Scipio meanwhile with his toe had flipped open the hinged shell that formed the top of the tortoise footstool. Inside the hollow tortoise were two streamlined pistols of milky white ceramic, curved like the letter J, not quite as long as a man’s forearm. The thumb-trigger was an emerald oval of touch-sensitive crystal. Menelaus recognized them as the same design of “slumbering gun” he always slept with, a caterpillar-drive linear accelerator, atomic powered, no moving parts, locked to his biometrics.

Scipio tossed both to him. The weapons were live. He could sense the energy from the atomic cells by the crackle in his implants when he caught them, one in each hand. Menelaus pointed one barrel at Naar, the other at Ull.

One of the dog things nearby said in Intertextual to Ull, “Master! Relict Anubis! Him! Allow me to run at him! I will stab him with the bayonet, the sharp, sharp bayonet, and fire my piece at point-blank range into his uncooperative non-Blue body! Ugly, ugly body! It will burn with much burning, bright! Bright!”

Mentor Ull said back, “Not to be allowed. The discharge may pass through his body and strike the sarcophagus behind him, and wound pack mates.”

The shoulders and tail of the dog thing drooped. A piteous whine escaped from between white, sharp teeth.

Mentor Ull scratched the dog thing fondly behind its ear. “It was a good and loyal suggestion. You are good! Good Follower!”

“Me! I am a good Follower!”

“Take a squad to his left and right, that you may stab and fire at an angle without striking the coffin. Do not shoot until I command.”

Dogs began inching up the dais, left and right, ears high, tense as bowstrings.

Montrose said in Iatric, “Naar! I have perfect peripheral vision and am perfectly ambidextrous and I have greased rattlesnake reflexes, and I really, really love shooting people. At this distance, I can pick which nostril of Ull’s nose and yours to drill, the left or the right.”

Naar looked bored. “A shot of a metallic projectile? The result will be unimpressive.” A shift of the automaton’s claw, and Sir Guiden, pale and gasping in pain, was now hanging before Naar, spoiling Menelaus’ aim. Naar said languidly, “Preceptor Illiance, if you will—?”

The gems on the coat of Preceptor Illiance glistered and shined. Menelaus saw black sparks dance before his eyes, and he thought it was some exotic energy discharge, before he realized that it was merely his eyeballs betraying him due to lightheadedness. His muscles locked up as if with cramps: he could not so much as twitch a finger.

Illiance drifted over, stood on tiptoe, and pried the two white pistols out of the numb hands of Menelaus.

Illiance said apologetically, “The food you have been consuming over the past week has been infested with nerve-seeking nanite bodies or mites which can permit or hinder normal axon-dendrite discharge of those nerves, and which we can control by means of simple radio signals.”

Montrose now understood why the Blue Men had been so utterly nonchalant about the Chimerae arming themselves with primitive, macroscopic weapons. On a microscopic level, the combat had already been lost.

Menelaus reflected sadly on how worried he had been about the goddam shower water. Damn, but he hated nanotech!

Illiance thoughtfully pointed one pistol at the golden floor, flipped up the trigger guard, and pushed his thumb on the trigger spot. “Not loaded,” he said in Intertextual, when nothing happened.

Mentor Ull said, “Loaded. You can see the dowel of firing material through the barrel. The trigger is biometrically sensitive, perhaps affixed to a family gene pattern.”

Illiance placed the oversized pistols, one in each side pocket of his coat. The curving grips hung far out in the air like horns of a lamb, bumping his elbows. He said thoughtfully, “Then Beta Anubis could not have fired it in any case.” He looked puzzled. “But the Judge of Ages, whose pistols these are, could have. Why did he pass them? With our translator paralyzed, we have no convenient means to inquire.” His look of mild puzzlement grew deeper, darkening to a look of bewilderment, or even fear. “Something is wrong. There is some basic, erroneous assumption I have been making about these circumstances.”

Scipio perhaps did not realize Menelaus could not move; or perhaps he was just feeling reckless; for he stepped forward, picked up his dropped sword, and pointed it at Naar.

In a tone so majestic no one could misunderstand, he spoke what was clearly a command. But it was spoken in English, a language which no one could understand. The import was clear enough: he was demanding the Blue Man release Sir Guiden.

Menelaus knew the risk, but the opportunity was too good to pass up. Paralyzed from head to toe as he was, he still had his neural implants. Were they unaffected by the nanite nerve-seekers hidden in the food?

It was one of those ironies of life that he could not, at the moment, get a signal to the sarcophagus a few yards away, but that he could get a signal to his cloak of tent material, which had emitters and receivers designed to interface with the gems that controlled the automata.

So when the Judge of Ages in his long red robes and long white wig pointed his short-bladed sword and uttered his kingly command, the automaton twitched, and bucked, throwing an astonished Preceptor Naar to the floor (much to the consternation of the dogs, who yowled); then the automaton stepped forward, and put Sir Guiden gently down on the dais beneath the shadow of the statue of Hades, and thus not far from where the powered armor rested. The automaton then bowed to the throne, and, leaning too far forward as it bowed, with a whine of gyros toppled with a horrid clatter to the floor, limp and sprawling as a dead thing.

Sir Guiden rose unsteadily to his feet, his hands upon the powered armor as if leaning on it for support. He spoke without turning his head in Latin, “Did you arrange that? That hurt.” But Menelaus, paralyzed, could not answer.

Scipio, showing more presence of mind (and acting ability) than Menelaus could have displayed in like circumstance, drew his red robes about him, and seated himself once more on the throne, holding aloft the black crystal sword. This simple gesture was done with such dignity and majesty that the chamber fell silent, all eyes staring at him. The dog things were as frozen as Menelaus.

And the men of various eras in the chamber looked at the black sword in awe, as if it were enchanted.

Only Naar, who was on the floor, chin propped up by one elbow, did not seem the least astonished or impressed. He was drumming the fingers of one hand against the floor, a gesture that seemed weirdly and casually human when done by a Blue Man. The gems on his coat were flickering, and his eyes were narrowed in thought as he looked first left and then right. Menelaus estimated Naar would deduce the truth of what had happened, and the origin of the signals, within four minutes.

Rada Lwa, who might be a stubborn fellow, but whose intelligence was above what was possible for unagumented humans, had at that moment deduced a truth of his own. He stepped up on the dais and pointed the misericorde at Scipio.

“Why is this man sitting as if in a judgment seat? Is he pretending to be the Judge of Ages? If so, you are fools. This is not Menelaus Montrose, but an imposter! I order any who understands my words to transmit them!”

But he did not say it in Spanish or in Korrekthotspeek. He said it in the data-compressed machine-squawk language of the Savants.

A voice from halfway across the chamber and from beneath the garish overalls Kine Larz wore emitted a chime and said back, “Understood, adored Montrose, first of all my programmers! I will comply!”