displeasure of the gods, and endangering your own spirit.'
Crane's dry chuckle came out of the darkness.
'I'll continue to do it. Echidna conceived again and bore another male, a boy who inherited his father's virile indifference to the physical sensations of others to the point of mania. You must know, Patera, as we all do, the exquisite pleasure of inflicting pain upon those we dislike. He allowed himself to be seduced by it, to the point that he came to care for nothing else and while still a child slaughtered thousands for his amusement. We call him Hierax now, the god of death.
'Shall I go on? There are three more, all girls, but you know them as well as I. Thelxiepeia with her spells and drugs and poisons, fat Phaea, and Sphigx, who combined her father's fortitude with her mother's vile temper. In a family such as hers, she would be forced to cultivate those qualities or die, unquestionably.'
Silk coughed. 'You indicated that you intended to return my needler, Councillor. I'd like very much to have it back.'
This time the uncanny light wrapped Lemur's entire body, strong enough to glow faintly through his tunic and trousers. 'Watch,' he said, and held out his right arm. A dark smudge beneath the embroidered satin of his sleeve crept down his arm to the elbow, then down his forearm until Hyacinth's gold-plated needler slid into his open hand. 'Here you are.'
'How did you do that?' Silk inquired.
'There are thousands of minute circuits in my arms. By flexing certain muscles, I can create a magnetic field, and by tightening them in sequence while relaxing others, I can move the field. Watch.'
Hyacinth's needler crept from Lemur's hand to his wrist, and disappeared into his sleeve. 'You say you'd like to have it back?'
'Yes, very much.'
'And you, Doctor Crane? I have already given you yours, and I plan to make use of your services. Will you count your needler as your fee, paid in advance?'
The light that streamed from Lemur was now so bright that Silk could make out Crane, seated on the cot, as he drew his needler and held it out. 'You can have it back, if you want. But give Silk his, and I'll accept that.'
'Doctor Crane has already tried to shoot me, you see.' Lemur's shining face smiled. 'He's playing a cruel trick on you, Patera.'
'No, he's being the same kind friend he has been to me since we first met. There are men who are ashamed of their best impulses, because they have come to associate goodness with weakness. Give it to me, please.'
It was not Hyacinth's needler but her azoth that crawled like a silver spider into Lemur's open hand. Silk reached for it, but the hand closed about it; Lemur laughed, and they were plunged in darkness again.
Crane's voice: 'Silk tells me you captured a woman with him. If you've hurt her badly, I want to see her.'
'I could squeeze this hard enough to crush it,' Lemur told them. 'That would be dangerous even for me.'
Silk had succeeded in untangling the silver chain; he put it about his neck and adjusted the position of Pas's gammadion as he spoke. 'Then I advise you not to do it.'
'I won't. Before I told you the truth about your gods, Patera, I hinted that I'd propose a new god to you, a living god to whom the wisest might kneel. I meant myself, as you must have realized. Are you ready to worship me?'
'I'm afraid we lack an appropriate victim for sacrifice.' Lemur's eyes glowed. 'You're wasting your tact, Patera. Don't you want to be Prolocutor? When I happened to mention it, I expected you to kiss my rump for the thought. Instead you're acting as if you didn't hear me.'
'After the first moment or two, I assumed you intended a subtle torture. To speak frankly, I still do.'
'Not at all. I'm completely serious. The doctor said he wished he'd invented you. So do I. If you're what he and his masters required, you suit my purposes even better.'
Silk felt as though he were choking. 'You want me to tell people that you're a god, Councillor? That you are to be paid divine honors?'
Warm and rich and friendly, Lemur's voice boomed out of the darkness. 'More than that. The present Prolocutor could do that, and would in a moment if I told him to. Or I could replace him with any of a hundred augurs who would.'
Silk shook his head. 'I doubt it. But even if you're correct, they would not be believed.'
'Precisely. But you would be. His Cognizance is old. His Cognizance will die, tomorrow perhaps. In a surprising but hugely popular development, it will be discovered that he has named you as his successor, and you will explain to the people that Pas has withheld his rains out of consideration for me. They need only pay me proper honors to be forgiven. Eventually they will come to understand that I am, as I am, a greater god than Pas. After all that I've told you, do you retain some loyalty to him? And Echidna and their brats?'
Silk sighed. 'I realized as you spoke how little I have ever had. Your blasphemies ought to have outraged me. I was merely shocked instead, like a maiden aunt who overhears her cook swearing; but you see, I've encountered a real god, the Outsider-'
Crane whooped with laughter.
'And Kypris, a real goddess. Thus I know wliat divinity is, the look and the sound and the true texture of it. You said something else that I ignored, Councillor.'
For the first time, Lemur sounded dangerous and even deadly. 'Which was . . . ?'
'You said that you were not a chem. I'm not one of those ignorant and prejudiced bios who consider themselves superior to chems, but I know-'
'You lie!' Doubly terrifying in the darkness, the blade of the azoth tore the plane of existence like so much paper, shooting past Silk's ear, manifest to every cell in his body, and horrible as nothing the universe contained could be. From the other side of the room, Crane shouted, 'You'll sink us!' and the vessel lurched and shook as he spoke. Chips of burning paint and flakes of incandescent steel showered Silk with fire; he backed away in horror.
'One bom a biological man did that, Patera. A man who has become more.' Something rang in the darkness as a hammer rings against an anvil. 'I am a biological man and a god.' The harrowing discontinuity that had wounded the very fabric of the universe was gone.
'Thank you,' Silk said. He gasped for breath. 'Thank you every much. Please don't do that again.'
As the violence of the vessel's motion abated to steady thrumming, Lemur's luminous arm reappeared; his hand opened, and the hilt of the azoth slid smoothly into its sleeve.
There was a thump as Crane dropped his medical bag. 'Are you inside there?'
Lemur's voice was warm again. 'Why do you ask?'
'Just curious. I was wondering if it might not be like conflict armor, but better.'
'Which would be of some interest to your masters in the government of . . . ?'
'Paluslria.'
'No. Not Paluslria. We have eliminated certain cities, and thai is one of them. Like Patera Silk, you'll soon come to serve Viron, and when you do, you must be more forth- right. Meanwhile, let it be enough for you that I am in another part of this boat. Perhaps I'll show you when we're done with the business at hand.'
'Serve you, you mean.'
'We gods have many names.
'Patera, you needn't concern yourself about your paramour from the past. She's nursing Doctor Crane's patient even as I speak, and worrying about you.'
Crane's voice: 'You use some old-fashioned words.How old are you, Councillor?'
'How old would you say I am?' Lemur extended his shining hand. 'You doctors like to speak of pronounced tremors. Can you pronounce upon that one?'
'You've held office under two caldes, and for twenty-two years since the death of the last. Naturally we wondered.'
'In Palustria. Yes, in Palustria, naturally you did. When you see me elsewhere you can formulate an estimate of your own, and I'll be interested to learn it.
'Patera, doesn't all this astound you?'
