irl have changed me!" Bruce shouted at him,
and I looked around at Lili and I remembered Dave saying, "I'm going to
Spain," and I wondered if anything would ever again make my face flame
like that. "Or, rather, they've made me stand up for what I've believed
in all along. They've made me--"

"_Wunderbar_," Erich called and began to do a little sissy dance on the
bomb that set my teeth on edge. He bent his wrists and elbows at arty
angles and stuck out a hip and ducked his head simperingly and blinked
his eyes very fast. "Will you invite me to the wedding, Bruce? You'll
have to get another best man, but I will be the flower girl and throw
pretty little posies to all the distinguished guests. Here, Mark. Catch,
Kaby. One for you, Greta. _Danke schoen. Ach, zwei Herzen in
dreivierteltakt ... ta-ta ... ta-ta ... ta-ta-ta-ta-ta ..._"

"What the hell do you think a woman is?" Bruce raged. "Something to mess
around with in your spare time?"

* * * * *

Erich kept on humming "Two Hearts in Waltz Time"--and jigging around to
it, damn him--but he slipped in a nod to Bruce and a "Precisely." So I
knew where I stood, but it was no news to me.

"Very well," Bruce said, "let's leave this Brown Shirt _maricon_ to
amuse himself and get down to business. I made all of you a proposal and
I don't have to tell you how serious it is or how serious Lili and I are
about it. We not only must infiltrate and subvert other Places, which
luckily for us are made for infiltration, we also must make contact with
the Snakes and establish working relationships with their Demons at our
level as one of our first steps."

That stopped Erich's jig and got enough of a gasp from some of us to
make it seem to come from practically everybody. Erich used it to work a
change of pace.

"Bruce! We've let you carry this foolery further than we should. You
seem to have the idea that because anything goes in the Place--dueling,
drunkenness, _und so weiter_--you can say what you have and it will all
be forgotten with the hangover. Not so. It is true that among such a set
of monsters and free spirits as ourselves, and working as secret agents
to boot, there cannot be the obvious military discipline that would
obtain in a Terran army.

"But let me tell you, Bruce, let me grind it home into you--Sid and Kaby
and Mark will bear me out in this, as officers of equivalent rank--that
the Spider line of command stretches into and through