Chapter Twenty-Six: Go Tell the Gamezohans (Dorian Cycladian Mix)

(Formerly For Death Said She – Whimpering of Table 23 Mix)

17. Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of figures and motions. And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain a perception. Thus it is in a simple substance, and not in a compound or in a machine, that perception must be sought for. Further, nothing but this (namely, perceptions and their changes) can be found in a simple substance. It is also in this alone that all the internal activities of simple substances can consist. (Theod. Pref. [E. 474; G. vi. 37].)

I

There was me, that is Bob, and my three warthogs, that is Dolph, Mitya and Doom, Doom being really weird, and we sat in the Kovalenko meat bar trying to drink ourselves into a completely new level of nerdy stupor.

"The Second Coming," announced Doom, "is by far the most meaningful poem from old Earth. It’s especially ominous since Damocles’ alleged destruction." He stressed the italics of alleged. Vodka made him more of a paranoid schizophrenic.

"I’m partial to that Ozymandias one myself, as I can really imagine Kubrik gone but for the boastful old statue of Wilhelm the Boring," I said.

"I heard they’re changing that for one of Wernher, now he’s the previous Emperor," said Mitya. We ignored him as usual, because we envied his girlfriend-having skills. It was a friendly kind of ignore, though, and he was used to it.

"Dudes. You both think way too much with your… brains," said Dolph, smiling blissfully and straining his forehead trying to open his eyes. "You should have someone read you Poe’s Bells while absolutely under the spell of sweet, sweet Vanara. Or Mary Jane, if you’re restricting it to stuff that grew there. Word. The bells totally make you feel the ghouls are biting your toes off with their alarums."

"I don’t think an alarum is some kind of maw," I observed, munching on the last piece of our Xurmaithian bull beef entry.

Doom nodded solemnly. He was prone to doing that for no reason. But hey, the High Preemptive Warthogs are the strangest men in Kubrik. Or we try to be.

We’re colleagues from the Gamezohan Imperial University. We met at Terran Culture 101, and despite taking few other subjects together, we’re pretty much indivisible as of now. I’m going for the Semiotics Phenomenology degree, hopefully to eventually be accepted in the Truth-Smothering Order of Pure Law.

Dmitry, alias Mitya, is a novian, a lesser race of humanoids from the icy wastes of Gahnta-Cyberia Nova, but you’d be hard pressed to find any major anatomical differences between him and a human, at least externally, besides the metallic cyan eyes the Novians boast for no immediate evolutionary advantage I can think of at the moment. He can also be buried naked in snow for indeterminate amounts of time, which I suppose makes sense. Mitya is close to getting a Mobility/Countermobility/Survivability degree, also known as "the degree to be a military field engineer and freeze your ass on some god-forsaken rock". Since freezing ass is not an issue for him, I suppose he doesn’t resent his Mafioso father that much for steering his career choice. Someone will have to take over the Tellurian Condensate harvesting trade someday, as the condensate must flow, he’ll say, and then snort. Actually it’s the only subject that can really upset him, as he’s otherwise as cold and blasé as the worst Sphexoren existentialist. You’ll end up seeing me narrating, "Mitya shrugged," a lot.

Adolphus is a human like me, though his family still lives in old Earth and practices Judaism, but a curious anachronism to the rest of us. They have a centuries old fortune made making diamonds from carbon. The five-ton bed cut from a single huge diamond Empress Nike got from her brother in her last birthday was commissioned from them. Dolph hails from a less filthy rich branch of the family, as his father specialized in medicine, specifically treating crystalline lifeforms, such as the Ruby Men from Salyra Ducat System D. Another hapless rich kid forced by his father into a profitable career, Dolph would have finished Complexity Cybernetics if he didn’t find it necessary to experience every single new drug in the Galaxy. On the plus side, he can sure play guitar, and is bound to eventually make big money with his sound-streamer cube skills. Actually, given his foot in mouth talents, he’s better off in an artistic career anyway. Complexity Cybernetics usually leads to a hard science career, unless you’re willing to go the distance and do psychohistory.

Ardaster von Doom, or, DOOOOOM as he’s likely to say it, and Ardy when we want to piss him off, is at once the least and the worst loser of us all. His future trade in Arcological Engineering requires no small amount of political connections, and of that he is aware. He has embraced the stereotype of the self-serving ambitious young workaholic selling his soul for the highest bidder who will eventually be very rich and able to dismiss all people below in the social ladder as weaklings who haven’t worked as hard. The only thing that saves him, from the point of view of our small intellectual clique, is that he associates with us in an entirely unbusinesslike way. Hopefully. Business networking takes many forms, and nothing pisses me off as bad as reminding me of all the responsible things I’m not doing for my career. A Neophobosexmachinan Black Mage by birth, he wears a metal mask to hide whatever horrifying visage he was born with, instead of the traditional big pointy hat. His specific branch of minor NPEMian magocracy has been associated with the green banner of House Gamdoha since the first imperial conquest of the region, a couple thousand years ago, but to be honest he lives on the same monthly amount as I do. He doesn’t have to work for it, though.

There are no tuitions in the GIU, of course, but a guy still has to make ends meet and lo, I work my afternoons at the Arjuna and the Sappho. The two bookstores belong to the same man, one Hubertus Ramirez d’Actylos. The Arjuna is one of those multimedia bookstores whose only concession to quaintness is still selling the cellulose information storage devices themselves. The books are the latest bestsellers and the best-selling classics one would expect, together with those technical books that are still committed to print. The store lies on a well-located corner in the Tyler Ticine Avenue, and is in no way remarkably distinct from any other in the Arjuna franchise. However, if you go to the very end of it, after Personality Imprint, after Synergy/Diminishing Returns Harmonics, and around the corner past the Staff Only sign, you’ll reach Sappho.

Customers get to Sappho by a side street that, despite being parallel to TT Av., does not directly connect to it. You have to leave the avenue at either the The Edge or The Smith’s Daughter streets, depending on whether you’re coming down TT from north or south, until you reach Gun And Blade Avenue. In the block between the two streets, you’ll find a small alley coming out of the Gab leading to a small square, named Serpent-Death. It features a small statue of the prophet Zarrothustra, when he tamed the scorpions to hunt down the devils tempting him in the desert. Around the square, all buildings belong to the tiny community of Zorrathustrists in Kubrik. It’s the last one left in the Galaxy, because it’s such a complicated religion. Anyway, between two of the buildings, you’ll find an alley that grows moderately wide as you follow it, until actually being worthy of a name, when you’ll find a sign indicating Walk On Street. Right then, the street dead-ends and to your left will be Sappho.

Sappho is, I dare say, one of the greatest places ever. It’s simply chocked full of books so old they’re practically rotting. Ramirez spent his entire share of the House’s fortune to make a collection to paragon the Empire’s and like absolutely no other, and his entire delight in the whole affair is not so much having a book as having possessed it. After finding a particularly rare tome he’s gone to great lengths to acquire, he’s more than happy to sell it again with an insignificant profit margin.

Yeah, I don’t get paid much, but the place rocks.

So I’ll spend all the time I can away from Arjuna, dusting off a first edition of Académie de l’espée, or a La Hypnerotomachia di Poliphilo, or a Persiles with a Trautz-Bauzonnet binding worth a small fortune. The collection includes some definitely worth more than just a small fortune, and they’re not locked away in any vault as they should be, but just sit there in the bookshelves invitingly, if you’ll just understand the strange logic behind the organization. There’s the one remaining copy of the Necryptozoonomicon in its original Farsi, and at least five other later editions and translations. There’s an Octavo and two copies of the Delomelanicon. There’s one of each version of Unausprechlichen Kulten, two copies of Philetas’ translation of the Al Azif, of which I think we have three or four original volumes, Liber Ivonis, Cthaat Aquadingen, Steganografia, De Vermiis Mysteriis, yeah, the complete occult catalog. We also have Aristotle’s Poetics in near mint, the first manuscript of Augustine’s Confessions, the notebooks of Aquinas. And that’s only Terran books. The Zardarkian section is at least equally rich, the Novan theological tomes comprise a significant percentage of the d’Actylos net worth, and there are even Wendauerian books, valuable if not for their content at least for their rarity.

I remember my first day at Sappho. Hubertus beckoned me closer with a wry smile in his wrinkled, somewhat obscene face.

"Come here, boy. I suppose this is the only book you ought to keep an eye on, because not even the Triple Eye could track it down if it fell in the really wrong hands."

I glanced at it, somewhat numbed by the collection, and did a double take. "A Draconomicon?"

"No," he said, grin widening. "THE Draconomicon. Bound in the hide of Waltraud, mother of Emperor Wilhelm, herself. The one in the Dynastic Museum is a censored copy and the versions belonging to each Lord of the Houses are abridged. Though we do have the Earl of Sawarren’s, he sold it last time he got buried in debt, it’s right in that corner on the floor."

I couldn’t believe. "Wow. And you just… leave it here? Anyone can take it from the bookshelf, read a couple of secrets humans are not meant to know and put it back?"

He chuckled. "I’m a skeptic and minor dragon, boy, and I believe information flow is beautiful. It sorts itself out. ‘If you’re unready for knowledge, you just won’t get it, dude.’"

"Anaxerretibes," I identified, and smiled.

"Yes, him. I acquired very briefly his Complete Works, but I had no place to store them, so I donated them to the Imperial Library. They had to acquire a new wing to store the forty thousand something volumes, so they named it after me," he finished, with unusual pride.

"Cool. Well, don’t worry, I won’t let any Wendauerian put their filthy paws on this book." I passed my fingers on the silvery, rough binding. "You must treasure it dearly, no?"

He scoffed, a little to brag his detachment. "No, I only have one book I really love and wouldn’t sell for any price." He pulled a small book bound in some pink alien leather. It had no title. "It’s the complete works of Sappho. The woman, not the store."

"She was a human poet, right? Roman?"

"Greek, boy, Greek. Some beautiful odes. I love Poikilothron most of them all. She was also the favorite of Alisia Sphexoren, you know. This," he waved the little book, "used to belong to her."

Of course I knew Alisia Sphexoren. She was acknowledged as the greatest dragon poet ever, except for – maybe – the Sphexoren Sphexoren, who founded the House.

"She was said to cause the suns to cry, something I had the opportunity to verify personally."

"Really, now?" I said with defensive sarcasm.

He winked. "I was young once, my good boy. I fell in love with an asteryad once. You know what one is, right?"

I shook my head.

"Well, you get hamadryads for trees, maenads for water, and asteryads for, well, stars. Suns. Even the Gamezoha System star has its asteryad, and if she died, the star would go out. My, what do you children learn of cosmogony in school these days?"

I shrugged. "I missed class a lot, I suppose."

He burst out laughing. "Well, actually, so did I. Long story short, Alisia’s poetry won me my beloved’s heart. And then she died. Bloody Sphexoren curse."

I nodded. Even associating with the House of Gloom is bad luck in love. Which kinda explains Wernher Gauss, come to think of it.

"Oh well, I guess I should have stuck to Sappho. But then I’d have children today, and not nearly enough money for my precious books!"

II

That conversation flashed back for no apparent reason as we sat in the Kovalenko meat bar, trying to decide upon the greatest human poet while drinking like awful losers. None of us chauvinists would even think of Sappho, of course.

"‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light’," said Dolph, lighting something smokable and probably illegal in less permissive societies.

"Kinda repetitive. I prefer ‘the fire that stirs about her, when she stirs’," said Mitya.

"You would, wouldn’t you," said I, maliciously.

He ignored the provocation. "Or maybe ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know’."

"Please, Keats does not compare," objected Doom. "In terms of raw harmony, I’ll admit the Second Coming loses easily. But then you can’t beat ‘hardly ashore at Clear Creek, I hear it: clarity, a voice of such perfect clarity’."

We all nod. We’re suckers for Li Po.

That grave matter solved, we order our steak. The Kovalenko Meat Bar is the newest fad, opened recently by a savagely beautiful and absurdly stupid werewolf with a funny accent and the stout belief you can’t sell Vodka without giving people fresh, practically raw meat with it. Crazy Miss Sacha, as we call her, ends up breaking a couple of heads every night, but all you got to do is stay out of the way, quietly enjoying your burger, and she’ll eagerly show you her sweet side. Which can be dangerous enough on its own. Since my personal policy is to avoid talking to the opposite sex as much as humanly possible, she thinks I’m mute and treats me all the better for it. Works for me.

"So," I say, once she’s out of ear sight. "What’s the game this week? Operation Shrewd Wombat?"

"Fuck no," replied Doom. "I’ve had it with the Wendauerian campaign. Duke Ardashir Aberdash was just too good. Every battle was won through preemption or dislocation."

"Heh, PM Moe thought so, as well. Now it makes sense, why he had Wilhelm remove glorious Duke Victory from command of the Joint Chiefs."

"And we end up with skinny old Morgan-Giles. So stupid his flagship disappears in an incursion against SURTRites."

Dolph looks up from his sound-streaming cube, with which he’s making a song vaguely akin to a soft whimpering. "Rumor has it he defected."

Doom snorts. "Gamezohans defecting? I’d say the idea is laughable, but with the whore we have for an Empress… long live!, of course," he added with an invisible grin, raising his glass.

"Speaking of which," says Dolph, pointing the cube in my direction. Violins and a Gregorian choir play from its darkness, following Dolph’s disrupted train of thought. "I got the new Nike XXX slave AI tactile hologram. The DataCube also has Mrs. Gauss-Ticine, Chromelips, Krystal Halak and classics like Bungren."

I shake my head. I stopped being that kind of loser a long time ago. Almost two months. Mitya reacts more vehemently.

"Dolph, you could at least be embarrassed by your habits, you know. Especially knowing some of the people you mentioned are practically my family."

That was true, in a roundabout way. Mitya’s unnaturally devoted girlfriend was none other than the infamously gorgeous gladiatrix and bullfighter Paraskeve Ticine, the archduchess’s younger sister. Now you see why we hate the lucky bastard so much.

Come to think of it, she was probably in the DC Dolph mentioned, too, and the dope fiend had been tactful enough not to mention it. It’d stand to reason, I mean, as Keh has competed with our present Empress as number one wet dream since that time she killed the arcturian wolfbear barehanded when she was 12. Gamezohan males of all species seem to develop an unhealthy preference for the deadly females…

Damn, maybe I did want a copy. Hum. I mean. Er. Moving ahead.

Dolph shrugged and smiled. Mitya shrugged and sighed. Doom rolled his eyes and continued. "No, I think we should do the present campaign. ‘Operation Ragnarok Adamant’. I’ve been following the latest materiel specs and doctrine closely."

"An on-going campaign? Sounds harder than our usual thing," objected Mitya.

"Well, we’re the greatest wargamers not currently employed by our excellent government. As I see it, we might preempt what will happen in the macrocosm with our microcosmic simulation."

Mitya shrugged. "Our mainframe is pretty weak."

"But we can upgrade it. We have a crystal craftsman right here for a C-chip."

"Oh-ho-ho! Dude. That’s… harder than it sounds, ya know. Totally. And I don’t have a pure enough rock."

"Ah," said Doom, with a glint in his eye, "I arranged the import of an Aceldama stone."

I did a spit-take and looked around. "Holy fuck, Ardy, those are military-grade and restricted. We could get in trouble just for owning one without permit."

"Chill, dude, our man Ardy wouldn’t do anything compromising, ain’t it right, Ardyman?"

Doom cleared his throat. "Thank you, Dolph. Two points. One, ‘Ardy’ is the filthy whore who gave birth to you motherfuckers. Two, I got the stone through with Weiss. Remember him? He studies Advanced Space Defense Systems. Going far in the customs officer career, that one. He passed three Aceldama stones, and I can now tell you, they were the last ones. The Aceldama asteroid ring is dry of any useful ore now. Those were going to be taken by the Dewnhëemian military, but an unsanctioned Gamezohan secret agent stole them to protect our interests. He only had two empty eye sockets, though, so he let Weiss keep one for his cooperation."

"Eye sockets," I repeated, dryly.

"That’s what Weiss said. And now we’ll buy the stone for ourselves, with money our faithful friend and Don’s son will provide."

Mitya raised a hand to object, but shrugged. "Meh. Whatever."

"How much do you trust this Weiss?"

"I know his brother. He always takes his dates to Le Róten Orànge."

We nodded. Doom was a pompous bastard and always had breakfast at Ardan’s, even when he couldn’t afford it. He said it paid off in networking.

"I’ve got the images for the 37-D holoboard. All strategic centers included. The Fleet’s site is very user friendly."

"How are we going to divide assignments?" I asked, interest growing.

"We can leave the AI handle the Opposing Force. I want the Intelligence and Information Flow head-quartered at the Balamb Garden section of Wei Palace."

"They have a Balamb Garden section? Heh." Dolph loved prehistoric videogames. I personally missed the reference.

"Mitya will probably want the role of Ryota Duv and command the space-to-space forces, right?"

Mitya shrugged, but almost enthusiastically.

"Corso will have Generalissimus Gàrakz’s role of controlling the ground deployment forces, as usual."

I nodded. I liked land battles, the messier the better.

"This leaves Adolphus with Duke Ticine’s new assignment as Void Marshal, commanding the Fleet’s operational deployment."

Dolph raised his right hand in a v-for-victory gesture and smirked.

I leaped up. "I’m out. I have a ultra-calculus test tomorrow morning."

"Damn that Rudolf Dactylos," said Dolph.

Yeah. Damn him for inventing the most revolutionary mathematics since calculus itself. Well, he worked upon Anaxerretibes’ work. Either way, ultra-calculus makes überspeed drives work and all in all makes the Empire go round. "Off I go."

As I left, I glanced at my credit cube to verify whether Crazy Miss Sacha had remembered to charge me. Seriously, it’s a surprise she turns in any profit at all.

Outside, it had been dark for several hours already, but the planet-wide arcological engineering ensured we had a bearable 289 K at that time of the year. The wind made it feel a lot colder and as usual I was too stupid to remember to wear my warmth jacket.

I enjoyed walking as much as the fellow man, but I was way too cold, too drunk and with some credit to spare, so I walked to the nearest booth, passed my credit cube, and exited the booth in front of the dingy building I have a room in.

Standing in front of my door, I thought of three things I wanted to change in my life. I then thought of three things I was thankful for. Unable to think of a third, I sighed, knocked it off, swore never to follow Dolph’s suggestions ever again, and went in.

Upload news to brain. Good night pills. Collapse in bed.

Repeat every night, for the rest of your life.

III

The good night pills ensure I have a refreshing, productive sleep time during which my body fully scans itself for defects and begins whatever treatment is necessary to ensure even a human can live beyond one hundred without any special treatments. My ultra-calculus is made an integral part of my cognitive process during my dreaming and I wake up informed and perky, after having lovingly designed dreams from the Ministry of the Sandman.

That’s how it’s supposed to work, yet despite everything, I still wake up feeling pretty much like shit.

Good morning, pills.

I take my good morning pills, and am jolted awake in what Dolph said was exactly like a cocaine rush. The hangover, headache and assorted ill being are gone. The existential gloom is also gone, though that’s usually back before nine a.m.

I leap up rubbing my hands. My mouth feels wonderfully refreshed as the highly nanites who call it home release highly concentrated menthol. The directional sound system begins playing a random cover of Paint it Black. I glance at my clothing and have the fibers fix themselves so I won’t have to change the clothing I was wearing at the Meat Bar. I take my shirt off, the good morning pill kicks in strongly, and I tap-dance my way downstairs to the rhythm of the song that, for everyone else’s convenience, only I can hear.

I find a spot among my neighbors waiting in the street. The public infomercial holograms flare up in the entire city at once.

"Gooooood morning fellow Kubrikans!" The day’s celebrity is a very familiar face even if you don’t like rock. Mrs. Whutty. "Today’s message to you from your Empress is, nemo pervenit qui non legitime certaverit! She also told me to wish you all an especially fine day! ‘The Empire ticks still.’ I have a show today at the Mitokana Plaza auditorium! It’s going to rock your souls into a brand new wavelength! Anyway, gotta run, bye! Enjoy your katas!"

The Empire ticks still. Not the most optimistic of slogans, but pretty realistic, I think, as the entire block harmoniously begins to practice its katas collectively. There probably is some kind of communal-love drug thing in the good morning pill, because it’s strangely soothing to move in synchronous order with people you don’t know at all, all over the city, rich, poor, young, old. It’s one of those moments you have to admit that your rulers may be mad, but they’re also genius.

I followed the motions in our collective meditation, eyes closed, consciousness in my center of gravity. I don’t know any martial arts at all, but for the mandatory thing. I lost my self easily that morning, which didn’t happen always. It was usually good news. At half past six, the twenty minutes were over and everyone resumed their individual identities and masks, but gratefully still under the effects of the pills and the exercise. I went up for my shirt and a two-minute sonic shower.

"I must remember to tell Dolph my theory about owning more than one set of clothing being a ridiculous anachronism today," I said out loud to myself. My six-legged cat tilted her head. I’ve no idea where she’s from, if it’s an actual animal or bio-engineered or what. Mitya gave her to me. I basically don’t pay any attention to her in the vain hope she’ll go away.

I grabbed my backpack and made my escape from the creepy kitty from hell.

Two blocks away sits O Debochado, where I had my usual flain bagel with coffee, flain being that little green fruit from Salyra Ducat System B that tastes like what olives would taste like if they were trying really hard to disguise themselves as grapes.

"So," said the bartender and owner of the place, Hari Roscoe, widely acknowledged as the greatest mathematician of the Empire and who runs the risk of brain damage if he ever works with mathematics again. "You’ve got an ultra-calculus test today, don’t you?"

I nodded. I shared more of my studying details with Roscoe than I did with the warthogs. They weren’t eager to know, either. "I think I’ve got that covered, though, I ran an information absorption dream program last night."

He shook his head and poured me more coffee. "Yes, but the deal with UC is not so much the information but the internal relationships, mate. It’s like hoping to go well in an English literature test just because you memorized a dictionary."

"Yeah, I’m aware," I said, sighing. "It’s pretty random. Either the questions will be ones I can solve, or not."

"I see what you mean behind the truism," he admitted after a brief pause. "Solving problems can easily become a matter of gestalts. But make an effort, man. You’ll be evaluated for the solution but also for the process."

I drummed my fingers on the bar. "Orange licorice," I said.

"As Gödel would have said: come again?"

"Can you pour some orange licorice in my coffee? I’m not sure why. A weird craving."

He stared at me for a moment as if I had just grown a pair of Halakian dolphin antlers. "Well, ok, I suppose," he agreed, eventually, and poured the mildly sickly-looking thing into my cup.

"Thanks, Hari."

"Oh, never you mind. You’re in the right track to end up like me if UC is making you think in strange ways…"

I smiled, finished my breakfast, and waved him goodbye. "See you tomorrow, Hari. Prepare to have your ass beaten in Go!"

He laughed. "Maybe then we’ll play another without the twenty point handicap."

Yeah, well, yeah, he’s just too good. He made me learn the game just to have a regular buddy to defeat. Told me girls couldn’t love men who couldn’t play Go. Come to think of it, given his loser status, I guess I should’ve been more skeptical, but I believed in reasonable doubt back then.

Lo, I went, and made a horrible UC test, and lo, there was much getting flunked.

I couldn’t care much. About anything, really, but especially about my responsibilities. I had gone beyond getting afraid of poverty and into the absolute delivery of my fate to the hands of the Almighty. Actually, I don’t know which Almighty I mean here. Mother was a faithful of the Glock Church but my atheistic father insisted I be raised in, at best, an agnostic fashion. Still, I remember one or two passages of the Book of Glock. Like the First Commandment: All Guns Art Loaded. Always.

That’s not even a real commandment. Still, I suppose it saved more lives over history than the ‘no other God’ thing.

I had a ricotta sandwich for lunch and had to stay at Arjuna the whole afternoon, so you can say my day remained bad. And then, there was a Her. ‘Of course’, ‘how unexpected’ and ‘meh’ are all acceptable responses.

I was unpacking some newly arrived cooking books when I heard a pleasant clearing of throat behind me. I turned, and behold, it was freaking Adelais Aberdash.

I’ll gain time before narrating what happened next by assuming you’ve been buried to your neck in Cyberia-Novan ice for the last oh fifty years and know nothing of Gamezohan nobility.

There are the Gausses, the silver dragons who have been holding dynastic power since times so remote homo sapiens still had scales. Though I suppose we weren’t homo sapiens then. Oh well. Down the spectrum in telluric condensates, you have seven other colors, each associated with one House, and then you used to have black dragons, who, we’re told, were evil and sucked.

House Aberdash is right on top of the spectrum, with their noble purple banner and the most exquisitely honorable ways among the Houses, imperial family included. Together with Houses Ticine and Sphexoren, the High Houses have more than symbolic power, as only the dragons of these families can mate with silver dragons and still produce pure silver offspring, depending of course on how untainted by non-draconic blood the specific branch of the family is. Therefore, any child of Archduke Gauss and his consort would be pure dragon, as both have no recent humanoid ancestors, and ‘pure’ silver, despite her lineage being indigo, per House Ticine. As a counter-example, Lysander Whutty von Sphexoren is son to a human mother, so he’s not a pure dragon. It’s a matter of wavelength versus signal strength, though my grasp of the actual science of the thing is at best very sloppy.

Major Adelais Aberdash is the daughter of the elsewhere mentioned Duke Ardashir "Victory" Aberdash, and has a respectable career in the Silver Berets special forces, assault platoon. She’s second in command only to Generalissimus Gàrakz himself, though she’s still nominally below the other generals responsible for combat support and similarly uninteresting subjects. She’s one of a handful pure dragonesses Wernher Gauss had the option of having the imperial heir with, and was expected to be the first choice as they had trained together as teenagers in a friendly basis. Not few people had hoped for that, as she was respectable and serious in a way our Empress (long live!) will never be, though perhaps not as shrewd as Ticine.

Let’s play a game. Try to guess my reaction when I saw her standing there, with the straight neck-length hair in the gray tone that just screams "royalty!" to a Gamezohan, wearing the infamous silver beret and the dark blue camouflage uniform they were using for Operation Ragnarok Adamant and packing enough firepower to wipe out the city a dozen times (don’t forget to add in the Gamezohan thing for uniforms!), calmly asking me if we had Ryota Chu’s Maneuver in the Fringe: Experiments in transtellurical logistics. Hint: I was still carrying the box with the cooking books.

"OW! FUCK! FUCK! MY FOOT! MY FUCKING FOOT!"

That was the first impression she had of me. I rock.

IV

"And then she just smiled and turned away." I stepped up and balanced myself on the parapet, looking down. The cold, black waters of Lake Gauss didn’t look especially inviting.

"Dude," said Dolph, leaning against an ancient light post. Needle Chill Square was old town Kubrik. Less than a hundred yards away, the ominous architecture of the Blackheart Cathedral loomed over us. We loved the ambience. Except when the gargoyles went on killing sprees, that sucked.

"Dude," he repeated, this time determined to finish a sentence no matter the effort. "I’m totally going to burn you that DC. The Duke’s daughter is there too, ya know. And it’s all based on actual medical records."

I tried to stunt-kick him in the face, and almost fell into the lake. "Shut up. It’s not like that. I’m just boasting my loser skills, I’m not in love or anything."

"Good, good," said Dolph, lighting up another smokable fulfillment. "We don’t need another Mitya."

"Hah! I’d never! Mark my words, for I am like Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing!"

He grinned at the irony. "You’re trying reverse psychology on fate, aren’t you?"

I laughed. "Well, fuck," I said eventually. "The sky’s wound is looking fine tonight."

"Uh-oh."

"Yeah… I think I’d bring her to the Cathedral, you know. They have a beautifully gloomy rosary of black roses and bitter thorns, and…"

"Knock it off, Romeo. Damn. Being raised in this planet does make you a masochist, eh?"

"I blame the dragons’ evolutionary psychology. You’ll want a dragoness capable of defending her eggs on her own."

"No shit, and look where that got you. Monkeys shouldn’t think like iguanas, man."

"Meh, look where it got them. Running the Galaxy and with the hottest chicks ever."

"I’m more of a fae person myself," he shrugged, with mock embarrassment. "You know what they say. Elf girls like to rock and roll."

"That’s," I stood up erect on the parapet, as if to make an important announcement, "the eternal dichotomy between Apollonian and Dionysian. You keep your free love. I want my girls with Ticine-style dog collars."

He inhaled deeply. "Oy, you Gamezohans really make a point of proving Theodore Adorno correct, eh."

"Who’s that again?" I asked, jumping down to his side. "The Terran suicide sociologist?"

"The one who blamed totalitarianisms on something he called the ‘authoritarian personality’. Ya know. We studied that regarding the collapse of Earth’s nation-states."

"Oh, that guy. Meh. It’s a bit farfetched to call ours a totalitarian State."

He stared at me.

"Hey, you get away with being serviced by the Imperial Family, wanker."

"Totally," he agreed, smiling blissfully. "Or I would, but I still haven’t gone through the entirety of the elf girl section."

I shook my head, and then heard footsteps behind us. I turned.

"You must be Weiss."

"Who, me?" he looked around nervously.

The three of us were the only people there as far as the eye could see, so, yeah, I suppose.

"I suppose," I answered.

"Uh. Yeah, Weiss van Silberwald. Pleased to meet you."

"I’m Bob, this is Dolph. Don’t mind him."

"Alright, I won’t." He raised the briefcase he was carrying in his right hand. "Dhe rock’s right here."

"You got the funds already, right?"

"Yeah. Wait. Dolph. You’re Adolphus at giu.gz?"

Dolph nodded slowly. He was already stoned out of his wits, so, back to his normal self, in other words.

"I got your e-mail. I got dhe attachment," he added meaningfully. Dolph smiled. "How… how do you unlock Queen de Lanseau?"

I rolled my eyes. Wankers, everywhere.

Twenty minutes later we were at the Kovalenko, the one place for good beef at one in the morning.

"And then I told him, you have to score five points with each of the Ticine sisters – sorry, Mitya, but that’s what I said – in ten minutes and then…"

Doom, "But you did get the stone, right?"

"…yeah. It’s in this briefcase."

"Have you checked it?"

We exchanged glances. "Not in objective reality, exactly, no."

Doom grabbed the briefcase and opened it. His face was bathed in golden light.

"It’s… beautiful."

"Yeah," said Dolph, "that’s Aceldama for you. I’ll begin work at it tomorrow."

"You have the tools?" asked Mitya. "You can’t use the GIU labs for this."

"It’s cool. My father will be so happy I finally decided to devote myself to my studies he’ll immediately slipgate me everything I need."

"How long will it take? The SURTR probably won’t outlast the month."

Dolph laughed. "Don’t worry about that! Two days. If you can’t make something in two days, it’s not worth it."

"Good thing women don’t think that way about pregnancy, though," I pointed out.

"Eggs. Eggs make everything easier," declared Mitya.

We stared at him. "Say, have you discussed with Keh…"

"No. No I haven’t. Shut up, you."

Doom shivered. "Right. Anyway. This C-Chip will have as much processing power as FUCKUP-II."

"I could have an entire city of AI slave girls!"

"Shut up, Dolph," agreed Mitya. "We know you’re secretly gay. For Doom."

"Shut up, you two," interrupted Doom. "Two points. One: we meet tomorrow afternoon at Dmitry’s. Two: everyone knows Dolph is gay for you, Mitya, you might as well give Keh the bad news."

I grinned. Doom was occasionally funny.

"Meeting adjourned."

Good night, pills. Good morning, pills. Paint it black. Public announcement. Katas. Flain bagel and coffee.

"Had a bad night?" asked Roscoe, filling my cup.

"Wow, you must be really perceptive."

"Well, you look like shit, good morning pills or not."

I chuckled. "I think I’m developing a resistance."

"Hah, you wish. The pharma-people of the Ministry of Delirium guarantee no such thing is possible."

"I want to file a complaint then. The happiness my government has been feeding me isn’t working. Can I call tech support?"

"You know, in fact, I think you can. But that’s irrelevant. You know what you need, boy."

"Oh no."

"Oh yes. A girl. And to get a girl…"

"…I have to play go. Tell me, Roscoe, have you ever had a girlfriend?"

"Oh yes," he replied, looking over my shoulder wistfully. "When I was six, I think."

I nodded. Figures. "Alright, bring on The Board."

I begin with a numerical advantage that disappears very quickly, Hari’s mad math skills or maybe just Go-related nerdyness making him always one step ahead of me. Well, he had a PhD in Psychohistory. If he can predict the future of societies, my gaming trends can’t be that difficult.

"Getting raped, I see," says Adelais Aberdash just a few inches from my left ear. I fall from the stool face-first into the sweet, sweet floor.

"Oof," I observe.

She smiles and picks up a shiny black bead, places it at an intersection I could swear was random, and says: "You always have to give people a chance, don’t you, Professor Roscoe?"

Hari smiles. "I see you’ve read my book on SIG Theory. I’m not a professor anymore, I’m afraid. And," he looks at the board, and smiles embarrassedly, "yeah, you win."

That morning I took the mature decision to believe the universe was shitting me.

"Hi," I said, from the ground. It was pretty comfortable there.

"Hi," she replied, leaning against the counter. "Are you always hurting yourself, or are you happy to see me?"

"Right. Fancy seeing you here," I said, trying to sound dry and just sounding muffled and with a nose-full of blood.

"I followed the orange scent, orange boy." She looked around casually from behind her mirror shades before bending down and pulling me up in one fluid motion. "I like oranges."

"Amazing. I think there’s a city on Earth…"

She snorted. "Citru? My nostrils hurt just from the memory."

"Oh, you’ve been to Citru? The king of Wendauer was born there, I think..."

"Once. We dropped Wernher there for his eighteenth trial." She pulled a stick of chewing gum from one of her pockets.

"Ah. Right." I picked up my cup and took a long sip. "Fancy seeing you here," I said, finally.

"I can leave, if you want me to," she retorted coolly. Hmm, gum. Eucalypt? Good… Wow, it’s actually impressive that I could smell that through all the blood running down my nose.

"Well, what I mean is. Fuck. Fancy seeing you here."

"I’m sorry? Did you break anything in the fall? That’s the third time you…"

"Actually," I interrupted, "I think I did." I passed out.

V

You overhear conversations at Sappho. It happens. It’s part of the strange, but easily verified law of physics that states that a man placing books on bookshelves immediately becomes invisible. Well, it’s true.

"You sold Zoroaster a Delomelanicon?" There was disbelief in the voice of the man talking to Hubertus. "Do you even know what he wants to do with it?"

The old dragon snorted. "Mercy, Orcus. Serves you right for never counting me among the Primi. I just served my superior illuminatus, as the Rule commands."

The stranger sighed. "Well, we’ve been rearranging things. Lucilla is still protective of her consort, and wasn’t keen on Zoroaster’s plan. Plus, after Sylvia got… erased, the entire Council of Seers fear the order will become a mere instrument for that reindeer."

"My, my, the plot thickens," said Hubertus, grinning and gently opening a tome. "Omnes vulnerant, postuma necat."

"Each wounds, the last kills?"

"Old family motto."

"Ah. Well, Sylvia’s place is still open and Zoroaster is being pressed to renounce. My sources tell me his daughter will succeed him among the Primi. Meaning there’s room for a male."

"And here you are, asking me for information. For reasons you will not disclose."

"Doubtlessly."

"And then I’ll be Aetius?" Hubertus seemed more amused than tempted by the offer.

"A smooth approval by the Circle is certain," said the stranger, nodding.

"In that case, my house is your house. Corso!" he shouted my name and I stood up, right between them. "Aaah! Oh. It’s you. You were here all along?"

"I was dusting off Les trois livres de l’Art," I replied, truthfully.

"Good boy. Max, meet Bob Corso. I couldn’t run this place without him."

I extended my hand, but he didn’t take it. "Pleased to meet you, Max." He didn’t answer that, either.

"Corso, take Max to the registers book. Answer all his questions to the best of your ability."

I nodded. "Alright. This way…"

We walked past alchemy, turned left at cosmogony, past soterology and into erotica. I briefly rested my gaze on a large golden book until realizing it was named Parsiphallus. I shook my head, took the keys from my pocket and opened the drawer where Hubertus kept his notebook.

Max took the notebook from my hands and examined it. It was encrypted in Hubertus complex, jargon-ridden encoding.

Eventually he handed it back to me. "Find me what ex-Premier Mobius bought recently."

Well, shit. Moebius had been a wanted criminal for some time now. I didn’t know the Sappho could evade Triple Eye surveillance that well.

I quickly found an entry a pair of months old.

"Here, sir. He bought: 1 of Delomelanicon. 1 of Moribus et rebus gestis Satanae. 1 of Necronomicon, trans. by Olaus Wormius. 1 of Watership Down, rabbit skin binding." I looked up. "Rabbit skin? Now that’s fucking evil."

He looked distant. Then he proved my initial judgment – paranoid schizophrenic – was correct as he began to speak to himself.

"That would explain… yes, he would need the devil’s cooperation… to win the dragons, with the Empire as a handy bonus. The lover boy is the weakest link…"

He turned to me. "Say, Corso, what do you think the Devil is like?"

"The Devil. Well, more than anything, he’s utterly, totally gay. For Jesus."

He stared at me for a while. "Well, actually, yes. But he’s also extremely hard to appease, these days."

"No shit."

"Moebius required a favor, and I know exactly what it was," he said, snapping his fingers. He was completely mad, so I decided to play along lest he bit me. With his alarum.

"Enlighten me!"

"You’re damn right I will! Morningstar had his demons torture, gang rape and generally  get abyssal on Krystal Halak’s ghost!"

"Ouch! The big meanie! Why would he do that?"

"It’s a plan of utter evil genius, can’t you see?! That’s how we got Tinfoil Lady! Krystal is the TL! He twisted her essence, and the defiled harmonics will expand unhindered until the entire telluric field has been corrupted. All he has to do is place her and Wernher Gauss together. She will then assimilate him, and he will not resist!"

"Amazing! We are Doomed!" I hadn’t had as much fun since the previous night, at Kovalenko’s.

"Yes! What will his friends do, when he becomes tainted? The faux-Damocles, Miriam, will try to purify him, but the MPOITU have no power over the tellurian. On the contrary, she will be assimilated. As, eventually, all of us!"

"Wow! How can we stop Moebius!"

"There is only one way! The Black Fire! It’s an avatar of Eçaraia, the Oblivion, mistress of the Mi-Go. Ironically, if we can have the Fire consume the tainted tellurian before it spreads…" He pointed at me. "That’s it! It all makes sense! The Black Fire and the Klotterdämmerung!"

"But Klot helps Moebius!"

"He was not supposed to! He was destined to be a warrior of Light, the one gifted with the power to fight Oblivion with Oblivion! Moebius corrupted him, but he had always remained as a wild card until now, this twin-pronged attack. Either the Lady of A Million Blades slaughters all life in the universe or Klot and the tainted essence cancel out and we’re left at the mercy of the Mi-Go! So it unfolds – the final act of this plot!"

"Good for you. For the record, I didn’t understand a single word you said," I offered helpfully. He looked at me suspiciously. I shrugged. "What?"

"What, are you waking up for real this time?"

"What?" I looked around me. I was in my bedroom, placed none too comfortably on my armchair. "Oh."

"I took the liberty of kicking in your door," said Adelais. She was lying on her stomach, face resting on both hands, as if she had been watching me sleep, which weirded me out. I don’t pretend to be especially dainty when breathing through clotted blood.

"Oh. Right. I was dreaming about something that happened at work," I explained, rubbing my eyes. "Weird people we meet."

"I can imagine."

"Bookstores totally beat jungle guerrilla in raw danger, you know." I breathed deeply and my dry throat hurt. "So. Where were we? Ah, yes. Fancy seeing you here."

"Alright, mister Robert Corso. I drank all the milk in your fridge, I suppose I owe you some kind of explanation."

"Victory!" I stood up and moved my arms very slowly in a rather unenthusiastic victory dance. She burst out laughing.

"Well, I think you just summed up everything, really. I didn’t laugh. I lived for my work, like ninety percent of our military. And one day my father went all existential and told me I’d better make some civilian friends my age or he’d have me discharged because he didn’t want me to have the meaningless life of duty he had."

"Wow. Sucks to be you," I said, taking off my bloodied jacket and pulling the sonic cleaning hose from its slot on the wall.

"Sometimes." She shrugged, and rolled onto her back, looking at me cleaning my face upside down. Her hair spread like… well, it’s not romantic but my immediate mental image was of a polar bear getting his legs shaved by a drunken Zen Motorcycle Rabbi.

"Why me?" Grillion dollar question from your friendly neighborhood cynic!

"You strike me as the only person with worse social skills than me in the entire city," she answered, and I knew she wasn’t lying. It was soothing, really.

"Oh yes, my personality is easily overwhelmed, I’m always confused, and I’m not perceptive enough for those mind-games that make human interaction so thrilling and demanding."

"Exactly."

I nodded. I could live with that.

"I expect you’re aware I can’t have a boyfriend, especially a human one, due to political and religious arrangements, of course."

"Of course," I said, nodding to myself in the mirror. "I mean, a girlfriend falling from the sky into my lap? No, Glock wouldn’t have that, he has to send me a girl-friend to make me remember exactly how empty and sad my life is and then laugh in my face because I’m exactly like Tantalus in hell."

She made an awkward sound I imagine was an inexperienced attempt at giggling. "Wow, did you take self-depreciation courses with Ricky Whutty? You sound a lot like him."

"I like Sphexoren literature. Especially self-ruining. It’s like self-help, but from a Sphexoren point of view."

"A true Gamezohan man. Made of flesh, steel and despair."

I shrugged and pointed at her. "Morning dew, gentle breeze and tinted glass. You got the uninteresting end of the stick."

She looked at me with curiosity, and I looked at her with whatever feeling you get when you have a beautiful female ass on your bed and know it’s just there because "frustrated expectations" is your middle name. I sighed. "Anyway, what time is it?"

"Why? Today is Thursday. All hail Emperor Wilhelm and his four-day weekend!"

I shook my head. "I said to Mr. Ramirez I’d help him at Sappho after lunch."

"You haven’t had lunch yet, though."

"Are you suggesting anything?"

"We could go somewhere," she replied, sitting up and beginning to put her boots back on.

"Where?"

"Surprise me."

"Bob! What are you… who’s that… greetings! I am DOOM! Ardaster A’Arpam von Doom! Delighted to make your acquaintance."

"Doom, Adelais, Adelais, Doom." I congratulated myself on how incredibly thoroughly I managed to screw myself by bringing her to a place I could not afford. I could see little Zardarkian schoolgirls cheering, waving little pom-poms and chanting, ‘Shit! For! Brains! Shit! For! Brains!’

"Nice to meet you too, Ardy." Wow. Instinctive tactlessness. I liked her.

"I don’t know what my dear friend was thinking when he brought his delightful date to Le Róten Orànge, a place that is practically my second home, but it probably was something in the lines of, Doom will pay the bills for me. Am I right, Bob?"

Good old Doom. You can always count on his urge to appear rich and powerful. I felt like kissing him.

"Good old Doom. I can always count on your urge to appear rich and powerful! I feel like kissing you," I replied.

"And you can always be counted to say what you think. That’s a bad strategy, friend." He gestured us to sit at his table.

"She’s not my date, by the way."

He paled. Well, I think he paled. He looked at Adelais, who smirked and shrugged.

"One of those things, eh," he said, finally.

"I don’t know. What things?" She sounded amused.

"Oh, you know, when… um. Weren’t you supposed to be killing SURTRites?"

"Tracking down Morgan-Giles, actually. Nah, my father decided I should take girly-ness classes instead of leading the most deadly men of the Empire to victory."

"Ah, and Bob is your teacher." Doom grinned. I grinned back, and gave him the finger. He was shedding the poseur mask and showing his better warthog face. Adelais was not cursed with the smothering perkiness girls tend to have. It was easy to think of her as a warthog. Ess. Warthogess? Thogatrix? Hmm.

VI

The first subtle hint that something was wrong came when Davi Ardan rushed by our table shouting into a mobile communicator that all was lost.

"All is lost! Are you positive he has the Stag?"

Doom looked up, but I tried to screen the kitsune out and focus on my anaconda.

"Well, I know from a reliable source he’s got the Unicorn. Oui, this week. This means he has one third of the Plan complete. And if what you say is true, the rest will follow."

I picked up the silverware spork and carefully pulled more molten gorgonzola to my plate.

"You know what follows, mon frére. Enraging the Raven, corrupting the Stag, tainting the Snake. The Stag is as good as compromised in his hands, Aetius has ominous reports regarding the Raven, the Snake has been doomed ever since he crushed the Swan, not to mention they brought the Dove’s destruction unto themselves when they destroyed Damocles."

I drink the last of my passion fruit soda and the waiting robot gives me my free refill.

"Non. I don’t think Lucilla can do much for the Snake, no matter how willing she is. That old schemer… he planned all this. His own renunciation only ensured we cannot pull rank on Syntia now and thwart his plans regarding the Stag. Syntia, is that even a bloody Roman name?"

He asked it looking in my general direction, so I shook my head helpfully.

"Oui, our hope resides in the fact Syntia still has unfinished businesses with the Snake’s sister. If we can keep her focusing on that… Oui. I’ll arrange a meeting between the demoiselles. Talk to you later." He walked off into the porch, and closed a soundproof glass door behind him.

"…well, took him long enough to realize no-one’s interested in what he had to say," I said, finally.

Doom and Ad nodded. "Seer business. Not very interesting," said Doom.

"Oh, you’d know about it?"

He produced his wallet. He had a large, conspicuous one-eyed pyramid badge inside.

"Pretty irrelevant, though. I rank so low all I get to do is being bossed about. Someday this will ensure Success, though, and that’s all that matters," he concluded, returning his wallet to his back pocket.

I nodded and used my spork as a tiny catapult to throw flain pits at him. Adelais watched bemusedly.

Good times.

Later that day at Sappho, having finally convinced my stalker that my job was really really boring and she didn’t have to watch me do it, I was enjoying my brief triumph by doing the exquisitely boring job of arranging the Zardarkian titles by furriness of the writer’s tail. Apparently this was very important for sociological reasons, and the information features highlighted in all the book covers according to an ancient symbolic coding system.

A customer tripped over me, stood up, dusted himself off, and walked away, cursing his awful luck that made him fall down for no reason. Then he said, "Good afternoon, Mr. Ramirez. Do you have dhe book I asked?"

"Oh, yes. Lore of Love and Loss, by Lucas Pásztor. Did you know this was one of the last books to be burned by the Church, in Earth?"

The customer, whom I recognized as Ricardus Whutty, took the book extended to him. It wasn’t one of the oldest in our catalog. "Why? Really sick black magic shit?"

Hubertus laughed. "Hah, you’d wish. No, it’s got nothing to do with Pásztor’s poetry or philosophy, actually. They only came to understand it two centuries later, anyway. Apparently the illustrator was really gay and filled the book with, as the Dominican priest called them, ‘barely disguised pederasty’."

Whutty sighed. "Wow, dhe good news just keep coming, don’t dhey."

"Well, blame the blood. Old Sphexoren Sphexoren was so gloomy, the only time it stopped raining on him was when he got stranded in the Alamein desert world."

Ricardus chuckled. Reading biographies of his ancestors were his main form of entertainment, as he could finally find people more miserable.

"You can take the book, and I’ll discount it from my debts to your House. But I’m curious…" Hubertus leaned closer to the admiral. "What made you suddenly interested in this kind of literature?"

"Oh, dhat’s an easy one," said Whutty, eager to share his pain. "Dhey took my love away."

My boss raised his eyebrows. "Come again?"

"Well, didn’t you hear dhe Mitokana Plaza show was cancelled because she was feeling indisposed? Lies. She never cancelled a show before. She disappeared right after presenting dhe Day’s Overture."

Hubertus Ramirez d’Actylos passed his scrawny fingers on his beard. He could easily win a Hemingway look-alike contest, except for his more Iberian-styled moustache. "That’s strange. What does the Triple Eye know?"

"Dhe station had been commandeered before dhe transmission. Apparently dhe day’s message was some kind of code or in-joke of dhose responsible."

"Hence, the LLL."

"Hence, dhe LLL, yes."

Hubertus nodded. "I imagine you won’t require assistance deciphering the enigma?"

Whutty hesitated. "Actually… now I dhink about it…"

Hubertus opened his mouth dramatically. "My! Let me help you, then, for I’ve devoted myself to the study of this book for quite some time." He took the Lore from its new owner’s unresisting hands. "You see, there are nine panels, associated with the unlocking of the eightfold chrysanthemum path and then Satori. But you knew that, right?"

Whutty scratched his head. "All I knew was dhat dhe quote came from dhat book."

Mr. Ramirez sighed. "Ok, each of the nine key illustrations has a subtitle, taken from an older work, the De umbrarum regni novem portis. That’s mostly irrelevant, though, as the new illustrations are unconnected to the old."

He opened the book at a picture of a large cat. "This illustration, the Panther, is the first of the book and the one your phrase, Nemo pervenit…is the subtitle of. It might have been used as a signature."

"Damn. I knew it. If dhere is one dhing in life a pandher needs, it’s a swift and merciless asskicking."

"A wise aphorism. However, her capture is only part of a greater plan, it would seem. The next illustration, the Swan, bears the subtitle Clausae patent."

"What’s dhat mean?"

"Literally? ‘They open that which is closed’. In the book’s context, it refers to the fact men are more easily hurt and corrupted through their loved ones. The subtitle of the first illustration means roughly ‘no-one who didn’t fight by the rules can win’. It refers to loyalty and honor."

Whutty sighed. "Can you just write it down for me?"

"Corso! You’ve got homework!" I exited placing-books-onto-bookshelves mode. "AAAAH!"

Whutty, "Wow. You gave dhe dude a heart attack. Heh."

I called 911. Hubertus was fine, eventually.

Lo, I worked on my assignment. It was interesting, except for the overabundance of drawings of strong men in loincloths.

I (Roman numeral one, not me) was the Panther. It showed said panther being covered by the Devil in a dark blanket. The subtitle and its meaning have been deciphered already, though there is an additional subtext of irony, as the ‘playing by the rules’ seems to involve trickery.

II is the Swan. The Devil is plain and simple crushing the swan in a grindstone. He collects the "juice" in a bucket. The panther sits faithfully by his side, like a trained dog.

III is the Unicorn. The Devil is guiding the unicorn’s horn to his coat’s pocket, as if driving it inside. The panther is snarling at the unicorn. The bucket is visible in the background. The subtitle is Verbum dimissum custodiat Arcanum, ‘the lost word guards the Secret’. Lucas writes, ‘Obviously the Word is only temporarily lost, and by Secret you can bet your ass they mean Power, even maybe Might. Specifically, military triumph is promised to whoever will seize ownership of the Word when it surfaces in his or her generation.’

IV is the Raven. The Devil has his arms raised and his mouth open in a taunt, and the Raven seems enraged. You can see a unicorn horn coming from the Devil’s pocket, as are present symbols from each previous illustration. The Raven is standing on a tombstone, on which one can just make out the words ‘beloved wife’. The motto is Fortuna non omnibus aeque, ‘Fortune isn’t equal for everyone’. Though the illustration lends itself to the gloomy interpretation that some people are just born to suffer, e.g. me, it’s also supposed to mean death isn’t the common fate of everyone, and other mystical nonsense.

V is the Stag. This is one of the most obscure illustrations. Apparently, the stag and the Devil are sitting around a table, having tea and a pleasant, friendly conversation while smoking cigars. The stag’s and the Devil’s horns have been traded, and the stag casts no shadow. The subtitle is a single word, Frustra, ‘in vain’, and often refers to the attempt to escape from oneself.

VI is the Snake. The Devil is feeding a morose-looking snake from the bucket he’s been dragging along since illustration II. The Devil still has the stag horns and the other trophies. Ditesco mori: ‘I profit from death’. The ambiguity of this phrase is that it could mean one is so miserable he’d be better off dead.

VII is the Boar. The Devil is raising the unicorn’s head from his pocket, grabbing it by the horn, and the light from the unicorn is blinding a large, ferocious-looking boar, whose eyes begin to bleed. Discipulus potior magistro: ‘the student surpasses his master’. There is, Lucas points out, an ironic subtext of blind hubris in the message.

VIII is the Dove. The Devil breaks a dove’s neck. The crow, the stag, the snake and the panther w