"And you think it's right to cheat in order to win?"
"I would say instead, it's not wrong," Michael said.
"Well, now I've heard everything. I must go think this over."
CHAPTER 3
It was evening in the Tuileries. The windows were ablaze with a thousand candles. People hurried in and out the high carved front doors. They were wearing republican blue and gray rather than royalist white and crimson. On a little bench across the street from the ceaseless crowds, Mack sat and considered the situation.
Breezes stirred the small, carefully trimmed trees that bordered the palace. And then Mack felt something, something more palpable than a breeze. It was a thin, disembodied voice that quested up and down the tree-lined avenue, saying, "Faust! Faust! Where are you, Faust?"
Mack looked around. "Did someone call me?"
Ylith materialized beside him. She was wearing magnificent riding attire of black velvet and sueded leather. Her riding boots had a deep shine, and her long dark hair was caught up in a white chiffon scarf.
"Remember me?"
"Indeed I do," Mack said. "You locked me in a mirror maze in Peking when you thought I was cheating."
"I've learned a thing or two since then," Ylith said. "What are you planning now?"
It was in Mack's mind to turn away and sulk and not tell this good-looking but impetuous and very judgmental spirit-woman anything at all. If she was so smart, let her figure it out for herself! But, sensing advantage, he conquered his pique and said, "I'm trying to rescue the king and queen of France."
"Why do you want to save them?" Ylith asked.
"I scarcely know. I haven't met them, you understand. But it seems I have to do something in this contest, and that looks like quite a good thing. I mean, what the hell, they are rather silly people whose main crime was to be born noble. And anyway, Mephistopheles thought it would be a good thing for me to do."
"I see," Ylith said. "So of course, since Mephistopheles wants it, Michael is opposed to it."
"I suppose that follows," Mack said. "And since you are on Michael's side—"
"I don't know what side I'm on anymore," Ylith said. "But I did you a wrong before and I'm here to make up for it now. What can I do to help?"
"I'll see what I can do," Ylith said. With a graceful double gesture of her long hands she faded out of Mack's sight.
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."