While he was yet repeating his announcement in a few more languages (Anglatino, Merikan, and English), Menelaus, with another compartment of his mind, used his cortical echo technique to build up an auditory image of the environment, and he filtered out the excess noise. In this way, he was able to overhear when Rada Lwa emitted a high-density information squawk. “Menelaus Montrose, the fallen Hermeticist, his face perhaps altered by a biotechnological technique, is somewhere in this chamber, unseen, unrecognized. He has had the effrontery to order me not to reveal his identity. To whom in this chamber should I reveal it? What is the circumstance? Where is he?”
The Glorified Ctesibius regarded Rada Lwa with a look that might have been carved from the face of a mountain. Coldly, he replied in the same machine-code language: “The act, and therefore the thought that prompts it, is vain. The Hermetic Order achieved glorification while we slept, and have passed on to purely machine-based forms of life. Nothing in the macroscopic world, at our merely biochemical speeds of life, can possibly concern them. The asymptote occurred while we slumbered.”
“What? There must be some error—” sputtered Rada Lwa.
“No error. The Machine we serve has left us behind to die. Darwin has culled us; we are extinct. No act of ours has meaning; nothing changes that outcome.”
Rada Lwa could neither blush with anger nor go pale. “There is yet meaning in revenge.”
Ctesibius said, “You speak of the First Montrose? He attempted interference with my damaged soul’s desire to slay itself, a deep insult to the sacrament of euthanasia, so I bear him no love. You are perhaps shortsighted? He is on the dais before you.”
At this, Rada Lwa strode forward, and the dogs let him by.
Menelaus said loudly in Latin, “Behold the man. That is his pale ass.”
7. Knight and Witch
Sir Guiden, at this point, was standing at the door, guarded by five or six dog things, but Mickey the Witch was nearby, looking about in puzzlement. Sir Guy put an affectionate arm around the shoulders of Mickey the Witch. He said in German, “Fat Swarthy Man in crazy eyeball Dunce-Cap! Come you this way. More interesting scenery toward the front of the chamber, I’d like to show you. That man with corpse-white skin, let us him follow, yes?”
Mickey walked with him, smiling broadly, saying, in Virginian, “I don’t understand your gabble-gabble. You are an ugly ape, are you not? And such unpleasant body odor! You are up to something that will get us all killed, yes? Why is there a cross and an eagle tattooed across your nose? You are one of our hated enemies, a Christian, no? Christ?”
Sir Guy tilted his head. “Christlich? Ja.” He pointed at Mickey, at the cabalistic signs woven into his black robes. “Sie sind ein Hexe?”
Mickey pointed at himself. “Hexen! Um Bruxa. Homem de Magia!”
Sir Guy said, “Magus! Magier!”
They both nodded, laughing, pleased at having understood each other.
Mickey, grinning, spun his charming wand in his hand like a baton, and said in his own language, “We destroyed your vile, repressive, patriarchal superstition thousands of years ago! The only point of the Simon Families, and the only purpose of finding a longevity system that worked only on women, was to take down your corrupt and elitist phallocracy!”
Sir Guy, smiling broadly, said in his own language, “You’re one of the vermin infidels whose clumsy assault we repelled when you devil-worshippers tried to dig up and break all the Tombs holding famous Churchmen, right? You small-brained grave-robber! As soon as I get my paralysis lance back, I’ll shove it down your throat to your groin.”
“Your language sounds like the gargling and spitting of a rabid epileptic, and all your holy men were reincarnated as butt-monkeys among the Bonobos.”
“I don’t know what you said, but you are damned to burn in hellfire, my pagan friend!”
Both men, in mutual incomprehension, threw back their heads and laughed together; and either because they were in such good cheer, or because of the subtle abilities of Mickey of Williamsburg, the dog simply let them walk on past.
The Witch saw only then where the knight was leading. His footsteps slowed, then stopped. Sir Guy tugged on his arm, and said in German, “Der ist ein Maschinist, ja? Ein Sklave der Maschine? Exarschel?”
Mickey said, “Machinist, yes, a slave of the Machine. Exarchelisma. By virtue of his name, Rada Lwa Chwal, I know that he is a steed for the spirit world. Am I not a naming mage of the Eleventh? Rada Lwa can be possessed by Exarchel. You understand? Machine inside man. Evil inside man.”
The knight nodded, and said in Latin, “Exarchelus. Malum.”
And the two men were no longer laughing. Mickey stepped forward toward the nearest dog thing, and began talking gently to it while it snarled at him, and he reached and scratched it behind the ears as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and that dog was preoccupied, and Sir Guiden walked calmly on past.
The dog things also made no move to stop Rada Lwa, whose blazing pink eyes were fixed on the throne. On he strode, his black robes flapping angrily about his legs, pushing through the crowd toward the dais, shouting in Spanish, “Shoot! Open fire upon him! This is the Judge of Ages, Juez de Edades, the enemy of progress and the people, the betrayer of the dreams of perfecting mankind!”
Rada Lwa stepped to one of the dog things and reached for the dog’s weapon, as if he meant to take it from the animal’s paws. The animal looked up at him casually, as if bemused at the interruption.
Rada Lwa evidently did not have Mickey’s way with beasts.
A moment later, bleeding from the bites on his hands, and from the shocking blows to his face and stomach, and curled in a fetal position with puke mingled with blood drops in a puddle on the floor, Rada Lwa managed to haul himself unsteadily to his feet, spread his arms wide, and call out, “Don’t any of you degenerate evolutionary dead ends and vermin-riddled subcreatures in this place understand Spanish? Shoot! Fuego!”
A tall and broad figure was looming darkly behind him. “I understand Spanish, Señor.”
8. Knight and Scholar
As it turned out, the Blue Men had not taken all the weapons from Sir Guiden, merely most of them. His cloak pin was a large wooden crucifix set with an ivory image of Christ, and, as it turned out, the bottom half of the crucifix was hollow and contained the blade of a long, narrow knife called a misericorde, and when he put one muscular elbow about the throat of the albino, he drew the knife with his other, and held the pointed tip before one pink eye, close enough to touch the little white, sensitive lashes of the lower lid.
Menelaus called down in Latin, “Sir Guy, none of the systems respond to my voice-command, and I am a phantasm to the cameras, so I need to get my hands on the sarcophagus controls, but there is a quarter score of dogs in the way.”
In Latin, Sir Guy said back, “It’s been forty years for me, Liege. My life has been spent in your service. Have you no kinder word than that?”
“Ah, sorry. Guess I am kinda rushed. Hey! Congratulations on getting married.”
“Thank you, Liege.”
“You’re too old for her.”
“Same to you, Liege,” said Sir Guy, nodding with his head toward the huge portrait on the back wall.
“Have your beautiful young wife stun Rada Lwa with her flower magic, so he don’t cause more commotion, and then have her zap the doggies blocking my way. She is among the Nymphs. Don’t kiss her, or the Blue Men will know something is up. Are you the guy, Guy, that changed all my passcodes?”