l while he tugged off his horned helmet, Mark
dumping a stack of shields in the corner, Maudie pausing as she
skittered past me to say, "Hi Gret, great you're back," and patting my
temple to show what part of me she meant. Beau went straight to Sid's
dressing table and set the portrait aside and lifted out Sid's reserve
makeup box.

"The lights, Martin!" he called.

Then Sid came back in, slamming and bolting the door behind him and
standing for a moment with his back against it, panting.

I rushed to him. Something was boiling up inside me, but before it
could get to my brain I opened my mouth and it came out as, "Siddy,
you can't fool me, that was no dirty S-or-S. I don't care how much he
shakes and purrs, or shakes a spear, or just plain shakes--Siddy, that
was Shakespeare!"

"Aye, girl, I think so," he told me, holding my wrists together. "They
can't find dolls to double men like that--or such is my main hope." A
big sickly grin came on his face. "Oh, gods," he demanded, "with what
words do you talk to a man whose speech you've stolen all your life?"

I asked him, "Sid, were we _ever_ in Central Park?"

He answered, "Once--twelve months back. A one-night stand. They came
for Erich. You flipped."

He swung me aside and moved behind Beau. All the lights went out.

* * * * *

Then I saw, dimly at first, the great dull-gleaming jewel, covered
with dials and green-glowing windows, that Beau had lifted from Sid's
reserve makeup box. The strongest green glow showed his intent face,
still framed by the long glistening locks of the Ross wig, as he
kneeled before the thing--Major Maintainer, I remembered it was
called.

"When now? Where?" Beau tossed impatiently to Sid over his shoulder.

"The forty-fourth year before our Lord's birth!" Sid answered
instantly. "Rome!"

Beau's fingers danced over the dials like a musician's, or a
safe-cracker's. The green glow flared and faded flickeringly.

"There's a storm in that vector of the Void."

"Circle it," Sid ordered.

"There are dark mists every way."

"Then pick the likeliest dark path!"

I called through the dark, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair, eh,
Siddy?"

"Aye, chick," he answered me. "'Tis all the rule we have!"

--FRITZ LEIBER

* * * * *

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