And it may take some time to learn what&#39;s real

Jamie has only half been keeping track of the conversation - something about Joris' world and red hair. (He's just glad Adam didn't set Joris off talking about the other Elsie.)

Muzzily: "Who's Vanessa?"

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"My sister. My sneering, bossy, know-it-all, redheaded sister," Adam says, enumerating traits precisely. "Next time she goes on at me, I shall sit and think how much I can sell her for - ooh!" He's beaming again like he'll never stop. "Oh! Ah! Sixty thousand, five hundred pounds!"

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Helen's hands cup protectively around the lump in the sleeve she's been tending to (as if worried it will hear and be horrified), and her nose comes out of her hair as she stiffens her jaw, angry.

"Greedy pig! And I thought Jamie was commercial minded!"

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- it's Helen's face!

Adam, not one to let an opportunity go by, turns to the little of the face that he can see and says smoothly, "Tell me about you."

(Best to turn the subject before it can get back to Konstam anyways.)

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"I might," Helen says, severely, after a moment, putting her hands on the table and easily coaxing the mouse out of her sleeve. It runs straight towards the biscuits.

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. . . has she been keeping that in her shirt or something?

"I didn't know you kept mice," Adam says, eyeing the mouse. His parents are not going to be happy if Helen starts shedding mice all over the house. (Neither is Vanessa, but that's significantly less of a concern.)

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"I don't," Helen tells him, with an abrupt shrug. "It lives here. It's quite sweet, but I'd prefer it if you had rats."

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Jamie rouses from his half-stupor enough to notice that this conversation is going nowhere good.

"Helen," he says, interrupting, "you ought to tell Adam about how you saw Them. Joris and I have both told."

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Helen glares over at Jamie from behind her hair. Oh, ought she, then?

Helen is getting very sick of being told what to do.

And she already told him some of it (he laughed at her).

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"I expect you remember loads more details about Them than Joris or I do," Jamie coaxes. "Seeing as it was years ago for me and I've probably forgotten things -" this is 100% a lie, Jamie does not think he will never forget any details of that day, but that is besides the point right now - "and Joris was busy clinging to a demon in a suicidal sort of way at the time. And you're more of a noticing person than either of us."

He combines this appeal to Helen's vanity with a Significant Look in the direction of Joris. If Helen does not step up to the plate, Joris is likely to jump back in with some more Konstaming, and nobody wants that!

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Voice tightly controlled, Helen begins to explain her experience with Them again. It's fully detailed, but the sentences are short and abrupt. Her voice is quieter than it usually is too, her phrasing more sarcastic.

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Adam takes off his much-mended glasses midway through this recitation and starts fiddling with them.

He's thinking. He's still not entirely sure he believes what these strangers are telling him - but there is a certain coherence to it. When you put things together.

"Funny," he says, when Helen stops talking. "You all seem to have seen Them differently." He's picked up their way of emphasizing the word, without thinking. "It's given me quite a few ideas. I'm not sure I like my ideas, either. But I know what kind of games They were playing. Want to come and see?"

He doesn't wait for an answer, just turns and walks down towards the basement.

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Past Frederick M. Allington, down a flight of steps to a basement, and as soon as Adam turns on the light for the well-furnished room-

Joris is just about back out the door and gone.

For the very good reason that it looks like one if Their game tables is sitting right in the middle of the room.

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Louder, so he can hear: "It's only models. Come back, fool."

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Jamie's also jumped back at the sight, but manages to get ahold of himself before he goes for the full-out bolt.

He remembers the games he saw Them playing. He remembers them very, very well. These don't look nearly so real, of course, but still -

By the time Jamie has gotten over his shock and tuned back in, Adam has already been explaining for quite some time (and in detail) how he makes the landscape out of paper and glue and paint and created his own mud-brown model figures. He sounds very proud of himself. Jamie is not surprised.

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All of them look like they've been clobbered over the head with something.

Adam's watching their reactions out of the corner of his eye, as he picks up a ruler to measure the distance from one of his tanks to one of his father's regiments. "I think I've got him," he remarks idly. "When he comes back on Sunday, I'm going to crush him. It takes real skill, you know."

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The intent way that Adam makes the measurements reminds Jamie even more of Them.

"Doesn't it depend on luck at all?" He nods towards the dice lying near the rulers, but he's thinking of Them and their chance machines. Random factors, they call them.

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Joris is back in the room, but he keeps eyeing the table as if expecting Them to show up at any moment.

"They threw dice."

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"You told me," Adam says, turning back around. "You said They moved things on the table and sometimes threw dice after that. That was what made me sure it was War Gaming."

He is sure, too - and what a marvelous idea it is, a War Game with a whole world for a table! Half of him wishes he could have a chance to play too. Even when Helen jumps in to protest that the game that she saw Them playing wasn't really like that, he's already thought of an explanation. "It was the kind we call Fantasy War Gaming," he tells her, and takes Helen and Jamie over to see the other board set up, the one with traps and pitfalls and monsters.

"You make it sound a lot like one of my outside fantasy maps. Players can take over a fort in those. Oh, and a lot of emphasis is put on the endowments of the players' men - how strong they are, and whether they're fighting men or thieves or clerks and what class of man or magic user they've got to. Is your world like that?"

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Helen nods, after a moment, stiff and wary. "Yes, I am a cleric and a magic user."

Duh.

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Joris has been paging though a book of rules for the war game on Adam's table.

Scarily, most of it makes sense, at least when it comes to strategy for fighting battles and wars, broken down into rules and odds. But that is war, and that is a totally different 'game'. For fighting one-on-one, or in small groups against foes not even human, however-

"This War isn't like ours with the demons. Not really."

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"No," Adam says - patiently enough, because he really doesn't mind letting them see how he's got it figured out.

"From what you said, yours is a version of the game in Helen's world. That's why they threw dice so much. When a player's man meets a monster - or a demon - he's allowed a saving throw, to give him some kind of chance. We use these many-sided dice -"

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Joris nods, curtly.

"Some of Their dice had many sides."

Sometimes he is good at noticing details like that.

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Helen's been quietly watching this, observing the maps and the rule book Joris has open.

Loud, abrupt: "I'm angry. How dare they play games?"

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