"I think not. It is because my logic defeats him."

"I did not know."

"Yes. I have probably had the longest debate of anyone at the End of Time with Bloom. He found that he could not best me in argument. It is sheer revenge, the rest. Or so I suspect."

"Aha?" My Lady Charlotina turned her fine and scented head so that she could smile pleasantly upon the Duke of Queens, strutting past in living koalas. "Then surely you can conceive a means of halting his activities, Doctor Volospion?"

"I believe that I have done so, madam."

She laughed, almost rudely. "But you decide to keep it to yourself."

"The Fireclown has a certain sensitivity. For all I know he has the means to overhear us."

"I should not have thought that, temperamentally, he was an ordinary eavesdropper."

"But I feel, nonetheless, that I should be cautious."

"So you'll not illuminate me?"

"To my regret."

"Well, I wish you luck with your plan, Doctor Volospion." She looked here and there. "Where is your guest, the Fireclown's quarry? Where is Miss Ming?"

He expressed secret glee. "Not here."

"Not here? She travels to meet her suitor at last?"

"No. On the contrary…"

"Then what?" My Lady Charlotina expressed cool impatience.

"Wait," said Doctor Volospion. "I protect her, as I promised. I am her True Knight. You heard me called that. Well I am doing my duty, My Lady Charlotina."

"You are vague, Doctor Volospion."

"Oh, madam, recall that encounter when we stood upon the cliff above Mr Bloom's ship!"

She drew her beautiful brows together. "You acted uncharacteristically, as I remember."

"You thought so."

"Oh," she was again impatient, "yes, yes…"

"Mr Bloom noticed, do you think?"

"He remarked on it, did he not?"

Doctor Volospion brought his hands together at his groin, his maroon and white sleeves swirling. He had an expression upon his pale, ascetic features of extreme self-satisfaction. "Miss Ming," he said, "is safe in my castle. A force-field, quite as strong as the Fireclown's, surrounds it. For her own good, she cannot leave its confines."

"You have locked her up?"

"For her own good. She agreed, for she fears the Fireclown greatly. I merely pointed out to her that it was the best way of ensuring that she would never encounter him."

"In your menagerie?"

"She is comfortable, secure and, doubtless, happy," said Doctor Volospion.

"True Knight, say you? Sorcerer, more accurately!" My Lady Charlotina for the first time showed admiration of Doctor Volospion's cunning. "I see! Excellent!"

Doctor Volospion's thin smile was almost joyous. His cold eyes sparkled. "I shall show you, I think, that I am no mere shadow of Jagged."

"Did anyone suggest…?"

"If anyone did suggest such a thing, he shall be proved in error."

She pursed her lips and looked at first one of her feet and then the other. "If the plan works…"

"It will work. The art of conflict is to turn the antagonist's own strengths against him and to draw out his weaknesses."

"It is one interpretation of the art. There have been so many, down all these millions of days."

"You shall see, madam."

"The Fireclown knows what you have done?"

"He has already accused me of it."

"Well, you shall have the gratitude of each of us if you succeed, Doctor Volospion."

"It is all I wish."

The ground shook. They both turned, to see a magnificent pink pachyderm lumbering towards them. The beast bore a swaying howdah in which were seated both Abu Thaleb and Argonheart Po.

Abu Thaleb, in quilted silks of rose and sable, leaned down to greet them. "My Lady Charlotina! I see music! And my old friend, Volospion. It has been so long…"

"I will leave you to this reunion," murmured My Lady Charlotina, and with a curtsy to the Commissar of Bengal she departed.

"Have you been all this time in your castle, Volospion?" asked Abu Thaleb. "We have not met since that time when we were all three together, Argonheart, you and I, when Mr Bloom's ship had first landed. I have looked for you at many a gathering."

"My attention, for my sins, has been much taken up with our current problem," said Doctor Volospion.

"Ah, if only there were a solution," rumbled Argonheart Po. "We should have realized, when my dinosaurs were incinerated…"

"It was the moment to act, of course," agreed Doctor Volospion. His neck grew stiff with craning and he lowered his head.

"It needs only Miss Ming," said Abu Thaleb, lowering himself over the side of the howdah and beginning to descend by means of a golden rope-ladder the side of his great beast, "to complete the original quartet."

"She cannot be with us. She remains in safety in my castle."

"Probably wise." Abu Thaleb reached the ground. He signed for Argonheart Po that his way was now clear. The monstrous chef heaved his bulk gingerly to the edge and put a tentative foot upon a golden rung. Doctor Volospion watched with some fascination as the corpulent figure, swathed in white, came down the pink expanse.

"It is my duty to protect the lady from any danger," Doctor Volospion said with a certain semblance of piety.

"She must be very much pleased by your thoughtfulness. She is so lacking in inner tranquillity that the trappings of security, physical and tactile, must mean much to her."

"I think so."

"Of course," said Abu Thaleb doubtfully, "this will confirm Mr Bloom's suspicions of you. Are you sure —?"

"I shall have to bear those suspicions, as a gentleman. I do my duty. If my actions are misinterpreted, particularly by Mr Bloom, that is no fault of mine."

"Naturally." Abu Thaleb dismissed his elephant. "But if Mr Bloom were to take it into his head to — um — rescue Miss Ming?"

"I am prepared."

Argonheart Po grunted. "You are looking paler than ever, Doctor Volospion. You should eat more."

"More? I do not eat at all."

"There is more to eating than merely sustaining the flesh," said Argonheart Po pointedly. "If it comes to that, none of us needs to eat, there are so many quicker ways of absorbing energy, but there is a certain instinctive relish to such old-fashioned activities which it is as well to enjoy. After all, we are all human. Well, most of us."

Abu Thaleb was upset by what seemed to him to be one friend's criticism of another. "Argonheart, my dear, we all have preferences. Doctor Volospion enjoys rather more intellectual pastimes than do we. We must respect his tastes."

Argonheart Po was quick to apologize. "I did not mean to infer…"

"I detected no inference," said Doctor Volospion with an extravagant wave of his hand. "My interests, as you must know, are specialized. I study ancient faiths and have little time for anything else. It is perhaps because I would wish to believe in something supernatural. However, in all my studies I have yet to find something which cannot be explained or dismissed either as natural or as delusion. I do, admittedly, possess one or two miraculous artefacts which would seem to possess qualities not easily defined by science, but I fear it is only a lack of knowledge on my part, and that these, too, will be shown to be the products of man's ingenuity."

Argonheart Po smiled. "If, one day, you will let me, I shall produce a culinary miracle for you and defy you to detect all the flavours and textures I shall put into it."

"One day, perhaps, I should be honoured, mighty King of the Kitchen."

And to Abu Thaleb's relief, the two parted amicably.

Doctor Volospion, alone for the moment, glanced about him. He seemed unusually content. A little sigh of pleasure passed between his normally tight-pressed lips. He could, on occasion, produce in himself a semblance of gaiety and now there was a lightness to his step as he moved to greet Mistress Christia, the Everlasting Concubine, changing his costume as he went, to brilliant damson doublet and hose, curling shoes, a hat with a high crown and an elongated peak which could be doffed to brush the turf with a flourish as he bowed low. "Beautiful Christia, Queen of my Heart, how I have longed for this opportunity to see you alone!"