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rounds of the officers and sergeants, making sure nobody was left standing idle. Lieutenant Joanna Hmieleski was a key specialist, an Alpha female, as she liked to put it, and already had her orders: keep an eye on the Doctor, and comb these floors and walls for clues, evidence or a note from a TV magician explaining how this stunt was pulled off.
    She‟d ruled out any chance of the latter, but appreciated the dose of humour. Based on the reports that each room revealed a similar Mary Celeste ambience, she‟d elected to concentrate her efforts in the one place for now and ordered everyone out of the dining room. So it was down to her and this Doctor guy, and so far her new colleague had remained mute and humourless, pouring heavy thoughts into every corner.
    Actually, Joanna found herself taking frequent pauses to watch him at work. Even when she was focused, on a blood-stain or the litter of dead cartridges, his was a constant presence, impossible to ignore. Why? Because, she realised, he reminded her so much of her father.
    They looked nothing alike, of course. Her father had been tall, like this Doctor, but always overweight, and with a smear of dark hair clinging to his head like a thinning oil slick. A community doctor with his own practice, he was a man who might have equated with the tribal elders of Kristal‟s ancestors. So loved and respected, and not least by Joanna. To her, he‟d shone like an oracle, an oracle who had ultimately guided her into medicine.
     
    But long before she‟d wound up on that road, she‟d seen all the unwelcome change that comes hand in hand with growing up.
    Joanna had gone through the requisite teen-rebellion phase nice and early, as though to clear it out of the way; and thinned her father‟s hair some more in the process. It was as she started to emerge that her father began to weaken, growing old fast, losing his mystique. In fact, he had many healthy years ahead of him, and Joanna was only coming to terms with a common discovery: her father was an ordinary man. Fallible and flawed. And in his case, bearing all his private sadnesses behind the gentlest manner and a pair of smiling eyes.
    Working alongside this Doctor guy, Joanna Hmieleski was a girl again. He inspired a similar awe in her. This strangest of strangers was, she reasoned, like a father seen through the eyes of a child. „So, Doctor,‟ she ventured courageously,
    „care to offer an educated guess?‟
    „I never guess.‟
    His face was fixed on an area of the wall, punched and scarred with bullet-holes, a single glance tracing a trajectory between the impacts and the scattered cartridges at Joanna‟s feet.
    His brusque manner felt like a rebuke, and Joanna told herself she was being foolish as she stood to have another go.
    „I just thought, since we‟re supposed to be working together -‟
    She rolled a spent cartridge in her palm. „I guess I was only trying to break the ice.‟
    The Doctor turned, all goldfish eyes and mystical smile.
    „Medicine is your field, hmm?‟
    „Sure,‟ she answered automatically, „but I fill a forensics role as well. Pydych is our engineer and-‟ The Doctor shushed her with a mime, then went on as if she hadn‟t spoken.
    „Do you know what interests me most, Lieutenant Hmieleski?‟ The way his voice made such a rich sound of her name was oddly flattering. „We have no patients. Not even a candidate for a post mortem. These cultists were firing an awful lot of ammunition at somebody or something. But your Captain assures me not a single shot was aimed at him or his soldiers.‟
    „Not intentionally, no. It never got to that. Kristal is convinced she was hit by accident. One desperate guy blowing an emergency exit through a back window. She saw him run off into the snows, like a wild thing, she said. That was when the rest of the shooting started inside the house and that‟s when we made our move. And that is pretty much all she wrote.‟
    „Yes, well, she could have