Menelaus looked left and right, noting which crates had been broken open, and memorizing the tracking numbers, and with each number, he gritted his teeth more grimly.
Beyond that, a second storehouse just of spare parts, braces, hulls, magnetic engines, coupling, and cables. Row upon row of fully robotic workshops loomed to the right. Vault upon vault of storage for dangerous radioactive or precious metals frowned from the left.
Larz continued the conversation. “No more rhyming, Simon, I swear it on my carrot. But you gotta tell me who or what you are. Why are the superhuman magicians from the night sky looking for you? They are pookas from children’s stories.”
“I experimented on myself to raise my intelligence, and I fell in love with the girl they had created like a Moreau. And they think I stole her from them.”
Larz said, “What are you? A little Giant?”
“Something like that.”
“I thought they had two noses.”
“I make do with one, just extra large, and it doubles as a can opener. Speaking of can openers, how the hell did you get the door open? The lock has so many levels of quantum encryption on it, not even the Machine can unpuzzle it.”
“Puzzle, wuzzle! I was given the passwords and challenge responses. When I was in the hospital.”
“You met Sir Guy? He wanted you to bring the Blue Men in?”
“I didn’t know his name. I don’t know what he wanted. He was a painted man, illuminated like an old book, all his face and skin covered over with inks. This man, whoever he was, the Blue Men chopped off all four of his limbs to put him in a talking frame of mind, and he didn’t talk no-how, so they coffined him up to regrow his limbs, and I guess they were going to try again. He wasn’t doing not a wringing thing for them, that’s a sure deal. He would not break. He was holy.”
“Holy?”
“Because of how he acted. He talked to invisible people on his knees (when he had knees) and he clasped his hands to ask the invisible people for help (when he had hands) and he was very kind and very not afraid. You could see it in his eyes.”
“But there were no holy men in your era. Or unholy. The Chimerae outlawed churches and Witches both.”
“They outlawed buildings and books. Who can outlaw holy men? All you can do is kill them, which makes them more holy. What’s so funny?”
“I was just thinking about a man I knew. His idea of a perfect society was one where everyone was in uniform and no one was in church, and men slept with each other’s wives like weasels in heat, and human beings were bred like dogs.”
Kine Larz looked solemn. “You are talking about us.”
Montrose gave him a sharp look. “You think I should talk more kindly about the works of the Chimerae? Now that the oblivion of time has swallowed all, you are a loyal fan?”
“All the higher-ups think our society is perfect, or soon will be. They dreamed great things!”
“Well, Larz old buddy, the icy waste you saw outside these Tombs is where all those dreams ended up. Their future never arrived. It is pie bye-and-bye and pie in the sky, but nothing but toil and lies now and here. This guy I mean, he would have been so very disappointed to find Christians in the catacombs in his perfect little world; I am just sorry I beefed him before he found out. I would have liked to see the dumbfounded look on his face. Well, he looked surprised enough when I shot him. That’ll have to do.”
“You shot one of the Alpha caste?”
“Higher rank than that,” said Montrose.
Larz nodded solemnly. “The prototype.”
“Who?” Montrose had not heard this term before.
“Narcís D’Aragó, our founder. He is the posthuman, the prototype toward which all Chimerical evolution is directed. The creator of all the lineages, Epsilon to Alpha.”
“He told everyone y’all were supposed to evolve up to be like him? Man’s ego was even more elephant-sized than I thought.”
“Mister, why did you shoot him? I mean, I know what the story says. That he killed your Thucydides Montrose by mistake, the Roman Holy Man who made the Giants.”
“That was sure one reason. The other is harder to explain.”
“Tell me. I have known your tales my whole life. Tell me the truth!” The eyes of Larz gleamed with strange hunger.
“This is the truth. Narcís D’Aragó was the opposite of a holy man, the kind of man who ushers in hell on earth. It is our duty to kill such men.”
“Whose duty?”
“All of us. Everyone with a trigger finger and half a pint of manhood. Ain’t that the moral of all those old stories you love?”
Larz nodded solemnly. “Your Sir Guy—if that was his name—was a man from an old story, and not the kind of stories Chimerae tell, which are all about honor and shame, rapes and polygamy, and war, murder, and suicide, and mass murder, and mass suicide. Not the lies their stories are. No, he was like one from a real story. An old tale. He was a knight and a Crusader and a Hospitalier, a warlord of the light, and it was like he had stepped down from a better world to be in this one, to help us fight our wars. Just like the Crusades!”
“You know about the Crusades? No, don’t tell me…”
“Of course. Strange Tales of the Street number 86 was Curse of the Treasure of the Templars, and one of the undead Professor Necromant raised from the Tombs of the Ages was a Crusader—a Red Cross Knight, in service to Richard the Lionheart during the King’s Crusade.”
“Huhn. You really can learn useful stuff from kiddie yarns. Maybe learn everything you need.”
“Professor Necromant also raised a zombie triceratops, an amphibious mer-vampire samurai cyberassassin from Atlantis named Glaucon, and a dog-eating Witch named Melech Chemosh Shemyaza the Nagual. Hey! Do you think this is the very tomb the Professor used?”
“Uh, yeah. Forget what I said about kiddie yarns being useful. Tell me more about Sir Guy.”
“He was every inch the perfect knight. He tried to console the black dwarfs when they were sad, even though they did not speak the same tongue. The little men with gold antennae. They knew they were going to die. He sprinkled them with water, just plain water, and for some reason that seemed to drive back their sadness. The next day, Ull had Naar’s automata dig a deep pit next to the airstrip, and the trio were driven into it, and the dogs climbed in, tore the little black men to bits, and climbed out, and Naar’s machines shoveled the cold dirt on top of them. They did not even put up a marker or nothing.”
“Who was with him?”
“Ull? He acted alone. Just the machines were with him.”
“Is he still alive?”
“The knight? He was alive when I saw him: they were moving his coffin down here with the rest of us.”
“Did he tell you anything or leave any message?”
“How would I know? He didn’t talk. Not a language I understood.”
“Then how—?”
“We used slumber marks.”
“Slumber marks? What’s that?”
“In my day everyone—every Chimera or Kine—before he went into suspension was taught a set of signs to allow people from different time periods to communicate. In case you were thawed out to do work for the Judge of Ages with someone else from a different period. Or in case you wanted to join the Knights. It is not always the same knight, you know! They are allowed to quit and reenter the un-thawed world, and the Judge of Ages has to fill out his missing roster, and he recruits new men. They did not have slumber marks in your day? Little signs you put on the coffins to tell the knights when to wake you up?”
“The coffins were better designed in my day. Who else was in the hospital?”
“A Giant—but I see you believe in Giants.”
“They are real, too. I glimpsed him in the pit when I first was thawed, and later, I saw his oversized coffin being lowered down when I came down from the surface just now.”
Larz squinted and looked at him sidelong. “You say you do not know the slumber marks, and yet they
date from the time of the Witches. Yet you are not a Sylph, nor a Giant, nor a Savant. What period are you from?”
Menelaus shrugged. Everyone was about to find out anyway, one way or the other. “I come from the days before the Giants. I am the oldest man in the world. And the damned tiredest. You see, I am really—”
“The Judge of Ages—wow!”
“Yes, yes—eh? How did you kn—”
“There he is! It’s him!” Larz was looking ahead, pointing with excitement. “He must be inside! He must!”
For the dogs had brought them suddenly through a pair of huge double doors into a chamber much larger than any ordinary coffin cell, a golden chamber. “—it’s the Judge of Ages! His tomb! His sanctum sanctorum! The great armored battle-crypt! Just like in the old stories!”
This was the mausoleum more splendid than that of a king. It was a sight to awe the eyes.
4. The Tomb of the Judge of Ages
The ceiling was painted in frescoes of gold and deep blue, a pattern of stars and constellations. Stalactites of yellow gold hung from the ceiling, an architectural oddity like baseless capitals of columns: these held clustered dozens of pinpoint sources for light, and from the points depended pineapple-shaped ornaments. The floor was tessellated with alternating squares of yellow gold and white marble and green malachite.
The chamber was like the nave of a cathedral, long and narrow. One wall, the south, was occupied by a doorframe and massive leaves large enough, when opened, to admit five chariots abreast. Through this door Menelaus and Larz came, escorted by a troop of dog things.
Thirty-foot-tall gold statues gilded and painted of white-bearded Father Time and the hooded Grim Reaper stood on either side of the great doors, looking inward toward the hall, and their scythes met and touched over the tops of the open doors. Opposite them at the far end of the hall and facing also inward loomed a statue of Michael the Archangel, balance scales in one hand, boar-spear impaling the jaws of a red dragon in the other, and a gigantic statue of Hades wrestling a fainting Proserpine was beside him. The white arms of the goddess were outstretched as if imploring old Chronos the Titan to come to her aid. Michael the Archangel stared with youthful defiance into the hood of the Grim Reaper, as if promising him, once victory over the old serpent won, he would be the last enemy felled.
The eastern walls, between the vast images of death and the archangel, were set with wardrobes of crystal holding the silks and costumes and suits of armor of many ages, stuffed heads of animals, pelts and skulls and other trophies.
The western wall, between the images of death and his bride and his father, was lined with crystal cases holding hunting and dueling pistols of several ages, and swords and spears and battleaxes, all polished and gleaming as if newly made. Both walls were lined with alternating pillars of white and red marble.
Above these twin rows of pillars ran two parallel balconies. Menelaus saw a shower stall, a kitchenette, a recycler, several oxy-nitrogen tanks, and other basic necessities hidden behind half-closed wooden screens along the recessed balconies. There were four staircases curving upward to the balconies, one behind each of the massive statues in the corners.
Midmost was a silver-basined fountain, sitting foursquare. A plume of water hung in the middle, burbling merrily, blocking the view of the north end of the chamber. From the plashing of the water, it seemed a very deep basin, a well or a cistern.
Level with this fountain were two alcoves or lesser wings interrupting the eastern and western walls. To the eastern side squatted a private supply of biosuspension material; to the western, an atomic pile plated in gold and designed to last forever.
Looking back toward the doors from the fountain, as large as the doors and occupying all the wall behind and above, was hung a larger-than-life portrait of a blond young woman. She had a sharp look to her eyes and a winning smile, and the artist had perfectly captured a sense of softness and hidden strength. She wore a crown and a sash of royal office, but incongruously; beneath that she wore a close-fitting suit of dark satin with a ring-collar. This was the officer’s uniform of the star vessel, the captain’s uniform. Behind her, like a half wheel, part of the Milky Way galaxy held up its curving arms. Above her head was a small puff of stars lost in intergalactic darkness, a globular cluster orbiting the Milky Way. A slender silver line connected the globular cluster with one point near the edge of the Milky Way.
Eternal clocks and calendars were built into the walls to either side of the portrait, and a small jewel was held on the frame in a position only a very little of the way up the silver line toward the globular cluster above the crown of the princess.
Menelaus stood staring, with such a look of loss and longing on his features, that he seemed a different man, and younger.
5. The Azure Coffin
Before the fountain, not abutting, but close enough to be wetted by its spray, was a coffin of lapis lazuli, blue as the sky, and of very ancient design.
The coffin was placed on the floor in a spot of no particular significance, and reminded Menelaus oddly of a photo he had seen in his youth of the last automobile left in the last parking lot after the Age of Oil had passed away.
Menelaus slowed and stopped, staring at the coffin. The dog things with him stopped also, perhaps unsure as to which part of the chamber to take him to.
Larz spoke up, “So this is the coffin of the Judge of Ages! Do not touch it. This whole chamber is probably full of hidden weapons!”
Menelaus stirred himself. Larz was regarding the blue coffin. “See?” Montrose said. “Reading cheaplies is educational. This place damn well better be full of hidden weapons.” Montrose stepped over and looked at the readout.
“I said to don’t touch it! It will probably explode, and then drop you into a pit full of acid-spitting cybercobras.”
“I’ll risk it,” he grunted, and put his fingers on the coffin surface. The coffin lid turned transparent. The interior was blue-white, and the coffin was layered with some sort of gel or ice, on both its sides and bottom. Inside it was a young woman, naked. She was thin-faced, no older than seventeen, and her hair was treated with a purple hue that glowed in the dark, her closed eyelids darkened with mascara or kohl. In the center of her forehead, a purple gem was planted, a teardrop seemingly fused to her skin.
“A naked woman!” exclaimed Larz. “What year is she from? I bet she’s a cavegirl!”
“No staring at the nipples!” Montrose said dourly.
“You’re looking!”
“I am a doctor.” But Menelaus shaded his own eyes with his hand, partly blocking the view. From beneath his fingers, he could still see the readout. “She’s perfectly healthy. This is a voluntary hibernation: the code indicates she’s waiting for someone, linked to another coffin calendar. The name line says ‘Changed Frequently.’ So unless her family name is Frequently and her Christian name is Changed, my guess is that she changed her name too often for the records system. She was interred A.D. 2537, she is too short to be a Giant, so she is a Sylph.”
Larz looked down with particular interest. “A Sylph! I have never seen one before. I bet she needs to be rescued!”
“Maybe we all do.”
“What pert breasts she has!”
Menelaus slapped the coffin lid again, and it turned opaque. “Down, boy. I think she is underage.”
“How so? She is at least a zillion years old!”
Coming suddenly around the edge of the fountain came Mentor Ull and Preceptors Illiance and Yndech. The sounds of the falling water hid the sounds of their light footfalls.
Ull said crossly in Iatric, “What is this tardiness, Beta Anubis? Why do you pause to consider this coffin? It is of no consequence. You are needed to facilitate conversation.”
Menelaus said, “Your pardon, Mentor. I thought perhaps this coffin, being alone in the midst of the floor, was significant.”
Illiance said, “An understandable misapprehension, for we were also puzzled by this coffin. But it holds no
particular concern for us at this time. The Judge of Ages awaits us at the end of the chamber. He is not in this coffin. He is risen.”
And at that moment came a loud chime of noise from the blue coffin, like the reverberation of a crystal gong.
Larz screamed an astoundingly loud, high-pitched scream, and threw himself to the golden floor, covering his head with both arms.
The dog things nearby, startled, barked and raised their muskets, some aiming at Larz, some at the coffin, some at Menelaus, who raised his empty hands, saying, “Good boy. Good doggy.”
Ull stepped forward, his half-lidded eyes brimming with even more contempt and weariness than was his wont. “Eschew these antics. Events converge! Depart to the dais fronting this chamber, Relict Beta Sterling Anubis.”
Illiance raised a slender hand. “Your indulgence is craved but a moment, Mentor, for my curiosity is piqued. What do these things mean, Corporal Anubis?”
Menelaus said, “Something you said was picked up by the coffin brain, and it triggered the thaw cycle. Should be a matter of minutes, rather than days, because she is unwounded and prepped for a quick thaw, like a Hospitalier.”
“Interesting. And why did Relict Kine Larz of the Gutter impel himself prone, and utter an energetic vocal commotion? Please ask him.”
Menelaus translated the question. Larz, looking up with panic-wide eyes at the gun muzzles of the snarling dogs, raised his trembling hands. “Tell the blue Alphas I meant no harm by it! Besides, I don’t have any kin in this age to be torn up before my eyes, so there is no use giving me punishment detail!”
Menelaus said, “The Blues aren’t as barbaric as, well, us.” He put his hand down and helped Larz to his feet.
Larz muttered. “Why do you say ‘us’? I know you are no Beta.”
“Don’t make me civilized, neither. I’m from Texas.”