Free Cycle of Nemesis by Kenneth Bulmer

swallowed. His left hand around Lottie’s waist remained firmly in position. “I’m fine,” he squeaked. He swallowed again, harder, and in his normal voice said, "What a whopper!”
    Charlie his robot butler said, “I do not understand this thing. Your instructions, please, boss.”
    Trust George Pomfret to substitute the normal robot’s "sir” with the adrenalin-jerking “boss.”
    “Hold on a sec, Charlie. I’m not sure I understand this myself.” Pomfret’s hand tightened on Lottie as she went to move away. She felt that pressure against her back and, seductively, swayed forward again against Pomfret. He put the Farley Express down on the chair wing at his side and put the thus freed arm around Lottie.
    “You’ll be all right, Lottie.”
    “I do not like this,” Charlie staccatoed in his chirrupy metallic voice. “Something—”
    “What the hell happened?” bellowed Hall Brennan. The west window that had been covered by dark blue drapes, drawn when the last of the daylight had gone, now burst inwards. Curtains, glass, metal framings, the whole fifteen foot square window, showered in like a slow motion bubble. Shards of glass pattered down like flung spears. I caught at Phoebe but Brennan already had her around the waist and was hurling her into the cover of the overturned dining table.
    “It’s another one!” shrilled Lottie.
    The wad of chewing gum in the chair quivered.
    Pomfret snatched up his gun.
    Hall Brennan, his left arm familiarly around Phoebe Desmond, fished out a small gun from an inside pocket. I saw it was a Creighton Forty, a projectile weapon capable of blowing a hole in an elephant over half a mile away.
    From the dark blue curtaining and the smashing uproar of the destroyed window emerged a shining figure.
    In a single flashing glance I saw the figure, recognized it for what it was, and smash went another cherished myth.
    Without dignity I joined Brennan and Phoebe at the back of the table.
    Brennan was breathing in thick jerky gasps, his face upturned and a look of absolute unbelieving awe on his face as though he had seen the millennium. “Just like the ones on the entrance to the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad!”
    I nudged him hard.
    The thing that had broken through the window now heaved its bulk up from the floor, fluttering and fanning its heavy coppery wings and creating draft enough to blow debris away from it in all directions. It stood a good twelve feet tall and its hooves shone silver. Its bull flanks glowed in angry bronze, every curled hair in place. Its wings of red copper with every feather indented and in place settled now stiff and formal over its back. Down its chest depended a curled and gold-threaded beard, hanging from a face at once baleful and idiotic, with thick lips and almond-eyes and a mindless serentity made all the more awful by the glory of the crown that sat atop that gruesome head.
    “A lamassu,” Brennan croaked. “A tutelary genie—”
    “A winged human-headed bull!” Phoebe said. “And it’s alive !"
    Then what Brennan said penetrated, for she coughed, “A tutelary genie! Hoo, boy!”
    I said sharply, “Look after Phoebe, Hall.”
    That should bring him around, as well as her.
    Across the room George Pomfret shouted, “Don’t give it a chance this time!” But Lottie’s convulsive attempts to climb all over him threw the Farley off. He daren’t pull the trigger now or he’d bring down the roof.
    The winged bull roared: a Bashan-like bellow that shook everything and made my head ring. It swung its hooves and they sliced razor-sharp into the carpet. Its human face swung around, the dark shapely eyes saw the three of us crouching behind the table, and its face went meaner than ever. It charged.
    The solid mahogany table flew across the room split like a cheap orange crate. The wings clapped forward to smother us. The fore hooves lifted in a glitter of silver to slice us to pieces. I snatched the gun from Brennan and fired and saw the