”But!” He closed his mouth again. “What about other gates?”
”Mike’s working on it. Hang on a sec.”
Kit waited in a sweat. Then Bull came back on. “No, she didn’t log out through any of the other gates, either. Not the tourist ones, anyway, and nobody’s filed paperwork to scout the unknown gates off Commons.”
”Bull, she has to be somewhere. La-La Land’s a closed environment.”
A brief silence greeted him. “Kit, there are unstable gates.”
He shut his eyes. “No. Not even Margo’s that stupid. She was scared spitless of the Nexus Gate and after Orleans …”
”Well, she’s still here somewhere, then, avoiding you.”
”For seven weeks? La-La Land isn’t that big. Besides, Margo couldn’t stay out of trouble for seven minutes, never mind seven weeks. If she were here, somebody would’ve seen her. She’s not on the station.” He thought hard. “Do me a favor, would you? See if anyone else is missing? I’ll start asking around on my own, see what I can scare up. Maybe a small gate opened up somewhere we don’t know about. Or maybe somebody went through one of the unexplored gates without permission.” It’d be just like that little idiot to pull a stunt like that.
”Sure thing, Kit. I’ll run some checks and let you know.”
”Thanks.”
Kit hung up and said several biting things to the withered-sea landscape garden, then started placing phone calls.
Kit didn’t have much luck. Nobody he talked to had heard a whisper about an unknown gate. A couple of down timers who worked as Time Tours baggage handlers recalled seeing Margo return through Primary, but they had no idea where she’d gone afterward. Kit’s granddaughter had managed to vanish without a trace from the heart of one of the most gossip-riddled communities in the world.