The Bloody Herring. Phyllis Ann Karr

painful is the lobster’s bubbling lake,

      Who’s dropped in by the cook’s relentless arm.

      But to their endings let us now cry truce—

      These creatures did not live without some use.”

      Sir Ruthven had wandered behind his guest’s chair during the last few lines, his footfalls ceasing as he reached the final couplet. Now, when his voice also stopped, Chuck felt a surge of alarm.

      Jumping up, he turned and saw the baronet huddled on the floor, his book still in one hand, his other hand closing around the Florentine dagger, which Chuck had neglected to retrieve from where it had fallen. Without a glance at the other man, whom he apparently believed still watching the fire, Sir Ruthven turned the blade toward his own chest.

      Chuck pushed over his chair. As Sir Ruthven turned at the crash, Chuck sprang upon him and wrestled away the dagger. This time he carried it to the fireplace and dropped it deliberately into the flames. For a while, at least, it would be too hot for any more mischief.

      Sir Ruthven was definitely suicidal, as Chuck had already feared from his taste in poetry. And he might be more dangerous as a would-be suicide than as a would-be murderer.

      If he was Lozinski, and succeeded in killing himself, what would happen to whatever he knew about…whatever Deuteronomy Osborne suspected was about to “go down”?

      That his whole virtual-reality world would vanish went without saying.

      Chapter 4

      Philosophy in the Kitchen

      “All right,” said Dr. Charles Falcon, “now suppose you tell me why you tried to do it.”

      “I should have thought my reasons not only obvious, but laudable.” For the second time, Sir Ruthven gathered himself up from the floor and returned across the room to drop into his armchair. “I quite appreciate your motivations for foiling my attempt on your life, but I’m dashed if I can see why you foiled my attempt on my own!”

      “Let’s just say you promised me dinner.”

      “True. There is that.” Nodding as if that settled the whole question, Sir Ruthven drained off the rest of his milk like an old imbiber. “But I have been remiss in my duties as host. No doubt you wish to dine as soon as possible.” He stood up briskly and started for the door. “I’m not entirely sure what the larder affords today, but I believe there’s half a joint, or a promising leg of mutton if you’d prefer—”

      “I’d prefer,” said Chuck, noticing that his host had said nothing more about having a servant on hand, “to do the cooking myself.”

      Sir Ruthven stopped and looked back at him, momentarily puzzled. Then his face cleared. “Ah! Do you expect me to poison you, or myself, or both?” Picking up a lighted candle, he opened the door. “Allow me to show you to the kitchen, then. I’m quite safe for the moment.” He playfully lofted the candlestick an inch or two. “I really have no desire to set either of us aflame.”

      Chuck blew out the candles in the room, hefted his backpack, and followed the baronet out of the library, through numerous corridors, and down numerous stairways, continuing to keep a mental map of the building. If its floorplan did any changing, he wanted to know.

      Four corridors and five stairways later, having reached the level below the door through which Chuck had entered the castle, they arrived in the kitchen, a cavernous, high-beamed vault complete with banked fire in huge fireplace, stone oven, festoons of onions and sausages (but no garlic in sight—Dr. Falcon thought she remembered from a lit class somewhere that Polidori’s “Lord Ruthven” had been the popular Victorian vampire before Bram Stoker’s Dracula), larder, buttery, salt closet, and—the one false note in an otherwise convincing layout—a sideroom which Sir Ruthven referred to as a “galley” and which apparently existed here only because Bob Lozinski had a vague idea that a galley should be here, without knowing exactly what it was.

      “Assuming you will find my company de trop, I’ll leave you now, to await the outcome of your culinary endeavors.” Sir Ruthven began to bow himself out, but Chuck stopped him.

      “You’re assuming too much, my friend.”

      The younger man blinked. “You prefer to chance having me here to slip nightshade or belladonna into the soup when you’re not looking?”

      “Better that then have you trying to do away with yourself again once you’re out of my sight.”

      Setting his candlestick down on a table, the baronet quietly opened a drawer and brought out a coil of thick satin cord, the kind used for old-fashioned bell pulls and drapery ties. “Best bind me,” he said pleasantly, handing it to his guest. “I’ve forgot where I last hid the belladonna, but there’s any number of cleavers and such about the place.”

      Chuck decided to adopt the suggestion. It would put them both more at their ease, mentally at least. “Rather odd gear for a kitchen,” he remarked, accepting the strong but luxurious cord.

      “One never knows where and when one may need a length of rope in this beastly castle. I find it best to guard against such emergencies as the present.” Sir Ruthven settled down in a heavy, high-backed wooden chair and held out his crossed wrists. “I had a namesake once who contrived to behead himself,” he went on cheerfully. “Made a very neat job of it, too.”

      “Must have been quite a trick. Hardly the kind of thing anyone can practice ahead of time.”

      “Even if one could succeed in cutting it only half off, that would be something.”

      Dr. Falcon had only a first degree black belt in hojojutsu—the ancient martial art of binding an attacker or prisoner securely, artistically, and non-injuriously—but the cord seemed more frictive than satin might prove in actual reality, and Sir Ruthven both cooperated and watched with what resembled professional interest, even expressing the hope that someday, when it was quite convenient for them both, Dr. Falcon might give him a formal lesson or two.

      The baronet secured artistically, non-injuriously and as comfortably as possible, both hands still in front, Chuck turned his attention to dinner. It was amazing how hungry a person could get in virtual reality, and how satisfying virtual food could seem: in virtual reality, as opposed to life out in the reality of Papa’s Pride, any kind of food was programmable in any amount. Not only had Sir Ruthven’s brandy been good, but his larder seemed stocked with solid, well-flavored groceries. Suicidally inclined he might be, but at least not indifferent to creature comforts.

      Chuck found a vegetable brush, rolled up his sleeves, and set to scrubbing potatoes for a quick ragout version of shepherd’s pie.

      “I really would be interested to know,” said Sir Ruthven, appearing perfectly at his ease, now that doing harm was beyond his power, “why you prevented me from terminating a useless existence—alluding, of course, to my own, not to yours.”

      “Negative thinking, sir. Your existence is far from useless.”

      “In the deleterious sense, perhaps not. My loss would no doubt be a distinct gain to society at large.” The baronet shook his head and tsked. “Ah, Dr. Falcon, you have done society at large a grave disservice.”

      Chuck decided to try a hint of what he suspected. “The reverse is true. I’ve saved society at large. If you ceased to exist, so would society.”

      For an instant the baronet looked puzzled, as if trying to remember something. Then he smiled broadly. “Ah, a philosophical discussion!” He let out his breath and probably would have stretched out if the cord had not held him upright in the chair. “That society would cease to exist in so far as it touches myself is obvious; but that it would be a cessation to avoid is highly debatable.”

      “I’m talking literally.” Chuck cubed the potatoes for quick boiling. “If you died, so would the world as you know it—people, rocks, grass, everything—gone. Not just as they touch you. As they touch one another.”

      “‘No