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                           CINDERELLA STORY

                           By ALLEN KIM LANG

                _What a bank! The First Vice-President
                 was a cool cat--the elevator and the
                money operators all wore earmuffs--was
                just as phony as a three-dollar bill!_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


                                   I

The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."

"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.

Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.

"Beg pardon?"

"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.

"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.

"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."

"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.

"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"

"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.

The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.

"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.

The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"

"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"

"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"

"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you--"

"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.

"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's _Wall Street Journal_, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."

Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.

       *       *       *       *       *

By lunchtime Orison had finished the _Wall Street Journal_ and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named _The Hobbit_. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.

Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.

Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.

What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house--the Windsor Arms--and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.

Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.

       *       *       *       *       *

In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.

No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.

"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.

Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.

"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."

Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.

The room was empty.

"Testing," the voice repeated.

"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"

"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"

"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.

"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."

Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.

"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.

Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.

"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"

"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"

"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"

"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.

"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."

Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.

"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."

"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.

"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.

Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.


                                  II

At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
_Wall Street Journal_, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."

"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?

"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.

"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.

"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.

"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.

"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"

"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.

"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.

"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."

"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."

"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"

"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"

Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.

"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"

"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.

"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.

"Thank you," she said.

He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.

       *       *       *       *       *

Orison finished the _Wall Street Journal_ by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's _Congressional Record_. She launched into the _Record_,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so _well_, darling," someone said across the desk.

Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."

"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.

"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.

"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."

"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"

"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."

"Thanks," Orison said.

"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding--you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise, _n'est-ce pas_?"

"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her _Wall
Street Journal_ into a club and standing. "Darling."

"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"

"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."

"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.

The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.

"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.

"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."

"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.

"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."

"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."

"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped _Pickelhauben_; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed--what continental manners these bankers
had!--and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."

Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."

"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."

"_N'est-ce pas?_" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."

Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"

"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And _bon voyage_."

Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.

First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the _Wall Street Journal_ from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.

Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "_Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa._"

Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."

"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"

"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.

Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.

But the building had a stairway.


                                  III

The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.

She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.

Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.

The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.

Into a pair of arms.

"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two _sumo_-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."

"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed _sumo_-wrestlers protested.

"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."

"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.

"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."

"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"

"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.

"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.

"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"

"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."

"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."

"I...."

Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.

"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
_Samma!_"

Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.

"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"

"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."

"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"

"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."

"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.

She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."

"I'd rather not," she protested.

"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.

       *       *       *       *       *

Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.

"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.

"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."

"What do they do?" Orison asked.

"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."

"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.

"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."

Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."

"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."

Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.

Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dink took her to the elevator and pressed the "Down" button. "Don't
come up here again unless I bring you," he said. "The Microfabridae
aren't dangerous, despite what my brother told you, but some of our
processes might involve some risk to bystanders. So don't take any
more tours above the fifth floor without me as your guide. All right,
Orison?"

"Yes, Dink."

The elevator stopped. "Take the lady to her office," Dink told the
bowing, earmuffed operator. "And Orison," he said, just before the
door closed, "I'm really not a Bluebeard. See you this evening."

Dink Gerding, wearing an ordinary enough suit, well-cut, expensive, but
nothing extraordinary for a banker, called for Orison at seven. He'd
look well, she thought, slipping into the coat he held for her, in a
white uniform brocaded with pounds of spun gold, broad epaulettes, a
stiff bank of extravagantly-colored ribbons across his chest; perhaps
resting his right hand on the pommel of a dress saber. "Dink," she
asked him, "were you ever in the Army?"

"You might say I'm still in an army," he said, turning and smiling down
at her from that arrogant posture of his. "I'm a corporal in the army
of the gainfully employed; an army where there's little glamor but
better pay than in the parades-and-battles sort. What makes you ask,
Orison?"

"Because of the way you stand and walk, Dink," she said. "Like an
Infantry captain from Texas."

"I'm flattered," Dink Gerding said, holding open the lobby door for
her. "The car's just around the corner."

"I met your brother, Kraft, earlier today, just before he and the
Earmuffs caught me up on eighth floor," Orison said. "He's no Texan,
that one. A Junker, maybe. I'm afraid I don't much care for your
brother, Dink."

"To be my elder brother is Kraft's special misfortune," Dink said. "I
understand he was quite loveable as a boy. Here's our transportation."

The car was a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith, splendidly conspicuous beside
the curb of the Windsor Arms, reducing that nobly-named establishment
by contrast to more democratic proportions. The ubiquitous Mr. Wanji,
liveried in a uniform nearly as ornate as the one Orison had visualized
for Dink, only his earmuffs clashing with the magnificence of his
costume, sprang from the driver's seat, raced around the limousine and
stood at attention holding the door for Orison and her escort. The
front door of the Rolls was marked, she observed, with a gold device
of three coronets. At the center of the triangle they formed was the
single letter "D."

The Rolls negotiated the city streets with the dignity of the _Queen
Elizabeth_ entering a minor harbor. "I thought you bankers aspired to
the common touch," Orison remarked. "I expected you to come for me in a
taxi, or perhaps a year-old Ford you drove yourself."

"Wanji is a better driver than I. So I have him drive me," Dink
explained. "We each do the work we're trained for. I assist Wanji in
balancing his checkbook, for example. As for this car, it belongs not
to me, but to my family. My family owns most of the toys I play with."
He paused. "I've been thinking, Orison, of acquiring a most valuable
property for myself alone."

"A nice little seventy-meter yacht?" Orison inquired. "Or the island of
Majorca, perhaps?"

"Something even grander," Dink said. "You, Miss McCall."

"But, Dink!"

The Rolls glided to the curb. Wanji jumped out and snapped open the
door. "Sire!" he said, and saluted as Dink disbarked. Orison took
Dink's hand and stepped to the curb, acknowledging Wanji's bow to her
with a princess smile. She'd come a long way from the secretarial pool.

       *       *       *       *       *

The doorman of the restaurant, instructed as to the importance of
these clients by their tableau at the curb, ushered Dink Gerding and
Orison McCall into the presence of the maitre d'. When the doorman
had been rewarded with a crackling handshake, the headwaiter led them
through the crowd of groundlings as though they were accompanied by
fife and drums. The table to which he bowed them, while not the most
conspicuous, was without doubt the finest the management had to offer.
The _Reserved_ sign was swept aside with a gesture that indicated that
there were no reservations where Mr. Dink Gerding was concerned.
Mr. Gerding justified the maitre's confidence in him with another
green-palmed handshake.

"Dink," Orison whispered across the table. "That was a fifty-dollar
bill you gave him."

"Yes, it was," Dink admitted. "I felt that fifty was enough."

"Quite enough," Orison assured him.

The wine-steward, wearing a chain that could have held a tub to
mooring, absorbed Dink's instructions with the air of a chela attending
the dying words of his guru. The two waiters poised themselves
reverently at his shoulders, waiting the revelation of his order.
"We'll begin ..." Dink began.

"Dink, I'd like a lobster," Orison said.

"I'd not advise lobster," Dink said thoughtfully. "I'm afraid that
lobster won't agree with you this evening."

"Dink, lobster is what I want," Orison insisted. "Haven't you heard of
the Nineteenth Amendment?"

"Very well, feminist," Dink said. He turned to the waiter at his right.
"The lady will have a lobster." He turned to the left. "As for me, a
saddle of venison, and such accessory furniture as you may choose to
accompany it." The waiters bowed and retreated.

"Why do you insist on being boss, even after banking-hours?" Orison
asked.

"Being boss is not my nature, but is my training," Dink said. "It seems
to me, Orison, that you American women resent the dignity of being
served by an adoring man."

"I prefer dignities to be more democratic," she said. "Why, in any
case, should you be exercised by my choosing lobster for dinner? My
digestion is my own affair, isn't it?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Your question," Dink said, resting his elbows on the table, "requires
a two-part answer. _Imprimus_: everything you do interests me, Orison,
inasmuch as you are my future bride. Please make no comment at this
point. Allow me to enjoy for the moment the male privilege of unimpeded
speech. _Secundus_: I once wished to be a doctor, had not my career
been chosen by my father. I still pursue the study of medicine as a
hobby. I didn't wish you to order lobster because I'm certain that
you'll be unable to enjoy lobster."

"I've eaten it before," Orison said. "Except for the engineering
difficulties in getting through the shell with all those little picks
and nutcrackers and nail-clippers, I had no trouble to speak of. Dink,
are you a foreigner?"

"What makes you think I may be?" he asked.

"The crest of your car, the earmuffs on most your staff at the Bank and
the fact that you seem to think a woman's opinion nothing more than a
trifle. There's a beginning," Orison said.

"What's wrong with earmuffs?" Dink demanded. "Everybody wears earmuffs."

"Not everybody," Orison said. "Not in April. Not bank officials. Not
indoors, in any case."

"Must report this to the Board," Dink said, taking a notebook from his
pocket and scribbling. "Must find alternative. No earmuffs indoors."

Perfect, Orison thought, near tears. He's perfect. He'd sit astride
that milk-white charger like a round-table knight, sturdy and lean and
honest-eyed. Dink is perfect, she thought, except only that he's insane.

Dink tucked his notebook back into his vest-pocket. "If I were a
foreigner," he asked, "would it make any difference to you?"

"Your nationality should concern me as little as my diet concerns you,"
Orison said.

"You said _should_," Dink pointed out. "That means that you are
concerned with me. Therefore, I will formally invite you to marry me."
He held up his hand as Orison began to speak. "I warn you, Orison,
there are only two answers possible to my proposal. Only _Yes_ or _Some
day_."

"What if I said no?" Orison asked.

"I'd interpret it as Some day," he said, and smiled.

"You know nothing about me," Orison protested.

"But I do," Dink said. "I know you're good. I know that you've fallen
half in love with me, and I entirely in love with you, in this half-day
in April that we've known each other."

"No," Orison said, gripping tightly the edge of the table.

"That means, Some day," he said.

The lobster arrived in post-mortem splendor, borne on a silver tray,
brick-red, garnished with sprigs of parsley and geranium, served with
the silver instruments designed for his dissection and the bowl of
baptismal butter. "Oh ..." Orison said, turning her eyes away from the
supper she'd selected. "It's horrible!"

"You've no appetite for lobster?" Dink asked.

"I'd as soon eat boiled baby," Orison said, pressing her napkin against
her lips.

"Take it away," Dink instructed the waiter. "The lady will have the
same order as I." The crustacean, red but undismembered, was again
borne aloft by the waiter to be returned to the scene of his martyrdom.
"Try a little of the wine, Orison," Dink suggested, tipping a splash of
the Riesling into her glass. "It will clear your head."

       *       *       *       *       *

She sipped. "It helps," she admitted. "What do you suppose happened
to me, Dink? It's as though all of a sudden I'd become allergic to
lobster."

"In a sense you are, darling," Dink said.

"Such a strange thing," she said.

"Don't let these strange things worry you, Orison," Dink said. "Think
this: for everything in the universe, there's an explanation. If you
understand it or not, the explanation's still there, curled up in the
middle of the mystery like Pinocchio in the belly of his whale. Just
have faith in the essential honesty of the universe, Orison, and you'll
be all right."

"A comforting philosophy," Orison said. "I can't imagine an explanation
for my sudden distaste for lobster, though."

"Such things happen," Dink assured her. "I have a friend, for instance,
who holds life in such reverence that he eats only vegetables. Isn't
that strange? And he worries, this very good friend of mine, that
perhaps vegetables have souls, too; and that perhaps it is no more
moral to destroy them for his food than it is to roast and ingest his
fellow animals."

"So what does this friend of yours eat?" Orison asked.

"Vegetables," Dink said. "But he worries about it. He's now proposing
to confine his diet to cakes made from algae. His argument is that if
vegetables have souls, algae have very small souls indeed; and that
they suffer less in being eaten than would, say, a cabbage or an
apple. His guilt may be numerically greater, eating algae. But it will
be qualitatively less."

"Has this micro-vegetarian friend of yours thought of psychotherapy?"
Orison asked.

"Often," Dink said. "But he maintains that he's much too old to pour
out his mind to a stranger; too set in his patterns to change. He fears
most of all, he says, that he might be made uncomfortable in new ways."

"We all do," mused Orison.

"Do I make you uncomfortable in a new way?" Dink asked.

"You're strange," Orison said. "Your Bank is fantastic. All in all,
this is the most peculiar day I've ever lived."

"I promise you, Orison, that someday you'll understand why the sight
of lobster made you ill this evening, why so many of the people at the
Bank wear earmuffs, why I seem foreign. You'll understand the work of
the singing Microfabridae and you'll meet Elder Compassion; you'll
know why Wanji was excited about the escudo green; and someday soon,
this most of all I promise you, you'll love me, and be my wife. Hah!
Here are the comestibles. Let's talk of topics less vital than love
and earmuffs. Let's talk of the weather, and Mr. Kennedy, and the
orchestra."


                                   V

_Abstract of Transcript, Monitor J-12, to U.S. Treasury Department
Intelligence:_

"Miss Orison McCall's report from Potawattomi, Indiana, was delayed
by one hour. Contact was established at 00:10 hours. Details follow
herewith:

"J-12: CQ, CQ, CQ, CQ.

"Miss McCall: If you'd been a minute later, I'd have been sound asleep,
dreaming bad dreams.

"J-12: Is the job wearing you down?

"Miss McCall: It's exciting and mysterious. Nothing like Washington.
The boss of Taft Bank appears to be a man named Dink Gerding. He's six
feet tall and slim, his hair is clipped short as a dachshund's, and he
walks like an Olympic skier. The other men at the bank bow when they
meet him, and some of them get all the way down onto the floor when
he's angry. Do you suppose this means something?

"J-12: Everything means something.

"Miss McCall: He said that. Dink did. For everything in the universe,
he said, there's an explanation.

"J-12: Not so. I mean that everything that people do in banks is
explainable. Not all the universe is logical--the tax-structure, for
instance, or the ways of women.

"Miss McCall: I'm not required to put up with male chauvinism from a
pillow, Mister, no banns having been published between us.

"J-12: Sorry, beautiful. Here are instructions from the Chief. He wants
to know why some members of the Taft Bank staff wear earmuffs, and he
wants details of what goes on upstairs. He wants you to get to know
this Dink Gerding better. Over.

"Miss McCall: Roger, Wilco, and Aye-Aye. Meanwhile, get philologists
working on this. The sentence, _Wanji e-Kal, Datto. Dink ger-Dink
d'summa_, means, more or less, 'This is Wanji. I'd like to speak to
Dink Gerding.' This message was received by me at Taft Bank this
morning, evidently by accident. Check also possible meaning of the
phrase, 'Escudo green is pale.'

"J-12: Will do.

"Miss McCall: Good night, then; wherever you are.

"J-12: Good night, beautiful. Out."

_Report of Treasury Intelligence on six words of presumed
foreign-language message_:

"_Datto_ may be Tagalog _chief_. _Summa_ is Latin _sum_. Total message
is nonsense in fifty languages. The clear message, _Escudo green is
pale_ probably a code. Escudo is Portuguese currency presently equal to
U.S. $0.348. End of Report."

_Confidential report_ (on scratchboard) _of Elder Compassion to H.R.H.
Dink ger-Dink, Prince Porphyrogenite of Empire, Heir-Apparent to the
Throne, Scion of the Triple Crown, Count of the Northern Marches,
Admiralissimo of the Conquest Forces of Empire, Captain-Commander of
the XLIIth Subversion-and-Conquest Task Force (Sol III)_:

"She whispered to her pillow, local time 2 A.M., 'I love him.'"

       *       *       *       *       *

Orison hadn't gone to sleep easily. She'd suppressed information from
J-12, saying nothing to him about the Microfabridae, surely the most
striking objective discovery of her two days' spying within the Taft
Bank. More central in her thoughts than her disloyalty to the Treasury
Department, though, was Dink Gerding. He'd told her that she was
half in love with him. He was half wrong, she thought. "I love him
entirely," she whispered, not knowing that J-12--in carelessness, not
subterfuge--had left the receiver-switch open to the pillow she'd made
her confidante.

_The Wall Street Journal_ greeted her the next morning, curled up in
her "In" basket. She'd just switched on her microphone and said "Good
morning" to her invisible listener when Mr. Wanji stepped from the
elevator. His ears, she saw, were bare today. But they were pink--a
shocking, porcelain, opaque, Toby-mug shade of pink.

She looked away from this latest manifestation of peculiarity in
banker's ears. "Good morning, Mr. Wanji," she said.

"Hi, doll," Wanji said. "The brain-guy says you don't have to read out
loud any more. Just read quiet-like. Dig?"

"Yes, sir," she said. "Shall I take notes on anything in particular?"

"Naw," Wanji said. "The brain-guy, he remembers everything."

"The brain-guy?" Orison asked. "Is that Dink Gerding?"

"Naw. Dink's the boss. The brain-guy is the man who makes the wheels
go round," Wanji said. He pressed the "Up" button of the elevator. As
Wanji embarked, Orison observed that the elevator operator had the same
shocking-pink ears.

Had those earmuffs been designed to hide this pinkness, the symptom of
some rare and disfiguring disease? Orison returned to her newspaper,
reading silently as ordered, wondering what obscure Pinocchio of sense
was curled up in the belly of this whale of illogic. The elevator,
she noticed with the housekeeping bit of her mind, was running much
more than usual today, up and down like a spastic yo-yo. Whatever the
mysterious business of the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust
Company might be, there was a lot of it being done.

Her telephone buzzed. Orison switched off her microphone. "Miss McCall
here," she said, feeling very efficient and British.

"This is Mr. Kraft Gerding," she was told. "I need you at the National
Guard Armory right away, Miss McCall. Will you come right over?"

"Yes, sir," Orison said. She gathered up her purse and coat and pressed
the elevator button. The operator ushered her into his car as though
she were his queen, and the elevator the paramount plane of the royal
flight. Standing behind him as he piloted them downward five floors,
Orison studied the man's ears. They were that awful, artificial pink,
as though enameled. Pancake makeup? Orison wondered. The ears, now the
earmuffs were off, might be the clue to that fish-of-understanding she
sought. Orison dampened a fingertip and applied it to the edge of the
man's ear.

He turned and stared. "A fly," Orison explained. "I brushed it off."

"Oh. Thank you. Here's the street floor, Miss McCall."

"Thank you." Orison stepped from the lobby to Broadway, refusing to
examine her fingertip until she was well beyond the shadow of the Taft
Bank Building. Now she looked at it.

A sort of pink paint was showing there. And where she'd touched the
elevator operator's ear to remove the makeup, the flesh beneath had
shown a brilliant, eggplant purple.

       *       *       *       *       *

Orison was greeted at the National Guard Armory by Auga Vingt, mistress
of malice. "How lovely of you to come right over, darling," she said.
"Kraft is waiting for you in the office of Company C."

"Thank you, darling," Orison purred. She clutched her purse as she
walked up the indicated stairway, Miss Vingt behind her.

Kraft Gerding was in full uniform behind a desk marked "Commanding
Officer," but his was not the uniform of the U.S. Army. It was the sort
that Mr. Wanji had worn as Dink's chauffeur, its splendor squared.
"Good morning, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said, standing. "I'm so
happy you could come. We need you here."

"What am I to do, sir?" Orison asked.

"Your presence is the full extent of your services required, my dear,"
he said. "You see, you're my hostage. My brother's interest in your
welfare is so marked that I determined to seize you as collateral for
his cooperation. We've begun a revolution, Miss McCall. You'll stay
with us until victory. Colonel the Margravine Auga Vingt, Commander of
the Royal Refreshment Corps, will act as your hostess. Colonel, please
take Miss McCall to her quarters."

"Now look here, bud!" Orison said.

"The proper address to Mr. Gerding is 'Your Royal Highness,' darling,"
Miss Vingt said, accompanying her point of protocol with a jab at the
small of Orison's back. "Come along, darling."

"I'm not going anywhere until I've telephoned Dink," Orison said.

"Terribly sorry," said Colonel Auga Vingt. "Our telephone has just
gone out of order." Two bravos wearing U.S. Army fatigues--surely the
largest such uniforms ever sewn together--stepped into the room. They
were enormous men, menacing, purple of ear. "Will you walk along like a
good girl, or shall I have my pets carry you?" the odious Auga asked.

"I'll walk," Orison decided. "What's more, I'll sue."

"All in good time, darling," Auga Vingt said.

       *       *       *       *       *

Orison's cell was large enough to be a ballroom, comprising as it did
the entire basement of the armory. A cot had been unfolded in one
corner, next to a parked half-track, and three olive-drab blankets were
stacked upon it. "Home, darling," Colonel Vingt said.

"I hope you realize that kidnapping is a Federal offense," Orison said.

"So is seizing an armory," her warden explained. "Of course, the
U.S. Army doesn't realize we've got it, yet. They drill here only on
Mondays." She turned and spoke quickly to the two guards, using what
was apparently the same language Wanji had employed over the telephone.
The guards bowed, then each chose a vehicle for his guard-post. One
seated himself behind the wheel of a weapons-carrier, the other posting
himself, cross-legged, on the steel hatch of a Sherman tank.

Auga Vingt turned to leave. "Hey," Orison said. "You're not going to
abandon me here with these two gorillas."

"But, darling, I am!" the obnoxious Auga replied. "If you're worried
about your virtue, rest easy, lamb. I can assure you that my thugs are
safe as kittens, providing only that you make no attempt to escape.
They are required, you see, to confine their romantic aspirations to
members of the Royal Refreshment Corps of appropriate rank. Since they
speak no English, nor any other tongue you're likely to have heard of,
they won't be much company. But they will be loyal in their attendance."

"Let me out of here!" a man's voice shouted, the sound echoing among
the ranks of tanks, half-tracks, weapons-carriers, and jeeps.

"Who's that?" Orison demanded.

"Your fellow-prisoner," Auga explained. "Until quite recently, he was
Commanding Officer of C Company. Your keepers have strict orders not
to let you two speak to one another. But I must get on with my duties,
charming as I find your company. Good day, darling."

"Drop dead," Orison suggested.

       *       *       *       *       *

After the door had slammed behind Auga Vingt, and the key had chattered
in its lock, she sat at the edge of her cot. The two guards watched her
as casually as though she were just another item on the Motor Company's
T.O.&E. This is what she got for playing it coy with Washington, Orison
thought. If she'd clued J-12 in on the Microfabridae, she'd at least
have been given some technical help. Then someone might have been there
to blow the whistle when she disappeared from the Taft Bank Building.
As things stood now, no one would know of her abduction until her
pillow called tonight at eleven-fifteen and got no answer: A long time
off, she thought. Perhaps she could get some help from the imprisoned
commander of C Company, she thought. Orison stood and called out, "Hey,
there! Can you hear...."

A large palm suddenly closed over her mouth. The guard who'd been
seated atop the tank had sprung down and appeared beside her as
suddenly as a circus trick. Experimentally, he removed his hand from
her mouth. "... me?" Orison completed her query, and was shut off again.

"Five by five," the male voice answered. "Who are...." The other guard
was gone now, and presumably stood beside the captain as his fellow
stood beside Orison. There was silence for five minutes, Orison having
trouble breathing, struggling until it became apparent that no action
of hers would have the slightest effect on the mountainous bulk of her
muffler. Then he removed his hand. Orison, out of breath, her lesson
learned, stayed quiet. The guards resumed their seats aboard the
rolling-stock.

There must be another way to signal her fellow-prisoner, Orison
thought. Tapping? She clicked an S-O-S on the side of a jeep with her
pen. Her guard appeared beside her as quickly as before, and took the
pen to stick it in his pocket. She was, it appeared, effectively in
solitary confinement.

Orison stood up to see if the guard minded. Apparently not. She walked
about the huge basement. She'd never before seen so much military
hardware outside an Armed Forces Day parade. Impressive, all this
steel. A ramp led up to a door the size of a barn-side, also steel,
bolted. If she could get inside a tank, and close the hatch, and
somehow get the monster up that ramp to ram that door, she'd make an
impressive call for help, Orison thought. She put one foot atop a
tank-tread when a large arm reached around her and set her aside. Her
guard, silent-footed, had been following all through her tour.

Orison returned to her cot.

Great deal, she thought. From desk to dungeon in an hour and a half.
She'd battled with shadows, earmuffed shadows, and had got herself set
in an amateur jail guarded by a pair of purple-eared apes. Nothing to
do but wait.

Four feet crashed onto concrete, two figures bowed till the palms of
their hands brushed the floor. "_T'ink_," the newcomer said. The two
guards backed to their vehicles and resumed their seats.

"Orison, my dear!" It was Kraft Gerding, all unction and teeth,
advancing upon her like the loser at tennis, hand outstretched. "I hope
you haven't been unduly discommoded," he said.

       *       *       *       *       *

"I haven't been commoded at all," Orison said. "No one showed me the
way. Would you mind explaining this chivaree to me, Mr. Gerding?"

"I'd be delighted to explain, my dear," Kraft Gerding said, bowing.
"May I sit?" he asked, waving a hand toward her cot.

"You may fall on your dreadful face, for all I care," Orison said.

"You must learn to speak like a queen," Kraft said, seating himself on
the cot beside her. "Otherwise, of course, you are perfect."

"Of course," Orison said. "I can't say the same for you."

"I grow on one," Kraft said. "You wonder, no doubt, how the William
Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company became a battleground; why
many of our employees have ears the color of day-old bruises; why Wanji
was so exercised by the color of escudoes; and what the work is that
the Microfabridae sing at. No?"

"Yes," Orison said.

"May I smoke?" Kraft Gerding asked, bringing a cheroot from an inner
pocket of his fieldmarshal's uniform.

"Smoke, glow, burst into flame. It's all the same to me," Orison said.

Kraft Gerding lit his cheroot with the air of an acolyte igniting
incense. Then, puffing, "Accident," he said, "has made you privy to a
_coup d'etat_. Our Empire, you see, is based on porphyrogeniture. Thus
my brother, Dink, is the Heir Apparent. I, his elder brother, conceived
before our father became Emperor, am merely Margrave of the North,
Prince Royal of the House of Dink, Colonel-General of the Forces of the
Triple Crown, Grand Duke of the Zilf Archipelago and Holder of the Keys
to the Royal City of Chilif."

"How unassuming can you get?" Orison asked.

"Your un-knowledge is deeper than I bethought me," Kraft Gerding
said, smiling, scooting a little wester on the cot. Orison moved one
hips-breadth further to the west.

"Very well," Kraft said. "As a primer, thus: my brother Dink ger-Dink,
heir through accident of tradition to the Triple Crown of Empire;
I, his elder, better brother; and our officers and exiles--these
latter common criminals, marked for men's contempt with purple
ears--constitute the XLIIth Subversion-and-Conquest Task Force of the
Empire of Dink. This mighty Empire, for your information, lies some
distance off in the southern skies of Earth."

"How far off?" Orison asked.

"As far," Kraft Gerding said, "as all your men since Adam have run in
pursuit of beauty." He scooted further west.

Orison made still further westering. "You come from some foreign
planet?" she asked.

"No longer foreign, my dear," Kraft said. "Our planet, our triple
footstool, welcomes young Earth to share our ancient wisdom and relax
under the shadow of our might."

"And I, young Earth, tell you, Kraft Gerding, to go sail a saucer,"
Orison said.

       *       *       *       *       *

Kraft Gerding stood up. "Come with me, my dear. I'll show you the
greenery that establishes me as Emperor Apparent of the planet Earth."
He strode to a steel door, took a key from his pocket, and unlocked it.
"Behold!" he said, flinging the door open.

Orison stepped into the basement room, a cube some fifty feet in each
dimension. She found herself in a corridor between huge walls of
bundled paper. Kraft Gerding, behind her, pried a packet from the wall
and handed it to her. "This, my dear Orison, is the lever with which
I'll over-turn the Earth," he said.

The bundle was banded with a strip of paper bearing the legend,
"$5,000 in 50's." Each bit of paper in the bundle bore the portrait
of President U. S. Grant. "This room," Kraft Gerding said, "contains
some four hundred million dollars in U.S. currency. I intend with this
money, and as much more as I need, to subvert and purchase a nation.
The United States will then be the beach-head for the world."

"Counterfeits," Orison said.

"But perfect counterfeits," Kraft said. "The paper was manufactured
by the master-craftsmen of Chilif. The inks were compounded by the
chemists of that same capital city of Empire. The plates were cut
by twenty million engravers, the Microfabridae of the Storm-Planet,
supervised by Elder Compassion, an ancient of the slothful race that
inhabits the planet nearest our mother sun. This is but one of my
treasuries. I have many such. There is the Threadneedle Room, filled
with pounds-sterling, in ones, fives, fifties and hundreds. There are
other rooms, boxes, trunks and trucks filled with all the currencies
of Earth. I am ready now to purchase this planet from its owners. No
violence, you see. Just subterfuge."

"It's violence enough, to ruin a planet," Orison said.

"It beats war," Kraft Gerding said, drawing on his cheroot.

"And that disgusting Miss Vingt?" Orison asked. "What does she do in
your forces of subversion?"

"Colonel the Margrave Auga Vingt is commander of the Royal Refreshment
Corps," Kraft said. "You understand that it wouldn't do to allow our
men, the purple-eared scum of three planets, to live off the land in
the delicate matter of women. Colonel Vingt's Corps both maintains
morale and prevents incidents of fraternization that Earthmen might
deplore with their fists and guns." Kraft chuckled. "You'll be amused
to hear that Auga Vingt has an ambition to become my Empress, once I
have overthrown my brother's tyranny and taken over Earth."

"I must sit down," Orison said.

"By all means, my dear," Kraft said. He tipped over a stack of bundled
twenty-dollar bills as a hassock for her comfort.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Could I have a cigarette?" Orison asked.

"Do." Kraft Gerding removed a pack from his pocket and lighted it for
her, passing it from his lips to hers. Orison, hiding her feelings of
distaste for this intimacy, drew on the cigarette. "Perhaps I might
have a drink as well?" she asked. "All this is making me rather dizzy."

"It is dizzy-making," Kraft conceded. "In an instant, my pet." He
strode from the treasure-room, shouting in his native language to the
guards.

Orison tugged a twenty-dollar bill from one of the bundles on which
she'd been sitting and held it to the tip of her cigarette, drawing
to make it hot. The paper glowed, but the tiny patch of fire died out
almost at once. She fumbled in her purse. There it was--her bottle of
nail-polish remover. She splashed the aromatic fluid over the bundled
money and again touched her cigarette to it. The paper flared. Flames
ran in upstream rivers through the stacks above.

Orison ran to the nearest jeep and turned the key. The gears were
unfamiliar to her, but she mastered them sufficiently to get moving
forward toward the steel doors. Up the ramp she rolled, her feet braced
down hard on the accelerator, wedged into her seat. The jeep struck the
steel doors and bounced back the ramp to the sound of a giant Chinese
gong, its engine stalled. Groggy, Orison dismounted and ran to the
door. She pounded on the steel with both fists, shouting for help.

An arm encircled Orison, and she heard behind her the door of the
money-room slam shut. "The blaze will smolder itself out in a moment,
my dear," Kraft Gerding said. He spoke to the guard who held her, and
she was released. "I doubt that you've destroyed more than a million
dollars' worth of your local paper with your prank," he said. "Five
minutes' press-run. I've brought you a spot of brandy. I daresay you
can use it. Arson is thirsty work."

He held out his hand. One of the purple-eared guards produced a silver
tray with a decanter and two balloon-glasses, poured them a quarter
full and presented the glasses to his chief, bowing deeply. Kraft took
one glass, giving the other to Orison. "A toast?" he asked. "To the
success of my rebellion. To our inevitable marriage. And to the health
of our progeny, who are, my dear, to inherit the Earth. A shotgun
toast," he said.

Orison dashed her brandy toward his face. Kraft turned, catching the
shower against his left ear, where it trickled down to stain the braid
of his epaulette. He glared and raised his hand in a most unchivalrous
gesture, then stopped himself. One of the guards produced a silken
cloth to blot him dry.

"The word 'shotgun' was perhaps ill-chosen," Kraft said. "The spirit
you show, dear Orison, is a quality most appropriate to the future
Empress of Earth."

"Keep away from me," Orison said.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Our ceremony of betrothal is simple," Kraft said. He put his
sword-arm about her waist. "You need only hear me say the words, 'I,
Rex-Imperator, take thee to wife,' and then bow, in the presence of
witnesses of my choosing. You'll be as noble as any princess conceived
in the Purple Chamber of the Palace of Chilif."

"I'd rather die than marry you," Orison said.

"You've established the parameters of the possible rather neatly,
my dear," Kraft Gerding said. "You will become my wife, and
Empress-Apparent of Earth, or you will shortly be the loveliest corpse
on this fair planet. My will is heaven's law, you understand. My
word carries the sanction of two suns, and my anger breeds massive
destruction. I ask of you your one slight person. In return, I offer to
share with you my greatness. You will rule with me in the palace I have
chosen--I forget its name, but it is presently used as the tomb of the
lady who invented the brassiere--the Taj Mahal, that's it. Perhaps we
could rename it. Answer quickly, now; great deeds are deeds of impulse:
marry me!"

"You're mad," Orison said.

"When a man has the power I have, he cannot be called a madman, for
his mind shapes the world to his dreams. There is then, you see, no
disorientation," Kraft said. "You've had a good ten seconds now to
decide. Shall I call my wedding-guests or my executioner?"

"Dink will never let you marry me," Orison said.

"His suit has come so far as that?" Kraft said. "No matter. I'll
destroy him."

"Please leave me, Your Excellency," Orison said. "I need time to think."

"I am clay in your lovely hands," Kraft said, bowing. "I grant your
wish."

"If I might ask another boon, Your Excellency," Orison said, "I'd like
to talk with Dink."

"And so you shall," Kraft promised her. "Tomorrow, perhaps. With my
brother in chains and you in the regalia of an Empress." He bowed
again, and left her. The door-lock clicked after him. The two huge
guards closed in on either side of Orison and led her back to her cot.
When she had seated herself, they withdrew to their perches on the Army
vehicles.


                                  VII

I might as well have joined the Marine Corps instead of the Treasury
Department, Orison thought, resting her fists on her knees. She had no
weapons now, nothing to help her break out from this steel-shuttered
cellar. What's more, the only clear evidence she had of the crime these
extraterrestrials were plotting was a single counterfeit twenty-dollar
bill wadded up in her hand. It looked entirely genuine, she thought.
It was perhaps too perfect for her purpose. It was quite possible
that this bill could be established as a counterfeit only by the
unlikely discovery of a genuine note with the same serial-number.
The paper-makers and chemists of Chilif, the engraving millions of
Microfabridae, had done their work too well.

Suddenly, across Orison's field of regard there danced dozens of
brilliant, five-pointed stars--over the weapons-carriers and the tanks,
the jeeps and the two lolling guards, the concrete floor and the steel
doors. Orison rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes, but the
stars were still there. "Don't worry," someone said. "I painted the
stars on the backs of your eyes only to get your attention." The stars
disappeared, and Orison heard again the music of the Microfabridae, a
singing almost unhearable.

"Who's that?" Orison demanded, her voice uncertain.

"Don't speak. You'll frighten the guards," the mysterious voice said.
"We have had long association, Orison. It was I who, so close in
empathy with you, prevented your eating lobster, for example. Earth's
lobster is a distant relative of mine. I could not see you ingest one
without feeling deep qualms. And it is to me you have been reading,
filling my mind with knowledge and amusement while I was engaged in the
dull work of projecting the images of currency to the Microfabridae at
work at their printing-plates. I am known as Elder Compassion, and I am
your friend."

"And Dink's friend?"

"His especially," the voice said. "Our business right now is to help
you escape. We must know exactly where you are, Orison."

"I'm in the basement of the National Guard Armory," Orison said softly.
"Where are you?"

"I'm on the ninth floor of the Bank building," Elder Compassion said.
"Yes, that means telepathy, of a weak and uncertain sort. I am not
one of the true telepaths, those gold and mighty minds I can hear
trumpeting in the night. I can but whisper, and eavesdrop a bit in
minds that let me. And is the fact that I speak within your ear and
listen to the currents that make words within your mind so much more
mysterious than your pillow that whispers?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Tell me what to do," Orison said.

"Look at the entrance of your basement," Elder Compassion said. Orison
stared at the steel doors at the top of the ramp. "Yes, Dink. You're
in the right place." The inner voice ceased for a moment; and into
Orison's mind flashed a picture of those doors seen from outside. An
automobile was parked a dozen feet from the door. Dink's car! Wanji
was at the wheel and Dink, grandly uniformed, was beside him. A pink,
animate thread dipped down from the trunk of the Rolls and began
working its way toward the steel doors. Microfabridae, Orison guessed.
Then the picture in her mind flicked off, and she was alone again.

She watched the doors at the top of the ramp.

For ten minutes or so, there was nothing new to be seen. Then--a
pinpoint of light, a tiny movement. "Look away," Elder Compassion said
within her. "We don't want to make your guards suspicious."

From the corner of her eye Orison could see the thin pink line
approaching the Sherman tank upon which one guard was sitting, at ease
but alert. The line of Microfabridae split into two columns, and one
set out toward the second guard, seated in his weapons-carrier, facing
the little room where C Company's commanding officer was imprisoned.

Orison knotted her fists to keep from screaming, reminding herself
that these creeping things weren't spiders. She heard, faint at
first, but growing at the edge of her consciousness, the song of the
Microfabridae. The twin columns were thicker now. It seemed impossible
that the guards hadn't yet seen them. A living thread oozed up the side
of the tank and busied itself a moment at the guard's ankles.

"What's going on?" the captain, Orison's fellow-prisoner, shouted from
his hidden cell.

"Mmmmf," the guard assigned to the captain replied. Then he was
entirely silent.

Orison stood. Her own guard was strapped to the steel of his tank by
a hundred strands of Lilliputian thread. A thin net of the stuff,
fine as angel-hair, covered his mouth. The second guard, in the
weapons-carrier, was bound in the same manner. He stared at Orison and
moved his jaw, but could say nothing. "They'll not be injured," Elder
Compassion told her. "It is impossible for me to allow a living being
to be hurt. Now, go look at the man who just called out."

Orison went to the cell where the Captain was, avoiding as she walked
the pools of Microfabridae scattered about the floor. The man stood in
a barred room, evidently designed as the toolroom of the motor-pool,
his hands around the bars. "Good afternoon," he said. "What's going on
here?"

"We're getting out," Orison told him.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Ask him if he can drive a tank," Elder Compassion whispered to Orison.
"Those steel doors are too well built to be quickly opened by our
little locksmiths."

"Can you drive a tank, Captain?" Orison asked.

"Miss, I piloted one of those M4E8 Sherman's across Europe sixteen
years ago. I've still got the strength to pull a landrel. But you'll
have to get me out there to do it; because there isn't room in this
cell."

"I'll get you out," Orison promised.

"You want the Microfabridae to chew through the lock?" the
voice-in-her-head asked gently.

"That's what I had in mind," Orison said.

"I know," Elder Compassion said. "Please look at the lock, so that I
may direct our little friends to it."

Orison gazed at the lock. A line of Microfabridae snaked up the
steel door-frame and entered the keyhole. From inside the door came
a chittering sound, like a clock gone berserk. Then the crustacea
reformed and marched down the door to the floor. Orison pressed the
door-catch. The eviscerated lock gave way.

The captain stepped out to stare at the Microfabridae. "Miss," he said,
"you and I could make a fortune with a team of those trained termites.
There isn't a bank in the country that could stand up against us."

"It's been thought of," Orison said. "Help me get this man down from
the tank, please, and we'll be on our way." Between them they lifted
the cocooned guard, wrapped like a larva in Microfabridaean silk, to
the cot, the little workers snipping with their chelae the threads that
had bound him to the steel.

"Can you unlock the steel doors?" Orison asked.

"I don't have the key," the Captain said.

"Then we'll have to go through them," Orison said. "Can we do it?"

"We've got thirty-five tons to roll up that ramp," the captain said.
"If we can't bust out with a punch like that, shame on us. Seems kind
of rough on the taxpayers to bulldoze through that expensive door."

"If we don't make it out of here, those taxpayers may find themselves
paying their thirty per cent to someone less friendly than Uncle Sam,"
Orison said. She clambered up the side of the tank and tugged at the
hatch.

"Let me," said the captain. He opened the hatch and dropped inside.
"You sit here to my right. We're going out the hard way, and buttoned
up." He closed the hatch, then reached over his left shoulder to
tug the master battery switch, squeezed together the twin butterfly
switches on the panel and grabbed hold of the steering-landrels. "Hold
on, Miss. We're headed for sunlight."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Sherman's thirty-five tons were rolling along at ten miles an hour
when its bow met steel. Concrete splinters flew from the sides of the
door, which crumpled as the tank fisted into its middle. The door broke
free of its supports and slammed outside, forming a deckway over which
the treads of the tank crunched. The captain killed the engine and
opened the hatch. He boosted Orison out, and followed her.

"Orison! Over here!" Dink Gerding shouted. Orison leaped from the tank
and ran toward the Rolls-Royce. "Get down!" Dink shouted again. He ran
to seize her, and threw her to the ground. "And stay down!" He was up,
drawing his sword. There was a crash. A smear of lead appeared on the
concrete beside Orison. Dink, bellowing rage, was running down the ramp
into the armory basement, his sword raised.

Kraft Gerding stood at the head of his troops at the foot of the
ramp. In hand he had an Army .45. He shouted to his men, a dozen
purple-ears, dressed in fatigues, each as big and ugly as the two
who'd been guarding Orison and the Captain. They strained forward
to follow him--but fell like ten-pins, tripped up by strands of web
knitted between their ankles by fast-working Microfabridae. "Don't stop
him, Elder Cousin!" Dink shouted, his words evidently meant for the
mysterious brain-guy, Elder Compassion, in the ninth floor of the Taft
Bank Building. "This I must do," Dink said.

Kraft Gerding dropped the automatic and slicked his sword from its
scabbard. The blade, Orison saw, rising to her feet, was by no means an
ornament. It looked most naked and competent. Dink advanced upon his
brother, each holding his sword at the ready like scorpions ready to do
battle. "It would distress me to wound you, elder sibling," Dink said.

"_Lese majesty_ or no, my liege," Kraft shouted, "I intend to chop
you to stew-meat!" Their blades met and clashed, the swordsmen taking
the shock of their contact with skillful springing of their arms and
shoulders. Behind the clash of steel, Orison heard a new sound, the
scream of a siren. A second siren called out, and both grew louder.
"The police!" Wanji shouted. "Stop it, Sires!"

The captain stood beside Orison. "I've seen _Hamlet_ played," he said,
"but the sword-fight was nowhere near so violent as this. Who are these
two nuts, anyway?"

"My fiance, and the man who, if he lives, will be my brother-in-law,"
Orison said.

"Excuse me," the captain said.

       *       *       *       *       *

Orison gripped the captain's arm and tried not to cry out at Dink's
danger. Kraft parried his brother's blade, raising it high and to his
right. Then he went in like a flash, hacking his edge down toward the
juncture of shoulder and neck. Dink fell aside. Kraft's sword bit
concrete. Dink flipped his sword in a jeweled arc, slamming Kraft's
blade from his hand to spin end-over-end through the air like a
drum-majorette's baton. Kraft's sword slammed to the pavement. In an
instant a pool of Microfabridae had covered it, binding the steel to
the concrete with strands of their angel-hair.

Dink advanced on his brother, backing him against the bulk of the
Sherman tank.

Kraft Gerding stood with his hands at his sides, his face composed
in dignity, waiting for the coup de grace. "Bind the traitor, Elder
Cousin," Dink said, addressing an ear not present. Microfabridae,
obedient to the command they alone heard, rolled in little waves
across the steel door and knit Kraft in a web from ankles to larynx.
The police were very near now, their sirens dying as they slowed
to halt. Dink sheathed his sword. "Wanji!" he called. "Put him in
the car. It is time that we withdraw." Wanji ran up to the cocooned
figure, saluted, and dumped Kraft Gerding across his shoulder like a
giant spool of silk. The Microfabridae flowed to the Rolls and pooled
themselves somewhere in its trunk. "To the Bank, Wanji," Dink ordered,
seating himself beside his driver. Orison sat in the back, next to the
trussed-up Kraft.

Police appeared, whistling and brandishing their revolvers. One
occupied himself with kicking at Kraft's grounded sword, tied to
the pavement by tendrils tougher than steel wire. Another guarded
the ankle-bound purple-ears, obviously unable to believe what he was
seeing. "You in the car there, stop!" a police officer shouted. Wanji,
erect and unheeding at the wheel, took the limousine around the corner
of the armory and down the street toward the Bank.

"You'd have done better, brother, to have killed me," Kraft Gerding
said, strait-jacketed in silk.

"Killing would seem appropriate, although our Elder Cousin declares
it unlawful," Dink said over his shoulder. "Your crime is treason
against the Triple Crown, attempted assassination of the Heir Apparent,
mutiny and kidnap. What punishment would you mete out to an officer so
turpitudinous, were you Defender of the Crowns?"

"I would have him put to death in a manner befitting his station,"
Kraft said. "I would not bind him like a sausage and pelt him with
taunts."

"Perhaps you can gain a special dispensation from Elder Compassion,
allowing me to grant you a properly noble death," Dink said. "We'll ask
him, if you like."

       *       *       *       *       *

The William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company was closed,
the ostensible reason given by an easel set up in front of the glass
doors of the front entrance: "National Holiday: Birthday of Millard
Fillmore." One of the loyalist Purple-Ears materialized behind the
glass as the Rolls rolled up to the curb, and unlocked the doors.

Wanji and the guard carried Kraft Gerding between them into the
bank-lobby, Dink relocking the doors behind them. A knot of spectators
gathered on the sidewalk outside, shading their eyes, examining with
much conversation the sign, the purple-eared guard, the uniformed Wanji
and Dink and the figure trussed up like a rolled carpet on the parquet
floor. "I think this busts up your counterfeiting ring, Dink," Orison
said. "What now?"

"That is, darling, precisely the question I want to ask our
brain-trust, Elder Compassion," Dink said. "He is both our leader and
in a sense our warden, you see. He came with us to Earth to guarantee
that we in no way violate the principle of reverence for life in our
conquest of your planet."

The elevator appeared, piloted by another of the Purple-Ears. "Nine,"
Dink snapped. Wanji and the guard towed the packaged Kraft aboard.

       *       *       *       *       *

The anteroom into which the elevator door opened on ninth floor
smelled of ozone and dryness. Faint music vibrated the desert air.
"Bach?" Orison asked.

"Scarlatti," Dink said. "His music consoles Elder Compassion for the
violence of men. Here--you'll need these." He handed Orison a pair of
almost opaque goggles, the sort that welders wear. "Come on," he said,
tugging Orison through a door.

Even with the heavy goggles, the room beyond was brilliant beyond
belief, a Sahara summer-solstice noon in brightness. The floor was
covered by tons of sand, duned up against the windows in waves that
would have disheartened a camel. The music now was almost as oppressive
as the heat and the light. Great booming gouts of sound came from every
direction. Suddenly, as though responding to Orison's mental protest,
the music stopped. The lights dimmed somewhat.

"We have come, Elder Cousin," Dink announced to the sand.

"I speak to the lovely woman," an interior voice said to all of them.
"Do not fear me, Orison, though I will seem to you a most hideous
worm. My world nestles next its sun. I, made to fit a homeworld that
would seem a Hell to you, could hardly be expected to conform to green
Earth's standards of beauty. Reflect, Orison, that I wish you well."

       *       *       *       *       *

Something dragged itself across a dune. "My God!" Orison whispered,
gripping Dink's right arm with both her hands.

"Orison, this is my mentor and my dearest friend," Dink said. "His name
is Elder Compassion. He is older than the language you speak. And he
is, though housed in strange flesh, a Man of Good Will."

The thing that squatted across the mid-room dune was twelve feet long
from the tip of the arched scorpion-telson to the twin pincers that
formed a chitinous mustache beneath its mouth. It stared at her with a
pair of compound eyes the size of hub-caps. "I'll not weary you further
with squeezing words into your minds," the interior voice said. "Bring
me the writing-boards, Son and Cousin."

"Cornet!" Dink snapped. "Bring scratchboards."

"Sire!" A young officer ran back to the anteroom and came back with a
stack of blackened boards, one of which he set up in the sand before
the monster, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the lance-like
tip that quivered in the air above him. "It is a fearsome thing,
this killing-tool my body is equipped with," the voice said, "and
embarrassing. It is rather as though your good Gandhi had been forced
to carry a sub-machine gun through life." The cornet scrambled out
of way through the sand, and the giant sting lowered itself to the
scratchboard.

The words he inscribed into the blackness were written in a delicate
italic, hardly larger than human penmanship: "My son, she is lovely."

"It is gracious of you, Elder Cousin, to recognize beauty in a form so
unlike your own species," Dink said, bowing.

There was a mental chuckle. "Her mind, you clod!" the monster sketched
in the scratchboard. "Her lovely, lovely mind."

"I am pleased that you ratify my choice of wife, Elder Cousin," Dink
said.

"She will assist you in the most difficult task ever a scion of the
Triple Crown had to accomplish, Son and Cousin," Elder Compassion
wrote. "She will aid you in preparing the Golden Worlds to accept
Coca-Cola."

"Your meaning, Elder Cousin, is hidden from my poor understanding,"
Dink said.

"I mean this," Elder Compassion sketched on his scratchboard. "You came
for conquest bearing with you the seeds of violence, and thus defeat.
You came to subvert Earth by pandering to Earth's greed. You were
yourself, through the agent of your greedy brother, rendered impotent.
Violence has been done. We must now retreat, making such amends as we
can. In the years that will soon be upon us, Earth's men will follow
us to the Golden Worlds, where you, as Emperor, and Orison, Empress,
will greet them."

"To the ship, then?" Dink asked. "What will we do with the rebels? With
Kraft, my brother?"

"They have earned the payment of exile," Elder Compassion wrote. "We
will leave them here."

       *       *       *       *       *

Dink turned to the young officer. "Cornet, assist our Elder Cousin to
the ship," he ordered. He turned to two of the purple-ears. "Take Kraft
to the vault," he said.

Orison spoke to the monster. "Sir," she said, "you spoke of making
amends for the damage you have done. You must first of all destroy the
paper with which you'd hoped to ruin us."

"I'll give those orders, Orison," Dink said.

"What will be done about the counterfeit money you've already spent,
financing your subversion?" she asked.

Elder Compassion was writing on his board. "Three miles beneath this
city lies a vein of gold," he wrote. "The Microfabridae are this
minute plumbing the earth to reach it. We will leave full payment for
our fiscal sins."

Dink took Orison's hand. "You'll come with us?" he asked.

"I will, Dink."

"Then I, Rex-Imperator, Son of the Triple Crown, Prince Porphyrogenous
of Empire, take you to wife," he said.

"If you're sure this is quite legal," Orison said, "I do."

"There are voices all about us," Elder Compassion spoke in their minds.
"The traitor, Kraft, is in the vault, bound and seated in the midst of
wealth. We must go, or there will be more violence."

"The moment the Microfabridae have left their golden payment for our
folly, Elder Cousin, guide them to the ship," Dink said. "I long to
show my Princess her dominions."

"She is the first," the voice spoke again. "The first of the
irresistible conquerors from Earth."

[Transcriber's Note: No Section IV or Section VI headings in original]