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chart that Dr Dee has obtained for them. He had it from Cagliostro, they say, who bought it from one of the Medici, to whom Nero had pawned it.”
    Prester John did not appear to be impressed. “Let us say, for argument’s sake, that there
is
an exit from the Afterworld. Why would Queen Elizabeth desire to leave? The After-world’s not so bad. It has its minor discomforts, yes, but one learns to cope with them. Does she think she’d be able to return to the land of the living and reclaim her throne? She’s dead, my friend. We are all dead here, though we have thesemblance of life. There is no other place for us to go. There is no throne waiting for her in another sphere.”
    Howard stepped forward. “Elizabeth has no real interest in leaving the Afterworld herself, majesty. What King Henry fears is that if she does find a way out, she’ll claim it for her own and set up a colony around it, and charge a fee for passing through the gate. No matter where it takes you, the king reckons there’ll be millions of people willing to risk it, and Elizabeth will wind up cornering all the money in the Afterworld. He can’t abide that notion, d’ye see? He thinks she’s already too smart and aggressive by half, and he hates the idea that she might get even more powerful. There’s something mixed into it having to do with Queen Elizabeth’s mother, too – that was Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife – she was a wild and wanton one, and he cut her head off for adultery, and now he thinks that Anne’s behind Elizabeth’s maneuvers, trying to get even with him by –”
    “Spare me these details,” said Yeh-lu Ta-shih with some irritation. “What does Henry expect me to do?”
    “Send troops to turn the Ralegh expedition back before it can find anything useful to Elizabeth.”
    “And in what way do I gain from this?”
    “If the exit from the Afterworld’s on your frontier, your majesty, do you really want a bunch of Elizabethan Englishmen setting up a colony next door to you?”
    “There is no exit from the Afterworld,” Prester John said complacently once again.
    “But if they set up a colony anyway?”
    Prester John was silent a moment. “I see,” he said finally.
    “In return for your aid,” Howard said, “we’re empowered to offer you a trade treaty on highly favorable terms.”
    “Ah.”
    “And a guarantee of military protection in the event of the invasion of your realm by a hostile power.”
    “If King Henry’s armies are so mighty, why does he not deal with the Ralegh expedition himself?”
    “There was no time to outfit and dispatch an army across such a great distance,” said Lovecraft. “Elizabeth’s people had already set out before anything was known of the scheme.”
    “Ah,” said Yeh-lu Ta-shih.
    “Of course,” Lovecraft went on, “there were other princes of the Outback that King Henry might have approached. Ibn Saud’s name came up, and one of the Assyrians – Assurnasirpal, I think – and someone mentioned Mao Tse-tung. No, King Henry said, let us ask the aid of Prester John, for he is a monarch of great puissance and grandeur, whose writ is supreme throughout the far reaches of the Afterworld. Prester John, indeed, that is the one whose aid we must seek!”
    A strange new sparkle had come into Yeh-lu Ta-shih’s eyes. “You were considering an alliance with Mao Tse-tung?”
    “It was merely a suggestion, your majesty.”
    “Ah. I see.” The emperor rose from his throne. “Well, we must consider these matters more carefully, eh? We must not come hastily to a decision.” He looked across the great vaulted throne-room to the divan where Dr Schweitzer still labored over Gilgamesh’s wound. “Your patient, doctor – what’s the report?”
    “A man of steel, majesty, a man of steel!
Gott sei Dank
, he heals before my eyes!”
    “Indeed. Come, then. You will all want to rest, I think; and then you shall know the full hospitality of Prester John.”

Five
    The full