" — but which leads to the ultimate victory of the Spiders and the West over the Snakes and Communism, Leibchen, remember that. Anyway, our counter-snatch didn't work. The Snakes had guards posted — most unusual and we weren't warned. The whole thing was a great mess. No wonder Bruce lost his head — not that it excuses him."
"The New Boy?" I asked. Sid hadn't got to him and he was still standing with hooded eyes where Erich had left him, a dark pillar of shame and rage.
"Ja, a lieutenant from World War One. An Englishman."
"I gathered that," I told Erich. "Is he really effeminate?"
"Weibischer?" He smiled. "I had to call him something when he said I was a coward. He'll make a fine Soldier — only needs a little more shaping."
"You men are so original when you spat." I lowered my voice. "But you shouldn't have gone on and called him a Snake, Erich mine."
"Schlange?" The smile got crooked. "Who knows — about any of us? As Saint Petersburg showed me, the Snakes' spies are getting cleverer than ours." The blue eyes didn't look sweet now. "Are you, Liebchen, really nothing more than a good loyal Spider?"
"Erich!"
"All right, I went too fart — with Bruce and with you too. We're all hacked over these days, riding with one leg over the breaking edge."
Maud and Beau were supporting the Roman to a couch, Maud taking most of his weight, with Sid stifi supervising and the New Boy still sulking by himself. The New Girl should have been with him, of course, but I couldn't see her anywhere and I decided she was probably having a nervous breakdown in the Refresher, the little jerk.
"The Roman looks pretty bad, Erich," I said.
"Ah, Mark's tough. Got virtue, as his people say. And our little starship girl will bring him back to life if anybody can and if . .
"… you call this living," I filled in dutifully.
He was right. Maud had fifty-odd years of psychomedical experience, 23rd Century at that. It should have been Doc's job, but that was fifty drunks back.
"Maud and Mark, that will be an interesting experiment," Erich said. "Reminiscent of Goering's with the frozen men and the naked gypsy girls."
"You are a filthy Nazi. She'll be using electrophoresis and deep suggestion, if I know anything."
"How will you be able to know anything, Liebchen, if she switches on the couch curtains, as I perceive she is preparing to do?"
"Filthy Nazi I said and meant."
"Precisely." He clicked his heels and bowed a millimeter. "Erich Friederich von Hohenwald, Oberleutnant in the army of the Third Reich. Fell at Narvi, where he was Recruited by the Spiders. Lifeline strengthened by a Big Change after his first death and at latest report Commandant of Toronto, where he maintains extensive baby farms to provide him with breakfast meat, if you believe the handbills of the voyageurs underground. At your service.
"Oh, Erich, it's all so lousy," I said, touching his hand, reminded that he was one of the unfortunates Resurrected from a point in their lifeines well before their deaths — in his case, because the date of his death had been shifted forward by a Big Change after his Resurrection. And as every Demon finds out, if he can't imagine it beforehand, it is pure hell to remember your future, and the shorter the time between your Resurrection and your death back in the cosmos, the better. Mine, bless Bab-ed-Din, was only an action-packed ten minutes on North Clark Street.
Erick put his other hand lightly over mine. "Fortunes of the Change War, Liebchen. At least I'm a Soldier and sometimes assigned to future operations — though why we should have this monomania about our future personalities back there, I don't know. Mine is a stupid Oberst, thin as paper — and frightfully indignant at the voyageurs! But it helps me a little if I see him in perspective and at least I get back to the cosmos pretty regularly. Gott sei Dank, so I'm better off than you Entertainers."
I didn't say aloud that a Changing cosmos is worse than none, but I found myself sending a prayer to the Bonny Dew for my father's repose, that the Change Winds would blow lightly across the lifeline of Anton A. Forzane, professor of physiology, born in Norway and buried in Chicago. Woodlawn Cemetery is a nice gray spot.
"That's all right, Erich," I said. "We Entertainers Cot Mittens too."
He scowled around at me suspiciously, as if he were wondering whether I had all my buttons on.
"Mittens?" he said. "What do you mean? I'm not wearing any. Are you trying to say something about Bruce's gloves — which incidentally seem to annoy him for some reason. No, seriously, Greta, why do you Entertainers need mittens?"
"Because we get cold feet sometimes. At least I do. Got Mittens, as I say."
A sickly light dawned in his Prussian puss. He muttered, "Got mittens… Gott mit uns… God with us," and roared softly, "Greta, I don't know how I put up with you the way you murder a great language for cheap laughs."
"You've got to take me as I am," I told him, "mittens and all, thank the Bonny Dew — " and hastily explained, "That's French — le bon Dieu — the good God — don't hit me. I'm not going to tell you any more of my secrets."
He laughed feebly, like he was dying.
"Cheer up," I said. "I won't be here forever, and there are worse places than the Place."
He nodded grudgingly, looking around. "You know what, Greta, if you'll promise not to make some dreadful joke out of it: on operations, I pretend I'll soon be going backstage to court the world- famous ballerina Greta Forzane."
He was right about the backstage part. The Place is a regular theater-in-the-round with the Void for an audience, the Void's gray hardly disturbed by the screens masking Surgery (Ugh!), Refresher and Stores. Between the last two are the bar and kitchen and Beau's piano. Between Surgery and the sector where the Door usually appears are the shelves and taborets of the Art Gallery. The control divan is stage center. Spaced around at a fair distance are six big low couches — one with its curtains now shooting up into the gray — and a few small tables. It is like a ballet set and the crazy costumes and characters that turn up don't ruin the illusion. By no means. Diaghilev would have hired most of them for the Ballet Russe on first sight, without even asking them whether they could keep time to music.
2
Beau had gone behind the bar and was talking quietly at Doc, but with his eyes elsewhere, looking very sallow and professional in his white, and I thought — Damballa! — I'm in the French Quarter. I couldn't see the New Girl. Sid was at last getting to the New Boy after the fuss about Mark. He threw a sign and I started over with Erich in tow.
"Welcome, sweet lad. Sidney Lessingham's your host, and a fellow Englishman. Born in King's Lynn, 1564, schooled at Cambridge, but London was the life and death of me, though I outlasted Bessie, Jimmie, Charlie, and Ollie almost. And what a life! By turns a clerk, a spy, a bawd — the two trades are hand in glove — a poet of no account, a beggar, and a peddler of resurrection tracts. Beau Lassiter, our throats are tinder!"
At the word "poet," the New Boy looked up, but 'resentfully, as if he had been tricked into it.
"And to spare your throat for drinking, sweet gallant, I'll be so bold as to guess and answer one of your questions," Sid rattled on. "Yes, I knew Will Shakespeare — we were of an age — and he was such a modest, mind-your-business rogue that we all wondered whether he really did write those plays. Your pardon, faith, but that scratch might be looked to."