After a while, his denunciations and recriminations wound themselves up and he closed his mouth. He bestowed upon us a look of contemptuous dismissal—head back, eyes sighting in down the long aquiline nose like a hunter drawing a bead.
“You may go,” he announced.
Greyboar made a motion. I hauled out the leather sack containing the Baron’s advance on the job. Broke my heart, this, but Greyboar had insisted and I wasn’t going to press the point. Got testy about his professional ethics, Greyboar did.
“We’re returning your advance, Your Lordship,” explained Greyboar. “Only proper, given that we didn’t finish the job.”
The Baron’s nose lifted higher. “If you think this’ll set things straight, you’re quite mistaken, my man,” he declared. “The issue here is ethics, not money. You are a scoundrel, sirrah, and you may be sure I shall see to it that your despicable behavior in this entire affair is known to the world.”
Then Butin’s reserve cracked just slightly. “I simply don’t understand!” he cried. “A chokester of your reputation!”
Greyboar spread his hands. “Well, Your Lordship, it’s like this here. Sure and I was in a dilemma, torn between my professional ethics and my solemn vow never to choke girls. Fortunately, I am—as you may have heard—a student of philosophy. A fortunate man, I’ve been—I was trained by the King of the Sundjhab, you know?” Greyboar coughed. “A very brief apprenticeship, to be sure—but he was a great guru, the King! Incredible man, to have taught me so much in such a short time. And then! Postgraduate polish applied to me by the great sorcerer Zulkeh. A master dialectician!”
The Baron was staring at Greyboar like he was looking at a madman. I hate to admit it, but I actually had a moment of empathy for His Lordship, for just that one fleeting second.
Greyboar continued. “Of course, once I applied their teachings to my dilemma, the solution came to me almost at once. Hadn’t the wizard Zulkeh taught me to seek the higher synthesis which arises from the contradiction of thesis and antithesis? Didn’t my guru explain that entropy is the guiding principle of all ethics? So I realized that the dilemma could only be resolved by rising to a higher plane. And what plane could be higher than the increase of entropy, the pursuit of disorder from order?”
The Baron, his face now red as a beet, began to speak. He didn’t get far.
“I have not finished,” said Greyboar, in that tone of voice he occasionally used. Could silence the surf, that tone of voice.
“So I asked myself, what is really the ethical issue here? What course of action would flow with Time’s Arrow, what course resist it with futile immorality? The answer was then obvious! Wonderful girls, Angela and Jenny! Really—natural-born ethical entropists! Not only did the little rascals humiliate a great Lord, but they went further and broke down these old and hoary rigidities concerning the proper sexual order—and with great thermodynamic energy, too! I know, I was there!”
Greyboar was now smiling broadly. “Yes, marvelous lasses! Instinctive philosophes of the second law of thermodynamics! Pioneers of entropy! Explorers of disorder! Of course they had to survive—they were an example for us all!”
Greyboar coughed modestly. “I myself, perhaps. Well! Ignace and I have been close for many years. Perhaps an even greater closeness, perhaps we too could contribute—” He eyed me speculatively. I was furious, you can imagine! Him and his little jokes! I didn’t think it was a bit funny!
“Well, perhaps not,” admitted Greyboar. “A good lad, Ignace, but he’s really quite set in his ways. Not a philosophical bone in his body, I’m afraid. In any event, Your Lordship, I trust I’ve explained the thing to your satisfaction.”
By now the Baron had quite lost his aristocratic reserve. “You are not only a scoundrel, sirrah,” he stormed, “you are a pervert and a madman! Leave! At once!”
Again, Greyboar coughed apologetically. “Well, actually, Your Lordship, there remains one small matter which we need to resolve before we go.” He held up a hand, forestalling the Baron’s next—no doubt peremptory—sentence.
“Won’t take but a moment, Your Lordship,” said Greyboar soothingly. “I assure you—just a brief moment of your time. You see, oddly enough, I have acquired another client. Two of them, actually. An unusual situation all the way around. Cut my rates to the bone, for one thing.”