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Stories from the Verse
Old Verses New
Chapter 81: Kondor 69
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Chapter 80: Brown 27
Watching Mitchell during the night was even less interesting than Kondor had anticipated. Even with the starlight scope on his natural eye and the cybereye tuned to infrared there wasn't much to see; most of the information came from hearing. Mitchell ate dinner with his wife, watched television, and went to bed early. He didn't even mention the Vorgo, the professor, magic. The high point of the night was when he took out the trash, the warm light from the open door hitting both of Kondor's eyes abruptly.
Krannitz excused himself around eleven, saying that he had to get some sleep as he was taking the show to Tremont the next day. He used a portable phone to call for a cab back to his hotel. Merrick fell asleep in the car a little after midnight. When nothing else happened before two, Kondor woke him and suggested they give up and go home. Mitchell was a dead end. Maybe he took it, maybe he didn't, but sitting out here wasn't going to tell them anything.
Stiff from sitting in the car, Kondor decided to relax in the Jacuzzi briefly before going to bed. He almost fell asleep in the soothing water; again his thoughts had wandered into dreams, dreams of magic and magicians, wizards and wizardry. He slipped in the tub, and startled to wakefulness. Drying off and dressing for bed, he was asleep almost before he had reached it. Something didn't make sense, and even as he slept the problem continued simmering in the back of his mind.
As he ate a quiet breakfast in his room, it came back to him. No one admitted having seen it after the show ended. For the first time it started to fit.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eight other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #104: Novel Learning. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
