The Garden of Proserpine

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fantasy set in the universe described in the manga 'Eroica yori ai o komete.' However much that universe resembles our own in its external physical features, the two are definitely not the same. Eroica's world is one without AIDS or INTERPOL, where American scientists offer top-secret formulas to the Pope (who accepts them), and agents from both sides of the Curtain who get tired of being spies retire to a remote Swiss valley where no one bothers them. Anyone expecting to find something that conforms to the reality we ourselves live in is not likely to discover it here.

The American couple with the complicated name were already eating breakfast when he arrived at the table they shared at the pension. He said a brief hello and sat down with his paper while the waiter, who doubled as the night clerk, brought him his croissants and café au lait.

"Where's your friend this morning?" Mr. Fawkes-Whatsits asked politely.

"He'll be down after his shower," Dorian said in the same fashion. "He jogs every morning."

Fawkes gave a neutral grunt, and went back to reading the brochure of the conference. Thank God neither he nor his tiny wife was the chatty type. Mornings were bad enough with Klaus, who always bounded out of bed in a fever of energy and eloquence that took no account of his bedmate's condition. Klaus' habits had altered not a whit in their seven years together, and Dorian still found his behaviour on waking as hard to take as his blanket-hogging while asleep. He couldn't have borne conversation with anyone else before he'd had at least one cup of coffee.

He dipped his croissant into the foamy milk and chewed slowly, thinking of nothing at all. This morning blank time was a relief, in its way: an interlude of Zen not-being when the most that was required of him was that he not stop breathing.

"This man Aouille," Mrs. Fawkes said after a bit, "Is he related to the cybernetics expert?" She turned the name into Owill, and Dorian winced.

"Dunno. A lot of Circassians seem to be called that. They must not go in for birth control much, if it's all one family." The man wasn't really good-looking, but there was a nice homeliness to his big features, and experience told Dorian that his slow easy-goingness probably vanished in bed. A small thread of interest stirred inside him.

"It's not a family, actually, it's a tribe," he remarked, smiling to ease his intrusion into their conversation. The smile took energy. He signalled to the waiter for another coffee. "There are two big ones in the Circassian highlands. When the country was modernized after the first war the lowland government made everyone adopt a surname, and the highlanders simply took the name of the tribe they belonged to. That's why half the people are called either Aouille-" he took pains with the pronunciation: A-oh-ee- "or Acaille. Like the Sikhs." He gave a highbeam glance into the man's deep brown eyes.

"Oh," the other said a little blankly: in response to Dorian or to the Sikhs, it was hard to tell.

It was the woman who said with interest, "So these two scientists- Acaille and Aouille-" She'd picked up the correction, but it still came out Owee. Oh well; Circassian was an intractable language- "they might as well be called Smith and Jones? No wonder no-one can find them."

"How do you know about the names?" Fawkes asked. It sounded like a neutral question, but there was definitely a response at some level. Dorian leaned a little closer to him.

"I had a Circassian friend once, many years ago. He told me all the legends of the country."

"Legends?" That was his wife. No jealousy there, only interest in what Dorian might have to say. Was she so certain of her husband, or merely indifferent?

"Oh yes." Dorian smiled, not breaking eye contact with the man. "In the beginning there were two stones that fell from heaven, one red and one blue. The people appointed two warrior priests to care for them. They carried the stones when the armies went into battle, and the Circassians swept their enemies before them. So for many years the red tribe and the blue prospered and ruled the land. But then there was division. The warriors of the blue tribe wanted to continue their conquests, the red wanted to stay and be content with what they had. The blue tribe left, taking their stone with them, while the red tribe retreated into the fastnesses of the mountains. Some day the two stones will be united again, and Circassian warriors will once more shake the world." He ended the story with a flourish.

"Not so far off, was it?" Fawkes smiled back at him.

"General Majek, you mean?" Dorian raised an eyebrow. "That story about him being involved in bringing down the Soviet regime? Surely that was just a popular legend after he left the government so suddenly."

"He doesn't seem the kind who'd stay quiet for long. And the timing was suggestive. He disappears off the scene and a year later there's seething unrest throughout the area."

"He disappears and two weeks later Chernobyl explodes," his wife said tartly. "You think there's a connection there too?"

"It's probably just rumour and speculation," Dorian said judiciously. "No-one could really believe he'd drop everything in order to go look after a child." That had been Klaus' conclusion. NATO had been more than a little concerned about what might be behind the General's sudden 'retirement' in favour of his older son, given rumours of conflict between Majek and the young man. However an intensive investigation had found no evidence of a power struggle at home nor of any clandestine political activity abroad. Sources in Circassia confirmed that the younger boy was indeed in a deep coma following some kind of explosion, and that Majek had returned with him to his fortress town in the mountains. However unlikely on the face of it, it seemed he really had retired voluntarily in order to devote himself to the child's recovery.

"All we ever hear from Circassia is rumour and speculation," Mrs. Fawkes said in dissatisfaction. "Like this paper of Jean Acaille's." She made it sound like Gene. This time Dorian didn't correct her.

"The Fountain of Youth?" He tried to keep his voice light, but a little thrill ran down his back as he said the words.

"That's what I mean. All the precis says is that he and - Aouille- are on the track of the chromosome that causes aging. 'A preliminary analysis-' That's all. But the stories that are going round- that he's isolated it, reversed it, that there are millennia-old people living in Circassia... It's getting to the point of hysteria."

"They seem to be fuelling the rumours themselves. Hiding away, not talking to reporters, not appearing in public- it suggests there's more of a mystery than there is." That had been Klaus' conclusion too, expressed far more forcibly than Dorian was about to. Klaus was furious at being sent off on so ludicrous a mission. The fact that agents from every other agency, and a host of countries both friendly and not, had also come in pursuit of the elusive scientists just made him angrier.

"Ridiculous!" he'd stormed. "A fairy tale! There's nothing to it, and those two are just trying to make people think there is. They're going to look pretty stupid when they actually have to give some proof, and so will everyone else. And NATO will damned well be right up there, wiping egg off our face along with the CIA and the Iranians and MOSSAD and the rest of the losers."

"They're scientists," Dorian had argued. "They wouldn't make claims they couldn't back. Stories like this don't come from nothing. There must be something revolutionary in their research to be getting a response like this."

"Oh of course," Klaus had sneered. "You believe it. You would. You want to be twenty-five forever. Well you can't. You're pushing forty-"

"Thirty-six," he'd protested.

"-and you look every day of it. Why don't you grow up? I hate being seen with someone who acts like a middle-aged teenager."

"Seen? When have you ever been seen with me anywhere?" he'd demanded, shaking with rage, and left before the perennial quarrel could start again. He knew Klaus was only talking this way because he was angry about his orders, but Dorian was damned if he'd serve as whipping boy yet another time. And what Klaus said had hurt, more than he wanted to admit. They hadn't seen each other again until their pre-arranged meeting here in T--, and things hadn't improved much even then

He pulled his mind from the constant sore point of Klaus, to hear Fawkes saying, as if in echo of his own thoughts, "There must be something to it. Academics don't get carried away like this for nothing. Someone knows something--"

"But it isn't us," Klaus said, sitting himself down peremptorily and smiling wolfishly at the American. "Whatever our respective governments may think. So you might as well stop pumping my friend."

Fawkes looked at him mildly. "Whoever does know isn't talking. That's the only thing we do know." He put his napkin down and rose to go, his wife following suit. "Have a nice day." He nodded briefly at Dorian, and left.

"Why did you have to be so rude to that poor man?" Dorian demanded.

"He's an agent, stupid." Klaus was shovelling a croissant into his mouth. "And you were telling him everything."

"You think everyone's an agent, including a perfectly ordinary American professor and his wife."

"You believed him when he said he was a professor? God."

"He didn't say. I can tell from his suits. Badly cut and badly cared for. His wife doesn't look after him- too busy with her career, I'll bet."

"Oh, she's a career woman, is she?" Klaus said with heavy sarcasm. "Could you tell that from her suits?"

"Of course. She's much better dressed than he is. Why don't you use your eyes, Klaus?"

"Why don't you use yours? If you're so damned observant, Sherlock, how come you can't tell CIA agents when you see them?"

"They're not CIA," Dorian said in exasperation. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Some other outfit, then. They're spies. I can smell them."

"You're paranoid. They're-"

"You're a fool- always have been and always will be," Klaus said in dismissive contempt. Something inside Dorian turned to iron.

"You're right. I'm a fool. I'd have to be, to stay with you and put up with this kind of behaviour."

"Don't make a scene."

"Don't make a scene. Don't draw attention to myself. Pretend I don't exist. Just sit still and let you insult me."

"It's your fault for getting me upset and making me say things I don't mean. If you'd just learn to think before you open that mouth of yours- where are you going?!"

He'd heard all this before, many many times, and he didn't want to hear it again. He got to his feet and walked out of the dining room, knowing Klaus wouldn't think of calling attention to himself by following.

'I can't go on like this,' he thought to himself. 'I can't. This is hell.'

Without purpose he wandered out of the pension and into the cobblestoned streets of the old quarter. Instinctively he made for the canal, where willows bent above the water's surface. Their pale green was like a mist, and the sight of them was obscurely painful. All things bloom again in the spring, but not us. Not us.

Thirty-six. Next year thirty-seven. The year after that... He still kept his lean figure, he trained regularly to maintain the solidity to his muscles, he was careful of his diet... There was nothing to show. He looked like a man ten years his junior. But he felt different now than ten years ago.

He felt under siege.

He'd never thought it would matter to him- the small lines beginning around his eyes, the gold beginning to dim in his hair. He thought he'd age with aplomb: go from being a beautiful young man to being a beautiful old one. There had been friends of his father's whom he'd loved as a boy: gracious Lord Marley with his exquisite manners and stunning pure-white hair; Brigadier Hopkins with the threads of molten silver at his temples and the face of an eagle, fierce and wise; someone called only Rudy, genial, round-faced and laughing, like a cotton-haired cherub. The young men who frequented the house loved them too. Dorian had early become aware of the rivalry for their favours. He'd always thought that if he aged, he'd do it like that.

'If I aged. I thought I had a choice. I never thought it would be like this.'

This dreary middle-aged nothingness. This lack of delight in the wonders of the world. No-one had told him that when the body begins to fail, the spirit fails too. Or was it the other way round?

How long had it been since anything had pleased him? Years, it seemed. After his second- third- year with Klaus-- 'with' Klaus. He grimaced. His third year as Klaus' clandestine lover, when the secret stolen meetings had begun to pall and Klaus had reverted to his worst bad temper... It was so much nicer before that: not perhaps at the very start when Klaus was always pushing him away, often at gun point, but after that, as he had slowly- so slowly- allowed Dorian to come nearer and nearer. It had taken every day of four years from Klaus' first grudging admission- in Paris, that had been- that he actually preferred Dorian alive to Dorian dead-- though Klaus himself wasn't queer and never would be and Dorian had better resign himself to that fact right now-- to his final capitulation. Four years of close loving pursuit, of small victories one after another, of advances that had gone unrebuffed and intimacies, both physical and psycho-logical, that Klaus had permitted with unvarying bad grace. His wire love had never unbent verbally, whatever his body did. Dorian didn't mind. From that morning in Paris he'd known he was going to win, and for four years the sun had shone unremittingly. His career as a thief had reached new heights of glory- he'd breached the security of collections private and public, he'd plundered the Prado and despoiled the Gettys. T'ang figurines from China, van Gogh's Sunflowers from Tokyo, Raphael's madonna from the Uffizi and Tintoretto's Venus from Venice had all come to grace his country home. It had been wonderful.

It had been wonderful. And now...

He didn't want to think about now.

Without intention, his feet had taken him to the hotel where the Biogenetics Conference was being held. He had nothing to do here- nothing to do in this city, for that matter. He'd come only because Klaus would be alone and they could meet without observation from the rest of NATO. T-- was too much a city of business and bureaucracy to provide any outlet for Dorian's tastes. But the hotel and the conference had become the centre of everyone's attention for this week. At least it was thronged with people and might provide a diversion... until Klaus found him and ordered him away from the area of his operations. Klaus expected Dorian to exist only at night, and regarded his daytime presence as an affront.

He took a table in the indoor café opening off the lobby. Around him seats were slowly being vacated as the conference attendees finished breakfast and took themselves off to the first seminars of the day. A programme lay abandoned on the table beside him. He reached a long arm over and scanned it while waiting for his cappuccino, but it might as well have been written in Greek. Well no- he could read Greek, but this was incomprehensible. 'Biochemical genetics of elasmo-branchs with emphasis on the alopiidae.' 'Gene expression in recombinant microorganisms.' 'Specific selection of deoxycytidine kinase mutants with tritiated deoxyadenoisine.' He flipped through the pages, and came to the seminars at week's end. 'Preliminary analysis of the possible effect of deviant chromosomal structure on the human aging process' by Acaille, Jean and Aouille, Sascha.

That woman was right. It sounded like nothing at all. 'Preliminary', 'possible'... There seemed no reason why agents from NATO and the old KGB and half a dozen other agencies as well would show up in droves to track down the authors of the paper, but they were here... There must be something to this, some substance to the persistent rumours that Acaille and Aouille had found the key- or a key- to perpetual youth.

Perpetual youth- it wasn't such an unnatural idea. It simply meant being the same way one had always been, from fifteen to thirty, before everything had begun to go so terribly wrong. It showed a desire for stability. What could be more normal than that? Aging was what was unnatural- the constant change, the unremitting attack of time, the relentless degeneration. It was wrong. It was unfair. It should be stopped...

There was a small stir around him, a rustling more psychic than physical, and Dorian found his head turning to locate the source. A man was walking through the café, making for the lobby door. Not a young man, nor particularly tall- no more than medium height, if that. There was no one thing about him that particularly struck the eye but he drew the room's attention like a magnet. Dorian frankly stared. Shaggy no-colour hair, the silver-smoke that blonde goes with age, growing carelessly over the collar; shaggy colourless eyebrows above deep-set eyes; pale skin with deep lines on each side of the bleached long mouth; a firm jutting chin and high blunt cheekbones that started a small ache in Dorian's heart. Unlike the academics all around in their conference suits and ties, the man was casually dressed as if for the country in a grey wool jumper and tweed trousers. Rather than looking out of place, he made the scholars in their unimaginative serge seem stolid and middle-class. The man was talking to someone beside him, quiet and intent, as if they were alone in the room. A hundred little details bespoke the aristocrat and leader: his straight spine and the tilt to his head, the informality of his dress, his genuine obliviousness to all those watching eyes. But what stunned Dorian most was the sense of concentrated force about him. It was practically visible, like the heat that turns the world wavy above a fire- an authority as massive and unselfconscious as a mountain's.

'Who is that?' Dorian wondered, awestruck. 'Why have I never seen him before?' His fascinated eyes tracked the man's progress through the restaurant and his finger crept up unthinkingly to play with one of his curls. 'Oh God,' he thought, and his finger throbbed as he twisted the hair tighter, 'Oh God-': half plea and half prayer: and as if in response the man turned his head and looked straight at him. His eyes were an amazing blue, like two pieces of the summer sky fixed in a human face. Dorian straightened up, glowing as though warmed by the Mediterranean sun as he felt the golden connection that ran between himself and the ravishing stranger. Always it was the same, that supreme moment when he met another avatar of the Beautiful and became caught in the mutual exchange of the divinity each embodied. He reflected delight back on his beholder like a mirror reflecting sunlight, feeling his own eyes growing wider and his mouth taking on a soft curve. The golden warmth turned from him briefly and Dorian felt as if a cloud had covered the sky. The man's companion was saying something to him, urging him forward. 'Oh no- don't leave-,' Dorian thought in desolation. The two moved on, but as they did those amazing eyes flashed once again in his direction.

He leaned back in his seat, dazzled. It was as if his soul had been rapt away to another plane of existence, one where heavenly music played among sun-split clouds. Slowly he felt himself descending to earth again. He smelled freshly poured coffee and the pungent perfume of a Gaulois and beneath that the solid restaurant odour of linen, lemon, and thick carpeting. Around him sang a muted conversational chorus of masculine baritones and tenors and the occasional high soprano, speaking in French and German and English and, off to one side, Turkish. The low hubbub was punctuated by the chink of china cups replaced in saucers and the clink of forks against porcelain plates. Absently he smiled at the flowers on his table: they were sunshiny yellow, frilled at the edges, with small freckly spots like a jaguar's. The celestial music sang faintly on, background to the steady clearness now burning in his soul, and in his head there was one single word.

'Mine.'

He felt his being relax and expand to touch all the life in the room around him. What a lovely day it was after all, and what a delightful city T-- had turned out to be, and how amusing these solemn academics were with their impossible language and their hard ideas. The world was such a simple place, really. There was beauty and it all belonged to him. He didn't even have to go looking for it-- beauty came walking into his path like a god in a garden. Most delightfully of all, beauty didn't always know who its most devoted lover was. There was first the game and ceremony of pursuit to give pleasure to his days, and then the final possession to crown his endeavours and his nights. Dorian sighed happily. For the first time in what seemed ages he felt completely himself. He felt like Eroica. It had been so long, so long, since he'd seen something by chance and recognized it instinctively as his own.

He lingered again on the memory of those blue eyes and the deep lines that bracketed the experienced mouth. How much he must know- how much he would have to teach Dorian- and how much Dorian could teach him. He would smell of tobacco, rich and mellow; he would be a slow and gracious lover, patient as a father- but masterful too, no doubt about it. That was a mouth accustomed to giving orders and a face used to being obeyed. And-- if one didn't obey? Under the aristocratic courtesy there had beat- or was he imagining it? - a pulse of danger. No, not imagination. Those eyes had held more than a hint of the jungle. Like a panther- a silver panther- noble and deadly; or a blue-eyed wolf, unfriend to man; or a king of Faery, pale and inhuman, judging mortal kind by his own strange and merciless standards...

Even as his pulse beat more strongly, Dorian smiled at his fantasies. His new love was all those things; he was also an ordinary man with a name and an occupation and, if God loved him, a room number in this hotel. Now to find out what all those were.

"The man who just left?" The waiter looked a little blank. "I'm sorry, monsieur, a number of people have left in the last five minutes. It's nearly time for the first session of the morning..."

"This wasn't a scientist," Dorian assured him. "You couldn't miss him. He had pale grey-blond hair, almost silver, and he wasn't wearing a suit- a grey jumper..."

The waiter was shaking his head. "I'm sorry, sir, I don't remember a gentleman matching that description."

"You must have seen him," Dorian insisted. "Everyone was turning to look at him."

The waiter kept shaking his head. "I'm sorry, sir, I was at the back of the restaurant-"

"That's where he came from-"

"I didn't see him-"

Dorian gazed in exasperation at the bovine face. "Let me speak to the maitre d'."

"Right away, sir." The man departed with relieved alacrity.

Dorian bit his lip in impatience until the maitre d' appeared. He was older and balding, with a shrewd watchful expression that somehow annoyed the Earl. He repeated his question.

"- a grey jumper and tweed trousers. I think he had some people with him. Obviously he's someone quite important; I was just trying to place him."

"I'm afraid I don't know the gentleman's name, sir. He came with a party- I don't think they're connected with the conference, from the way they dressed. And I doubt they're staying at this hotel. They settled the bill before they left, in cash."

Dorian's eyes narrowed momentarily, then he smiled. "Ah well, I was just wondering who he was. I thought I'd seen him before someplace."

"They might still be in the lobby, or in the vicinity of the hotel," the maitre d' suggested.

Dorian laughed. "Oh, it's hardly that important. I'll have another cappuccino- and do you have brioche?"

"Yes indeed, sir," and he vanished in his turn. Dorian lit a cigarette, and turned his attention on the café, letting his glance rest finally on a good-looking young lad a few tables away. He put a dreamy heavy-lidded expression on his face, the look of one indulging in thoughts best not inquired into too deeply.

Very informative, the maitre d'. Too informative. Paid in cash, had they? And certainly not guests of the hotel. Oh no indeed. The man was clearly a V.I.P., but that was scarcely news. No, he was a V.I.P. with a liking for privacy and able to command it. Dorian smiled slowly. How wonderful. A little difficulty to be overcome, just for the practice. His coffee and brioche appeared before him and he sipped absently. A frontal assault on the desk clerk wouldn't work, obviously; but he didn't have the equipment or the talent to hack into the hotel's computer. That was what Bonham was for- what a pity he hadn't brought Bonham, but then, how could he have known? Of course, he could get the information long-distance. He considered the notion and discarded it. No, not this time. This was Dorian's personal quest. In matters of art he took what assistance his men could give him, but in affairs of the heart it was every man for himself. He smiled wider, and was aware of a small commotion. The young man three tables away was rising hastily and making for the door, blushing a deep red. He cast one terrified glance over his shoulder in Dorian's direction as he disappeared.

Dorian laughed out loud. Definitely, they'd think him an undesirable type. Time he went back to the fray. He signalled for his bill.

He sat in the lobby, smoking slowly, sizing up the men behind the front desk. They were all giving him covert looks, of envy or perplexity or disapproval, but Dorian had his sensors out for that little hormonal admixture that was necessary to his mission. Yes; there. The young one with the blond hair and the remains of acne. That was the one. Good-looking enough, though the red splotches were a pity; but if push came to shove, better than the portly middle-aged man on his right.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Dorian jumped at the fierce hiss in his ear. He turned to regard the stranger beside him- oh, not a stranger, of course. Klaus. Of course. He opened blue eyes wide.

"Cruising the desk clerks. What does it look like?"

"Leave at once. You're too conspicuous."

"Go to hell," he said mildly.

"What?!" Klaus looked dumbfounded.

"I said, go to hell. Or go away- whichever you prefer. And if you don't-" he cut in over Klaus outraged expression, "I'll yell that you're propositioning me. That'll get you refused entry to this hotel for good."

"What the fuck are you playing at!!" Give Klaus credit, his whisper still suggested volume enough to shake the walls, but Dorian wasn't in the mood to give Klaus credit.

He ground out his cigarette, rose to his feet, and strode over to the front desk.

"Where is the manager?" he demanded in ringing tones. "I wish to speak with him at once. This man is pestering me." He flung a hand out at Klaus who had stopped halfway in his pursuit. A bit too much Edith Evans in the voice, he thought critically, but the effect on the hotel minions was satisfactory. A flurry of activity erupted behind the desk, and a man in pinstriped trousers emerged from the interior office.

"What appears to be the matter, sir?" he inquired, eyes dubiously taking in Dorian's rose velvet draped pantaloons and full-sleeved shirt.

"Nothing is the matter," Klaus interjected, low-voiced and in control. "This pervert wishes to embarrass me in public."

"I am Dorian earl of Red Gloria, a peer of the English realm and a citizen of the European Community." He showed his passport to the manager. "This man came up and whispered in my ear, right here in the lobby. I'm not accustomed to behaviour of this sort in a hotel of your reputation."

"And you, sir?" The manager turned to Klaus inquiringly.

"Major von dem Eberbach of NATO." Unwillingly, Klaus flashed his ID. "This man is of interest to NATO and I wish to speak with him."

"In what capacity?" The manager was looking less than friendly at Klaus.

"I'm not at liberty to say."

"Is this a matter for the police?"

"It concerns security. It's not safe to have him in your hotel. Leave him to me."

"I don't think so, Major," the hotel manager said heavily. "We've made it clear that your kind are not welcome here. Please leave at once."

"My kind!" Klaus was black with rage and his tone threatened. "Just what are you implying?"

"Spies- agents- undercover operators- whatever you wish to call yourselves. We will not permit men like you to disoblige our guests and disrupt the conference. We have police security," he plowed on through Klaus' objections, "and I'll ask them to intervene if you don't leave immediately."

"Ridiculous!" Klaus snapped. "You can't turf out a NATO officer in pursuit of his orders!"

"I can if you refuse to tell me what those orders are, sir. I have an obligation to our guests. Will you leave, or shall I call for our security staff?"

Klaus glared at the man, who merely looked back at him with civil detestation.

Klaus turned to Dorian. "I'll see you outside," he said darkly, and turned to go.

"You'll get the same answer outside as in, dear," Dorian called after him, and had the satisfaction of seeing Klaus' ears go red. "Some men can't take no for an answer," he remarked to the manager. "But it looks like I'll have to stay here now. Do you have a room available?"

"Sir." The manager spread deprecatory hands. "Our rooms were all booked months ago."

Dorian smiled, megawatt charm pouring on the man like a nova.

"Of course. But naturally, there's always something available for visiting celebrities. If the King of Sweden turned up this afternoon, you wouldn't send him over to the Hilton?"

"Naturally not-'

"Well, he isn't here, and I am. What have you got?"

"The Royal Suite is taken--"

"I don't need a suite fit for a king; a room for a prince will do nicely. That's what I am, after all."

"You are?" The man's eyes were going unfocussed.

"In my own fashion. Unrecognized, of course. We can't have a scandal."

"I've heard about the English royals. You don't mean-"

Dorian nodded, smiling. "A marriage of state- well, what can you expect? Like son, like father."

"Ohh..." He regarded Dorian dazedly. "You don't look like-"

"Thank God," Dorian said fervently. "Meaning no disrespect, of course."

"Oh well, in that case- Jean-Pierre," he signalled the middle-aged men. "Take- uhh-

"-His lordship-" Dorian supplied. "I'm quite legitimately an earl." Luckily the manager was in no state to figure out how.

"-to the twelfth floor suite."

"Oh, I won't bother your senior staff," Dorian interposed graciously. "This young man can take me to my room." A wave of his hand, and the substitution was made as if by magic. In seconds they were riding up in the lift.

"What's your name?"

"Paul, monsieur."

"Paul." He caressed the syllable.

Paul didn't look at him, but blushed furiously. Nonetheless, Dorian realized almost at once, he was more experienced than that blush would suggest.

"Security's very tight here, I see."

"Yes monsieur."

"Your manager just tossed a NATO Major off the premises."

"Our guests are accustomed to the best. We can't have them bothered with cops and robbers," Paul replied, clearly quoting a superior. His eyes slid round to look at Dorian, but meeting the Earl's, immediately went front again. "There are some very important people here for the conference, after all."

"Yes. There was one of them down in the restaurant. A man with hair like smoke-" Paul's face went closed, like a door slamming shut. "Somebody so important that no-one sees him if he doesn't want them to. I'm envious," Dorian murmured in the young man's ear. "I wish I could command invisibility like that."

Paul shifted a little, but didn't answer.

"Really?" Dorian smiled. "Is your job on the line if you admit to knowing him?"

"Could be more than my job," Paul muttered, as the lift doors opened.

"Do hotel staff often get death threats from their guests? Maybe you should put in for danger pay."

"It's no joke," he whispered desperately. "This place is crawling with secret agents. They've told us to expect anything- kidnappings, assassinations, God knows what all. It's because of those Circassians and their secret formula. Everyone's gone crazy about it. They've told us not to trust anybody."

"I'm not interested in the fountain of youth," Dorian half-lied, as Paul unlocked the door of his suite. "I only want to know who my invisible man is."

"Why?" Paul didn't bother to gloss the bluntness of the question.

"Why do you think?" Dorian looked straight in his eye. "You should understand." He ran a swift finger down the red-patched cheek. Paul blushed again but there was calculation in his expression.

"You'll make it worth my while?"

"One as pretty as you shouldn't be mercenary," Dorian said neutrally, watching the eyes respond to his nearness.

"I don't want money," Paul blurted, and pressed closer.

"Well then," Dorian smiled. "Show me where the bedroom is and maybe we can work something out."

An energetic half hour later, Paul disentangled himself from the tumbled sheets.

"I gotta go," he said, and began pulling on his pants. Dorian concealed his disapproval of the vulgar haste. Where there was no finesse in the important areas, one could scarcely expect grace in the finer details. He stretched out at his ease and watched Paul's eyes return unwillingly to his body.

"Well?" he said inquiringly.

"Well what?" Paul asked sullenly. No grace at all- not even a mercantile quid pro quo. The petty bourgeois were the most tiresome of classes, no doubt about it, with their perennial resentment of absolutely everything.

"My invisible man," Dorian prompted. "His name, and his room number."

"His name's Aouille," Paul said in smug triumph.

"Not the biologist, of course."

"Not the biologist, not the engineer, not the man who buys antiques, not the one with the funny harp, not the artist who does the wood carvings--" Paul chanted.

"Good heavens, are they all here together?"

Paul looked annoyed. "No, but they have been. There are a lot of them."

"And this is another Aouille?"

"Yes it is. And his room isn't registered to him."

"You're not going to tell me which it is, of course."

"It's against hotel policy," Paul said, unbudgeably self-righteous.

"Dog in the manger?"

Paul looked confused, then angry. "Of course not. You aristocrats think we're all for sale. All you have to do is fuck me and I'll tell you anything you want-"

"As I recall, you fucked me. Was it so bad?"

"No but-"

"But?"

"You only went to bed with me because you wanted something from me," Paul muttered.

"Yes. You knew that before we started. Something for something. Where's your business sense, young man?"

"Don't call me 'young man'. I'm as old as you are."

"Twenty-four?"

"Twenty-two, but-"

"I'm thirty-six."

"Oh." Paul looked stunned. "You can't be."

An odd satisfaction, not untinged with bitterness, filled Dorian's soul.

"All year long. And feeling every day of it right now. You'd do better with someone your own age."

"Oh." Paul was chewing his lip. "I've got to go." He looked at the bedroom door, but seemed unable to move.

"Good-bye then." Dorian waited.

"Well-- good-bye." He took a step to the door, paused, took two more steps, turned to look over his shoulder, then turned completely around.

"Look," he said desperately. "I know how you feel. But my job-"

Dorian smiled.

"You promise you won't tell him where you learned-?"

Dorian nodded, crossing his heart.

"Oh God- It's the roof penthouse suite. But you can't get in. There's a special elevator, and the doors are coded access, and it's the guest who codes them- we don't even know what it is- the housekeeper has to call to get in, even-"

"I see. Thank you."

"Oh God. I've got to go. This didn't happen, right?"

"No," Dorian said reassuringly, "It didn't happen."

His clothes and his tools were at the pension. Dorian took the narrow winding by-streets rather than the main thoroughfares, merely to give himself the pleasure of the walk. He approved of T---'s city planning, if one wanted to put that name to an arrangement that had grown randomly within the walls of the old castle town. Over on the wide boulevards were the eighteenth century and Empire apartment buildings, but here near the canals there were tall grey buildings from the Middle Ages with slit windows and spiral stone staircases. Dorian saw a young man come running sideways down the narrow enclosed steps on the outside of one tower-like structure. Just so, he thought, the medieval students would have dashed out into the street in their doublets and hose, bound for a lecture at the faculty of medicine which had been the pride of both city and university since the thirteenth century.

But his mind for once wasn't wholly on his fantasies of the storied past. The present was still too strong, not to mention the promised future. The slightly grubby interlude just finished cast a small shadow on his soul as he left the hotel, but it lifted in the rays of the sun that warmed the cobblestones. That poor young man, with his turbulent skin and adolescent rancours: God send him a nice rich lover and a change of diet. Dorian erased the matter from his mind and returned to the memory of that lion-like silver head turning in his direction. He played it over in his mind, the slow revolution and the two blue eyes so transparent that the light had seemed to shine through them- or out of them-

"Ouf-" He'd run full tilt into a man by the canal side. He blinked, seeing dark hair with silver at the temples-

"Your pardon, sir," the man was saying in automatic apology. Dorian smiled brilliantly if illogically at the silver temples. A good omen- how nice to live in a world that had older men in it-

"Not at all. It was my fault." He made a small open-handed bow.

"Have we met before, monsieur? Surely I recall-"

"I'm afraid you're mistaken," Dorian said kindly, hiding his amusement at the threadbare line, and took himself off. Even if he'd been in the mood, the man wasn't at all his type. But the encounter added the final note to his contentment. He could look forward to being much run after again. There was nothing to make a man irresistible like being in love. Back when he'd been pursuing Klaus, he'd had to beat his suitors off with a stick. Well, he could live with that. He was actually rather looking forward to it.

He arranged to have his clothes sent to the hotel, stuffed the bare necessities into a small bag, and made a few enquiries of the pension's proprietor.

"A hardware store?" she said dubiously. "Maybe in the suburbs, monsieur. Or you might try the department stores near the main square."

"What a good idea," Dorian said graciously. He pressed a small remembrance into her hand, and received her profuse thanks with a little thread of guilt. The poor woman would get the rough side of Klaus' tongue when the Major discovered that he'd gone for good. Of course, she could throw Klaus out as well, as the hotel manager had. That was the best way to deal with bullies, in the end.

He took a cab to the city centre and succeeded with some difficulty in making the necessary purchases. It was mid-afternoon by the time he returned to his palatial suite at the hotel. Yes, this was much more like it. Opulence and magnificence were his natural background. Enough of the small two-star lodgings Klaus' parsimony and paranoia had required him to stay in for the last seven years: places that suited whatever Klaus' cover was at whatever time, places where other NATO agents didn't come, places where Klaus could afford to pay his precise half of the bill... He would never allow Dorian to pick up the tab. "I know where your money comes from and I won't touch it," he'd said. What a pity the constipated German soul was housed in such an attractive casing. A waste of a beautiful body. Dorian sighed a last regret, and dismissed Klaus from his mind. He had work to do.

Shortly thereafter he was swinging fourteen stories above the street on a sling lowered from the roof and running along a track laid beneath the coping. His hair was tucked under a white cap, plain overalls covered the velvet and silk, and he was diligently washing the windows of the top floor on the hotel's west side.

Unfortunately all the windows proved to be of double glazed industrial thickness and wire reinforced, with opaque curtains obscuring the view of the rooms within. Very secure indeed. His real goal, however, was the large balcony off to his left and its walk-out double doors. Painstakingly he worked his way, window by window, to the stone balustrade. He stepped down onto it and approached the glass doors. They slid open at once, and Dorian found the barrel of an automatic rifle staring him in the face. He held up his squeegee mop as if in protection and looked in affected puzzlement at the rifle's owner. He was huge and uncouth, with a mane of rough black hair and a fearsome scar bisecting one eye.

"I have to wash the windows," Dorian said slowly in French.

The man snarled something in Circassian, clearly a negative. Dorian essayed German, with the same result. That exhausted the languages he could legitimately speak as a native of T---. He tried again in Russian, carefully stiff.

"The windows- I wash." He waved his squeegee at the doors. The man repeated what he'd said for the third time, and indicated, with the butt of his gun, that Dorian should leave.

"I wash windows. No wash, no pay. I starve."

The man bellowed, waving the gun. Dorian was debating whether the correct response was to bellow back or to burst into tears when a second armed man came to the doors. The giant let loose a cascade of tortured consonants at him, and the newcomer looked Dorian over carefully. He was a little more kempt than his fellow and his manner was a touch more civilized, but there was still an air of backwoods wildness to him. His dark eyes, partly hidden by a shock of black hair, were like an intelligent ferret's, and his aim was perfectly steady as he held his gun at Dorian's stomach.

"You speak French?" His accent was surprisingly good. Apparently he'd had some education.

"Yes of course." Dorian put an aggrieved note in his voice. "Will you let me get on with my work? All the fourteenth and twelfth floor windows have to be done this afternoon--"

"Go ahead," the man said, coming out onto the balcony. He spoke quickly to the giant, who stepped back inside and slid the door to. "Koczi will stand inside with his gun aimed at your chest, and I will stand out here aiming at your back. I'm sure you'll want to finish quickly, under the circumstances."

"Believe it," Dorian muttered, the disgruntled worker. "What's this all in aid of? An honest man can't do his job these days without having foreigners shoving guns in his face. This damned conference..."

"Quickly, monsieur." The gun barrel indicated the doors.

Dorian picked up his bucket and squeegee, slathered soapy water over the glass and began wiping it off neatly. As he worked he cast quick nervous glances inside, ostensibly at the hulking Koczi, and learned that this was the sitting room, with a door in the opposite wall that led apparently to the corridor.

"C'est fini," he said, sourly. "Now I have to do the remaining windows on this side. I trust you permit?"

"But of course," the shorter man said. He smiled without humour. "I'll watch until you're finished. I trust you permit?"

Dorian gave a Gallic snort of disgust, remounted his sling, and proceeded to clean the remaining four windows without undue haste. He rounded the corner and began working on the northern side. The first three windows had the same wire mesh and opaque curtains behind them as before, but the fourth was ordinary glass and gave onto an empty corridor. Craning, Dorian could see a large door of some heavy kind of wood, with a panel beside it. That would be the entrance, with the coded entry system. He smiled in satisfaction. How high tech. How formidable. How lucky the management trusted in the latest security systems and ignored basic precautions.

Dorian tested the window. It was bolted. At least they'd thought that far. It took thirty seconds to have a pane out and the bolt undone. He regarded the locked and coded door with approval. The hinges were on the outside. People always covered the obvious points and slipped up on the secondary ones. Speaking of which-- Perhaps he should wait until he'd concocted a plausible cover story before entering his beloved's- his well-guarded beloved's- domain? His memory was inconveniently recalling one or two things he'd learned about Circassian customs from Sergei, which suggested prudence might be the best course. He twitched his shoulders irritably. When had he ever been prudent? He was in love. Caution was for the helplessly middle-aged and the hopelessly bourgeois, and he was neither.

He applied himself to the hinges and was pulling the door away five minutes later. He cleared up the small matter of the electric lock, tidily put the door back on, and effected his metamorphosis from canvas-clad worker into elegant aristocrat. At last he stood with beating heart looking at the real front door of the suite. 'Through me lies the way-' he thought, and caught himself. No, damn it, through this door lies Heaven. 'Eternal Love it was that placed me here'- and love it is that waits for me beyond. He took a deep, anticipatory breath.

The original bell was still in place and evidently, from the door's locked condition, still in use. He rang, trusting inspiration would arrive when he needed it. The door opened almost immediately, taking him off-guard.

"Hello, Zha-" The short blond man checked. "You're not Jean." The open cheerful face looked puzzled. Easy enough to talk his way past that.

"No, I'm afraid not," Dorian began persuasively, until his belated senses caught up with him. He stopped and stared at the man, who was looking back at him with creased eyebrows.

"Don't I-" Dorian began just as the other said "I know you. I know I know you."

A voice called in Circassian from inside the apartment, down the hallway and to the right. It was a deep voice, peremptory, with a hint of velvet in it, and Dorian's knees went weak. His voice. Oh God. It called again, more impatiently, a single name that illuminated his darkness.

"Gunmar!" he gasped. "It's me- Dorian Red Gloria."

"Lord Gloria!" Gunmar's eyes widened in delight. Yes, definitely. Older, and by all evidence a little more sensible, but basically the same cheerful innocent as a dozen years before.

"You've cut your hair," Dorian said, smiling into his eyes.

"You haven't cut yours. Come in, come in." He took Dorian's arm and pulled him into the corridor. "Papa, it's an old friend," he called.

'Papa?' Dorian thought in bewilderment. Gunmar's father was dead- but Gunmar was guiding him into the living room and Dorian had eyes for nothing but the man sitting in a chair placed by itself, like- like a throne, he thought. Aouille's ash blond eyebrows were raised in speculation as Gunmar chattered through the introductions.

"Papa, this is an old friend from England," he said in French. "Dorian Earl of Red Gloria. We met in Paris when I was studying there with Takamatsu. He knows Uncle Savijc."

"That I can believe," someone muttered- a large blond man sitting off to Aouille's left.

"Kinta, don't be horrible," Gunmar said reprovingly but with affection. "Lord Gloria, this is my father and this is my cousin Kinta."

"I'm very pleased to meet you, sir," Dorian murmured, gazing entranced into the blue eyes. Oh lucky lucky Gunmar- to have been adopted by him. And lucky lucky Dorian, to know Gunmar.

"The pleasure's mine," Aouille said, a small smile beginning. Not just courtesy. He remembered from this morning. More than that: he liked something he saw in Dorian. The man had taste as well.

"How did he get in?" the large man- Kinta- demanded belligerently.

"An interesting question," Aouille remarked and his eyes danced a little at Dorian. "I look forward to hearing the answer, though not just now. I don't want to seem inhospitable but we're meeting to settle a few family matters. I won't-"

The bell rang again. "That's Jean," Gunmar said in satisfaction. "Jean's Uncle Savijc's friend," he added informatively as he went off to answer the door.

"His little friend," Kinta said heavily, and Dorian registered both the hostility in the words and the meaning behind them. 'Petit ami' meant 'lover' in French. His eyes narrowed but Gunmar's voice was already coming down the corridor. "You'll never guess who-" He turned around as Sergei walked into the room, arm in arm with a dark-haired man, and stopped dead.

"Good God- Dorian," he said, his head going back in surprise. He barely looked a day older- his hair still the colour of corn silk and his one eye still a changeable shade of blue-grey. He smiled suddenly and brilliantly. "It's been years."

"Yes, hasn't it?" Dorian said, bemused. Even after all his time with Klaus- even with Aouille sitting not three feet away and filling all his senses- there was still that little tug of attraction. From his side; not from Sergei's. He felt a small obscure pang at the muted happiness that radiated from his one-time lover. Because of this Jean person-- He looked over and just managed to keep the surprise from his face. 'Jean' was a young man-- a very young man-- young enough to be Sergei's son. Twenty-one, if that, and not a day older. Ah well- so Sergei was into cradle robbing...

"Dorian Lord Gloria, Jean," Sergei was saying in introduction.

Jean nodded, giving Dorian a friendly but appraising look. Dorian wondered suddenly if he'd misjudged. Those eyes were more than mature. Jean loosed Sergei's arm and held out his hand.

"Jean Acaille," he said.

"The scientist?" Dorian asked in disbelief, shaking hands automatically.

"Jean." Aouille's voice was heavy with displeasure. "You have an alias here. Use it. You know how dangerous this is."

Acaille looked unconcerned. "Lord Gloria is an old friend of the family. And frankly, I'm tired of pretending I don't exist."

"If you don't care for the pretence, you may find yourself facing the reality." Aouille's tone was grim.

"We're more use to everyone alive," Kinta said dismissively. "I've told you, you're being paranoid about this."

"I listen to what's being said out in the real world, where you can't be bothered to show your face." Dorian couldn't blame him for being annoyed. Kinta would try the patience of a saint. "Half the major powers want your discovery for themselves, the other half think it will destroy the status quo, and all of them want you out of the way."

"Speaking of out of the way, why don't Lord Gloria and I take ourselves there?" Sergei suggested. "This particular fight doesn't need noncombatant observers."

"Mmh," Aouille grunted, recovering. "I'll see you after, Savijc. Lord Gloria-" Dorian glowed at the sound of his name on those lips, "a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I hope to see you soon."

"No more than I do," Dorian said sincerely, and turned to find Sergei staring at him in something like shock, while the unspeakable boy beside him stood grinning from ear to ear. When he smiled he looked too young to vote.

"See you, Sergei," Jean said. "Sois sage."

"Et toi, aussi." Sergei shot him a meaning glance, took Dorian's arm, and turned to go.

"By the way," Gunmar said in a puzzled voice, "how did you get in? You don't know the code."

Trust Gunmar to remain the enfant terrible in spite of his age. Still, Aouille ought to know about the flaws in his security. Dorian looked over at him.

"The outside door, where the panel is- the hinges are on the same side as the corridor. You can get the bolts out with a screwdriver."

"Western technology." Aouille's tone showed what he thought of that. "Savijc-"

"I'll see to it," Sergei said.

"But why did you take-"

"Later, Gunmar." That was Aouille and Kinta and Sergei, all speaking together. Gunmar looked surprised, and Dorian and Sergei took advantage of the momentary pause to make their escape.

"Sergei, tell me. Tell me quickly. Who is he?

"He told you. Jean Acaille, the scientist."

"No," Dorian howled, amused and infuriated. "Believe it or not, there are other men in the world besides Jean Acaille and I'm in love with one of them. Who-"

"A moment, m'ami." He stopped by the living room. "Araszyam." The shorter of the guards came out and Sergei spoke to him swiftly in Circassian, gesturing back towards the front door. Dorian tried to efface himself but Ara-what's-his-name had already taken note of his face. He could tell the moment when the man began informing Sergei of his exploits on the balcony. Sergei smiled and said something that made him nod in comprehension. He saluted and went back into the room.

"For the record, you're an old friend of mine, an eccentric European aristocrat. To men of that class the last three words are practically interchang