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Trapped in his eternal sleep by his enemies, the evil Wizard of Hyperborea begins to dream... and in his dream, comes to know that he is dreaming, and why. Read the first chapter of this fantasy free before purchasing as a browser readable e-book on CD-ROM from Antelope Publishing. Price $12.95

Chapter Two

Sebastien had a certain fastidiousness of nature that made him uncomfortable when strangers approached him too closely. Mrs. Saason's touch on his forearm burned like acid, and the musty gardenia scent of her perfume made his nose twitch. He found himself leaning backward in his chair to get away from her, but she seemed just as determined to maintain contact. The result was something in the nature of a poorly coordinated gymnastic routine. Sebastien's large, slightly overweight frame hung precariously from the edge of his chair while Mrs. Saason leaned against him like a sailor rolling with the deck in a hurricane.

Realizing the somewhat bizarre elements of the situation, Sebastien decided the time had come to assert himself. "I still have several minutes left of my scheduled time with Dillon, here, Mrs. Saason," he said gruffly. "So perhaps we can just set aside the lemonade and sandwiches for later-"

"And who is so strictly a victim of the clock as all that, Mr. Cato?" Mrs. Saason asked with a negligent wave of her hand. "We have no intention of asking for a discount for time spent in other enjoyments, do we, Dillon?"

"No, Momma," the small bluish boy replied demurely as he chewed on a sandwich. If he was perturbed by the sight of his mother sprawled across the lap of a virtual stranger he gave no sign of it.

"Nevertheless," Sebastien said firmly. He pushed himself back to an erect position. Fortunately for his peace of mind, Mrs. Saason gave way without any really serious resistance until she was very nearly back in her own chair, again.

As she fell away, Sebastien considered making a break for it. But despite her somewhat bizarre behavior, he didn't really have the impression that the small woman was attempting to become unduly familiar. True, she seemed a bit overenthusiastic and determined, but whatever she had in mind, there was no sense of anything really improper in it.

Sebastien recalled having heard that peoples from tropical countries tended to crowd others when engaged in casual conversation, always standing just a few steps too close for typical, reserved Anglos to be entirely comfortable. He wasn't really certain that Mrs. Saason was of that particular ethnic group, but it was as good an explanation for her behavior as anything else he could think of, right then. And he didn't really want her to raise any complications about paying for the session, since he felt he had already more than earned it. So he gathered what was left of his poise and smiled down at the small woman in what he hoped was a friendly but not suggestive manner.

"It's quite a clever little boy you have, there, Mrs. Saason," he told her, then flinched inwardly at the stupid inanity he heard spilling from his own mouth. Fortunately neither Mrs. Saason nor her son seemed even to notice what he had said.

"You know this city well, Mr. Cato?" she asked, leaning away to snatch at a sandwich with some frill greens hanging from its insides.

"Columbine?" Sebastien asked, allowing himself a slight sigh of relief as the woman gave him a moment of breathing room. "Yes, reasonably well, I suppose. I've lived here..."

"Then you are familiar with many of the sights one might see here?" Mrs. Saason asked without giving him a chance to finish.

"Sights? I'm afraid I don't know what..."

"Let it pass," the small woman said with an indifferent shrug. "I was merely thinking - if one such as you were to undertake a certain - task, shall we say, he would have no difficulty in fulfilling it, would he?"

"I'm only here to tutor your son, Mrs. Saason," Cato told her, scratching his cheek with what he insisted to himself was definitely not nervousness. "If you're looking for someone to do something for you, perhaps you should find another-"

"Oh come, now, Mr. Cato," the woman said, shaking her head. The black coils of her thick, shining hair shuddered around her head like restless serpents. "You can't tell me you couldn't use a few extra dollars. And here you are, selling your time to teach ignorant children subjects in which they have no interest, for starvation wages at that."

Sebastien found himself slightly offended at the woman's offhand rejection of his life's work. "Teaching is a respected and honorable profession, madam," he said coolly.

"Of course it is, of course it is," she said soothingly. "The avocation of kings. But it doesn't pay a king's ransom. And who among us could not use some extra money, simply to do some simple research anyone with a basic knowledge of one's community could not fulfill in a few hours' work?"

"What kind of research is this, Mrs. Saason?" Sebastien asked, not because he was interested but simply because his curiosity was prickling him.

"Then you will consider our little commission, Mr. Cato?" the small woman asked with an intensity that made the hair on his forearms rise with apprehension.

"I didn't say that," Sebastien protested. "But surely you can't expect me to say one way or another till I have some idea what you're talking about."

"It is a mere nothing, a simple task any native could fulfill," Mrs. Saason assured him. "We are simply trying to locate someone, that is all. Someone very ... very important to us."

All of a sudden Sebastien had a vivid image of a hypothetical Mr. Saason, terrorized and dominated for years by his aggressive, downright scary wife, heading for the hills and a blissful anonymity somewhere in the city's more sordid neighborhoods. As much as he frowned on a man deserting his wife and children, in this particular case his sympathies were entirely on the side of the absent husband.

"I don't really think..." he began.

"I want you to find my daughter for me, Mr. Cato," the small woman interrupted him. She gave him an intense, toothy look that reminded him, this time, of a shark attempting to smile at a wounded man in a leaky liferaft.

But despite his misgivings, she had managed to strike a chord. A missing husband fleeing from a scary wife was one thing. A kidnapped or runaway girl was something else, again.

He adjusted his weight on the chair and reached out for a sip of somewhat watery lemonade. Dillon continued to work his way through the sandwiches with a single-minded intensity only a boy of that age could display. His mother seemed to have said all she was going to, without prodding. She chewed quietly on her watercress sandwich, carefully pushing the green fragments back between her lips with a small, sharp finger.

Sebastien drained half of the glass of lemonade before he finally turned to Mrs. Saason with a cautious expression. "Your daughter?"

"My twin sister," Dillon spoke up, but he didn't seem very upset about it. Sebastien glanced in his direction. The boy merely looked back at him without blinking.

"We're talking about a fourteen year old girl, here?" he asked.

"Almost fifteen," Dillon corrected him. Sebastien turned to Mrs. Saason, who nodded.

"Have you- forgive my ignorance, but have you told the police?" Sebastien asked.

"The police would be unable to do anything for us, Mr. Cato," the small woman told him flatly.

"Have you talked with them?" Sebastien insisted.

"It would do no good, and might do a great deal of harm," she replied.

"Harm?" Sebastien felt a chill at the base of his spine. "Are we talking about kidnapping, here?"

"Kidnapping?" Mrs. Saason chewed thoughtfully on her sandwich and stared off into space as if the idea had never occurred to her before. But then she shook her head and turned back to Sebastien. "In a manner of speaking, it is a case of kidnapping," she agreed.

"Then I strongly advise you to go to the police immediately," he told her firmly. "They have trained experts who can..."

"Will you at least hear us out, Mr. Cato?" Mrs. Saason pleaded.

Sebastien had long since convinced himself that he should stand up and march out the door, and to perdition with his fee. But his curiosity, always his greatest strength and his greatest weakness, got the best of him. He sighed and settled back into the chair. "Why do you want someone like me to go hunting for your daughter for you, Mrs. Saason?" he asked. "I have no experience at all in that kind of thing. It seems to me..."

"We have our reasons, Mr. Cato, believe me!" the small woman assured him. "But here, let me refresh your drink." She poured him another glass of lemonade and made a grab for another sandwich, apparently at random.

"No one is suggesting that you play private detective, or engage in shootouts with gangsters," she assured him. "We are simply trying to locate a young woman who has become lost. We believe her to be within the confines of this city, which is why we are here at all."

"And this young woman is fourteen? And your twin sister?" He looked to Dillon, who nodded. "Then forgive me, but she shouldn't be hard to find. I don't mean to pry into your personal affairs, but whatever your national background may be, there can't be many people in this area who share it. Forgive me, but your daughter must stand out like a sore thumb, in this town."

Mrs. Saason shrugged in a peculiar way, as if her shoulders were connected oddly. "Well, you see, that is part of the problem," she explained. "We are not certain what my daughter looks like."

Sebastien just blinked at her. "What was she, stolen at birth or something?"

"Not exactly. But you see ... people do change, after all, don't they?"

"Not that much, I'd think," Sebastien protested.

"But yes, certainly," Mrs. Saason nodded emphatically.

Sebastien tried to think this over, but he found he wasn't getting anywhere so finally he gave up. "You expect me to find someone without even knowing what she looks like?"

"Basically, yes."

"At least - what is her name, then?"

"We don't know that, either," the small woman told him regretfully. "Oh, of course we know her real name, but the name she might be using here..." She shrugged.

"Is she trying to hide from you on purpose, then?" Sebastien asked. "Is she a runaway?"

"Not exactly," Mrs. Saason said. "We have every reason to believe she has no idea who she is, or where she has come from. I'm afraid my daughter could be seated directly in front of me and wouldn't have the faintest idea who I am."

Sebastien rubbed his finger vigorously beneath his nose. "You're saying you don't know what this girl looks like, what her name is, and that she doesn't even know who she is herself?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Then good luck, madam." Sebastien set his glass down on the desk and began to rise. "I hope you find your daughter. But frankly, if I were you I wouldn't hold out any great expectations of it. Making bricks without straw is hard enough, but you don't even have any clay!"

"Wait! Will you wait?" Mrs. Saason reached out and caught him by the forearm. He resisted the impulse to pull away from her touch and merely looked down into her anxious, dark eyes.

"It's not as difficult as you're making it sound," the small woman insisted. Sebastien shook his head but sank back down into the chair.

"The way you're describing it, it sounds virtually impossible," he told her.

"But we have a few things in our favor," she said. "For one thing, we have a way to identify her, if only we can find her!"

"And what is that?" Sebastien asked. "Some sort of birthmark?"

The small woman flashed her a toothy smile. "Something a bit more subtle than that. You have heard, perhaps, of the mysterious psychic linkage between twins?"

"You mean like mental telepathy?"

"Something like that, yes."

Sebastien looked suspiciously to Dillon, who merely looked back at him without blinking. "I've heard of it," the older man said slowly. "But I'm not sure I believe in it."

"Fortunately it is one of those things which does not require your belief in order to work," Mrs. Saason told him with her first flash of impatience. "If it did not exist, we would not have been able to track my daughter this far. We are certain that she is in this city. All we need is for someone to locate her specific location. Once we have done that, my son can identify her, even if she is standing in a crowd of thousands."

Sebastien shook his head. "If you can do that, why don't you just- you know, home in on her all by yourself?" he asked. "I mean, if you can track her down this far..."

"One does not use a telescope to study dust motes," Mrs. Saason told him. "My son's sensitivity to his sister is accurate enough in general terms, and in direct person, but it is hardly like a personal radar, so sensitive that it can guide us street by street through a busy city filled with strangers."

Sebastien wasn't sure that was entirely logical, but he let it go for the time being. "Even so," he protested. "We're right back where we started from. How am I supposed to find this young woman if I don't have anything to go on?"

"We do not expect you to be able to do so all by yourself, Mr. Cato," Mrs. Saason assured him. "But with your knowledge of the city, and my son's sensitivity, and my - what few things I can contribute to the cause, we should be able to locate my poor missing daughter easily enough, and restore the poor child to the bosom of her family. For which we will pay you well, I might add."

Sebastien found himself strangely offended. "I'm not thinking of the money, madam," he told her stiffly. "If I could do anything to help a young woman in trouble, I would gladly do it for free. But I don't really see..."

"But you agree to help us, then?" Mrs. Saason asked eagerly.

"Oh, suppose so," Sebastien agreed irritably.

The fifty-six chapter Centaurs in the Earth is enhanced with music and comes on CD-ROM to be viewed off-line on a web browser.

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