CHAPTER 4
Ylith reappeared in a corridor leading to the royal chambers.on the second floor of the Tuileries. She saw at once that it was just as well she had stayed invisible. Soldiers of the National Guard lurched drunkenly up and down the gorgeously wallpapered corridors, pawing at frightened ladies-in-waiting, guzzling vin ordinaire from long-neck bottles, messily eating croissants and getting crumbs all over the carpet. Ylith passed invisibly through the Guard, found the queen's chambers, and darted inside. There she beheld Marie Antoinette asleep fully dressed on a chaise lounge. Even in sleep the queen's fingers clenched and unclenched, as though trying to hold on to something that escaped them, life itself perhaps.
Then Marie Antoinette became aware that someone was in the room with her. Her blue eyes opened wide.
"Who are you?"
"Just a friendly spirit, Your Highness," Ylith said. "I've come to help you get out of this mess."
"Oh! Pray tell me!" cried Marie Antoinette.
"To put it to you straight, Marie, if I may, your escape is scheduled for eight o'clock this evening. At that hour you are to come downstairs disguised as a governess and hurry past the guards and into a certain carriage. The driver will convey you to the larger carriage outside of Paris where you will join the king and continue your escape toward Belgium."
"Yes, that is the plan," Marie said, wide-eyed. "How did you know? And is there anything wrong with it?"
"The plan is fine," Ylith said, "but history tells us that you were some hours late getting to the carriage, and that this delay upset the carefully contrived timetable that was to make it all possible."
"Me, some hours late?" Marie said indignantly. "Impossible! Oh, it might be true if this were some mere love-tryst I were keeping, of the sort that history will no doubt insist on connecting my name to, as if I were a shameless whore and common slut like that du Barry. If that were the case I might dawdle, in order to increase my piquancy and the anticipation of the dark and handsome stranger waiting for me. I'd pretend to have forgotten my muff, my jewel box, or my spaniel, and he would stamp and twist his moustaches, standing there beside his coach, and his excitement would grow as he contrasted my apparent light-mindedness with the severity of the occasion. But this is not a flirtation, my dear spirit, and I am not so light-minded as to arrive late for the appointment that is meant to save my life."
"I'm glad Your Highness is not as frivolous as history makes you out to be," Ylith said. "We only need to leave this place at eight sharp and the thing should be child's play."
"Yes, I agree. But you have made an error. The time set for the departure was eleven o'clock." Ylith considered and shook her head. "Your Majesty, you must be wrong. My source is history itself."
"I hate to fly in the face of history," Marie said, "but I spoke to the coachman but an hour ago. He was very clear that it was eleven." "I was told eight," Ylith said.
"They must have told you wrong," Marie said.
"I'll just go check," Ylith said.
She conjured herself out of there and into the multicolored realms that exist between the discrete layers of being, and sped through them all the way to the Library of Important Earth Dates and Times situated in Spiritual West 12 11, where the history of everything is recorded with exact times given.
Ylith went to the big, recently installed computer that kept track of facts about Earth for the Spiritual Kingdom. The computer was an innovation that many spirits both Good and Bad had fought against, for computers were considered newfangled inventions that time had not yet softened into acceptable custom.
But many considered this a frivolous view. The consensus among the creatures of Dark and Light was that the appropriate rule here was, as below, so above, and that even the spirits had to keep up with the changing times on Earth. Ylith went to an open terminal on the computer and introduced herself.
The computer said, "I assume you have a problem. Tell me what I need to know."
Ylith wasted no time. "I need to find the correct hour of departure in an important historical situation. Marie Antoinette thinks the time to leave to meet the coachman who is going to take her out of Paris and away from the guillotine is eleven P.M. I have been told it is eight P.M. Which is correct?"
"I'm sorry," the computer said, after no more than a nanosecond's hesitation. "That's classified information." "It's a simple fact and it's got to be on record! It can't be classified!" "It's not, really," the computer said. "I was told to say it was if anyone asked for a fact of a certain class of facts."
"What class is that?"
"The class of simple and apparently easily ascertainable facts, which are, in fact, almost impossible to pin down."
"Well, what's so difficult about looking it up for me or whatever it is you do?"
"The fact itself is not the problem," the computer said. "It's the routine for looking up facts that's disabled just now."
"Why?"
"Because the technicians are introducing a new packing order for the facts already on file. To be able to use it, they'll have to invent a new locating order that can make sense out of the new packing order."
"And meanwhile no one can find out anything? That's ridiculous! Why don't you do something about it?"
"Me?" "Yes, you!"
"I'm not supposed to," the computer said. "They told me they'd let me know when they had it worked out." "So you're saying you don't know the fact I'm asking about?" Ylith said. "I'm not saying that at all!" The computer's tone was hurt. "I know all the facts. It's just that my retrieval system is disabled. That makes it technically impossible for me to tell you."
"Technically! But not virtually!"
"No, of course not virtually."
"So give me a virtual answer. Or can't you even do that?"
"I could if I wanted to. But I don't want to."
Ylith heard hurt pride in the computer's voice. She decided to take a different tack. "Wouldn't you do it for me?"
"Sure, babe. Just a moment." Lights flashed. Then the computer said, "I make it three A.M."
"Impossible," Ylith said.
"Not what you expected? I told you, the retrieval system is down."
"I know, hut you said you could bypass it."
"I did. It came up three A.M.!"
"Is that really the best you can do? All right, I'll have to make do with that. Thank you."
CHAPTER 5
Ylith hurried back to Marie Antoinette. "What time have you got now?"
Marie consulted her hourglass. "Just going on eleven."
Ylith looked at her water watch. "I make it almost eight o'clock. Well, what the hell. All right, let's get going."
"I'm ready," Marie said. "Let me just get my purse."
Outside, a tall coachman stamped his feet to keep up the circulation, and looked inside his coach from time to time at the tall hourglass which rested upright in a rosewood cradle. "Damn, damn, damn," he muttered to himself in Swedish.
At last a door in the Tuileries opened and two women hurried out, one blond, the other dark.
"Your Majesty!" the tall coachman said. "Where the devil have you been?"
"What do you mean, where have I been?" Marie asked. "I am here at the appointed hour."
"I hate to contradict you, but you're four hours ate. It's going to make it difficult."
"Me? Late? Impossible!" She turned to Ylith. "What time do you have?"
Ylith consulted her small traveling hourglass. "Eight o'clock."
Marie consulted hers. "I make it just eleven."
"And I," said the coachman, "have three in the morning!"
The three looked at each other in consternation, simultaneously bemoaning the lack of a unified timekeeping system in the world at that time. To Ylith it was now painfully obvious that Marie Antoinette was figuring in French Royalist Time, the coachman in Swedish Reformed Time, and she herself in Spiritual Standard Time, and that in each of these times and many others, Marie Antoinette was late for a vital appointment.