I waited aeons, but have bent the years so that, to me, it was but an hour; and the name of the Hour, your father's servant girl, when we should meet, was told to me. All, all has been done so that you may answer.
Was it talking to me? I tried to form words in this strange relational-set language. I had an organ for producing a frame: "Help me! They are going to kill me!"
Helios is cognizant, on several levels, of the threat. You are too small, at present, for us to reach.
The entire sidereal universe of Saturn is no more than a black spot on a slide in the library of Helios. However, the infinite can save the finite in a way you cannot understand.
"What can you do?"
We stand ready to avenge you.
"What?"
The puzzlement of a world of perfect immortality, perfect evil, confounds our mathematicians.
Hence, the final solution is prepared, an absolute crime. I summon Phlegon! He progresses through eighteen millions of collapsed relational sets!
A solemn gong-note rang through the neutronium, and a wailing clamor of horns and drumbeats-or something my brain interpreted as horns and drums. It was an astonishing noise, something louder than the whole universe.
A second voice emerged from that clamor and spoke in existential sets that threatened to crack the neutron substance around me: we have tolerated the affront OF SATURN FOR NINE
UNCOUNTABLE INFINITIES of time. advance the thousand-dimensional object! at phaethusa's word, we initiate the retaliatory annihilation!
Trinax called out to me, and now his signal sounded dim and remote: Daughter of Helios and Neaera! Speak if you wish us to slay and murder all of time and space, and all things great and small within it. The Green Energy Smiths are alert-the Thousand-Dimensional Object is in a state of readiness.
The gong-note sounded again, and all the lesser dimensions shook.
The siren Parthenope signaled to her sister, using an energy-weft that smote my ears as a normal voice: "Leucosia, our prey is now being observed by the horrors of the Namelessness, the creatures of Myriagon. Now, at last, we can kill her when and where they can witness the crime, and see our songs stained red with her virgin blood. At last! This weary playacting, pretending that she could escape us, chasing her until she called them, at last is ended."
The two sirens unfolded themselves into the fifth dimension from the fourth, growing into solidity around me. I could not tell the distance, but my sense-impressions heard echoes from their existential patterns very nearby. They had not been unable to reach me.
Parthenope said wearily, "Slay her with a diminished fifth, my sister, and be done with it, that the world may die, and we be at rest."
But Leucosia answered, "Sister, something is amiss. My lance is pointed at her heart, but I dare not strike. Observe the colors of the moral warp. What is wrong?"
Parthenope whispered in awe: "Madness! She has gone insane! She will not strike back, even if we kill her for it."
"Tell her we will despoil her naked corpse in public after the murder and will vaunt and caper, merely to taunt her weeping mother."
"Phaethusa! Can you not heat our words?"
I gritted my teeth and said nothing. For one thing, to deflect the neutron medium of five-space even one-eighth inch out of its normal rest-state required immense energy. I am sure my three-dimensional girl-body would have been sweating and shaking by now.
For another, I damn well was not going to die to please them.
And, bloody hell, I was the heroine here, wasn't I? The human race, all those planets, the sun and moon and stars, time and space-all the beautiful things Archer talked about-it was not going to be wiped out because of me. Not while I was leader. Not on my watch. No sir. No.
Thrinax: Phaethusa's silence passes verdict on the world of Saturn. Arrest the Thousand-Dimensional Object! I see countless strands of ethical and entropic energy stream from my garments into the blank spot of Saturn's dead world, but one returns bright as silver, untarnished. Phaethusa would forgive her slayers. She was raised as human, thinks as a human, and yet she reached the conclusion Helios foresaw, even in a world where moral facts cannot be seen, only imagined. The universe is proved. Spare it.
A new voice spoke, a feminine voice, but not human-sounding, as if a harp of fine crystal were playing: Lampetia, save for Phaethusa, youngest daughter of the Bright One, addresses my brothers. In my glass I see the universe of Saturn is now within our debt, and by the foolish rules that Cosmos uses, this means Captain Thrinax wins another victory, to us instantaneous, even if, to her, many weary aeons of suffering must pass.
Indeed, the weapon of light, stronger than any weapons of the material world: a weapon not in his hand, but in a girl's heart. The mercy of bright Phaethusa is mightier than the Scythe of Time, more far-reaching than the Thunderbolt of Jove.
I admit I was wondering what good this would do me, when a second woman's voice, this one sounding much more lively, and more human, spoke. Sister, I am Circe, Enchantress, daughter of Helios the Bright and lovely Neaera the Dark of the Moon. I alone of our folk have dwelt for a time within Saturn's realm, and studied its lore. The tiniest part of the debt the Cosmos now owes you I use to transform you to a new shape.
All transformations are by knowledge: Knowledge changes you into something other than you are. For this purpose you were incarnated. Receive now the secret of how to escape the Olympian power of destiny control...
At that same moment, a hurried group of messages passed back and forth between Leucosia and Parthenope. They screamed.
One was a shriek of fear. "She must be slain before she drinks this knowledge!"
But the other was a victory scream. 'Too late! They are too late! Phaethusa dies this moment! The maenads are here!"
"Leucosia-the other wives have arrived, dangerous to us. Abandon this paradigm. Change, now, dancing sister, our notes to flatter shape, and call this strangeness of high space down into the beauty of the world-a beauty which will not perish with Phaethusa's death, as our Lord Husband planned."