Clippety-clop rang its hooves.
Then it stopped and hung its head down over the tube's lip and fixed Revanche with one demon's eye while its rider dismounted. It remained in that attitude, and did not move even when its master dropped gently onto the ledge to face Revanche.
The financier felt his bulging eyes threaten to leave his head, like balloons tugging at their moorings.
His eyes understood before his brain did.
They took in a face that was a compound of two persons, a masterly paradox of features and traits: compassionate and merciless, sensitive and coarse, loving and hating. It was a hybrid of X, and of himself.
It was not that contradictory face that told him so much, that explained why his interferer had failed to work, even why he had been "herded," and was now facing this fantastic and vengeful creation.
It was something else that told him that not only Dafess City but he, Revanche, had been the victim of a Caligulan sense of humor, the butt of the most colossal practical joke the Messinan had ever played.
That something else he had been too shocked to think about. Why had the Bioids, who carried full-power anti-gravs within their bodies, fallen over the ledge? It was because Da Vincelleo had deliberately destroyed them to raise his hopes. And then had brought out this—this thing—this joke! Not satisfied to make Revanche squirm, he had wanted him to sweat blood.
The creature that was drawing a saber from its scabbard, was dressed in a uniform now long dead, but easily recognizable because it had been resurrected recently in many of the romantic historical novels that enjoyed a Solarwide vogue.
It wore the rugged active-service boots, the dun-colored trousers, and the stiff abbreviated jacket of a twentieth century foot soldier of officer caste. It was singing softly from a rigid mouth.