The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Hamlet, thought Mike. Act One, the end of scene five.
But why had he been born to set it right? Besides, exactly what was wrong? There was something wrong, all right.
And why from the end of the act? Another act to come? Something more to happen? The clock will go round till another time comes. Watch the clock, the absolutely cuckoo clock, which ticked as things happened that made almost no sense and yet had sense hidden in their works.
The good old Keku clock. Somewhere is icumen in, lewdly sing Keku. The Mellon is ripe and climbing Jakob’s ladder. And both of them playing Follow the Leda.
And where were they heading? Toward some destination in the general direction of the constellation Cygnus. The transformation equations work fine on an interstellar ship. Would they work on a man? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to transform yourself into a swan? Cygnus the Swan.
And we’ll all play Follow the Leda....
Somewhere in there, Mike the Angel managed to doze off.
He awoke suddenly, and his dream of being a huge black swan vanished, shattered into nothingness.