As Bashan passed the alcove with the atomic pile, he reached with his hand, wrenching his long wand free, opening wider the deadly rent; and now he used that length, tall as the mast of a ship, to swat aside any dogs or automata who dared to step in his way to hinder him, or else, in one stroke, to crush them.

All in the chamber were as astonished as if they had seen a creeping glacier rear up and sprint. The Giant had moved so very slowly before, leaning carefully on the wand; and Menelaus knew the risk the Giant took, for the bones and joints even of its huge, toeless, cylindrical legs had not been designed with such fast and jarring motions in mind. Even a simple fall, for Bashan, would be as a fall from a roof.

Of the forty or so dog things between him and his goal, not one withstood his coming, but they panicked and broke, fleeing left and right as the monstrous man plunged past, his footfalls an earthquake.

Laughing madly, Trey Azurine dashed after the retreating Giant, two long streamers of fabric sparking and floating behind her, lighter than silk; nor did any close with her to stop her. Scipio, who was the only one there who had no idea how dangerous was her hunger silk that flapped and snapped so close to his face, ran along behind her, his red robes hiked up about his knees, but no one’s eyes were on him.

As Menelaus flew, tucked in the Giant’s arm neatly as a nursing baby, with the floor a dizzying distance below a blur and his bones jarred at every cyclopean footfall, Menelaus picked up a message in his implants, compressed into the Savant high-speed language.

“Answer this, Dr. Montrose. Why was my race taught the Cliometry from your enemies, rather than from you? Why, if we were doomed either to over-expand and fragment, or dwindle and pass away, were we ever brought into being?”

Because he was within touch-range, Montrose could answer faster than speech in the same language over his implants, making the Savant modulations he could not make with his mouth and throat. “Dr. Hugh-Jones, in war, a captain leads men into valleys from which they will not come back. So it is in this great war against the Hermetic view of the universe, but it is races, not men, who fall. The Giants were needed at their time and place precisely to prevent the takeover of the whole world by the Ghosts, and to work the salvation of man.”

Bashan hid the look of agony on his ugly face, but his golden eyes were haunted. “Dr. Montrose, do you not know what kind of civilization and society we could have built, the unimaginable beauty of it? If so, why were the greater, the Giants, sacrificed to save the weaker, the men?”

Montrose sent, “It was not by my design, but their own.”

Bashan sent, “Yet you designed their designs, you and Thucydides Montrose. We are posthumans, Dr. Montrose! Why should such as we sacrifice ourselves for humans?”

Montrose sent, “Because we are not Hermeticists, Dr. Hugh-Jones. Except among savages, the great die to save the meek, and the strong for the sake of the weak. It has always been so.”

Bashan nodded his great head. “So it shall be again, Dr. Montrose.”

Reaching the far end unhindered, Bashan reached up, and as if he were placing a jar on a high shelf, he tucked Menelaus onto the upper balcony.

Menelaus found his feet, stiffened a cloak-hem to axlike sharpness, and chopped open a wooden panel, which fell in two huge triangular sections to reveal a steel vault door nine feet high and six wide. This vault door was locked, absurdly enough, with a chain and padlock like something from before the First Space Age.

“I don’t have the key!” shouted Menelaus. “Can you break the chain?”

“Oh? Break the chain…?” Bashan, grinning a grisly grin with his weird little baby-mouth, reached up with both hands, strained casually, and yanked the whole huge steel vault door out of its hinges in a spray of rock dust and snapping metal bars. Beyond was a standard old-fashioned firing station, with scopes and triggers, already lit and waiting. Menelaus jumped toward it.

Ull, seeing the firing station, cried out, “Fire, my Followers, fire!”

Immediately the squad of dog things that had scattered at the charge of the Giant ran, two dozen of them, formed their double ranks, and raised their weapons. They fired. Six of the dog things lined against the Witches executed a neat half turn and also fired at Bashan. A cloud of white smoke rose, smelling of gunpowder.

At the same moment, the guns in the chandeliers swiveled, and with a sound like continuous thunder, those thirty dog things were blown into bloody rags, heads exploding under the impact of bullets from above. Four other dog things near the Witches who had not fired, but who were standing near, also fell, as did two of the Witch-men of the Demonstrator caste, hit by shrapnel or stray fire.

Swift as this was, it was too late to save Bashan. The musketballs were explosive, emitting various forms of radiation, and so the broad back of the Giant erupted with eerie flames. He did not cry out, but turned, holding the broken slab of cabinet door across his body like a shield, staggering one step and then another, and then he toppled hugely onto the line of dogs guarding the Chimerae. Eight jumped clear; the others stared upward in shock, ears and tails drooping, or fired vainly into the vast slab of metal descending on them, before it, and the weight of the dead Giant, flattened the dog things in a grisly crescendo of snapping bones and popping skulls into a spreading lake of blood, fur, crushed metal, and tangled meat.

Ull called out, “Destroy the fire control!”

Despite his recent demotion, all the Blue Men saw the sense of the command, and obeyed him.

Even those directly beneath the balcony fired, drilling holes through the marble flooring with the white-hot needles of their energy weapons. Thirty-four lines of energy, bright as lightning, converged on the panel where Menelaus stood. The material of his cloak hindered the beams long enough for him to fling himself aside, with only a few second-degree burns scraped in parallel lines along his back, as if a giant cat made out of lightning had clawed him. Not a single handweapon of the Blue Men missed: Menelaus knew they were computer-aimed by their inbuilt serpentine segments.

The guns in the chandeliers opened fire on the Blue Men, but their gems glittered like flame, and the bullets fell to their left and right, missing their targets; the chandelier guns recognized the futility of it, and fell silent.

“Trey!” Menelaus shouted in Merikan over the thunder-snap of the laser-guided electrical charges. “Order Azurine to stop firing!”

3. Hormagaunts

The Hormagaunts, not needing any additional prompting or excuse, emitted clouds of acrid spores, and began killing any dog things or Blue Men who came within range of their claws, spines, poisoned fangs, poisoned stinger tails.

A trio of dogs rushed at Gload, but their bayonets and sabers scraped along his tortoise shell integument without penetrating; he stumped forward as slowly as an armored car, grabbing two of them and stuffing them headfirst into the vast toothy maw of his stomach. Then, disdaining opponents of mere flesh and blood, he lumbered over to the nearest digging automaton, and wrestled with the blades that clashed off his armor, set his thick legs, and toppled the automaton to the floor, metal bars bending under his monstrous fingers.

Crile was agile as a lizard, twisting and dodging in an eye-defeating blur of speed, his tail like a whip, and the dog things behind him staggered like drunks, sagging and fainting, succumbing to almost invisible punctures and scratches of deadliest poison. Lightning-swift, Crile leaped on the head of one, and then to the head of another, before the dog things could raise a paw to protect themselves, and when he leaped to the next, their eye sockets were empty of all save streams of blood and vitreous humor.