nine-inch-high statue of a stern and kingly figure on a throne, an eagle on his shoulder and a crooked lightning bolt made of brass in his marble hand. There was a cutting board and knife rack before it. The cutting board was bloodstained, and there were tiny bits of down and feather littering the surface.
Vanity was certain that an evil mastermind like Boggin must have an escape exit from his inner lair, but the only thing she found was a hidden hatch leading to a defunct dumbwaiter shaft. She stuck her head into the hatch. There was a skylight high above, and the shaft below fell sheer into darkness. No one without wings would be able to use this route.
She also was curious about the conversation she was not able to overhear, and wondered at the identity of the guest Mr. Sprat dared not to stop nor delay. Evil masterminds simply had to have methods of listening in on what happened in rooms adjacent to them. They had to! It was an article of faith with her.
Sure enough, when she looked for a peephole hidden in the panel behind the Odysseus portrait, there one was. There was a mechanism for listening, basically a bell with an earpiece, sort of a crude stethoscope.
2.
The visitor was standing. Boggin was kneeling on one knee before it, with his mortarboard in his hand, his long red braid of hair, normally hidden, now trailing down his back.
The visitor was thin and tall, like a leopard or a jaguar might look if standing on hind legs. Parts of its skin were made of bronze, or perhaps metal plates had been fused to its chest and back, metal scales along its upper arms and metal greaves on its lower legs. Because its neck was long and flexible, its head looked small. It had long hair like a woman, but its teeth were sharp like a lion's teeth. Its lips and cheeks were so plastic that it could flex its mouth from a tiny pink rosebud to a white grin whose corners touched the spot where, on a human, there were visible ears.
It wore a scarlet cloak. In one hand it gripped a short stabbing-spear with a metal head and a wooden shaft, a weighted spike at the butt end; in the opposite elbow it held a narrow-cheeked bronze helmet with a drooping red plume. As a gratuitous anachronism, the warrior-creature also carried a stub-nosed submachine gun of squat design at its hip, a bandolier of magazines looped over its shoulder.
Vanity did not hear the beginning of the conversation.
The creature was saying, '… Uranians have demonstrated that they could escape your confinement. A second escape is likely to be believed. The Lamia will no doubt make a second attempt at that time. Our military intelligence department estimates the chance of Lamia making a second attempt while the Uranians are still in custody to be a small one.'
Boggin spoke in his normally hearty and self-interrupting fashion. He did not speak as a kneeling man should. 'Ah… ! I am certain, my dear Centurion Infantophage (and a fine name you have chosen for yourself!), that the military intelligence department of the Laestrygonians—are you familiar with the word
'oxymoron'? No? I thought not—a department that enjoys such fame, or, one is tempted to say, such notoriety for the accuracy and timeliness of its predictions and warnings, well, such an august institution is one with which it is certainly, ah, futile, if not to say, pointless, to remonstrate.'
The creature's eyes glittered with hate. 'You are mocking us, air-blower?'
Boggin lowered his head, but his voice was still rich with good humor: 'Oh, my dear Centurion Infantophage (a most excellent name, have I said how well it fits you?), certainly I would not wish to be understood by you if I were mocking you to your, ah, shall we call it a face? To your face. No, indeed. I hold the Laestrygonians in the greatest possible respect! The greatest, indeed, possible to grant to Laestrygonians. Your fine military intelligence department was charged, I believe, with the duty of bodyguarding the Lord Terminus, was it not? During the battle of Phlegra. The late Lord Terminus, I should say. The late, departed, once-alive but now-dead, which is to say, no- longer-alive, Lord Terminus. No doubt the sincere grief of your master, the Lord Mavors, at the departure of his father Lord Terminus was modified, if not ameliorated, by his joy on discovering (no doubt, to his complete surprise) that he stood to inherit the throne of heaven. The rulership of the entire sidereal universe must be a heavy burden.'
'My master does not care for the throne. He assumes it as a matter of duty, no more and no less.'
'What an unlucky day that was for him, then, when the Laestrygonians failed to protect his father from Typhon of Chaos! I am certain that the punishments visited upon the Laestrygonians by Lord Mavors when they fail at their duties are as great as the generous rewards he heaps upon them when they succeed!'
'Lord Mavors is harsh to those who fail him, but just. He is a good leader.'
'And may I also take this opportunity to congratulate you and your department for its recent elevation to the status of the Praetorians? The halls and palaces that you now occupy on the lower slopes of Olympos are indeed splendid, as well I know, since I and my brethren inhabited a very similar station of rank under the rulership of Lord Terminus.'
'I do not see how that comment is relevant to this conversation.'
'Of course not, Centurion. Of course you would not see. Forgive my digression. What in the world could I have been thinking?'
'You will arrange the release of the Uranians. Lord Mavors has laid a malediction upon whoever should kill one or more of them. The nature of Olympian curse allows the maledictator to become aware of opposition or resistance to the malediction…'
'Ah, indeed?' muttered Boggin. 'I am grateful, certainly grateful for your instruction upon this obscure point. You will tell me more about the operation of the Olympian art of destiny-manipulation when you have opportunity, I hope, Laestrygonian.'
'Enough! Why do you speak with such insolence?'
'Every teacher learns lessons from his own students, Centurion.'
'You, are insubordinate.'
'As the term is usually used, Centurion, in fact, I am not. I am not under the orders of Lord Mavors, nor does he have authority to command me.
'Indeed,' continued Boggin in that same hearty tone, 'Lord Mavors is asking me to go directly against the last orders I received—one might, without undue exaggeration, almost call it the dying wish—of Lord Terminus. 'Protect those infants!' Those were his last words to me, Centurion: 'Your life, and the life of Cosmos itself, is forfeit, if they are harmed.' Actually, his very last words to me were: 'We shall impart further instructions by Our next
