“Good afternoon,” he said pleasantly. “May I sit down?”

“Who the hell are you?” Geraint said furiously. “Streak, I thought you said-”

“It’s all right,” Serrin said rapidly. “I know him. What on earth are you doing here, Merlin?”

“I’m acting on my own initiative, I’m afraid,” the free spirit said with the sheepish look of a five-year-old boy caught perched on a high stool with his hands in the cookie jar. “I do consider that my master might have been a little more forthcoming than he was.”

“Then sit down,” Geraint said, waving the guard away. The man gave him a questioning look, then closed the door behind him.

Kristen already had a cup of tea in her hand, and offered it to the spirit. He took it in his right hand and took one of hers in his left, raising it to his lips to kiss it and bowing slightly as he did so. He caught Serrin’s eye and smiled.

“Do forgive me,” he said affably. “Please don’t be jealous. I’m not even human, after all.”

“Hmmmm,” Serrin grumbled, but Kristen looked pleased.

“So,” the spirit said as he sat down, crossing his legs at the ankles of his elegant cotton trousers, “I gather you’ve been abroad.”

“Might have,” Streak said suspiciously, gun still in his hand. “On the other hand, maybe we ain’t. What’s it to you anyway? And will someone tell me who this is, if he isn’t human? He looks bloody human to me.”

“He’s a spirit.” Serrin said. “Which is doubtless part of the explanation for how he got in here.”

“That worries me,” Streak replied. “If he can-”

“Ah, yes, well,” Merlin said hurriedly, “it’s rather easier to find someone when you’ve been involved in a hermetic ritual with them. The linkage is much simpler. Not an advantage the Priory or the Acquavivans would have.”

“Acquavivans?” said Senin, unfamiliar with the term.

“Those NOJ tossers,” Streak said. “They’re only one Jesuit faction, after all. Named after Claudio Acquaviva, devisor of the Ratio, their organizational code. Hard-nuts, the lot of ‘em.”

“So how does chummer here know about all this?”

“Please, please,” Merlin entreated them all. He sipped his tea and smiled at Kristen. “Most welcome and refreshing, thank you. It’s been a tong hard day and it isn’t even teatime yet.”

“I don’t believe this bloke,” Streak said to Geraint. “Are you sure he isn’t related to you? He sounds just like you.”

Serrin ignored him. “Tell us why you’re here, Merlin?”

“I thought you could use a little help.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Streak said. “But like I just said, mate, what’s it to you?”

“Look. Streak, leave this to me,” Serrin said irritably. “I know Merlin.”

“Why don’t we go and have a gin and tonic, Streak?” Geraint said pleasantly, with just the slightest edge in his voice that clearly implied, “This is not a suggestion” Streak looked uncertainly at him, and at the spirit, and then decided that if Geraint didn’t mind sitting it out, he’d settle for a secondhand summary too. They retreated to the kitchen.

“What does Hessler think of your being here?” Serrin said carefully He was hardly party to the details of the spirit’s dealings with the mage he had, after all, called “Master.”

“He might not be entirely pleased.” Merlin confessed. “But there are some things I think you really should know. Otherwise, you won’t be prepared for some of the opposition you may encounter.”

“Such as?” Michael ventured.

“The NOJ are hardly to be trifled with.” Merlin said. “Not when a matter of such importance is at stake.”

“But what can be so important to them?” Michael asked. “I mean, we’re not planning to nuke the Pope or something.”

“Well, actually,” the spirit replied, “I think that’s more or less exactly what they think you’re planning to do. In a manner of speaking.”

“What?”

“The problem is that the situation you’re stumbling into is far, far bigger than you can possibly realize.”

“Wonderful,” Michael said. “You know, it always strikes me how funny it is that people say that when all they really mean is, ‘I want you to stop being a pest and go away’.”

“Perhaps, but I’m not people,” the spirit said pleasantly. “I look at things rather differently.”

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Serrin interjected. “What we know is that someone has been able to deck into big-time computer cores. He left behind a puzzling icon of religious significance. That choice wasn’t accidental or trivial. It’s the reason why the Priory and the NOJ are so interested in the entire affair.”

“Good,” Merlin said approvingly.

“And that icon holds the key to who he is,” Michael offered.

“Absolutely,” Merlin agreed.

“And to why he’s doing this…” Serrin said slowly, wondering even as he said it why he did.

“Excellent!” Merlin was beaming with genuine pleasure.

Michael looked at Serrin with a mixture of respect and a little admiration. The mage’s intuitive leap had struck paydirt.

“What’s odd is that quite a few people think they know who he is,” Michael said. “Even more odd is that Renraku is offering a very large sum of money for that information, but no one’s telling. Now doesn’t that strike you as peculiar?”

“Michael, you’re British,” the spirit admonished. “You should know that some things are priceless, simply beyond money. I do believe you’ve been bettered in this understanding by Serrin, who’s American. How times change.”

“Touche all right,” Michael said irritably. “But our decker is planning to cause the Crash of ‘Twenty-nine all over again. Isn’t that enough to make anyone speak up? Think about it for a minute. It will mean mass unemployment, social chaos and unrest, suicides, even revolutions and mass bloodshed in some lands if it’s anything like ‘Twenty-nine was. Doesn’t anyone care about that, even if they don’t worry about the money?”

“Yes, Michael, they do,” Merlin said wearily. “That’s why I’m here. I don’t think we can let him do this.”

“Then tell us who he is,” Michael demanded flatly, punctuating each word with the slap of his hand on his knee.

There was a long silence.

“It’s not as simple as that,” Merlin said at length.

“Funny, it never bloody is,” Michael snapped. “I shouldn’t have thought that speaking the few short words of a name was so terribly demanding, not really.”

“Don’t be facetious,” Merlin shot back, genuinely irked. Michael looked angry himself for an instant and then shrugged, sitting back quietly.

“You can appreciate that I’m not always free to speak of what I know,” the spirit said to Serrin.

The mage nodded.

“And this is one of those times. If I told you who and where, I’d be snuffed out of existence permanently and instantly as soon as it was learned of, and I don’t relish that prospect one bit, thank you.”

“I had not taken your Master to be so vengeful,” Serrin said, a little surprised.

“Oh, if it was only up to him, I’d be safe enough,” Merlin said. “Yes, I’d probably have to clean the kitchen every day for a year, but I do that most of the time anyway.”

Serrin couldn’t help but smile a little. The contrast of such a homely detail with the scale of what they were discussing was comical.

“There are powerful people with an interest in this,” Merlin said, “and there are those among them who could and would destroy me-and my Master, for that matter.”

“And If I told you who is responsible it would ruin every thing.”

“Pity about that,” Michael said.

“Look,” Merlin continued, a hint of irritation coloring his voice once more, “if I told you who was responsible you wouldn’t believe me. If you want to find him, you’ll have to do it on your own. The only way to stop him, I think, is by finding him for yourselves and persuading him, coming to some understanding. He needs the money for what he’s trying to achieve. He’ll need to get it. Or at the very least, a large slice of it.”