"You are unhappy?"
"Oh, no! In this lovely room? In your lovely palace? It's everything a little girl dreams about. It's just that awful Mr Bloom. Ever since…"
"I see." The saturnine features showed enlightenment. "You are still afraid. He can never escape, Miss Ming. He has tried, but I assure you my powers are far greater than his. He becomes tiresome, but he is no threat."
"You'll let him go, then?"
"If I could be sure that he would leave the planet, for he fails to be as entertaining as I had hoped. And if he would give me that Grail of his, from which his power, I am now certain, derives. But he refuses."
"You could take it now, couldn't you?"
"Not from him. Not from his ship. The screen is still impenetrable. No, you are our only hope."
"Me?"
"He would not have allowed himself to be trapped at all, if it had not been for you." Doctor Volospion sighed deeply. "Well, I have just returned from visiting him again. I have offered him his liberty in return for that one piece of property, but he fobs me off with arguments that are typically specious, with vague talk of Faith and Trust — you have heard his babble."
Mavis murmured sympathetically. "I've never seen you so cast down, Doctor Volospion. You never know with some people, do you? He's best locked up for his own good. He's a sort of cripple, isn't he? You know what some cripples are like. You can't blame them. It's the frustration. It's all bottled up in them. It turns them into sex maniacs."
"To do him justice, Miss Ming, his interest seems only in you. I have offered him many women, both real and artificial, from the menageries. Many of them are very beautiful, but he insists that none of them has your 'soul,' your — um — true beauty."
"Really?" She was sceptical, still. "He's insane. A lot of men are like that. That's one of the reasons I gave them up. At least with a lady you know where you are on that score. And Mr Bloom has got about as much sex-appeal as a seagull — less! Did you ever hear of a really sweet old book called Jonathan…"
"Your headache is better, Miss Ming?"
"Why, yes." She touched her hair. "It's almost gone. Did you…?"
Doctor Volospion drew his own brows together and traced beringed fingers across the creases. "You do not give yourself enough credit, Miss Ming…"
She smiled. "That's what Betty was always telling me when I used to feel low. But poor old Mavis…"
"He demands that you see him. He speaks of nothing else."
"Oh!" She paused. She shook her head. "No, I couldn't, really. As it is, I haven't had a good night's sleep since the day he arrived."
"Of course, I understand."
Miss Ming was touched by Doctor Volospion's unusual sadness. He seemed to have none of his usual confidence. She moved closer to him.
"Don't worry, Doctor Volospion. Maybe it would be best if you tried to forget about him."
"I need the Grail. I am obsessed with it. And I cannot rid myself of the notion that, somehow, he is tricking me."
"Impossible. You're far too clever. Why is this Grail so important to you?"
Doctor Volospion withdrew from her.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to pry."
"Only you can help me, Miss Ming."
The apparent pleading in his voice moved her to heights of sympathy. "Oh…"
"You could convince him, I think, where I could not."
She was relenting, against all her instincts. "Well, if I saw him for a few moments … And it might help me, too — to lay the ghost, if you know what I mean."
His voice was low. "I should be very grateful to you, Miss Ming. Perhaps we should go immediately."
She hesitated. Then she patted his arm. "Oh, all right. Give me a few minutes to get dressed."
With a deep bow, Doctor Volospion left the room.
Miss Ming began to consider her clothes. On the one hand, she thought, some sort of sexless boiler suit would be best, to dampen Mr Bloom's ardour as much as possible. Another impulse was to put on her very sexiest clothes, to feed her vanity. In the end she compromised, donning a flowery mou-mou which, she thought, disguised her plumpness. Courageously she went to join Doctor Volospion, who awaited her in the corridor. Together they made their way to the menagerie.
As they descended flights of stone stairs she observed: "Surprisingly I'm feeling quite light-headed. Almost gay!"
They passed through the tiered rows of his many devotional trophies, past the bones and the sticks and the bits of cloth, the cauldrons, idols, masks and weapons, the crowns and the boxes, the scrolls, tablets and books, the prayer-wheels and crystals and ju-jus, until they reached the door of the first section of the menagerie, the Jewish House.
"I had thought of putting him in here," Doctor Volospion told her as they passed by the inmates, who ranted, wailed, chanted, tore their clothing or merely turned aside as they passed, "but finally I decided on the Non-Sectarian Prophet House."
"I hadn't realized your collection was so big. I've never seen it all, as you know." Miss Ming made conversation as best she could. Evidently the place still disturbed her.
"It grows almost without one realizing it," said Doctor Volospion. "I suppose, because so many people of a messianic disposition take an interest in the future, we are bound to get more than our fair share of prophets, anxious to discover if their particular version of the millennium has come about. Because they are frequently disappointed, many are glad of the refuge I offer."
They went through another door.
"Martyrdom, it would seem, is the next best thing to affirmation," he said.
They passed through a score of different Houses until, finally, they came to the Fireclown's habitat. It was designed to resemble a desert, scorched by a permanently blazing sun.
"He refused," whispered Doctor Volospion, as they approached, "to tell me what sort of environment he favoured, so I chose this one. It is the most popular with my prophets, as you'll have noted."
Emmanuel Bloom, in his clown's costume, sat on a rock in the centre of his energy cage. His greasepaint seemed to have run a little, as if he had been weeping, but he did not seem in particularly low spirits now. He had not, it appeared, noticed them. He was reciting poetry to himself.
He had seen her. His great blue eyes blinked. His stiff little body began to rise. His birdlike, fluting voice took on a different tone.
"And yet like none of these…" He put an awkward finger to his small mouth. He put his painted head on one side.
Mavis Ming cleared her throat. Doctor Volospion's hand forced her further towards the cage.
The Fireclown spoke first. "So Guinevere comes at last to her Lancelot — or is it Kundry, come to call me Parsifal? Sorceress, you have incarcerated me. Tell your servant to release me so that, in turn, I may free you from the evil that holds you with stronger bonds than any that chain me!"