Slide shook his head. "That is not strictly true, Majesty. It might appear so, but only because of the relativity of time and the singular perpetuation of the observer."

"We are not sure we understand."

"And I'm not sure I could explain without expounding a brief history of time and the separation of parallel dimensions."

"We have neither the time nor inclination for a history of time."

"That's why I hesitate to attempt it."

"We have heard that they hunt you in other realms of the continuum." "That is true, your Majesty."

"It is said that you deliberately caused disastrous alterations in an entire swath of very important time lines."

"It is said, ma-am, but that does not make it true."

"Then you are a fugitive from retribution for a crime that you did not commit?"

"That is my story, your Majesty."

"And you're sticking to it?"

"I am, ma'am."

"You must have been relieved when brought we you to our realm."

Slide resisted giving himself away by raising a cynical eyebrow. Either someone was deceiving the Queen about the reason for Slide's presence on Mars, or some temporal discrepancy had come into play. At his side, he heard Lupo let out a faint exhalation as though he knew that the Queen might be misinformed. As far as Slide was aware Dr. Zen's Carter Machine had hurled him across both space and time on the Gridley Wave, and he had been slammed naked into the hard sands of Mars with not even Mahdjfb the Fygglhgis to witness his actual arrival. No one in the Turquoise Tower, or anywhere else on the planet, could have had a hand in the event, although he knew, from his perception of the subjective present, that could easily not be what they firmly believed. Thus Slide's reply was thought-out and guarded. "I would certainly rather be here than in some of the other places I have recently found myself."

"But are you grateful to us, Yancey Slide?"

Slide half bowed and smiled. He might as well play along with the illusion for the moment. "Yes, you majesty. I am extremely grateful."

"Grateful enough to be of service in return?"

Yeah, well, he might have known. Nothing was for nothing, anywhere in space-time. Again he bowed. This time lower and with a greater flourish. "I am at your service, you Majesty."

Slide knew he was entering the art of the deal, but this was doing it the hard way, when the first phase was clearly going be waiting for Queen Mina and her coterie of courtiers to define exactly what the deal was all about. Like those who hunted him, and those from whom he ran, the Queen seemed to be under the delusion that Slide had the power to alter history and change the course of the future. It was nonsense, of course. Just part of the bad rap that had been laid on the idimmu almost since infinity. Sure, they could mightily fuck things up by the classic "Stepping On The Butterfly" time paradox, but any entity with

temporal jump capacity could emerge into a particular era, inadvertently destroy one crucial factor, and wreak havoc in another. Like the story went, he could step on butterfly in one time zone, and cause towers to fall millions of years later on the same timeline. The trouble was that survivors of the cataclysm would not remember that the towers had ever existed in the first place, because, in their reality, the towers never had.

The whole business of rearranging time was all an academic conundrum, with no practical application, no matter what his enemies might claim. He imagined that the Queen had some scheme in mind whereby he expected him casually to hop back a few eons, and eliminate the source of the Slimy Things, or whatever else might threaten the kingdom, but such an operation was never going to happen. Even if he had the power, the timelines in this neck of the nexus were almost certainly inalterably fucked up already. Only the Ancient Ones could know what havoc Mina and her Victorians had wreaked on the ecology of nearby time when they'd arbitrarily set down their imperial dog and pony show on antediluvian Mars.

The truth was that Slime didn't have half the power with which he was so often credited. Without the help of technology like the Gridley Wave and its more advanced cousins, he had no way of controlling, or even knowing, where his time jumps might take him. The myth that idimmu could navigate the streams of time, as opposed to merely jumping and hoping, was as specious as their supposed immortality. Sure they could handle immeasurably more wear and tear than humans, but, if he was sufficiently unlucky or careless enough to run into his own specific Instant of Termination, he could find himself as non-existent and effectively dead as any deceased mortal. He wasn't about to tell the Queen any of that, though. While Mina and her crew went on thinking that he was the solution, and not just another itinerant problem, he at least had a hole in which to hide, here in out-of-the-way Extrosylvania. His only alternative was to jump out, cold and discorporate, back down into the Gantenbrink matter and the sub-atomic foam, and that was something he had no desire to do.

"We are glad to hear that, Yancey Slide, but I wonder how your enthusiasm will hold up when you learn the nature of the service we require of you."

Slide looked deliberately nonchalant and composed. "I find I can take most things in my stride. Why not tell me and see how I react?"

Queen Mina was about to respond when the capitalist Bolivar Morlock huffed and took a step forward. "Your Majesty, I must protest…"

"You protest too much and far to often, Bolivar."

"I'm sure Slide will prove a great asset in the long run, ma'am, but right now I feel we have to address the impending industrial strike. How can we hope to take the fight to the Slimy Things if the foundry is going to be closed down be idle malcontents, even for a matter of days?"

"As you well know, Bolivar, I am against sending in the army to intimidate your human workers and preserve your profits."

"It's the Green Martians this time, ma'am."

"You always claimed they were to stupid to demand a living wage."

"The Human Syndicalists have feeding them Marx, and they are taking to it like ducks to water."

General Cairngorm grunted and spoke for the first time in a voice so vague that it more than hinted at senility, opiates, or possibly both. "On Mars, there are no ducks and very little water."

Morlock snarled at Cairngorm. "You know what I mean, goddamn it." He turned back to the Queen and spoke with an awed urgency. "They have formed a union, ma'am."

The Queen lost patience and waved a dismissive hand. "Be silent Bolivar. Your labor troubles are going have to take a lower priority. Now Slide is here, we can perhaps strike at the very root of the problem rather than merely trimming each branch as it appears."

Before Morlock could respond, he was again interrupted. This time by the doors of the throne room being thrown open for the entrance of Miss Harriet Marwood and Sir Richard Barton. The couple were slightly breathless, as thought they had been rushing, with Marwood already making her apologies. "I humbly beg your Majesty's pardon. We were detained."

"Detained?"

"Yes, ma'am. Richard had me birched.

The Queen turned her attention from both Slide and Morlock and starred quizzically Miss Marwood. "Birched?"

"A prolonged and thorough thrashing, ma'am. And in public, before the entire evening clientele at Mrs Rosa Coote's. Even though your summons was pressing, I needed a little time to recover."

Slide sensed a deep and probably degenerate relativity between the two women, but he could only guess at the explicits. The Queen arched a second eyebrow. "You allowed such intimately exposed infliction?"

Marwood gestured to Sir Richard. "I lost a bet with the brute, ma'am. It was a gambling debt, don't you know? What could I do but humble myself accordingly?"