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Last week in Babylon,

Last night in Roone behind the bar and was talking quietly at Doc, but with his eyes elsewhere, looking very sallow and professional in his white, and I thought - Damballa! - I&039;m in the French Quarter I couldn&039;t see the New Girl Sid was at last getting to the New Boy after the fuss about Mark He threw a sign and I started over with Erich in tow

"Welcoha&039;s Lynn, 1564, schooled at Cah I outlasted Bessie, Jimmie, Charlie, and Ollie almost And what a life! By turns a clerk, a spy, a bawd - the two trades are hand in glove - a poet of no account, a beggar, and a peddler of resurrection tracts Beau Lassiter, our throats are tinder!"

At the word "poet," the New Boy looked up, but &039;resentfully, as if he had been tricked into it

"And to spare your throat for drinking, sweet gallant, I&039;ll be so bold as to guess and answer one of your questions," Sid rattled on "Yes, I knew Will Shakespeare - ere of an age - and he was such a ue that we all wondered whether he really did write those plays Your pardon, faith, but that scratch ht be looked to"

Then I saw that the New Girl hadn&039;t lost her head, but gone to Surgery (Ugh!) for a first-aid tray She reached a swab toward the New Boy&039;s sticky cheek, saying rather shrilly, "If I ht

Her ti was bad Sid&039;s last words and Erich&039;s approach had darkened the look in the young Soldier&039;s face and he angrily swept her ar at her Erich squeezed my arm The tray clattered to the floor - and one of the drinks that Beau was bringing almost followed it Ever since the New Girl&039;s arrival, Beau had been figuring that she was his responsibility, though I don&039;t think the two of thereement yet Beau was especially set on it because I was thick with Sid at the tih cases

"Easy now, lad, and you loveBeau the "Hold it" look "She&039;s just a poor pagan trying to comfort you S your bile, you black villain, and perchance it will turn to poetry Ah, did I touch you there? Confess, you are a poet"

There isn&039;t y and wondered if he knehat he was doing with his insights

"Yes, I&039;ht," the New Boy roared "I&039;m Bruce Marchant, you bloody Zombies I&039; Jahs aren&039;t safe froing our history, stealing our certainties, clai and best intentioned and efficient, and what does it lead to? This bloody SI glove!"

He held up his black-gloved left hand which still held thewith the Spider Issue gauntlet, heart of gold?" Sid dehed, "Consider yourself lucky, Kaloves at all"

"What&039;s wrong with it?" Bruce yelled "The bloody things are both lefts!" He slammed it down on the floor

We are howled, we couldn&039;t help it He turned his back on us and stauessed he would keep out of the Void Erich squeezed asps, "Mein Gott, Liebchen, what have I always told you about Soldiers? The bigger the gripe, the smaller the cause! It is infallible!"

One of us didn&039;t laugh Ever since the New Girl heard the name Bruce Merchant, she&039;d had a look In her eyes like she&039;d been given the sacra, because she&039;d been pretty h she&039;d co been a real whoopee girl in London and New York in the Twenties She looked disapprovingly at us as she gathered up the tray and stuff, not forgetting the glove, which she placed on the center of the tray like a holy relic

Beau cut over and tried to talk to her, but she ghosted past hi because of the tray in his hands He caht away because I saw the New Girl stepping through the screen into Surgery and I hate to be relad Doc is too drunk to use it, so as I know only too well fros to be forgotten

By that ti in a carefully hard voice, "Look here, it&039;s not the dashed glove itself, as you very well know, you howling Derizzled gold beard heightening the effect of innocent receptivity

"It&039;s the principle of the thing," Bruce said, looking around sharply, but none of us cracked a s inefficiency and death of the cosmos - and don&039;t tell me that isn&039;t in the cards! - n omniscient authority The Spiders - and we don&039;t knoho they are ultients like ourselves - the Spiders pluck us froraves of our lif elines - "

"Is that bad, lad?" Sid htfaced

" - and Resurrect us if they can and then tell us wepower called the Snakes - just a na and enslaving the whole cosmos, past, present and future"

"And isn&039;t it, lad?"

"Before we&039;re properly awake, we&039;re Recruited into the Big Time and hustled into tunnels and burrows outside our space-tiray sacks, puss pockets - no offense to this Place - that the Spiders have created, antic implosions, but no one knows for certain, and then we&039;re sent off on all sorts of e history in ways that are supposed to thwart the Snakes"

"True, lad"

"And fro hot and heavy, the shocks come so fast, our emotions are wrenched in so many directions, our public and private metaphysics distorted so insanely, the deepest thread of reality we cling to tied in such bloody knots, that we never can get things straight"

"We&039;ve all felt that way, lad," Ski said soberly; Beau nodded his sleek death&039;s head; "You should have seen me, Kamerad, irl&039;s, too, Bruce"

"Oh, I know I&039;ll get hardened to it, and don&039;t think I can&039;t It&039;s not that," Bruce said harshly "And I wouldn&039;t mind the personal confusion, the mess it&039;shistory and destroying priceless, oncecalled imperishable beauties of the past, if I felt it were for the best The Spiders assure us that, to thwart the Snakes, it is all-important that the West ultimately defeat the East But what have they done to achieve this? I&039;ll give you some beautiful examples To stabilize power in the early Mediterranean world, they have built up Crete at the expense of Greece, host city, Plato a trivial fabulist, and putting all Greek culture in a ot time for culture?" I heard entle reproof

"But you reues, lad," Sid observed "And rail not as Crete - I have a sweet Keftian friend"

"For how long will I reues? And who after ed "Here&039;s another The Spiders want Rome powerful and, to date, they&039;ve helped Rome so much that she collapses in a blaze of German and Parthian invasions a few years after the death of Julius Caesar"

This time it was Beau who butted in Most everybody in the Place loves these bull sessions "You omit to mention, sir, that Rome&039;s newest downfall is directly due to the Unholy Triple Alliance the Snakes have fomented between the Eastern Classical World, Moha to pass the torch of power futurewards by way of Byzantiu it pass into the hands of the Spider West That, sir, is the Snakes&039; Three-Thousand-Year Plan which we are fighting against, striving to revive Ro is the word for it," Bruce snapped "Here&039;s yet another exaland and A a Ger a Nazi e from the salt orod to Kansas City!"

He stopped andin a weird spiritless voice, like footsteps in hard snow

"Salz, Salz, bringe Salz Kein&039; Peitsch&039;, gnadige Herren Salz, Salz, Salz"

I turned and there was Doc waltzing toward us with little tiny steps, bent over so low that the ends of his shawl touched the floor, his head crooked up sideways and looking through us