It was no small task to visit the three Weird Sisters, as they were called, though not to their faces, for they lived in a little region of their own beyond space and time, a place that was unconnected to anything else except through the iron thread of Inexplicable Causality. Still, Azzie felt he had to go, because Lachesis, through her connection with Necessity, was reputed to be wise in the ways of the creatures of Dark and Light and skilled at reading their motivations.

First he went shopping for a little gift, for Lachesis liked getting presents, and kept them in a great storeroom that was attached to the modest Greek temple in which she and the other Fates worked. The storeroom had been enlarged over and over again, since the presents sent to influence the Fates never stopped coming. Azzie found a tea strainer in sterling silver, crafted in ancient China, and with this under his arm, suitably gift wrapped, he made his way to the little red star on the rim of the region of space known as the Coalsack, and, taking a deep breath, plunged in.

He was whirled and tumbled in the turbulence of this region, but at last came out at the place he had intended, a rocky meadow, and at the end of it the small brick house where the Three Fates lived, and, behind it, looming very much larger, the huge Greek temple they had built to house the presents that generation after generation of mankind sent in hopes of changing their destinies and winning a few more years or days of life.

"Come right in, dearie," Lachesis said, pushing open the door. "Atropos, Clotho, look who's come for a visit!"

"Why, it's that nice young demon, Azzie," Atropos said. Snip, snip went her shears. Cut fragments of twisted flax floated in the air.

"Take care!" Lachesis said to Atropos. "You cut off those last lives a full inch below my mark. Every centimeter is ten years of life to a mortal!"

"What does it matter?" Atropos said. "They'd just waste those years like they've wasted all the others."

"That's not the point," Lachesis said. "Moira, the web of fate, gives them a certain amount of time to do with as they please. It's not for any god, mortal, or primordial spirit to change that."

"So I'll give someone else an extra inch or two," Clotho said defiantly. "It'll all even out."

Lachesis shrugged and turned to Azzie. "What can I do? Just last week I caught her tying knots in the strands of flax before cutting them. When I asked her about it, she said she just wanted to see what humans thought about having their life-cords tied in knots. And Clotho didn't say a thing against it! She doesn't care, either. I've asked Central Supply to replace Atropos, even if she is an old friend, but they tell me it's a Civil Service ruling, only Atropos can do the job, it wouldn't be traditional or within labor regulations to do otherwise! As if tradition and labor regulations were everything!"

"Don't you give it a thought," Lachesis said. "The tea strainer is lovely, and I know just the place for it.

Now, what do you have on our mind?"

Azzie told her about the Millennial contest, and the ambiguous wording in the Protocols that had been drafted by the Archangel Michael.

"You're right to distrust Michael," Lachesis said, "His zeal for Good has become so great of late that he cares not what he does to win his point. It will get him a reprimand one of these days, I'm sure. But in the meantime he's able to get in his quibble about the uncertain nature of free will and the difficulty of making a judgment based upon it. That covers him for the situations he's going to put Faust into, or, rather, the false Faust. But I wonder how is Ananke to judge the intentions of he who makes the choices, beset, as he will be, by pressures on all sides? It seems that she will have to judge by outcomes rather than intentions. Taking this into account, Michael needed a contestant whose choices he could predict."

"So why not use the real Faust?"

"There are difficulties about the real Faust," Lachesis said. The various stories we have about him present no unanimity in their assessment of his character. He is variously portrayed as a mountebank and boaster, on the one hand, and as a supreme magician and high-level thinker on the other. Michael knew he would have no difficulty getting Mephistopheles to accept Faust as a contestant; the problem came in trying to predict what Faust would do. Whereas Mack the Club was an altogether simpler proposition—a fallen divinity student, living out some hard times, doing some evil deeds, but possessed of an ineluctable urge toward bourgeois propriety; or such at least was the assessment of the Heavenly Investigators who checked him out surreptitiously for Michael."

"Are you telling me," Azzie said, "that Michael put Mack up to it? Put the idea in his head of clubbing Faust and going to his house, knowing that Mephistopheles would be there and would mistake him for the real thing?"

"You mustn't quote me on this," Lachesis said, "but that is the news that reaches me. Many of the Heavenly Host consider it a good joke on that presumptuous Mephistopheles. It was the angel Babriel who did the actual dirty work for Michael, appearing to Mack in a tavern and suggesting that Mack do it, and claiming that it would redound to his credit as a Good Deed. Mack, to his credit, expostulated, saying that it was difficult to justify murder, even for the best cause in the world. At which Babriel rolled his eyes in pious horror and said, 'We're not suggesting murder! Not at all! Not even maiming! We just want you to knock Faust over the head, take his purse, and then take some stuff from his house.' Mack then asked, 'But wouldn't that be stealing?' 'In a way,' Babriel replied. 'But if you put ten percent of your receipts in the poorhouse box, the sin will be rescinded.'"

Lachesis admired the tea strainer again, then put it down and said, "That, at least, is the information I have on the matter."

"This is most interesting news," Azzie said. "I don't know how to thank you for giving me this information."

"I gave it to you for the common good of all," Lachesis said. "We Fates assist neither Dark nor Light. But it is our bounden duty to expose skulduggery when we see it, no matter who commits it and for what purpose. The time may come, Azzie, when I may have to tell tales on you. Don't hold it against me!"

"Indeed I shall not," Azzie said. "He who gets caught deserves discomfiture, that is a rule for all. I must away, good mother!" "What will you do with this information?" Lachesis asked. "I don't know yet," Azzie said. "First I'll cherish it for a while, and gloat over it in my heart, then I'll see how I can put it to use."

And with that, he was away.

CHAPTER 15

Marguerite asked, "Where is this place?" She rearranged her gown and tried to do something with her hair, which had been considerably windswept from their recent trip.

They had just come plummeting down out of the blue, arriving near a large marble building with pillars situated on a hilltop. Nearby was an open-air market where small, dusky men sold rugs, cloaks, tapestries, and other goods. Behind the market were tents colored brown and dun and black, making the place look like a Bedouin encampment. "Where are we?" Marguerite asked.

"This is Athens," Faust told her. "That marble building over there is the Parthenon."

"And these guys here?" Marguerite asked, indicating the rug sellers.

"Merchants, I suppose," Faust said.

Marguerite sighed. "Is this the glory that was Greece? It's nothing like they taught us in Goose School."

"Ah, well, you're thinking of ancient times," Faust said. "This is the modern age. It's changed a bit. And yet, the Parthenon is still here, its tall Doric pillars standing against the blue sky like a sentinel of all that is good and worthy and beautiful in the world of men."