"Yes?" the woman asked."Hi, is Audrey still here?" Alex asked."Who are you?" the woman asked."I'm- a friend," Alex said."You're a friend of Audrey's?"...the woman asked."Hey Alex!" Alex heard Audrey say from within the office. "Come on in."Audrey opened the door and Alex stepped inside the cool, air-conditioned office. The woman gave Audrey a dirty look as she shut the door behind him."This way," Audrey said.Alex followed Audrey back to the lifeguard's locker room."Don't mind Teresa, she's always. In general the level of science and technology was similar to that of Earth in the 1930's, though certain martial arts and related philosophies were more in the mainstream here than had been the case on Earth. Since the martial arts were one of the possible routes to the power if taken to a high enough level that was the route taken by the three Mev's group was to find. If those three individuals were indeed on the cusp of becoming as the High Lords of Venda then they did indeed need to be. Unfortunately, that slammed her into the wall. Corwin dropped down onto the broken safety glass. I turned off the shower and did a quick check to find that she was damn lucky. My shield didn’t do anything to protect these three women. I turned off the water, lifted her off the floor, and did my best to brush off the broken glass before getting a towel wrapped around her.Damn it! I can’t get all the glass out of her skin because that would be too unexplainable.I carefully placed her on the bed. The wind-up clock that was just out of reach on the bedside table glaredat him in the pre-dawn gloom. He really was a bit of a Luddite in someways. He admitted it in a half joking manner whenever someone called himon something like that. But he still did it. As far as he could see thatwas more of a feature than a bug and he wasn't inclined to change.The glowing hands slowly crawling across the clock face told him that itwas almost half past six. That meant that he had only been asleep for.