ething
like that, but no, Illy didn't know much about it.

"All these things and more he whispered," Kaby went on, "with the last
gasps of his life-force, telling all his secret orders--for he'd not
been sent to get us, he was on a separate mission, when he heard my
SOSs. Sid, it's you he was to contact, as the first leg of his mission,
pick up from you three black hussars, death's-head Demons, daring
Soldiers, then to wait until the Places next match rhythm with the
cosmos--matter of two mealtimes, barely--and to tune in northern Egypt
in the age of the last Caesar, in the year of Rome's swift downfall,
there to start an operation in a battle near a city named for Thrace's
Alexander, there to change the course of battle, blow sky-high the
stinking Serpents, all their agents, all their Zombies!

"Goddess, pardon, now I savvy how you've guided my least footstep, when
I thought you'd gone and left me--for I flubbed your three-mole signal.
We've found Sid's Place, that's the first leg, and I see the three black
hussars, and we've brought with us the weapon and the Parthian
disguises, salvaged from the doomed Express Room when your Door appeared
in time's nick, and the Room around us closing spewed us through before
it vanished with the corpse of Benson-Carter. Triple Goddess, draw the
milk now from the womanhood I flaunt here and inject the blackest
hatred! Vengeance now upon the Serpents, vengeance sweet in northern
Egypt, for your island, Crete, Goddess!--and a victory for the Spiders!
Goddess, Goddess, we can swing it!"

The roar that made me try to stop my ears with my shoulders didn't come
from Kaby--she'd spoken her piece--but from Sid. The dear boy was purple
enough to make me want to remind him you can die of high blood pressure
just as easy in the Change World.

"Dump me with ops! 'Sblood, I'll not endure it! Is this a battle post?
They'll be mounting operations from field hospitals next. Kabysia
Labrys, thou art mad to suggest it. And what's this prattle of locks,
clocks, and death's heads, buttons and monkeys? This brabble, this
farrago, this hocus-pocus! And where's the weapon you prate of? In that
whoreson bronze casket, I suppose."

She nodded, looking blank and almost a little shy as poetic possession
faded from her. Her answer came like its faltering last echo.

"It is nothing but a tiny tactical atomic bomb."

CHAPTER 7

After about 0.1 millisecond (one ten-thousandth part of a second)