“Mm. He likely deserves it.”

“Amen, and you’re not stringing windy, brother! Anyway, my other name is Glorified Scipio Montrose, Endorcist of One and a Half Donations, but I don’t cotton to that name so much no more, as I am not really a Savant. Sure, I got holes drilled in my head, and for a while I had a supergenius copy of myself I could talk to on the phone, who could solve all my problems for me. Gave me personal advice, too, which I did not much appreciate. He seemed to think I was screwing up my life and the lives of the people he cared about, our friends and family. He was trying to keep me married to that shrew. I think she called him behind my back, the trollop! After a while, he got spooky.”

“Spooky how?”

“I think the Machine got him. Ate him. Ate my soul.” Scipio shuddered. “The Machine had all my memories and personality and habits, so he could talk like me when I called on the phone, and what he said was possibly things I might have thought if I were smarter than myself, but I had this hunch I just could not shake. Creeped the plague out of me. I kept thinking of this … copy … of the Nobilissimus going over my memories of my wedding night. I guess I don’t much care for being a Savant. I am actually a Cryonarch, one of the Lords of the Slumber. I am in exile, until we get our rightful power back.”

“Sure. Good luck with that. What is with the getup?” Montrose nodded toward Scipio’s costume.

Scipio looked slightly miffed. “It is my right. This is Cryonarch court wear of the first form.” Then with an eyebrow he made something resembling a microscopic shrug. “At least, it was in the sixties.”

“The sixties of what century?”

“Sorry; The Twenty-fifth Century. Just before the Fifth Global Civil War, in 2461 the Gallic Directorship granted the Northern Advocacy judicial dignities, and we started dressing this way. In Northern Europe.”

“You don’t have any glow-in-the-dark tattoos. No diamond showing your donation.”

“You mean like kids wear? What do you take me for? A plague-carrying newborn-greenhorn Current? I am a Second Ancestor. I hail from A.D. 2409, the Nevada branch of the Clan, and I made my first hibernation when Del Azarchel fled to Prussia, with orders to wake me for the next war, which I knew was coming. I thawed again in 2413, in 2439, 2450, 2467, every time Ximen the Black struck. I was there to fight him. The Montroses are a fighting breed!” Scipio laughed softly at himself, shaking his head. “Listen to me go on. Like anyone cares how often I slumbered, or what my seniority is. The First Ancestor robbed us of all our power and threw us into the cesspit. We used to run this place, these Tombs, the whole world. We were the men immune from time, the changeless ones. I guess that is all changed now. It is no fun being Rip van Winkle, though. Every time I thawed, things got weirder. It was like waking up on Mars.”

“And what about the wig? Cryonarchs don’t wear wigs.”

“Savants do. The wig is to cover and protect the ugly in-jacks they had to drill in my skull for my donation. And to show we are as good as Scholars. Nobilissimus del Azarchel gave the Scholars the right to wear such wigs, when the sumptuary laws denied it to everyone else.”

“And where are your loyalties now? With the First Ancestor, or with the Master of the World?”

“What the hell year did you say it was? The fight between them must be long over.”

“Nope. In about five minutes, we are going to see the next round of it, and if I have calculated a-rightly, Blackie his own damned self will show up, guns blazing. So pick a side, Cryonarch.”

“Which side are you on?”

“I am a good guy. Mostly.”

“Okay, I’ll trust you, Mister Good Guy. You did not give me away. And you seem to know what’s what.”

“I know a Scholar and a Savant contemporary with your era are about to enter the chamber. Ctesibius the Savant will recognize you. There is a Scholar named Rada Lwa who will at least know you are not Menelaus Montrose. I have a theory that he will not recognize me even if he looks me straight in the face, due to contamination.”

“I recognize his name. Rada Lwa Chwal is from the Argent-Montrose branch of the Clan. It was a junior branch that got involved in some scandal; I forget the details. Him, eh? So the plan is, you sent the dwarfs to gather those two guys here, so that they can shout out I am a fake. Thanks a lot, Captain Sterling! Sorry I trusted you.”

“Shout out in a language no one speaks but me.”

“And then what happens? The real Judge of Ages pops out of a hidden coffin and saves us from this Bell? What is it going to do, anyway, ding-dong at us?”

“It’s shaped like an Oriental bell, a cylinder; not an Occidental bell, a cone. It is an orbital skyhook, a massive one, big enough to hale a major city aloft easy as a chickenhawk snatching up a peep, and it’s made of some impossibly strong material. What is going to happen is very simple: I am going to jam the door shut, and trap them in here with me.”

“Lock yourself in the room with the musketeer dogs and the pistol-packing blue goons. Good plan. What happens when they scald your ass with laser-guns set to deep fat fry, Space Captain Sterling?”

“Their weapons will be not much use. I’ll destroy whoever opens fire first.”

“Destroy how?”

“The coffin is armed with twin infinite repeaters and rocket-propelled grapeshot. The vents can flood the room with phosgene gas. The floor is wired for electrocution. Those pineapple-looking ornaments all over the ceiling are self-aiming heavy-caliber guns. There are secret panels in the upper walls behind which are other automatics and emitters. The fountain in the middle of the room can be switched to spray the chamber with lethal fluid. The doorposts are armed with chemical shot, linear accelerators, jellied gasoline, sonic weapons, and particle-beam projectors. The globular structure to the left of the fountain is a working atomic pile, and to flood the room with radioactives, all I’d need do is release the magnetic containment. I won’t tell you what I can do with the nanomedical fluids in the structure to the right: give you bad dreams. And you’ve got a sword in your hand. And I have a rock.”

“That is why you wanted to get over to the sarcophagus: to reach the general security channel from the local channel. Let’s say those dogs let you by. And what exactly makes you think you can operate all these weapons? Or that they are still loaded? For that matter, how do you know they are there?”

“Because I know the architect who built the place, and I know any changes to any chambers made by the Hospitaliers would follow his designs. I do not think there is an object in this room that does not have a weapon built into it, except maybe the portrait. For her sake, I’ll try to spare as many as I can. I pacify them, disarm them, and then we sit and wait for my men to thaw out. I hope Soorm set the process in motion. I have been having a lot of trouble with my systems, which have been partly compromised. I’ve been getting better responses from the lower levels, however, so…”

“Your men? Your systems?”

Menelaus drew back his hood and stared at the man, giving him a good look at his face.

“Jesus poxing Christ up a tree,” breathed Scipio.

“Don’t poxing swear,” said Menelaus. “And congratulations. You passed the test. I thought you might have the Machine in your head. You’re just unobservant.”

4

Witnesses

1. Entrance

The Blue Men were gathering everyone into the chamber in order by age: Alalloel first, her walk stately, the gray twins next, followed by the Hormagaunts and their Donors and Clade-dwellers. Soorm was on his feet, and appeared unharmed, but his shoulders drooped, and his fluked scorpion tail lashed.

The Nymphs danced in, graceful as willow branches in the breeze. They wore green tunics, and the women had long green scarves in their hair, shedding petals. They had been given their lutes and fiddles and flutes and panpipes, and they filled the chamber with a wild, elfin air like the sound of the robin, the thrush, the lark, and the loon. A quartet of effete, sloe-eyed males were they, and the quartet of slim-ankled hetaerae flinging their dark hair in twirling ecstasy. The smell of wine and the scent of roses came with them. The green silks of the girls’ curving girdles or corsets were tied tightly about their slender waists, to emphasize the exaggerated roundness of their hips, the over-fullness of their breasts. Male and female both had oiled their luxurious midnight-black hair so that it shined like fresh ink. As she whirled past, Oenoe tossed a petal toward Menelaus—it was a myrtle blossom, which meant I am ready.