4. WITH THE HELP OF RUMOR AND TRUTH, MELUSINE FINDS HER PROJECT Rumor, or Fame as she was sometimes called, was not easy on the eyes. When you could see her (and mostly you heard her), she was covered with ears--rounded, pointed, fluted--her face was further distorted by her multiple tongues, as numerous as her feathers, for she was a night flying thing. Listening to her was like listening to a human orchestra of murmurs. She was unreliable in her information, but she interpreted every language in the world. More often she was the go-between, like Iddawg the "Embroiler," telling your message sourly when you meant it sweetly.

Truth said: "Lilith was made by God, not men. Why aren't you at work on more cities? The things you can make?" Irked, Melusine replied that she had her Lusignan, her Parthenay, and she was laying claims to having built Geneva. She wanted to do something different. She was tired of the accolades given that imaginary mistress of Bertran's, written up from the parts of other women, and fascinated with the posthumous stories attributed to theologians and natural philosophers. Why had legend credited only learned men with the making of an android? Where was Hypatia's moving statue? Where was Hildegard's? Melusine was convinced that the "Synthetic Woman" invented by rhetoricians was kin to the mechanical woman, enclosed in her towers and her clothes, and replaced her with a simulacrum. Truth, glowing like a ghost, told her she was confusing her categories, but Rumor reassured her that across cultures, ages, and languages, all things had contact in legend and literature. And fear.

"Good," said Melusine. "I will make a collection of the lost parts of artificial women, from which I will construct a Synthetic Woman of various devices. My New Woman might even bear daughters for me, as I have had only imperfect sons," and Truth wavered. Rumor rumbled humorously: "Only a woman who is a serpent under the water where it meets her waist could think of such a thing," and Melusine laughed. "Bring me," she said, "the world's counterfeit women and all the books about them. Show me Hadaly again?."

"A little ahead of your time?" This was Truth.

"Edison," said Melusine, "was drawing on the best medieval hatred of real women when made his ideal one out of the conceits of his era. While I am in here, chronology is not a concern. The clock is, though, and it's ticking!"