“I’ll do what I can,” Madame la Sorciere vowed, “but you must agree not to tell Monsieur Boker. He doesn’t want you fraternizing with the enemy, but I think it will do you good. Hone your skills for the Great Debate.”

There was a pause -falling, soft clouds-inwhich the Maid felt as if she had fainted. When she recovered-hard cool surfaces, sudden sharp splashes of brown, green- shefound herself seated in the Inn of the Two Maggots, once again, surrounded by guests who seemed not to know that she was there.

Armor-plated beings bearing trays and clearing tableware darted among the guests. She looked for Garcon and spotted him gazing at the honey-haired cook, who pretended not to notice. Garcon’s longing recalled the way the Maid herself had gazed at statues of St. Catherine and St. Margaret, who had both forsworn men but adopted their attire; suspended between two worlds, holy passion above, earthy ardor below. Just as here, with its jarring jargon of numbers and machines, though she knew it for a purgatorial waiting cloister, floating between the worlds.

She suppressed a smile when Monsieur Arouet appeared. He sported a dark, unpowdered wig, though still looked rather old-about the age of her father Jacques Dars, thirty plus one or two. His shoulders slumped forward under the weight of many books. She’d only seen books twice, during her trials, and though they looked nothing like these, she recoiled at the memory of their power.

“ Alors,”Monsieur Arouet said, setting the books before her. “Forty-two volumes. My Selected Works. Incomplete but-” he smiled “-for now, it will have to do. What’s wrong?”

“Do you mock me? You know I cannot read.”

“I know. Garcon 213-ADM is going to teach you.”

“I do not want to learn. All books except the Bible are born of the devil.”

Monsieur Arouet threw up his hands and lapsed into curses, violent and intriguing oaths like those her soldiers used when they forgot that she was near. “You must learn how to read. Knowledge is power!”

“The devil must know a great deal,” she said, careful to let no part of the books touch her.

Monsieur Arouet, exasperated, turned to the sorceress-who appeared to be sitting at a nearby table-and said, “Vac! Can’t you teach her anything?” Then he turned back to her. “How will you appreciate my brilliance if you can’t even read?”

“I have no use for it.”

“Ha! Had you been able to read, you’d have confounded those idiots who sent you to the stake.”

“All learned men,” she said. “Like you.”

“No, pucellette, not like me. Not like me at all.” As if it were a serpent, she recoiled from the book he held out. Grinning, he rubbed the book all over himself and Garcon, who was now standing beside the table. “It’s harmless-see?”

“Evil is often invisible,” she murmured. “

Monsieur is right,” Garcon told her. “All the best people read.”

“Had you been lettered,” Monsieur Arouet said, “you’d have known that your inquisitors had absolutely no right to try you. You were a prisoner of war, seized in battle. Your English captor had no legal right to have your religious views examined by French inquisitors and academics. You pretended to believe your voices were divine-”

“Pretended!” she cried out.

“-and he pretended to believe they were demonic. The English are themselves too tolerant to burn anyone at the stake. They leave such forms of amusement to our countrymen, the French.”

“Not too tolerant,” the Maid said, “to turn me over to the bishop of Beauvais, claiming I was a witch.” She looked away, unwilling to let him peer in her eyes. “Perhaps I am. I betrayed my own voices.”

“Voices of conscience, nothing more. The pagan Socrates heard them as well. Everyone does. But it’s unreasonable to sacrifice our lives to them, if only because to destroy ourselves on their account is to destroy them, too.” He sucked reflectively on his teeth. “Persons of good breeding betray them as a matter of course.”

“And we, here?” Joan whispered. He narrowed his eyes. “These…others? The scientists?”

“They are spectral.”

“Like demons? Yet they speak of reason. They have raised a republic of analysis.”

“So they say it is. Yet they have asked us to represent what they do not have.”

“You think them bloodless.” Voltaire twisted his mouth in surprised speculation.

“I think we listen to the same ‘scientists,’ so we are being tested in the same trial.”

“I heed voices such as theirs,” Voltaire said defensively. “I, at least, know when to turn my head aside from mindless advice.”

“Perhaps Monsieur’s voices are soft,” Garcon suggested. “Therefore, more easily ignored.”

“I let them-churchly men!-force me to admit my voices were the devil’s,” said the Maid, “when all the while I knew they were divine. Isn’t that the act of a demon? A witch?”

“Listen!” Monsieur Arouet gripped her by the arms. “There are no witches. The only demons in your life were those who sent you to the stake. Ignorant swine, the lot! Except for your English captor, who pretended to believe you were a witch to carry out a shrewd, political move. When your garments had bummed away, his dupes removed your body from the stake to show the crowd and the inquisitors you were indeed a female, who, if for no other reason than usurping the privileges of males, deserved your fate.”

“Please stop!” she said. She thought she smelled the oily reek of smoke, although Monsieur Arouet had made Garcon place NO SMOKING signs throughout the inn-which, abruptly, they were now inside. The room veered, whirled. “The fire.” She gasped. “Its tongues…”

“That’s enough,” the sorceress said. “Can’t you see you’re upsetting her? Layoff!”

But Monsieur Arouet persisted. “They examined your private parts after your garments bummed away-didn’t know that, did you?-just as they’d done before, to prove you were the virgin that you claimed. And having satisfied their lewdness in the name of holiness, they returned you to the pyre and charred your bones to ashes. That was how your countrymen requited you for championing their king! For seeing to it France remained forever French. And having incinerated you, a while later they held a hearing, cited some rural rumor that your heart had not been consumed in the fire, and promptly declared you a national heroine, the Savior of France. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, by now, they have canonized you and revere you as a saint.”

“In 1924,” La Sorciere said. Though how she knew this odd number, she did not comprehend. Angelic knowledge?

Monsieur Arouet’s splutter of scorn crackled in her ears.

“Much good it did her,” Monsieur Arouet said to La Sorciere.

“That date was in an attendant note,” La Sorciere said, her earnest voice in its factual mode. “Though of course we have no coordinates to know what the numbers mean. It is now 12,026 of the Galactic Era.”

Scorching logics fanned the crackling air. Hot winds blurred the crowd of onlookers gathered around the stake.

“Fire.” The Maid gasped. Clutching the mesh collar at her throat, she fled into the cool dark of oblivion.