Penelope commanded her front door to slide open, then ushered the Kid inside and led him through the foyer to the large room that overlooked the pond.
The Kid looked around and saw a rag doll lying on the couch.
“Whose is that?” he asked, pointing toward it.
“Mine,” said Penelope with no show of embarrassment. She picked it up and cuddled it to her breast.
“Aren't you a little old for dolls?”
“I had a kitten once,” she replied, tightening her grip on the doll as if afraid that someone would come into the room and take it away from her. “It wouldn't come near me, and whenever I reached out to it, it hissed and spat at me.”
“Maybe it was just a spooky kitten,” he suggested.
She shook her head. “I bought a puppy three months ago. It ran up to every stranger, wagging its tail—but it would never remain in the same room with me.”
“A rag doll's a poor substitute,” said the Kid.
“Perhaps,” she agreed. “But it has never run from me, and it has never attempted to betray me, and that is more than I can say about any human I've ever known.”
“Any human?”
She paused, a wistful expression on her face. “There was one, a very long time ago, a woman who fed me and protected me, and whom I loved very much—but even she turned against me in the end.” She turned to face the Kid. “It is more difficult than you think to be the Prophet, to know that every member of the race that gave you birth hates and fears you.”
“Not without cause,” noted the Kid. “You really did a job on them last night.”
“Only because the Anointed One has decreed that I must die.” She smiled bitterly. “The Anointed One, whom I have never met, never challenged, never opposed. He was well on his way to attacking the Democracy, but then he somehow heard of my powers and instead he has decided to make war on me instead of upon the navy. The Iceman, who knows he cannot possibly hinder me, nonetheless pays you to spy on me. The Black Death, who knew what happens to those who are disloyal to me, died rather than stay and continue working for me.” She paused and sighed. “I always knew he would.”
“If you knew he was going to be disloyal, why didn't you get rid of him sooner?”
“As I told you, he had a function to perform.”
“To die in Minuet?”
“To provide you with the opportunity to prove your fidelity to me,” she said. “It was imperative that you be presented with a situation where you would surely die if you did not trust in my powers and yield to my authority.”
“Why?” asked the Kid. “You had Mboya already.”
She shook her head. “He was destined to desert me.”
“How do you know I won't?”
“Because you are selfish enough and greedy enough and immoral enough to realize that your best interest lies in total fealty to me,” she replied.
“I don't know that I especially like that assessment of me,” said the Kid.
“The question is not whether you like it,” replied Penelope, “but whether it is true.” She paused. “You have made only two friends on the Inner Frontier—Felix Lomax and Carlos Mendoza—and yet here you are, working for me and prepared to betray both of them.”
“What do you know about the Gravedancer?” demanded the Kid, surprised.
“Do you think I am without my spies and my informants, or that you can keep any secrets from me?” she asked with an amused smile. “Do not try to change the subject, Fido: have you deserted them or not?”
“My name's the Silicon Kid.”
“Your name is whatever I choose it to be,” answered Penelope. “Just as your destiny is.”
“Speaking of destinies, there are a lot of people who would pay a hell of a lot of money to know what yours is.”
She looked out at the pond.
“I know what it should be, but there are still too many variables, too many intangibles, in the equation.” She turned to stare at him. “That is why you are here.”
“What do you expect me to do?” asked the Kid.
“I have many tasks for you,” said Penelope. “If you succeed at them, you will be handsomely rewarded. If you fail, you will surely die.”
The Kid looked unimpressed. “This is silly,” he said. “Why don't you just read the future and tell me what I have to do in order to succeed?”
She shook her head and looked back at the pond. “That presupposes that there is only one future,” she answered. “And as I have explained to you before, there are more futures than there are grains of sand on a beach. I cannot yet see them all with equal clarity.”
The Kid sat down on a couch and stretched his arms along the top of it. “All right,” he said. “Just what is it that you want me to do next?”
She turned to him, but again he got the distinct impression that she was looking past or through him, into the future.
“You will kill Moses Mohammed Christ, who calls himself the Anointed One.”
“Just like that?” asked the Kid with a smile. “He's probably better protected than the Secretary of the Democracy—and he's certain to be awfully well-hidden.”
“I know where he is.”
“How many bodyguards has he got?”
She shrugged. “It makes no difference,” she said. “His bodyguards, with one exception, will cause you no problems.”
“Who's the one who will cause me a problems?”
“Felix Lomax.”
“The Gravedancer?” said the Kid. “What trouble can he cause? Hell, he still thinks I'm working for him and the Iceman.”
“He will know.”
“Not unless you tell him, he won't,” said the Kid confidently. “Or are you saying that he's a telepath, too?”
“Neither he nor I are telepaths,” answered Penelope. “But on the other hand, neither of us are fools. He will see you there and he will deduce the reason for your presence.”
The Kid considered her statement, then shrugged. “Then I'll kill him.”
“He will not be as easy to kill as you seem to think,” she said.
“I killed Mboya, didn't I?”
“I was there to help you.”
“You didn't lift a finger,” he said. “I killed him on my own.”
“I did not lift a finger?” she repeated with a smile. “Why do you suppose his pistol failed to function?”
“Well, after that,” said the Kid uneasily.
“You really believe that, don't you?” she said with a sigh. “You are a fool, Fido.”
“I told you not to call me that!” he snapped.
She looked amused. “Do you think to frighten me? Or do you think that I will be as easy to kill as The Black Death was?”
He glared sullenly at her, but said nothing.
“I admire a show of spirit in any young animal, even a young man,” she continued. “But if you direct it at me again, I will have to discipline you. There are men out there—many men—who need killing. You must learn to focus your rage.” She paused. “You must also learn that being young and strong and fast, and even unafraid, is not enough when you face an opponent such as Felix Lomax.”
“Come on,” he said, unimpressed. “If I get in any trouble, you'll just do whatever you did with Mboya, and that'll be that. Why are you trying to make this seem more dangerous or difficult than it is?”
“You will be hundreds, perhaps thousands, of light years away from me,” she answered. “I cannot control events that precisely from so great a distance. If I could, I wouldn't need you.”
“I can do it without you,” he said confidently.
“If it was an impossible task, I wouldn't send you,” she said. “I detest waste.”
“Well, then?”
“I know that you can kill the Anointed One. I do not know if you will kill him.”
“Thanks for your confidence,” he said sardonically.
“There are many futures in which you kill him, and in some you kill Felix Lomax as well. But there are an almost equal number of futures in which you lie dead at Lomax's feet.”
“None of those are going to come to pass.”
“I hope not, but I do not know.”
“I know,” said the Kid. He paused. “Once I take care of the Gravedancer and the Anointed One, maybe I'll go after the Iceman.”
She shook her head. “He is the only man that I have ever feared. You cannot kill him.”
“He's an old man who lets other people do his fighting for him.”
“You will not oppose him, now or ever,” she said.
“But I can take him.”
“He was responsible for the death of the only person I ever cared for,” she said so softly that the Kid had difficulty making out the words. “He is the man who convinced the Democracy to try to kill me.” She paused as the memories came flooding back. “He is the reason I remained imprisoned on Hades after I had manipulated events to arrange my escape. Whenever I have been made to suffer—and I have suffered much, believe me—he has been the cause of it.”
“All the more reason for me to kill him.”
And for the first time since he had known her, the emotionless mask dropped from Penelope's face. She turned away from the window to face him, and her eyes shone with a terrifying hatred.
“He is mine!” she whispered.
The Kid left Mozart six hours later. As his ship broke out of orbit, he was still contemplating the almost tangible fury in Penelope's voice, and feeling very relieved that all he had to do was face the best killer and the most powerful fanatic in the galaxy. He did not envy the Iceman.
And far behind him, Penelope Bailey hugged her doll to her bosom and wondered what her life might have been like had she been an ordinary woman. Then she realized that for the first time in many years she was crying. She wiped the tears off her cheeks, put all thought of the way things might have been out of her mind, and went back to sorting out the various futures that confronted her.