2.
The visitor was standing. Boggin was kneeling on one knee before it, with his mortarboard in his hand, his long red braid of hair, normally hidden, now trailing down his back.
The visitor was thin and tall, like a leopard or a jaguar might look if standing on hind legs. Parts of its skin were made of bronze, or perhaps metal plates had been fused to its chest and back, metal scales along its upper arms and metal greaves on its lower legs. Because its neck was long and flexible, its head looked small. It had long hair like a woman, but its teeth were sharp like a lion's teeth. Its lips and cheeks were so plastic that it could flex its mouth from a tiny pink rosebud to a white grin whose corners touched the spot where, on a human, there were visible ears.
It wore a scarlet cloak. In one hand it gripped a short stabbing-spear with a metal head and a wooden shaft, a weighted spike at the butt end; in the opposite elbow it held a narrow-cheeked bronze helmet with a drooping red plume. As a gratuitous anachronism, the warrior-creature also carried a stub-nosed submachine gun of squat design at its hip, a bandolier of magazines looped over its shoulder.
Vanity did not hear the beginning of the conversation.
The creature was saying, "… Uranians have demonstrated that they could escape your confinement. A second escape is likely to be believed. The Lamia will no doubt make a second attempt at that time. Our military intelligence department estimates the chance of Lamia making a second attempt while the Uranians are still in custody to be a small one."
Boggin spoke in his normally hearty and self-interrupting fashion. He did not speak as a kneeling man should. "Ah… ! I am certain, my dear Centurion Infantophage (and a fine name you have chosen for yourself!), that the military intelligence department of the Laestrygonians—are you familiar with the word
'oxymoron'? No? I thought not—a department that enjoys such fame, or, one is tempted to say, such notoriety for the accuracy and timeliness of its predictions and warnings, well, such an august institution is one with which it is certainly, ah, futile, if not to say, pointless, to remonstrate."
The creature's eyes glittered with hate. "You are mocking us, air-blower?"
Boggin lowered his head, but his voice was still rich with good humor: "Oh, my dear Centurion Infantophage (a most excellent name, have I said how well it fits you?), certainly I would not wish to be understood by you if I were mocking you to your, ah, shall we call it a face? To your face. No, indeed. I hold the Laestrygonians in the greatest possible respect! The greatest, indeed, possible to grant to Laestrygonians. Your fine military intelligence department was charged, I believe, with the duty of bodyguarding the Lord Terminus, was it not? During the battle of Phlegra. The late Lord Terminus, I should say. The late, departed, once-alive but now-dead, which is to say, no-longer-alive, Lord Terminus. No doubt the sincere grief of your master, the Lord Mavors, at the departure of his father Lord Terminus was modified, if not ameliorated, by his joy on discovering (no doubt, to his complete surprise) that he stood to inherit the throne of heaven. The rulership of the entire sidereal universe must be a heavy burden."
"My master does not care for the throne. He assumes it as a matter of duty, no more and no less."
"What an unlucky day that was for him, then, when the Laestrygonians failed to protect his father from Typhon of Chaos! I am certain that the punishments visited upon the Laestrygonians by Lord Mavors when they fail at their duties are as great as the generous rewards he heaps upon them when they succeed!"
"Lord Mavors is harsh to those who fail him, but just. He is a good leader."
"And may I also take this opportunity to congratulate you and your department for its recent elevation to the status of the Praetorians? The halls and palaces that you now occupy on the lower slopes of Olympos are indeed splendid, as well I know, since I and my brethren inhabited a very similar station of rank under the rulership of Lord Terminus."
"I do not see how that comment is relevant to this conversation."
"Of course not, Centurion. Of course you would not see. Forgive my digression. What in the world could I have been thinking?"
"You will arrange the release of the Uranians. Lord Mavors has laid a malediction upon whoever should kill one or more of them. The nature of Olympian curse allows the maledictator to become aware of opposition or resistance to the malediction…"
"Ah, indeed?" muttered Boggin. "I am grateful, certainly grateful for your instruction upon this obscure point. You will tell me more about the operation of the Olympian art of destiny-manipulation when you have opportunity, I hope, Laestrygonian."
"Enough! Why do you speak with such insolence?"
"Every teacher learns lessons from his own students, Centurion."
"You, are insubordinate."
"As the term is usually used, Centurion, in fact, I am not. I am not under the orders of Lord Mavors, nor does he have authority to command me.
"Indeed," continued Boggin in that same hearty tone, "Lord Mavors is asking me to go directly against the last orders I received—one might, without undue exaggeration, almost call it the dying wish—of Lord Terminus. 'Protect those infants!' Those were his last words to me, Centurion: 'Your life, and the life of Cosmos itself, is forfeit, if they are harmed.' Actually, his very last words to me were: 'We shall impart further instructions by Our next messenger."
"Well, that never eventuated, did it, my dear Centurion? His last messenger, Lord Trismegistus, had (so to speak) turned in his two weeks' notice, and was busy showing the Phaeacians where to go to ship the hulking mass of Lord Typhon of Chaos to the foot of Mount Olympos at the time, and Lady Iris was busy trying to run his errands for him.
"I do not recall receiving any message from Lord Terminus saying, 'Obey Mavors, he is Our royal heir,'
or anything like that. The present situation might be more, how shall I say, unambiguous, had a message of that nature been received by any party."
The Laestrygonian smiled, which was a truly alarming sight. (Vanity was reminded of a shark opening its mouth.) "Lord Mavors says this is the only method to arrange for the safety of the hostages. Until the traitor is identified and rooted out, they are not safe here, or anywhere. It will reduce rather than increase the danger. Lord Mavors is not contradicting your previous orders."
Boggin said, 'The traitor could be anyone, could he not?"
The Laestrygonian nodded his graceful head. "You are above suspicion, Boreas. You have had too ample an opportunity to kill the hostages in the past, if that were your scheme. But the traitor must be someone who wishes to break the present truce with Chaos."
Boggin might have been tired of kneeling. Or perhaps he felt there were some things that one must stand on one's feet to say.
He rose up, and said, still in a pleasant and good-natured voice, "Well, well, who could it be? If war broke out, to whom would everyone turn to lead us in war against our mutual foes? I do not think it would be the god of the toy-makers, would it? It is surprising how quiet fraternal discord becomes, when an enemy none of us can resist separately marches against us, burning planets as it comes."
The Laestrygonian's eyes glittered like the eyes of a cat in the dark, and its shark grin dwindled to an amazingly small pucker of disapproval.
"You suspect Lord Mavors of favoring war?"
"Well, they do say it is the quickest time to rise up through the ranks, wartime. Success in war carries many a general on the shoulders of clamoring crowds to Caesar's purple."
"And failure in war leads to bonds, stripes, imprisonment, crucifixion, and the death of one's baby sons and lady wives. Mavors knows we cannot prevail against the Chaoticists, divided as we are, if the foe makes a coordinated and intelligent attack. Even a victory would make the Cosmos suffer losses in men and territory we cannot spare. You are said to be quick-witted, lord of the snowy winds, a lover of intrigue: Does your crooked mind find no more likely candidate than Lord Mavors for the power that sent Lamia to attack young Eidotheia, child of the Gray Sisters?"