Ull said in Iatric, “Anubis, we seek the Judge of Ages. We know he is among you. Tell the relicts that we will begin killing all within the chamber, starting with women and Giant and others we are confident are not he, until he reveals himself.”
Menelaus said, “Look up. I have one hundred guns armed with a mix of armor-piercing and scattershot rounds, with a few tracers to look pretty, aimed at all your heads. The floor is electrified; the fountain is poison. You are totally outgunned, surrounded, and locked in a radioactive room that is rapidly growing unhealthy for human life.”
Ull sneered, “Your control is illusionary, Chimera. We permitted those signals to pass in order to lure the Judge of Ages, through overconfidence, to reveal his location. You do not think we returned the equipment of the Linderlings to them unchanged and dangerous? The multivariable channel neuroemission node object 6AS-46A-W5-BB963”—Menelaus reached under his cloak, and tightened his hand on the gold capsule Keirthlin had given him—“was reprogrammed to impersonate all passthrough data without passing it through. The signals only appeared to pass. Do you think us fools?”
“Yes,” said Menelaus. “Well, not all of y’all. Mostly you.” And he stepped over to the throne, and put his hand on the armrest. As he had hoped, the upper surface was library cloth, and at touch-range, the radioactivity could not stop the transmission from his fingertips to the cloth surface.
Two of the guns overhead clicked with loud snaps, and nothing happened, and nothing fired.
Menelaus groaned. “Okay, I take back that fool comment. That was well played. Is Blackie helping you, Learned Ull? There is no way that trick would have worked if it was just you who reprogrammed the node. What happened to Reyes y Pastor? Why did you take his seat at the Table Round?”
Soorm spoke in Iatric, “That answer I know!”
The words were spoken so loudly, and with such authority, that even Ull looked amazed, and stared at the monstrosity, half bear and half sea lion, that stood in the waters of the fountain, two mismatched eyes goggling, two tongues lolling, the claws on his webbed hands sheathing and unsheathing like those of a twitching lion.
Soorm said, “The Red Hermeticist realized that the era he ruled, all his dreams for how humanity should evolve, we beloved Hormagaunts, and everything else for which he lived, was a falsehood. Over a thousand years of events were organized merely to allow for one raid on Yap Island—the Cetaceans reverse engineered the genework on the Clades to deduce the mathematical Divarication solution Menelaus Montrose used to solve for complex mutually incompatible system interaction. It was from the Clade Codes that the Unity Divarication was devised, to drive the lines of Hormagaunt artificial species into oneness, and produce first the Locusts, and, later, the Locust hive mind.
“My entire world, of which I am the father and the first, was a joke, a feint, a jest, merely meant to permit one afternoon of bloodshed, lasting from noon to the ninth hour, and years of torment to thousands of innocent Clades buried alive at the utmost bottom of the sea, merely so that that fourteen lines of code expressed in ninety-one symbols could be deduced.
“The knowledge drove Reyes, my creator, insane, and he returned to the comfort of the superstitions of his youth, and sought to save the souls of the soulless monsters he created. For this crime, his greater self and oversoul, the Dreagh Expastor, was murdered and consumed by the Dreagh Excoronimas, even as Man Pastor was slain by Man Coronimas. Reyes y Pastor died a martyr on the steps of his church, trying to defend the sacred bread of the altar from defilement.”
Ull was staring dumbfounded at him. “How can you know of these secret things, hidden since the dawn of time? You are a Hormagaunt and a monster. And whom do you address?” For the chameleon eyes of Soorm did not point the same direction when he spoke.
Soorm drew himself up, his scorpion tail lashing angrily. “I am the scion of Reyes y Pastor, and his masterwork! You are not worthy to touch the latchet of his shoes, much less fill those shoes! Judge of Ages, hear my prayer! I hold thee to thy oath! This pathetic blue dwarf occupies the throne of Master of the World of this Age. Judge him, O Judge of Ages! You said he would topple from his throne!”
Menelaus said, “One last thing he’s got to do, first. One little thing.”
Ull said to Menelaus, “Your control of the chamber weapons, Chimera, is nullified. Even with our nerve mites out of contact, yet our Followers outnumber the Thaws by more than twice over, armed against unarmed! We command, and on pain of death, you obey! Tell all in this chamber in their languages to reveal the Judge of Ages, or we begin to slay the innocent!”
Preceptor Naar, looking down from his perch on a nearby automaton, said sharply, “What do you mean, ‘we’? You are not a Simplifier. You are a Hermeticist, mazed in complexity and falsehood like a spider in a labyrinth, an architect of the Noösphere we shed. You are an enemy and opponent of every ideal for which we stand!” And for once, his languid, long features were tight and hot with passion.
All the Blue Men, faces expressionless, raised their fingers and pointed at Ull. Despite the radioactivity in the room, some of their coat-circuits must have been working, for flocks of gems fled from their coats, passing through the air like glittering snowflakes of many colors. With a chattering clatter, the gems affixed themselves to Ull’s coat, layer upon layer, until he was one bright multipatterned carpet of gemstones from neck to hemline, and all along his sleeves.
No matter how demoted, he was still a human, and Ull’s commands were still obeyed by the dog things in the chamber, for he cried out, “Followers! Bayonet the She-Nymphs!”
Two groups of seven dog things ran at the Nymphs, who, oddly, neither flinched nor fled. Instead the Nymphs began to dance, the women counterclockwise and the men clockwise, weaving and interweaving with rapid footfalls, and their mantillas floated like scarves, shedding white cherry blossom petals and white dandelion puffs. The dogs rushed into their midst, and the Nymphs screamed.
But they screamed with laughter, because the dog things were running in circles with the dance, weaving in and out, each chasing the tail of the dog thing before, barking happily, tongues lolling, tails wagging. The muskets and cutlasses were flung gaily to the golden floor, and Nymphs led dogs in a game of skipping and jumping over the muskets, from one side to the other.
Then Oenoe, who stood in the middle of circles of mad, dancing figures, raised her lovely arms overhead, and sang a single high note into the air, crystalline, perfect, pure. The music slowed, softened, and segued into a lullaby.
Even without understanding the words, all in the chamber understood the song promised the wonders of safety and satiety; mother’s love and lover’s kisses; roses and wine and feast-days without end; and slumber by the golden margins of mazy streams of cool, clear water beneath the dappled shadows of generous fruit trees, their luscious fruit a-shine with dewdrops; and, then, at sunset, dreams of pleasure merging into the beauty of the starlight.
And when the song was ended, the fourteen dog things were asleep in a puppy pile heaped in the center of the circle, and the male Nymphs, grinning like Satyrs, brandished four muskets, clutching them by the barrels as if they were clubs.
There was a murmur of admiration from the hags among the Witches, who nodded their hooded heads and clapped their hands in applause.
Ull cried wildly to Ydmoy, Yndech, and Yndelf, “Expelled of the order or not, a confluence of interests still commingles our actions! For your own reasons, to preserve your order and race, you must find the Judge of Ages.”
Ydmoy said gravely, “It may be so, but to spend human lives to achieve our goal, while efficient and useful, we reject as Locust thinking.”