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  "In fact, Michael has been studying casuistry," Winnie said. "That is the report we've heard. He claims that the inability to dissemble convincingly is a disadvantage that Good need no longer labor under."

  "That's quite a fine quibble all by itself. Hmm." Azzie looked over the document again. "All this talk in here about free will… Do you suppose it might be a red herring? And if so, what is it intended to direct attention away from?"

  "I haven't a clue," Winnie said, batting her long lashes at him.

  "Perhaps not, my dear." He rolled up the parchment and returned it to her. "But I know someone who might."

  CHAPTER 14

  The person Azzie had in mind who might know was Lachesis, eldest of the Three Fates, and some say the wisest. These are the ladies who spin, measure, and cut the thread of human destiny. It is Lachesis who does all the real work, however. Clotho, who spins the thread out of the flax of undifferentiated being, is a cheerful old lady whose fingers do the work all by themselves while she lives in daydreams of a former time. Atropos, who cuts the thread, works entirely under Lachesis' directions, snip, snip, cut it here, dearie, and that one there, another life predestined to go down the drain. This was not very demanding work and Clotho and Atropos had plenty of time left over for interminable card games and the serving of the tea and pound cake on which the Fates lived. Only Lachesis needed to use judgment, determining how long a man should live, and, some say, in what manner he was to die. She was a tall, grim-faced old lady, related to Necessity by Chaos out of Night, an early Great Mother whom she visited on important holidays, spending the rest of the time working away at the lengths of flax, examining their individual fibers with indefatigable zeal, giving to each man his moira, his portion of fate.

  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 glo
at 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."

  "It's very nice," Marguerite said. "But why did we come here? I thought we were going right to the Styx now." "The River Styx happens to run through Greece," Faust said.

  "What? Here in Athens?"

  "No. Somewhere in Greece. I thought I'd better come here first and ask directions."

  Marguerite said, "One thing bothers me. We were taught the Styx didn't really exist. So how can you ask directions to it?"

  Faust smiled in a superior way and asked her, "Does the Archangel Michael exist?"

  "And what about the Holy Grail? Does that exist?"

  "So they say," Marguerite said.

  "Well then, believe me, the Styx exists, too. If one imaginary thing exists, then all imaginary things must exist."

  Marguerite sniffed. "Well, if you say so."

  "Of course I say so," Faust said. "Who's the autodidactic thaumaturge around here?"

  "Oh, you are, of course," Marguerite said. "Don't mind me."

  Faust knew from his old atlases that the River Styx comes to the surface somewhere in Greece, before it continues its downward and roundabout ways through the ages of time and space to the shores of Tartaros. The atlases said it came out of a cavern, issued along a dark' ling plain for a while, then plunged into a steep declivity which tended downward into a cavern measureless to man. This was the ancient classical road to the underworld that Theseus took when he went down to try to steal Helen away from Achilles. Faust mentioned this to Marguerite.

  "Who is this Helen?" Marguerite asked.

  "A famous lady," Faust said, "renowned for her beauty, over whom a famous war was waged and a great city destroyed."

  "Oh, one of those," Marguerite said. "What do we need with her?'

  "We probably won't get to meet her. But if we did, she might give us some important clues as to how to get to Constantinople in 1210 and displace Mack the Pretender and take our rightful place in whatever is going on."

  "So who are you going to ask?" Marguerite said. "The people around here don't look like they know what city they're in, far less how to find a mythical place like the Styx."

  "Don't let their look put you off," Faust said. "They just look like that to discourage strangers. I bet any of them could tell us."

  He led Marguerite toward a group of people who were clustered around a man with a coffee pot. "What did I tell you?" Faust said to Marguerite. "Coffee! These people aren't so dumb. That stuff isn't even known yet in the rest of Europe."

  Pressing forward, Faust said, in the mincing Corinthian accent he had picked up in Greek class, "Good citizens I Can you direct me to the famous River Styx, whose whereabouts is said to be somewhere in Hellas?"

  The men in the coffee-drinking crowd looked at each other, and one said, in a broad Dorian dialect, "Alf, isn't there a Styx over near where your uncle's got his farm, in Thesprotia?"

  "You're thinking of the Acheron," Alf said. "That runs into the Styx near Heraclea Pontica, but it takes its time about getting there. Meanders, as they say. But there's a more direct way. You go to Colonus, and pick up the Cocytus River. Just follow it downstream. It flows into the Styx after descending to the unplumbed caverns of Acherusia."

  Faust thanked the rustics and moved away with Marguerite. Utilizing his spell, Faust soared north, following the coastline of Attica. Marguerite rode on his back, for there was no spell strong enough to empower his arms to hold her while the wind was buffeting so. Marguerite's hair was all in a tangle again, and she feared that her complexion was getting reddened by constant exposure to the elements. But she was content, because she was the only girl she knew who had ridden on the air with a wizard, and that was a considerable distinction for a girl with so little education.

  Faust flew past the city of Corinth, with its high citadel, and dipped over the ruins of Thebes, still much as Alexander had left them over a thousand years ago. The land below became less steep as they continued toward Thrace. After a while two broad rivers appeared, and Faust was able to ascertain that one of them was the Acheron. He put down to the ground immediately.

  "Why are we stopping?" Marguerite asked. "Is this the Styx?"

  "No, this is the Acheron, which runs into the Styx."

  "So why can't we fly the rest of the way?"

  Faust shook his head. He had depleted most of the puissance of his Traveling Spell by so much use, and it would need time to recharge. A few hundred yards away, on the riverbank, there was a dilapidated old farm, and there was an open punt tied to its dock. The area seemed deserted, so Faust untied the little boat, and, putting Marguerite in the bow and himself taking the stern, proceeded downstream toward the Styx.

  CHAPTER 16

  Their punt drifted like a dream on the slow-moving river. This, he knew, had to be Phlegethon. The stream narrowed, the region became more bleak, and soon there was no vegetation except for black poplars and mournful fields of asphodel.

  "We're getting there," Faust said. He'd been doing most of the punting since they began. He had been able to get a little relief out of a poling spell that imparted a certain measure of energy to each stroke, like an artificial muscle.

  The Phlegethon declined until it was no more than a narrow ditch. The time was twilight. Faust knew they'd finally reached the Styx when the banks suddenly opened out, revealing a dark expanse of water.

  At this he punted past a very large sign that was written in several languages. It read, the river styx. no private boats beyond this point.

  "We'll have to stop here," he told Marguerite. "Charon has the sole rights of passage on this river. And anyhow, no magician, no matter how clever, can sail the Styx unaided. For that, he needs to make a deal.

  Come, let us find Charon."

  "Not at all," Faust said. "These entities have very little to do with religion. These are energies that are left over from a former age, and still take a certain shape and form."

  Then he saw the boat coming toward him across the dark river. As it approached, he could see it was a sort of a houseboat, and it was propelled by five dolphins who had their noses against the stern and were pushing. This boat was making good time through the water since men amidships were helping with oars and paddles. It was a high, unsteady old boat and you could see yellow lantern light shining out through the portholes, and hear sounds of music and merriment.

  "And who might you be?" Charon cried out, directing the boat toward Faust's punt. He was a surly old man, lean and spindly, with unshaven white-stubbled jaw and sunken eye sockets out of which tiny black eyes glittered. A nimbus of grayish white hair floated above his bony forehead and knobby skull. He had a wide, withered mouth with many twists and turns in it, but all tending downwards. He broke off his talk with Faust to give some orders.

  "Pass that beam over there! Pu
ll that oar! Take that sail in! Turn that thing around!"

  Faust knew through his excellent classical education that several of the people working on the boat were dead Greek heroes. There were Theseus, Perseus, Hercules, Jason, and several others whom Faust didn't know, but presumed were also heroes.

  "What do you want?" Charon called out.

  "We need passage across the Styx," Faust says. "We need to get to a certain place and time, 1210 in Constantinople."

  "We don't call at 1210 in Constantinople anymore," Charon said. "Too much trouble and upset there.

  Too many souls wanting to be ferried away. I don't need to bring this boat into any trouble spots like that."

  "I really need to go there," Faust says. "What will you take to bring us?"

  Charon laughed. "You don't have anything that I want! And don't let that story that you can take the ride for one obol kid you. Doing anything on the Styx is damned expensive since I have the sole navigation contract. It's my territory exclusively so don't try going any farther in that punt. And don't try creeping around on the banks, either. I've got them planted with repel-me-not. You'd need a hell of a spell, magician, to deal with a constricting vine like the repel-me-not."

  "I had no intention of sneaking around you," Faust said with dignity. "But I'm sure we can make a deal."

  "What makes you so sure?" Charon asked. . "Because I have something you want."

  "Hah! I can't imagine what that would be!"

  "Listen," Faust said. "You noticed the person I came here with?"

  Charon glanced at Marguerite. "The woman? Yes, I see her. So what?"

  "Pretty cute, isn't she?"

  "I see plenty of cute ones go by here," Charon said.

  "Ah," Faust said. "But not Jive cute ones."

  Charon stared at him. Faust said, "You do detect the difference between live ones and dead ones, don't you?" "Just because you're alive," Charon said, "don't go putting on airs. I'm just as good as you and just as real, even if I haven't ever existed in the mundane sense."