“Will they clean the carpet?”

“You can ask.”

Is there any way to get that much blood out of a white carpet? Ellis wondered. “Do you need to report this to your boss?”

“ Boss? That’s another one of your old-fashioned words, isn’t it?”

“It means your supervisor,” Ellis explained. “The person at your job who tells you what to do. The one in charge of hiring the employees.”

Pax stared at him intently, head slowly shaking. “No one tells me what to do.”

“How did you become an arbitrator?”

“I started speaking to people and realized I could help them, so I do—but okay, that’s just me. Most people do take the aptitude test to help them.”

“You don’t work for a business or organization—the government?”

“I’m not sure what you mean by work, Ellis Rogers. Nowadays that term means to do something hard, or to do something you don’t really like but have to.”

“Yeah—that’s pretty much it.”

Pax looked puzzled. “But you talk as if it’s something a person would do a lot of.”

Ellis nodded. “Most people—most adults—worked eight or more hours a day—five, six, and sometimes even seven days a week. So yeah, you worka lot. Usually you have a boss who tells you what to do, and you get paid in return.”

Pax had a sad look, as if just learning that Ellis had been the victim of some terrible crime. “No one here tells anyone else what to do. People do what they like for as long as it pleases them. When it doesn’t, they do something else.”

“You’re not making sense. How do things get done—how do you get food to eat and furniture for the houses? Who makes the portal things?”

“Oh.” Pax waved a hand at him. “The Maker takes care of everything.”

The Maker?Ellis didn’t like the sound of that. He imagined a world where everything was provided by some being who demanded human sacrifices. “Who is the Maker?”

Pax smiled, and Ellis thought there might have been a laugh if they were somewhere else at some other time. “The Maker isn’t a person. It’s a device, one of the Three Miracles. I’ll show you when we get back home. I’ve got five of them, though technically three are Vin’s.”

“Dexworth has people coming,”Abernathy announced.

Pax wandered back down the hallway and reentered the bloodstained room. The body lay faceup, eyes looking at the ceiling. Only a small hole was visible in the chest. A larger exit wound must have been on the other side and the source of the blood spray, but Ellis couldn’t see it and didn’t care to.

Pax stooped and picked up the necklace that had been thrown. On it was a small device like an iPod shuffle. “It’s Geo-24’s. Why would anyone want to kill a geomancer of all people?”

“To impersonate him,” Ellis offered.

“Him?” Pax smiled.

“Whatever.” Ellis was flustered, standing in the room with the person he’d killed. Pax, who earlier had been far more upset, now appeared more at ease. “I’m just saying impersonation appears to have been the point of this.”

Pax stared at the little portal device. “Okay, but why?”

“Well, what are geomancers? They don’t appear to live very lavishly, but you talk as if they’re rock stars.”

“Rock stars?”

“Forget it—they’re someone to be envied, right?”

“Geomancers are beloved and respected. Highly educated—they spend centuries studying, and they work selflessly in terrible conditions to protect Hollow World.”

Ellis was working his way nearer to the garden window, away from the bloodstains. The last of the day’s light was fading; night was on its way. “Protect it from what? What do they do?”

“In your day didn’t you have something called meteorologists?”

“Weathermen, yeah.”

Pax looked puzzled. “Only men could be meteorologists?”

“Huh? No—oh! Skip it, what’s your point?”

Pax shrugged. “Just as I assume weathermenin your day were revered above all others, so are geomancers today.”

“Weathermen weren’t revered,” Ellis said.

“I thought meteorologists were all that stood between survival and destruction back then.”

“Destruction from what?”

“The weather. You lived during the Great Tempest, didn’t you?”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

Pax looked embarrassed. “Oh no—I suppose that didn’t happen until the twenty-three hundreds, but wait…” Pax paused. “I thought the climate was changing as early as the twentieth century.”

“There was some debate about global warming, if that’s what you mean.”

“So you were at the very beginning, then.”

“Beginning of what?”

“The storms.”

“What does this have to do with geomancers?”

“I guess you could consider them modern-day meteorologists, only instead of forecasting atmospheric weather, they forecast geologic storms. It doesn’t rain or snow down here and we don’t have tornadoes or hurricanes, but when the asthenosphere acts up, it can really ruin your life.”

With a soft pop, a portal appeared in the living room between the bloody couch and the table with the hard hat. Five people stepped out, all twins of Pax except they wore matching white jumpsuits and gloves.

“Another one, Pax?” one of the five asked.

“I don’t know who this is, other than Geo-24’s murderer. That’s who the last victim was, for what it’s worth.”

“A geomancer?” The tone was one of surprise.

“I know.”

“Any idea who killed this one?”

“Ellis Rogers,” Pax said, gesturing at him.

All five looked over.

“Am I going to be arrested?” Ellis asked.

“Arrested?” Pax looked at him, confused. “That’s another of your old terms, isn’t it?”

“Are they”—he nodded at the five—“going to take me and lock me in a room somewhere? Punish me for killing?”

“No, Ellis Rogers. No one is going to punishyou.” Pax said the word punishas if it, too, was unusual. “Things really were very different in your day, weren’t they?”

Ellis was too relieved by the answer to question further, and he watched them move the furniture, clearing a path to haul the bag-wrapped body through the portal.

On the way out one turned to Pax and said, “So, this will be the last one, then?”

Pax nodded. “We can hope.”

The dining room was a Gothic cathedral again by the time Pax and Ellis returned. The home was mostly dark except for the candles on the table and a dim mood lighting created by a faintly illuminated ceiling. Ellis noticed that the portal they returned through had opened to the exact place they had left, leading him to suspect that the placement of openings wasn’t random. This got him wondering about what might happen if a portal appeared in the middle of a sofa. Perhaps it would appear and disappear without a trace, but what if it bisected a person? Pax had mentioned that accidents were few, so he had to assume something prevented such things from happening.

Loud music was playing, startling Ellis as the bass boomed through the walls and reverberated against his chest, thumping as if someone were patting him. The rhythm was strong and the melody catchy enough for a pop song, but the instant they stepped through, the sound died.

“You’re safe!”Alva shouted, her voice booming as loud as the music had before.

Floor lighting appeared, and a new style of music played in the background. Ellis thought it might be something classical—it sounded like an orchestra.

“Is Vin gone?” Pax asked.

“Vin has a meeting, remember?”

“That’s right.” Pax turned to Ellis. “They hold a sector artists’ meeting once a month. It’s necessary to make sure they are all working in harmony.

“I think it’s really just an excuse to brag, as that’s all any of them did the times they held it here,”Alva said with a tone of exasperation.