“Hi! Can I help you?”

“Just looking,” the man said. “Smells good in here.”

“What brings you to the Mile?” she asked.

“Haven‘t been here in a while,” he said. “Just felt like taking a look around, you know? See what’s new.”

“What is new?”

“Well, for one thing… it sure seems like there’s a lot of kids out there.”

“Yeah?” she said. “Well, I mean… it is Friday night.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But, it didn’t seem like there were so many at first, and then it was like every time I turned around there were more of them, so I started counting… and… well, I kept losing count. But it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of grown-ups around, you know? And some of the kids look pretty young.”

“Oh, tell me about it,” the candy shop proprietress said, heaving a heavy sigh. “Today’s parents think the mall’s a playground and we’re all babysitters. I feel bad for the toyshop… but next to them, I’ve got it worst. They come in here and act like a kid in… well, you know.”

She laughed, and he laughed with her.

“I guess I know what you mean,” he said.

“I didn’t catch your name?” she said.

“Larry,” he said. “Larry Peters.”

“That’s funny,” she said. “I wouldn’t have guessed you were a Larry. I’m Ginger.”

“Strangely enough, I would have guessed you were one of those,” Larry said, his eyes flicking up to her shock of ginger hair.

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “Say, can I interest in you in a complimentary chocolate cordial?”

“I never say no to free candy,” he said, accepting the treat.

“It’s good,” he said. “The filling… very sweet. Uh, I should probably get going.”

“Can’t tempt you with anything else?”

“Not tonight, I’m afraid.”

“Hey, uh, Larry?” she called, as he was almost out the door.

“What?”

“Oh, forget it,” she said.

He did.

“So it worked,” Wow said after seating Mama in the kitchen and serving her tea. She made it a statement rather than a question.

Mama nodded.

“After what you told him, Ivan’s likely to stick to me like glue for the next little while,” Mama said. “Which means I can finally keep a bit of an eye on him.”

“But it also means that your pet bear’s got a license to go all over town now,” Wow said. “Instead of being penned up in his half of the city. John‘s screaming… well, muttering… bloody murder over that one, you know.”

“John’s good at keeping the peace within his neck of the wood, but he’s not so great at dealing with threats from without… anyway, Ivan can’t quite go ‘all over‘,” Mama said. “He can travel between east and west but he’s got to stick close to me to do it. He might think he’s been let off his leash, but really he’s only just put it on.”

“Just as long as he doesn’t ignore the possible threat to my sister,” Wow said. “You said you were going to downplay it. I hope you haven’t discouraged him from looking into it at all.”

“A man like Ivan doesn’t need encouragement,” Mama said. “You’ve got to discourage him a bit just to get his response down to a reasonable level.”

“Do you think Ivan knows you’re yanking his strings?” Wow asked.

“You have to ask me?” Mama returned.

“I’ve never been able to get a read off Ivan, you know that.”

“I know,” Mama said. “But what do you think, then?”

“Well, bearing in mind that my advice is given ‘for entertainment purposes only‘,” Wow said with a sly grin which Mama briefly returned, “I think you’re playing a dangerous game.”

The day being Friday, her goal was to complete all of her appointed tasks before the sun set. As with the other strictures of her faith, her position did not always allow her to strictly observe the Shabbat, but she did her best. G-d was good, and would ask no more than that.

She did make a point never to touch money after sundown, though. She was very careful about that.

As the day wore on, Ivan reacted to her requests for greater haste with a sense of understated mirth, though he also willingly complied.

“Is something about my faith amusing to you?” Mama asked him. She had emerged from a fairly tense meeting with three rival gang leaders and a tribe chieftain whose territory butted up against a disputed zone, and was in less of a mood to tolerate his attitude.

“Faith of any kind is amusing to me,” Ivan replied. “My sense of humor is very ecumenical in this regard.”

“Everybody’s got to believe in something,” Mama said.

“I believe otherwise,” Ivan said.

“Do you believe in tribe?” Mama asked.

“After a fashion,” he said.

“How’s that?” she asked.

“I believe that it exists,” he said. He paused, and then added, “after a fashion.”

“And that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” Mama asked him. “You said you wanted to disappear… where better than into a place that doesn’t quite exist, an organization that nobody could prove existed?”

“Somebody could prove it,” Ivan said. “They’d just have to know where to look.”

“But that would put paid to your little hidey-hole, wouldn’t it?” Mama said.

“It’s good you have excellent security, then,” Ivan replied.

When the program had begun, they’d had a single webcam which sent an updated picture every five minutes. Now, there were three webcams that showed the nests from different angles. The new webcams updated in real time, with a gallery of past screen captures for visitors to view when the nests were empty or when, as had just happened, the cameras were offline for maintenance.

“A crisis averted,” Mama said. “The conflict’s still there, and always will be… peregrines hunt pigeons. It’s just that simple. The Flock needs to learn not to send its messengers out during the raptors’ feeding time.”

“So why talk to the Falconer?” Ivan asked.

“The Flock sees themselves as the injured party,” Mama said. “Every time one of the falcons snatches one of their pigeons, they take it personally, even if it is their own fault. But, we need their services, even as we need the falcons’ eyes. So I pretend to lecture the Falconer and he pretends he’s sorry, and I’ll go back to the Flock and tell them he’ll restrict his birds’ hunting times to dawn and dusk if they’ll not fly their birds during those times.”

“That is the natural hunting habit of the falcons?” Ivan asked.

“It is,” Mama said. “And the Flock knows it, but he has to seem like he’s giving something up. ”

“Interesting,” Ivan said.

“If it’s so interesting, you could have come up with me,” Mama said.

“What, and leave the van unattended?” Ivan asked, feigning offense.

“So, you didn’t leave it the moment I was inside?” Mama asked.

“I would never leave the van unguarded,” Ivan said. “And does it seem likely I would have agents waiting to take my place, this far uptown?”

“Diplomacy,” Ivan said.

“Don’t turn your nose up at it,” Mama said, though his tone had been neutral. “It can be a useful tool.”

“It can be a useful diversion,” Ivan said.

“You’re sure you’ve got clearance to enter the west side?” Mama asked.

“Should I take it that you concede the point that the mall isn’t part of the west side?” Ivan asked.

“I concede that it’s not across the border,” Mama said. “And that on that basis, John Bull could hardly keep you out of it.”

Ivan snorted.

“What?” Mama asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Ivan said.

“You haven’t…” Mama began.

“I haven’t what?” Ivan asked after she’d let the thought hang unfinished for several seconds.

“Nothing,” Mama said. “Nothing I want to know about, that’s for damn sure.” She muttered this to herself. Mama wasn’t big on muttering to anybody, least of all herself, but the man called Ivan had a way of bringing it out in her.

She looked out the window at her city, at Jericho, and watched the neighborhoods change. Ivan avoided the midday traffic on the main arteries as best as he could, but as they were headed into the center of Jericho’s financial district, some delays were inevitable.

“Ivan, what are you doing here?” she asked when a lengthy traffic light denied her the distraction of changing scenery.

He turned his least cold smile to the mirror so she could see it.

“I am driving you,” he said. “We have gone over this.”

“In tribe, I mean,” she said. “It seems to me a man with your talents could put them to all sorts of uses. What are you doing, protecting a silly old woman and the freaks and dregs of the street?”

“Perhaps… I needed a place to disappear,” Ivan said.

Ivan, on the other hand, never seemed to scavenge for his meals.

“You know, you never do ask for any money,” Mama said as they sat in the parked van and ate, she on her bench and Ivan up front in the driver’s seat.

“Do you need my help with an unforeseen budget surplus, perhaps?” Ivan asked.

“Western security’s got one of the largest budgets in tribe,” Mama said. “But you’ve never asked me for a cent.”

“That just goes to show you how much safer things are here in the east,” Ivan said, turning his face so his rueful smile wouldn’t be visible in the mirror. “We do not have the problems of the west.”

“Your money’s got to come from somewhere, Ivan,” Mama said.

“What do you think I’m doing?” Ivan asked. “Selling drugs? Weapons? Neither of those are any good for security. If I could get all of them off the streets, out of Jericho, I would.”

“Except the ones your men carry,” Mama said.

“Oh, no,” Ivan said. “If I could know for a fact that nobody else carried any guns, I would not give them to my men.”

“Then you’d keep them to yourself?” Mama asked.

“Of course,” Ivan agreed.

“You can laugh,” Mama said. “But if I find out you’re involved in something I wouldn’t approve of…”

“No worries,” Ivan said. “I can promise you that if I were involved in such a thing, you would never find out.”

“It is my policy,” Mama said. “Ginger seems to think she can convince the rest of tribe to take in some of her kids. It‘s not a bad plan… they have to leave the mall when they get too old, anyway. If they do it when they‘re a bit younger, and have somebody to show them the ropes, it might actually make things easier for them.”

“Who would take them in?” Ivan asked.

“Some folks might,” Mama said. “Young hands and quick legs have their advantages in some of the work that needs doing. Ginger says she’ll start small… get herself a couple of poster children, is how she put it, and the rest will follow from that.”

“It might be good if the rest did follow,” Ivan said. “The rest of the children, I mean… all of them. This whole operation is unstable.”

“That’s not your concern,” Mama said.

“It concerns tribe security,” Ivan said. “I am in charge of security for the east.”

“You know, it’s never been totally clear whether the Mile Mall belongs to east or west,” Mama said.

“That’s part of the problem,” Ivan said softly.

“What’s that?” Mama asked. “You start muttering, Ivan?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s all it is, too… mutterings and misgivings.”

“Well?” Mama prompted.

“Well, what?”

“Let’s hear them.”

“The mall is a weak spot,” Ivan said. “So many children, so few watchful eyes… and all right on top of the straight world. If I wanted to attack tribe, this would be the place I would do it.”

“Attack tribe?” Mama said. “You’re not planning a civil war, are you?”

“Of course not, Mama,” he said smiling. “But if I should change my mind, you’ll be the first one to know.”

He never strayed too far from Ginger’s shop, of course. Tigers could never be tamed, but they could be trained, and the tiger that was Ivan knew his duty too well to neglect it.

It had turned into a pleasant day, the air nipping but not biting. The mall was busy, but not packed. There were children, of course, running around and hanging around. Not too many. Just… never the same few glimpsed in a row.

The Mile Mall had always struck Ivan as a point of convergence, of confluence… not just between the de facto cities of East Jericho and West Jericho, but between the visible world and the unseen one, the crass consumer culture of modern America and the secret subculture of the streets. The mall belonged to tribe but it did not belong to tribe.

Malls were by their very nature in-between places… people might say that they were going to the mall, but they really meant they were passing through it. Even the stores changed. Sure, there would be a Hot Topic and a Cinnabon stand somewhere, just to prove to a skeptical world that it was indeed a mall that they saw before them.

Nothing was permanent in a mall, except the mall itself. Nothing was certain. Nothing was stable. That put the mall’s permanent inhabitants in a tenuous position.

When things went bad, they would go bad here.

Listen to me, Ivan told himself. I am becoming philosophical in my middle age.

He didn’t often think to himself in concrete words.

Even Ivan himself, in his own head, couldn’t help but hear the Boris Badenov accent.

When they had left, she handed Mama a small cardboard sign with a clock with movable hands on it, below the words “WE’LL BE BACK AT“. Mama glanced at her watch and set the hands thirty minutes ahead, then stuck it in the door and turned the lock.

“You’re keeping some bad company these days, Mama,” Ginger said ruefully, glancing towards the display window, at the broad back of Ivan.

“Or he’s keeping me,” Mama replied. “He does good work.”

“You can’t do good work by doing ill,” Ginger countered.

“That was the reason most folks wanted to keep the witches out of tribe, back when,” Mama said.

“Small-minded superstition,” Ginger said, with a shrug. “As far as I know, nobody’s had cause to regret our inclusion. You’ll want to watch that one twice as hard as he watches you, though… they don’t call him ‘Ivan the Terrible’ for nothing.”

“I expect they don’t,” Mama said. “Most folks who insult him wind up paying something. Anyway, I didn‘t come here to discuss my minders.”

“I’d guess that you didn’t,” Ginger said, her manner changing in the blink of an eye, becoming more guarded.

“You’ve got too many kids here, Ginger,” Mama said, her tone also changing, becoming less conversational and more authoritative. “Somebody’s bound to start counting. Somebody’s bound to notice.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?” Ginger asked. “Turn the new ones away? Start culling? Nobody ends up here because they wanted to. These children are here because they were unwanted, neglected if not abandoned outright by their parents.”

“Something’s got to be done,” Mama said.

“Well,” Ginger said, thoughtfully. “How about an adoption program?”

“Now that’s awfully convenient,” Mama said.

“Isn’t it nice when things just happen to go your way?” Ivan noted, an unnaturally cheery note in his voice.

“They aren’t even leaving the garage,” Mama noted, watching the junker pulling into another space a short distance away. “I wonder what their game is?”

“They will be keeping an eye on the van for us,” Ivan said. “Tribe protocol demands it never be left unattended. You know this.”

“I know it because I wrote it,” Mama said. “It’s usually not an issue since the driver stays with it.”

“This driver feels like doing some window shopping,” Ivan said.

“You’re really not planning on leaving me alone today, are you?” Mama asked.

“I am not such an easy man to get rid of,” Ivan said.

“I just bet not,” Mama replied. “You know Ginger’s never going to allow you inside her shop, right? I hope you don‘t plan on forcing the issue.”

“She has never much cared for me,” Ivan admitted. “I will wait by the door. I do not have much taste for sweets, anyway.”

“You’re going to have to let me out of your sight sometimes,” Mama said. “I’m not as young as I used to be, you know. A cup of tea doesn’t take nearly as long to find its way to the end of the line as it once did.”

“We will go straight to the candy store, then,” Ivan said. “I would guess that Ginger has a bathroom inside her premises.”

“Guess, nothing,” Mama snorted. “You probably know how many tiles are in the floor.”

“Now you are being silly,” Ivan replied. “Where is the practical value of such information?”