"It explains every instance we've observed."
"I believe you're on the right track," nodded Brave. "When did you find it?"
"While I was telling Win about it. Let's go home and thrash it out, son. She's a disturbing influence."
Brave eyed Win up and down with a leer that on anyone else would have been particularly lewd and lascivious. From the faithful Brave it was merely what he meant it to be—a piece of mild buffoonery. "You understate the case, my liege. Yon woman has a plump and supple look; she wriggles too much, such minxes are dangerous. Let's drag tail."
"Okay, boys. Go knock your steel-plated skulls together. But remember that I think you're barking up an impossible tree at an invisible possum what ain't thar." She swung the door open for them and stood aside, one arm upraised with the hand on the jamb.
Alan kissed her a light farewell, and Brave patted her on the head and said, "Ketch-um sleep, squaw, you look bushed." Then, as Alan turned away, his glance was caught by a mark on Win's arm. It was a round blemish, an angry-looking red welt to the edges of which still clung infinitesimal flakes of gray ash smudged into the skin. He turned away and walked down the corridor with Brave at his side, and he thought ferociously of every possibility he could imagine, but his mind always came back to the same answer.
It was a burn, just such a small wound as would result, say, from a cigarette being pressed out against the arm by an oblivious lover.
And it should have been shockingly painful.
But Win had not felt it at all....