Honcho raised his hands and clapped them sharply. Blade sensed that now the unseen listeners and watchers were gone. Honcho wanted privacy for some reasons of his own.
The neuter image stared at him. 'Come,' said Honcho. 'We will go to my real where we can talk. In secret.' He stepped toward the circular pad. Blade hesitated.
Honcho smiled at him. 'You are afraid, then? Of what happened to Moyna? Do not be. It is only to teleport, not destruct. Come. No harm. As you have said, we are friends. For now. It is really very simple. A simple disestablishment of quarks.'
Blade stepped onto the pad. He was very close to Honcho now, and could not resist the temptation to sweep a hand through the image. He felt nothing and the image was not disturbed. It was like passing his hand through a solid vapor. Blade did not even question the contradiction in terms. He was thinking ahead. Thinking furiously.
Honcho was staring at Blade. He laughed softly. 'You do not really understand at all, do you? Such a simple thing. So now I know who you are not!'
Blade stared back. 'All right. Who am I not?'
'You are not Mazda! Not HE WHO WILL COME TO THEY. That much I know. If you were Mazda you would know all things.'
'We are getting a little too involved,' said Blade coolly. 'It is useless to talk of such things now. Let us wait, as you say, and talk in secret and in leisure, so we can come to understand each other.'
Honcho's face was very close to Blade's. The neuter's facial area was smooth skinned, marred by only a faint down, the teeth longish and a glistening white. The slitted eyes were deep green pits.
'I tell you one thing,' said Honcho. 'I have already decided this. I know you are not Mazda. You know you are not Mazda. But THEY do not know that you are not Mazda. So, if I decree it, and I may, you will be Mazda! You will be HE WHO COMES TO THEY. It is understood?'
Blade knew that to be servile would be a mistake, perhaps a fatal one. In any case he was not a servile man. Had never been. 'I promise nothing,' he said gruffly. 'Let us wait and see.'
'Yes. We shall indeed see. Take a chair and make yourself comfortable.'
Blade gazed around in new amazement. Only an instant before he had been in the chamber, on the pad; now he was standing in the midst of a tall-ceilinged room. Somewhere music was playing. Beneath his feet was a thick- piled white rug that he knew would be made of the ubiquitous mani. There were cabinets around the walls. In the very center of the room was a large, low desk with two contour chairs facing it. In one of the chairs, reclining, smiling except for the gimlety green eyes, was Honcho.
The neuter waved a hand toward the other chair. 'Sit.'
Blade approached the chair warily. Was this the real Honcho or more simlu?
Honcho guessed at Blade's thought. It stood up and extended a hand across the desk. 'Touch.'
They touched hands. The neuter's was cool, nearly as frail as Moyna's had been, but it was flesh and blood. Blade sank into the chair.
Honcho smiled. 'You are convinced that I am in my real at the moment, not simlu?'
Blade nodded. 'Yes. I am convinced.'
'Good,' said the neuter. For a moment it toyed with the chain of diamonds around its neck. Then it reached into a drawer and came out with what Blade recognized as a sort of ball point pen and slate.
Honcho poised the pen, it was really more of a stylus, over the slate and looked at Blade. 'Your name?'
But before Blade could answer the neuter held up its hand. 'One moment. Before we begin I had better explain something to you. Tell me a lie.'
Blade stared. 'What?'
Impatience flickered over the neuter's face. 'Tell me a lie! Say something that is untrue.'
Blade grinned. 'My name is Queen Elizabeth.'
A low buzz sounded from somewhere in his chair. Two lights, set into the arm rests, began to flicker. Blade's smile pained a little. A built-in lie detector was going to make it tougher.
'You get the point,' said Honcho. 'Now...your name?'
'Richard Blade.'
Again the buzzing and the flickering lights. Blade frowned. 'But I'm not lying, damn it. I am Richard Blade!'
'Wrong,' said the neuter. 'You may have been Richard Blade, whoever and whatever he was, but from this seg of kronos you are Mazda. HE WHO COMES TO THEY. Never forget it.'
Blade could only stare, feeling foolish and helpless, with his mouth half open.
'You are Mazda,' Honcho repeated. 'You are a God in homid form. After millions of kronos the promise has been kept. You are here. HE WHO COMES TO THEY.'
There was no mistaking the glitter, the cunning, in the green eyes now. 'And,' said the neuter, 'you are also my own very private God. My own to do with exactly as I please.'
Chapter Four
As nearly as Blade could reckon it was three days before he saw Honcho again. He had no way of telling time. He did not yet understand the Tharnian kronos, and there were no days and nights, no sun or moon or stars. Only the neutral, curdled milk sky. Blade had to content himself by guessing at the hours, and making marks with a stylus and slate he found in his apartments.
He lived alone, in great luxury, and knew that he was continually watched by spiscreens which he could not locate.
