story models that he had been running, and analyzed the situation.
While water was still in mid-air, falling towards the ground, D'Artagnan sent his first emergency notice into the dataweb. Before the water had traveled another centimeter downwards, D'Artagnan had evaluated the situation and the possible dangers that might diverge from this point in time; given Her Majesty's medical history, the possibility of stroke could not be discounted in case of extreme shock. D'Artagnan accessed and routed emergency ambulance care towards Maggie's exurban two-story home, on the outskirts of Cincinnati. There was more that needed to be done, that could not be done from here....
For the first time since his construction,