“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?”
“Liege, I had to tell the blond Black Chinaman who smiles like a jackal how to open the doors with a serpentine so that Ull would let him at the controls.”
“His name is Kine Larz. I wondered what was up.”
“He was supposed to switch the defenses from nonlethal to lethal, and run the reload check. Thanks to him, everything should be online and warmed up.”
“Better than I hoped! Back to business: to get me to the sarcophagus, I am going to get you up here to this nice suit of powered armor next to me, except it will hurt, and you might get killed.”
“I was shriven by the chaplain before I hibernated, Liege. I am good to go.”
Ull and the Blue Men were watching the assault on Rada Lwa with narrowed eyes.
Ull said, “Preceptor Illiance! This commotion partakes of deception. Is this not Relict His Excellency Grandmaster Sir Guiden von Hompesch zu Bolheim, whom we have confirmed is a Tomb Guardian? What attempted the relict Rada Lwa to say, that the Judge of Ages sends this man to suppress his words? Relict Beta Anubis! Translate Rada Lwa’s comment at once!”
But Illiance was looking perturbed. “I happen to disagree, wise Mentor. I have studied the facial tells and muscular contractions of the Judge of Ages. Relict Sir Guiden is not one of his men. His expression shows he does not recognize him.” Illiance, of course, was looking at Scipio, who did not recognize Sir Guiden at all.
Menelaus said in Iatric, “Mentor Ull! As Preceptor Ydmoy warned us, the relicts are behaving with unexpected eccentricity! I am speaking to calm down those two, one of whom attempted most uncouthly and unwisely to assault one of your Followers. Rada Lwa’s comment was to the effect, Mentor Ull, that two or more of your Followers, while afflicted with mange, brain damage, scrofula, and syphilis, copulated with your mother to produce you, passing their infirmities along, but cheated your mother of the transaction money involved, despite the extremely low fee and reasonable rates. The matter being biologically and economically unlikely, I presume some scurrilous insult is intended. The Judge of Ages is disturbed, and demands that the albino be ejected from the chamber at once, pending his further displeasure!”
Illiance was looking back and forth. “Corporal Beta Sterling Anubis and Grandmaster Sir Guiden von Hompesch zu Bolheim are cohorts and associates of each other. The signs are unmistakable. How it is none of you see it?”
Menelaus said, “None of them see it, Illiance, because they have their weirdness chip switched on and their emotion chip switched off. But I can explain! I know that man because he was my master when I was an interred here, learning how to take care of coffins. I asked him to step up and hinder the eccentric albino, who was annoying your Follower. My purpose is to allow the Judge of Ages to conduct his hearing without further delay or commotion. Is that not clear? Is that not reasonable?”
Illiance turned and looked at him in wonder. “Also, the Judge of Ages did not speak. You are practicing a deception on me. You are lying. I was not able to hear the nuances of pitch that indicated this previously. I wonder why?”
Menelaus grimaced. He was certain the Blue Men’s circuits would detect the moment he brought the chamber weapons up to ready. He did not want to jam the door until everyone was within: from outside, the murmur of the footfalls of the approaching Giant was audible.
“Not to worry, Preceptor Illiance! I will inquire of the relict what you wish to know. What was the question again?”
Illiance was merely staring at him, dumbfounded.
Despite his hopes, Oenoe the Nymph left the circle of the Nymphs, and glided across the floor to Sir Guy. He could not embrace her with a snarling albino in one hand and a knife in the other, but she could put her cheek up against the cloak on his back, and she closed her eyes in joy. She was rather short, and her cheek did not even reach his shoulder blade.
But she could see his abundant joy in his eyes, and, reflected there, her own.
9. Aanwen Concludes
On the dais, Montrose muttered, “Whoops. The jig is up.”
The only other man in the chamber who spoke English, Scipio, whispered back, “What just happened? The knight just kissed the showgirl. So what?”
Montrose muttered, “One clue too many. The Blues are about to figure what’s up.”
The Widow Aanwen said in Intertextual to Illiance, “Observe the embrace between Relict Oenoe Psthinshayura-Ah and Relict Sir Guiden von Hompesch zu Bolheim. Perform a third-level Cliometric analysis using the negative information system. Contemplate the results. There is no pattern of events whereby that woman could know that man, she having been found on a lower level of the Tombs, unless the man calling himself Beta Sterling Anubis is also one of their order, and a Knight Hospitalier.
Illiance said, “I do not have a basis to agree. Any client of the Tombs could have woken and met Tomb Guardians at any time.”
She said with weary patience, “This Tomb Guardian thawed a high-status matriarch of the Natural Order, and they took the time to learn each other’s languages and cultural-neurological assumption structures, and formed a mutual love-relationship? And this same Tomb Guardian thawed a Beta-rank Chimera, and formed a master-servant relation with him?”
Illiance gave a liquid shrug. “Human relationships are multivariable.”
“Are you men blind to these things?” demanded an exasperated Aanwen. “It was clear from his tone of voice and demeanor that the man calling himself Beta Sterling Anubis gave Sir Guiden commands, but Sir Guiden is the Grandmaster of the Order of Knights Hospitalier. There is only one superior to the Grandmaster. Observe the similarity of facial features between the man pretending to be a Chimera and the man pretending to be the Judge of Ages. They are Clades, or family-relations. The man pretending to be the Judge is close enough genetically to have fooled our DNA tests; and as a contemporary, he drinks that bitter black liquid stimulant.”
Illiance said back, “Your theory founders on the calculus of vocabulary analysis: we confirmed that the Judge of Ages was speaking words only he could have spoken.”
She said, “The interpreter is himself the man who originally spoke them.”
Illiance said, “Cogent meaning fails to be conveyed.”
She rolled her eye and turned away from Illiance. “Mentor Ull, do you follow my argument?”
Ull looked down at Aanwen, his eyes heavily lidded. “I apprehend the steps, but not the conclusion. What explanation would fit this pattern? Are you saying the Judge of Ages woke in the time of the Chimerae, and fathered a son named Anubis, who is now acting as his interpreter? The idea is without merit. It is confirmed from independent sources that the Judge of Ages is as loyal to his mate as a Simplifier. He would not mate outside the marriage covenant. Sterling Anubis cannot be the son of the Judge of Ages, for the simple reason that half-Chimerae cannot achieve Beta rank.”
Aanwen said, “He has no rank! He is not a Chimera! Sterling Anubis is Menelaus Montrose. That man is the Judge of Ages.”
Ull merely harrumphed. “You indulge in absurdities. Anubis is clownish and dull-witted.”
She said, “Very well. Let events unfold with no further contribution from me. I have done my part and more. You are not Simple, none of you! You have become Locusts!”
With this, Aanwen threw her pistol to the floor and it chimed and rang like a dropped wineglass of crystal.
She turned grandly toward the center of the room and held out her hand, palm up, toward Menelaus. “Judge of Ages, hear! I remind you of your obligation to spare Preceptor Illiance from yo
ur vengeance. Again I walk from you, and live. Sometimes the simplest solution is best.”
And she turned, and on silent gliding steps, went toward the great doors.
The Witches looked on in awe, bowed and parted to the left and right to make way for her. Even without understanding the speech, they were clearly more impressed with the actions of a Blue Woman than with anything a Blue Man would do. Small and dainty as a child, blue as a plum, she receded between the tall hooded figures of the Witch crones and their menfolk.
Aanwen was gone.
10. Oenoe’s Kiss
Sir Guiden whispered to his wife. Some of the other Blue Men, at this point, drew their pistols, some pointing at Sir Guiden, some at the bewildered Nymphs, others at Montrose.
Oenoe blew a kiss at Rada Lwa, and flower petals from her mantilla drifted toward his pale face, and he blinked, eyes unfocused, dazed.
But before she could complete her neurological spell, Preceptor Naar, nonchalantly riding one of his clanking machines, stepped between the two and parted them. Sir Guiden, at the same moment, let out a yelp and dropped his misericorde, for it had burned him. Several of the gems on Naar’s coat were active: this was the same trick used on Menelaus when first his coffin was forced open, namely, heating metal by magnetic induction.
Naar’s mechanism reached down with a large black-and-yellow painted claw, and delicately plucked Rada Lwa out of the grasp of Sir Guy, and set the albino down to one side, where he staggered, and went to one knee. With the other claw, Naar’s automaton picked up Sir Guy, dangling him like a child.
Oenoe clutched her stomach and looked wild with fright. It was the first expression Menelaus had seen on her face that seemed unrehearsed and utterly sincere, and it was an expression of utmost misery. Menelaus said in Natural, “Get the dogs away from the sarcophagus this second, and I can control the room!”
She replied in the same language, “Even I, beloved, cannot work so swiftly. The chemicals need time to react to the nervous system.”
The iron claw tightened. Sir Guiden screamed in a strangled, high-pitched voice: “Montrose! Help me! Ayúdame! MONTROSE!”
Three people reacted. Menelaus stepped forward, and brought his rock out from under his cloak, and he stiffened the fabric to steely hardness. Rada Lwa, who was kneeling, reached and plucked up the dropped misericorde and leaped to his feet, looking to see who had screamed. Scipio on the throne stood up.
Then the three men all looked at each other, surprised. Rada Lwa blinked oddly, unable to focus his eyes on the face beneath the metallic cloak of tent material. Then he looked at Sir Guiden, saying in Spanish, “Wait. Who called my name?”
Scipio said in English, “Ancestor, did you say every object was armed?” He let the black, glassy blade clatter to the dais beside him. Illiance somersaulted effortlessly out of the way like an acrobat to avoid being struck or cut by the dropped blade, and smoothly rolled upright on his feet, his face all the while serene.
Scipio meanwhile with his toe had flipped open the hinged shell that formed the top of the tortoise footstool. Inside the hollow tortoise were two streamlined pistols of milky white ceramic, curved like the letter J, not quite as long as a man’s forearm. The thumb-trigger was an emerald oval of touch-sensitive crystal. Menelaus recognized them as the same design of “slumbering gun” he always slept with, a caterpillar-drive linear accelerator, atomic powered, no moving parts, locked to his biometrics.
Scipio tossed both to him. The weapons were live. He could sense the energy from the atomic cells by the crackle in his implants when he caught them, one in each hand. Menelaus pointed one barrel at Naar, the other at Ull.
One of the dog things nearby said in Intertextual to Ull, “Master! Relict Anubis! Him! Allow me to run at him! I will stab him with the bayonet, the sharp, sharp bayonet, and fire my piece at point-blank range into his uncooperative non-Blue body! Ugly, ugly body! It will burn with much burning, bright! Bright!”
Mentor Ull said back, “Not to be allowed. The discharge may pass through his body and strike the sarcophagus behind him, and wound pack mates.”
The shoulders and tail of the dog thing drooped. A piteous whine escaped from between white, sharp teeth.
Mentor Ull scratched the dog thing fondly behind its ear. “It was a good and loyal suggestion. You are good! Good Follower!”
“Me! I am a good Follower!”
“Take a squad to his left and right, that you may stab and fire at an angle without striking the coffin. Do not shoot until I command.”
Dogs began inching up the dais, left and right, ears high, tense as bowstrings.
Montrose said in Iatric, “Naar! I have perfect peripheral vision and am perfectly ambidextrous and I have greased rattlesnake reflexes, and I really, really love shooting people. At this distance, I can pick which nostril of Ull’s nose and yours to drill, the left or the right.”
Naar looked bored. “A shot of a metallic projectile? The result will be unimpressive.” A shift of the automaton’s claw, and Sir Guiden, pale and gasping in pain, was now hanging before Naar, spoiling Menelaus’ aim. Naar said languidly, “Preceptor Illiance, if you will—?”
The gems on the coat of Preceptor Illiance glistered and shined. Menelaus saw black sparks dance before his eyes, and he thought it was some exotic energy discharge, before he realized that it was merely his eyeballs betraying him due to lightheadedness. His muscles locked up as if with cramps: he could not so much as twitch a finger.
Illiance drifted over, stood on tiptoe, and pried the two white pistols out of the numb hands of Menelaus.
Illiance said apologetically, “The food you have been consuming over the past week has been infested with nerve-seeking nanite bodies or mites which can permit or hinder normal axon-dendrite discharge of those nerves, and which we can control by means of simple radio signals.”
Montrose now understood why the Blue Men had been so utterly nonchalant about the Chimerae arming themselves with primitive, macroscopic weapons. On a microscopic level, the combat had already been lost.
Menelaus reflected sadly on how worried he had been about the goddam shower water. Damn, but he hated nanotech!
Illiance thoughtfully pointed one pistol at the golden floor, flipped up the trigger guard, and pushed his thumb on the trigger spot. “Not loaded,” he said in Intertextual, when nothing happened.
Mentor Ull said, “Loaded. You can see the dowel of firing material through the barrel. The trigger is biometrically sensitive, perhaps affixed to a family gene pattern.”
Illiance placed the oversized pistols, one in each side pocket of his coat. The curving grips hung far out in the air like horns of a lamb, bumping his elbows. He said thoughtfully, “Then Beta Anubis could not have fired it in any case.” He looked puzzled. “But the Judge of Ages, whose pistols these are, could have. Why did he pass them? With our translator paralyzed, we have no convenient means to inquire.” His look of mild puzzlement grew deeper, darkening to a look of bewilderment, or even fear. “Something is wrong. There is some basic, erroneous assumption I have been making about these circumstances.”
Scipio perhaps did not realize Menelaus could not move; or perhaps he was just feeling reckless; for he stepped forward, picked up his dropped sword, and pointed it at Naar.
In a tone so majestic no one could misunderstand, he spoke what was clearly a command. But it was spoken in English, a language which no one could understand. The import was clear enough: he was demanding the Blue Man release Sir Guiden.
Menelaus knew the risk, but the opportunity was too good to pass up. Paralyzed from head to toe as he was, he still had his neural implants. Were they unaffected by the nanite nerve-seekers hidden in the food?
It was one of those ironies of life that he could not, at the moment, get a signal to the sarcophagus a few yards away, but that he could get a signal to his cloak of tent material, which had emitters and receivers designed to interface with the gems that controlled the automata.
So wh
en the Judge of Ages in his long red robes and long white wig pointed his short-bladed sword and uttered his kingly command, the automaton twitched, and bucked, throwing an astonished Preceptor Naar to the floor (much to the consternation of the dogs, who yowled); then the automaton stepped forward, and put Sir Guiden gently down on the dais beneath the shadow of the statue of Hades, and thus not far from where the powered armor rested. The automaton then bowed to the throne, and, leaning too far forward as it bowed, with a whine of gyros toppled with a horrid clatter to the floor, limp and sprawling as a dead thing.
Sir Guiden rose unsteadily to his feet, his hands upon the powered armor as if leaning on it for support. He spoke without turning his head in Latin, “Did you arrange that? That hurt.” But Menelaus, paralyzed, could not answer.
Scipio, showing more presence of mind (and acting ability) than Menelaus could have displayed in like circumstance, drew his red robes about him, and seated himself once more on the throne, holding aloft the black crystal sword. This simple gesture was done with such dignity and majesty that the chamber fell silent, all eyes staring at him. The dog things were as frozen as Menelaus.
And the men of various eras in the chamber looked at the black sword in awe, as if it were enchanted.
Only Naar, who was on the floor, chin propped up by one elbow, did not seem the least astonished or impressed. He was drumming the fingers of one hand against the floor, a gesture that seemed weirdly and casually human when done by a Blue Man. The gems on his coat were flickering, and his eyes were narrowed in thought as he looked first left and then right. Menelaus estimated Naar would deduce the truth of what had happened, and the origin of the signals, within four minutes.
Rada Lwa, who might be a stubborn fellow, but whose intelligence was above what was possible for unagumented humans, had at that moment deduced a truth of his own. He stepped up on the dais and pointed the misericorde at Scipio.
“Why is this man sitting as if in a judgment seat? Is he pretending to be the Judge of Ages? If so, you are fools. This is not Menelaus Montrose, but an imposter! I order any who understands my words to transmit them!”