“My verdict will depend on your actions in the next twelve minutes. Weigh them carefully.”
Ull stepped toward her, speaking in Iatric. “You do not look like what I designed. Had I known, I would have not imprisoned you with the others, my daughter.”
She looked at him with her blind-seeming eyes of pure darkness, and her silver and gold and blue antennae twitched as if studying him closely on many invisible bands. Alalloel wore no expression. “Had that been, I would not have seen firsthand what you inflicted on my fellow Thaws. Reciprocity requires that you perish for your homicide of Crucxit, Axcit, and Litcec of Seven-Twenty-One North Station, who were protected, while on this ground, by the sanctity of the Judge of Ages from the execution of the laws of the Simplifiers. You alone are responsible for the act. Since you did not interfere to halt the Blue Men, I will not interfere to halt the Judge of Ages.”
“Am I not the father, maker, and creator of your species?”
“I will make careful note of your conduct during your execution, so that future antiquarians will honor your memory when the origins of our race are contemplated. We have such appointed times and memorials.”
“Before I was forced into hibernation, I set and established the Cliometric influences and outcomes to guide the destiny of your race to its achievements!”
“Again, reciprocity applies. You did not leave us a free decision of our fate; we leave no decision as to your fate to you.”
Then she turned away from him and addressed the Blue Men at large.
“Hear me, members of the Order of Simplified Vulnerary Aetiology! You have practiced deception by omission by pretending to be archeologists when you sought not knowledge of the past, but the capture of the Judge of Ages. Deception is an information hindrance! Thus you likewise shall be hindered. You have forfeited your right to learn the identity of the Judge of Ages.
“Your attempts are vain, and the Final Stipulation takes no note of them: here, in a place set aside for him to sit in judgment, no one who has ever been a client in his Tombs has the ability to do permanent harm to him, as events will soon make clear.”
The Blue Men, alarmed and amazed, all turned toward each other, and began speaking at once, maintaining several channels of verbal communication at the same time, and in the confusion, even Ull was in the conversation.
Scipio said to Menelaus aloud, “What do we do?” And he heard a crackling over his implants: the voice of Sir Guiden saying something, drowned out by the radioactivity. Menelaus said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell is happening.”
Then there was a sound like a gong. Falling silent, the Blue men turned toward the small sky-blue coffin still parked in the middle of the chamber, by itself, near the fountain.
6. The Sylph
Out from the open lid of the coffin came a soft sigh.
A young woman, perhaps seventeen, perhaps younger, with luminescent purple hair and wild eyes came half-naked out of the interior, drying her hair with a long blue-gray length of floating translucent silk.
The length was apparently a garment. Of its own accord, it swirled and flowed around her, wrapping itself low and tight about her hips to drop a long sash between her legs, then draping itself like a sari from the left hip to the right shoulder, to throw a long train over and behind her, where it hung in midair as if upheld by impalpable breezes or invisible maidens-in-waiting.
It was a shining semitransparent blue-gray material. It seemed to be woven of thousands of tiny sparks of motion, like a disturbed ant nest, or some ever-flowing liquid.
Some of those in the room recognized that garment: Ctesibius and Rada Lwa, who drew back in fear, Ull and Naar, who pointed jeweled pistols toward her.
The garment floated weightlessly to her left and right. She stared around her with wide-eyed innocence, an eerie smile on her lips. She spoke in Merikan, one of the precursor languages to Anglatino, “What a lot of odd people! Is it a barter party?”
Ull spoke, “Anubis, tell her to identify herself.”
Illiance said, “But is not her name Frequently Changed? Anubis reported that this was written on her…”
The purple-haired girl, eyes dreamy and unfocused, lips curved like those of one who smiles in her sleep, stepped forward, wandering first one way and then the other, pausing now and then to spin in a slow circle and giggle, and her long train of weightless silk was sparkling and flowing after her with underwatery slowness.
Ull shouted at the dog things, who then backed away from the girl and her garment. Rada Lwa and Ctesibius, seeing the dogs move, warily retreated from the girl, so that she was alone in the midst of an expanse of empty floor, smiling softly.
Even the Giant Bashan, golden eyes narrowed, stepped carefully over a squad of dog things, to place himself to one side and slightly before the dais, near Menelaus and out of her reach.
Scipio said aloud in English, “Am I the only one who does not know what is going on?”
Menelaus said, “She is wearing hunger silk, which is a molecular disassembly cloth. She is one of the floaters. A Sylph.”
Her head turned at that voice, and the gemstone at her forehead twinkled like her eyes. She smiled up at him. “I told the coffin to wake me up when you were awake! It’s you! Menelaus Montrose!”
A hush fell over the whole chamber. Even to the many there who did not understand her language, the last two words were clear enough. Menelaus Montrose.
She put out both hands toward him and began skipping gaily toward him. There was no mistaking whom she addressed.
He said back, “Do I know you? Who the hell are you?”
6
Deliberation
1. Death in the Chamber of the Dead
The girl with glowing hair rushed forward, and but then stopped on the first stair of the dais, hands on hips. She tossed back her head and pouted. “You don’t remember! How rude! And I thought you had a perfect, posthuman memory! It’s me, Trey!”
“Who?”
She made a noise of exasperation and stamped her foot. “Trey Soaring Azurine! I was aboard when our chaplain, Brother Roger, showed you that your wife had stolen a star out of heaven, which I think was very romantic. Aboard the aeroscaphe!”
“Sorry. You had a different name then. Why are you here?”
“Roger also told me I could not stay sexfriends with Tessa and Woggy, and so what else did I have to live for? You are the only man I know who lives up to Brother Roger’s ridiculous rules, being in love with only one woman forever, and so I wanted to see if you could live long enough to meet your wife.”
Then she looked out at the chamber.
“Who are all those dogs with guns? They’re cute! Do they work for you?” One squad of dog things, twenty-four of them, reacting to a gesture from Ull, were no longer aiming at the Witches, but had made an about-face, and had their weapons trained on Trey.
Yuen scowled, and whirled his named weapon in an elaborate flourish, cracking the whip with a loud snap, and gazed with ferocious hatred toward Montrose. “Here is the Judge of Ages, at last! No Beta, but a race-impostor!”
But Daae curtly but softly said, “Yuen! At ease. The Judge is our savior and ally. No other race was he worthy to hide among. Women! Aim at Ull. He is the enemy.” The two Beta maidens drew their bowstrings back to their ears with an ominous creak of bowshafts, and Lady Ivinia, as graceful as an Olympian statue, drew back her javelin, preparing to cast.
2. Bashan
With a motion impossibly swift for one his great size, the Giant turned toward and swept a dozen dog things up in his arm and threw them onto their fellows. With his other hand, he caught up Menelaus Montrose from next to a bewildered and giggling Trey Azurine, and, cradling Menelaus in one arm, the Giant plunged across the chamber, overleaped the fountain, and ran toward the statue of the Grim Reaper like an elephant charging.
As Bashan passed the alcove with the atomic pile, he reached with his hand, wrenching his long wand free, opening wider the deadly rent
; and now he used that length, tall as the mast of a ship, to swat aside any dogs or automata who dared to step in his way to hinder him, or else, in one stroke, to crush them.
All in the chamber were as astonished as if they had seen a creeping glacier rear up and sprint. The Giant had moved so very slowly before, leaning carefully on the wand; and Menelaus knew the risk the Giant took, for the bones and joints even of its huge, toeless, cylindrical legs had not been designed with such fast and jarring motions in mind. Even a simple fall, for Bashan, would be as a fall from a roof.
Of the forty or so dog things between him and his goal, not one withstood his coming, but they panicked and broke, fleeing left and right as the monstrous man plunged past, his footfalls an earthquake.
Laughing madly, Trey Azurine dashed after the retreating Giant, two long streamers of fabric sparking and floating behind her, lighter than silk; nor did any close with her to stop her. Scipio, who was the only one there who had no idea how dangerous was her hunger silk that flapped and snapped so close to his face, ran along behind her, his red robes hiked up about his knees, but no one’s eyes were on him.
As Menelaus flew, tucked in the Giant’s arm neatly as a nursing baby, with the floor a dizzying distance below a blur and his bones jarred at every cyclopean footfall, Menelaus picked up a message in his implants, compressed into the Savant high-speed language.
“Answer this, Dr. Montrose. Why was my race taught the Cliometry from your enemies, rather than from you? Why, if we were doomed either to over-expand and fragment, or dwindle and pass away, were we ever brought into being?”
Because he was within touch-range, Montrose could answer faster than speech in the same language over his implants, making the Savant modulations he could not make with his mouth and throat. “Dr. Hugh-Jones, in war, a captain leads men into valleys from which they will not come back. So it is in this great war against the Hermetic view of the universe, but it is races, not men, who fall. The Giants were needed at their time and place precisely to prevent the takeover of the whole world by the Ghosts, and to work the salvation of man.”
Bashan hid the look of agony on his ugly face, but his golden eyes were haunted. “Dr. Montrose, do you not know what kind of civilization and society we could have built, the unimaginable beauty of it? If so, why were the greater, the Giants, sacrificed to save the weaker, the men?”
Montrose sent, “It was not by my design, but their own.”
Bashan sent, “Yet you designed their designs, you and Thucydides Montrose. We are posthumans, Dr. Montrose! Why should such as we sacrifice ourselves for humans?”
Montrose sent, “Because we are not Hermeticists, Dr. Hugh-Jones. Except among savages, the great die to save the meek, and the strong for the sake of the weak. It has always been so.”
Bashan nodded his great head. “So it shall be again, Dr. Montrose.”
Reaching the far end unhindered, Bashan reached up, and as if he were placing a jar on a high shelf, he tucked Menelaus onto the upper balcony.
Menelaus found his feet, stiffened a cloak-hem to axlike sharpness, and chopped open a wooden panel, which fell in two huge triangular sections to reveal a steel vault door nine feet high and six wide. This vault door was locked, absurdly enough, with a chain and padlock like something from before the First Space Age.
“I don’t have the key!” shouted Menelaus. “Can you break the chain?”
“Oh? Break the chain…?” Bashan, grinning a grisly grin with his weird little baby-mouth, reached up with both hands, strained casually, and yanked the whole huge steel vault door out of its hinges in a spray of rock dust and snapping metal bars. Beyond was a standard old-fashioned firing station, with scopes and triggers, already lit and waiting. Menelaus jumped toward it.
Ull, seeing the firing station, cried out, “Fire, my Followers, fire!”
Immediately the squad of dog things that had scattered at the charge of the Giant ran, two dozen of them, formed their double ranks, and raised their weapons. They fired. Six of the dog things lined against the Witches executed a neat half turn and also fired at Bashan. A cloud of white smoke rose, smelling of gunpowder.
At the same moment, the guns in the chandeliers swiveled, and with a sound like continuous thunder, those thirty dog things were blown into bloody rags, heads exploding under the impact of bullets from above. Four other dog things near the Witches who had not fired, but who were standing near, also fell, as did two of the Witch-men of the Demonstrator caste, hit by shrapnel or stray fire.
Swift as this was, it was too late to save Bashan. The musketballs were explosive, emitting various forms of radiation, and so the broad back of the Giant erupted with eerie flames. He did not cry out, but turned, holding the broken slab of cabinet door across his body like a shield, staggering one step and then another, and then he toppled hugely onto the line of dogs guarding the Chimerae. Eight jumped clear; the others stared upward in shock, ears and tails drooping, or fired vainly into the vast slab of metal descending on them, before it, and the weight of the dead Giant, flattened the dog things in a grisly crescendo of snapping bones and popping skulls into a spreading lake of blood, fur, crushed metal, and tangled meat.
Ull called out, “Destroy the fire control!”
Despite his recent demotion, all the Blue Men saw the sense of the command, and obeyed him.
Even those directly beneath the balcony fired, drilling holes through the marble flooring with the white-hot needles of their energy weapons. Thirty-four lines of energy, bright as lightning, converged on the panel where Menelaus stood. The material of his cloak hindered the beams long enough for him to fling himself aside, with only a few second-degree burns scraped in parallel lines along his back, as if a giant cat made out of lightning had clawed him. Not a single handweapon of the Blue Men missed: Menelaus knew they were computer-aimed by their inbuilt serpentine segments.
The guns in the chandeliers opened fire on the Blue Men, but their gems glittered like flame, and the bullets fell to their left and right, missing their targets; the chandelier guns recognized the futility of it, and fell silent.
“Trey!” Menelaus shouted in Merikan over the thunder-snap of the laser-guided electrical charges. “Order Azurine to stop firing!”
3. Hormagaunts
The Hormagaunts, not needing any additional prompting or excuse, emitted clouds of acrid spores, and began killing any dog things or Blue Men who came within range of their claws, spines, poisoned fangs, poisoned stinger tails.
A trio of dogs rushed at Gload, but their bayonets and sabers scraped along his tortoise shell integument without penetrating; he stumped forward as slowly as an armored car, grabbing two of them and stuffing them headfirst into the vast toothy maw of his stomach. Then, disdaining opponents of mere flesh and blood, he lumbered over to the nearest digging automaton, and wrestled with the blades that clashed off his armor, set his thick legs, and toppled the automaton to the floor, metal bars bending under his monstrous fingers.
Crile was agile as a lizard, twisting and dodging in an eye-defeating blur of speed, his tail like a whip, and the dog things behind him staggered like drunks, sagging and fainting, succumbing to almost invisible punctures and scratches of deadliest poison. Lightning-swift, Crile leaped on the head of one, and then to the head of another, before the dog things could raise a paw to protect themselves, and when he leaped to the next, their eye sockets were empty of all save streams of blood and vitreous humor.
Wild musket fire shot upward and every which way, missing the too-swift Hormagaunt, but drawing down retaliation from overhead fire. One musket fusillade, striking the ceiling, ignited and severed the supports, bringing one of the stalactite-shaped chandeliers crashing to the floor, where its arsenal and powder magazine exploded, killing ten dogs. Preceptor Naar, glancing over his shoulder at the distraction with a bored sneer, pointed his pistol and electrocuted Crile in midleap.
A Mastiff charged Gload with a bayonet; Gload opened wide his monstrous belly-mouth and
caught the musket between his teeth and bit it in twain. Plucking up the poor Mastiff by the leg, Gload began striking left and right, using the screaming dog thing as a living bludgeon to batter down its squad mates. Preceptor Orovoy, with a pistol in either hand, shot Gload, who merely laughed, for his shell turned mirror-bright and deflected the laserlight; Orovoy adjusted his pistols for other outputs, only to discover that Gload was grounded against electric shock, proof against microwave burns, and resistant to gamma radiation; whereupon Gload picked up a nearby automaton hugely in both hands, and tossed it onto the wizened old dwarf.
The gems on his coat lit up heroically, applying a magnetic force against the huge mass. It slowed slightly, or almost did, but the overloaded gems flared and went dark, and Preceptor Orovoy was flattened, and burst in every direction like a wine grape beneath a shoe.
Soorm pulled a dog thing, one in each claw, into the fountain with him, making them jump and yowl with staggers of electricity, and impaled the bodies on the central water jet in the middle. In a moment the whole pool was red and opaque. It must have been much deeper than it seemed, like a cistern, for Soorm sank into it and vanished from sight. When a trio of unwary dog things leaned over, bayonets ready, a scorpion tail impaled the first through the ribs before it could scream, and webbed claws grabbed the others to the right and left, and yanked all three down into the water with remarkable swiftness. There was some splashing and agitation in the pool, and then the waters turned redder.
4. Clades
One of the older Blue Men, Invigilator Saaev, left off firing his pistols, and had one of the automata nearby hoist him up to its operator cage (which looked to Menelaus remarkably like haversack a squaw might use for carrying a papoose: an ugly metal squaw shaped like a praying mantis, with a very ugly blue-skinned, prune-wrinkled papoose with wizened eyes). Saaev shouted verbal orders to nearby automata: “Employ the Gas of Peace!”