black, there remains a chance--the
slimmest chance, but still a chance--of saving the cosmos from Change
Death and restoring reality's richness and giving the Ghosts good sleep
and perhaps even regaining the real now. We have the means right at
hand. What if the power of time traveling were used not for war and
destruction, but for healing, for the mutual enrichment of the ages, for
quiet communication and growth, in brief, to bring a peace message--"

But my little commandant is quite an actor himself and knows a wee bit
about the principles of scene-stealing, and he was not going to let
Bruce drown him out as if he were just another extra playing a Voice
from the Mob. He darted across our front, between us and the bar, took a
running leap, and landed bang on the bloody box of bomb.

A bit later, Maud was silently showing me the white ring above her elbow
where I'd grabbed her and Illy was teasing a clutch of his tentacles out
of my other hand and squeaking reproachfully, "Greta girl, don't ever do
that."

Erich was standing on the chest and I noticed that his boots carefully
straddled the circle of skulls, and I should have known anyway you could
hardly push them in the right order by jumping on them, and he was
pointing at Bruce and saying, "--and that means mutiny, my young sir.
_Um Gottes willen_, Bruce, listen to me and step down before you say
anything worse. I'm older than you, Bruce. Mark's older. Trust in your
_Kameraden_. Guide yourself by their knowledge."

He had got my attention, but I had much rather have him black my eye.

"You older than me?" Bruce was grinning. "When your twelve-years'
advantage was spent in soaking up the wisdom of a race of sadistic
dreamers gone paranoid, in a world whose thought-stream had already been
muddied by one total war? Mark older than me? When all his ideas and
loyalties are those of a wolf pack of unimaginative sluggers two
thousand years younger than I am? Either of you older because you have
more of the killing cynicism that is all the wisdom the Change World
ever gives you? Don't make me laugh!

"I'm an Englishman, and I come from an epoch when total war was still a
desecration and the flowers and buds of thoughts not yet whacked off or
blighted. I'm a poet and poets are wiser than anyone because they're the
only people who have the guts to think and feel at the same time. Right,
Sid? When I talk to all of you about a peace message, I want you to
think about it