“It’s a direct quote,” said Jerry grimly.
* * *
Whatever else Circe might do or not do, her curative magic was first-rate. Jerry could hardly believe that his ankle had been agonizingly painful. He tested it and turned to Medea, who was organizing the necessities for the trip. She seemed to be even more “organizingly inclined” than Liz.
“You really don’t have to come along, Medea. We’ll take Odysseus’ ship. He’s been there before.”
Medea, as was her way, simply ignored the part of the statement she didn’t want to hear. “Yes, we’ll have to take the black ship. We won’t all fit into the chariot, and anyway Bitar and Smitar need a rest.”
“We’d better inform Odysseus and his merry men we’re sailing a black ship into hell again,” said Jerry, accepting the inevitable.
“Well, at least I’ve got something for the fleas this time,” said Liz.
“What? And why have you been keeping it to yourself?” demanded virtually every modern, scratching instinctively.
“An herbal remedy of my mother’s: wormwood, fleabane and rue, with added magic from Medea. Would you all like some? Every one of you looks as if you need it.”
“And I’m going to try my hand at distilling. That son of a bitch Ody tries to get us smashed again, I’ll spike his drinks for him,” said McKenna.
“And I’m going to get a good night’s sleep for a change,” sighed Jerry. “Clean, full, safe, dry, and not on a ship.”
* * *
The Krim device manipulated the prukrin threads of the Ur-universe’s belief strands with skill. Already the reactivated long-moribund universe was nearly ready for the masters. And while the gods of this thread of Ur-universe were difficult to work with and unreliable in the extreme, it was also a valuable find. This species generated emotional intensities that the Krim would find delightful. The Ur-universes were intense and rich in the emotional flavors that the Krim relished. And it was all proceeding well. Krim-delighting rituals were being enacted faithfully . . .
Except for that one group! They were an irritation. A tear within the mantle of prukrin reality. Here they were, in a place rich in sorrows and misery and fear. And they were laughing! At ease! The masters would be furious. They would have to be eliminated, if they could not be turned to belief. Well. It would try using the darkness that lurked within this species’ soul. It would tweak the legend. Human sacrifice was not unknown. Odysseus himself was believed to have insisted on the sacrifice of Iphigenia.
23
Cam’ ye o’er fra’ France?
“We insist on seeing him!” demanded someone from the outer office, speaking accented English. An exaggerated version of the Queen’s English, in fact.
Hunched over his desk, painfully working through another psychological assessment written in the specifically turgid jargon of thatbranch of academia, Miggy Tremelo found himself almost grinding his teeth. It was not the interruption in his train of thought which annoyed him. Truth to tell, that was a relief. Even by academic standards, Miggy found “psychologese” particularly aggravating. It was the inevitable—
His new secretary started booming her response. Professor Tremelo is not to be disturbed; you have no appointment; procedures must be followed—
Miggy did find himself grinding his teeth. If there was a more unlovely sound in the universe than that voice, he couldn’t imagine what it might be. His new secretary, shoved upon him by the National Security Council because she apparently had a higher security clearance than God Almighty, reminded him of something out of the Grimm Brothers. A troll, composed of equal parts red tape, officiousness, petty self-satisfaction with the exercise of petty power, and—last but not least—monumental stupidity.
As the row in the outer office continued, Miggy tried to block it out. But the noise was too loud.
Miggy sighed. He almost knew to the last word what the visitor would say next. I’m-not-leaving-this-office-until-I-see-him!
He snorted. Fat chance, lady. This much he granted: at least the troll kept unwanted visitors from bothering him. And Miggy couldn’t think of a single person from England that he wanted to see at the moment.
Right on cue the woman made the predicted statement. Upper-class British accent. Shrill.
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