"You must be the Duchess. My name's Nat Whilk." He hooked an elbow over the bar. "You look like a sporting lass."
"Don't let my girlish good looks deceive you, donkey-boy. I'm older than I look and I know even scam, glamour, and tuppenny magic there is."
"Not this one. I just invented it." Nat pulled a metal washer out of his pocket and laid it down on the bar. It was a thick chunk of metal with a hole in it the size of a nickel. Alongside it he plunked down a quarter. "Ten dollars says I can push this quarter through this washer."
The toad squeezed the washer between thumb and forefinger. Then she held it to her eye and stared through it. She examined the quarter with equal care. Finally, she said. "All right. You're on."
Nat picked up the washer and, sticking his finger through it, pushed the quarter.
For an instant the Duchess said nothing. Then she laughed and started to haul out a cigar box from under the bar.
"Just put it on my account," Nat said. "I'm thinking I might eat here on a regular basis. Lunch, to begin with. For three."
"A'right." The Duchess picked up a stub of chalk and wrote "NW: $8.45" on a cluttered slate on the side wall.
Nat leaned forward and erased the forty-five cents with his thumb "For a tip," he said. "Say, do you happen to have a fresh deck of cards?"
The toad produced a deck from under the bar. "Three bucks."
"No, I mean a cold deck."
"Two bits." She replaced the deck with what looked to be its exact double, and adjusted the tally. Nat borrowed the chalk and changed the final five to a zero.
The Duchess smiled.
She waddled into the kitchen, and after a few minutes emerged with two baskets of toasted cheese sandwiches and drew them a beer apiece. When lunch was eaten, Nat bought a pack of Marlboros, rounding down the lab by an additional nickel. Will lit up gratefully "First I've had since we hit town," he commented.
"New here, eh? Babels not how you pictured it, I reckon," the Duchess said.
"I thought it would be a single building."
"Everybody thinks that. But a building isn't flexible the way a city is. Times change, and what's needed changes with them. Used to be, folks got around by horse and carriage and slept nine to a room, winters, to keep warm. Now all the carriage houses have been converted to apartments, because with central heating everybody wants to fuck in private. Nimrod understood that, and so he built not a city but the framework for one — a double helix of interlocking gyres, technically, anchored on this volcanic plug. Buildings are thrown up and torn down as needed, but the city goes on. A man of remarkable foresight was King Nimrod."
"Knew him personally, did you?" Nat said, amused.
"I was not always as you see me now," the Duchess said haughtily. "Long ago, I was young and guileless. To say nothing of being small enough to fit into a teacup. I lived in a crevice in the rock on the upper slopes of Ararat then, beside a narrow path to its top. Every morning King Nimrod strode up that path to sing the mountain higher, and every evening he came down again. Such was his habit, and I thought nothing of it for I was then but a dumb beast and innocent of speech or reason.
"One day Nimrod did not climb the mountain. Oh. what a day that was! Great storms fought like dragons in the sky, and lightning lashed the rock. The earth shook to its very foundations, and the mountain danced. There are no words to describe the fury of it. That was the day — but it was many a century before I figured this out — when, in his direst peril, Nimrod called up the sea to destroy his enemies. Ararat rang like a bell then, when the ocean waters struck it fiercer than any hammer, drowning the marshlands at his command and creating the Bay of Demons, which even now is our port and the source of Babel's wealth. But I suppose you already know that story."
"Yes, Will said." Solemnly, Nat intoned:
"Before history existed, before time began, King Nimrod led the People from Urdumheim. Across the stunned and empty world they fled, To the place of marshes in the time of flood..."
His stentorian boom lapsed into a normal speaking voice, and he said. "If you want, I can recite all eight thousand lines."
"Whose tale is this, yours or mine?'' the Duchess snapped. "The next day Nimrod came slowly up the mountain. All discontent was his expression and his glance went everywhere, as if he were looking for something he could not find. Chancing upon me, he stopped and of a whim picked me up. Holding me to his face, he addressed me thus: 'Look upon my works, small natterjack, and despair.' His cheeks were streaked with tears, for the price he had paid for his people's emancipation was death. They had been born immortal and he had made them subject to the great wheel of time.
"I, of course, said nothing.
"But Nimrod was soliloquizing, and the Mighty need only the slightest excuse for an audience — which I was — and no sign of comprehension from it either. 'Diminished,' said he, 'are my powers. The mountain that was to be our fortress. I cannot raise another span. Better freedom and death, thought I,. than endless life as a slave. Now I am not so sure. What point is there to building, when all must someday come undone? And if I must die someday, then why wait? Tomorrow is no better than today.' He stopped and eyed me critically. 'You ken not a word of this, d'ye? Brute animals know death only when it comes to them. Well, power enough do I yet retain to make you understand.
"Then his fingers, which to then had held me lightly, closed about me like a cage. Slowly he contracted his hand, and began to crush the life from me. I struggled but could not escape. Great then was my terror! And in that instant did I indeed comprehend the nature of death."
"What did you do?" Will asked
"I did what any self-respecting toad would do. I pissed in his hand."
Nat winced. "That was perhaps not the wisest possible action, given that Nimrod was not only a mage but a Power." "What did I know? I was a fucking toad!" "So what happened?"
"Nimrod laughed, and put me down. 'Live, little toad,' he said. 'Grow and prosper.' So I crawled as deep into the rock as I could go, and there must have been some puissance yet remaining in his words, for here I've been ever since."
"It must be hard on you to be trapped in a bubble of rock and unable to leave," Will said.
"I have my newspaper. I listen to my little radio. Most years I make enough money to keep myself fed, and when I don't I go into hibernation. It's a life."
At that instant there came a clattering like an avalanche of kitchen-ware from the stairs. The door burst open, and with a thunder of hooves and a spray of splinters, a spidery black nag pulled itself to a violent stop. Behind it, the stairway was steep and winding. The horse must have had double-jointed legs to run so cannily down it, and sinews of steel to come so quickly still. In one fluid motion, its rider leapt from its back. He was the captain of lancers they had seen before.
Will froze in the act of lighting a cigarette. Across the table, Nat looked shocked and saddened. "You dimed us out, Duchess."
The toad grimaced. "You're a pretty young thing," she said, "and I like pretty things. But the hunt for you was all over the police scanner, and I didn't live to be the age I am by taking chances."
The horse straightened its legs and shook itself. Its rider had lost or left behind his saber in the chase and his troop of lancers as well, but he still carried an automatic pistol at his side, and the effortless way he had unsnapped the holster flap as he dismounted suggested he could draw it quickly.
He bowed slightly. "Captain Bagabyxas at your service." He was elegantly lean, with a sharp and narrow face. "I'm afraid I'll have to take you in for questioning."