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.His clasped hands rested upon his knees."I despised him on sight."We met in the dueling halls of the Puzzle Palace.Suicide was nominally illegal, but the authoritieswinked at it -- training grounds for leadership and so on.He had a coterie of admirers listening to himtalk about control theory and the biological effects of projective chaos weapons.A striking young man,charismatically self-assured.He had a bad reputation.His skin was pale, and he wore the offworldjewelry that was popular back then: bloodstones embedded in the fingers, bands of silver around thewrists with the veins routed through crystal channels.""Yes, I remember that style," the bureaucrat said."Expensive, as I recall."Orphelin shrugged."It was his popularity that most offended me.I was a material phenomenologist.So while Gregorian could freely discuss what he was learning, my education was very strictly controlled,and I wasn't allowed to take any of it out of class.What status I had in student circles came from myhaving studied under a pharmacienne before I came to Laputa.Oh, I was their trained ape all right!Dressed all in black with saltmouse skulls and feather fetishes hung on the fringes.I played suicide not somuch for the prestige of winning, but to brush fingertips against death-morbid shock was much morecommon than anyone ever let on.I made dark hints that I won because I had occult powers.AndGregorian burst out laughing at the sight of me! Did you ever play suicide?"The bureaucrat hesitated."Once.I was young.""Then I don't have to tell you that it's a rigged game.Anyone foolish enough to play by the rules isgoing to lose.I had mastered the standard means of cheating -- tapping in extra data sources, relayingyour opponent's signal through a millisecond-delay circuit, all the usual -- and enjoyed a local reputationas a mind warrior.But Gregorian beat me three times running.I had a mistress, an Inner Circle bitch withthose aristocratic near-abstract features that take three generations of intensive gene reworking toachieve.He humiliated me in front of her and his father and what few friends I had.""You met his father? What was he like?""I have no idea.It was edited out before we left the halls.His father was somebody important whocouldn't afford to be connected with the games.All I remember of him was that he was there."A year later I returned home to the Tidewater with Gregorian beside me.We shared a room at myparents' hotel as if we were close friends.By then, antipathy had blossomed into hatred.We'd agreed tohave a wizard's duel -- three questions each, winner take all."The night we went in search of the maddrake root was wet and starless.We dug by the paupers'boneyard, where we would not be disturbed.Gregorian straightened first, hands all mud.I have it, hesaid.He snapped the root in two and held it to my nose.Maddrake has a distinctive odor.It was onlyafter I had swallowed my half that -- that smile of his! -- it occurred to me that he might have rubbed hishands with maddrake sap and offered instead the halfaman root, which is a close cousin but can becounteracted with a simple antidote.Too late.I had to trust him.We waited until the trees burned greento their cores and the wind spoke.Let us begin, I said."Gregorian leaped up and walked through the bones with his arms out, making the skeletons rattle.They were not well maintained, of course.The paint was faded, and half the bones had fallen to theground so that we trod them underfoot.The death-forces flowed up from them and crawled under myskin, and that made me bold.I felt strong with death.Turn and face me, I commanded.Or are youafraid?"He turned, and to my horror I saw that he had taken on the aspect of Crow.His head was huge andblack: black beak, black feathers, bright obsidian eyes.There was that little bristle of hairlike feathers atthe base of the beak, the narrow nostril slits halfway to its point.I had never seen a spirit invoked before.That's one question, he said in Crow's harsh voice.No, I am not."I assumed this was all illusion, an effect of the maddrake.Angrily I strode forward and seized hisarms.The little deaths flowed into him and fought beneath his skin, so that his muscles writhed and spasmed.I squeezed.I was strong then, you must know.My grip should have choked off the blood andleft his arms paralyzed.The death-forces should have killed him.But he shook my hands awayeffortlessly, and laughed."You cannot overpower Crow with your little tricks."How did you know I was seeing Crow? I asked.Feeling that horror that comes on realizing that oneis completely out of his depth."That's two questions.Crow stropped his beak against a nearby skull, setting the whole skeletonaswing.I know all about you.I have an informant who tells me everything.The Black Beast."Who is the Black Beast? I cried."That's three questions.Crow poked his beak into a skull socket, teased out some small sweetmeat.Ihave answered two of them, and now it is my turn.First tell me: What does it mean when I say Mirandais black?"I was angry at how he'd tricked the questions from me, but the duel's purpose is to test will againstwill; it had been fairly done.An inch down, I said, all the world-globe is an egg of blackness.Starlightdoes not touch it; only Prospero, Ariel, and Caliban contend for influence.Mystery is that close.Thiswas all catechism, you see, baby stuff, and so I regained much of my confidence.As beneath the skull thebrain is black.The magician understands this and contends for influence."Crow ruffled his feathers, then parted his beak as he threw back some dark gristly bit.That blacktongue! What are the black constellations?"They are the shapes formed by the starless spaces between the bright constellations.The uninitiatedcannot see them and believe they do not exist, but once pointed out they cannot be forgotten.They areemblematic of the mysteries anyone can master but few realize exist."Crow poked about among the teeth with the tip of his beak.I'd offer you a maggot, he said, butthere are barely enough here for me.One last question.Who is the Black Beast?"What do you mean? I said angrily.I asked you that same question, and you wouldn't answer me.Idon't believe in your Black Beast at all."Crow threw his head back then and screamed in triumph.Those beady little eyes were dark novaeof malice.He spread out thumb and forefinger and said, you are that long erect.Your mistress was onceinvolved in the Committee for the Liberation of Information, and only her mother's money hushed up thescandal.You suspect she is unfaithful to you because she says nothing of your own infidelities.You wetthe bed long into your adolescence -- you wound up apprenticed to your pharmacienne after she curedyour bladder problem.The Black Beast has told me all about you.The Black Beast is someone verynear to you.You trust the Black Beast, but you should not.The Beast is not your friend but mine."And he walked away.I shouted after him that our duel was not over, that there had been no clearwinner.But he was gone.I told my parents he had been called away."Dr.Orphelin sighed."Gregorian disappeared from my life.Perhaps he transferred to anotherextension.But I could not get his question out of my mind.Who was the Black Beast? What false friendhad told Gregorian my secrets? One morning I woke to find a drawing of a crow in flight tacked up onthe wall
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