Soorm and Crile and Gload, disdaining any weapons not built of their own flesh, put their backs to the fountain. Crile elongated his neck and opened both serpent fangs and telescoping elbow spikes. Soorm stepped backward into the water, charged his electrical eel cells, and bent to draw up his scorpion’s tail, bulb throbbing with poison, above his shoulder, twitching. The headless Gload uttered a belly laugh from the grotesque shark mouth running from side to side across his belly, and he cracked his knuckles.
Of the Witches, Mickey and Ajuoga and Lilura were of a period late enough to know the Chimerae, and know them as deadly enemies, and so they called to their fellows and followers, and, with much more noise and disarray, retreated to the opposite alcove, which held tanks of medical nanomaterial, and the women climbed atop the tanks, leaving Mickey, the Demonstrators, and the other menfolk to form a line across the opening of the alcove. The stands of antique armor the menfolk pulled from either side, and so a broken line of empty metal stood between the Witch-men and the chamber. Mickey whirled his charming rod overhead, passing it quickly from one hand to the other, and flourished it like a quarterstaff, uttering his battle-yodel. The Demonstrators hissed, and helped themselves to the swords and spears the suits of armor held.
The thirty-one Witches faced the nine Chimerae across the fountain. Three Hormagaunts stood between them, looking both ways, while Prissy and Zouave, allergic to each other, sought out opposite sides of the chamber.
The captain of the dog things barked, and the squadrons turned left and right. Two dozen dog things faced the Giant in two rows of twelve, the front row kneeling; another two dozen faced the dais, or the fountain, or the Witches, or the Chimerae, or the scattered others in the chamber. The Scholar Rada Lwa, Ctesibius the Savant, Sir Guiden, Linder Keir and Keirthlin, and Alalloel were guarded each by a trio or quartet of dogs. The remaining threescore gathered near the Blue Men in a defensive half circle.
The gentle Nymphs retreated, cooing and moaning, to the feet of the statue of Michael the Archangel, and the males of their race played fretful trills and warning arpeggios on their double-pipes. No one was covering them with weapons, which made Menelaus smile, because his circuits in the chamber detected the pheromones and scentless neuropsychological chemicals that began to rise up like vapor from them. He signaled with his implants to the wall vents, turned on the fans, and increased the air circulation in that quarter of the chamber.
The Giant at the chamber door observed all this without expression. He looked carefully at Menelaus, and stepped forward one giant step.
2. Chess and Poker
Only then did Menelaus hear, over his implants, in his inner ear, the voice of Sir Guiden. “Liege, I assume we are not talking over implants to maintain radio silence?”
“Which you just broke,” sent Menelaus back to him, with, perhaps, a bit of a snarl.
“Sorry, Liege, I knew you had your reasons, but there are now multiple signals leaving this room, and I have a shot at Ull right this second. I did not get a chance to open this fine suit of armor I am next to, because there are five dogs watching me, but I managed to palm the luminous marker pistol from the belt when they weren’t looking.”
“What? You going to paint him to death?”
“It isn’t much, but the marker needles can crack a man’s skull at short range. I can get off one shot, maybe two, before they deck me. Should I take the shot?”
“Hold off. Things are not what they seem.”
“What is going on, Liege?”
“The problem is that I am playing poker with the people here, but playing chess with the Machine. I can bluff people, but the Machine and I can see each other’s moves. He knows I am in the chamber, but does not know where.”
“That means you want to leave the chamber, right? And the Machine will not find you?”
“Wrong. I deliberately expelled an evolutionary virus from this site in order to attract attention to it, knowing full well it would be the one broken into by the Currents working for Exarchel. For a while he had me fooled, because he used Thaws instead of Currents to dig me up, but I think I am oriented now. I hid myself clumsily enough that any servant of the Machine could see through my disguise—just as Scipio and Ctesibius, in fact, did—but just subtly enough that he would have to send a physical agent to me to confirm, and I have a tactic in place to trace whatever message that agent tries to send back to his master.
“But then the message never came. So I had to be bolder. I began going around telling the people I thought were agents who I was: first Soorm, then Rada Lwa, then Linder Keir and Linder Keirthlin. I have reason to believe Soorm is still loyal to Reyes y Pastor, the Red Hermeticist, so I was expecting him to call Exarchel. So far he has not. Keirthlin actually helped me, even handed me the keys to winning this hand. So I am ruling them out. Alalloel is a puzzle: I thought she was a Current, but she overheard me tell the Linder twins who I am, and she did not call down Exarchel on me. So it is someone else. Someone in the room.”
Sir Guiden said, “It’s Ull. The Giant just said so.”
“I counted him. From most effected to least, Rada Lwa, Ull, Keir, all have been intimate mind-to-mind with the Machine, and contaminated, and suffered physical brain alteration as a result. Rada Lwa can hear my voice but cannot recognize my face. Ctesibius and Scipio have been in mind-contact with the Machine, but it was one-way, a donation; a donation is not a possession, so they are clean.”
“Liege? Do you want your enemies to find you? Are you mad?”
“I want my enemies to find me. I am really mad.”
“Is this some sublime posthuman thing no one can understand?”
“It is the opposite of sublime. I want Del Azarchel to know where I am, so he will pick up his pistol and come looking for me, and we can finish our duel. His people, including the machine half of his mind, don’t want him to die dueling me, so they are trying to bump me off before that happens.”
Then Menelaus sent, “Exarchel? I know you heard all that. I have all your little puppets and spies and agents locked up here in the chamber with me, so you might as well give up, and send Blackie.”
And, with a silent thought directed through his implants, Menelaus stirred the great golden sarcophagus of the Judge of Ages to life. Roaring, the serene image on its lid gleaming, it slammed and banged heavily down the dais; roared past Menelaus, wind-whipping the hems of his metal robes as he cheered; and sped across the chamber floor, accelerating.
Everyone, Blue Man and dog things and Thaws of many eras, shouted and screamed and jumped out of the way.
An automaton stalked into the path, raised its machine gun, and opened fire. The automaton’s bullets slammed off the hull of the sarcophagus, screaming. Decorative armor panels slid aside, revealing weapon blisters. Twin machine guns bright with tracer fire, and a particle-beam energy weapon brighter than a lightning bolt and louder, erupted from the sarcophagus, blinding nearly all eyes there, and dazing all ears. Three arms of the automaton were chewed in half by the bullets, and its energy core was aflame, when the sarcophagus ran it down, trampling it to pieces under wheels and treads.
Four of the Blue Men raised their jeweled weapons, but were flung from their feet when a nonlethal shock of electricity crackled along the floor. Unfortunately, everyone standing on the same square of gold tile was treated likewise, and all fell screaming, except for Gload the Hormagaunt, who seemed to be immune to electricity. He grinned, and little sparks jumped from his bottom fangs to his top.
Bashan the Giant, seeing the sarcophagus barreling toward him like a train engine, stepped to one side with a polite nod.
The huge pistons groaned and the leaves of the huge doors fell to. Boom. The sarcophagus sprayed some chemical from its interior on the doors as it rushed forward. There was a squeal of brakes and the sarcophagus fishtailed sideways, so that it struck the doors lengthwise. When the heavy sarcophagus smashed into the doors, it was a sound as if an aircraft carrier had been dropped onto a sea of stone. The doors were struck so forcefully that they were bent slightly in the frame, just enough to jam the hinges. The chemical fluid ignited with a blue-white flame when the sarcophagus struck, and this in turn ignited the fluids and bearings in the undercarriage. The fire hardened and solidified the glue filling the cracks of the door leaves into something the consistency of asphalt, and burnt away the joints of the wheels and treads of the coffin, leaving it unable to move, trapped in asphalt, and blocking the way, its huge mass crumpled and bent up against the doors.