2

The Tomb of Ages

1. Payment

Mentor Ull was standing near the line of sandbags that separated the connecting corridor from the firing range, where the huge doors leading underground loomed.

Ull said to Menelaus, “Beta Sterling Anubis, please tell Kine Larz of the Gutter that, as we agreed, he may keep the ratiotechnology-based hand weapon of the Extet clan as payment for his services, but please warn him that there is no fiscal or financial structure in the current world able to exchange such a valuable antiquity for other goods and services more to his liking.”

Naar and Ull returned through the door. Menelaus watched with a look of blank anger on his face as the little men glided without harm past the countless spray-nozzles, mines, gun-muzzles, and energy emission antennae lining the massive metal doorposts.

Menelaus said in Chimerical to Larz, “Now that you have betrayed us to the Blue Men, they are trying to see to it that you get killed. The one in the coat without many glitters is named Ull, and he is the Alpha here. He says you may keep the ancestral weapon of the Extet clan for your use, but he warns you that there are no pawn shops or museums to sell it to. I will warn you that if an Alpha sees a Kine holding a weapon from one of the original experiment families, he will not even bother to utter a ritual challenge.”

The rice wine had given Larz artificial courage. His speech was only slightly slurred when he spoke. “A Beta would not issue a bother to a brother a pother either, a real Beta. Who in oblivion are you?”

But at this point the dog things grew restless, and began gesturing angrily with their muskets.

The gray twins and Alalloel were at the rear of the line of marching dogs. Menelaus and Larz were in the front.

Menelaus watched the great door carefully. Certain of the gunblisters were still active, and the barrels did track Larz and the dogs as they walked under the massive lintel, and other weapons followed, but nothing fired, and nothing pointed at Menelaus. Menelaus put his hand to his mouth and coughed, and started to say something aloud, but the dog next to him (no doubt fearful that a loud noise might provoke one of the many unknown weapons in the door) struck Menelaus sharply on the side of his unhooded head with a musket butt, and half dragged, half carried him across the threshold. Menelaus was eventually able to get his feet under him.

He also now had the powder horn and the wallet of musketballs which had been dangling alluringly from the dog’s sabretache under his cloak. Along with his rock, the splicing knife, and the Gray capsule of logic crystals, it was not much by way of weaponry, but it was something.

The stairs were gold, and creaked ever so slightly underfoot, as each stair was a pressure plate. Menelaus looked left and right, noting that the heavy voltage conduits meant to electrify the stairs (gold was, after all, a splendid conductor) had been jacked into their safety positions.

The dogs led them down one magnificent flight after another. Down and down they went, through solid bedrock and past layers of armor like the geologic strata of a metal world, from the third to the fourth level.

The stairs were more slippery than they seemed, or Menelaus had been hit in the head more often or harder than he thought, for he fell once or twice. Larz (who was staggering a bit himself) stepped next to him, and put a hand under his arm to help him walk.

As they walked, Larz took the trouble to hide the serpentine. He unbuttoned his shoulders, wrapped the stolen smart whip four or five times around his naked waist, and pulled the top of his coveralls over it.

Menelaus said, “That won’t help. Alpha Yuen already saw you touching it.”

2. The Man Named Loser

“Tell me who you are, or I will tell everyone who you are not,” said Larz in Chimerical. “You are not a Beta. Not no-how.”

“And you are not Larz of the Gutter.”

The man’s eyes grew round. “They still read cheaplies in the far future? They still read Gibson? You’re kidding me!”

“You should have picked a name no one would recognize, like Tarzan or Sherlock.”

“So says a man named Anubis—you trying to get caught? No Chimera was ever called such. He is the ancient Egyptian death-god with the head of a jackal.”

“I was hoping anyone who recognized the name would betray himself. Where did you hear it? It is not like the Chimerae let their slaves study mythology.”

“Mythology? What’s that? No, I know Anubis ’cause Larz of the Gutter faced the Phantom Pharaoh of the Haunted Pyramid of Mars in Strange Tales of the Street numbers 100 to 104, a four-part episode called Beneath the Moons of Fear and Terror. I consider it a five-parter, on account of 104 was a double-sized issue.”

“Y’know, I read slop like that when I was younger, too. So what is your real name?”

“Loser! My Da wanted me to get into a lot of fights. But I actually, really am a merc law. I did crack-knuckle work, and some shoot-and-scoot.”

“Wait, do you mean your name is Loser, or were you calling me a…”

“I mean I am as slick as the real Gutter Larz, and that is my name from now on. I got the damn door to crack, Jack! That’s prudential departmental credential, a smart fix with no tricks!”

“Oh, seeping scabs of syphilis! Please, by all that is clean and sterile, don’t start your stupid sales pitch again. Your coffin said Larz.”

“And yours said Beta Stalling something-or-other Devious Anne-Ibis. So what? I figured whatever name I picked when I slumbered, that would be my name in the new world when I thawed. So stop stalling, Stalling, or I’m calling and you’ll be crawling.”

Menelaus said, “Anything to squelch your damned yammering! I’ll talk! Do you believe in the Hermetic Order?”

“Spooks and kooks who live in the great black yonder in a starship older than history? Dark Magicians who serve the Machine? Simon the Black and his secret of eternal life? C’mon, mate, don’t pork a porker. No such beastie.”

“Simon the Black is myth. Ximen del Azarchel is real.”

“Simon the Magician. Simon of the Moon. I know the name.”

“How do you know it?”

Larz said, “The same way I know about the Pharaohs of Egypt. Larz of the Gutter had to fight mummies and mesmerists and swamp zombies, not just gangsters and assassins. It’s just made-up stuff, R and R reads, not real.”

“Real enough to kill us all in the next hour.”

“No! It is a fairy tale for kids in boot camp. The world was burnt an aeon ago, and only Simon the Magician escaped; an aeon before that, the world was drowned to death, and only Noah the Navigator escaped.”

“Old Noah with his houseboat full of zoo animals?” said Montrose, astonished. “I used to have a toy when I was a whelp—how in the world is that story still around, by your day?”

“Aha! So you might ask! There is something behind those tales. Now, you might think the latest news is the least painted-up and liar-tilted. But no sirree! My take on it is”—and here Larz seemed to puff out his chest a bit, and assumed a philosophical expression—“in general the older tales can be more trusted, on account of the brass has had less time to hack them, right? Older tales had more time to spread around the world and lodge in nooks and cracks where the truth police cannot unnook nor uncrack them, not all of them, right? Of course right. And the truest tales come from the very beginning of the world.”

“Very beginning of the world?”

“You heard the one about the man named Man and the woman named Wife, and they lived in a garden called Peace? It seems a geneticist named Old Snake fed the wife a poison apple, so that her children would look like people on the outside, but be just like snakes on the inside, ’cause that is the only way the sterile Old Snake could reproduce. You know that one, right? Old stories never die, and not even the Chimerae can wipe them out.”

“That is a very old story,” said Menelaus. “My Ma used to tell it to me. Not sure if I believe it.”

“It explains why the world is just a damned snake pit, though, don’t it?”

“I allow that it might do that,” nodded Menelaus.

“You believe Simon the Black is real. Are you going to scoff at Old Snake and his everlasting poison?”

Menelaus sighed. “I can see that kiddie yarns are more educational than I thought. Well, some of those stories are real or near enough. I think Reyes y Pastor has been adding historical vectors to keep Bible stories afloat, the way I tried to do for yarns about Englishmen raised by apes. And the stories about the great ship Hermetic are true, or based on truth. The Hermeticists have been diddling with your history, and all the history periods before and after, and they are hunting for me.”

“What’d you do?”

“I defied them. It’s not just me. They are gunning for everyone who protects the Tombs, because we are the only thing keeping the past alive, and stopping them from running history any damn which way they please. So I had to hide my ID.”

“Why us? Why try to pass your sassafras ass as a big, bad Beta?”

“Simple. No one frats with a Chimera. I picked an era, the Social Wars, when the records were burnt or erased by electromagnetic pulse.”

“How come the brass didn’t glam your scam?”

Presumably Larz meant Daae and Yuen. “I trounced them,” answered Montrose, “and their Alpha pride could not admit a Kine can trounce a Chimera.”

“Ho! They is slow. I could tell you weren’t no Chimera at half a glance even without you dropping your pants.”

“For the love of God, I will pay you gold from the treasuries of the Judge of Ages if you will stop talking in rhymes. It makes me seasick. Yellow gold that shines like the sun. I swear by the circumcised and risen penis of Christ.”

Larz was so surprised that his voice dropped to a whisper. “You know about the White Christ?”

3. Depthtrain Station

At that point, the passage was blocked by a rock slide. The procession turned aside and entered a wide arch, and here were ramps meant for coffins to slide, not people to walk, and there was no conversation as the dogs and their prisoners clambered and stooped to pass through.

They entered a short, bright corridor leading to a broad platform. It was a depthtrain station.

A vast well, covered with one transparent airlock after another, dropped into infinite distance underfoot. Poised like a ship in dry dock, or a topsy-turvy rocket ship in an upside-down launch silo, was one of the ancient depthtrains: a bullet shape coated with as many magnetic spines as a metal porcupine. The vehicle was huge, a tower leaning nose-downward, and in the racks and rails overhead, other bullet-shaped carriages and train cars rested, titanic, shining, filling a vast space like the ammunition rack of cyclopean beings. In two great half circles surrounding the lip of the vacuum well, metallic parentheses, crouched the silent bulk of a magnetic-atomic linear accelerator. There was no thunderstorm smell of ozone, no throb of dynamos; the only hint of the vast power locked in those accelerators were little alert lights like fireflies burning steadily, as they had for millennia, on the steel faces of the main leads.

The next chamber, equally vast, was a warehouse with rectilinear crates and containers and lifts and power-trucks and trolleys idle to either side, positioned to maneuver the supplies through an upper loading dock to the waiting depthtrain cars. The train yard control booth was overhead, looking down through slanted glass windows, and its ceiling was a transparent globe, finely spiderwebbed with countless brachistochrone curves of the gravity-drops.

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.”

Larz suddenly was full of vim and pluck again, and so he waved his hands in the air, crowing loudly, “Well, tell them this ain’t no way to plunder a dungeon! Don’t they know anything? First, you check for traps! Always send in the native guide before you, because he is usually secretly a-working for the cult that worships the Mummy, so it won’t matter if he trips the tripwire. Second, always leave the gold on the ground, because the Judge of Ages circuits it into the electrocution system. And third, the beautiful captive always knows something important, so talk to her right away, and if she is gagged, take out the gag before you untie her feet, because that way she can warn you if the Beast of the Crypt is sneaking up from behind.

“And check for secret passageways behind the wall,” cried Larz, warming to his topic. “And follow the money; because the guy who makes out like a bandit is usually the bandit. Oh, and the adjutant or the mess-hall staff, or someone in the background who just helps out, like the interpreter following the Sultan of the Space Chimerae around, he is always the key to the whole thing. Folks what reads Bloody Half-breed Murderer at Large Picture Weekly or (what’s that good one?) Gladiator, the Son of Gladiator, we all know how it’s done! Not to mention Doctor Vengeance Versus the Decapitator. You’ve read Doctor Vengeance, right? ‘The Cure for Crime Is Bitter Medicine!’ or when he laughs his laugh and whispers, ‘Time to Amputate!’ Remember? You must’ve read ’em.”

“I read something like that when I was way young,” admitted Menelaus. “But it was about space pirates and moon maidens and suchlike.”

“How come none of these smart guys know what to do in situations like this? Wake the girl, check for secret panels, check for traps, and keep an eye on the adjutant! Common sense!”

“First, they’re too smart to read the cheaplies, and second, why are you trying to help them? These are our abductors, and the Judge of Ages is going to blast them, so don’t give anything away.” Menelaus turned his head, and said to the Blue Men in Iatric, “Kine Larz reports that the sudden noise startled him, and he hit the deck to avoid shrapnel. The coffin is armed, after all.”

Illiance nodded sagely. “The precaution was no doubt wise. He may return to his prone situation on the ground if he wishes, or put himself where he deems best. You must come farther.”

Larz decided to stand far away from Menelaus, and the dogs allowed him to step away. He avoided the vat of biosuspension material, which he recognized as nanotechnology and a source of danger; so he ducked into the opposite alcove. Maybe he did not recognize the large golden sphere as the containment dome for a small atomic pile.

6. Dais, Sarcophagus, Throne

Passing to the other side of the fountain, they could now see that the western wall was ivory panels carved with a bas-relief of two stallions rampant, facing each other, framing the rest of the scene with their uplifted hoofs, fiery manes tangled with the ceiling.

Between them on the wall was a stark black field, cut with silvery-white lines of nonhuman mathematical hieroglyphs forming a triangle within a circle, and at the corners of this triangle were symbols written in ovals of various eccentricities and triangles isosceles, equilateral, and right, written in turn into dodecagons and parabolic curves, radiating out in two great arms to nested fields of eye-defeating sine waves on the right like a restless ocean and rigid rectilinear shapes on the left like an army entrenched and encamped.

Written in the stone on the wall above the horses and the dark fresco were the words NE OUBLIE.

Before this wall was a three-tiered dais, and each tier was over ten feet broad.

Atop the lowest tier, to the far left stood a suit of powered armor for a knight, looking like an ape made of shining steel. As far to the right was what looked like barding for a horse, with breathing gear built into the champron or skull armor, instrument housings built into the crinet and crupper, strength-amplifying modules in the flanchard, and emission weapons dotting the peytral along the steed’s chest. Both suits of armor were emblazoned and caparisoned with the Maltese Cross. Oddly enough, it was powered armor for a horse.

Atop the middle tier midmost rested a huge, gold-plated sarcophagus with the relief figure of a sleeping warrior carved into its lid. This lid was slid half-open. The sarcophagus rested at a slight angle, the footboard lower than the head, so that the slumberer upon thaw would find the larger-than-life portrait of the woman the first thing before his eyes, along with the calendar and starmap of her location.

On closer inspection, the figure carved into the half-open sarcophagus lid was not quite a warrior. Sculptured folds of long and magisterial robes, such as warlords in battle would be unlikely to wear, lapped the figure in rising runnels like a frozen cascade. The image of a balance scales rested in one hand, and a flat-pointed, two-edged sword in the other. His hair was long ringlets that reached to his shoulders, and on his head was a tasseled square, almost a hood, such as judges in a forgotten land in days long gone were wont to wear when issuing death sentences. Below the carved boots of the reclining figure were skulls and broken swords.

Atop the highest tier, beneath a canopy upheld by four tall and pallid wands, was a black iron throne.

The dark throne was covered with the bright, silver-dappled scarlet leathers of extinct or re-extinct dinosaurs. The backrest was a pattern of argent and gules lozenges. The armrests, oddly, were carved in the shapes of friars in kirtles, so that the fingertips of one seated there would rest on the down-bent hoods, who bore the armrests on their heads like monkish versions of caryatides. The carved images of the kirtle friars carried long swords in their hands, points upright, blades mirror-bright. Above the throne, the canopy was adorned with images of scallops and roses. Below, the footstool was a tortoise made of iron.

The sarcophagus stood empty. The throne was occupied.

Here sat a stern-eyed man, almost the image of the image on the coffin lid.

He dressed in a costume of brilliant scarlet robes trimmed with white at the cuffs, with ermine at his throat and across his shoulders. He sported a black scarf and girdle, and down his back hung a scarlet casting-hood. A wig of long white curls framed his severe face.

Across the man’s knees he held a straight and naked sword, with an unadorned crosspiece of steel. The blade was square and short at the tip, as if the point had been sheered off. The blade was black synthetic that looked like glass, and shined with a violet light. It was logic crystal.

Menelaus stared in bafflement, wondering who the fellow was.

7. The Dark Judgment Seat

Menelaus saw before him where Preceptor Illiance and the knot of other Blue Men, two squads of dog things, and a trio of automata stood contemplating the figure on the throne. Mentor Ull glided up and was standing with the older Blues named Saaev and Orovoy, all three looking as wrinkled and decrepit as mummies.

Ull had folded his arms like a Mandarin, tucking each hand into the opposite sleeve. Menelaus with great interest perceived from the way the folds of the garment fell that Ull was wearing some metal device at his elbow, like a large bracelet pushed as far up the forearm as it could go.

Menelaus patted Illiance on his bald, blue, waist-high head, which made all the dog things snarl.

“You found him sitting here?” said Menelaus, baffled by the scene, and the stern man.

Illiance, serene and unperturbed, said, “Not at all. He happened to be in his sarcophagus.”

Menelaus stood below the dais, with the open sarcophagus between him and the throned figure, and stared up. The man’s face was long and bony, lantern-jawed, and a scattering of freckles touched his cheeks. He had deep-set eyes that seemed never to blink. His mouth was a nearly lipless gash that never flexed far from the horizontal. In the shadow of his long and curling white wig, his eyebrows were a dark orange.

Illiance said, “We are puzzled that he lacks the dark skin and slanted eyes that Kine Larz and Scholar Rada Lwa reported. We have not yet determined his hair color or the size and fineness of his hands. Perhaps he undertook a minor biological adjustment when thawed in the time of the Chimerae, to appear more as they? We will address him: many ambiguities will be resolved.” Illiance stepped up onto the first tier of the dais.

Menelaus only then saw that the ornamented sarcophagus was an active one. Its alert lights were gleaming softly, and to either side of the prow, snub muzzles were poking from gun blisters to the left and right like the eyes of a chameleon.

Menelaus waved Illiance back, but the little man ignored (or, more likely, did not understand) the gesture, and kept walking forward. The Blue Man glided up the dais, and around the coffin to approach the throne. The sarcophagus weapons twitched but did not open fire.

Illiance, with no sense of private space or standing on dignity, sat down cross-legged at the stern man’s feet, his nose almost touching the man’s knees.

The man raised a hand and beckoned Menelaus. With a wary eye on the sarcophagus, Menelaus walked around it and stepped forward, his metallic robes slithering and jingling. He halted again and gave a stiff-armed open-palm Chimerical salute.

A twinkle of amusement appeared in the man’s eye, and he also held out his hand in the same form of salute. “Seig Heil,” he said sardonically.