"Havoc!" she exclaimed, flustered.
"Truth. I am a man. Trust me in this. Just take the courage I have lent you, and maintain a good stage presence, and it will work."
She remained highly uncertain, but tackled the other aspect. "How can I manage a man?"
"You have seen me managing the girls. This is the mirror of that. Put yourself in my place, emotionally, and do it. It will work."
"There is no alternative?"
"Not if we are to save our worlds."
She started to protest. But he took her hand again, and shared his mind with her, and suddenly she believed.
The future of mankind really did depend on her.
Chapter 5 Shee
"You do know I'm on a mission?" Havoc inquired with a tolerant smile. "I should spank you for interrupting it."
"I would accept the spanking, Father, from you," Voila replied. She was a reasonably attractive light-brown-haired young woman of twenty one, the Glamor of Amoeba, and the strongest by far of all the Glamors. Few could have told by looking at her how dreadfully powerful she was, or how alien her outlook. Even Havoc was somewhat in awe of what she had become. "But Weft would be insanely jealous."
Her sister Weft, of course, had always had a thing for him, and was embarrassingly open about it. She would gladly have bared her bottom for his hand. In fact she would have taken him to bed long since, had she found some way to justify it. It was a family joke, to all except Weft herself. "I can't remain here long. Opaline will wonder if she wakes and finds me missing."
"You must remain. Send your double."
He studied her. She was serious, and she always had reason. Then he walked to the front office. "Ennui, set up my double to take my place beside Opaline. Caution: he must not have sex with her."
Ennui nodded and departed. She would handle it competently, including briefing and getting the man rapidly transported there in clothing matching Havoc's of the moment.
"We have learned things," Voila said. "There is a machines spy among us that we are unable to identify, but we must, in order to increase our chance against the machines to fifty percent. They have a number of recruitment prospects, for which they are prepared to pay handsomely. I am first on their list. They are sending a humanoid robot to persuade you to send me to them."
Havoc was used to straight talk from his daughter, but this set him back. "A spy, a prospect, and a robot. By what device of illusion do they suppose I would ever yield you to their power?"
"They will spare our entire human culture if you do. Otherwise they will try to destroy it. Their chances of success in that are three to one. It is because they do not like those odds they are making the offer."
"What odds do they favor?"
"One hundred to one, or better."
"And this golem they are sending—"
"A robot, fashioned of metals and minerals into a most fetching humanoid female. She is designed to become your mistress."
Havoc choked. "I have a mistress."
"Your second mistress."
"And the machines suppose I would ever touch her? Why?"
"Because the future paths suggest that you can maintain our chances of survival at fifty percent only if you do."
"Contempt!"
"Father, you must do it. It is necessary."
He stared at her, knowing she was serious. "I must cohabit with a machine bent on persuading me to give you to the machines."
"Affirmation."
"We can't simply blast her transport ship out of space before she arrives, and be done with it?"
"Negation. We must not harm her."
"The paths show disaster if we do?"
"The paths show a diminution of our position."
That was the same thing. Everything in this monstrous chess game was governed by the paths that led to advantage or disadvantage. Still, the notion rankled. Havoc loved women, but not machines. "This will require some consideration."
"You have an hour."
"Question?"
"Then she arrives here."
He considered. "Question: if you go to the machines, what is your personal fate?"
"Largely comfortable. All my family and friends will be protected. I will have complete freedom of our realm and theirs, and can marry a mortal or a machine crafted to my liking. Mino will return to their control, and Idyll and I will join him regularly for sessions of future paths exploration, as we have done before. But now it would be for the benefit of the machines, to enable them to conquer the remaining galaxy in approximately a third of the time and a quarter of the expenditure of resources as otherwise."
He whistled. "So you really are valuable to them."
She nodded. "Most valuable. They would take very good care of me and mine."
"And if you do not join them?"
"Then it is war. All of us may be destroyed, as we are too dangerous to allow to continue to exist outside their control. They will still conquer the galaxy, albeit it more slowly and with larger losses."
"Then why should you not join them?"
"The rest of the galaxy would suffer."
"Be rendered extinct?"
"Affirmation."
"Mankind is not known as an altruistic species."
She waited.
"But we do have a chance," he added.
"Affirmation."
"So naturally we will gamble."
Again she waited, knowing him all too well.
"But we will keep the decision in abeyance. First I will see how persuasive this female machine contraption can be. They will not act until her mission fails, and that might take some time."
"If she does not persuade you within a year, they will assume her mission is futile, and act. That decision is pre-programmed."
"So the robot proffers us a chance to stall for a year. That is why you say I should take her as a second mistress."
"In part, father."
"Question?"
"You will like her. Perhaps even love her."
"An enemy machine!"
Voila was silent again. She had of course fathomed all the relevant future paths, and knew his decision before he made it. This session had been mainly a show of form, allowing him to act kingly. Voila had been the ultimate authority on human decisions for the past five years or more.
He was resigned. "Thanks for letting me strut and fret my hour upon the stage, daughter."
She kissed him, and for just a moment she was his little girl again. "Welcome, father." She faded out.
Havoc went to his office. Ennui was there, old but able. She was never off-duty when things of importance were afoot, regardless of the time. "Gale and Monochrome await you in your suite, Havoc."
"They know?"
"Naturally." And naturally she knew what he was talking about. She was telepathic, but hardly needed it. There was no mortal person more important to the functioning of the kingdom than Ennui, and everyone knew it.
He went to his suite. Both women greeted him. They were dressed to be attractive, Gale in green, Monochrome in white, and they were the two loveliest women in the human culture despite being well beyond youth. Glamors were ageless.
Havoc paused for a moment to admire them. Queen Gale, now 40, was the Glamor of Mosses and Lichen, slender yet full fleshed, retaining the figure that had in her youth made her perhaps the planet's most beautiful woman. Her hair and eyes were brown and lustrous. She played the hammer dulcimer with marvelous finesse. He had loved her from the time she was a child, and would always love her.
Monochrome was the Mistress of Mistresses of Planet Earth, that planet's Female Spirit or Glamor, lovely and cultured, not looking her age of 55. She was albino, white of hair and skin, her eyes pink because there was no color to mask their blood. Her body was so well formed it seemed to have no bones, just soft curves. She anchored her hair with the two sections of her soprano recorder, which she could play supremely well. Havoc had made her a reluctant Oath of Friendship by Voila's direction, then quickly come to love her; she was as fine a woman in her own right as could be discovered, with subtle yet powerful magic.