“That is why you wanted to get over to the sarcophagus: to reach the general security channel from the local channel. Let’s say those dogs let you by. And what exactly makes you think you can operate all these weapons? Or that they are still loaded? For that matter, how do you know they are there?”
“Because I know the architect who built the place, and I know any changes to any chambers made by the Hospitaliers would follow his designs. I do not think there is an object in this room that does not have a weapon built into it, except maybe the portrait. For her sake, I’ll try to spare as many as I can. I pacify them, disarm them, and then we sit and wait for my men to thaw out. I hope Soorm set the process in motion. I have been having a lot of trouble with my systems, which have been partly compromised. I’ve been getting better responses from the lower levels, however, so…”
“Your men? Your systems?”
Menelaus drew back his hood and stared at the man, giving him a good look at his face.
“Jesus poxing Christ up a tree,” breathed Scipio.
“Don’t poxing swear,” said Menelaus. “And congratulations. You passed the test. I thought you might have the Machine in your head. You’re just unobservant.”
4
Witnesses
1. Entrance
The Blue Men were gathering everyone into the chamber in order by age: Alalloel first, her walk stately, the gray twins next, followed by the Hormagaunts and their Donors and Clade-dwellers. Soorm was on his feet, and appeared unharmed, but his shoulders drooped, and his fluked scorpion tail lashed.
The Nymphs danced in, graceful as willow branches in the breeze. They wore green tunics, and the women had long green scarves in their hair, shedding petals. They had been given their lutes and fiddles and flutes and panpipes, and they filled the chamber with a wild, elfin air like the sound of the robin, the thrush, the lark, and the loon. A quartet of effete, sloe-eyed males were they, and the quartet of slim-ankled hetaerae flinging their dark hair in twirling ecstasy. The smell of wine and the scent of roses came with them. The green silks of the girls’ curving girdles or corsets were tied tightly about their slender waists, to emphasize the exaggerated roundness of their hips, the over-fullness of their breasts. Male and female both had oiled their luxurious midnight-black hair so that it shined like fresh ink. As she whirled past, Oenoe tossed a petal toward Menelaus—it was a myrtle blossom, which meant I am ready.
Next came the Chimerae marching through the doors, bows strung and spears ready.
Menelaus caught the gaze of Daae and Lady Ivinia, and saw that they were ready, too. Alpha Yuen had his bone truncheon in his hand, not hidden, but he was staring at the floor, his one eye sullen, his posture tense with anger.
Mickey the Witch strode ponderously through the door as if to grand and inaudible music. The crones next came stalking in, grave and solemn in black, leaning on their charming wands, and the more mundane menfolk in their various heraldic robes came after, and fierce Demonstrators in their coats of human-skin leather. Mickey, less solemn than the rest, gave Menelaus a cheery smile, and an eye-decoration on his ridiculous pointed hat winked. He mouthed the words what’s going on? The other Witches were behind his broad back, and did not see his facial contortions.
Menelaus could think of no way to answer the question.
2. Scipio in Storybook Land
Scipio, seated on the throne of the Judge of Ages, raised his hand to cover his mouth, and said softly, “Okay, First Ancestor, I take back what I said about your cartoon. Looks like it came true. This menagerie doesn’t have a single unmodified nonfreak in the lot. Who the pox are the half-naked dancing girls in flowers, and the dead-eyed SS troopers in samurai drag whose girls are dressed like Minerva and the Drum Majorettes? And the gross hags looking like they were stretched on racks? And that thing with no head? Are those space aliens?”
“Lemme sum up,” sighed Montrose. “The sequence of extinctions goes like this: That girl with antennae and weird eyes is a Melusine, and her kind wiped out the two gray dwarfs in the parkas toward the front, called Linderlings. The gray dwarfs and the blue dwarfs are part of a race of black dwarfs called Locusts, who are radio-telepaths that formed a mass mind and are color-coded for your convenience. The Locusts exterminated the Hormagaunts, who are the biotech monstrosities there. The Hormagaunts are Nymphs gone mad, who are the Geisha girls and the sissy-looking boys. The Nymphs drugged the Chimerae, who are the Spartan Nazis there. The Chimerae wiped out the Witches, who are the tall ugly women there, and that whole group from Halloweenland. The Witches wiped out the Giants, whom you know all about and I can hear one coming now. We also have coming a Savant and a Scholar from your times, and, if God is in a good mood and decides to stop cat-playing with my life, my knight will be here too. He’s from the poxy Middle Ages.”
“You have got to be poxy kidding me. Chimerae and Witches and Nymphs and knights? Plagues of Locusts and the Seven Dwarfs? What is this, the Land of Storybooks? Those cannot be their real names.”
“It is not what they call themselves, but, by the prickly cap of bleeding Christ, that is what they really are. The way to remember who is who is that the Witches want to sacrifice babies, the Chimera want to breed them like dogs, the Hormagaunts want to eat them, and the Locusts want to absorb their brains. What the Melusine want, I have no idea, and that worries me.”
“None of ’em sound like nice people,” said Scipio.
Menelaus gave him a sickly grin. “They are damned sick, believe you me. But no worse than the folk from our day, mister.”
“Our day was civilized!”
“Meaning we threw rockets instead of rocks. Civilization makes it easier to earn ourselves the mark of Cain, which is the goddam star-spangled banner of the human race. Remember how many World Wars the Cryonarchy fought? Four? Five? How many cities of innocent civilians were wiped out by atomic or antimatter space-bombardment? Man has not progressed a whisker’s length in all this time: Like a mad dog on a chain tearing up a circle centered on his stake, all we’ve done is change and change. Ain’t moved. Ain’t bettered us none. Ah, is that him—?”
Montrose was staring in naked eagerness.
3. A Familiar Face
The old knight entered. Menelaus increased the visual cortex activity in his brain to allow himself to see his old friend clearly.
The eyebrows and short, square beard of Sir Guy had turned white with age, but the heavy muscles of his youth had not yet vanished. The rest of his face was obscured with colorful designs of ink, some of them gleaming with luminescence. The short beard on his cheeks was oddly colored by the skin beneath, where the inks painting his jawline gleamed through.
He wore a cowl or coif of metal links covering his head and neck, with system jacks and fittings to mate with the inside of a large helmet. He wore a skintight one-piece of flexible gray smartmetal, the type an astronaut might wear beneath his space suit, and it also was fitted with jacks to mate with the interior of powered armor.
Over this, he wore a surcoat of black, and his cape was black. Both surcoat and cape were blazoned with a large white Maltese Cross. The white crosses stood out starkly in the hanging lanterns in the wide gloom overhead, and their reflections in the gold tiles underfoot.
He wore no boots, and his gloves were tucked in his belt. His hands and feet were baby-pink, and formed a bland contrast with the bizarrely complex glowing tattoos and inks of his face. Menelaus recalled that Larz said the Blue Men had dismembered Guy, and regrew the severed limbs later. It seemed an act of pointless cruelty. There were no ink-artists available to restore his lost designs, for the craft of tattooing with variable-property smart-inks had passed away over seven millennia ago. It was as if someone had effaced the cave paintings of Lascaux with a sandblaster.