I put the book quickly aside. I picked up the next. It had a flashy cover, a bust head in a helmet.

"Now, that's the one we're interested in," said Teenie. "Alexander the Great."

"Quite an outlaw," said Madison. "His mother, Olympia, poisoned his father, naturally, and the boy went on to rape the whole known world. He had a psychoanalytic problem but, no matter, he was one of the greatest outlaws of all time. Just a barbarian from Macedonia and he could do all that."

"You already know about him," I said.

"No, no," said Teenie. "We haven't dug into his private life at all. We haven't any idea how he got such good PR when he was such a bum. Crazy, too. Thought he was a god. But we need a few more details and then we'll be able to split for Macedonia."

"Wait," I said. "That's awfully close to Turkey. If the Turks get their hands on me, I'll be shish kebab."

"That's why we got the books on the bottom," said Teenie. "When we finish with Alexander, we can go look into 'Chinese' Gordon."

"To China?" I said.

"No, no, Inky. Jesus, are you ignorant. 'Chinese' Gordon made his last stand in Egypt. And you can see right there on that globe that you can go from Macedonia to Egypt without hitting Turkey. I'm looking forward to riding a camel up the pyramids anyway. So start chewing alphabet about Alexander so we can get out of this place. A tough-looking Mafia type was asking after you on the dock and we don't want to have to stick you in those catacombs with all those dead eyes staring at you for the rest of eternity."

We sailed just as soon as we could get a pilot and tug.

That evening, as we headed for the Strait of Messina that separates Sicily from Italy, I was not waiting up to see the whirlpools that had almost sunk Ulysses. I was in my bedchamber and the record player was going full blast.

Teenie was sharing a joint and weaving to the throb of a new record she had bought. She was giggling. The heavy-rhythmed song went:

Go on home!

To bed.

Go on home!

To bed.

To me.

Go on home!

To bed.

To me.

To Oh, Boy!

Push it home!

To me.

To Oh, Boy!

Push it home.

Stupid (bleep) that I was, I thought she was giggling because she was high on pot!

In a leisurely way, through deceptively calm seas, I was being sailed onward to my doom.

Fate is sometimes like a headsman who is in no hurry: he gets the victim on the platform, adjusts the condemned man's neck just so, artistically hones his axe and sends an assistant off for a mug of beer so he can enjoy the scenery and gloat before he delivers the sizzling swoosh that will sever forever the desirable connection between skull and torso.

There is no doubt that the scenery was beautiful. We rounded the bottom end of Greece, passing through the Cyclades into the legendary Aegean Sea. The azure waters were lapped by the cooling breezes of late spring; the white cotton-puff clouds rose in majesty above the fabled isles of song and story. The white yacht drew a gentle wake but it was a fatal mark in my history.

Over to the east of us lay Turkey, but it was further than a hundred miles and out of sight-and, unfortunately, out of mind for me. Our course lay between the two continents of Europe and Asia. As I was well-oiled on pot at night and distracted by exercise all day, Asia, where catastrophe awaited, might as well have been on another planet.

Four cruising days were consumed, days like drops of lifeblood running out unseen. I had found that the yacht, at low speeds, did not bob around at all even in a moderate sea and Bitts was nothing loathe to drink beer in his pilot chair and yarn with his watch officers about Jason and the Golden Fleece and experiences they themselves had had with girls and ouzo on one or another island that we passed. Teenie herself seemed to find this very educational, for she was up there two or three times a day.

I gave attention to my own duty. Every day I checked up on Heller and Krak. There was seven hours' time difference now and it was three or four in the afternoon aboard the yacht before they were very active in the morning in New York.

Only once did I hear a mention of the yacht. They were at breakfast in their condo sunshine room because it was pouring rain outside.

"I'm sorry you lost the ship," said Heller. "It was very nice."

"The Turkish navy had more use for it than I did," said the Countess. "You've been cured completely of your silliness about other women and I have no slightest idea of ever running away from you again. Besides, we're finishing up here very swiftly and we'll be going home in no time at all. So, who needs it?"

I did. Without it, I would be in the clutches of Turkish authorities at best or full of holes from Nurse Bildirjin's father's shotgun at worst. Little did I know how much worse it was going to get.

Macedonia, where Alexander's father, Philip, had ruled, is at the north end of Greece. We sailed into the Gulf of Salonika with Mount Olympus, home of the Greek Gods, rising in snow-capped majesty to our port. We threaded our way through the fishing craft off the city of Katerini and, turning northeastward, sailed gracefully into Thessalonica, the second major port of Greece.

They found us a nice, clean berth, bombarded us with welcomes, and Teenie and Madison rolled up their sleeves to hunt down the haunts of Alexander the Great.

They pushed me into accompanying them and in a wheezing car, left over from World War II, we rattled off to the site of Philip's capital, Pella, twenty-four miles northwest of the modern city.

The archaeologists had been busy and that was all I could say for it. In an otherwise pastoral scene, they had laid bare foundations and several floors. I will admit the floors of the former residences were interesting: in later homes on Earth, you find paintings on the walls but in the time of Alexander the Great, they put the pictures on the floors! They were pebble mosaic, many-hued, heads of lions, scenes of the hunt and they WALKED ON THEM!

I right away told Teenie and Madison that this was very significant psychologically. It was obvious to me. I tried to explain it to them. "Greek Gods," I said, "dwell in the sky. Now, you can get the idea of baby Alexander trotting around here in his diapers and he sees all these Earth scenes under his feet, so of course he thinks he's a god in the sky. Simple. An obvious case of spacio-psychological mispositioning of the medulla oblongata, leaving him with no option but to conquer the world."

They didn't get it.

"That doesn't explain why his mother poisoned his father," said Teenie, working a camera she had mysteriously acquired and framing a shot of a particularly silly-looking lioness who was busy chomping a luckless man and laughing about it.

"Well, that's just it," I said. "I've been reading these books and she didn't. Philip was assassinated by a young man who thought he had suffered injustice at Philip's hands. I gave it to you in the notes I made for you, Madison."

"Oh, I read them," said Madison. "It's just more natural that Olympia would poison her husband. Besides, it makes better headlines. I can see it now in the Athens Times, 18 point quote Outraged Queen Slips Hubby Arsenic unquote."

"It isn't factual," I protested.

"Factual?" said Madison, sweeping his hand to indicate the ruins of the ancient city, "what does FACT have to do with it? Alexander was 99 percent a PR creation. The legends of his life have almost nothing to do with fact. He was one of the most romanced-about outlaws in history. PRs, according to your own notes from those very books, were sweating for centuries to dream up new copy about Alexander. And as for the poison story, even that is too close to the truth to make good newsprint. She had plenty of reason."