Doctor Volospion's laugh was cruel. "All you do, Mr Bloom, is to reveal yourself as a buffoon! Not even your insane Faith can make an angel of Miss Ming!"
Mavis Ming was not resentful. "I've got my good points," she said, "but I'm no Gloria Gutzmann. And I try too hard, I guess, and people don't like that. I can be neurotic, probably. After all that affair with Snuffles didn't do anyone any good in the end, though I was trying to do Dafnish Armatuce a favour."
She babbled on, scarcely conscious of her words, while the adversaries, pausing in their conflict, watched her.
"But then, maybe I was acting selfishly, after all. Well, it's all water under the bridge, isn't it? What's done is done. Who can blame anybody, at the end of the day?"
Mr Bloom's voice became a caressing murmur. He stroked her hands. "Fear not, Miss Ming. I am the Flame of Life. I carry a torch that will resurrect the spirit, and I carry a source to drive out devils. I need no armour, save my faith, my knowledge, my understanding. I am the Sun's soldier, keeper of His mysteries. Give yourself to me and become fully yourself, alive and free."
Mavis Ming began to cry. The Fireclown's vivid mask smiled in a grotesque of sympathy.
"Come with me now," said Bloom.
"I would remind you that you are powerless to leave," said Doctor Volospion.
The Fireclown dropped her hands and turned so that his back was to her. His little frame twitched and trembled, his red-gold mass of hair might have been the bristling crest of some exotic fowl, his little hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, like claws, as his beautiful, musical voice filled that dreadful menagerie.
"Ah, Volospion, I should destroy you — but one cannot destroy the dead!"
Doctor Volospion was apparently unmoved. "Possibly, Mr Bloom, but the dead can imprison the living, can they not? If that is so, I possess the advantage which men like myself have always possessed over men such as you."
The Fireclown wheeled to grasp Miss Ming. She cried out:
"Stop him, Doctor Volospion, for Christ's sake!"
And at last Doctor Volospion's long hand touched a power ring and the Fireclown was surrounded by bars of blue, pulsing energy.
"Ha!" The clown capered this way and that, trying to free himself and then, as if reconciled, sat down on the floor, crossing his little legs, his blue eyes blinking up at them as if in sudden bewilderment.
Doctor Volospion smiled.
"Eagle, is it? Phoenix? I must admit that I see only a caged sparrow."
Emmanuel Bloom paid him no heed. He addressed Mavis Ming.
"Free me," he said. "It will mean your own freedom."
Mavis Ming giggled.
13. In which Doctor Volospion asks Mavis Ming to make a Sacrifice
She awoke from another nightmare.
Mavis Ming was filled with a sense of desolation worse than any she had experienced in the past.
"Oh, dear," she murmured through her night-mask.
An impression of her dream was all that was left to her, but she seemed to recall that it involved Mr Bloom.
"What a wicked little creature! He's frightened me more than anything's ever frightened me before. Even Donny's tantrums weren't as bad. He deserves to be locked up. He deserves it. In any other world it would be his just punishment for doing what he had done. If Doctor Volospion hadn't stopped him, he would have raped me, for sure. Oh, why can't I stop thinking about what he said to me? It's all nonsense. I wish I was braver. I can't believe he's safely out of the way. I wish I had the nerve to go and see for myself. It would make me feel so much better."
She sank into her many pillows, pulling the sheets over her eyes. "I know what those energy cages are like. It's the same sort I was in when I first arrived. He'll never get out. And I can't go to see him. That ridiculous flattery. And Doctor Volospion doesn't help by telling me all the time that he thinks Bloom's love is 'genuine,' whatever that means. Oh, it's worse now. It is. Why couldn't Doctor Volospion have made him go away? Keeping him here is torture!"
Doctor Volospion had even suggested, earlier, that it would be charitable if she went to his cage to "comfort" him.
"Repulsive little runt!" She pushed back her pink silky sheets and turned up the lamp (already fairly bright) whose stand was in the shape of a flesh-coloured nymph rising naked from the powder-blue petals of an open rose. "I do wish Doctor Volospion would let me have a power ring of my own. It would make everything much easier. Everyone else has them. Lots of time travellers do." She crossed the soft pale yellow carpet to her gilded Empire-style dressing-table to look at her face in the mirror.
"Oh, I look awful! That dreadful creature."
She sighed. She often had trouble sleeping, for she was very highly strung, but this was much worse. For all their extravagant entertainments, their parties where the world was moulded to their whims, what they really needed, thought Mavis, was a decent TV network. TV would be just the answer to her problems right now.
"Perhaps Doctor Volospion could find something for me in one of those old cities," she mused. "I'll ask him. Not that he seems to be doing me many favours, these days. How long's he had the Fireclown now? A couple of weeks? And spending all his time down there. Maybe he loves Bloom and that's what it's all about." She laughed, but immediately became miserable again.
"Oh, Mavis. Why is it always you? The world just isn't on your side." She gave one of her funny little crooked smiles, very similar to those she had seen Barbara Stanwyck giving in those beautiful old movies.
"If only I could have gone back in time, to the 20th century, even, where the sort of clothes and lifestyle they had were so graceful. They had simpler lives, then. Oh, I know they must have had their problems, but how I wish I could be there now! It's what I was looking forward to, when they elected me to be the first person to try out the time machine. Of course, it was proof of how popular I was with the other guys at the department. Everyone agreed unanimously that I should be the first to go. It was a great honour."
Apparently this thought did not succeed in lifting her spirits. She raised a hand to her head.
"Oh, oh — here comes the headache! Poor old Mavis!"
She began to pad back towards the big circular bed. But the thought of a continuance of those dreams, even though she had pushed them right out of her mind, stopped her. It had been Doctor Volospion's suggestion that she continue to lead the sort of life she had been used to — with regular periods of darkness and daylight and a corresponding need to sleep and eat, even though he could easily have changed all that for her.
To be fair to him, she thought, he tended to follow a similar routine himself, ever since he had heard that Lord Jagged of Canaria had adopted this ancient affectation. If she had had a power ring or an air car at her disposal (again she was completely reliant on Volospion's good graces) she would have left the palace and gone to find some fun, something to take her mind off things. She looked at her Winnie-the-Pooh clock — another three hours before the palace would be properly activated. Until then she would not even be able to get a snack with which to console herself.
"I'm not much better off than that little creep down there," she said. "Oh, Mavis, what sort of a state have they got you into!"
A tap, now, at the door.
Grateful for the interruption, Mavis pulled on her fluffy blue dressing-robe. "Come in!"
Doctor Volospion, a satanic Hamlet in black and white doublet and hose, entered her room. "You are not sleeping, Miss Ming? I heard your voice as I passed…"
Hope revealed itself in her eyes. "I've got a bit of a headache, Doctor." He could normally cure her headaches. Her mood improved. She became eager, anxious to win his approval. "Silly little Mavis is having nightmares again."