Malcolm chuckled. “Really? Well, she did want to be an actress. But then, what little girl didn’t at some point in life? As I recall, my sisters went through the `I’ll die if I’m not an actress’ phase shortly after the “I’ll die if I don’t have a horse’ phase and the `I’ll die if I’m not an Olympic figure skater’ phase.”
Kit grinned. “I didn’t have any sisters. Sounds like I missed out on all the fun. But seriously, Margo and I have had only one real heart-to-heart since she’s been here and what I found out then …” He shook his head. “She’s so full of hurt, she doesn’t want to talk about any of the million or so silly little details I’d give the Neo Edo to know”
Malcolm sighed. “I figured as much. What are-” He paused, visible startlement passing over his mobile features, then pressed a hand to the back of his ear. “There’s no gate due to cycle-is there?”
Kit felt it too: that subharmonic sensation which heralded a gate opening nearby. Whatever it was, it was out of phase-and from the feel of it, this was one big gate.
”New gate!”
”Right.
They scrambled for the door and all but collided with the Prince Albert’s owner. “Where is it?” Peg Ames demanded breathlessly. She was holding her head. “Mother Bear, that’s going to be a big gate. That hurts.”
It did, too, much worse than the Porta Romae — which was La-La Land’s biggest active gate. ‘Eighty-sixers converged on the Commons at a dead run from storefronts, even from residential corridors. Several carried scanners designed to search for the unstable fields that heralded a gate’s arrival in the temporal spatial continuum. Tourists looked bewildered. They huddled in groups, holding their ears. A klaxon’s strident SKRONNK! echoed off girders and concrete walls in a mad rhythm. Someone had sounded the special alert siren activated only during station emergencies. Last time that siren had sounded, the semi-permanent unstable gate under the Shermans’ coffee shop had endangered the lives of more than a dozen rescue workers.