'City, you great barbarian oaf! Not state! You-'
Arthur slammed the phone down.
He got up and walked out of the throne room as the phone started to ring again. It rang a dozen times, and he finally came back in. The hem of his purple velvet dressing gown swished around on the floor, stirring up dust, and he made a mental note to get the place swept. He let it ring another few times before he picked it up, but before he could get a word out Merlin said, sounding very small, 'I'm sorry, Arthur.'
Arthur hesitated, his eyes wide. His grip on the phone relaxed marginally. 'Merlin,' he said softly, 'I think this is the first time you've ever apologized to me. About anything.'
'I don't intend to make it a habit. And the only thing I'm apologizing for is the barbarian remark. Everything else stands. You're supposed to follow the script I've laid out.'
'I'm not an actor, Merlin. I'm ... a politician.'
'Same difference. Listen, I'll be seeing you in a day or so. And I've got a new member for our group. He's going to be our accountant.'
'Goodman?'
'One of the best. Utterly dedicated.'
'Where have you been for the past week or so?'
'Sobering him up and cleaning him off.'
Arthur laughed. 'What a sense of humor you have, Merlin. What did you do, pick him up off the street?'
'More or less.'
Arthur nodded slowly. 'Urn, Merlin-I'm going to assume you know what you're doing. What's the fellow's name anyway?**
'Vale. Percy Vale.'
Arthur's mouth opened and closed for a moment. Then he said carefully, 'Merlin, I have to ask you. Percy Vale...'
'Yes?'
'GwenDeVere...'
'Your point, Arthur?'
'Have you, well, noticed a pattern?'
'Pattern?' There was a lengthy pause, and Arthur wondered if Merlin was still on,the line before he heard the wizard say, 'What pattern?'
'Those names sound like-'
'Bosh. What's in a name, Arthur? See you soon.' The line was abruptly cut off.
Percy Vale bore little superficial resemblance to the man Merlin had found on the library a week ago. He was now dressed in a straight-arrow, three-piece, black pinstripe suit. There was no trace of liquor on his breath, although it had left a haunted look in his eyes. He was neatly groomed, his fingernails trimmed. His eyes were bloodshot, but Visine would take that away in time. A cup of black coffee sat in front of him.
'You promised me, Merlin.'
Merlin sat across from him, the remains of his breakfast all around him. Percy had had toast.
Merlin had put away steak and eggs and was on his third cup of coffee. The waitress kept giving him looks every time she walked by. He ignored them; he was used to it.
'Yes, I know I promised you, Percy.'
'You said that if I sobered up, you'd tell me who I am. You told me you'd explain why I got this emptiness in my gut and I always gotta fill it with booze.'
Merlin sipped his coffee. 'You were once a knight,' he said so quietly that Percy had to strain his ears to hear him. 'A knight of the Round Table.'
Percy stared at him and then leaned back. 'Bull-sheeet. No black man ever sat at no Round Table. You mean with King Arthur and them? No way.'
'Oh, you were not black at the time,' Merlin said with a dismissive wave. 'You have to learn to look beyond the present. Yours is an eternal spirit, Percy. You have always existed. You always will. Sometimes you will be white, sometimes yellow, sometimes male and sometimes female. You are a symbol.'
'What, you mean one of those big round things you clang?'
Merlin winced. 'Symbol. Not cymbal. Symbol as in representing something. You are an incarnation, Percy. An incarnation of a human ideal.'
'Man, that is the biggest crock of-'
'In this case that ideal is dedication to a goal. You are not aware of it, Percy, but in a time past you sought the Holy Grail.'
'The what?'
Merlin pursed his lips. 'In the time of Camelot there came a period of discontent. The knights became bored with the ideal of chivalry and civilization. Arthur had achieved a goal, namely the use of the power of knighthood for something other than hacking enemies into small bits of meat. Men were treating men like human beings, and women like chattel that needed protection, which was a damned sight better than the way both genders were being treated earlier.'
Percy cocked his head to one side as Merlin took another sip of coffee. 'But, as human beings are wont to do, the knights wound up needing a new goal to stave off the oppression of boredom. So I gave them one. They were to search for, find, and recover the Holy Grail.
The cup from which Jesus Christ drank at the Last Supper.'
'Why?'
Merlin shrugged. 'I don't know. It was the first thing that popped into my mind. It was either that or the Holy Plate. It hardly mattered what I came up with, as long as it was something to keep what I laughingly refer to as the knights' 'minds' occupied.'
'Are you saying there wasn't ever a Holy Grail?'
'No,' said Merlin. 'There might have been. And there might be flying saucers and the Loch Ness monster and honest used-car dealers and whatever other fantasies the human mind is capable of conjuring. What I'm saying is that I made up the Holy Grail. Certainly. I would have said anything to delay the splintering of the Round Table. Yet for all I know I actually hit upon something that existed. I couldn't say. Whatever I made up, however, you were the most dedicated in attempting to find h. For that is what you are-dedication personified.'
'Yeah, yeah, so you said.'
'So I said,' agreed Merlin cheerfully. 'And you have lived many lives, for you have always existed and always will. And no matter who you were or where you were, you have always been dedicated.'
'Oh, yeah?' said Percy. 'Then why,' and he leaned forward intently, 'why, if I'm so damned dedicated, am I a stinking drunk?'
'Because in this lifetime you were dedicated to your own self-destruction. And you were very good at it. If it hadn't been for me, you might have achieved it.' Merlin frowned then. 'And since you are the embodiment of the human spirit, I got you just in time. It would not have boded well at all for humanity if you'd allowed your liver to turn into a colander.'
'Oh, yeah?' said Percy. 'You don't know what made me the way I am.'
'In fact I do. I have quite a few ways of searching out what I wish to know. It wasn't difficult.
Good accountant, you were. One of the best. Worked for a big firm and discovered irregularities-funds disappearing for which you could not account.'
Percy turned away but Merlin continued, his voice oddly flat and even. 'You discovered a higher up, a man you respected tremendously, had been jerking the company around. He fed you a sob story that wrenched your heart. Ever sympathetic to the human condition, you agreed to cover for him. And you did, until the auditors found it. But the higher up managed to pin the whole thing on you. Fired. Disgraced. No one would hire you. Your world in the toilet, you had no goal to achieve. So you sought escape in a bottle-'
Percy slammed his hand down on the table, rattling the ketchup and the salt and pepper shakers. Everyone in the coffee shop jumped except for Merlin. 'All right! That's history, Merlin.'
Merlin nodded once. 'Fine. As long as we're both agreed on that.'
'Agreed.'
'Fine. For I have a new goal for you. The election of Arthur, your former king, to a position that will be his
