4. Question Game

Working together, they managed to pack the totipotent cell material into the immense wound running through Larz, and began programming it to pinch shut open veins, bind wounds, and lower the fever.

Many moments passed. Eventually Oenoe looked up. “This is beyond my skill. I cannot stop the internal bleeding just with this. There are others in the chamber who might be able to help. Can we call my maids? Can we get him to a coffin?”

Everyone jumped when voices spoke from the dead body of Rada Lwa, whose arms and legs had curled up like a cripple’s, but it was merely the talking boxes, repeating her comment in Iatric and Virginian and Chimerical.

The fighting in the rest of the chamber was still going on. Incredible as it seemed to those on the balcony, the whole duel with Yuen had taken only a minute or two. Beyond the wall of black fog surrounding them, there were still at least twenty Blue Men, scores of dog things, a dozen Witches, and a brace of Chimerae fighting; and, from the clanking noises, at least three automata were still active. Groans and screams and cries indicated how many people also needed immediate medical help, if they were to live.

Menelaus said, “There are no more working coffins in this chamber. And no one in here can see or hear us, thanks to Exarchel.”

The talking boxes repeated that in several languages.

Mickey scowled at the corpse of Rada Lwa. “Gods of the underworld, but that is annoying! Does everyone here speak Latin? I learned it to read the Malleus Maleficarum in the original, and the Archidoxes of Paracelsus.”

Oenoe answered in the same tongue, “And I, to speak with my husband.”

Soorm said, “And I, to follow the strange rites of my master, Father Reyes, and read the book of his tortured god.”

Menelaus said, “And I can memorize new languages by shoving books up my nose directly into my augmented brain.”

Mickey said, “I knew that nose had to have additional prosthetics in it.”

“Mock not the nose! It has served me well this day.”

Soorm said, “What do we do? Your Kine who gave his life for you is dying under our hands. We are in the most advanced medical facility ever devised, and hundreds of coffins, any one of which can bring a man back from six cubits beyond the brink of death, are just beyond the doors that you, in your wisdom, jammed shut, O Judge of Ages.”

Menelaus said, “Yeah, but there is a weak spot in the wall behind the portrait. Yank the machinery for the clock out, and the wall armor is only half an inch thick there, and any of these digging machines, or a single working wall gun, could punch through. Don’t tell my wife my plan was to blow through her face. Or—I guess it don’t matter. She is not due back for another fifty-nine thousand four hundred eighty-five years, four months, three days, and change. That is the thinnest part of the wall. And if she does find out, she’ll understand.”

“How do you know what is there?” asked Mickey. “You have never been in this room before.”

“It’s a posthuman thing. I can see how big the room is with my eyeball, and subtract numbers, and notice tiny air currents, and—it’s magic. It’s poxing magic, and I am a demigod, okay?”

Mickey nodded smugly. “As I suspected. So we cross the battle, where people who cannot see us are shooting muskets, and have Soorm smash through the wall with a battering ram he can project from his groin?”

Soorm said, “There is also a secret exit in the central cistern. I checked. I don’t think we can move the patient through the water very safely, though. For one thing, some madman planted petards of topically active neural poison down there, with directional lasers set to blow the water into steam and vent it into the room. But there is also a secret exit under the throne: I can hear the hollow space under the floor with my echolocation. And there are two hidden doors in the eastern wall, and two in the west, opening into crawl spaces big enough to admit coffins.”

Menelaus said, “That is not the problem. Exarchel is the problem. He has poxed and hexed and jinxed all my systems, and I cannot give orders to Pellucid, because Exarchel and Pellucid are one and the same now, and he cannot see me. So no coffin, at the moment, would accept a new client. When they are off-power, the biosuspension fluid still acts, and the coffin can preserve the hibernaut indefinitely; but you need power to put a living man into slumber.”

Soorm said, “Or to thaw a slumbering man to wake? That is why your knights are not here, Judge of Ages. I did all you commanded in your secret armory vault, but something—I know now it was Exarchel—cut the power to their coffins, and also jammed our radio link.”

Menelaus said, “That’s good to hear.”

“Good?” Soorm’s eyes were already goggled like a frog’s, so he could not look more surprised, but there was surprise in his tone.

“Because for a time, I thought you did that. I thought you were still loyal to Reyes, and you had turned on me.”

Soorm said, “I am still loyal to Reyes, or to his memory. But he turned his face away from the Master of the World.”

Menelaus said, “But you said you hated him?”

Soorm said, “I thought you would trust me more if I said that. Besides, Hormagaunts all hate their fathers. We are not really a very nice and cuddly race of beings. I didn’t want you to think me odd.”

Mickey said, “So, did anyone tell the truth to the Blue Men about who and what he was? Did anyone give his right name?”

Oenoe said, “To the grave-robbers? Was I supposed to tell them that I sought out the Grandmaster of the Order of Malta to destroy him, and pretended to fall in love with him so as to weaken him and corrode him—but he would not lie with me as man with woman until he had bound me by oath to forsake all others, and to live no longer for myself, but for the image of his god inside him; was I to tell them this? There was a night we slept in the meadow on scented grass beneath the moon, and the fireflies hung in the sky below the stars, which were as elder fireflies, and Guiden put his naked sword between us as we slept, and he would not turn to me and take me in his arms, though I knew by many signs how he ached for me, and his love for me was like fire in his bones and wine in his head. A Nymph cannot be deceived about such matters! No, he would not so much as brush me with the back of his hand, for the law of his order proved stronger than the arts of mine. Should I have told the Blue Men how entire was my humiliation and defeat? How I was shamed beyond shame? How I was broken like a mare to the saddle, bridle, whip, and spur?”

Mickey said, “Stop talking like that. You’re turning me on.”

“I speak of the lash of my own rich and female passions, the hunting hounds I had so often used on others—in rebellion they turned and rent me. I came to ache for my knight, for he was the only man who has ever taken the deep and hidden grail of my heart in his hand, filled as if with fiery wine, but would not so much as taste of the brim of it. Should I have spoken of the mysteries of womanhood to those—those—eunuchs?! I am the lady wife of the finest knight who has ever drawn sword against the Machine and all its handiworks!”

Nodding toward Larz, Menelaus said, “How we doing?”

Oenoe said, “Poorly. He cannot live, unless you work one of your posthuman works.”

“I am trying my damnest. Soorm. Help me up into the throne. Don’t toss the corpse like that! Easter Jesus popping up a gopher hole, but you are barbaric! Ain’t you been to Sunday school? A dead man is not just a bag of lunchmeat!”

“Why the throne?” asked Soorm, carefully maneuvering Menelaus, with his two maimed feet and broken arm, into the iron judgment seat.

Menelaus put his good hand on the cowls of the friars forming the armrests. There was library material coating the wood in a thin veneer, so he felt an answering tingle in his implants. “Something the Melusine said. I am hoping I might do better with some other interface. My implants are not meshing properly with the systems in the room.”