While he was still being carried along the balcony, the Nymphs Aea and Thysa meanwhile jogged alongside, smiling softly, gliding as swiftly as dreams, and they were quickly wrapping the maimed feet of Menelaus in medical tape, into which they had packed little flower petals that released coagulants and topically active painkillers.

Mickey, with one hand, was slapping handfuls of anti-burn paste here and there along Montrose’s back and neck and legs; and the substance formed a bond with his skin; and tiny molecular machines in the paste worked quickly, bringing nutriment to any still-living cells, soothing damage, and binding shut cracks and lacerations neatly as a suture. The parts of his body on which the Nymphs poured their loving attention were neatly pursed up and scented; the parts Mickey helped with looked like a half-unfinished clay statue, daubed with bruises, burns, and blood clots.

Oenoe held a flower under the broken nose of Menelaus which killed the sensation of pain throughout his body, and cleared his wits in a fashion he found alarming. Then she stole a kiss from him in a fashion he found even more alarming.

Mickey, still striding along with huge, rolling strides, seeing this, puckered up, pointing at his at own round and chubby face significantly. He spoke in Virginian, “Hey, Geisha fairy! I hauled him up here at great personal risk! Gimme some sugar, baby!”

Oenoe smiled, not understanding his words, but, understanding the gesture, said in her language: “But I am married, and may not kiss you on the lips. Fair and Darling Thysa! Thrust the round warmth of your bosom into the charming face of our beloved guest and friend, that he may taste your nipples; and Fair and Darling Aea! Kneel to greet his manhood with the welcome of mouth joy, that it may be filled and exult in a happy explosion of seed! Fortunately, we have practiced the technique to use on a man while walking briskly…”

Menelaus said to Mickey, “We are in the middle of combat here, and these women give off nerve-slave type pheromones that build up an operant conditioning in your thalamus and hypothalamus, and don’t you Witches know never to let the Belles Dames sans Merci or the Queen of Fairyland get you? Don’t put anything into your mouth! You’ll be ruined for normal women.” And to Oenoe, he said, “Call your little wiggle-assed whorettes off him! Or do I have to get a garden hose?”

Mickey was saying philosophically, “You know, some things in life are more important than others. While, on the one hand, staying in control of my own brain is important, on the other hand, I don’t use it that much, and that girl is the most physically attractive human being I have ever seen or can imagine, so…”

“Don’t make me slap you, Witch-man! I ain’t got the strength left. I can shut off the whole battle in a second, if I get to my throne. The damn Melusine was right. No one can hurt me what’s ever been in one of my coffins.”

“But only if you’re sitting down?”

“Exactly.”

“What kind of magic is that? Arsomancy? Sit down in the Geisha babe’s lap.”

“But only if I sit there. Get me to the judgment seat. C’mon.”

Oenoe rose and followed. She sent Thysa and Aea back to tend the sleeping musicians, whose gentle music of pipes and harps behind them was lost in the clamor of battle before them. Oenoe wore no gas mask, but raised a flower with a deep purple bell to hide her nose, red mouth, and delicately pointed chin, and held it in place with the veil of her mantilla, so only her enormous eyes were visible. These she anointed with moly herb to prevent the lachrymal agent in the gas cloud from blinding her, and she descended the stairs into the cloud.

Now they were at the top of the stairway. Through gaps in the cloud, looking between the uplifted wings of Archangel Michael, could be glimpsed fragments of a scene of horror, a battlefield in a golden box. The floor was coated with pools and streaks of blood, broken bodies, craters and bulletholes, the wreckage of digging automata.

“Down we go,” muttered Montrose. “Clients are dying. All my damn fault.”

“Are all people with posthuman superintelligence guilt-ridden?” snorted Mickey.

“Yup. Superintelligence allows you to see with crystal clarity just how stupid you are. Ignorance is bliss, my Warlocky friend.”

“Not so. Ignorance is just a comfortable silence in the brain. Eating is bliss. Rounder a man is, the happier he is. Do you know any thin men that you can call jolly? In the globe, nature approaches perfection! Are not the apple, the plum, and the peach unsurpassable? Note, for example, the beauty of a pregnant mother, or, better yet, the shape of a breast that approaches globularity…”

“Shake a leg a little faster, jolly man.”

Posthuman, Warlock, and Nymph crossed the floor, half-blind in the gloom and fogbanks, coming now and again upon bodies, whether wounded or dead they did not pause to inquire.

They groped through the cloud of soporific up the dais to the iron throne.

Gushes of wind surprised them. The ventilation was pouring a volume of fresh air down around the throne, so that a cylinder of cloud surrounded it, billowing in tatters, but no trace of the black gas was atop the dais itself. The rushing air deadened the noise of battle, so it was like stepping into a closed place whose walls muffled the sounds of horror, the clash of arms and called commands and the barks and screams of the dying, making them seem distant.

In the cool air, in the place of silence, there sat Rada Lwa the Scholar on the iron throne, bone-white face bright beneath his black square Scholar’s cap, his ivory fingers templed before his colorless lips, his elbows on the heads of the carven friars of the armrests, and four loaded pistols in his lap.

His pink eyes saw the figures approaching, watching as Oenoe halted, her pretty eyes wide with alarm upon seeing Rada Lwa. Mickey the Witch unlimbered the staggering, bleeding Menelaus, who put both hands on one of the four glittering white wands that held up the canopy over the throne. Menelaus leaned on the wand to support his weight, but he also ran his fingers over one spot as if over unseen control keys. Whatever he was expecting to happen, did not happen. “Locked out! Damnation. This is going to take a little doing…”

“Cowhand,” came the voice of Ximen del Azarchel from the pale mouth of Rada Lwa Chwal, cold and jovial, majestic and mocking. “For a time you had me fooled.”

8

Verdict

1. The Machine

The voice rolled with rich humor and dark magnetism, but the pink eyes were stones, the face dull, idiotic, lifeless: a mask.

Mickey said in a voice of fear, “Rada is not here. His flesh is under a Possession. The lwa speak through his mouth from the infosphere. It is the Machine!”

Menelaus was still hanging on to the pale and glowing wand, and still tapping his fingers and grinding his teeth. He said, “Do not answer him or turn your eyes toward me. That is the Machine, not the real Blackie, and he cannot see me or hear me. Even now, he is not sure if I am here or not.”

“What odd company you keep, Cowhand!” The voice stepped on the shoes of Menelaus’ words, as if the speaker had not heard them. “I see my marionette, Rada Lwa, has brought just enough loaded pistols to do away with you, your escort, and then himself. How convenient! Is this the end result we wish? I can oblige you. But perhaps you are curious to explore other options.”

From his belt the same words, even if spoken in an awkward grammar, or with a word missing, were repeated in Natural and Virginian.

Oenoe, smiling thoughtfully, half turned toward Mickey as if to ask a question. So natural was the gesture that Mickey tilted his head toward her attentively before he remembered that she could not speak the language of the Witches nor understand an answer. Turned, her body hid an oleander flower which dropped softly from her mantilla into her slim hand.