The blue eyes became shrewd even as they stared into Mavis Ming"s. "Your guest? No longer. We leave. Do you come, Mavis mine?"
"I-I-," It was as if she wished to say yes to him, yet she continued to pull back as best she could.
"Mr. Bloom, you have had your opportunity to leave this planet. You refused to take it. Well, now you have no choice. You shall stay forever (which is not, we think, that long)."
Mr. Bloom raised a knowing head. "What?"
"You have told us, yourself, that you are unique, sir." Doctor Volospion was triumphant. "You prize yourself so highly, I must accept your valuation."
"Eh?"
"From henceforth, Sir Prophet, you will grace my menagerie. Here you will stay my finest acquisition."
"What? My power!" Did Mr. Bloom show genuine surprise? His gestures became melodramatic to a degree.
Doctor Volospion was too full of victory to detect play-acting, if play-acting there was. "Here you may preach to your heart"s content. You will find the compet.i.tion stimulating, I am certain."
Bloom received this intelligence calmly. "My power is greater than yours," he said.
"I led you to think that it was, so that you would feel confident when I suggested a tour of my collection. Twelve force screens of unimaginable strength now lie between you and your ship, cutting you off from the source of your energy. Do you think you could have shattered my first force field if I had not allowed it?"
"It seemed singularly easy," agreed the Fireclown. "But you seem still unclear as to the nature of my own power. It does not derive from a physical source, as yours does, though you are right in a.s.suming it comes from my ship. It is spiritual inspiration which allows me to work my miracles. The source of that inspiration lies in the ship."
"This so-called Grail of yours?"
Bloom fell silent.
"Well, call on it, then," said Doctor Volospion.
Every sc.r.a.p of bombast had disappeared from Bloom. It was as if he discarded a useless weapon, or rather a piece of armor which had proved defective. "There is no ent.i.ty more free in all the teeming multiverse than the Fireclown." His unblinking eyes stared into Miss Ming"s again. "You cannot imprison me, sir."
"Imprison?" Doctor Volospion derided the idea with a gesture. "You shall have everything you desire. Your favorite environment shall be re-created for you. If necessary, it is possible to supply the impression of distance, movement. Regard the state as a well-earned retirement, Mr. Bloom."
The avian head turned on the long neck, the paint around the mouth formed an expression of some gravity (albeit exaggerated). Mr. Bloom did not relax his grip upon Miss Ming"s hands.
"Your satire palls, Doctor Volospion. It is the sort that easily grows stale, for it lacks love; it is inspired by self-hatred. You are typical of those faithless priests of the fifth millennium who were once your comrades in vice."
Doctor Volospion showed shock. "How could you possibly know my origins? The secret..."
"There are no secrets from the Sun," said the Fireclown. "The Sun knows All. Old He may be, but His memory is clearer than those of your poor, senescent cities."
"Do not seek to confound me, sir, with airy generalities of that sort. How do you know?"
"I have eyes," said Bloom, "which have seen all things. One gesture reveals a society to me-two words reveal an individual. A conversation betrays every origin."
"This Grail of yours? It helps you?"
The Fireclown ignored him. "The eagle floats on currents of light, high above the world, and the light is recollection, the light is history. I know you, Doctor Volospion, and I know you for a villain, just as I know Mavis Ming as a G.o.ddess-chained and gagged, perverted and alone, but still a G.o.ddess."
Doctor Volospion"s laugh was cruel. "All you do, Mr. Bloom, is to reveal yourself as a buffoon! Not even your insane Faith can make an angel of Miss Ming!"
Mavis Ming was not resentful. "I"ve got my good points," she said, "but I"m no Gloria Gutzmann. And I try too hard, I guess, and people don"t like that. I can be neurotic, probably. After all that affair with Snuffles didn"t do anyone any good in the end, though I was trying to do Dafnish Armatuce a favor."
She babbled on, scarcely conscious of her words, while the adversaries, pausing in their conflict, watched her.
"But then, maybe I was acting selfishly, after all. Well, it"s all water under the bridge, isn"t it. What"s done is done. Who can blame anybody, at the end of the day?"
Mr. Bloom"s voice became a caressing murmur.
He stroked her hands. "Fear not, Miss Ming. I am the Flame of Life. I carry a torch that will resurrect the spirit, and I carry a scourge to drive out devils. I need no armor, save my faith, my knowledge, my understanding. I am the Sun"s soldier, keeper of His mysteries. Give yourself to me and become fully yourself, alive and free."
Mavis Ming began to cry. The Fireclown"s vivid mask smiled in a grotesque of sympathy.
"Come with me now," said Bloom.
"I would remind you that you are powerless to leave," said Doctor Volospion.
The Fireclown dropped her hands and turned so that his back was to her. His little frame twitched and trembled, his red-gold ma.s.s of hair might have been the bristling crest of some exotic fowl, his little hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, like claws, as his beautiful, musical voice filled that dreadful menagerie.
"Ah, Volospion, I should destroy you - but one cannot destroy the dead!"
Doctor Volospion was apparently unmoved. "Possibly, Mr. Bloom, but the dead can imprison the living, can they not? If that is so, I possess the advantage which men like myself have always possessed over men such as you."
The Fireclown wheeled to grasp Miss Ming. She cried out: "Stop him, Doctor Volospion, for Christ"s sake!"
And at last Doctor Volospion"s long hand touched a power ring and the Fireclown was surrounded by bars of blue, pulsing energy.
"Ha!" The clown capered this way and that, trying to free himself and then, as if reconciled, sat down on the floor, crossing his little legs, his blue eyes blinking up at them as if in sudden bewilderment.
Doctor Volospion smiled.
"Eagle, is it? Phoenix? I must admit that I see only a caged sparrow."
Emmanuel Bloom paid him no heed. He addressed Mavis Ming.
"Free me," he said. "It will mean your own freedom."
Mavis Ming giggled.
Chapter Thirteen.
In which Doctor Volospion asks Mavis Ming to make a Sacrifice
She awoke from another nightmare.
Mavis Ming was filled with a sense of desolation worse than any she had experienced in the past.
"Oh, dear," she murmured through her night mask.
An impression of her dream was all that was left to her, but she seemed to recall that it involved Mr. Bloom.
"What a wicked little creature. He"s frightened me more than anything"s ever frightened me before. Even Donny"s tantrums weren"t as bad. He deserves to be locked up. He deserves it. In any other world it would be his just punishment for doing what he had done. If Doctor Volospion hadn"t stopped him, he would have raped me, for sure. Oh, why can"t I stop thinking about what he said to me. It"s all nonsense. I wish I was braver. I can"t believe he"s safely out of the way. I wish I had the nerve to go and see for myself. It would make me feel so much better."
She sank into her many pillows, pulling the sheets over her eyes. "I know what those energy cages are like. It"s the same sort I was in when I first arrived. He"ll never get out. And I can"t go to see him. That ridiculous flattery. And Doctor Volospion doesn"t help by telling me all the time that he thinks Bloom"s love is "genuine," whatever that means. Oh, it"s worse now. It is. Why couldn"t Doctor Volospion have made him go away. Keeping him here is torture!"
Doctor Volospion had even suggested, earlier, that it would be charitable if she went to his cage to "comfort" him.
"Repulsive little runt!" She pushed back her pink silky sheets and turned up the lamp (already fairly bright) whose stand was in the shape of a flesh-colored nymph rising naked from the powder-blue petals of an open rose. "I do wish Doctor Volospion would let me have a power ring of my own. It would make everything much easier. Everyone else has them. Lots of time travelers do." She crossed the soft pale yellow carpet to her gilded Empire-style dressing table to look at her face in the mirror.
"Oh, I look awful. That dreadful creature."
She sighed. She often had trouble sleeping, for she was very highly strung, but this was much worse. For all their extravagant entertainments, their parties where the world was moulded to their whims, what they really needed, thought Mavis, was a decent TV network. TV would be just the answer to her problems right now.
"Perhaps Doctor Volospion could find something for me in one of those old cities," she mused. "I"ll ask him. Not that he seems to be doing me many favors, these days. How long"s he had the Fireclown now? A couple of weeks? And spending all his time down there. Maybe he loves Bloom and that"s what it"s all about." She laughed, but immediately became miserable again.
"Oh, Mavis. Why is it always you? The world just isn"t on your side." She gave one of her funny little crooked smiles, very similar to those she had seen Barbara Stanwyck giving in those beautiful old movies.
"If only I could have gone back in time, to the 20th century, even, where the sort of clothes and lifestyle they had were so graceful. They had simpler lives, then. Oh, I know they must have had their problems, but how I wish I could be there now. It"s what I was looking forward to, when they elected me to be the first person to try out the time machine. Of course, it was proof of how popular I was with the other guys at the department. Everyone agreed unanimously that I should be the first to go. It was a great honor."
Apparently this thought did not succeed in lifting her spirits. She raised a hand to her head.
"Oh, oh-here comes the headache! Poor old Mavis!"
She began to pad back toward the big circular bed. But the thought of a continuance of those dreams, even though she had pushed them right out of her mind, stopped her. It had been Doctor Volospion"s suggestion that she continue to lead the sort of life she had been used to - with regular periods of darkness and daylight and a corresponding need to sleep and eat, even though he could easily have changed all that for her.
To be fair to him, she thought, he tended to follow a similar routine himself, ever since he had heard that Lord Jagged of Canaria had adopted this ancient affectation. If she had had a power ring or an air car at her disposal (again she was completely reliant on Volospion"s good graces) she would have left the palace and gone to find some fun, something to take her mind off things. She looked at her Winnie the Pooh clock-another three hours before the palace would be properly activated. Until then she would not even be able to get a snack with which to console herself.
"I"m not much better off than that little creep down there," she said. "Oh, Mavis, what sort of a state have they got you into!"
A tap, now, at the door.
Grateful for the interruption, Mavis pulled on her fluffy blue dressing robe. "Come in!"
Doctor Volospion, a satanic Hamlet in black and white doublet and hose, entered her room. "You are not sleeping, Miss Ming? I heard your voice as I pa.s.sed..."
Hope revealed itself in her eyes. "I"ve got a bit of a headache, doctor." He could normally cure her headaches. Her mood improved. She became eager, anxious to win his approval. "Silly little Mavis is having nightmares again."
"You are unhappy?"
"Oh, no! In this lovely room? In your lovely palace? It"s everything a little girl dreams about. If"sjust that awful Mr. Bloom. Ever since..."
"I see." The saturnine features showed enlightenment. "You are still afraid. He can never escape, Miss Ming. He has tried, but I a.s.sure you my powers are far greater than his. He becomes tiresome, but he is no threat."
"You"ll let him go, then?"
"If I could be sure that he would leave the planet, for he fails to be as entertaining as I had hoped. And if he would give me that Grail of his, from which his power, I am now certain, derives. But he refuses."
"You could take it now, couldn"t you?"
"Not from him. Not from his ship. The screen is still impenetrable. No, you are our only hope."
"Me?"
"He would not have allowed himself to be trapped at all, if it had not been for you." Doctor Volospion sighed deeply. "Well, I have just returned from visiting him again. I have offered him his liberty in return for that one piece of property, but he fobs me off with arguments that are typically specious, with vague talk of Faith and Trust - you have heard his babble."
Mavis murmured sympathetically. "I"ve never seen you so cast down, Doctor Volospion. You never know with some people, do you? He"s best locked up for his own good. He"s a sort of cripple, isn"t he? You know what some cripples are like. You can"t blame them. It"s the frustration. It"s all bottled up in them. It turns them into s.e.x maniacs."
"To do him justice, Miss Ming, his interest seems only in you. I have offered him many women, both real and artificial, from the menageries. Many of them are very beautiful, but he insists that none of them has your "soul" your - um - true beauty."
"Really?" She was skeptical, still. "He"s insane. A lot of men are like that. That"s one of the reasons I gave them up. At least with a lady you know where you are on that score. And Mr. Bloom has got about as much s.e.x-appeal as a seagull - less! Did you ever hear of a really sweet old book called Jonathon..."
"Your headache is better, Miss Ming?"
"Why, yes." She touched her hair. "It"s almost gone. Did you...?"
Doctor Volospion drew his own brows together and traced beringed fingers across the creases. "You do not give yourself enough credit, Miss Ming..."
She smiled. "That"s what Betty was always telling me when I used to feel low. But poor old Mavis..."
"He demands that you see him. He speaks of nothing else."
"Oh!" She paused. She shook her head. "No, I couldn"t, really. As it is, I haven"t had a good night"s sleep since the day he arrived."
"Of course, I understand."
Miss Ming was touched by Doctor Volospion"s unusual sadness. He seemed to have none of his usual confidence. She moved closer to him.
"Don"t worry, Doctor Volospion. Maybe it would be best if you tried to forget about him."
"I need the Grail. I am obsessed with it. And I cannot rid myself of the notion that, somehow, he is tricking me."
"Impossible. You"re far too clever. Why is this Grail so important to you."
Doctor Volospion withdrew from her.
"I"m sorry," she said. "I didn"t mean to pry."
"Only you can help me, Miss Ming."
The apparent pleading in his voice moved her to heights of sympathy. "Oh..."