Paradigms Lost by Ryk E Spoor

have expected. “Domingo’s spoken of you quite a bit of late. My apologies for a certain . . . comment on our prior meeting?”
    I grinned. “As long as the threat’s withdrawn, sure.”
    “It is forgotten, then. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to assist.”
    “Sure,” I said. “What exactly do you do?”
    “I’m the master-at-arms and in charge of security here,” he responded.
    I noted the nature of the material scattered around his side of the table and grinned. “And how do you feel about that?”
    He understood exactly what I meant and grinned back. “You have me there. By all the gods, security has changed in the past century! At least in the old days the common man didn’t have access to sorcery; nowadays, you can pick up one of these,” he gestured at several home electronics catalogs, “and order up something with the eyes of an eagle and the hearing of a bat that will send all it sees and hears right back to you.”
    “Well, I noticed the security setup you have here; it’s not bad for a man who seems to still be playing catch-up on the century.”
    He acknowledged the comment with a bow. “Mostly done on contractor recommendations. I’m not comfortable, though, with having anything in the house that I don’t understand.”
    “Then ask me. Once I’ve got Verne’s problem out of the way, I’ll be glad to bring you up to speed. I’ve got plenty of resources in the security area.”
    “I’ll do that,” he said, smiling. “Oh, sir,” he said, looking at Verne, “Carmichael sent a pretty pissed-off message to you. I don’t like the tone of it.”
    The two of them went off a ways to discuss Carmichael. I turned to Meta and shook her hand. “And your position here is . . . ?”
    “I suppose you might call me . . . librarian? Archivist? Something of that sort.” Her grip was gentle, though not a limp fish by any means.
    “Ah, so I’m in your territory here.”
    She smiled. “It is of course Master Domingo’s, but I have jurisdiction as he allows.”
    Meta and Verne let me wander the library for a few minutes; it was rather instructive, I thought, to see just what Verne thought of as “not unusual or valuable enough” to warrant being kept elsewhere. Even with my relatively limited knowledge of books, I noted several items on the shelves that would easily bring in several hundred dollars if sold.
    The next hour of the tour passed without notable event—the other staff might have been sleeping or out for the evening, but whatever the reason I didn’t run into any more.
    Finally, Verne led me down a wide flight of stairs into the basement, which was as high-ceilinged and opulently furnished as the downstairs, but had clearly greater security. “And here is my bedroom.”
    “Wait a minute. I thought you said that room on the second floor was your bedroom?”
    “My show bedroom—the one that visitors of most sorts will be told is my bedroom, if they have any occasion to ask or discover it. I can rest there, if necessary, but here, enclosed in the earth itself, I am better protected.”
    The room was very large; I was vaguely disappointed not to see a classic pedestal supporting an open, velvet-lined coffin; instead there was a huge four-poster bed with heavy curtains about it. Several small bookshelves stood at intervals along the walls, along with some large and oddly elaborate frames for paintings, a desk and chairs, a fair-sized entertainment center, and two wardrobes. Besides the paintings, there were a few other objects on the wall, most of them weapons of one kind or another. I wandered around the room, studying these things carefully. The oddity of the painting frames became clear when I realized they were double-sealed frames—museum quality, for preserving fragile materials against the ravages of time. Probably nitrogen-filled.
    “So, Jason,” Verne said finally, “does anything occur to you?”
    I rubbed my chin. “I’m getting something of an idea,