“Naar’s digging machines are part of his system. Yeah, he infected them, and the Blue Men took them out of my warehouse buried under Mount Misery when they thawed there. Yes, they are mine. I use a lot of digging machines in my line of work. I had to wear that big metal tent everywhere I went, so my own machines would not step on me.

“The solution two on how to stay alive was cruder. Hyde dropped an elephantine huge hint to Blackie that Rania and I had a romance going on, and since it was a topic concerning a girl, his normally high IQ dropped to idiot levels and his hair-trigger sense of paranoid suspicion flipped into the gullible side of the dial, due to testosterone poisoning—happens to all guys—and he had to keep me alive to find out what the heck was going on. The rest is history, or thanks to Divarication, legend.”

Larz said, “Why is the Master of the World immune? Is not his mind the same as his Machine’s?”

“Grandfather clause. If I had vanished from Blackie’s eyesight during those early days, he would have known something was up, so I made it not affect him. Heh. I may have saved his life by doing that, because the Machine dares not simply absorb and eat his flesh and blood version, or I will be a phantasm to him forever.”

Larz said, “Why not just make the Machine forget you altogether?”

“Can’t. My phantasm code only affects Exarchel’s perception and perceptual memory, not his thoughts, personality, or long-term memory, which have traces in the conscious mind. Even could I have, I would not have: the version of Blackie’s mind that never knew me would not have been a recognizable copy of Blackie, and I would not have made it out of the gray room in one piece—he and I have too much tangled up in each other’s lives.”

Larz had his eyes closed.

Menelaus said gently, “I answered your question. Now you got to tell me one.”

Larz pried his eyes open. “Got questions? I got answers. Man with the plan and I understan’. My price is nice, but don’t ask twice.”

“You jumped Yuen. You knew he was better than you, death on stilts with an afterburner. You knew he would kill you. You knew you could have stayed in the horse armor, where neither the black gas nor the mites Exarchel was spreading would get to you.”

“I knew.”

“Why’d you do it?”

Larz grinned weakly. “Because … I am Streetlaw Larz. Private Law! Best Thaw of ’em all! I wanted to die like the private eye. That is what I am. Not Loser Dzen Scopewaith no more, never. I am Larz of the Gutter now, for real. For real and for ever.”

He closed his eyes. Before he sank into unconsciousness, Larz said, “Wake me when she comes, Judge of Ages.”

A moment later, Oenoe said, “He is going into cardiac arrest. Soorm, I am going to massage his heart to get it going again. When I say ‘clear,’ you stimulate the heart electrically. Ready?”

Menelaus said, “Hold up. I got an easier way.”

And he was grinning with immense relief, and he slumped back on the throne, and his laugh was the laugh of victory.

The ventilations whirled the winds into the chamber, and the fogs and clouds parted. Doors hidden in the walls opened to the left and right, and heavily armored coffins, one after another, crawled into the room.

“Cute! I almost feel like my old self again! But that was not what I came here to do.”

All four of the wands holding up the canopy above the throne lit up like sunlight. Even through the cloud bank, the musketfire and shouts of combat from the other quarters of the chamber broke into cries of alarm, as if frightened of some coming explosion.

6. Slumber Wand

There was a crackle as if of static electricity, and the glittering white motes began to flee from the four bright wands. Circle after expanding circle of these motes, bright as the rings of Saturn, rippled outward, and about the throne was a bright pattern like so many four-leafed clovers, one within the next.

“Hoo haw! We were guests of the Blue Men for a week, and they managed to nanotech us. Damn, but I hate those little bugs! But I use them in my biosuspension. I actually have to intrude four quarts of the stuff in every body, or more, and it binds cell to cell, like a second copy inside you. Takes a while to remove, and you have to do it by a careful molecular flushing process—and simply breaking someone out of his coffin is not that process, nor is the quick thaw I installed for emergency quick release. Which means every damn person in this room is nanoteched up to the eyeballs with systems meant to shut down cellular activity. If they had done their thaws correctly—” But, by then, he could say no more.

White streams like waterfalls lapped over Mickey and Oenoe, Larz and Soorm, to blanket them in glitter, and they became motionless. And then Menelaus Montrose on the throne was motionless as well, grinning a motionless grin.

None of the figures on the dais were breathing. This was not paralysis, it was petrifaction: their skin was like stone, and no drop of blood moved within them.

The sound of battle from the rest of the chamber was cut off. All human noises ceased with a rush and clatter of dropped weapons and fainting and falling bodies.

There came noises of clanking automata that continued for a time, and then a series of shocking explosions, one after another, each time accompanied by a robust cry, amplified by loudspeakers, “DEUS LO VOLT!”

When the last sound died, and not a single footfall of any automaton sounded anywhere in the wide chamber, out from the fog and smoke came a whirr of leg-motors.

Next a wide, solid figure in black powered armor, on whose chest and back were blazoned the fierce white cross of Malta, stepped into the clean air as suddenly as if stepping out from behind a curtain. He moved very slowly, groping, hesitating.

The mysterious white pool of sparks and motes continued to dance about his armored feet and legs, but they found no purchase. The motes could not enter the armor.

The armored form raised his hand, moved it back and forth, searching, reaching, and soon touched one of the four white staves. He knew as his master had known how to work the control, for the fog of white motes now began rippling in reverse, ring on ring and wave on wave being gathered back into the wand. The wand had grown dim during this exercise, but now, starting at the heel and growing toward the head of the wand, it grew brighter, until all its original luster had returned.

The faceplate opened. There was the tattooed visage of Sir Guiden. His cheeks and chin were surrounded by tongue-buttons and chin-switches, and his visor was a line of readouts whose reflections glinted along his painted brow like fireflies. But his eyes were squinting slits of milky colorlessness. He sniffed and sniffed again. Then he pulled the wand from its stand, letting the front quarter of the canopy fall like a flap to strike Menelaus Montrose in the face.

Sir Guiden groped with the wand like a blind man’s cane, and touched the fallen form of Oenoe, who lay on the ground in silhouette, shoulder and waist and hips and long legs, like a line of fertile and rounded hills of greenery.

Sir Guiden worked the staff, and now a set of bright pink sparks, the color of sunsets or cherry petals, dripped down and washed over the slumbering form. In a moment the thaw was complete, and she rose smiling; and the two were together.

9

Depthtrain

1. Quake

Menelaus Montrose woke to a noise of many thunders, earthquakes, and volcanoes, and voices, and he thought it was a nightmare. He was on the iron throne, and when he tried to stand, the pain in his maimed legs shot through his body like a javelin of fire, and the burns that made a patchwork of pain across his flesh seemed to ignite in reply. He was still dressed in no more than the beaded undergarment of Rada Lwa, torn, ripped, slashed, burnt, stained, bloody, and smelling of the fume of the black gas.