Chiro waited for Sam to approach and fell into step beside him. "They already have a new person in that room? We HAVE to be on Io somewhere, how else could they have a new person here so quickly after losing the last one?"

"It could be nothing. Maybe they are always short of people, so it just happened that this one came in at this time," Sam offered. "Maybe we are still short because she is replacing one of the people last week."

The musings died off as they took their seats at the dining table. Nobody said anything about Sam being gone the day before. He wondered if anyone besides Chiro and cook had noticed. His eyes traveled around the long, worn table passing over the brusque woman he met moments before in the hall and settling on an elderly gentleman sitting at the opposite end. He nudged Chiro and gestured with his eyes. Another new face, this one in the seat previously filled by the new serving girl. She, too, was conspicuously missing, or at least conspicuous to Sam. The look of confusion on Chiro's face was obvious. He didn't know what he was supposed to be looking for. Sam saw the girl after every meal as she brought in dishes to be washed. Maybe nobody else had ever noticed her, with her mouse-like movements and matching brown hair. They all wore the same clothes, light brown slacks and matching button-up tops, some with aprons over them and some without. There wasn't much to set them all apart at first glance. A person could be easy to forget, but could they be easy to not remember in the first place?

"The new serving girl is gone too," he whispered as he leaned closer so that only Chiro would hear. "That old man is in her place." They both looked down the length of the table to where the man was carefully shining his spoon with his unbleached linen napkin. Once it was so shiny that it seemed to catch the light glaring off of his bald head and bounced it onto the far wall, he dipped it methodically into the oatmeal.

The look of confusion did not go away, but he could tell Chiro was trying to remember the girl he spoke of. "Wait... the one who just got here a few days ago?"

"Yes." Sam sat back upright as Cook brought in the food. From the corner of his eye, he saw Butler step into the room and take up his usual post by the door leading further into the manor. They lowered their heads and concentrated on their food, but as soon as Butler walked out again, they continued their whispers. "Was she here yesterday?"

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"I think so, yeah. Cook didn't bring the food out or anything. It must have been ...what was her name again?"

Sam shrugged. He had never asked. "She wasn't even here a week, though, and I never saw her with anybody else. How could she have gotten sick and we haven't?"

"Sam..." Chiro looked directly at him and took a deep breath.

Sam could tell that he was readying himself to say something serious, and he wondered if it had to do with whatever had been on Chiro's mind the last few days.

"Did your people have any tales of... I have no idea how to describe it...did they know that there are other universes besides our own?"

The blank look was answer enough, so Chiro chewed his lip and tried to explain. "Everything around us, planets, moons, stars, everywhere is all part of our universe. But there are other universes that run alongside ours, and if you could see into them, it might be like looking into a mirror or it might be vastly different. About a thousand cycles ago, there was a big war when things passed from a universe near ours INTO ours and caused all kinds of trouble. It's been a long time since then, but I think -"

Butler walked back in, and Chiro snapped his jaws together. Their conversation was over, for the moment. At the next two meals, Butler gifted all of his stern frowns to the two boys, and there was no chance to pick the conversation up again the rest of the day. The talk about other universes was odd, and Sam only understood part of it. Of course, he knew what the term universe meant. Just because his people had been told they were alone in the universe didn't mean they were clueless to there being other stars and planets and whatnot. He had never heard any stories about universes beyond their own, though. Was Chiro thinking that something came from another universe to make people sick? Sam wandered through the hours, trying to remember the faces of the people that he had met who were no longer there. Five people, five in less than two weeks. That seemed like a lot, but if it was a sickness, like the flu that tore through town a couple of years back? There would be a lot more people in such close quarters. Maybe nobody was dead at all. Maybe they really had all quit. Maybe... maybe...