The Judge of Ages
But he did not say it in Spanish or in Korrekthotspeek. He said it in the data-compressed machine-squawk language of the Savants.
A voice from halfway across the chamber and from beneath the garish overalls Kine Larz wore emitted a chime and said back, “Understood, adored Montrose, first of all my programmers! I will comply!”
Menelaus remembered that data-speak was also the language of the Sylphs.
Almost too swiftly for any human eye to register, Alpha Yuen leaped like a tiger, and fell on Kine Larz. He ripped the man’s garment from neckline to buttocks, revealing the metal length of serpentine wrapped twice and thrice around his body. Yuen put his hand on the ornamented hilt of the serpentine and hissed a command. The metal length gave off a jolt of electric force, making Larz scream and dance, and then it flexed and straightened violently enough to draw blood, throwing Larz to the ground like a child’s top that spins off the edge of a table.
The serpentine was now straight as a spearshaft, and the leading edge of smartmetal flexed and flattened, forming a spearhead that hummed and sang with electric power.
Yuen, grim and silent, his one eye blazing, raised the weapon above the cowering Larz in both hands—but halted in awe when the voice of Arroglint the Fortunate again spoke from the weapon, this time in his native tongue.
In Chimerical, and then in Virginian, the calm and soothing tones of a machine voice rang out: “You are fools, my adored ones. The man sitting in the judgment seat is not Menelaus Montrose, but an imposter.”
And at that same moment, Kine Larz, moving with the speed of panic, scuttled like a crab away from the awe-frozen Yuen, rose and sprinted, and took refuge behind Scipio, calling out “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” in Chimerical.
And from the jeweled pistols of the Blue Men came a chime of noise, and a chorus of voices, as alike to Arroglint’s as brothers’ voices, saying the same message in Intertextual, and again in Iatric. “The man sitting in the judgment seat is not Menelaus Montrose, but an imposter.” Meanwhile, Soorm (while all the eyes, and, more importantly, ears and noses, of all the dog things were straining toward the scene on the dais) sidled close to Oenoe, and, in Natural, repeated to her what was being said.
Everyone in the chamber understood one of those languages, except for Scipio (who had, after all, not studied very deeply how to be a Savant). But he understood what had happened when all the faces in the chamber turned toward him, and not one face looked very pleased, not one looked at all fooled. And Kine Larz slid away from behind Scipio, and hid behind the iron throne, and out of the line of fire.
Scipio cleared his throat. “I can explain…,” he said in English, a language no one understood.
11. On the Nose
Menelaus saw that there was nothing else to be done. So he used the implants again to order the smartmetal material he wore as a cloak to relax like an accordion, straighten, and fling his paralyzed body at the sarcophagus at just the correct angle that some part of his naked flesh would touch the library cloth control surface.
The throw was not perfect, as the cloak was not built for this, but Menelaus had calculated the various motions of his body and the intervening air nicely, and the five dog things were taken by complete surprise. He struck the two squatting atop the sarcophagus and sent them toppling muzzle over tail in a clash of dropped cutlasses and muskets, and musketballs spilled from an improperly tied poke like marbles, brightly clattering and slithering.
Unfortunately, one of the dogs with better reflexes stabbed at him with a bayonet, and he had to harden the Bernoulli-curved cloak hems he was using as lifting surfaces into momentary metallic armor to parry the blow, and fold a hem into a razor-sharp blade to slash the creature and drive it yowling back in a spray of blood.
This made Menelaus deviate, but only slightly: he landed heavily on the control surface, but faceup rather than facedown, and the metal of his hood was between him and the spot he had to touch to allow his implants to trigger the sarcophagus controls. The dogs loomed up to each side as he lay, looking down with anger and astonishment and curiosity in their canine eyes.
It was just a stroke of good luck that Mentor Ull spoke up just at that moment. He cried in Iatric: “I deduce some invisible magnetic force in the chamber smote Naar’s automaton, and sent Beta Sterling Anubis toppling. Examine the signal environment! Discover the source!” And more than half of the Blue Men bent their heads and lit up the gems on their coats.
This gave Menelaus the moment he needed to send another command through his implants to his cloak, which flexed and flipped his paralyzed and motionless body neatly over like a flapjack. He slammed nose-first and very painfully into the library cloth coating part of the surface of the sarcophagus.
But it was enough of a contact, nose-to-cloth, to make the connection. Menelaus blessed his nose, and promised never to mock its great size again.
His implants triggered. The slim golden capsule the Linderlings had given him throbbed, and he could feel the pulse of power in his back teeth. Signals went from Menelaus’ brain, to receptors placed about his brain stem, to emitters placed in his chest cavity, to the node of rod-logic crystals given him by the Linderlings, to a transmitter in the golden tube surface, to the library cloth, which, sensing the DNA pattern of an authorized user in the pores of the nose of Menelaus, had switched on external input-output ports, small as pinpoints, dotting the cloth surface.
In his teeth and prefrontal cortex, Menelaus felt the passcodes being accepted like the click of tumblers falling nearly into place. Authorization Accepted! The circuits seemed to be in working order: the response was the standard Standing By! The motive engines under the sarcophagus hull changed pitch slightly, revving up. The weapons click-clacked as live rounds were jacked into firing chambers.
The coffin was mated to the local room circuits. Through it, Menelaus sent and received similar confirmations from the engines controlling the door hinges, the guns in the roof, electric mines in the floor, and the automatics behind the walls.
Checklists of ammunition magazines and energy levels flickered like green shadows through his brain. Ready!
There were roughly one hundred guns hidden in the pineapple-shaped ornaments hanging from the ceiling: not quite enough to put an unseen pinpoint beam on everyone’s head, whether blue or canine, but near enough.
He could suppress the ignition command so that any musketball fired could still kill a man if it struck him in a vital area, but without the incendiary, casualities would be far fewer.
He established the targeting list and action-reaction priorities. Aim!
First one, then several, then all the Blue Men perked up, startled, eyes wide, gems on their coats glittering, and the gray twins turned their slitted goggles toward Menelaus. Alalloel did not turn her head, but her three pairs of antennae, gold, silver, and blue, perked straight up like exclamation points.
“Achieve alertness!” called out Yndelf in Iatric, drawing his jeweled pistol, which was glowing bright as multicolored flame. “Oddity has been detected! Something manipulates the environs electronically! Dangerous instruments are target-locked on us!”
Yndech and Ydmoy drew their pistols. The two older men, Orovoy and Saaev, both drew braces of pistols, one in each hand, looking like absurd miniature gunfighters. Ull once again tucked his hands each into the opposite sleeves, Mandarin-style; Menelaus wondered what the energy source at his elbow might be.
The front rank of dogs knelt, muskets to shoulder, and the rear rank raised their muskets also, pointing at the man on the throne. The dog officer, a Collie, tail wagging with excitement, drew its sword in a slithering ring of steel, raised the blade, and looked to Ull, awaiting permission to give the order to fire.
Scipio, staring down scores of barrels pointed at him, did not so much as turn a hair, but assumed a stern and calm expression, and held it. Menelaus could not turn his paralyzed head to see this directly, but the images from the hundred targeting cameras in the ceiling were being fed directly in
to his visual cortex, and he felt a moment of family pride at Scipio’s aplomb.
Naar rose slowly to his feet, looking bored, and brushed the dust off his coat. The coat-gems under his fingers lit up, and to either side of him his line of cannon-bearing automata stirred, straightened, and raised their heavy guns. One of them stooped and hoisted Naar to a perch atop.
Ull said to Yndelf, “Whence originates the signal?”
Yndelf was pointing his glittering pistol at the sarcophagus, or at the body of Montrose paralyzed and helpless atop it.
All this conversation was in Iatric. So it was that when Soorm, in an absolutely serious tone, and with no expression possible on his fixed, seal-like and goggle-eyed face, shouted, “Quickly! The real Judge of Ages is here! He is angered! Rescue our translator Beta Anubis from the magnetic curse of the coffin before it flings him again! Undo the paralysis!” the Blue Men not only understood him, but Preceptor Yndech, much less accustomed to trickery and deception than a Hormagaunt of Soorm’s age, actually commanded the dog things Menelaus had attacked to come to his aid. In the same moment, Yndech’s coat gems lit up, and Menelaus felt a tingling, burning sensation start from his lower spine and spread throughout his trunk and limbs and head.
Menelaus, head lolling, arms flopping, allowed the helpful dog things to pull him to his rubbery feet, but he could not suppress the laughter that welled up from his lungs.
The dogs near him shrank back, alarmed by that laughter, which rang with madness.
Docent Aarthroy, the boy, whose coat was almost a solid mass of glittering gems, raised his hand and spoke. Menelaus had not heard his voice before. It was oddly flat yet rhythmic, just like the triune voice of the three Locusts, Crucxit, Axcit, and Litcec, had been. “Forgive if it happens to disturb. Significant information is apprehended. Relict of coffin labeled Beta Sterling Xenius Anubis, Proven in Battle of Mt. Erebus, Genetic Unknown, Line Unknown, Possibly Crotalinae, interment date A.D. 5292. Identified oddity! Relict possesses/employs third-order logic crystal energy system, multivariable channel neuroemission transponder and responder node, devised post-condition, object tracing number 6AS-46A-W5-BB963, technology comparable to object found in coffin Locust labeled Linderkeirthlin Laialin Inquiline Northeastern Region interment date A.D. 8866.” As he spoke, with one hand he pointed at Menelaus, and with the other at Keirthlin.
Naar peered calmly down over the edge of his machine, and said in a bored tone of voice, “I confirm Docent Aarthroy’s reading. Mentor Ull and Relict Soorm are mistaken. Relict Anubis is himself the source of the signals. He has primitive first-order short-range cybernetics channeled through a Linderling third-order node.”
“Too late!” laughed Menelaus, clutching for support at the supine image of his own head atop the sarcophagus lid, using the golden nose as a convenient hand grip. “Too slow on the uptake! Checkmate!”
There came a loud clattering from the walls and stalactite-shaped chandeliers. All of the pineapple ornaments banged open, one after another, with a noise like a hundred mousetraps snapping, and stubby little gunbarrels, their camera-eye lenses glittering, poked out of the openings.
12. Grand Entrance
They were interrupted by a commotion from the great doors. Now came a rumble, as of a slow drum, pounding. There was a murmur of awe from the gathered prisoners when a Giant stepped across the threshold.
The Giant strode forward on his immense legs, and the floor trembled at his footfall. It was like seeing an avalanche stride, or an iceberg on the northern seas. He ducked his head slightly to clear the vast doors, stepped within, halted, and drew himself up, casting his gaze over the room. His head was above the level of the chandeliers near him, so that while his massive shoulders and Herculean chest were brightly lit, his head was in half shadow. In this gloom, his yellow eyes glimmered, catlike.
The ten dog things escorting him were brought up short, and, seeing guns in the ceiling, bristled and whined. At their noise, alarmed, one hundred or so dogs, nearly half of the number in the chamber, turned and leveled weapons toward the Giant.
He stood at least fifteen feet tall. The tallest of the Witches was only level with his waist. Even Menelaus, who was tall for a man, was less than a child to him.
The Giant was not a pretty creature. The feet were toeless pads, and the legs were elephantine cylinders. The torso was disproportionately squat, and the chest and shoulders abnormally thick and wide. The hands were muscled, the fingers long and strong, but the last joint of the pinky of either hand was split like a Y into two smaller digits, flagella so fine that a watchmaker would envy them. The neck was a ring of muscle and flab that made the creature look like he was wearing a turtleneck sweater. Coarse hairs like the bristles of a rhinoceros stuck out from here and there from his flesh, which was the consistency of an orange peel. The head was an astonishing globe, large even for a body this size, in proportion as if the head of a baby had been perched on the body of a monster. The flesh of the scalp was thickly webbed with blue arteries like river deltas, implying a brain that needed more blood than a human brain. The facial features were coarse and gathered near the chin, making the beetling brow and vast dome of the skull even more grotesque.
It was hard to say which part of the face was more uncomely. The chin was weak and small. The mouth was a pouting rosebud of quivering red membrane. The nose was upturned and piglike, with vast nostrils, and two additional artificial nostrils penetrated the cheeks like metal plugs, one to each side of the nose. The continual hissing and suction of the breathing bespoke the immense amount of oxygen the three-foot-wide brain required. The ears were disagreeable nubs of flesh.
The eyes, however, were large and lustrous and golden, great orbs set in round sockets, with pupils like bright wells. The irises were yellow speckled with green, and the rapid dilation and contraction of the pupils as the Giant looked from one to another of the aspects and fixtures, men and dogs, in the vast chamber before his feet hinted at a brain able to absorb tremendous amounts of visual information quickly.
The Blue Men had returned his clothing to him also. In the hand of the Giant was an immense staff on which he leaned for support. His headgear was the jawless skull of a saber-toothed tiger, and the tawny pelt of leopard-spots, still attached, swathed his upper limbs as a stole, clawed feet and tail dangling down like tassels. Beneath, he wore the traditional suit lined with flexible vertical smart-piping, hydraulically stiffened to help support his frame, and the pipes flexed and tensed like muscles as he moved.
Strange gold eyes stared down above a curious double nose, a puckered bud of a mouth, a nub of a receding chin, a ghastly neck of layered flab.
Neither Scipio, nor the others in the chamber, could meet that gaze, only Menelaus.
He spoke in flawless Intertextual. “Forgive me for taking so long to deduce your language, but your forms are complicated, even for me. I am Dr. Bashan Christopher Calligorant Hugh-Jones, interment date, Year of Our Lord 3033. I speak all the languages of all within the chamber.
“Ull Ynglingas, you should be aware that the Xypotech protecting the Tombs was invaded, damaged, and switched to standby; but it was switched from standby to lethal defense seventeen minutes ago. Surrender now and submit to the justice of the Judge of Ages, or be destroyed.”
Mentor Ull stared at him. “Insufficient explanation! We have been battling the coffins and associated weaponry for weeks! We have won sixty-nine coffins from the Tomb with minimal losses.”
The Giant laughed. “Those were not his weapons. Those were his toys.”
Now he spoke in Iatric, and the Hormagaunts and Clade-dwellers looked on.
“Preceptor Illiance Vroy,” came the voice of Bashan, “I call upon you to relieve Mentor Ull Ynglingas of his command. Take the gems from the handweapon that Preceptrix Aanwen Leel tossed to the ground, and place them on his coat as a sign of his demotion.”
Illiance looked at Ull suspiciously, then up at the hundred guns peering from the ceiling, and then (because he c
ould not look him in the eye) at the chin of the strange, oversized head of the Giant. “I have insufficient reason to comply with your request, reasonable as it may be.”
“Do what I say, and quickly, for I stand in intellect and wisdom to you as a father to a child, or a shepherd to a sheep.”
“I reluctantly refuse. Mentor Ull’s actions perhaps have a reasonable construction. If you were to tell your reasons, I might comply.”
Bashan the Giant sighed, which was a noise like an immense wind, and the oddly childish mouth became a grim line. “Your compliance is tardy. The situation now has changed. Had you done as I said, you would have discovered the red metallic amulet Ull wears affixed like a medical prosthetic just below his elbow. This amulet once belonged to Father Reyes y Pastor, who was expelled from the Hermetic Order.
“As a reward for his work in biotechnology and Cliometry wherein he successfully interfered with the lives of countless Melusine, who are the dominant and Current species of the Earth, Ull was given the honors and the place of Reyes.
“His arms are too thin to wear the band on his wrist, so he must affix it to his forearm. He did not slumber when you did, but, being granted endless youth by the sciences of the Hermetic Order, came again alive periodically during all the centuries you slept. He has betrayed your principles, and seeks the Judge of Ages only to kill him.
“The only reason why the Judge of Ages has not been attacked with lethal force is that some doubt still clouds Ull’s mind surrounding the issue of identity.
“Had you done as I asked, his deception would have been revealed without any further ado. Because you refused, there will now be a firefight in this chamber, and not all here will emerge alive.”
5
Jurors
1. To Arms
Daae the Alpha Chimera called out in Virginian, “The Judge of Ages in his wrath has summoned a Giant from the earliest of times, from the Antecpyrotic World, to destroy all those within the chamber! Prepare yourselves for the oblivion we crave, for the force of the elder days will make no distinction of innocence or guilt, any more than the fires they used to destroy earlier worlds!”