“And I.” A young woman stood at his other elbow. “Sybyl,” she said, and shook hands. They both appeared quite competent, neat, and efficient. Hari puzzled at the looks bordering on reverence they gave him. After all, he was just a mathist, like them.

Then he laughed again, heartily, a curiously liberating bark. He had just thought of what it would be like to tell Dors about the data-cores.

Joan of Arc wakened inside an amber dream. Cool breezes caressed her, odd noises reverberated. She heard before she saw

—and abruptly found herself sitting outdoors. She noted things one at a time, as though some part of herself were counting them.

Soft air. Before her, a smooth round table.

Pressing against her, an unsettling white chair. Its seat, unlike those in her home village of Domremy, was not hand-hewn of wood. Its smooth slickness lewdly aped her contours. She reddened.

Strangers. One, two, three…winking into being before her eyes.

They moved. Peculiar people. She could not tell woman from man, except for those whose pantaloons and tunics outlined their intimate parts. The spectacle was even more than she’d seen in Chinon, at the lewd court of the Great and True King.

Talk. The strangers seemed oblivious of her, though she could hear them chattering in the background as distinctly as she sometimes heard her voices. She listened only long enough to conclude that what they said, having nothing to do with holiness or France, was clearly not worth hearing.

Noise. From outside. An iron river of self-moving carriages muttered by. She felt surprise at this-then somehow the emotion evaporated.

A long view, telescoping in

Pearly mists concealed distant ivory spires. Fog made them seem like melting churches.

What was this place?

A vision, perhaps related to her beloved voices. Could such apparitions be holy?

Surely the man at a nearby table was no angel. He was eating scrambled eggs-through a straw.

And the women-unchaste, flagrant, gaudy cornucopias of hip and thigh and breast. Some drank red wine from transparent goblets, different from any she’d seen at the royal court.

Others seemed to sup from floating clouds-delicate, billowing mousse fogs. One mist, reeking of beef with a tangy Loire sauce, passed near her. She breathed in-and felt in an instant that she had experienced a meal.

Was this heaven? Where appetites were satisfied without labor and toil?

But no. Surely the final reward was not so, so… carnal. And perturbing. And embarrassing.

The fire some sucked into their mouths from little reeds-those alarmed her. A cloud of smoke drifting her way flushed birds of panic from her breast-although she could not smell the smoke, nor did it burn her eyes or sear her throat.

The fire, the fire!she thought, heart fluttering in panic. What had….?

She saw a being made of breastplate coming at her with a tray of food and drink -poison from enemies, no doubt, the foes of France!she thought in churning fright-she at once reached for her sword.

“Be with you in a moment,” the breast-plated thing said as it wheeled past her to another table. “I’ve only got four hands. Do have patience.”

An inn, she thought. It was some kind of inn, though there appeared to be nowhere to lodge. And yes…it came now…she was supposed to meet someone…a gentleman?

That one: the tall, skinny old man-much older than Jacques Dars, her father-the only one besides herself attired normally.

Something about his dress recalled the foppish dandies at the Great and True King’s court. His hair curled tight, its whiteness set off by a lilac ribbon at his throat. He wore a pair of mignonette ruffles with narrow edging, a long waistcoat of brown satin with colored flowers, and sported red velvet breeches, white stockings, and chamois shoes.

A silly, vain aristocrat, she thought. A fop accustomed to carriages, who could not so much as sit a horse, much less do holy battle.

But duty was a sacred obligation. If King Charles ordered her to advance, advance she would.

She rose. Her suit of mail felt surprisingly light. She hardly sensed the belted-on protective leather flaps in front and back, nor the two metal arm plates that left elbows free to wield the sword. No one paid the least attention to the rustle of her mail or her faint clank.

“Are you the gentleman I am to meet? Monsieur Arouet?”

“Don’t call me that,” he snapped. “Arouet is my father’s name-the name of an authoritarian prude, not mine. No one has called me that in years.”

Up close, he seemed less ancient. She’d been misled by his white hair, which she now saw was false, a powdered wig secured by the lilac ribbon under his chin.

“What should I call you then?” She suppressed terms of contempt for this dandy-rough words learned from comrades-in-arms, now borne by demons to her tongue’s edge, but not beyond.

“Poet, tragedian, historian.” He leaned forward and with a wicked wink whispered, “I style myself Voltaire. Freethinker. Philosopher king.”

“Besides the King of Heaven and His son, I call but one man King. Charles VII of the House of Valois. And I’LL call you Arouet until my royal master bids me do otherwise.”

“My dear pucelIe, your Charles is dead.”

“No!”

He glanced at the noiseless carriages propelled by invisible forces on the street. “Sit down, sit down. Much else has passed, as well. Do help me get that droll waiter’s attention.”

“You know me?” Led by her voices, she had cast off her father’s name to call herself La PucelIe, the Chaste Maid.

“I know you very well. Not only did you live centuries before me, I wrote a play about you. And I have curious memories of speaking with you before, in some shadowy spaces.” He shook his head, frowning. “Besides my garments-beautiful, n’est ce pas?-you’re the only familiar thing about this place. You and the street, though I must say you’re younger than I thought, while the street… hmmm…seems wider yet older. They finally got ‘round to paving it.”

“I, I cannot fathom-”

He pointed to a sign that bore the inn’s name -Aux Deux Magots.“Mademoiselle Lecouvreur-a famous actress, though equally known as my mistress.” He blinked. “You’re blushing-how sweet.”

“I know nothing of such things.” She added with more than a trace of pride, “I am a maid.”

He grimaced. “Why one would be proud of such an unnatural state, I can’t imagine.”

“As I cannot imagine why you are so dressed.”

“My tailors will be mortally offended! But allow me to suggest that it is you, my dear pucelle, who, in your insistence on dressing like a man, would deprive civilized society of one of its most harmless pleasures.”