Free Fugue: The Cure by S. D. Stuart Page A

out into the street. She dodged two steam-powered carriages, and the same horse-drawn cart they both darted around, before she made it to the other side. Being a pedestrian in a large city was not one of the safest things to be, she thought. At least it kept people like her in steady demand.
    She closed her umbrella and shook the rain off it as she stepped through the threshold of the Crested Wren, a fancy restaurant that took its name from some small bird that lived on the original world humans departed long before colonizing the planet where she was born.
    Just inside the door, the maître d’ looked up from his podium. His face lit up in a well-practiced smile. “Good evening Dr. Cureaux.”
    She shed her wet overcoat and placed it in the outstretched hand of the maître d’. “Is my companion here yet?”
    “He has only just arrived Madame.”
    She smiled at the maître d’. “One day Reginald, someone’s going to catch you in a lie.”
    The maître d’ bowed slightly. “Maybe someday, Madame, but not today.”
    She looked across the full restaurant at her usual table and saw her companion handing an empty bread bowl to the waiter.
    He glanced toward the entrance and immediately smiled when their eyes met.
    As she approached the table, he stood up and pulled her chair out for her. “I was beginning to think you were never going to make it.”
    She settled into her chair. “Honestly, I did not think I was going to make it either. And I have you to blame.”
    He cocked an eyebrow. “Me?”
    “As the Chief Constable over the Arouet Provinces, anything your men do is ultimately your responsibility. So, when your constables drag a wounded criminal into my hospital, it is all hands on deck.”
    “I thought you moved to the research department and no longer work on patients?”
    “I did, and I don’t. But as a senior staff member, and with scores of constables running around the halls, I was called on to make some executive decisions. You should be pleased to hear I gave your patient his own floor.”
    “I hope you did not do that on my account?”
    She gave him a wink. “I did not do it because I am the Chief Constable’s girlfriend. I did it because I could not have that many armed constables standing around spooking my other patients.”
    “Tell you what. After dinner, instead of going home and getting my daily recommended hours of sleep, I will go to the office and see about getting that number reduced to a reasonable level.”
    “Thank you. Whoever said dating the Chief Constable was a bad idea?”
    “Yeah. Who would go and say an idiotic thing like that?”
    She smiled at him. “You did.”
    “That’s right. Now I remember. Oh, I took the liberty of eating all the bread before you arrived. I know how you don’t like to be tempted by all those carbs.”
    She laughed, all the drama at the office melting away in the presence of a good friend. “How very thoughtful of you.”
    They spent the next hour alternating between silence and light conversation as they ate. One of the benefits of dating someone exclusively was the unspoken agreement that allowed you to stay quiet when the conversation naturally waned.
    But leave it up to Chief Constable Severn Blaine to abhor silence as if it were an admission of wrongdoing.
    “With the exception of tonight’s interruption, how goes your research?”
    “I think I’m close enough to identifying the markers that can help us end Scalars Disease.”
    “I don’t want to sound like I’m minimizing your life’s work, but what’s the point? Nobody has died from Scalars in over a hundred and twenty years.”
    “The threat is still there.”
    “Not really. We have the annual immunization that keeps everyone in the Empire healthy.”
    “That is just a band-aid on a gaping wound. I want to do more than just sweep the problem under the rug. When you do that, it is still there. It is still under the rug. I want to cut it from the house.”
    “The Empire has had