Menelaus realized she must be at least partly contaminated by Exarchel, or her archives were. He said, “What happened to the people? Where is everyone?”

She looked at him with her strange, blind-seeming eyes. “You are not forthcoming? I reciprocate. Do not resist when the Simplifiers emerge to hale you below. They make an identity error.”

“What?”

“I speak now for the Final Stipulation of Noösphere Protocols, which supersedes even the Eighteenth Configuration: the Finality imposes an imperative to permit resolution of the various deceptions and aggressions involved that minimizes collateral damage to persons or historically valuable objects, information, or arrangements.”

“What the poxy hell you talking about, lady?”

“The Finality requires that you go below. All events are arranged; all contingencies foreseen. Do no damage to our Tombs.”

“Your Tombs! Pestilential hellish pox!”

But there was no more time. The dogs raised their muskets as Illiance, glittering in his blue coat, glided smoothly up and out from the gold shining stairs leading below. He pointed and whistled and the dog things eagerly leaped to obey. Paws grabbed Menelaus by the arms and half dragged, half frogwalked him across the wide steel floor to the shadow of the great doors.

Illiance regarded him with mild curiosity, and said in a quiet voice, “Beta Sterling Anubis.”

Menelaus counted the gems on the Blue Man’s long coat. “Hello, Preceptor. Got your rank back, did you? Congrats.”

“Thank you, Corporal. My peers happen to admire the elegance with which an armed insurrection in the camp was averted, thanks to my forethought, and to my correct assessment of your maneuvers. You were preparing an act of insurrection, were you not? You would have killed the Followers we sent to guide you. The crime is an abomination.”

“Yeah. Almost as bad as tomb-looting, theft, trespass, kidnapping, maiming, assault, torture, and murder.”

Illiance said, “Now, please come this way. Your talent for translating dead languages is needed. We have found the Judge of Ages.”

“Oh, this I got to see.”

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.”