The Judge of Ages

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!”

Whether he knew that the Blue Men had thawed this Giant themselves, keeping him out of sight in their hospital all this time, or whether he thought the Judge of Ages had arranged to have him brought into the chamber, was not clear, but his words startled both educated Chimerae and Witches who understood his language.

Fatin the Witch maiden called out to her Witches in Virginian, “Stay! The Giant knows the guilty. Have you never seen one before? This is a posthuman—his intelligence range is in the 500s. Look at his eyes! He understands everything about us … He will spare us…”

Ajuoga called out in her icy, poisonous voice, “No! He is baptized of the White Christ, and is an enemy to all Witches. We are dead meat and food for birds and jackals!”

Mickey shouted toward the Giant, “Eat the Blue Men, not me! I am full of unhealthy hallucinogenic chemicals and fatty tissue! You need to watch your diet!”

Alpha Daae whistled. The Chimerae moved with practiced quickness, and retreated into the alcove holding the atomic pile. The dog things, dividing their attention to cover the Giant and the Judge of Ages on his throne, were taken unawares, and given no direct orders, they did not stop the Chimerae.

Gamma Phyle and Kine Happy pulled down the two display cabinets to the left and right of the opening of the alcove, sending the huge cases tilting, toppling, and shattering with a noise like thunder when they fell to the floor. Priceless antiques spilled out. The two prone display cases now made an impromptu bulwark across the opening of the alcove, and Beta Vulpina and Beta Suspinia took position to the left and right, bows strung and arrows nocked. The tops of the display cases did not quite touch, and in this breach stood Alpha Daae and Alpha Yuen, both looking more fierce and fearless and splendid than even their wont.

Seeing this, Prissy Pskov and Zouave Zhigansk scrambled for any weapon-shaped antique that had fallen from the smashed cases, and they called Toil, Drudge, and Drench to do likewise. The three Donors did not obey, but fled to a corner of the chamber, cowering behind the looming statue of Michael the Archangel.

Soorm and Crile and Gload, disdaining any weapons not built of their own flesh, put their backs to the fountain. Crile elongated his neck and opened both serpent fangs and telescoping elbow spikes. Soorm stepped backward into the water, charged his electrical eel cells, and bent to draw up his scorpion’s tail, bulb throbbing with poison, above his shoulder, twitching. The headless Gload uttered a belly laugh from the grotesque shark mouth running from side to side across his belly, and he cracked his knuckles.

Of the Witches, Mickey and Ajuoga and Lilura were of a period late enough to know the Chimerae, and know them as deadly enemies, and so they called to their fellows and followers, and, with much more noise and disarray, retreated to the opposite alcove, which held tanks of medical nanomaterial, and the women climbed atop the tanks, leaving Mickey, the Demonstrators, and the other menfolk to form a line across the opening of the alcove. The stands of antique armor the menfolk pulled from either side, and so a broken line of empty metal stood between the Witch-men and the chamber. Mickey whirled his charming rod overhead, passing it quickly from one hand to the other, and flourished it like a quarterstaff, uttering his battle-yodel. The Demonstrators hissed, and helped themselves to the swords and spears the suits of armor held.

The thirty-one Witches faced the nine Chimerae across the fountain. Three Hormagaunts stood between them, looking both ways, while Prissy and Zouave, allergic to each other, sought out opposite sides of the chamber.

The captain of the dog things barked, and the squadrons turned left and right. Two dozen dog things faced the Giant in two rows of twelve, the front row kneeling; another two dozen faced the dais, or the fountain, or the Witches, or the Chimerae, or the scattered others in the chamber. The Scholar Rada Lwa, Ctesibius the Savant, Sir Guiden, Linder Keir and Keirthlin, and Alalloel were guarded each by a trio or quartet of dogs. The remaining threescore gathered near the Blue Men in a defensive half circle.

The gentle Nymphs retreated, cooing and moaning, to the feet of the statue of Michael the Archangel, and the males of their race played fretful trills and warning arpeggios on their double-pipes. No one was covering them with weapons, which made Menelaus smile, because his circuits in the chamber detected the pheromones and scentless neuropsychological chemicals that began to rise up like vapor from them. He signaled with his implants to the wall vents, turned on the fans, and increased the air circulation in that quarter of the chamber.

The Giant at the chamber door observed all this without expression. He looked carefully at Menelaus, and stepped forward one giant step.

2. Chess and Poker

Only then did Menelaus hear, over his implants, in his inner ear, the voice of Sir Guiden. “Liege, I assume we are not talking over implants to maintain radio silence?”

“Which you just broke,” sent Menelaus back to him, with, perhaps, a bit of a snarl.

“Sorry, Liege, I knew you had your reasons, but there are now multiple signals leaving this room, and I have a shot at Ull right this second. I did not get a chance to open this fine suit of armor I am next to, because there are five dogs watching me, but I managed to palm the luminous marker pistol from the belt when they weren’t looking.”

“What? You going to paint him to death?”

“It isn’t much, but the marker needles can crack a man’s skull at short range. I can get off one shot, maybe two, before they deck me. Should I take the shot?”

“Hold off. Things are not what they seem.”

“What is going on, Liege?”

“The problem is that I am playing poker with the people here, but playing chess with the Machine. I can bluff people, but the Machine and I can see each other’s moves. He knows I am in the chamber, but does not know where.”

“That means you want to leave the chamber, right? And the Machine will not find you?”

“Wrong. I deliberately expelled an evolutionary virus from this site in order to attract attention to it, knowing full well it would be the one broken into by the Currents working for Exarchel. For a while he had me fooled, because he used Thaws instead of Currents to dig me up, but I think I am oriented now. I hid myself clumsily enough that any servant of the Machine could see through my disguise—just as Scipio and Ctesibius, in fact, did—but just subtly enough that he would have to send a physical agent to me to confirm, and I have a tactic in place to trace whatever message that agent tries to send back to his master.

“But then the message never came. So I had to be bolder. I began going around telling the people I thought were agents who I was: first Soorm, then Rada Lwa, then Linder Keir and Linder Keirthlin. I have reason to believe Soorm is still loyal to Reyes y Pastor, the Red Hermeticist, so I was expecting him to call Exarchel. So far he has not. Keirthlin actually helped me, even handed me the keys to winning this hand. So I am ruling them out. Alalloel is a puzzle: I thought she was a Current, but she overheard me tell the Linder twins who I am, and she did not call down Exarchel on me. So it is someone else. Someone in the room.”

Sir Guiden said, “It’s Ull. The Giant just said so.”

“I counted him. From most effected to least, Rada Lwa, Ull, Keir, all have been intimate mind-to-mind with the Machine, and contaminated, and suffered physical brain alteration as a result. Rada Lwa can hear my voice but cannot recognize my face. Ctesibius and Scipio have been in mind-contact with the Machine, but it was one-way, a donation; a donation is not a possession, so they are clean.”

“Liege? Do you want your enemies to find you? Are you mad?”

“I want my enemies to find me. I am really mad.”

“Is this some sublime posthuman thing no one can understand?”

“It is the opposite of sublime. I want Del Azarchel to know where I am, so he will pick up his pistol and come looking for me, and we can finish our duel. His people, including the machine half of his mind, don’t want him to die dueling me, so they are trying to bump me off before that happens.”

Then Menelaus sent, “Exarchel? I know you heard all that. I have all your little puppets and spies and agents locked up here in the chamber with me, so you might as well give up, and send Blackie.”

And, with a silent thought directed through his implants, Menelaus stirred the great golden sarcophagus of the Judge of Ages to life. Roaring, the serene image on its lid gleaming, it slammed and banged heavily down the dais; roared past Menelaus, wind-whipping the hems of his metal robes as he cheered; and sped across the chamber floor, accelerating.

Everyone, Blue Man and dog things and Thaws of many eras, shouted and screamed and jumped out of the way.

An automaton stalked into the path, raised its machine gun, and opened fire. The automaton’s bullets slammed off the hull of the sarcophagus, screaming. Decorative armor panels slid aside, revealing weapon blisters. Twin machine guns bright with tracer fire, and a particle-beam energy weapon brighter than a lightning bolt and louder, erupted from the sarcophagus, blinding nearly all eyes there, and dazing all ears. Three arms of the automaton were chewed in half by the bullets, and its energy core was aflame, when the sarcophagus ran it down, trampling it to pieces under wheels and treads.

Four of the Blue Men raised their jeweled weapons, but were flung from their feet when a nonlethal shock of electricity crackled along the floor. Unfortunately, everyone standing on the same square of gold tile was treated likewise, and all fell screaming, except for Gload the Hormagaunt, who seemed to be immune to electricity. He grinned, and little sparks jumped from his bottom fangs to his top.

Bashan the Giant, seeing the sarcophagus barreling toward him like a train engine, stepped to one side with a polite nod.

The huge pistons groaned and the leaves of the huge doors fell to. Boom. The sarcophagus sprayed some chemical from its interior on the doors as it rushed forward. There was a squeal of brakes and the sarcophagus fishtailed sideways, so that it struck the doors lengthwise. When the heavy sarcophagus smashed into the doors, it was a sound as if an aircraft carrier had been dropped onto a sea of stone. The doors were struck so forcefully that they were bent slightly in the frame, just enough to jam the hinges. The chemical fluid ignited with a blue-white flame when the sarcophagus struck, and this in turn ignited the fluids and bearings in the undercarriage. The fire hardened and solidified the glue filling the cracks of the door leaves into something the consistency of asphalt, and burnt away the joints of the wheels and treads of the coffin, leaving it unable to move, trapped in asphalt, and blocking the way, its huge mass crumpled and bent up against the doors.

After that crash, there was silence in the chamber for the space of a breath or two, as everyone stared at the jammed doors in wonder and fear.

3. Petrifaction, Radiation

Mentor Ull had a look of deep annoyance darkening his features. His eyes looked more like those of a rattlesnake than ever. “Erratic behavior! Headstrong, awkward! Why must these primitive creatures perform such irksome frolics?” The gems on his coat blazed with sudden, startling brightness, and every person in the chamber, from Menelaus on the dais to the north side to Bashan the Giant before the jammed doors at the south, suddenly froze in mid-motion, mid-gesture, able to breathe and to move involuntary muscles, but not able even to blink.

The Blue Men all sighed a little sigh, and the dog things, uttering only a yelp or two of scorn and relief, stood and relaxed and shouldered their weapons.

Naar said in Intertextual, “Most bothersome! Why must we trifle with these relicts from ages before mental unity was accomplished? Can we not at least begin to kill off all of those whom we have confirmed cannot be the one we seek?”

But Illiance said in Iatric, “Actually, only those who have eaten our food are affected…,” and he was in the act of turning toward Scipio, who was merely pretending to be paralyzed, when Scipio at that moment happened to blink.

Illiance said to him in Iatric, “Sir? Do you speak this language? What is the meaning of your pantomime?”

Scipio smiled apologetically, and shrugged sheepishly, and kicked Illiance headlong off the dais.

Two dog things fired without orders: one musket misfired, powder not igniting, and the other missed, so its musketball struck the throne behind Scipio and burned like white fire.

Scipio leaped and swung his square-pointed black blade at Illiance, who had landed on hands and knees. Illiance threw his hand before his face, and all the gems on his coat lit up.

As the blade swept down, it resisted and wobbled, in the same way two magnets of the same pole will resist if pressed together; both the logic crystal of the blade and the logic crystals of the coat whined, and then a flash of light and a snap of electric power flashed between them.

The blade was shattered in three pieces, but the gems on the coat of Illiance cracked or went dark. Both men were equally surprised, but both were not equally slow to recover: Scipio stepped on the little man, and snatched up both of the white ceramic pistols from where they stuck out from his coat pockets.

Scipio flipped up the sights with his thumbs and, holding a weapon in either hand, pointed at Mentor Ull, shouting out a command in a language Ull did not recognize.

Yndech said in Intertextual, “Let us irradiate the false Judge of Ages with our pistols, and mourn the departure of Mentor Ull. The exchange will be economical.”

But Ydmoy said, “Uncouth! You reason like a Locust. Perhaps the false Judge can be deflected via negotiation to a nonviolent admixture of motives and results. Perhaps if the false Judge were willing to compromise, he would merely shoot Ull in some extremity and maim him.”

Yndelf said, thoughtfully, “I have noted an interesting anomaly to which some attention should be paid. Was not Relict Melechemoshemyazanagual Onmyoji de Concepcion subjected to nerve paralysis with the others? While we turned our gaze to the fascinating assault on Preceptor Illiance, the Warlock seems to have hidden himself.”

Ull spoke in Iatric, ignoring the guns pointed at his head, “Negotiations are in order. I will first release the Giant Bashan, in order that he may translate our words. I no longer trust the accuracy of the Chimera Anubis.”

Ull now turned and called to the far side of the chamber. “Relict Bashan! First, command the false Judge to disarm himself. Next, order the Warlock of Williamsburg to reveal himself from hiding. Third, to each man, in his own tongue, translate these words: ‘It is required that the identity of the Judge of Ages be revealed. It has been deduced that he is posing among you in disguise. Each group is enjoined to look at those among you, and to identify whose behavior is eccentric or untypical for your order of being.’”

With another flicker of gems, motion returned to the limbs of Bashan, who stretched, and then laughed such laughter as Giants use.

Bashan turned, and raised the huge staff on which he leaned, taller than a weaver’s beam, and threw it like a spear. It passed halfway down the chamber and struck and pierced the gold containment sphere of the atomic pile. In the distance, a bell began to ring shrilly.

And with that, Bashan said mockingly in Iatric, “Little grasshopper, did you not wonder why I paused to make mention of an ability to speak all the languages here, even though the only languages I had opportunity to overhear in the medical house were yours?”

All throughout the chamber, the men and women of various ages began to groan and stir.

Scipio, who did not speak Iatric, said, “Okay! Someone who talks English or Spanish has to tell me whether the Moon-man here released the paralysis because I said so, or whether something else is going on.”

Menelaus, who had been frozen inside his cloak, now straightened and stretched and said, “Something else. The radioactivity in the chamber is drowning out the radio signals the Blues are sending to mites in our nerve clusters to paralyze us. So we can move.”

“Radioactivity interferes with radio?” Scipio asked, blinking.

“Hence the name. I see you have the same level of scientific education as a Witch.”

“Is the radioactivity going to kill us? Or mutate us into spider creatures?”

“Or less than a Witch. The Chimerae should be okay, because they are bioengineered for high-roentgen environments. The rest of us—depends on how long we are exposed. We have enough working coffins to do some cellular correction to prevent cancers and other misgrowths. It is what they were designed for. But for now…”

“For now, I shoot this guy in the head?” Because Scipio was still standing (one foot on the back of Preceptor Illiance, who was looking remarkably unflustered) with the pistols pointed at the skull of Mentor Ull, who was looking remarkably dyspeptic.

Ull said to Menelaus in Iatric, “Tell this unnamed Relict of long-ago that his antique railgun pistol is of no advantage. My embellishments”—his gems lit up as he spoke—“organize the circumambient magnetic flux to my advantage.”

And an invisible force yanked the metal dowel running down the length of each translucent barrel straight up into the air, taking the pistols with it. Scipio held on to the grips and found himself dangling in midair; he let go as the pistols were flung upward. Both pistols hung in midair twenty feet or so above the floor, and then Mentor Ull flung them both all the way down the length of the great hall and up atop the balcony, where they rang with a noise like dropped China crockery.

Scipio, shaken but unhurt, landed on his feet not far from where Menelaus stood. Illiance, freed of Scipio’s weight, was helped to his feet by two or three dog things with drooping ears, who licked his face and fussed over him, passing snarling glances of hate toward Scipio.

Ull said in Iatric, “Anubis, we seek the Judge of Ages. We know he is among you. Tell the relicts that we will begin killing all within the chamber, starting with women and Giant and others we are confident are not he, until he reveals himself.”

Menelaus said, “Look up. I have one hundred guns armed with a mix of armor-piercing and scattershot rounds, with a few tracers to look pretty, aimed at all your heads. The floor is electrified; the fountain is poison. You are totally outgunned, surrounded, and locked in a radioactive room that is rapidly growing unhealthy for human life.”

Ull sneered, “Your control is illusionary, Chimera. We permitted those signals to pass in order to lure the Judge of Ages, through overconfidence, to reveal his location. You do not think we returned the equipment of the Linderlings to them unchanged and dangerous? The multivariable channel neuroemission node object 6AS-46A-W5-BB963”—Menelaus reached under his cloak, and tightened his hand on the gold capsule Keirthlin had given him—“was reprogrammed to impersonate all passthrough data without passing it through. The signals only appeared to pass. Do you think us fools?”

“Yes,” said Menelaus. “Well, not all of y’all. Mostly you.” And he stepped over to the throne, and put his hand on the armrest. As he had hoped, the upper surface was library cloth, and at touch-range, the radioactivity could not stop the transmission from his fingertips to the cloth surface.

Two of the guns overhead clicked with loud snaps, and nothing happened, and nothing fired.

Menelaus groaned. “Okay, I take back that fool comment. That was well played. Is Blackie helping you, Learned Ull? There is no way that trick would have worked if it was just you who reprogrammed the node. What happened to Reyes y Pastor? Why did you take his seat at the Table Round?”

Soorm spoke in Iatric, “That answer I know!”

The words were spoken so loudly, and with such authority, that even Ull looked amazed, and stared at the monstrosity, half bear and half sea lion, that stood in the waters of the fountain, two mismatched eyes goggling, two tongues lolling, the claws on his webbed hands sheathing and unsheathing like those of a twitching lion.

Soorm said, “The Red Hermeticist realized that the era he ruled, all his dreams for how humanity should evolve, we beloved Hormagaunts, and everything else for which he lived, was a falsehood. Over a thousand years of events were organized merely to allow for one raid on Yap Island—the Cetaceans reverse engineered the genework on the Clades to deduce the mathematical Divarication solution Menelaus Montrose used to solve for complex mutually incompatible system interaction. It was from the Clade Codes that the Unity Divarication was devised, to drive the lines of Hormagaunt artificial species into oneness, and produce first the Locusts, and, later, the Locust hive mind.

“My entire world, of which I am the father and the first, was a joke, a feint, a jest, merely meant to permit one afternoon of bloodshed, lasting from noon to the ninth hour, and years of torment to thousands of innocent Clades buried alive at the utmost bottom of the sea, merely so that that fourteen lines of code expressed in ninety-one symbols could be deduced.

“The knowledge drove Reyes, my creator, insane, and he returned to the comfort of the superstitions of his youth, and sought to save the souls of the soulless monsters he created. For this crime, his greater self and oversoul, the Dreagh Expastor, was murdered and consumed by the Dreagh Excoronimas, even as Man Pastor was slain by Man Coronimas. Reyes y Pastor died a martyr on the steps of his church, trying to defend the sacred bread of the altar from defilement.”

Ull was staring dumbfounded at him. “How can you know of these secret things, hidden since the dawn of time? You are a Hormagaunt and a monster. And whom do you address?” For the chameleon eyes of Soorm did not point the same direction when he spoke.

Soorm drew himself up, his scorpion tail lashing angrily. “I am the scion of Reyes y Pastor, and his masterwork! You are not worthy to touch the latchet of his shoes, much less fill those shoes! Judge of Ages, hear my prayer! I hold thee to thy oath! This pathetic blue dwarf occupies the throne of Master of the World of this Age. Judge him, O Judge of Ages! You said he would topple from his throne!”

Menelaus said, “One last thing he’s got to do, first. One little thing.”

Ull said to Menelaus, “Your control of the chamber weapons, Chimera, is nullified. Even with our nerve mites out of contact, yet our Followers outnumber the Thaws by more than twice over, armed against unarmed! We command, and on pain of death, you obey! Tell all in this chamber in their languages to reveal the Judge of Ages, or we begin to slay the innocent!”

Preceptor Naar, looking down from his perch on a nearby automaton, said sharply, “What do you mean, ‘we’? You are not a Simplifier. You are a Hermeticist, mazed in complexity and falsehood like a spider in a labyrinth, an architect of the Noösphere we shed. You are an enemy and opponent of every ideal for which we stand!” And for once, his languid, long features were tight and hot with passion.

All the Blue Men, faces expressionless, raised their fingers and pointed at Ull. Despite the radioactivity in the room, some of their coat-circuits must have been working, for flocks of gems fled from their coats, passing through the air like glittering snowflakes of many colors. With a chattering clatter, the gems affixed themselves to Ull’s coat, layer upon layer, until he was one bright multipatterned carpet of gemstones from neck to hemline, and all along his sleeves.

No matter how demoted, he was still a human, and Ull’s commands were still obeyed by the dog things in the chamber, for he cried out, “Followers! Bayonet the She-Nymphs!”

Two groups of seven dog things ran at the Nymphs, who, oddly, neither flinched nor fled. Instead the Nymphs began to dance, the women counterclockwise and the men clockwise, weaving and interweaving with rapid footfalls, and their mantillas floated like scarves, shedding white cherry blossom petals and white dandelion puffs. The dogs rushed into their midst, and the Nymphs screamed.

But they screamed with laughter, because the dog things were running in circles with the dance, weaving in and out, each chasing the tail of the dog thing before, barking happily, tongues lolling, tails wagging. The muskets and cutlasses were flung gaily to the golden floor, and Nymphs led dogs in a game of skipping and jumping over the muskets, from one side to the other.

Then Oenoe, who stood in the middle of circles of mad, dancing figures, raised her lovely arms overhead, and sang a single high note into the air, crystalline, perfect, pure. The music slowed, softened, and segued into a lullaby.

Even without understanding the words, all in the chamber understood the song promised the wonders of safety and satiety; mother’s love and lover’s kisses; roses and wine and feast-days without end; and slumber by the golden margins of mazy streams of cool, clear water beneath the dappled shadows of generous fruit trees, their luscious fruit a-shine with dewdrops; and, then, at sunset, dreams of pleasure merging into the beauty of the starlight.

And when the song was ended, the fourteen dog things were asleep in a puppy pile heaped in the center of the circle, and the male Nymphs, grinning like Satyrs, brandished four muskets, clutching them by the barrels as if they were clubs.

There was a murmur of admiration from the hags among the Witches, who nodded their hooded heads and clapped their hands in applause.

Ull cried wildly to Ydmoy, Yndech, and Yndelf, “Expelled of the order or not, a confluence of interests still commingles our actions! For your own reasons, to preserve your order and race, you must find the Judge of Ages.”

Ydmoy said gravely, “It may be so, but to spend human lives to achieve our goal, while efficient and useful, we reject as Locust thinking.”

Yndech said, “True, but then again, Locust Ull is correct—no objection can be raised to discovering the identity of the Judge of Ages and coercing him to preserve our race. The principle of Darwinian evolution proposes that to do otherwise would be to adopt a moral code that cannot reproduce itself and therefore cannot be carried into the future!” And he pointed his pistol at Menelaus. “Translate the command to the chamber!”

The Giant Bashan tilted his vast bald head down, his magnificent, beautiful eyes narrowed and his tiny grisly mouth bracketed by wrinkles in his orange-peel integument. Now he strode forward, the floor murmuring thunder beneath his footfalls, and stepped over the fountain in one stride. He was a tower, high and terrible, staring down with eyes like two suns, a gaze no one could meet. There was a rumble in his chest, almost subsonic, like the noise whales might make, a sound more easily felt in the teeth than heard in the ear. At the same time, there was a voice of human pitch that issued from his throat.

But the rumbling in his chest was a second voice box, which the Giants used for their long-range low-frequency speech. The sounds were too low for the ear hairs of the Blue Men to catch, but Menelaus heard this second voice, speaking in Merikan: “Where is the manual firing station?”

Menelaus had the arsenal index and weapon status information glowing in his mind. He was not certain, because the golden node capsule given him by the Linderlings had touched the data, if the information were accurate. He decided to trust it, because events were happening too fast, and there were no other options. He replied in Merikan, “A firing station at the corner balcony, up yonder, behind the statue of the Grim Reaper. Behind a secret panel, there is a big metal door that needs a key I don’t have.”

The Giant, with his other, high-pitched voice box, talked over the voice of Menelaus (who spoke words the Blue Men could not have understood even had they been loud and clear) and so was at the same time saying in Iatric, “O Fools! Your so-called principle of Darwinism is nothing to do with Darwin, or with any biological theory: It is an excuse for the evil you contemplate, and, like all evils, a lie. The lie says that if you merely do deeds evil enough, ruthlessly enough, you shall survive.

“Your Locust race did horrific deeds in the name of race survival, inflicting a despair upon the Hormagaunts, so that anyone not absorbed into a Locust hive mind was diverted from his true life and true mate, subtly made miserable, and exposed to influences both psychological and chemical to hinder reproduction. The Hormagaunts in those years were led by Cliometric webs of incentives first to lives of pleasure and sterile self-centeredness, then to underpopulation, and then to extinction. You killed a race: genocide. By Darwin’s logic, genocide is not merely acceptable, but laudable.

“And yet here you are, the last remnant of an extinct species, and your grim deeds did not win you the racial immortality you crave. You are as dead as the Giants, but far more ignobly.”

Yndech said, “No one can defy the cold logic of the Darwinian calculation. Those who do not place survival as paramount, by definition do not survive. Self-sacrifice is always a losing survival strategy!”

The Giant opened wide his eyes, and they were like two scalding lamps, and Yndech put up his arms over his face, and quailed.

The massive voice boomed: “The Consensus Advocacy met in final conclave and read the Cliometric calculations of our future. We saw that if we continued to expand our numbers, the technological infrastructure needed to reproduce our race at replacement levels would be great—for even to bear a single child required extensive biogenetic modification and neurosurgery—so great indeed that the conversion of all biological life to nanomechanical life would be inevitable, and the human race be extinct. We chose instead to destroy the technological basis of man, and preserve the whole which was greater than our part. Do you say we did wrong? Hypocrites! The human race—and all races represented here in this chamber, and all of history—owes themselves to our sacrifice. Therefore you shall not, if I can prevent, bring any coercion to bear on the Judge of Ages, for he is the grandfather of the Giants, and all the races after owe their very existence to him.”

The Blue Men had nothing to say back.

Subsonically, meanwhile, in another language, Bashan said to Menelaus, “Doctor Montrose, I can open that firing station for you, but only by exposing myself to gunfire unto death. This saddens me, for my only purpose, once I deduced the existence of the chess game throughout all human history, the chess game in which the fated part of the race of Giants was merely to be a sacrificial pawn, was to discover whether that sacrifice was worthwhile. I instructed my coffin to wake me when your deadly game with Del Azarchel was to be concluded. I wanted to see your last duel. I left my world and outlived all history, and lost everything, merely to slake that curiosity. Now I die that you might live. So I shall never know.”

Menelaus again spoke in Merikan, which the Blue Men could hear but not understand, saying, “I can at least satisfy your curiosity. If De Ulloa, D’Aragó, Pastor, and Coronimas are dead, and Ull is about to die, the only Hermeticist left is Sarmento i Illa d’Or: I can see the end of the chess game. It is a sacrifice move. I lose my rook and checkmate him. But you must get me to the fire control station before the Blues figure out who I am. Which cannot be that far off: practically everyone in the room knows.”

4. None in This Chamber

The Giant said to Yndech and the Blue Men, “Simplifiers! I tell you the simple truth. You will not discover who or where the Judge of Ages is. None in this chamber will or can betray him. Have your translator pass the question along, and see for yourselves.”

Menelaus wondered what Bashan the Giant had in mind; but he trusted him, so when Yndech in Iatric gave the command, Menelaus obeyed, and spoke the question in several tongues to the other Thaws: he demanded of the Thaws to reveal who among them did not conform to the standards of their times.

Soorm answered without needing to wait for a translation. “I represent the Configuration of Iatrocratic Clades. Speaking on behalf of my people and my age of history, let me report that we all live in isolated Clades and scattered hermitages, and most of us are allergic to each other. We have no rules of conformity. This means, first, that we cannot see nonconformity even if we wanted to, and second, we would rather die than conform to your command, so we will never want to. Go eat your own mothers, culls!” And Crile and Gload roared and shrieked like lions and vultures.

Oenoe cried in a voice like ringing music, “The Natural Order of Man loves the Judge of Ages and is beloved by him. We would not betray him even for kisses.”

Illiance now spoke up, “Anubis? Did you translate that correctly? Kisses?”

Menelaus said, “Well, she actually referred to a more intimate congress, but the meaning is the same.”

Alpha Daae spoke sternly, “The Eugenic General Emergency Command of the Commonwealth of Virginia, her federal allies, protectorates, and conquered territories, rejects the authority of mixed-bloods, ferals, strays, and under-creatures to direct our actions. We are not under the command of the Judge of Ages, but our honor will not permit us to yield to you. In the name of the Republic, the Senate, and the Bloodlines, I hereby impose martial law; I countermand the order of the Blue Men; and I compel all in this chamber to answer no question of theirs. Whoever speaks first, dies, and your name will live on in my weapon.”

Fuamnach of Whalesong Coven screeched in a scraping voice and said, “Is not the Judge of Ages a demigod, a prince of the twilight land between life and death? The Delphic Acroamatic Progressive Order reverently seeks to escape his curse, and asks him, if he is within the sound of our voices, to heed how we pray and conjure and convoke that he might spare us, and excuse us our previous trespasses. You are all doomed.” And as her voice shrieked out, all the tall Witches and their menfolk raised their hands on high. And they all moaned, “Do-oo-om.”

Linder Keir said, “The identity of the Judge of Ages is known to me, but certain fine distinctions of the neuropsychological, interpersonal, legal, and ethical codes which govern every nuance of Linderling behavior prevent my telling you. The actions of the Blue Men are highly suspect and unethical.”

Rada Lwa said, “I heard his voice earlier, but I do not see him in the chamber. He is still outside, and you’ve missed him!”

Ctesibius looked at Menelaus, uttered a hard, sharp laugh of despair, and said no word, but sat shaking his head as if in weary amusement.

5. Finality Speaks

Hearing these translated responses, one after another, the little Blue Men began bobbing their heads in an odd gesture, tilting first one ear toward one shoulder, then the other, and frowning at the chamber floor. Illiance said, “Clearly our means were inappropriate to our goal. We attempted an indirect, unsimplistic approach, and now suffer the penalty. I suggest surrender, immediate and without qualification, to the Judge of Ages, and he may decide the fate of our race without coercion from us.”

And Bashan smiled thinly.

Ull was saying querulously, “Improbable! Unacceptable! Suicidal! Our goals must be achieved, if not by correct means, then…”

Illiance made a harsh, cutting gesture with the side of his hand. “Locust! Be silent! You have no part of the counsels of the Order of Simplified Vulnerary Aetiology! We seek to cure pain, not to inflict! You are the child of a world that has been superseded by our world! Evolution condemns you!”

But a new voice, eerie, multiple, also speaking Intertextual, interrupted: “Founder Ull is also the father of the next world, the one that superseded the Locusts and all their Inquiline subspecies, Blue and Gray, Simple and Linderling. You who condemn in the name of evolution are hence condemned in the name of evolution.”

Not just the Blue Men, but all in the chamber turned at the sound of this.

Alalloel opened her mouth, and a voice which had not spoken before, which sounded like half a dozen voices, male and female, high and low, speaking in unison, then said in Intertextual, “I have been unable to act hitherto, as I am in the process of receiving four hundred years of download memory templates and data, format, philosophical, and mathematical improvements; additional mental applications and channels; and a socio-legal body of precedents applying to various mental environments. These downloads came from my parallel and descendent personalities of the Lree mind-group, which had to be located and restored from archive for this purpose. It is considerable information, but the protocols of the Melusine require that I, being the ranking agent in place, be first consulted before a verdict is rendered. The Final Stipulation of the Noösphere Protocols has waited patiently for my education and decision.

“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?”