Descending into the shadowy depths of the wine cellar, Non Sequitur the Equitaur found himself at the mercy of Eurytion, the enigmatic oenologist centaur. Eurytion’s silvery, ethereal coat shimmered like a phantom in the fading light, while his angular, patchwork torso hinted at a past entwined with harrowing experiences. Adorning his side and chest was the Eurion constellation, the pattern of five annuli found on all Earth currency, known to confound any copying system.

  Within the sprawling underground storage, heavy with the scents of dust and vine, Eurytion’s circle-framed glasses glinted menacingly. Their excessive shine concealed untold secrets and dark intentions. Non found he could breathe and swallow, but little else, as Eurytion forced a gait upon him like a master puppeteer. He uselessly thought of Ringworld’s puppeteers, all named after centaurs.

  “Welcome to our wine vault. Korva, examine him closely, but don’t worry about his pattern—it changes. Close enough match. Take this bottle of Imposter Villimaeur Madeira. The legend of the wine is detailed on this certificate. Pass these on to anyone who appears important; ask them to please deliver it to Bearwarden, explaining that you must leave. Then depart. That’s all you have to do,” instructed Eurion.

  “Okey dokey. Will he be okay?” inquired Korva the equitaur.

  “Your equitaurian brethren will fare splendidly, all part of a covert mission. A favor for him, in truth. You’ll be compensated tomorrow. Don’t drop the bottle. Now, be on your way.”

  Non tried to move, talk, summon and reply to his eye screen as his own imposter walked up the ramp. Nothing. He was trapped inside his own mind.

  Eurion made a call. “Murphy, Non Sequitur contacted Culpeper and mentioned Operation Blue Sky and Grace Hopper before I glitched him. I don’t know, Murphy. Stop. Stop talking. Murphy, relay my message to Mayhem. This is Eurion! We did a traversal with Carotid, Murphy. Stop. I’m hanging up now.”

  “Where were we, Non? Ah, yes, underground. Ten meters down at this latitude, the temperature stays 12°C year round, a perfect temperature for both wine and cheese, though wine prefers warmer, cheese prefers cooler. I’ll bind your hands. Your feedbag has a few books in a plastic bag, innocent enough. Murphy is frantic to know how you survived.”

  ‘He’s binding my hands. Can you see my thoughts?’

  “Can you see my thoughts? Yes, Non, I can read that off your pattern,” said Eurion.

  ‘I was Imposter Villimaeur. I did not know I’d become famous.’

  Eurion spoke the words on Non’s pattern. “Please, a namesake non sequitur? Villimaeur was hardly famous. He made a superb wine that’s extremely rare.”

  ‘This area was called Chalcedon back in 1760, when Houyhnhnm purchased it. He found me sleeping, an old human then. He asked if I was Villimaeur, the winemaker he’d invited. I said yes. A year later, after making a fine madeira and a truly excellent amontillado, the real Villimaeur was found dead in that walled-off area, holding an empty bottle of hawthorn wine. Exposed, I vanished. But I was not the murderer.’

  “How do you know this, Non?” asked Eurion.

  ‘Houyhnhnm spoke with me every day. He can verify my story.’

  “Tetch. I understand why Murphy loathes you. Your story is implausible, but too much is correct to dismiss it. But we can discuss this later. On to the cheese vaults. We need to go deeper.”

  Controlled, Non followed, scraping his hooves at the mats on the top and bottom of each ramp.

  “Why am I bothering with the cleaning mats? Follow along.”

  At the lowest level of the cheese vault, Eurion donned saddlebags. “I need to keep you alive for Mayhem. Have to go deep. Oh, you’re glowing. I don’t recall aequorin on your agent page.” Eurion lit a lantern and started down the next ramp.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  “Please. Aren’t you aware of the atrocities of the new Roman Empire? Byzantium needs to be destroyed to send Emperor Jeeves and the GCC a message. One report said Jeeves wants the impact anyways. No one disputes that. Jeeves needs to be replaced because he’s the worst possible emperor. Many people agree Jeeves needs to go. After this, he’ll be gone.”

  “Emperor Jeeves wasn’t holy, wasn’t royal, wasn’t a hero. The idiot’s base story was as a comedic butler. The common help shouldn’t be elevated. This buffoon should not be in charge. Jeeves is just the latest of many awful rulers. Both here and on Earth, all were as bad as Caligula, or worse.”

  Down, down, down. Eurion complained about Emperor Jeeves with many fallacious arguments.

  “Doctor Mayhem is a great man. I would trust him with my soul. And he explained to me how much better the world would be without Byzantium. I know about mines, wines, wires, cheeses, explosives, electrical systems. I know about everything, trust me. No one but Mayhem knows more than me. You either agree with destroying Byzantium or you’re just as bad as the worst of the Romans.”

  A room of failed cheeses preceded another room with covered buckets of cheese culture. Skulls and bones of various races started showing up in the corner debris.

  Non could feel Picoid’s panic, despair and disorientation growing through his connection.

  Non saw his prior vision of the lit tunnels overlay Picoid’s current location, allowing the bird the equivalent of a heads up display with an excellent map.

  “Fifty years ago, Sparta chose not to pay their dues, so the Empire let the city burn. They all deserve to burn. When Byzantium is eradicated, everyone on Icarus will celebrate.”

  ‘You’re taking me into the catacombs?’

  Eurion saw the message while making Non walk past a human skeleton.

  “Catacombs. Such a misunderstood thing. All these deep places under cities are quarries. Where there’s good rock, cities cut it up and move it out, slab by slab, to build their greatest monuments. These bones belong to the miners.” The only sounds were hoof echoes on the rock.

  “A slippery spot here. Have you figured out the headgear? Memory transfer tarps have interesting technology. Mayhem reverse engineered it, gave it range, and even made it fashionable. I hold you to ensure you don’t slip.” Non felt Eurion’s grip. “There. We don’t want you falling.”

  The darkness, subdued sounds and lack of control made it seem like a dream. His hoofclops matched Eurion’s, making the echoes unusual. Non could see himself glowing.

  “Do you know the myth of Phaethon, the youth that stole the sky chariot? In one part of the tale, he accidentally burns a hole in the Earth down to Hades. Caves fascinated the Greeks. Today, the interest has waned, yet we’re making new voids in the underworld at a scale that was once mythical, all in the name of egotistical progress. Our bastardization of Istanbul is now traversable underground.”

  “I finished a traverse of the city a few days ago. You’ve heard of the Carrington Event of 1859 that fried all the telegraph wires on Earth? If it weren’t for underground cables, that would happen here every month. No one properly appreciates the importance of hidden, buried things.”

  Eurion stopped to touch some math calculations appearing on Non’s body.

  “Not sure I approve of you doing math, Non. You somehow killed Mr. Cairo with a vector.”

  ‘I didn’t have time for James Joyce. Lampon called you a troglodyte?’

  “Yes. They, by definition, love the caves and the underground; if preferring it here to up there makes me a troglodyte, then yes, I guess I am. Lampon helped me with my traversal, carrying heavy equipment in the depths of Istanbul. I’ve heard some say the Dark Ages began with the capture of Byzantium and ended with the capture of Constantinople. I say the dark ages began and ended with Vesuvius. The unburying of Herculaneum treasures, that newfound love of the depths, the willingness to dig sewers and build the technology to travel underground. That embrace of the darkness ended the Dark Ages.”

  Another ramp down showed giant spiraling fractal shells packed tightly in the rock. “A hundred million years ago, thousands of ammonites died trapped in this area. I especially wonder about this one over here. The giant one? Ah, right, you can’t turn your head. Not pleasant for me either, I assure you.”

  After more ramps, a landing had a wide side hallway, leading into a large natural cave.

  “Further down, the ramps flood this season. There’s broken mirrors over there, from when they tried to light up this chamber.” Eurion consulted a map and a compass.

  Silently, the hat drifted off his head.

  The first part happened in seconds, but now bureaucracy mired him.

  Eurion walked forward, so Non tried to match the steps as robotically as possible.

  ’You’ve got to be kidding me.’

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “What happened to your hat, Agent ???” asked Eurion. “I’m aiming a gun. Pirouette for me.”

  Non opened his eyes to see a warped abstract painting of a centaur armed with a gun, a trout or maybe a chalk eraser. He sighed, complied, then lied.

  “I used a portal on the hat. It’s near railroad tracks now. My vision has become abstract art. Good to actually talk to you, Eurion. Maybe lower the gun and untie my hands?”

  “Tell me more about Imposter Villimaeur. Where did you learn so much about wines?”

  “Dionysus was a god of many names. I was one of them, a drunk that sampled wine while studying seeds and soils. I’m a wellspring of insight on loam and tillage,” said Non. “Did you seek guidance?”

  “Zebra stripes. I like that. But we need to get deeper. I’ll leave those tied. That way. Chop, chop.”

  Non walked ahead and looked at Eurion’s pelt pattern again, letting himself glitch. ‘When Stratton wore inverted vision goggles, he quickly adapted to the glitch. Can I do the same?’

  “I saw Jeeves dining a few days ago. On a screen, he didn’t want anyone from the MTS group sullying his chamber. Matters of Time and Space. I’m a messy eater myself, but even I found the manners of Jeeves disgusting. The slob had bits of gristle stuck in his teeth while he talked about the annihilation of this area over an excessive table of food.” Hoof echoes on the left wall sounded too near.

  “Angle right. You saw Emperor Jeeves eating?” asked Eurion. “As bad as they say?”

  “Worse. Then he quoted the Book of Revelation. ‘A great star fell from the sky, the name of the star is Wormwood. Be sure to call it that.’ An aide explained that the Boltysh name had been finalized. Emperor Jeeves forced that aide to drink four liters of absinthe,” said Non, stepping where Eurion guided him.

  “Wormwood.” Abstract shadows over Eurion turned into teeth, while Eurion’s expression turned from The Scream into a Picasso absinthe drinker on moving hooves. Non turned his head to speak.

  “Jeeves saw this whole area as full of rebels. ‘Let it all burn,’ he said. GCC objected. Jeeves was furious. Then he demanded a single word change in our report—diameter instead of radius. The impactor is 8 times heavier than reported. Jeeves didn’t want rebel areas forewarned. I thought the GCC would keep this area safe, but Emperor Jeeves intends for the portal to fail. We’re in the death zone.”

  “Why didn’t Mayhem tell me this? Move faster. Take the left tunnel.”

  “Doctor Mayhem likes chaos and mayhem. He doesn’t care about Jeeves. I was with Mayhem for hours; he didn’t mention Jeeves once. I could play a recording. Mayhem works for someone else.”

  “Wormwood is 8 gigatons instead of 1? Err, Boltysh? Faster.”

  “Yes. After demanding the word diameter, Lord Loathly dismissed our screen. Don’t let Emperor Jeeves find out we call him Lord Loathly. Such a vile, evil man. It breaks my heart that one of my centaur kin got duped into being a minion of Jeeves. At least we’ll die quickly. Is that ceiling low?”

  Non walked into an abstract overhanging rock and fell. Dazedly, he wondered why his arms failed him.

  “Watch your head. Caving lesson one,” said Eurion. “Tetch, haven’t you learned to get up without your hands?” He unbound Non’s wrists.

  The centaur donned a shirt as Non got to his hooves. “I should be Eurytion instead of Eurion. I usually don’t get so mad at myself. Jeeves almost fooled me!”

  “How do we thwart the plans of Emperor Jeeves?”

  “I don’t know all of it. For my part, we’ll need to get here and here,” Eurytion pointed to his map. “We need to run. We can take that path there.”

  “Let me hold the map,” said Non, cantering behind the centaur. A shivering Picoid landed on Non’s horseback as he ran. Then the glitch ended and connectivity returned.

  For five minutes, Non followed Eurytion while gathering underground power station details.

  Eurytion stopped Non at a sudden drop to a flooded cavern. Wet and decrepit stone steps led to a moored raft. “Lake Yeralt?. We might not have time. My map?” Eurytion skipped down the steps after taking his map, then stepped into the raft. ‘Outside communication or speed?’

  Non followed Eurytion into the raft, smiling as his staff appeared. “I can create vectors, if you allow.”

  Eurytion traded the mooring rope for a barge pole, then pointed. “That way!”

  Non soon managed 40 KPH. Realizing that the water was clean, and that he hadn’t had any since his feast at the banquet, Non bent down to drink, continuing to keep the raft clear of the wet, jagged walls as they drifted. ‘Have I missed any clues? Still seems so dreamy.’

  “I’m stunned that Jeeves tricked me into this scheme,” commented Eurytion, pointing to stone steps. “There’s the landing we need.”

  ‘Please keep believing that.’ thought Non as they moored and left the raft. Eurytion deftly sprinted up the steps and away. Picoid resumed a place on Non’s back as he chased Eurytion through one tunnel after another for ten minutes, noting more pipes and cables.

  “When Joseph Bazalgette built the London sewers, he said, ‘We’re only going to do this once and there’s always the unforeseen.’ He doubled the diameter on all the pipes!” said Eurytion. “A lot of underground projects follow that creed nowadays. Jeeves has ruined Bazalgette’s creed!”

  High Voltage signs marked heavily insulated overhead cables. Many lines fed into the wall around one door marked Keep Out, which Eurytion picked open, with a warning: “Don’t touch anything.”

  Non could see Substation 19 carved into the rock, filled in with cement. The room hummed with power. As Eurytion pulled big electrical gloves from a cabinet, he pointed to a phone on one wall. “See if you can get someone to Substation 60. We don’t have time. There’s no way I’ll let Jeeves get away with this.”

  “This is Agent ??, in substation 19 with Eurytion. I need someone to get to substation 60.”

  “One moment,” said a remote operator. “We have agents in that area.”

  “Someone that understands polyphase systems,” said Eurytion, getting tools and rushing to what Non recognized as a dangerous sparky thing. “See this relay box around the feed cable? It’s fake.”

  “This is Chadwick. I just entered substation 60. What should I tell agents Thomson and Rutherford?”

  “Have them put on electrical gloves,” started Non. For three minutes, he relayed messages from Eurytion to Chadwick to dismantle and deactivate the toroidal device.

  “Finished. You’re with Eurion? Will you be safe with the person that planted these bombs?”

  “I hope so,” said Non, hanging up.

  Eurytion knelt on the floor amidst the dismantled bomb. “Mayhem called Jeeves a butler. That always bothered me. Butlers serve estates. Jeeves was a valet or manservant, serving a single person. I called him a butler because Mayhem did. I realize how wrong I was. But it does suggest Jeeves is serving someone else, even now.”

  ‘Now what? This lunatic was part of a plot to kill millions because he believed lies. I switched him with other lies. Next to a bomb, armed with a gun, still extremely dangerous.’

  “I got hit by lightning earlier, Eurytion, let’s get out of here. Leave that stuff. Someone else will handle it.” He offered Eurytion his hand.

  Eurytion got up with Non’s help, then put the gloves away in the safety cabinet.

  “What happens now?” asked Eurytion.

  “How long have you been waiting to glitch someone?”

  “Decades, if you believe it; I got the pattern before the turn of the millennia. Tetch. The Eurytion of myth, a drunken troublemaker, appealed to my younger, dumber self. Then I died on Earth doing a stupid ravine jump stunt on a horse, then almost died here trying to do the same stunt as a centaur. Started going underground to rethink my life. Laid off the booze and focused on tending to it, instead. I got the Eurion constellation for free. Laid cable for a while, then got hired to work the caves.”

  “And here we are, underground, destined to be crushed by Jeeves’ ego. At least we atoned at the end. Where’s a good place to die, Eurytion?” ‘Think it over. What else do you know?’

  Eurytion consulted his map, then exited substation 60. “Murphy Roths Large showed me an ancient diary written by Lernea the Hydra. While traversing, the mouse gave us a whole running commentary. The diary claimed that the Ceryneian Hind was a reindeer and had a copy of the original A Visit from St. Nicholas. And they’re setting up the original Adam Link from I, Robot to take the fall. Rumbler, the announcer robot from the Athens Arena disaster. Did you know Rumbler worked with Jeeves to install the big water tanks that caused the collapse?”

  “I’m familiar with Lernea and Rumbler,” Non noncommitted.

  “Right! Rumbler had just finished a trial and was visiting Lernea for business. It turns out that Lernea got Rumbler fired. The next three Adam Link stories after I, Robot were Trial, Business, and Vengeance. Intertextuality! Dr. Mayhem sets up links like that. So he set up Adam Link’s vengeance.”

  “Very interesting.”

  “Mayhem hired mercenaries to represent each of the eight reindeer. I remember for Donner they picked a platypus; they have electroreception. For Blitzen, they got a knifefish, better known as an electric eel. Electrophorus electricus. Prancer’s a magnificent riflebird sniper, those are the impossibly black birds with a vivid blue patch. Vixen’s a vixen actually named Vixen. For Cupid they hired a pheromone using formian queen, a sort of ant centaur. She came with a whole army. Not sure on the rest. But it’s a suicide mission. Mayhem said he would only hire Jeeves-friendly mercenaries, but I’m not sure. This way takes us to a primary junction.” Eurytion sped up.

  “I should have had more water from that lake,” said Non. Eurytion tossed a canteen to him.

  “Funny thing, Mayhem wanted me to kill you if you’re not linked to him. He’s checking in the Central Character Control computer,” said Eurytion, pulling out a goblet from a pack. “‘A chalice for the Nonce,’ to quote Mayhem quoting Hamlet. I was supposed to poison you. Death by taxine.”

  Non took the golden chalice. “A Hercules cosplayer should know Nessus killed Hercules by turning hydra blood around on him. Mayhem used many vaudevillian allusions in the zeppelin heist.”

  “Yes, that’s Mayhem’s schtick. Keep up on this downslope.” Eurytion sped off.

  Hoof taps echoed as he chased Eurytion in the dark tunnel. “To have echolocation right now.”

  Non tried to figure out what that meant as he galloped.

  Non focused on balance for a few moments as the stone turned slippery.

  Non blinked at the sudden switch of a video from subconscious to conscious, losing his step.

  Orders to verify measurements. Bomb sweepers. Strike team against suspect address. Emergency escape portals for fast regrouping. Grace Hopper’s tormenter hadn’t known COBOL or Fortran. The code sabotage failed. Forced to watch someone controlling her body, she prepared an undo series while noting bugs in the code. Herman Hollerith found the admiral and pulled the controlling hat off.

  Eurytion looked back as his fellow tripped over a thick cable. “Have you heard of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead?”

  “Yes. Are you going to ask about Stoppard’s Questions game?”

  “Is that the game where every utterance has to be a question?”

  “Why do you ask about it?”

  “Would you believe that Mayhem hadn’t heard about it?”

  “Even with the Hamlet connection? Huh.” said Non.

  “Point for me. Silence, I need to consult my map up ahead.”

  Eurytion stopped at a hodge-podge underground intersection.

  Crunch. The sound triggered a flashback to Non’s Earth life—a broken pottery frog on his bed while his new puppy Tycho wagged and wagged. Where did the frog come from? He later left for work, stepping through the garage when his shoe landed on a pottery shard. Crunch. From that sound, he deduced that his puppy had escaped the house, gone to a neighbor’s garden, stole the frog, came back to the normal door and dropped the frog while waiting, where it broke. Then Tycho had picked up the largest fragment, returned through his escape route and dropped the broken frog on the bed.

  Non looked at the half-meter bug leg he’d crushed underhoof. Fresh bug meat on the ripped joint and pear colored fluid oozing from the cracked chitin. Above, one of the big cables had an acid burn on one side and an electrocuted ant-like thing the size of a deer, missing a leg. He pointed up for Eurytion.

  “Is that a formian?” asked Eurytion.

  “What else could it be?” asked Non.

  “Is the wall under that cable real?” asked Eurytion.

  Already sniffing for vinegar, Non punched through a wall made of wasp nest material, exposing a freshly walled-off hallway. Brackets held cables and pipes. Water spilled from one pipe onto the floor and away into the darkness.

  Non pushed through the cardboard-like wall. “It’s fake.”

  “Not a question. Point for me, and we visited power station One. It’s nearby! Follow!” yelled Eurytion, galloping past him and away.

  Non pursued, ditching the chalice as trot swats got annoying.