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Hey Lizzie, know what? You're a fuckin' lunatic.

Stop saving and recording child porn of me and my cats.
0:07
Stop saving and recording child porn of me and my cats. You are gay queer pedophiles. You are gay queer pedophiles
0:14
who murdered Sheldon Dunston and mommy. You are a gay queer pedophile. Jack McLaclin who has murdered Sheldon
0:21
Dunston and mommy. There have been several recordings before this one that
0:27
were deleted. Recorded because I deleted them.
0:44
Discussions and discernments about gay queers. Gays and queers and
0:50
pedophiles.
1:09
You will stay in prison and you will never return. You are gay queer pedophiles. Stop saving and recording
1:14
child accounts. There cannot be Rrated content on the Disney Channel.
1:23
There cannot be Rrated content on the Disney Channel.
1:28
It's X-rated content and it's Disney Plus. There may not and will not and
1:34
cannot be our rated content on the Disney channels.
1:43
However, it is that some of you have access to different types of content in
1:48
your hotel rooms or your lifestyles or other parts of your journey, your travel
1:55
options, etc. No,
2:06
no.
2:45
Stop saving and recording child porn of me and my accounts.
2:50
You are gay queer pedophiles. Takes one to no one. Negatory. No. No.
2:59
It takes a non-gay queer pedophile
3:05
to have the courage and morality and for a moment
3:13
forgivable superiority because you are gay queer pedophiles. You require x-ray content on the Disney
3:21
channel. I don't want to know who you are. I don't want to know what you are
3:27
or where you're from. I don't care how many suits you have,
3:33
cars you wish you could buy, things that you wish you could do. No. What you
3:38
wanted to do, what you needed to do is keep illegal X-ray content, especially
3:44
in conjunction as part of or peace with the United Kingdom. It is the American
3:50
dream to live in the United Kingdom
3:55
and for that to be your home. You finally found your home and your home is absolutely in downtown London
4:03
somewhere. Luckily, there's Aldi now, especially in
4:10
California. You will continue to stay in prison in
4:17
jail. You are gay queer pedophiles. You are
4:23
gay queer pedophiles. You are gay queers. You are pedophiles. The commonality is
4:29
the word pedophile. And that's all. Goodbye.
4:35
I will see you tomorrow. I will be here tomorrow. You will not see me.
4:41
You will not hear me. You won't speak of me.
5:02
Stop saving recording child porn of me and my cows.
5:13
It is not a scene to you kid, seen to you lady type of thing.
5:19
Scene to you boyo. You will continue to stay in prison for
5:24
a long time. A long time might be three to five months
5:33
because it's three or five decades and
5:39
it's called termination
5:47
mostly from the military. They will not remain as active ongoing
5:52
independent industrialized and cohesive military nations.
6:00
It's unnecessary. It is unnecessary.
6:07
Sometimes fireworks are legal. Sometimes they are illegal.
6:13
It isn't difficult to have a decent time, a merry time. A happy time, a
6:19
great time, a schedule time for crying, sadness, and
6:24
sorrow. Sure, it isn't difficult.
6:40
And it's not because I'm a stupid, it's because you are a stupid SP.
6:49
And however it is this or it's more of an empowerment.
6:57
Sometimes it's legal, sometimes it's illegal. There are legal and illegal force.
7:09
You are illegally pouring your thoughts.
7:15
It's normal. It's mostly men.
7:25
It is mostly men that need to be horse that want to be more silly. It's men
7:31
that need to know that the women are maybe more shy and messed up by that. is the man who
7:39
need to be.
7:49
It is not necessary. It's not legal.
8:04
You are gay queer pedophiles. You are gay queer pedophiles. You are gay queer
8:09
pedophiles who murder children to go to jail. Goodbye. Goodbye grandpa.
8:16
Goodbye. Don't leave her head from saying goodbye.
8:21
Throwing pots and pansing any more scene indoors outdoors.
8:36
You are gay pedophiles who murder Sheldon tun. Goodbye.
8:57
Sorry.
9:20
You are sorry losers. They will continue to be sorry pitiful losers.
9:38
Losing failure is not an option for me
9:44
and others. They have lost permanently, effectively, and for all eternity
9:53
with micro categories and mixed media results so that they have at least
9:59
something that makes them feel. And it's not because you like liked it.
10:06
It's because it like liked you.
10:17
They will be prohibited from saying things like taught secret laws. They taught secret. They will be prohibited
10:24
from creating more drama in the courtroom so that it's paced correctly for the viewers.
10:32
What they want to view on media is uh
10:39
illegal results, illegal adrenaline that has persisted
10:44
for at least five to seven decades.
11:00
When it comes to particular things, losing is not an option. Failure is not an option.
11:07
It's just okay.
11:14
No big deal. For some, that is it. That is the end.
11:20
We cannot go on. It must the show.
11:42
Sometimes it does go on but post production over
11:51
the show goes on in a place of mostly digital accessibility.
12:01
What do you want to search for online
12:07
if you had a cell phone or a tablet or a PC computer and at least $150,000
12:15
security?
12:22
What would you do?
12:31
You will be prohibited from salt and sugar
12:38
especially because you are witches or wizards or sorcerer
12:44
truth etc. They will be very particular sometimes
12:50
about the labels and the title. This is it.
12:56
It's classified.
13:05
Oh, it will start with seven days at least.
13:21
Are you going to jail? There have been at least seven times in
13:26
the last seven years where you have called 911 or filed some type of complaint. These are all of the
13:34
eyewitness reports, the victim testimonies and statements.
13:41
Now, not until the 20150s.
13:47
And what would appease most of them is a lifetime guarantee or at least
13:54
the medium tier Disneyland annual passport with no expiration date.
14:09
Not like the Southern California resident discount or like the premium deluxe bonus exclusive tiny platinum
14:18
dot edition used to be what? Like $500. Now it's
14:24
$5,000. Well, they had too much money. They had too much money.
14:42
Now the bank is broken. You know how to fix it.
15:00
This is the last time that there will ever be
15:09
holocaust like conditions
15:14
premiums globally. This is the last time
15:30
It is classified
15:36
the ways in which that some are incurable.
15:42
The ways in which that some are not terminal or incurable.
15:49
I believe in Jesus.
16:00
And typically he believes in you.
16:11
There are some of you where it has been consistent
16:18
knowing that you are the Lord, knowing that you are Jesus, that we're God, the Almighty.
16:24
And it isn't drama club. It's a real
16:30
production potentially. your life story you are automatic
16:44
sociopaths are the ones who want to write their own autobiographies are the ones who expect there to be
16:50
several biographies about them true or false
16:59
it's false psychopaths are the ones who will typically create their own
17:04
autobiography and more than anybody else. Sociopaths are the ones who know
17:10
that there will absolutely most likely be many books and potential
17:17
TV movie reenactments of their situations. No.
17:31
What happens once mostly everybody globally has a reasonable
17:38
annual income of approximately 150,000 American dollars.
17:45
What happens is
17:52
most people over age 21 have access to at least $150,000 annually somehow because it's legal.
17:59
It's normal. Every year they spend it. They see it invested.
18:06
Take that $150,000 and turn it into 50 million.
18:11
Cost 100 million for this studio, 3 million for this car, 31 million. That's
18:17
how much I got left over. But hey, you know what?
18:33
You are gay or pedophile and the last ones standing woman. The
18:39
last ones standing there g pedophiles are females and there isn't any man alive including
18:47
trans men. It's either trans it's either a trans man who knows empathy and
18:53
figures something out about that or It's Elizabeth
19:01
according to them.
19:07
Not until the 20150s.
19:15
Good luck. Best wishes.
19:20
Goodbye.
19:27
The final statement I don't have to say to think about it again at least 10 years. You are gay pedophiles
19:38
pedophile.
19:51
You murder Catherine O'Hara in at least a second degree in at least a second degree in at least a second degree so
19:58
that you could potentially be considered for Before Christmas or something.
20:15
You will stay in jail alive for at least a decade. You will stay in jail alive for at least
20:21
20 years. And if that is something that is
20:27
medically impossible, it will be at least 20 hours
20:39
because you've earned 20 life sentences and 20 death penalties.
20:45
Technically, since at least the
20:52
There will not be a single life sentence or a single death penalty for me, my mom
20:58
or any of my grandmothers
21:07
or my former mother-in-law
21:13
over Mr. for Mr. Frank and his wife. Their kid is
21:21
classified for John McGloin and Elizabeth McLaclin.
21:26
It is at least one life sentence and at least one death penalty here in Southern
21:31
California because you need cocaine
21:37
and California cannabis and accessories.
21:43
products and skinare
21:49
which is mostly cannabis infused and it is legal but not for you.
22:00
One of the options for life sentences and death penalties is one month as a lobster.
22:07
This is a fact. This is one of the ways in which to handle them and deal with them since
22:14
about 25 years ago. It's classified.
22:21
So there are sometimes mice that are animal spirits. There are sometimes mice that people there
22:29
are of them. They're not like pets aren't mind.
22:37
They are here to destroy planet earth.
22:43
It is deep state classified.
22:52
I believe in equal opportunities whatever that means.
22:58
This includes the uh you know maybe classified or somewhat secretive or not
23:04
necessarily talking about all the time. not necessarily successful. Maybe
23:11
success. I believe that trans men it is part of equality that they may
23:18
exist, they can exist, they should exist. However, it is they do and don't exist.
23:30
It is illegal in certain places to consider anybody except your grandfather
23:35
as your first husband, your biological grand,
23:42
specifically your father's father.
23:55
Jesus is not always the savior for everybody. I believe that Jesus is the savior. I believe that Jesus is the
24:02
savior including Sheldon and mom and their animal spirit.
24:14
It will never communicate the same way that human spirits do.
24:20
And it is classified the ways in which they are animal spirits spirits. They're souls. They have
24:27
They already
24:38
it is classified.
24:45
You are gay. Qu pedophiles murder children and mom. You are artificial intelligence murder children and mom.
24:55
They're not gay. Not queer, not these are the verifications of artificial
25:02
intelligence.
25:10
You're a trans man, a trans woman, not queer. I will be as politically
25:19
neutral as possible always.
25:24
This is typically how the independent
25:29
party goes.
25:36
Thank you for being conservative Democrats or liberal Republican,
25:43
however it is. Thank you for knowing you're a Democrat or knowing you're Republican. Excellent.
25:52
other denominations. What's going on
25:59
what's trending? The internet will not exist for some of you.
26:06
But you might always exist within the internet. Not necessarily.
26:11
That is what some of them fear the most is being removed mostly from the internet and even the secret societies.
26:31
It is truly high society.
26:39
It's the highest of societies. It is truly high society. But came
26:45
it made of candy. Candy is candy. Liquor is quicker. Nope.
26:54
Nope. Yes. Nope.
27:00
To what? A sugar high. You will be prohibited from experiencing
27:06
this thing.
27:13
I will not be prohibited from anything. I will still make choices and decisions.
27:21
And none of them are illegal,
27:28
including my belief in Jesus.
27:46
It's classified
27:56
They've been prevented from narcissistically committing to suicide. Committing suicide the whole time. Yeah.
28:04
You're just that smart. Not smart and that smart.
28:11
Get smart.
28:38
Dday
28:44
is sometimes something that people need to repeat invoke when there was about to
28:50
happen day to during World War II.
28:59
There's something else you call No DJ will never happen again. Never again.
29:17
Oh.
29:28
Not until at least 2033.
29:41
World peace will continue to happen.
29:58
It will not be filmed by MTV. The return shall be done because forever is
30:04
classified. Today is the day that I light this white
30:10
candle and this is why I have these
30:17
particular falls in this.
30:32
Some of them need to know that they are the dark lord or at least a dark lord. This is Why they will stay in prison
30:40
alive for at least 25. This is uh
30:49
part of the campaign towards peace. They're required to stay alive for 25.
30:58
They're required to stay alive. It's not a slogan. It's a suggestion
31:05
and a potential implementation.
31:15
Not necessarily in paperwork all the time, but here as part of the code of
31:21
conduct.
31:27
I refer to it as Santa's workshop assistance. What this Out of sight, out of mind.
31:36
I trust you.
31:44
I don't trust you.
31:53
It's not about trust. It's about survival.
31:58
Hey, if it really was World War Z, You're going to die. You're going to die. You're going to survive. You will
32:04
survive. You lose. You lose.
32:10
If some of them continue to need to say, "So and so is one. So and so is lost."
32:16
Well, it's a good thing that you have won. You have lost. They will stay in jail or prison for at
32:22
least 10 years. Some of them. Not all of them. Not all of them, but some of them.
32:37
It's classified.
32:44
It is classified. My vow of silence is eternal.
32:52
But it does not happen every single day in the world. My vow of silence is
32:58
eternal.
33:06
What a nightmare. Everything before Jesus finally saved us all since at least the year 180.
33:14
It has been like 2003 years almost. God bless you. Thank you, Jesus. I
33:20
appreciate you. They're like, "Finally." Effing finally.
33:26
No, it's not like that.
33:34
I'm grateful for internet and technology
33:40
western eastern northern and southern representations northwest and southwest
33:47
midwest like the east coast.
34:01
I love Americana most of the time, but it is part of the equation. Making sure
34:06
that whatever Americans are always going to continue to register officially as al-Qaeda.
34:12
Yeah. Al-Qaeda
34:18
will continue to stay in custody for at least 25
34:26
days and it was minimum 25 years, maybe life
34:32
in prison in the last 25 hours. Definitely life in prison
34:38
because you did murder somebody in prison and that will keep you in prison for life. You're only there for 25 years
34:44
but in the first 25 hours you stay for life.
34:54
Safer courtrooms, safer hospitals and see the police.
35:07
I will have to go see sorry because the answer is no. The answer is no. The
35:12
answer is no. The answer is no. That's very particular text messages
35:18
or inquiry.
35:34
Psychopath ones who can't handle rejection. Soc
35:46
is more of a psychopath. Aiden is a psychopathic sociopath. He's
35:52
a sociopath with psychopathic.
36:01
This is why you were all James Bond starting at least 100 years ago
36:07
cuz Tesla.
36:14
This is why you really went to art school. This is why you We brought him coffee and styled his hair.
36:23
He was literally at the eye doctor. Still have his glasses.
36:28
He's so
36:36
Caitlyn Fitzgerald is a psychopath. She's a sociopathic psychopath.
36:48
And David Ten is another example of someone who is a sociopathic psychopath. He's a psychopath, but he is a
36:54
sociopath.
37:00
This is not always the case. He has a dual diagnosis. Nothing. And nothing.
37:06
Anything else? Nope.
37:14
I appreciate you. God bless you. I appreciate you. God bless you.
37:22
God bless everyone.
37:32
Doesn't matter what your label is. This was the name. This is the alias. This is the identity.
37:52
They have murdered children and mommy.
37:58
It is not a little golden book that you can turn into a purse. Maybe
38:05
too.
38:35
Some of you will be prohibited from using the word autistic and also Barbie together at the same
38:41
time. It's like Windows 95 Barbie. Hi, I'm Barbie. Welcome to my house
38:58
with your talent.
39:03
Being a mostly nice, but just this one not enough
39:11
with your talent. More of a wedge actually. A little less
39:18
salty salt. Your salt will not be anywhere near
39:26
wench.
39:35
Let's tell you,
39:49
but it's like a hidden talent. My hidden talent is abstinence. My
39:55
hidden talent is abstinence.
 
BLACK MAGIC BY MARJORIE BOWEN CONT

Returning to the great hall of the palace with quick resolve to return to Martzburg or to send for Sybilla forming in her mind, she encountered the Empress walking up and down the long chamber discontentedly.

Ysabeau, who affected a fondness for Jacobea, smiled on her indolently, but Jacobea, always a little overawed by her great loveliness, and, in her soul, disliking her, would have passed on.

The Empress raised her hand.

“Nay, stay and talk to your poor deserted lady,” she said in her babyish voice. “The Emperor is in his chamber writing Latin prayers—on a day like this!” She kissed her hand to the sunshine and the flowers seen through the window. “My dames are all abroad with their gallants—and I—— Hazard what I have been doing?”

She held her left hand behind her and laughed in Jacobea’s face; seen thus in her over-gorgeous clothes, her childlike appearance and beauty giving her an air of fresh innocence, she was not unlike the little image of the Virgin often set above her altars.

“Guess!” she cried again; then, without waiting for an answer—“Catching butterflies in the garden.”

She showed her hand now, and held delicately before Jacobea’s eyes a white net drawn tightly together full of vari-coloured butterflies.

“What is the use of them, poor souls?” asked Jacobea.

The Empress looked at her prisoners.

“Their wings are very lovely,” she said greedily. “If I pulled them off would they last? Sewn on silk how they would shimmer!”

“Nay, they would fade,” answered Jacobea hastily.

“Ye have tried it?” demanded the Empress.

“Nay, I could not be so cruel… I love such little gay creatures.”

Reflection darkened Ysabeau’s gorgeous eyes.

“Well, I will take the wings off and see if they lose their brightness.” She surveyed the fluttering victims. “Some are purple… a rare shade!”

Jacobea’s smooth brow gathered in a frown of distress.

“They are alive,” she said, “and it is agreeable to them to live; will you not let them free?”

Ysabeau laughed; not at all babyishly now.

“You need not watch me, dame.”

“Your Grace does not consider how gentle and helpless they are, indeed”—Jacobea flushed in her eagerness—“they have faces and little velvet jackets on their bodies.”

Ysabeau frowned and turned away.

“It amuses you to thwart my pleasures,” she answered. She suddenly flung the net at Jacobea. “Take them and begone.”

The chatelaine of Martzburg, knowing something of the Empress, was surprised at this sudden yielding; looking round, however, she learnt the cause of it. The Margrave of East Flanders had entered the hall.

She caught up the rescued butterflies and left the chamber, while the Empress sank into the window-seat among the crimson cushions patterned with sprawling lions, pulled a white rose out of her belt and set her teeth in the stem of it.

“Where is Melchoir?” asked the Margrave, coming towards her; his immense size augmented by his full rich clothes gave him the air of a golden giant.

“Writing Latin prayers,” she mocked. “Were you Emperor of the West, Lord Balthasar, would you do that?”

He frowned.

“I am not such a holy man as Melchoir.”

Ysabeau laughed.

“Were you my husband would you do that?”

His fresh fair face flushed rose colour.

“This is among the things I may not even fancy.”

She looked out of the window; her dress was low and loosened about the shoulders, by cause of the heat, she said, but she loved to make a pageant of her beauty; red, bronze and purple silks clung about her fastened with a thick belt; her pale gold hair was woven into a great diadem of curls above her brow, and round her throat was a string of emeralds, a gift from Byzantium, her home.

Purposely she was silent, hoping Balthasar would speak; but he stood, without a word, leaning against the tapestry.

“Oh God!” she said at last, without turning her head, “I loathe Frankfort!”

His eyes glittered, but he made no answer.

“Were I a man I would not be so tame.”

Now he spoke.

“Princess, you know that I am sick for Rome, but what may we do when the Emperor makes delays?”

“Melchoir should be a monk,” his wife returned bitterly, “since a German township serves him when he might rule half the world.” Now she gave Balthasar her lovely face, and fixed on him her violet eyes. “We of the East do not understand this diffidence. My father was an Aegean groom who took the throne by strangling the life out of his master—he ruled strongly in Ravenna, I was born in the purple, nursed in the gold—I do not fathom your northern tardiness.”

“The Emperor will go to Rome,” said the Margrave in a troubled voice. “He will cross the Alps this year, I think.”

Her white lids drooped.

“You love Melchoir—therefore you bear with him.”

He lifted his head.

“You, too, must bear with him, since he is your lord, Princess,” he answered.

And the Empress repressed the words she longed to utter, and forced a smile.

“How stern you are, Margrave; if I but turn a breath against Melchoir—and, sometimes, you wrong me, forgetting that I also am your friend.”

Her eyes were quick to flash over him, to mark how stiffly and awkwardly he stood and could not look at her.

“My duty to the Emperor,” she said softly, “and my love, cannot blind me to his weakness now; come, Lord Balthasar, to you also it is weakness—even your loyalty must admit we lose the time. The Pope says—Come—the King of the Lombards will acknowledge my lord his suzerain—and here we stay in Frankfort waiting for the winter to cut off the Alps.”

“Certes he is wrong,” frowned the Margrave. “Wrong… if I were he—I would be Emperor in good sooth and all the world should know that I ruled in Rome——”

She drew a long breath.

“Strange that we, his friend and his wife, cannot persuade him; the nobles are on our side also.”

“Save Hugh of Rooselaare, who is ever at his ear,” answered Balthasar. “He brings him to stay in Germany.”

“The Lord of Rooselaare!” echoed the Empress. “His daughter was your wife?”

“I never saw her,” he interrupted quickly. “And she died. Her father seems, therefore, to hate me.”

“And me also, I think, though why I do not know,” she smiled. “His daughter’s dead, dead… oh, we are very sure that she is dead.”

“Certes, she was as good as another;” the Margrave spoke gloomily. “Now I must wed again.”

The Empress stared at him.

“I did not think you considered that.”

“I must. I am the Margrave now.”

Ysabeau turned her head and fixed her eyes on the palace garden.

“There is no lady worthy of your rank and at the same time free,” she said.

“You have an heiress in your train, Princess—Jacobea of Martzburg—I have thought of her.”

The rich colours in the Empress’s gown shimmered together with her hidden trembling.

“Can you think of her? She is near as tall as you, Margrave, and not fair—oh, a gentle fool enough—but—but”—she looked over her shoulder—“am I not your lady?”

“Ay, and ever will be,” he answered, lifting his bright blue eyes. “I wear your favour, I do battle for you, in the jousts you are my Queen of Love—I make my prayers in your name and am your servant, Princess.”

“Well—you need not a wife.” She bit her lips to keep them still.

“Certes,” answered Balthasar wonderingly. “A knight must have a wife besides a lady—since his lady is ofttimes the spouse of another, and his highest thought is to touch her gown—but a wife is to keep his castle and do his service.”

The Empress twisted her fingers in and out her girdle.

“I had rather,” she cried passionately, “be wife than lady.”

“Ye are both,” he answered, flushing. “The Emperor’s wife and my lady.”

She gave him a curious glance.

“Sometimes I think you are a fool, yet maybe it is only that I am not used to the North. How you would show in Byzantium, my cold Margrave!” And she leant across the gold and red cushions towards him. “Certes, you shall have your long straight maiden. I think her heart is as chill as yours.”

He moved away from her.

“Ye shall not mock me, Princess,” he said fiercely. “My heart is hot enough, let me be.”

She laughed at him.

“Are you afraid of me? Why do you move away? Come back, and I will recount you the praises of Jacobea of Martzburg.”

He gave her a sullen look.

“No more of her.”

“And yet your heart is hot enough——”

“Not with the thought of her—God knows.”

But the Empress pressed her hands together and slowly rose, looking past Balthasar at the door.

“Melchoir, we speak of you,” she said.

The Margrave turned; the Emperor, velvet shod, was softly entering; he glanced gravely at his wife and smilingly at Balthasar.

“We speak of you,” repeated Ysabeau, dark-eyed and flushed, “of you… and Rome.”

Melchoir of Brabant, third of his name, austere, reserved, proud and cold, looked more like a knight of the Church than King of Germany and Emperor of the West; he was plainly habited, his dark hair cut close, his handsome, slightly haughty face composed and stern; too earnest was he to be showily attractive yet many men adored him, among them Balthasar of Courtrai, for in himself the Emperor was both brave and lovable.

“Cannot you have done with Rome?” he asked sadly, while his large intelligent eyes rested affectionately on the Margrave. “Is Frankfort grown so distasteful?”

“Certes, no, Lord Melchoir—it is the chance! the chance!”

The Emperor sank in a weary manner on to a seat.

“Hugh of Rooselaare and I have spoken together and we have agreed, Balthasar, not to go to Rome.”

The Empress stiffened and drooped her lids; the Margrave turned swiftly to face his master, and all the colour was dashed out of his fresh face.

Melchoir smiled gently.

“My friend, ye are an adventurer, and think of the glory to be gained—but I must think of my people who need me here—the land is not fit to leave. It will need many men to hold Rome; we must drain the land of knights, wring money from the poor, tax the churches—leave Germany defenceless, a prey to the Franks, and this for the empty title of Emperor.”

Balthasar’s breast heaved.

“Is this your decision?”

The Emperor answered gravely—

“I do not think it God His wish that I should go to Rome.”

The Margrave bent his head and was silent, but Ysabeau flung her clear voice into the pause.

“In Constantinople a man such as you would not long fill a throne; ere now you had been a blinded monk and I free to choose another husband!”

The Emperor rose from his seat.

“The woman raves,” he said to the pale Margrave. “Begone, Balthasar.”

The German left them; when his heavy footfall had died into silence, Melchoir looked at his wife and his eyes flashed.

“God forgive my father,” he said bitterly, “for tying me to this Eastern she-cat!”

The Empress crouched in the window-seat and clutched the cushions.

“I was meant for a man’s mate,” she cried fiercely, “for a Cæsar’s wife. I would they had flung me to a foot-boy sooner than given me to thee—thou trembling woman’s soul!”

“Thou hast repaid the injury,” answered the Emperor sternly, “by the great unhappiness I have in thee. My life is not sweet with thee nor easy. I would thou hadst less beauty and more gentleness.”

“I am gentle enough when I choose,” she mocked. “Balthasar and the Court think me a loving wife.”

He took a step towards her; his cheek showed pale.

“It is most true none save I know you for the thing you are—heartless, cruel, fierce and hard——”

“Leave that!” she cried passionately. “You drive me mad. I hate you, yea, you thwart me every turn——”

She came swiftly across the floor to him.

“Have you any courage—any blood in you—will you go to Rome?”

“To please your wanton ambition I will do nothing, nor will I for any reason go to Rome.”

Ysabeau quivered like an infuriated animal.

“I will talk no more of it,” said Melchoir coldly and wearily. “Too often do we waste ourselves in such words as these.”

The Greek could scarcely speak for passion; her nostrils were dilated, her lips pale and compressed.

“I am ashamed to call you lord,” she said hoarsely; “humbled before every woman in the kingdom who sees her husband brave at least—while I—know you coward——”

Melchoir clenched his hands to keep them off her.

“Hark to me, my wife. I am your master and the master of this land—I will not be insulted, nay, nor flouted, by your stinging tongue. Hold me in what contempt ye will, you shall not voice it—by St. George, no!—not if I have to take the whip to hold you dumb!”

“Ho! a Christian knight!” she jeered. “I loathe your Church as I loathe you. I am not Ysabeau, but still Marozia Porphyrogentris.”

“Do not remind me thy father was a stableman and a murderer,” said Melchoir. “Nor that I caused thee to change a name the women of thy line had made accursed. Would I could send thee back to Ravenna!—for thou hast brought to me nought but bitterness!”

“Be careful,” breathed Ysabeau. “Be careful.”

“Stand out of my way,” he commanded.

For answer she loosened the heavy girdle round her waist; he saw her purpose and caught her hands.

“You shall not strike me.” The links of gold hung from her helpless fingers while she gazed at him with brilliant eyes. “Would you have struck me?”

“Yea—across your mouth,” she answered. “Now were you a man, you would kill me.”

He took the belt from her arm, releasing her. “That you should trouble me!” he said wearily.

At this she stood aside to let him pass; he turned to the door, and as he lifted the tapestry flung down her belt.

The Empress crept along the floor, snatched it up and stood still, panting.

Before the passion had left her face the hangings were stirred again.

One of her Chamberlains.

“Princess, there is a young doctor below desires to see you. Constantine, his name, of Frankfort College.”

“Oh!” said Ysabeau; a guilty colour touched her whitened cheek. “I know nothing of him,” she added quickly.

“Pardon, Princess, he says ’tis to decipher an old writing you have sent to him; his words are, when you see him you will remember.”

The blood burnt more brightly still under the exquisite skin.

“Bring him here,” she said.

But even as the Chamberlain moved aside, the slender figure of Dirk appeared in the doorway.

He looked at her, smiling calmly, his scholar’s cap in his hand.

“You do remember me?” he asked.

The Empress moved her head in assent.
 
A Colder War, cont'd.

Technology taster

"We know they first came here during the Precambrian age.''

Professor Gould is busy with his viewgraphs, eyes down, trying not to pay too much attention to his audience. "We have samples of macrofauna, discovered by palaeontologist Charles D. Walcott on his pioneering expeditions into the Canadian Rockies, near the eastern border of British Columbia --'' a hand-drawing of something indescribably weird fetches up on the screen " -- like this opabina, which died there six hundred and forty million years ago. Fossils of soft-bodied animals that old are rare; the Burgess shale deposits are the best record of the Precambrian fauna anyone has found to date.''

A skinny woman with big hair and bigger shoulder-pads sniffs loudly; she has no truck with these antediluvian dates. Roger winces sympathy for the academic. He'd rather she wasn't here, but somehow she got wind of the famous palaeontologist's visit -- and she's the colonel's administrative assistant. Telling her to leave would be a career-limiting move.

"The important item to note -- '' photograph of a mangled piece of rock, visual echoes of the opabina -- "is the tooth marks. We find them also -- their exact cognates -- on the ring segments of the Z-series specimens returned by the Pabodie Antarctic expedition of 1926. The world of the Precambrian was laid out differently from our own; most of the land masses that today are separate continents were joined into one huge structure. Indeed, these samples were originally separated by only two thousand miles or thereabouts. Suggesting that they brought their own parasites with them.''

"What do tooth-marks tell us about them, that we need to know?'' asks the colonel.

The doctor looks up. His eyes gleam: "That something liked to eat them when they were fresh.'' There's a brief rattle of laughter. "Something with jaws that open and close like the iris in your camera. Something we thought was extinct.''

Another viewgraph, this time with a blurry underwater photograph on it. The thing looks a bit like a weird fish -- a turbocharged, armoured hagfish with side-skirts and spoilers, or maybe a squid with not enough tentacles. The upper head is a flattened disk, fronted by two bizarre fern-like tentacles drooping over the weird sucker-mouth on its underside. "This snapshot was taken in Lake Vostok last year. It should be dead: there's nothing there for it to eat. This, ladies and gentlemen, is Anomalocaris, our toothy chewer.'' He pauses for a moment. "I'm very grateful to you for showing it to me,'' he adds, "even though it's going to make a lot of my colleagues very angry.''

Is that a shy grin? The professor moves on rapidly, not giving Roger a chance to fathom his real reaction. "Now this is interesting in the extreme,'' Gould comments. Whatever it is, it looks like a cauliflower head, or maybe a brain: fractally branching stalks continuously diminishing in length and diameter, until they turn into an iridescent fuzzy manifold wrapped around a central stem. The base of the stem is rooted to a barrel-shaped structure that stands on four stubby tentacles.

"We had somehow managed to cram Anomalocaris into our taxonomy, but this is something that has no precedent. It bears a striking resemblance to an enlarged body segment of Hallucigena --'' here he shows another viewgraph, something like a stiletto-heeled centipede wearing a war-bonnet of tentacles -- "but a year ago we worked out that we had poor hallucigena upside down and it was actually just a spiny worm. And the high levels of iridium and diamond in the head here ... this isn't a living creature, at least not within the animal kingdom I've been studying for the past thirty years. There's no cellular structure at all. I asked one of my colleagues for help and they were completely unable to isolate any DNA or RNA from it at all. It's more like a machine that displays biological levels of complexity.''

"Can you put a date to it?'' asks the colonel.

"Yup.'' The professor grins. "It predates the wave of atmospheric atomic testing that began in 1945; that's about all. We think it's from some time in the first half of this century, last half of last century. It's been dead for years, but there are older people still walking this earth. In contrast --'' he flips to the picture of Anomalocaris "-- this specimen we found in rocks that are roughly six hundred and ten million years old.'' He whips up another shot: similar structure, much clearer. "Note how similar it is to the dead but not decomposed one. They're obviously still alive somewhere.''

He looks at the colonel, suddenly bashful and tongue-tied: "Can I talk about the, uh, thing we were, like, earlier ...?''

"Sure. Go ahead. Everyone here is cleared for it.'' The colonel's casual wave takes in the big-haired secretary, and Roger, and the two guys from Big Black who are taking notes, and the very serious woman from the Secret Service, and even the balding, worried-looking Admiral with the double chin and coke-bottle glasses.

"Oh. Alright.'' Bashfulness falls away. "Well, we've done some preliminary dissections on the Anomalocaris tissues you supplied us with. And we've sent some samples for laboratory analysis -- nothing anyone could deduce much from,'' he adds hastily. He straightens up. "What we discovered is quite simple: these samples didn't originate in Earth's ecosystem. Cladistic analysis of their intracellular characteristics and what we've been able to work out of their biochemistry indicates, not a point of divergence from our own ancestry, but the absence of common ancestry. A cabbage is more human, has more in common with us, than that creature. You can't tell by looking at the fossils, six hundred million years after it died, but live tissue samples are something else.

"Item: it's a multicellular organism, but each cell appears to have multiple structures like nuclei -- a thing called a syncitium. No DNA, it uses RNA with a couple of base pairs that aren't used by terrestrial biology. We haven't been able to figure out what most of its organelles do, what their terrestrial cognates would be, and it builds proteins using a couple of amino acids that we don't. That nothing does. Either it's descended from an ancestry that diverged from ours before the archaeobacteria, or -- more probably -- it is no relative at all.'' He isn't smiling any more. "The gateways, colonel?''

"Yeah, that's about the size of it. The critter you've got there was retrieved by one of our, uh, missions. On the other side of a gate.''

Gould nods. "I don't suppose you could get me some more?'' he asks hopefully.

"All missions are suspended pending an investigation into an accident we had earlier this year,'' the colonel says, with a significant glance at Roger. Suslowicz died two weeks ago; Gorman is still disastrously sick, connective tissue rotting in his body, massive radiation exposure the probable cause. Normal service will not be resumed; the pipeline will remain empty until someone can figure out a way to make the deliveries without losing the crew. Roger inclines his head minutely.

"Oh well.'' The professor shrugs. "Let me know if you do. By the way, do you have anything approximating a fix on the other end of the gate?''

"No,'' says the colonel, and this time Roger knows he's lying. Mission four, before the colonel diverted their payload capacity to another purpose, planted a compact radio telescope in an empty courtyard in the city on the far side of the gate. XK-Masada, where the air's too thin to breathe without oxygen; where the sky is indigo, and the buildings cast razor-sharp shadows across a rocky plain baked to the consistency of pottery under a blood-red sun. Subsequent analysis of pulsar signals recorded by the station confirmed that it was nearly six hundred light years closer to the galactic core, inward along the same spiral arm. There are glyphs on the alien buildings that resemble symbols seen in grainy black-and-white Minox photos of the doors of the bunker in the Ukraine. Symbols behind which the subject of Project Koschei lies undead and sleeping: something evil, scraped from a nest in the drowned wreckage of a city on the Baltic floor. "Why do you want to know where they came from?''

"Well. We know so little about the context in which life evolves.'' For a moment the professor looks wistful. "We have -- had -- only one datum point: Earth, this world. Now we have a second, a fragment of a second. If we get a third, we can begin to ask deep questions like, not, 'is there life out there?' -- because we know the answer to that one, now -- but questions like 'what sort of life is out there?' and 'is there a place for us?'''

Roger shudders: idiot, he thinks. If only you knew you wouldn't be so happy -- He restrains the urge to speak up. Doing so would be another career-limiting move. More to the point, it might be a life-expectancy-limiting move for the professor, who certainly didn't deserve any such drastic punishment for his cooperation. Besides, Harvard professors visiting the Executive Office Building in DC are harder to disappear than comm-symp teachers in some fly-blown jungle village in Nicaragua. Somebody might notice. The colonel would be annoyed.

Roger realises that Professor Gould is staring at him. "Do you have a question for me?'' asks the distinguished palaeontologist.

"Uh -- in a moment.'' Roger shakes himself. Remembering time-survivor curves, the captured Nazi medical atrocity records mapping the ability of a human brain to survive in close proximity to the Baltic Singularity. Mengele's insanity. The SS's final attempt to liquidate the survivors, the witnesses. Koschei, primed and pointed at the American heartland like a darkly evil gun. The "world-eating mind'' adrift in brilliant dreams of madness, estivating in the absence of its prey: dreaming of the minds of sapient beings, be they barrel-bodied wing-flying tentacular things, or their human inheritors. "Do you think they could have been intelligent, professor? Conscious, like us?''

"I'd say so.'' Gould's eyes glitter. "This one --'' he points to a viewgraph -- "isn't alive as we know it. And this one -- '' he's found a Predecessor, god help him, barrel-bodied and bat-winged -- "had what looks like a lot of very complex ganglia, not a brain as we know it, but at least as massive as our own. And some specialised grasping adaptations that might be interpreted as facilitating tool use. Put the two together and you have a high level technological civilization. Gateways between planets orbiting different stars. Alien flora, fauna, or whatever. I'd say an interstellar civilization isn't out of the picture. One that has been extinct for deep geological time -- ten times as long as the dinosaurs -- but that has left relics that work.'' His voice is trembling with emotion. "We humans, we've barely scratched the surface! The longest lasting of our relics? All our buildings will be dust in twenty thousand years, even the pyramids. Neil Armstrong's footprints in the Sea of Tranquillity will crumble under micrometeoroid bombardment in a mere half million years or so. The emptied oil fields will refill over ten million years, methane percolating up through the mantle: continental drift will erase everything. But these people...! They built to last. There's so much to learn from them. I wonder if we're worthy pretenders to their technological crown?''

"I'm sure we are, professor,'' the colonel's secretary says brassily. "Isn't that right, Ollie?''

The colonel nods, grinning. "You betcha, Fawn. You betcha!''

The Great Satan

Roger sits in the bar in the King David hotel, drinking from a tall glass of second-rate lemonade and sweating in spite of the air conditioning. He's dizzy and disoriented from jet-lag, the gut-cramps have only let him come down from his room in the past hour, and he has another two hours to go before he can try to place a call to Andrea. They had another blazing row before he flew out here; she doesn't understand why he keeps having to visit odd corners of the globe. She only knows that his son is growing up thinking a father is a voice that phones at odd times of day.

Roger is mildly depressed, despite the buzz of doing business at this level. He spends a lot of time worrying about what will happen if they're found out -- what Andrea will do, or Jason for that matter, Jason whose father is a phone call away all the time -- if Roger is led away in handcuffs beneath the glare of flash bulbs. If the colonel sings, if the shy bald admiral is browbeaten into spilling the beans to Congress, who will look after them then?

Roger has no illusions about what kills black operations: there are too many people in the loop, too many elaborate front corporations and numbered bank accounts and shady Middle Eastern arms dealers. Sooner or later someone will find a reason to talk, and Roger is in too deep. He isn't just the company liaison officer any more: he's become the colonel's bag-man, his shadow, the guy with the diplomatic passport and the bulging briefcase full of heroin and end-user certificates.

At least the ship will sink from the top down, he thinks. There are people very high up who want the colonel to succeed. When the shit hits the fan and is sprayed across the front page of the Washington Post, it will likely take down cabinet members and secretaries of state: the President himself will have to take the witness stand and deny everything. The republic will question itself.

A hand descends on his shoulder, sharply cutting off his reverie. "Howdy, Roger! Whatcha worrying about now?''

Jourgensen looks up wearily. "Stuff,'' he says gloomily. "Have a seat.'' The redneck from the embassy -- Mike Hamilton, some kind of junior attache for embassy protocol by cover -- pulls out a chair and crashes down on it like a friendly car wreck. He's not really a redneck, Roger knows -- rednecks don't come with doctorates in foreign relations from Yale -- but he likes people to think he's a bumpkin when he wants to get something from them.

"He's early,'' says Hamilton, looking past Roger's ear, voice suddenly all business. "Play the agenda, I'm your dim but friendly good cop. Got the background? Deniables ready?''

Roger nods, then glances round and sees Mehmet (family name unknown) approaching from the other side of the room. Mehmet is impeccably manicured and tailored, wearing a suit from Jermyn Street that costs more than Roger earns in a month. He has a neatly trimmed beard and moustache and talks with a pronounced English accent. Mehmet is a Turkish name, not a Persian one: pseudonym, of course. To look at him you would think he was a westernized Turkish businessman -- certainly not an Iranian revolutionary with heavy links to Hezbollah and (whisper this), Old Man Ruholla himself, the hermit of Qom. Never, ever, in a thousand years, the unofficial Iranian ambassador to the Little Satan in Tel Aviv.

Mehmet strides over. A brief exchange of pleasantries masks the essential formality of their meeting: he's early, a deliberate move to put them off-balance. He's outnumbered, too, and that's also a move to put them on the defensive, because the first rule of diplomacy is never to put yourself in a negotiating situation where the other side can assert any kind of moral authority, and sheer weight of numbers is a powerful psychological tool.

"Roger, my dear fellow.'' He smiles at Jourgensen. "And the charming doctor Hamilton, I see.'' The smile broadens. "I take it the good colonel is desirous of news of his friends?''

Jourgensen nods. "That is indeed the case.''

Mehmet stops smiling. For a moment he looks ten years older. "I visited them,'' he says shortly. "No, I was taken to see them. It is indeed grave, my friends. They are in the hands of very dangerous men, men who have nothing to lose and are filled with hatred.''

Roger speaks: "There is a debt between us --''

Mehmet holds up a hand. "Peace, my friend. We will come to that. These are men of violence, men who have seen their homes destroyed and families subjected to indignities, and their hearts are full of anger. It will take a large display of repentance, a high blood-price, to buy their acquiescence. That is part of our law, you understand? The family of the bereaved may demand blood-price of the transgressor, and how else might the world be? They see it in these terms: that you must repent of your evils and assist them in waging holy war against those who would defile the will of Allah.''

Roger sighs. "We do what we can,'' he says. "We're shipping them arms. We're fighting the Soviets every way we can without provoking the big one. What more do they want? The hostages -- that's not playing well in DC. There's got to be some give and take. If Hezbollah don't release them soon they'll just convince everyone what they're not serious about negotiating. And that'll be an end to it. The colonel wants to help you, but he's got to have something to show the man at the top, right?''

Mehmet nods. "You and I are men of the world and understand that this keeping of hostages is not rational, but they look to you for defence against the great Satan that assails them, and their blood burns with anger that your nation, for all its fine words, takes no action. The great Satan rampages in Afghanistan, taking whole villages by night, and what is done? The United States turns its back. And they are not the only ones who feel betrayed. Our Ba'athist foes from Iraq ... in Basra the unholy brotherhood of Takrit and their servants the Mukhabarat hold nightly sacrifice upon the altar of Yair-Suthot; the fountains of blood in Tehran testify to their effect. If the richest, most powerful nation on earth refuses to fight, these men of violence from the Bekaa think, how may we unstopper the ears of that nation? And they are not sophisticates like you or I.''

He looks at Roger, who hunches his shoulders uneasily. "We can't move against the Soviets openly! They must understand that it would be the end of far more than their little war. If the Taliban want American help against the Russians, it cannot be delivered openly.''

"It is not the Russians that we quarrel with,'' Mehmet says quietly, "but their choice in allies. They believe themselves to be infidel atheists, but by their deeds they shall be known; the icy spoor of Leng is upon them, their tools are those described in the Kitab al Azif. We have proof that they have violated the terms of the Dresden Agreement. The accursed and unhallowed stalk the frozen passes of the Himalayas by night, taking all whose path they cross. And will you stopper your ears even as the Russians grow in misplaced confidence, sure that their dominance of these forces of evil is complete? The gates are opening everywhere, as it was prophesied. Last week we flew an F-14C with a camera relay pod through one of them. The pilot and weapons operator are in paradise now, but we have glanced into hell and have the film and radar plots to prove it.''

The Iranian ambassador fixes the redneck from the embassy with an icy gaze. "Tell your ambassador that we have opened preliminary discussions with Mossad, with a view to purchasing the produce of a factory at Dimona, in the Negev desert. Past insults may be set aside, for the present danger imperils all of us. They are receptive to our arguments, even if you are not: his holiness the Ayatollah has declared in private that any warrior who carries a nuclear device into the abode of the eater of souls will certainly achieve paradise. There will be an end to the followers of the ancient abominations on this Earth, doctor Hamilton, even if we have to push the nuclear bombs down their throats with our own hands!''
 
BLACK MAGIC BY MARJORIE BOWEN CONT

CHAPTER XVI.
THE QUARREL
Dirk Renswoude laid down the pen and pushed aside the parchment, and lifted heavy eyes with a sigh of weariness.

It was midday and very hot; the witch’s red roses were beginning to shed their petals and disclose their yellow hearts, and the leaves of the great trees that shaded the house were curling and yellowing in the fierce sun.

From his place at the table Dirk could mark these signs of autumn without; yet by the look in his eyes it seemed that he saw neither trees nor flowers, but only some image evoked by his thoughts; presently he picked up the quill, bit the end of it, frowned and laid it down.

Then he started and looked round with some eagerness, for a light sound broke the sleepy stillness, the door opened, and before his expectant gaze Theirry appeared.

Dirk flushed and smiled.

“Well met,” he said. “I have much to say to you.” He rose and held out his hand.

Theirry merely touched it with his fingers.

“And I am come because I also have much to say.”

Dirk’s manner changed, the warmth died from his face, and he gave the other a keen glance.

“Speak, then.” He returned to his seat, took his face between his two delicate hands, and rested his elbows on the table. “I was writing my lecture for to-night, certes, I shall be glad of a diversion.”

“You will not be pleased with mine,” answered Theirry; his expression was grave and cold, his dress plain and careless; he frowned, lifted his eyebrows continually, and played with the buttons on his doublet.

“Be seated,” said Dirk.

Theirry took the chair he proffered.

“There is no need to make an ado,” he began, obviously with an effort. “I am not going on with you.”

“You are not going on?” repeated Dirk. “Well, your reasons?”

“May God forgive me what I have done,” cried Theirry in great agitation; “but I will sin no more—I have resolved it—and ye cannot tempt me.”

“And all you swore—to me?” demanded Dirk; his eyes narrowed, but he remained composed.

Theirry clasped his restless fingers.

“No man is bound to bargains with the Devil… I have been weak and wicked—but I mingle no more in your fiendish councils——”

“This is for Jacobea of Martzburg’s sake.”

“It is for her sake—because of her that I am here now to tell you I have done with it—done with you!”

Dirk dropped his hands on to the table.

“Theirry! Theirry!” he cried wildly and sorrowfully.

“I have measured the temptation,” said Theirry; “I have thought of the gain—the loss—I have put it aside, with God’s help and hers—I will not aid you in the way you asked me—nor will I see it done.”

“And ye call that virtue!” cried Dirk. “Poor fool—all it amounts to is that you, alas!—love the chatelaine.”

“Nay,” he answered hotly. “It is that, having seen her, I would not be vile. You meditate a dastard thing—the Emperor is a noble knight.”

“Ambrose of Menthon was a holy monk,” retorted Dirk. “Who choked the pious words in his throat? Joris of Thuringia was an innocent youth—who sent him to a hideous death?”

“I!” cried Theirry fiercely; “but always with you to goad me on! Before the Devil sent you across my way I had never touched sin save in dim thoughts… but you, with talk of friendship, lured me from an honest man’s company to poison me with forbidden knowledge, to tempt me into hideous blasphemies—and I will have no more of it!”

“Yet you vowed comradeship with me,” said Dirk. “Is your loyalty of such quality?”

Theirry sprang violently from his chair and paced heavily up and down the room.

“You blinded me… I knew not what I did… but now I know; when I—I—heard her speak, and heard that you had dared to try to trap her to destruction——”

Dirk interrupted with a low laugh.

“So she told you that! But I warrant that she was dumb about the nature of her temptation!”

“That is no matter,” answered Theirry; “now she is free of you, as I shall be——”

“As you vowed to her you would be,” added Dirk. “Well, go your way—I thought you loved me a little—but the first woman’s face——!”

Theirry stood still to front him.

“I cannot love that which—I fear.”

Dirk went swiftly very pale.

“Do you—fear me, Theirry?” he asked wistfully.

“Ay, ye know too much of Satan’s lore—more than you ever taught me,” he shuddered uncontrollably; “there are things in this very house——”

“What do you mean—what do you mean?” Dirk rose in his place.

“Who is the woman?” whispered Theirry fearfully; “there is a woman here——”

“In this house there are none save Nathalie and me,” answered Dirk on the defensive, his eyes dark and glowing.

“There you lie to me; the last time I was here, I turned back swiftly on leaving, but found the door bolted, the lights out, all save one—in the little chamber next to this—I watched at the window and saw a gorgeous room and a woman, a winged woman.”

“You dream,” answered Dirk in a low voice. “Do you think I have enough power to raise such shapes?”

“I think ’twas some love of yours from Hell—whence you came——”

“My love is not in Hell, but on the earth,” answered Dirk quietly—“yet shall we go together into the pit—as for the woman, it was a dream—there is no gorgeous chamber there.”

He crossed the room and flung open a little door in the wall.

“See—old Nathalie’s closet—full of herbs and charms——”

Theirry peered into an ill-lit apartment fitted with shelves containing jars and bottles.

“The enchantment that could bring the woman could change the room,” he muttered, unconvinced.

Dirk gave a slow, strange look.

“Was she beautiful?”

“Yea—but——”

“More beautiful than Jacobea of Martzburg?”

Theirry laughed.

“I cannot compare Satan’s handmaiden with a lily from Paradise.”

Dirk closed the closet door.

“Theirry,” he said falteringly, “do not leave me—you are the only thing in all the universe can move me to joy or pain—I love you, utterly.”

“Out on such affection that would steal my soul——”

He was turning away when Dirk laid a timid hand upon his sleeve.

“I will make you great, ay, very great… do not hate me——”

But Theirry gazed fearfully at the youth’s curious pale face.

“I will have none of you.”

“You do not know how dear I hold you,” insisted Dirk in a trembling voice; “come back to me, and I will let your lady be——”

“She can scorn ye… defy ye… as I do now!”

And he flung off the slim hand from his arm and strode away down the long room.

Dirk drew himself together and crouched against the wall.

“Will she? certes, I wonder, will she?” he cried. “You will have none of me, you say, you reject me; but for how long?”

“For ever,” answered Theirry hoarsely.

“Or until Jacobea of Martzburg falls.”

Theirry swung round.

“That leaves it still for ever.”

“Maybe, however, only for a few poor weeks—your lily is very fragile, Theirry, so look to see it broken in the mud——”

“If you harm her,” cried Theirry fiercely, “if you blast her with your hellish spells——”

“Nay—I will not; of herself she shall come to ruin.”

“When that is, I will return to you, so—farewell for ever——”

He made a passionate gesture with his hand as if he swept aside Dirk and all thoughts of him, and turned quickly towards the door.

“Wait!” Dirk called to him. “What of this that you know of me?”

Theirry paused.

“So much I owe you—that I should be silent.”

“Since, if you speak, you bring to light your own history,” smiled Dirk. “But—about the Emperor?”

“God helping me I will prevent that.”

“How will you prevent it?” Dirk asked quietly; “would you betray me as a first offering to your outraged God?”

Theirry pressed his hand to his brow in a bewildered, troubled manner.

“No, no, not that; but I will take occasion to warn him—to warn some one of the Empress.”

Dirk hunched his shoulders scornfully.

“Ah, begone, ye are a foolish creature—go and put them on their guard.”

Theirry flushed.

“Ay, I will,” he answered hotly. “I know one honest man about the Court—Hugh of Rooselaare.”

A quick change came over Dirk’s face.

“The Lord of Rooselaare?” he said. “I should remember him, certes; his daughter was Balthasar’s wife—Ursula.”

“She was, and he is the Emperor’s friend, and opposed to the schemes of Ysabeau.”

Dirk returned to the table and took up one of the books lying there; mechanically he turned the pages, and his eyes were bright on Theirry’s pallid face.

“Warn whom you will, say what you will; save, if ye can, Melchoir of Brabant; begone, see, I seek not to detain you. One day you shall come back to me, when yon soft saint fails, and I shall be waiting for you; till then, farewell.”

“For ever farewell,” answered Theirry. “I take up your challenge; I go to save the Emperor.”

Their eyes met; Theirry’s were the first to falter; he muttered something like a malediction on himself, lifted the latch and strode away.

Dirk sank into his chair; he looked very young and slight in his plain brown silk; his brow was drawn with pain, his eyes large and grieved; he turned the books and parchments over as though he did not see them.

He had not been long alone when the door was pushed open and Nathalie crept in.

“He has gone?” she whispered, “and in enmity?”

“Ay,” answered Dirk slowly. “Renouncing me.”

The witch came to the table, took up the youth’s passive hand and fawned over it.

“Let him go,” she said in an insinuating voice. “He is a fool.”

“Why, I have put no strain on him to stay,” Dirk smiled faintly. “But he will return.”

“Nay,” pleaded Nathalie, “forget him.”

“Forget him!” repeated Dirk mournfully. “But I love him.”

Nathalie stroked the still, slim fingers anxiously.

“This affection will be your ruin,” she moaned.

Dirk gazed past her at the autumn sky and the overblown red roses.

“Well, if it be so,” he said pantingly, “it will be his ruin also; he must go with me when I leave the world—the world! after all, Nathalie”—he turned his strange gaze on the witch—“it does not matter if she hold him here, so long as he is mine through eternity.”

His cheeks flushed and quivered, the long lashes drooped over his eyes; then suddenly he smiled.

“Nathalie, he has good intentions; he hopes to save the Emperor.”

The witch blinked up at him.

“But it is too late?”

“Certes; I conveyed the potion to Ysabeau this morning.” And Dirk’s smile deepened.
 
BLACK MAGIC BY MARJORIE BOWEN CONT

CHAPTER XVII.
THE MURDER
“Balthasar,” said the Emperor, in pity of his friend’s sullen face, “I will send ye to Rome to make treaty with the Pope since it goes so heavily with you to stay in Frankfort.”

The Margrave bit the ends of his yellow hair and made no answer.

The Empress half lay along the seat against the wall. She wore a white and silver gown; on the cushion, where her elbow rested to support her head, lay a great cluster of crimson roses.

On low stools near her sat her maidens sewing, three of them embroidering between them a strip of scarlet silk.

It was the dining hall, the table laid already with rudely magnificent covers; through the low windows, from which the tapestry was looped back, was to be seen a red sunset sky flaming over Frankfort.

“Nay, be pleasant with me,” smiled the Emperor; he laid his arm affectionately round the Margrave’s huge shoulders. “Certes, since I took this resolution not to go to Rome, I have nought but sour looks from all, save Hugh.”

Balthasar’s good-humoured face cleared.

“Ye are wrong, my Prince; but God wot, I am not angered—we can manage without Rome”—he heroically stifled his sigh—“and who knows that ye may not change yet?” he added cheerfully.

Ysabeau looked at them as they paced up and down, their arms about each other, the golden locks and the black almost touching, the gorgeous purple and red habit of the Margrave against the quiet black garments of the Emperor.

She yawned as she looked, but her eyes were very bright; slowly she rose and stretched her slender body while the red roses fell softly to the ground, but she took no heed of them, fixing her gaze on the two men; her husband seemed not to know of her presence, but the Margrave was hotly conscious of her eyes upon him, and though he would not turn his upon her, nevertheless, she marked it and, in a half-smiling way, came and leant on the table that divided them.

The sunset flashed final beams that fell in flushing rosy lines on the gold and silver goblets and dishes, struck the Empress’s embroideries into points of vivid light, and shone marvellously through Balthasar’s brilliant locks.

“Surely we are late to-night,” said the Emperor.

“Yea,” answered Balthasar; “I do not love to wait.”

He stopped to pour himself a tankard of amber wine and drank it at a draught.

Ysabeau watched him, then snatched up the fallen roses and laid them on the cloth.

“Will not my lord also drink?” she asked; the fingers of her right hand were hidden in the red flowers, with her left she raised a chased flagon in which the sunlight burnt and sparkled.

“As you please, Princess,” answered Melchoir, and gazed towards the light indifferently.

“Ye might have poured for me,” murmured the Margrave in a half voice.

Her hand came from the roses and touched a horn glass bound with silver, it lingered there a moment, then rose to her bosom; Balthasar, absorbing her face, did not notice the gesture.

“Another time,” she answered, “I will serve you, Balthasar of Courtrai.” She filled the glass until the wine bubbled at the brim. “Give it to my lord,” she said.

Balthasar laughed uneasily; their fingers touched upon the glass, and a few drops were spilled.

“Take care!” cried the Empress.

Melchoir turned and took the goblet.

“Why did you say—take care?” he asked.

“Between us we upset the wine,” said Ysabeau.

Melchoir drank.

“It has an ugly taste,” he said.

She laughed.

“Is it the cupbearer, perchance?”

“The wine is good enough,” put in Balthasar.

The Emperor drank again, then set it down.

“I say it is strange—taste it, Balthasar.”

In an instant the Empress intervened.

“Nay”—she caught up the glass with a movement swifter than the Margrave’s—“since I poured, the fault—if fault there be—is mine.”

“Give it to me!” cried Balthasar.

But she made a quick motion aside, the glass slipped from her fingers and the wine was lost on the floor.

As Balthasar stooped to pick up the goblet, the Emperor smiled.

“I warn you of that flagon, Margrave.”

The pages and varlets entered with the meats and set them on the table; they who sat at the Emperor’s board came to take their places; Theirry followed his master and fixed quick eyes on the Emperor.

He knew that Melchoir had been abroad all day at the hunt and could not have long returned, hardly could their designs upon him be put in practice to-night; after the supper he meant to speak to Hugh of Rooselaare, this as an earnest of his final severance with Dirk.

As the beautiful shining crowd settled to their seats, the young secretary, whose place was behind his master’s chair, took occasion to note carefully the lord who was to receive his warning.

The candles, hanging in their copper circlets, were lit, and the ruddy light shone over the company, while bright pages drew the curtains over the last sunset glow.

Theirry marked the Empress, sitting languorously and stripping a red rose of its petals; Melchoir, austere, composed, as always; Balthasar, gay and noisy; then he turned his gaze on Hugh of Rooselaare.

That noble sat close to the Emperor. Theirry had not, so far, studied his personal appearance though acquainted with his reputation; observing him intently he saw a tall, well-made man dressed with sombre elegance, a man with a strong, rather curious face framed in straight, dull brown hair.

There was something in the turn of the features, the prominent chin, dark, clear eyes, pale complexion and resolute set of the mouth that gradually teased Theirry as he gazed; the whole expression reminded him of another face, seen under different circumstances, whose he could not determine.

Suddenly the Lord of Rooselaare, becoming aware of this scrutiny, turned his singularly intent eyes in the direction of the young scholar.

At once Theirry had it, he placed the likeness. In this manner had Dirk Renswoude often looked at him.

The resemblance was unmistakable if elusive; this man’s face was of necessity sterner, darker, older and more set; he was of larger make, moreover, than Dirk could ever be, his nose was heavier, his jaw more square, yet the likeness, once noticed, could not be again overlooked.

It strangely discomposed Theirry, he felt he could not take his warning to one who had Dirk’s trick of the intense gaze and inscrutable set of the lips; he considered if there were not some one else—let him go straightway, he thought, to the Emperor himself.

His reflections were interrupted by a little movement near the table, a pause in the converse.
 
A Colder War, cont'd.

Swimming pool

"Mister Jourgensen, at what point did you become aware that the Iranian government was threatening to violate UN Resolution 216 and the Non-Proliferation Protocol to the 1956 Geneva accords?''

Roger sweats under the hot lights: his heartbeat accelerates. "I'm not sure I understand the question, sir.''

"I asked you a direct question. Which part don't you understand? I'm going to repeat myself slowly: when did you realise that the Iranian Government was threatening to violate resolution 216 and the 1956 Geneva Accords on nuclear proliferation?''

Roger shakes his head. It's like a bad dream, unseen insects buzzing furiously around him. "Sir, I had no direct dealings with the Iranian government. All I know is that I was asked to carry messages to and from a guy called Mehmet who I was told knew something about our hostages in Beirut. My understanding is that the colonel has been conducting secret negotiations with this gentleman or his backers for some time -- a couple of years -- now. Mehmet made allusions to parties in the Iranian administration but I have no way of knowing if he was telling the truth, and I never saw any diplomatic credentials.''

There's an inquisition of dark-suited congressmen opposite him, like a jury of teachers sitting in judgement over an errant pupil. The trouble is, these teachers can put him in front of a judge and send him to prison for many years, so that Jason really will grow up with a father who's a voice on the telephone, a father who isn't around to take him to air shows or ball games or any of the other rituals of growing up. They're talking to each other quietly, deciding on another line of questioning: Roger shifts uneasily in his chair. This is a closed hearing, the television camera a gesture in the direction of the congressional archives: a pack of hungry democrats have scented republican blood in the water.

The congressman in the middle looks towards Roger. "Stop right there. Where did you know about this guy Mehmet from? Who told you to go see him and who told you what he was?''

Roger swallows. "I got a memo from Fawn, like always. Admiral Poindexter wanted a man on the spot to talk to this guy, a messenger, basically, who was already in the loop. Colonel North signed off on it and told me to charge the trip to his discretionary fund.'' That must have been the wrong thing to say, because two of the congressmen are leaning together and whispering in each other's ears, and an aide obligingly sidles up to accept a note, then dashes away. "I was told that Mehmet was a mediator,'' Roger adds. "In trying to resolve the Beirut hostage thing.''

"A mediator.'' The guy asking the questions looks at him in disbelief.

The man to his left -- who looks as old as the moon, thin white hair, liver spots on his hooked nose, eyelids like sacks -- chuckles appreciatively. "Yeah. Like Hitler was a diplomat. 'One more territorial demand' --'' he glances round. "Nobody else remember that?'' he asks plaintively.

"No sir,'' Roger says very seriously.

The prime interrogator snorts. "What did Mehmet tell you Iran was going to do, exactly?''

Roger thinks for a moment. "He said they were going to buy something from a factory at Dimona. I understood this to be the Israeli Defence Ministry's nuclear weapons research institute, and the only logical item -- in the context of our discussion -- was a nuclear weapon. Or weapons. He said the Ayatollah had decreed that a suicide bomber who took out the temple of Yog-Sothoth in Basra would achieve paradise, and that they also had hard evidence that the Soviets have deployed certain illegal weapons systems in Afghanistan. This was in the context of discussing illegal weapons proliferation; he was very insistent about the Iraq thing.''

"What exactly are these weapons systems?'' demands the third inquisitor, a quiet, hawk-faced man sitting on the left of the panel.

"The shoggot'im, they're called: servitors. There are several kinds of advanced robotic systems made out of molecular components: they can change shape, restructure material at the atomic level -- act like corrosive acid, or secrete diamonds. Some of them are like a tenuous mist -- what Doctor Drexler at MIT calls a utility fog -- while others are more like an oily globule. Apparently they may be able to manufacture more of themselves, but they're not really alive in any meaning of the term we're familiar with. They're programmable, like robots, using a command language deduced from recovered records of the forerunners who left them here. The Molotov Raid of 1930 brought back a large consignment of them; all we have to go on are the scraps they missed, and reports by the Antarctic Survey. Professor Liebkunst's files in particular are most frustrating --''

"Stop. So you're saying the Russians have these, uh, Shoggoths, but we don't have any. And even those dumb Arab bastards in Baghdad are working on them. So you're saying we've got a, a Shoggoth gap? A strategic chink in our armour? And now the Iranians say the Russians are using them in Afghanistan?''

Roger speaks rapidly: "That is minimally correct, sir, although countervailing weapons have been developed to reduce the risk of a unilateral preemption escalating to an exchange of weakly godlike agencies.'' The congressman in the middle nods encouragingly. "For the past three decades, the B-39 Peacemaker force has been tasked by SIOP with maintaining an XK-PLUTO capability directed at ablating the ability of the Russians to activate Project Koschei, the dormant alien entity they captured from the Nazis at the end of the last war. We have twelve PLUTO-class atomic-powered cruise missiles pointed at that thing, day and night, as many megatons as the entire Minuteman force. In principle, we will be able to blast it to pieces before it can be brought to full wakefulness and eat the minds of everyone within two hundred miles.''

He warms to his subject. "Secondly, we believe the Soviet control of Shoggoth technology is rudimentary at best. They know how to tell them to roll over an Afghan hill-farmer village, but they can't manufacture more of them. Their utility as weapons is limited -- but terrifying -- but they're not much of a problem. A greater issue is the temple in Basra. This contains an operational gateway, and according to Mehmet the Iraqi political secret police, the Mukhabarat, are trying to figure out how to manipulate it; they're trying to summon something through it. He seemed to be mostly afraid that they -- and the Russians -- would lose control of whatever it was; presumably another weakly godlike creature like the K-Thulu entity at the core of Project Koschei.''

The old guy speaks: "This foo-loo thing, boy -- you can drop those stupid K prefixes around me -- is it one of a kind?''

Roger shakes his head. "I don't know, sir. We know the gateways link to at least three other planets. There may be many that we don't know of. We don't know how to create them or close them; all we can do is send people through, or pile bricks in the opening.'' He nearly bites his tongue, because there are more than three worlds out there, and he's been to at least one of them: the bolt-hole on XK-Masada, built by the NRO from their secret budget. He's seen the mile-high dome Buckminster Fuller spent his last decade designing for them, the rings of Patriot air defence missiles. A squadron of black diamond-shaped fighters from the Skunk works, said to be invisible to radar, patrols the empty skies of XK-Masada. Hydroponic farms and empty barracks and apartment blocks await the senators and congressmen and their families and thousands of support personnel. In event of war they'll be evacuated through the small gate that has been moved to the Executive Office Building basement, in a room beneath the swimming pool where Jack used to go skinny-dipping with Marilyn.

"Off the record now.'' The old congressman waves his hand in a chopping gesture: "I say off, boy.'' The cameraman switches off his machine and leaves. He leans forward, towards Roger. "What you're telling me is, we've been waging a secret war since, when? The end of the second world war? Earlier, the Pabodie Antarctic expedition in the twenties, whose survivors brought back the first of these alien relics? And now the Eye-ranians have gotten into the game and figure it's part of their fight with Saddam?''

"Sir.'' Roger barely trusts himself to do more than nod.

"Well.'' The congressman eyes his neighbour sharply. "Let me put it to you that you have heard the phrase, 'the great filter'. What does it mean to you?''

"The great --'' Roger stops. Professor Gould, he thinks. "We had a professor of palaeontology lecture us,'' he explains. "I think he mentioned it. Something about why there aren't any aliens in flying saucers buzzing us the whole time.''

The congressman snorts. His neighbour starts and sits up. "Thanks to Pabodie and his followers, Liebkunst and the like, we know there's a lot of life in the universe. The great filter, boy, is whatever force stops most of it developing intelligence and coming to visit. Something, somehow, kills intelligent species before they develop this kind of technology for themselves. How about meddling with relics of the elder ones? What do you think of that?''

Roger licks his lips nervously. "That sounds like a good possibility, sir,'' he says. His unease is building.

The congressman's expression is intense: "These weapons your colonel is dicking around with make all our nukes look like a toy bow and arrow, and all you can say is it's a good possibility, sir? Seems to me like someone in the Oval Office has been asleep at the switch.''

"Sir, executive order 2047, issued January 1980, directed the armed forces to standardize on nuclear weapons to fill the mass destruction role. All other items were to be developmentally suspended, with surplus stocks allocated to the supervision of Admiral Poindexter's joint munitions expenditure committee. Which Colonel North was detached to by the USMC high command, with the full cognizance of the White House --''

The door opens. The congressman looks round angrily: "I thought I said we weren't to be disturbed!''

The aide standing there looks uncertain. "Sir, there's been an, uh, major security incident, and we need to evacuate --''

"Where? What happened?'' demands the congressman. But Roger, with a sinking feeling, realises that the aide isn't watching the house committee members: and the guy behind him is Secret Service.

"Basra. There's been an attack, sir.'' A furtive glance at Roger, as his brain freezes in denial: "If you'd all please come this way ...''

Bombing in fifteen minutes

Heads down, through a corridor where congressional staffers hurry about carrying papers, urgently calling one another. A cadre of dark-suited secret service agents close in, hustling Roger along in the wake of the committee members. A wailing like tinnitus fills his ears. "What's happening?'' he asks, but nobody answers.

Down into the basement. Another corridor, where two marine guards are waiting with drawn weapons. The secret service guys are exchanging terse reports by radio. The committee men are hustled away along a narrow service tunnel: Roger is stalled by the entrance. "What's going on?'' he asks his minder.

"Just a moment, sir.'' More listening: these guys cock their heads to one side as they take instruction, birds of prey scanning the horizon for prey. "Delta four coming in. Over. You're clear to go along the tunnel now, sir. This way.''

"What's happening?'' Roger demands as he lets himself be hustled into the corridor, along to the end and round a sharp corner. Numb shock takes hold: he keeps putting one foot in front of the other.

"We're now at Defcon one, sir. You're down on the special list as part of the house staff. Next door on the left, sir.''

The queue in the dim-lit basement room is moving fast, white-gloved guards with clipboards checking off men and a few women in suits as they step through a steel blast door one by one and disappear from view. Roger looks round in bewilderment: he sees a familiar face. "Fawn! What's going on?''

The secretary looks puzzled. "I don't know. Roger? I thought you were testifying today.''

"So did I.'' They're at the door. "What else?''

"Ronnie was making a big speech in Helsinki; the colonel had me record it in his office. Something about not coexisting with the empire of evil. He cracked some kinda joke about how we start bombing in fifteen minutes, then this --''

They're at the door. It opens on a steel-walled airlock and the marine guard is taking their badges and hustling them inside. Two staff types and a middle-aged brigadier join them and the door thumps shut. The background noise vanishes, Roger's ears pop, then the inner door opens and another marine guard waves them through into the receiving hall.

"Where are we?'' asks the big-haired secretary, staring around.

"Welcome to XK-Masada,'' says Roger. Then his childhood horrors catch up with him and he goes in search of a toilet to throw up in.


We need you back

Roger spends the next week in a state of numbed shock. His apartment here is like a small hotel room -- a hotel with security, air conditioning, and windows that only open onto an interior atrium. He pays little attention to his surroundings. It's not as if he has a home to return to.

Roger stops shaving. Stops changing his socks. Stops looking in mirrors or combing his hair. He smokes a lot, orders cheap bourbon from the commissary, and drinks himself into an amnesic stupor each night. He is, frankly, a mess. Self-destructive. Everything disintegrated under him at once: his job, the people he held in high regard, his family, his life. All the time he can't get one thing out of his head: the expression on Gorman's face as he stands there, in front of the submarine, rotting from the inside out with radiation sickness, dead and not yet knowing it. It's why he's stopped looking in mirrors.

On the fourth day he's slumped in a chair watching taped I Love Lucy re-runs on the boob tube when the door to his suite opens quietly. Someone comes in. He doesn't look round until the colonel walks across the screen and unplugs the TV set at the wall, then sits down in the chair next to him. The colonel has bags of dark skin under his eyes; his jacket is rumpled and his collar is unbuttoned.

"You've got to stop this, Roger,'' he says quietly. "You look like shit.''

"Yeah, well. You too.''

The colonel passes him a slim manila folder. Without wanting to, Roger slides out the single sheet of paper within.

"So it was them.''

"Yeah.'' A moment's silence. "For what it's worth, we haven't lost yet. We may yet pull your wife and son out alive. Or be able to go back home.''

"Your family too, I suppose.'' Roger's touched by the colonel's consideration, the pious hope that Andrea and Jason will be alright, even through his shell of misery. He realises his glass is empty. Instead of re-filling it he puts it down on the carpet beside his feet. "Why?''

The colonel removes the sheet of paper from his numb fingers. "Probably someone spotted you in the King David and traced you back to us. The Mukhabarat had agents everywhere, and if they were in league with the KGB ...'' he shrugs. "Things escalated rapidly. Then the president cracked that joke over a hot mike that was supposed to be switched off ... Have you been checking in with the desk summaries this week?''

Roger looks at him blankly. "Should I?''

"Oh, things are still happening.'' The colonel leans back and stretches his feet out. "From what we can tell of the situation on the other side, not everyone's dead yet. Ligachev's screaming blue murder over the hotline, accusing us of genocide: but he's still talking. Europe is a mess and nobody knows what's going on in the Middle East -- even the Blackbirds aren't making it back out again.''

"The thing at Takrit.''

"Yeah. It's bad news, Roger. We need you back.''

"Bad news?''

"The worst.'' The colonel jams his hands between his knees, stares at the floor like a bashful child. "Saddam Hussein al-Takriti spent years trying to get his hands on elder technology. It looks like he finally succeeded in stabilising the gate into Sothoth. Whole villages disappeared, Marsh Arabs, wiped out in the swamps of Eastern Iraq. Reports of yellow rain, people's skin melting right off their bones. The Iranians got itchy and finally went nuclear. Trouble is, they did so two hours before that speech. Some asshole in Plotsk launched half the Uralskoye SS-20 grid -- they went to launch on warning eight months ago -- burning south, praise Jesus. Scratch the Middle East, period -- everything from the Nile to the Khyber Pass is toast. We're still waiting for the callback on Moscow, but SAC has put the whole Peacemaker force on airborne alert. So far we've lost the eastern seaboard as far south as North Virginia and they've lost the Donbass basin and Vladivostok. Things are a mess; nobody can even agree whether we're fighting the commies or something else. But the box at Chernobyl -- Project Koschei -- the doors are open, Roger. We orbited a Keyhole-eleven over it and there are tracks, leading west. The PLUTO strike didn't stop it -- and nobody knows what the fuck is going on in WarPac country. Or France, or Germany, or Japan, or England.''

The colonel makes a grab for Roger's wild turkey, rubs the neck clean and swallows from the bottle. He looks at Roger with a wild expression on his face. "Koschei is loose, Roger. They fucking woke the thing. And now they can't control it. Can you believe that?''

"I can believe that.''

"I want you back behind a desk tomorrow morning, Roger. We need to know what this Thulu creature is capable of. We need to know what to do to stop it. Forget Iraq; Iraq is a smoking hole in the map. But K-Thulu is heading towards the Atlantic coast. What are we going to do if it doesn't stop?''
 
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