Joe was a blues man, most days, most ways. He had a hearty, disrespectful attitude towards all things wondrous, a marrow-deep bravery towards all things devastating, and a perverse habituation towards all the woes of Man, his own included. So it made perfect sense when he sold out the inventory of the bookstore and used the money to start a bar. It was equally expected that the bar barely supported itself, attended as it was by a very elite and somewhat eclectic bunch of Seacouverians, the blues aficionados of the Northwest Territories.         What the bar failed to afford him in the monetary, it made up for in the sheer wealth of woeful wanderers who gathered before him nightly, queued up and awaiting his libations, ministrations, and his highly trained acute perceptions.

         Some of them mortal. Some of them not.

         Joseph Dawson, entrepreneur, observer of the human condition, survivor, hummed to himself as he finished the cleaning, stocking, and stacking, the dog-hour chores of an empty, pre-dawn pub. The tune was a memory from his early adolescence, the long ago days when he had been convinced that sadness was fatal. Petty tragedies those, not worth remembering. Those were the days when the world was new, the sun was warm, the days before the war (a lesser war, at that) when "walking" referred not to his favorite style of blues, but rather to an ability he had taken too much for granted.

         Those were the days before he had become acquainted with such esoterica as physical therapy, TENS units, orthotics, and the general bother of phantom limb and chronic pain, the days before he knew how to savor the darker and richer dimensions of merely being alive, and the infinite variety of approaches to doing just that. And those were the days when the only blues he knew came from a skinny Italian kid who had a voice like a shimmering brass horn...and the most blue thing about him was his eyes.

         It was the only excuse for Joe Dawson, blues purist and aging barkeep, to be humming one of the tracks from the "Wee Small Hours" album as he tried to remember the words he had been too young, too utterly green, to understand.

         "...we're drinkin', my friend, to the end of a brief episode." He squinted as he held one of the new pieces of stemware up to the light. Smudge or fault? It mattered little. In the next moment it lay shattered at his feet...the feet he had now, not his.

         A feather-touch of fingers had graced his left shoulder, a smoky alto had thrummed in his left ear, "Make it one for my baby..." she supplied the next line. The voice was familiar enough, singular as it was in its 1-900-husky- voiced-broads way, he knew it immediately, though he'd never met her face to face.

         "How the hell did you get in here?" Dawson was very careful about security, locks, and so forth, especially this part of Seacouver, especially this time of night. His was a dicey clientele. He was facing the mirror behind the bar, but she was standing behind him and he couldn't see the face he'd often imagined went with that voice. All he could see were the most incredibly long fingers curled like a graceful drape...too near his neck, he thought suddenly, but he knew he had nothing to fear from her. Beneath the graceful wrist was the same indigo tattoo he bore upon his own, the mark of the Watchers. "Ram?"

         Her face emerged in the mirror, peeking round his. She was nothing at all like the woman he had imagined.

         "Tis I, noble Knight."

         If she had not spoken again, he might have thought himself mistaken as to her identity.

         "Techno wonk, first grade, Paris office, at your service," she turned him gently away from the mirror and extended her hand. "It is nice to meet you in person, Watcher Dawson, Northwest Territories."

         Edges, he thought, that's what is wrong with the way she looks--all edges. Sharp as a sword in every aspect, bright, and quick, and dangerous. All his red flags went flying, even as he told himself again there was nothing to fear from this woman. She was older than he'd thought. He had a few years on her, but not many. Her medium brown hair was some indeterminate length, not-long, not-short, drawn back carelessly, tangled round the shanks of her glasses which perched on a nose that was narrow and long, too long. She was thin, lank, the points of her shoulders showing even beneath the over-size sweater with the hole in the left sleeve.

         Plain, his mom would have said. Ugly as a mud fence, was his dad's favorite assessment, a dog. And yet...

         Ram, her unbelievable ways with the odd cyber patchwork that comprised the Paris office Watcher database had so named her, that and the eidetic memory for which she was legend. Ram stood with the ready assurance of an athlete or a dancer at rest, rendering her rather shabby outfit, sweater, jeans, Nike knock-offs into an afterthought, something borrowed from a less-elegant acquaintance.

         There was about her the undeniable air of aristocracy, bumming about on a tour through the commoners. The nose might have been struck off a gold piece of the realm, the ArchDuke's favored distaff daughter. The perfect ears, the long neck, pale throat, and...

         "Too early in the morning?" she laughed softly, baring the ivory of her forefangs.

         That's what it is, Dawson thought, the time of the night when the mind goes numb and the spirits walk. And one had surely walked into his bar this night. He stalled in mid-assessment of her eyes, not blue, not brown, a sort of pale green with gold flecks at the edges where the light caught...

         "Shall I come back when you've found your lips?" There was no hint of derision in her tone, only a tender concern.

         Joe couldn't think why he was so mesmerized, so incapacitated by this person. There was nothing and less than nothing about her which was at all remarkable, sexual or otherwise. Hell, she could have been any gender with those disturbing, Lovecraftian angles, the ray-traced straight line of her jaw, the...

         ...empty spot in front of him where she had been standing, but was now gone.
 

So set em' up, Joe.  I've got a little story that you ought to know.

 

     "Joe? You okay?"

       Dawson turned around to greet the day's first customer, "Well howdy, stranger," he extended his hand over the bar towards the tall young man with the English schoolboy demeanor, the eternal grad student, Adam Piersen, Ph and D, if you please.

      "Good to see you too, Joe," Adam's hand slipped past Dawson's and his long arms wrapped the bartender in a hug, just firm enough to convey the sincerity of the gesture and not strong enough to topple Joe over the bar.
       "Things okay between us?" Joe asked tentatively. The last time he'd seen Adam there was a hell of a mess with the Watchers' Paris office: deaths, betrayals-- Watchers turning into Hunters, Immortals turning into Murderers--ugly business and he'd been right in the middle of it, condemned to death for treason. Joe had been shot, the first time in his life since the war. Adam had nursed him back to health. Adam the medic, Adam the Watcher, research division, Methos chronicler...

       Adam, the Immortal.

       Adam, the Oldest Immortal, five millennia worth of old...

       Methos.

       "Sure, Joe. Just had to step back and see where things would land." The young old man ducked his chin, "And I took Alexa to  Greece...she had asked to be buried there. It was about time I honored her request, time I let her go.

       "While Joe was happy enough to observe and record, he was none too comfortable with actually participating in this degree of emotional exchange. Alexa had been mortally ill before Adam even met her, before he fell in love with her and they went on the frantic world tour which ended in a hospital in Switzerland.

       "The sun's hardly over the yardarm, but I could..." Joe reached for the "good stuff" on the back bar.

       Adam lifted his hand, palm forward, "Coffee will do just fine,  thank you."

       Joe set up the mugs and poured. One sugar and a dollop of  Bailey's went into Adam's mug.

       Adam laughed and the tension between them abated.

       "Hey, it's my job to remember," Joe shrugged.

       "So what's up, buddy? Mac and Richie are still out on the island. They won't be back till the end of the week. I can get you a map..." he added as a friendly dig. The last thing on earth Adam would want to do was spend time in the wilderness, even with a friend.

       "Very funny," Adam toasted him with the mug. He tilted his head towards the direction of the empty tables. Joe was always amazed at Adam's ability to gauge when he'd been standing too long. For all he gave off an impression of the idle rich, hip-deep in ennui, Adam was actually a better Watcher than the rest of them. Course, five thousand years and still alive, he could never be as lazy and disinterested as he seemed. He settled into a chair opposite Piersen and waited for his friend to divulge his reason for being there.

       "I'm expecting a parcel from France," Adam said three or four thoughtful sips later. Joe watched Adam's long, pale fingers play at the rim of the mug.

       "Listen," he said suddenly, "You know Ram?"

       "The Wonk, of course," Adam turned his head, but his eyes stayed pinned on Joe. "Why do you ask?"

       Joe shifted to a more comfortable position. He wasn't sure she'd been here, wasn't sure he wanted to know, one way or the other... "Is she as odd as she seems?"

       Adam brought his palm down, smack, on the table. "So she IS here! I knew it!" He jumped up and began to pace. "Well?"

       Joe watched him prowl and wondered how he could have suddenly become so lost in what had started as a simple conversation.

        "Well?"

       "Where?"

       "Where what?" Joe asked, thoroughly confused.

       "Where," Adam leaned over Joe and spoke loudly and distinctly as if to a child, "did she leave the package?"

       Joe shook his head. "I think she was here about three this  morning. I can't even be sure about that. As far as any package..."

       Before Joe could be any less informative, Piersen had spied the object in a dark booth in the corner, a draftsman's mailing tube by the look of it, but knowing what he did, Joe guessed rightly...sword. Adam tore into the package as if it were Christmas and removed the inner wrapping of leather from the packing beads, spewing them over the floor like an early snow. He slipped the blade from its simple scabbard and laid it on the table in front of Joe. "Look at this!"

       "I'm looking." Joe had entirely given up trying to understand any of this and had shifted over to what he called his straight input mode, just gathering information.

       "Well?" Adam twirled a nearby chair around in front of him and sat backwards, straddling the back, resting his chin on his arms, his bright eyes impaling Joe in their gleeful attention.

       "Look, Adam, I don't get any of this: not the..."

       "No, really, have a look and tell me what you think. Come on,  Joe..."

       Joe couldn't get comfortable so he pushed up to standing and leaned his weight forward on his hands, a palm either side of the  blade. He couldn't think what to say." Well," he wasn't in the mood to finesse, "it sure is ugly."

       Adam nodded enthusiastically, "Yes, yes it is. Go on."

       "Well, okay, look here: the blade's thick on one side for two-thirds of its middle length and what this groove along the face is for, I'll be damned if I know. One edge sharp enough to shave with," Joe jerked and put his thumb in his mouth, "and the other too dull to cut butter." This was beginning to feel like a Watcher's quiz and Joe wasn't sure, as one of the remaining network elders it was entirely respectful that Adam should be doing this. Despite the fact that Methos had seen more years than any of the Watchers could imagine, still Adam would ever be the upstart preppy.

       "Please," Adam nudged the hilt towards Joe's left hand.

       Joe steadied himself with his right and wrapped his left hand  around the thick, crudely carved hilt. "God damn! How much does this sucker weigh?"

       "Not quite a stone, I should think," Adam replied.

       Joe seemed to remember that was about twenty pounds. "So it's not a real sword...I mean, it's some kind of display piece. Brighten up ye olde den, that kind of thing."

       "Well, you know that's what I thought when I found the first one of these. But this is the third I've found, all under similar circumstances...and I'm beginning to wonder..."

        Joe stretched his back and returned to setting up the bar. "More coffee?"

       "What? Oh, no. Aren't you the slightest bit curious," how Adam could be so old and still be the image of an impish child was one of the wonders of the world. All nose and eyes and tousled hair, and a crooked grin that betrayed the gentle deviltry that was his nature and his affectation at one and the same time.

       "Actually," Joe remembered dropping the wine glass, but he couldn't remember cleaning it up. Still, there were no shards on the floor. Maybe he had been dreaming. "I was wondering about Ram."

       "What?" Adam's hands were walking the odd blade and his attention was distracted. "Oh, what can I say?"

       "Aren't YOU the least bit curious," Joe's imitation of Adam's boy child fell short a mile.

       "About Ram? Heaven's no. She's as dull as dirt," he held the hilt with both hand and sited down the length of the blade, shaking his head.

       "I take it you know her, then?"

       "Of course," Adam lifted the sword and struggled to take it through some simple defensive positions, changing his grip, speed,  trying different angles. It was a dreadfully awkward weapon, if that was indeed its purpose. Joe doubted it.

       "As long as you've known me, have you ever seen me sit down and type up any addenda to the Methos Chronicles?"

       As he mentioned it, Joe realized the answer must be "no." It had been a hectic and woeful year. "But I get copies of the updates all the time, long and rich, newly uncovered histories about The Old Man..."

       "She does a good job." Adam chewed on his lip and pulled out his polishing rag from a back pocket and began to work on the faces and the bastard edges of the sword.

       "Ram writes the Chronicles?"

       "Well, I always mean to, but I usually miss the report deadlines...I do some of the research, I mean, who better, but, truth to tell: Yes, Ram writes the Chronicles."

       "But she's the Paris division computer spec, and she's in charge of all the support, and security, and the semi- monthly memos, the global concordance and..." Joe could remember many a late night emergency call when his 'puter drive choked and started burping up buffer loads. She was always there, velvet voice, steady and patient and knowledgeable as a demigod.

       "Not to mention that hot little phone sex service she runs on the side..." Adam added.

       "You're kidding!" Joe didn't doubt she could turn a profit with that voice of hers.

       Adam's head lowered and his eyes rolled up at Joe.

       "You ARE kidding." Joe said.

       "You met her, what do you think?"

       "Well, buddy, I think she can hardly have time for all that work, let alone a life."

       "Ram's a Techno Wizard supreme," Adam snorted. "People like that don't have a life. I told you, she's an insufferable bore. She dresses like a bag lady. She's painfully homely, no friends, no interests outside of the network, the woman can't put two words together if it isn't to talk about machines. No sense of humor. I gave her a pocket protector last year for a Christmas present and she thanked me, for God's Sake!"

       "But she did bring you the sword," Joe was astonished at Adam's dismissive assessment.

       "Probably as an excuse for a vacation, or because of the volume of paperwork needed to mail a weapon through customs."

       Joe had to remind himself that Adam had lived a good portion of his life with slavery and servants a given. But this was so unlike him, Joe was taken aback. "But didn't you say her job was her life, buddy?"

       "Oh, pullease!" Adam put the sword back in its scabbard and  brought his mug over for a refill.

       "She isn't...?" Joe poured.

       "Isn't what?" Adam raised the steamy, best java-in-the- quarter, brew to his lips and sipped.

       "Well, I just had the impression she was an Imm..." Joe never got to finish.

        Adam spewed his coffee out his mouth and his ample, patrician beak in an exuberant spray worthy of a vaudeville routine. And by the time they had both stopped laughing, Joe had forgotten the question.
 

      Joe and Adam spent the rest of the morning assessing the very odd sword which Piersen had arranged to be delivered from his Paris apartment. As noon approached, they changed venues to Joe's office in the back and relinquished the bar to the business- men who started their drinking days at lunch.

       Adam maintained there was some significance to this clumsy piece of weaponry. Just exactly what had thus far managed to elude the elder Immortal. ........Joe maintained it was a badly made bit of wall art and tried to get Adam back around to talking about the intriguing messenger who had brought the weighty bundle half-way round the globe through half a dozen airport checks. Add "skilled smuggler" among Ram's many other attributes, this woman whom Adam persisted in describing as dull.        The sword was equally intriguing, at least to Adam. Actually,  there were three in all , each of them found at the sites of an Immortal duel near the headless body of the loser. It seemed pretty obvious to Joe that meant these were the weapons of the hapless duelist. No wonder they lost. The blades were impossibly cumbersome, not just heavy, though they were that, but also unwieldy. However, no blood--nary a forensic trace--was found on any of the blades and the prints on the hilts were of neither party involved. In the first two instances Watchers had witnessed the Immortals' fight to the death, had seen the Quickening Major, the awesome and dreadful transfer of life force from the slain to the victor, the next step in the accumulation of power  which would culminate in the last, the One Immortal, the paragon of the ongoing tournament of The Gathering.

       In neither of the first two instances had a third party been spied. No mystery owner of the miserable extra swords had been seen. Having turned away from his grieving over Alexa and the bad business at the Watcher Headquarters, Adam had fastened on the mystery of the "three third swords, "almost to the point of obsession--a word Joe usually did not think of in the same sentence-   as the casually cynical Immortal  in Watcher's clothing.

       When he decided that the Highlander should have a look at  the blades, Adam sent for them, and the TechnoWonk took care of the rest. It seemed she took care of a great many things for Adam. Ram had arranged the treatment in Switzerland for Alexa, had managed all the arrangements for getting the body back to Paris, and lately, to Greece. When Adam got evicted, first from his apartment and then from Duncan's barge, Ram arranged to reopen Salzer's shop and squirreled up a portion of the petty cash budget to finance the restoration of the records in the bookshop basement so Adam could have a place to stay when he'd outworn his welcome at Duncan's digs.

       And Piersen's ongoing ingratitude for Ram's many interventions on his behalf might have infuriated Joe Dawson, but for the simple truth that he had himself never actually thanked Ram for all her help in the days a decade earlier when he'd struggled through becoming computer literate. God, but that had entailed some all-night, round and round, dusk till dawn bone crunching sessions with the HQ support. The first ten months he didn't even know her by name, only by the slightly breathy, contralto melodies of her patient counsel. He had always just expected she would be there, any hour, and she was. Like another sort of computer. It had never occurred to him she was a living, breathing, incredibly hard working little Techno Wonk--as Adam put it.

        Then he had met her and even half-asleep, Joe had been impressed...or so he recalled, but not clearly, nor could he even say why. Mid week, no music, a slow dragging bit of hours till closing found Joe back where he had been before, washing the dishes, "scrubbing the decks," bussing the tables, with Adam in the back room, pounding away at Joe's  laptop, hot on the trail of some obscurity which related to the Mystery of the Swords. Well, he'd been hot, the trail cold as the dead.

       "So set ‘em up, Joe..." the warm tones drifted over from the corner booth. He was a Watcher, dammit. How had she sneaked in again?

       "Ram." She slipped out of the booth and walked towards him,  both arms outstretched graciously, like an old friend.

       "How ya doin, Joe?" Dawson reciprocated the hug. So bony, he thought, Why is she so thin when she sounds like someone's zaftig odalisque? She tugged his frosty beard and laughed.

       "You look just as I imagined you would." Joe chuckled,

       "Dumb?"

       "Oh, heaven's no," even her smile was angled. "You are really quite inventive."

       "Yeah, right." Dawson was reminded of something that made him suddenly angry. He turned away from Ram and made his way back to the bar.

       Ram's eyebrows lifted in yet another angle as she watched him withdraw. "I was hoping to hear you sing before I had to go back to Headquarters. Dr. Piersen says you're quite talented."

       "You're leaving?" Dawson kept his tones even. It wasn't her fault. Why should he blame her? She'd done nothing. But that was just the point: she had done nothing.

       "You need some help, Joe?"

       "Not now, seeing as I'm still alive and all," the acid in his voice could have eaten the shellac off the bartop. "Not one word in my defense. "

       Ram nodded and stared. "I see..." She shrugged and turned right towards the door . "No tunes this trip."

       Joe called at her retreating back. "Adam was right. It's only your job. You don't really care at all. "

       She turned back and shrugged, "I'm sorry you got shot. I did the best I could."

       "Best?"

       "How long were you and Duncan MacLeod friends before HQ Central called you on the mat for breaching your Watchers' Oath?"

       "A couple of years," Dawson replied.

       "You're welcome," said Ram.

       "I thought you'd be back at Headquarters by now," Adam appeared at the office doorway, stretching his back and yawning.

       "You promised, Dr. Piersen."

       Adam ran his hand through his hair, "I suppose...Come on, then." He popped back into the office and returned with his coat, Joe's coat, and the architect's mailer tube which held the sword.

       So it was that Joe found himself walking through the mist laden chill of the late Seacouver night with the oldest Immortal and the Watchers Cyber wonk, and feeling like a character in a comic book action series. Adam had promised to take Ram through Duncan's dojo, sort of a Watcher anthropological tour, in exchange for her bringing the sword all the way from Paris for him. Joe tried to explain that Seacouver, like all large cities, was not safe for midnight excursions, that it would be better to drive, but no one was listening. Being the host Watcher and all, he felt responsible, if not for Adam's safety, then at least for Ram's. Adam was not the responsible type. His easy-going and charming manners did not include such weighty concerns as duty and conscience, or even the mortality of his friends.

       Adam's long stride had soon carried him far ahead of Joe and  Ram.

        "What do you think about Adam's peculiar swords?" Joe paused to rest for a moment.

       "It's heavy," Ram replied. "I think this latest interest of Dr.  Piersen smacks of Watchers' Syndrome."

       "No," Joe interjected. Oh, if Ram only knew. Watchers' Syndrome referred to the malady which afflicted some of their members who became too closely involved with the object of their observations, so closely, in fact, that they began to have delusions about being Immortals themselves.

       "I cannot swear to it," Ram continued, "but I think he's actually started carrying around a sword under his coat. Not a good sign. Sometimes he acts as if he IS Methos. I am worried about him, Joe."

        In the slightly hoarse thrum of her tones Joe heard clearly the profound affections he held for old Adam even given the apparent disparity of their ages...and, oh, if she only knew the impossible dimensions of that disparity. Joe was not usually given to judgments, but he judged Adam a blind fool. Whose long legs had carried him far ahead of them halfway down the second block.

       "You going to manage this jaunt?" Ram asked with a  straight-forward unaffected manner which Joe hardly ever heard  when people talked to him about his legs, or lack thereof.

       "Yeah, but I'll probably spend the night on Mac's couch. You can go on and catch up with Adam."

       Ram seemed to be testing the air for a moment, then she said softly, "No, Joe, Dr. Piersen isn't very good company. I would much rather stay with you. We could talk."

       Joe found her invitation easy to accept. She was so attentive to every detail, right down to matching his ungainly walk exactly without parody, like a perfect dancing partner. An excellent listener, she brought such an open appreciation to the endeavor, that Joe found himself talking about all manner of things he might otherwise have thought to take to his grave unspoken, from his lovers, lost to death, lost to others, to his legs, lost to a mis-step and a mine, to his place in the Watchers, his friendship with the two Immortals, Mac and Richie...and, had he not come to his senses, he might have gone on about Methos. Ram, angles and all, was incredibly... he could not think of a word...well, "comfortable," simply because she completely removed herself from consideration except as an avid audience.

       Joe had taken advantage of her again, just as Adam did, and he knew it, but he could not help luxuriating in the glow of her easy attentions. He wondered why they didn't use her as a field agent. She would be superb. Probably the computer system couldn't do without her. She would be going back to tend it soon. She would be gone, probably forever. Joe felt himself pulling back, or trying to...

       They came around the construction across from the dojo, the skyline of Seacouver lighting all but this dark alley behind the brownstone (actually red from its latest painting). Ram dashed away from him down the black throat of the alley.

       Joe could hear two men, one of them Adam, speaking in the shadows there. Joe saw Ram halt, wheel, and start to walk back towards him. As she came into the light, Joe could see her face was drawn, her entire frame tensed into a fist, arms crossed tightly over her chest. She passed him as if he weren't there, planted her feet wide, her back to the alley.

       What the hell? Joe glanced down the alley and then over to where Ram stood like a granite slab. Then everything happened so fast and in such broad flashes of light and dark it was only later that Joe was able to sort out exactly what must have happened.

       There was a sudden flash and clang as steel met steel and lit the end of the alley revealing the ritual that would only end with one Immortal dead and the other Quickened. Adam was fighting a man a full handspan taller. The elder Immortal struggled out of his coat and threw it at the stranger, who dodged effectively and backed toward the spot where Joe was standing. The second Immortal was clearly leading Adam out of the alley, into the light. Joe couldn't believe they had come this far, almost to Mac's door without so much as a scratch, and now...

       Behind him, Joe heard a scuffling sound as Ram dove for a second stranger who had entered the alleyway after them. There was a familiar crack and then a zing as Joe dodged instinctively leftward. He'd been under fire too often not to know what had happened. But the bullet found another target. Adam yelped and his sword went flying and he retreated far back into the alley, disappearing in the darkness hugging his wounded and fractured hand to his chest.

       A flurry of motion by his right reminded Joe to look behind him, to see if Ram had been hurt, but all he saw was the crumpled body of a man, a corpse with a broken neck. The one thought that jarred him then...I was right to be afraid that night with her hand so close. Then his attention shot back down the alley. In light of what happened, Ram must have caught Adam's blade on the way down, he surely never heard it fall. That, or he had missed the sound. Joe was fairly certain he had not. It was a large sword. It would have made a terrible clatter.

        Equally hard to believe she had moved fast enough to catch...as with everything else about her, all was uncertainty, a strangely comfortable uncertainty.

       "You cannot interfere, mortal," the tall Immortal intoned.

       "King's X," Ram laughed. "You and your straight man there, I count two, like the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Starsky and Hutch, no, more funny, I think...George Burns and Gracie Allen."

       "It looks to me as if you've done old Gracie in," the tall man  quipped.

       "Well, then," Ram flourished Adam's sword and sketched a bow, "I shall have to suffice."

       "No," Adam's moan floated out of the farthest shadows.

       "Wait your turn," the tall man snorted, "Gracie here won't take me a minute."

       "Play on, Georgie," Ram taunted, taking a better grip,  two-handed, on the large sword.

       Joe stared in a paralysis of fear and wonder. He just could not get his mind around the scene that was playing out before him.

       "Lay on, you mean, stupid mortal."

       "In your dreams, Georgie Boy," Ram parried with blade and  tongue and not the one less sharp than the other. She was very good, all things considered. The sword was not suited to her and her double grip restricted her swing, not an insubstantial draw- back seeing as her opponent had a third again longer arms to begin with and easily wielded his weapon in one very strong hand.

       The battle between them could not have lasted many minutes but it seemed to go on for hours. Joe wondered that Adam didn't come to her assistance, but his hand had been shattered by the bullet and even Immortals take time to heal. And even healed, the closest weapon was the mystery sword in the packing tube which had managed to roll half-way out the alley with the fighters going at it between the tube and the elder Immortal.

       And all the while, they were spitting jokes at each other, old  vaudeville lines about Gracie's stupid brother (Joe presumed they were referring to Adam) making the scene all the more horrible simply by the counterpoint. Joe could not help but notice that Ram was tiring. The tall man noted this also and pressed his attack, driving her back against an enormous wooden packing crate.

       In the next horrid instant, the tall man had plunged the point of his sword clean through Ram's midsection and into the wood planking behind her.

       Joe felt the blow as if he had taken it himself. He had known she was going to leave, probably forever...Dear Lord, and he had done nothing but watch. Though what he could have done, unarmed, he did not know.

       Adam approached the tall man's back, slowly, quietly, his bloody hand tucked in his pocket, his left hand raised to strike, silent tears running down his high cheeks, and eyes lambent with rage.

       "Say 'goodnight, Gracie'," the tall man finished their exchange.

       Ram did not hear. Her head was thrown back in extremity, blood beginning to bubble at the corner of her mouth. The tall man bent forward and rocked the blade to loosen it from the wood. Ram's breath went rushing out of her in a grunt. Adam's sword snapped to attention in Ram's long fingers, lifted to the height of her shoulders, and swiped across the man's neck in one fluid motion.

       "Goodnight, Gracie," she rasped and lifted her foot to kick his headless corpse away from her.

       Then Adam was before her, apologizing as he pulled the tall Immortal's blade free and gathered her up in his arms like a beloved child, all the while weeping like a baby himself. Joe approached haltingly, but Adam waved him back. "The Quickening," he croaked the explanation just as the entire dark alleyway lit up like noonday and the force of the dead Immortal threw Joe to the ground, heart-rent and soul-sick...

      Ram had finally got to visit the place Duncan MacLeod called "home." Not that she would ever actually see it, lying dead as a stone, the last of her exsanguination completed on Duncan's poor couch. It seemed only fair somehow, some small justice in the face of the night's merciless destiny.

       It fell to Joe to call someone to clear the alleyway, bury the bodies. Some advantages to being District Chief, Joe thought. It had been a long while since he'd had to  "deal with the details," as he referred to the onerous business of hiding a dueling site, partly because "his" Immortal was of a more gracious and forgiving bent, and partly because someone else usually got the job done before he returned to a given site...this had been one of the points in Adam's diatribe about the Mystery Swords he had found, that the "mystery" owners were cleaning the challenge grounds.        Adam had completely forgotten the swords in the fury of this night. His hand was healed, but that was the only thing right with him it seemed. For an agonizing time Joe couldn't make him put the body down. He had finally staggered into the lift, rode up to Duncan's loft and collapsed on the sofa. After that, Joe was able to talk him into releasing poor dead Ram, laying her to rest, at least for the present, on the blood-soaked couch.

       Poor Adam had just come unhinged, blabbering away, a constant driven motion with no apparent direction if it wasn't round and round, over and over again. It was no better after he showered and dressed in some of Mac's things which fit him not at all. At least the words started making some sense, Joe thought. They had changed from the "Elmer Fudd" sounding dialect of Aramaic which Adam had demonstrated for him on some prior occasion. Now he spoke in English, with only the occasional Old Roman asides. Or Greek, Joe wasn't sure.

       "Look at her," Adam started his thousandth prowl down the length of Duncan's loft.

       Joe didn't look. He'd had enough watching for one night and he'd only just started dealing with the rending notion that there was something he should have done to prevent this sad calamity. Actually, for all she'd been nearly gutted and there was blood everywhere, Ram looked serene and much younger than she had before, the odd angles all dissolved in the final peace that must come to us all, mortal and immortal alike, Joe thought. The Afghan--he hoped it wasn't one of Mac's favorites--covered most of the mess. She might have been sleeping.

       Adam wouldn't let him cover her face. It was going to be the devil's own time getting the elder Immortal to let them bury her. Perhaps this was part and parcel of his grieving Alexa, Joe wondered as he watched the long legs pound back and forth across the apartment, or maybe he felt more for the Techno Wonk than he had let himself admit and only now understood, now that she was gone and any feeling he might have had for her was less than worthless. Joe knew this was true for himself. He'd hardly known her two hours altogether and he missed her as if she'd been a dear and life-long friend.

       And over and over again in his head, Joe heard Duncan saying, "The dead don't need revenging. They don't need anything. "

       And outside his head, Adam was still at it, on and on: "Look at her, Joe. A mortal gave her life for me! Someone who can't have lived an instant in comparison to my millennia! She stepped into a sword for me, Joe, me," the way he spat the pronoun made Joe wince.

       "Me," he growled, "who called her ugly and lifeless and dull. Oh, God," he grabbed the back of the couch so hard his knuckles went white like bones.

       "She was so thoroughly grateful for any of my attention and what did I do? Gave her a joke gift to make fun of her, make fun of the one person in the entire network who kept me in good favor with the Watchers despite my lazy ways! And, Dear God, she thanked me for it!"

       Joe hoped this overabundant wave of emotion would pass sometime, anytime, soon. He levered up and transferred his weight from the table to the kitchen island where he made his way round to make them some coffee. It was going to be a bad night at this rate and he was starting to hurt from his tumble in the alley. Too far from home for his pain medication and too proud to ask one of the Watchers to go get it for him, not that he would have called either of his assistants up to bear witness to this mess.

       Adam's attention suddenly left the couch and its occupant and he stormed across the room towards Joe. Joe would have shrunk back from such an aggressive move, but he'd left his canes at the chair and backing up was not one of his forte moves, on the best of days, and this was surely not.

       "What is wrong with me, Joe?" Adam hurled the question as if it were more accusation, somehow Joe's doing. Joe just shrugged and held up the coffee pot as if it were some kind of answer, or defense. "Have I lived so long that I've lost any shred of humanity, decency?"

       Joe would have said emphatically, "no," but he sensed it wasn't that sort of question. Adam was going to have to get this out of his system and Joe decided he would attempt his best semblance of Ram's quiet listening. I am going to have to hold my own tears till a lonely later time, he thought, and the thought almost made him weep on the spot.

       Except...Past Adam's right shoulder, Joe beheld the miracle, that charism for which all who have loved and lost pray in the first moments when their grief is yet so new it almost seems reversible.

       "Damn me to hell, Joe. It wouldn't be justice enough, for the prig I've been!"

       Ram rose quietly, her hand over her belly and the healing wound there, her green eyes closed against the remaining pain. She pushed her back against the pillows searching for a more comfortable position. That achieved, she opened her eyes and smiled at Joe.

       He thought his heart would burst. There was a god, a smiling, sonofabitch, big-bellied buddha of an old man...yessss! "Adam," he said quietly.

       "How could I have been so blind, Joe?"

       "Adam," Joe repeated a little more forcefully.

       "I don't think you're even listening!" Adam turned on his heels, headed straight for the couch, "You know what I mean, Ram. Tell him! He doesn't understand what I'm saying. He doesn't know what it means that you gave your life for..."

       On and on...not a blessed thing was going to stop his self-denigrating epiphany, not a bloody, blessed thing. Ram pressed her lips together and her eyes softened with her confined mirth. Adam started back towards Joe, two more strides, halted, shook his head, and his bright, fevered eyes grew big as platters. Then, quick as thought, he was kneeling before her, "Don't be afraid, Ram."

      Ram looked quizzically over the top of his head towards Joe. Joe shrugged and went back to making coffee.

       "It will take a bit of getting used to, but you will find being Immortal is not so unpleasant after all," Adam continued. "And I can teach you how to fence, or Duncan, or maybe Amanda would be a better choice, closer to your size. I don't want you to be afraid, Shawn. Everything will be all right. Really." Ram leaned forward carefully and placed her pale, graceful hands either side of Adam's face.

       "What a tender thing to say, Dr. Piersen. "

       God, Joe thought, if she ever looks at me that way, I will surely be smitten.

       "'Adam,' please, Shawn, ‘Adam'"

       So, she was "Shawn," or was it "Sean," of course, another Highlander, figured. Joe felt suddenly too mortal, too insignificant, too sorry for himself.

       "All right," she hesitated, "Adam." Ram, Sean, fussed with the lapels of Mac's too large shirt, straightening the collar, patting down the wayward points, then pulling back slowly, just drinking in his face, then she traced his nose, with a touch soft as moths' wings. There was something possessive, almost maternal in the gesture. Joe wasn't sure, but it seemed as if the tightness which had bound the elder Immortal since the fight in the alley melted as surely as snow on a sunny afternoon and weren't his ears just the most fetching shade of pink?

       "I, I," Adam stammered, "I have to get something...I left it at Joe's... It's the only thing I own that means anything to me...I have to get it's something worth..." Adam lapsed into Aramaic and the restless pacing.

       Joe tipped his chin in the direction of the bed when he understood the Immortal was looking for his coat. That procured, Adam dashed for the stairs and was gone still mumbling away in a dead language, much happier, if no more coherent.

       Joe started laughing and shaking his head, "You gotta love him. Damn."

       "Yes," was all she said, but there never was a more expansive sound in all the world.

       Joe knew he was outclassed, up the creek. So he was certainly surprised when she invited him over.

       "I am sorry, Joe," she started, "I'd come to you, but I'm still fairly incapacitated."

       When he was seated on the low table opposite her, he voiced his suspicions, "You've known all along, haven't you?"

       "That I was going to get skewered tonight? Hardly."

       "No, I mean," Joe cast about for a way to ask, "this is not First Death, not Awakening for you?"

       "Nooo," Ram answered breathily with a lilt at the end. "What this is, is..." she grimaced as she pushed more upright. "I am in deep, deep trouble...you cannot imagine. In the next hour, I have to be cleaned, changed, and long gone from this place."

       It was a post-traumatic thing , Joe surmised, some natural reaction to flee, even after the battle was done.

       "How come Adam never felt, never sensed you are an Immortal?"

       "Because I are not," she replied.

       Denial, he thought, that was understandable. She'd suffered enough this night, too much, natural inclination would be to run from this in every way, body and mind. "Sean," he began, as gently as he could.

       "No, don't call me that," she said, "I haven't been called that in ages, and it wasn't my real name to begin with. "Her tone was clearing. She must be healing.

       "You were dead," he said simply, pulling the conversation back to the issue.

       "I am not mortal, Joe. I am likewise not what your kind calls 'Immortal.'"

       "My kind? What is your kind?"

       Ram took a deep breath, testing, then she heaved herself up to standing and came very close to passing out.

       "You don't have to rush this, Ram," Joe reached up with both hands and steadied her until her head cleared.

       "Yes, I do. It won't do to have them come after me here. I won't have you involved in this, Joe."

       "Who?"

       She staggered towards the sink at the kitchen island, turned the cold water on full, and began drinking and washing her face in alternating handfuls of water.

       "Ram," Joe twisted around, "who is coming after you?"

       She had started in on her hair, washing it with the dish- washing soap. "What? Oh, my kind."

      "And what, who? If you are not mortal and not Immortal, what are you?"

       "Like other societies through time, we're a tad ethnocentric, Joe."

       "Meaning?"

       "We don't call ourselves anything. We are simply the people." Ram shook off the rinse water and started drying with the dish towel gauging the distance to the bathroom.

       Joe pondered this for a moment. "Then what do the people call us?"

       "Joe," he noticed her angles were returning. "You probably shouldn't be asking a lot of questions to which you'd rather not know the answers."

       This made Joe a little angry, "Tell me!" he growled through avery tight throat.

       "Very well, then. We call you the beastes." Ram strode past him on less than steady limbs.

       "And what do you call the Immortals," he called after her as she disappeared into the bathroom. "The Project," she called back.

       And that's where the conversation ended for the moment as the shower turned on and Joe dug around in Mac's things looking for Amanda leftovers for Ram to wear. Joe turned over what she had said, tantalizing it was, nearly as much as the fact she had left the door open and he couldn't decide how much of a gentleman he should be, seeing he was a "beaste," after all.

       In the end, Joe decided to place the pile of clothes just inside the door and went over to pour himself the coffee he'd made earlier and settle in at the table before he stiffened completely. He should have had his legs off long before now and he was beginning to cramp up.

       Ram emerged, looking as she had before, royalty in the borrowed clothes of a commoner, though Amanda was hardly that. "Thank you, Joe," Ram turned around twice showing off the hand-me-downs. She got down on her knees and dug out the draftsman's mailing tube from under Duncan's bed. She brought this over to the table and presented it to Joe. Then she got herself a cup of coffee and sat down beside him.

       Laying the coffee down, she placed both her hands on his belly, just above his thighs and below the thick leather harness which held the whole outfit on. The sudden intimacy made Joe highly uncomfortable and thoroughly pleased at one and the same time. "This is going to feel a little strange, Joe,

       "No doubt, Joe thought.

       "If you just relax...there."

       Somewhere between the "just relax" and the "there" Joe was electrocuted. Not really, , but he had stuck a screwdriver in a live socket by accident once and this was almost the same sensation. "What the hell!" he managed as soon as he had enough breath to speak.

       "I'm sorry," Ram tilted her head and blinked. "I thought you were having too much pain to listen, so..."

       "So?" Now that she mentioned it, he had been...and now he wasn't. "What did you do?"

       "Quickening Minor can be controlled. We can control it. We don't go around leaking our power all the time, nor do we give it up only in extremus." That was evidently all the explanation he would get because she hurried on, "As I have said, Joe, I will have to leave directly, but I want to ask you for a favor and I will repay you generously."

       "No," Joe replied.

       Ram's eyes opened wide in surprise.

       "I don't see why you think you have to..."

       "I have to," she breathed out slowly. "Well, in for a penny...My people will come for me, to take me to trial for the heinous breach I have committed this eve. I will go with them, because it is their right to punish me, but I do not want you, or Methos, hurt. So I have to get away from here, now." She raised her hand to silence his ready protest...

       They would protect her, they loved her, they...Joe never got the opportunity.

       "There is an outside chance I can return after this is over. I want you to keep my sword," she pushed the tube in front of him. "I may have need of it, should they allow me to come back."

       "Yours?" Joe asked. But, of course, an improbable blade for an improbable...person.

       She ignored the question, "For this I will give you a djinn key." Seeing he did not understand, Ram continued, "It is a word, actually two words, the worth of which is inestimable. With these words, when the time is right---and you will know it when it comes--you may ask for anything your heart desires if you give up these two words." Joe got out his notepad, but she put her hand on his and shook her head, "You will have to remember, lower case, two separate words in this order, ‘irremediable madness.'"

       She had him repeat and spell the words several times and then she rose to leave.

        "Ram," Joe started, "I know you have to leave, but three questions, please." He couldn't believe he'd thought of nothing better to slow her going, but the djinn comment had him thinking about genies and three wishes...and it's a quarter to three...God, but he was going to miss this one.

       She waited.

       "How can you lift the sword when it's so heavy?"

       "It's too heavy to lift. I don't."

       "That's not an answer, Ram?"

       "Oh, very well. It's a coffee, tea, or milk thing. Next."

       "What is the groove along the shaft for?"

       "You of all people should have guessed that. Next."

       Joe took a deep breath, what had she said...in for a penny,

       "What is it between you and Methos?"

       Ram laughed. He would miss that sound. He was already grieving as badly as if she were still lying gutted and dead on the sofa.

       "When I straightened his collar you were minded of something. You were right."

       Then she was gone, as completely as if she had never been.

        Joe Dawson found himself staring at his laptop. He'd typed up a report on the events of the preceding night, several versions in fact. In some of them Ram had died, some of them, she was discovered as the newest Immortal manifest, none of them accurate. He just did not understand the truth of it, or how much was to be told, or...

       Joe finally gave up and wandered out of his office. The bar was empty, mid-afternoon, middle of the week. Some things never changed. And sometimes your world went kettle-over-teacups and even breathing made your heart hurt.         Joe could tell he was not going to handle this well. He poured himself two fingers' worth of his best Jameson's. Probably wouldn't help. Couldn't hurt, though.        "Joe," the familiar English lilt with the touch of Cardiff floated through the opening door. Adam didn't seem to be affected at all. Same old jolly, school-boy self. Very different from the night before when he had returned to Duncan's loft and found Ram gone. Talk about the manure hitting the ventilatory device.

       Joe lifted his glass, "Can I interest you?"

       "No, but I will take a beer if you're offering." Adam mounted one of the barstools and leaned forward on his elbows.

       Joe obliged, smacking the belligerent tap so it would stop spewing. Mac hadn't done such a good job on the obstreperous nozzle. Adam blew off the over-abundant suds and sipped absently.

       "Would you mind if I had another look at that sword?" he asked.

       "Sure," Joe replied,

       "I guess so. She only said to take care of it for her...until she returned."

       "If," Adam amended as he ducked into the office to retrieve the object of his renewed obsession. "You said she told you something about this?"

       "Yes, let me see," Joe tossed back the shot and poured another. Definitely not a day for moderation.

       Adam pulled the blade out of its sheath. "Well?"

       "I asked how she could lift it. She said she couldn't that it was too heavy to lift."

       "Joe!" Adam snapped.

       "Okay, buddy, wait a minute. I'm thinking. Yes, she said it was a coffee, tea, or milk thing. Ram's exact words, I swear."

       "Wait a minute," Adam's tone lightened. "Of course!" He sighted down the blade and turned the thicker edge over so it led the stroke. Leaning his weight away from the blade, he angled it up about twenty degrees and swung it in a lateral arc. The blade lifted and carried him around in a complete circle.

       "How did you do that?" Joe finished off the second shot. The hurt in his heart was leaving, floating away on the whiskey and the sheer exuberance of the elder Immortal. "Well, I didn't actually," Adam replied.

       "It's an airfoil. The thick edge is for lift. If you present it into the stroke with enough angle, it flies, literally. I'll bet..." He flew the blade up at a steep angle, stalled it in mid-flight, put his weight behind it and it buried three inches into the floor.

       "Damnation!" Joe toasted him with the third shot, "I suppose you're going to fix that. But what are the grooves for? She said I should know, that out of everyone, I should be the one to know...something like that." He put the Jameson's away. Enough, his brain had achieved that fur-lined fuzziness that usually proceeded an  all night session of blues on his old ax. And he was frankly not in the mood to be quite that drunk.

       "Well, I've heard, I've even read about such, but I don't think I can..." Adam spit on his palms and took up the weapon again. He kicked a few chairs out of the way and began to "fly" the blade in circles, round and round, faster and faster...

       The blade began to hiss, then to whistle, and then it found its throat and began to ring like a fine bronze bell. Adam couldn't keep it up very long, but it was long enough to have heard the sword sing. And for Joe's heart to start its dull ache again. Adam put the sword down and came over to put his hand on Joe's shoulder.

       "I never showed you what I went to get for her," he offered, reaching deep into a back pocket and retrieving a small wad of pale tissue paper.

       "What is it, buddy?" the Jameson's was beginning to make his nose run, or his melancholy...they were almost the same thing. He idly wondered how something tiny enough to be wrapped in this insignificant package could be the treasure of Adam's long life. It was a tiny gold cartouche set with a ring for a leather thong he supposed, graven with Egyptian carvings down its length, a name?

       "I was told it belonged to my mother. That she gave it to me when she left. It is supposed to be her name. I don't know exactly what it says, but it means something like ‘Chaos'. "

       Indeed, thought Joe, and so has she been. And so, pray the fat little sonofabitch buddha, may she yet be.

       The phone in his office began ringing, not like a bronze bell. "Slow down," Joe spoke into the receiver covering the ear piece with his hand. Jim--James, if you please--was screeching at the top of his lungs. Too loud to be understood even on the thousands of miles of telephone connections from Paris to Seacouver. As nearly as he could make out it was something to do with the main frame, the data banks, the entire system. Joe's High School French just wasn't up to the vocabulary orthe speed with which it was delivered.

       He gave up and handed the phone to Adam. There was a long bit of "Hmm, hmmm's" and "Oh, yes, I understands perfectly's" and a few "You can't be serious'" before Adam said, "Hold on a bit and I'll ask."

       Joe waited for the translation.

       "They want to know if we can contact Ram. The entire system is--how did he put it?--'winking out like so many stars at sunrise.' Evidently the data banks are backing themselves up into irretrievable caches. They're losing data at an incredible rate which will end them up with no system at all by about three tomorrow morning."

       Of course, Joe clicked even through the Jameson fog and the heartache, "and I suppose that would be about a quarter of three their time?"

       Adam squinted and sighted down his prominent nose at Joe. "Exactly. How do you know that?"

       "Because I, my old friend, have a djinn key of great worth," Joe replied. Bless her, she'd been better than her word. Joe took the phone and told Jim to shut the hell up. Then he made the new HQChief promise him anything Joe should decide he wanted. And when that was done, he gave over the two magic words. It took several tries before HQ got the spelling, case, and spacing right, but when they did, the computer sat up and barked like an obedient puppy, or whatever such an arcane and complex bean counter did when it was behaving. Hell, maybe she'd made it sing too.

       And when they asked him what he wanted, Joe did not even have to think. "Suspend all secondary projects, all primary projects," Joe began, then repeated in slow English and fractured French.

       They agreed.

       Adam's jaw dropped. Joe was asking all the Watchers to stop watching the Immortals and they had said "yes."

       "Start a global search, all personnel, now, until completed."

       And when they asked for whom they were to search, he had another djinn key, more precious than the others...

       "Ram."