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Mistress Christia wore ringlets today of light red-gold, a translucent gown of sea-green antique rayon, bracelets of live lizards, their tails held between their tiny forepaws.

"Oh, Doctor Volospion, how you flatter me! I have heard that you keep the most sought-after beauty in the world imprisoned in one of your gloomy towers!"

"You have heard? Already? It is true." He pretended shame. "I ca

"Is it fitting, then, that you dally with me — for my reputation —"

"Is enviable," he said.

She kissed his chilly cheek. "But I know you to be heartless."

"It is you, Mistress Christia, who gives me a heart."

"But you will lay it at another's feet, I know. It is my fate, always."

His attention was distracted, all at once. Sweet Orb Mace's juvenile slaughter house was blazing. And a look of joy crossed Doctor Volospion's face.

Mistress Christia was bemused. "You seem pleased at this? Poor Sweet Orb Mace and his lovely little house."

"Oh, no, no, that is not it, at all." He moved like a moth for the flames, his face lit by them. And then fire licked his body again and he was naked. There came a chorus from all around. Everyone was likewise unclad.

From out of the inferno stepped Emmanuel Bloom. He wore a black and white Pierrot costume.

"I have come," he trilled amiably, "to be worshipped. I strip you naked. Thus I will strip your souls." He looked at their bare bodies and seemed rather confounded by some of the sights.

Fussing, a number of the guests were already replenishing themselves. Costumes blossomed on flesh again.

"No matter," said the Fireclown, "I have made my moral point."

With a caress Doctor Volospion brought rippling velvet to his body, dark reds and greens glowed upon him. "Shall you never tire of these demonstrations?" he asked.

Emmanuel Bloom shrugged. "Why should I? It is my way of preaching to you. There are many excellent precedents for the method. A miracle and a parable or two work, as it were, wonders."

"You have converted no-one, sir," said My Lady Charlotina, in a huge china bell decorated with little flowers. Her voice tended to echo.

The Fireclown agreed with her. "It is taking longer than I expected, madam. But I am persistent, by nature. And patient, in my way."

"Well, sir, we lose patience," said Abu Thaleb. "I regret to say it, but it is true." He turned for confirmation to his friends. All nodded. "You see?"

"Is consensus truth?" the Fireclown wished to know. "Agree what you like between yourselves, for it will not alter what is so."

"It could be said that that which all are agreed upon is truth," mildly proposed Argonheart Po, who saw the chance of a metaphysical spat. "Do we not make the truth from the stuff of Chaos?"

"If the will is strong enough, perhaps," said Emmanuel Bloom. "But your wills are nothing. Mine is immeasurably powerful. You use gadgetry for your miracles. Do you see me using anything else but the power of my mind?"

"Your ship's force-field…" suggested Doctor Volospion.

"That, too, is controlled by my mind."

Doctor Volospion seemed unhappy with this information.

"And where is my soul mate?" inquired Mr Bloom. "Where is my consort? Where are you hiding her, Volospion? Eh, manikin? Speak!" He glared up at his smiling adversary.

"She is protected," said Volospion, "from you."

"Protected? She needs no protection from Emmanuel Bloom. So, you imprison her."

"For her own safety," said My Lady Charlotina. "It is what Miss Ming wants."

"She is deluded." The Fireclown displayed irritation. "Deluded by this conjuror and his jesuitry. Give her up to me. I demand it. If I can save no other soul in this whole world, I shall save hers, I swear!"

"Never," said Doctor Volospion, "would I give another human creature into your keeping. How could I justify my conscience?"



"Conscience! Pah!"

"She is secure," My Lady Charlotina glanced once at Doctor Volospion, "is she not? Locked in your deepest dungeon?"

"Well…" Doctor Volospion's shrug was modest.

"Ah, I ca

"Bargain?" said Doctor Volospion. "What have you that I should wish to bargain?"

"What do you wish from me?" The Fireclown had become agitated. "Tell me!"

"Nothing. You have heard my reasons for keeping Miss Ming safe from your threats…"

"Threats? When did I threaten?"

"You have frightened the poor woman. She is not very intelligent. She has scant self-confidence…"

"I offer her all of that and more. It is promises, not threats, I make! Bah!" The Fireclown set the lawn to smouldering and, as a consequence, many of the guests to dancing. At length everyone withdrew a few feet into the air, though still disturbed by rich smoke. Only the Fireclown remained on the ground, careless of the heat. "I can give that woman everything. You take from her what little pride she still has. I can give her beauty and love and eternal life…"

"The secret of eternal life, Mr Bloom, is already known to us," said My Lady Charlotina from above. She had some difficulty in seeing him through the smoke, which grew steadily thicker.

"This? It is a state of eternal death. You have no true enthusiasms any longer. The secret of eternal life, madam, is enthusiasm, nothing more or less."

"Enough?" said a distant Argonheart Po. "To sustain us physically?"

"To relish everything to the full, for its own sake, that's the answer." Mr Bloom's black and white Pierrot costume was almost invisible now in the boiling smoke. "Away with your charms and potions, your Shangri-Las, your Planets of Youth, of frozen cells and brain transfers! — many's the entity I've seen last little more than a thousand years before boredom shrivels up his soul and kills him."

"Kills him?" Argonheart's voice was even fainter.

"Oh, his body may live. But one way or another, boredom kills him!"

"Your ideas remain somewhat out of date," said My Lady Charlotina. "Immortality is no longer a matter of potions, enchantments or surgery…"

"I speak of the soul, madam."

"Then you speak of nothing at all," said Doctor Volospion.

There was no reply.

The Fireclown was gone.

11. In which Doctor Volospion is subjected to a siege and attempts to Parley

Miss Ming was neither chained nor bound, neither did she languish in a dungeon, but she did confine herself, at Doctor Volospion's request, to her own apartments, furnished by him to her exact requirements, and at first she was content to accept this security, but as time passed she came to pine for human company, for even Doctor Volospion hardly ever visited her, and her only intercourse was with mechanical servants. When she did encounter her dark-minded host she would beg for news of Bloom, praying that by now he would have abandoned his plans and left the planet.

She saw Doctor Volospion soon after the party at Sweet Orb Mace's, where the house and lawn had been burned.

"He is still, I fear, here," Volospion informed her, seating himself on a pink, quilted pouf. "His determination to save the world has weakened just a little, I would say."

"So he will go soon?"

"His determination to win your hand, Miss Ming, is if anything stronger than ever."

"So he remains…" She sank upon a satin cushion.

"Everyone shares your dismay. Indeed I have been deputized to rid the world of the madman, in an informal way, and I have racked my brains to conceive a plan, but none comes. Can you think of anything?"

"Me? Little Mavis? I'm very honoured, Doctor Volospion, but…" She played with the neck of her blue lace negligee. "If you have failed, how can I help?"