"It doesn't matter. I'm sending you over,” said Quartermain. He seemed to laugh to himself—at himself—then he glanced at Shad's micro and hung his head. “Yeah. I'm sending you over,” he repeated as he slunk out of the chamber.
She turned from watching Quartermain's departing tail, and laughed nervously. “Oh—he frightened me for a moment. He was joking. That's it. After all, I'm carrying his babies. He was joking, wasn't he?"
"Don't be silly,” said Shad in that special Bogart voice of his. “You're taking the fall. You killed Miles and you're going over for it."
"How can you ... how can he do this to me?” She broke down and began a really irritating series of whines.
"Listen,” said Shad after awhile. “This won't do any good. You'll never understand me, but I'll try once and then give it up. When a fox's partner's killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what the fox thought of him, he was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. And it happens they're in the fox hunting business. Well, when one of your fox hunters gets killed by a fox, it's bad business to let the fox get away with it. Bad all around. Bad for every fox hunting operation everywhere."
Shirley Wurple didn't know her next line from The Maltese Falcon, which left Shad with nothing left to say.
The vixen looked at me and said, “What if I run? You two little pocket pips couldn't stop me."
"No, we couldn't,” I answered. “In Houndtor Down Lodge this instant, though, equipped with the best riding stock and guided by the most competently trained hounds in the world, is an assembly of the most proficient and fanatical fox hunters in the world. You've never run before the hounds, doctor. You don't know how. I fear in a matter of minutes you and your unborn cubs would be cornered and most likely torn to pieces. Why not let a judge and jury decide your fate?"
"I can run faster than you can move. My human body can—"
"Your human body is dead, Dr. Wurple,” said Shad.
Her eyes grew wide as she faced me.
"Carbon monoxide poisoning from your generator,” I explained. “There was nothing we could do.” I could see the defeat in her face as I turned away, sad for her.
She cooperated in exiting the burrow once PC Lounds arrived to caution her and make the arrest. He put her in a dog cage and drove off with her in the electric. There wasn't anything we could say to console Archie Quartermain. All we could do was to give him the number of a facilitator for an amdroid grief group, see to it that DCI Stokes released Lady Ida Bowman with all due apologies, and head back to Exeter, the sun actually making it through the clouds for a minute before a new front came in and the rainfall resumed.
While we rode off into the truncated sunrise, I asked my new partner, “How would you like to be on that jury, Shad? He was the fantasy love of her life, and the price of her union with him was she'd have to remain helplessly by while he was killed over and over again. What to do?"
"We just catch ‘em, Jaggs. We don't cook ‘em."
"Indeed, Shad. Too bad we resolved things so quickly, though. I really wanted to meet Dorothea Tay. Back in the dim reaches of time, I fear she was my childhood heartthrob."
After a moment of silence, Shad said, “Speaking of old movies, The Maltese Falcon was a script Archie and I had memorized front to back. ‘I'm sending you over.'” He chuckled and said with Humphrey Bogart's voice, “'When a fox's partner's killed, he's supposed to do something about it.'” He glanced at me and said in his own voice, “Why did you let me go on like that?"
"My dear chap, I never would have dreamt of deprivin’ you of your moment of triumph."
He frowned, regarded me with one dark eye, and said, “The Scarlet Pimpernel, Anthony Andrews vid remake, nineteen eighty-two."
"Quite right,” I said as I beamed at my new partner. “Excellent."
Copyright © 2006 Barry B. Longyear