He said, “Nobilissimus del Azarchel you call him? Even Pellucid mocked the idea, but I knew that there had to be a Current culture on the surface, and that it was being run by Del Azarchel.”

Now she spoke in three voices again. “Not on the surface.”

“In the ocean, then,” he shrugged. “You guys are dolphins and whales and machine emulations nerve-linked with humans and Moreaus into a single gestalt mind—or so I was told. I was also told that certain bodies in the gestalt are mind-controlled down to the finest imaginable level: a helotry of the mind, a slave who cannot even imagine freedom unless he is commanded to imagine it, and told how to.”

Her trio of voices said, “That format has been superseded.”

“Meaning what?”

“Consider the man-hours involved in removing even one mental habit from an entire society, merely to perform the proofreading and line-checking of each hierarchy by its superiors, plus the danger of contamination of the editors by the very thoughts they are redacting, and you will apprehend some of the immediate limitations of the helotry system. For daily operations, our world is governed by a decentralized parliamentary plutoaristocratic advocacy, based on semi-independent families and clans, similar to the Concordat designed by Rania the First. The Nobilissimus is supreme military commander as well as the sacramental king.”

He said, “From the time of the Witches onward, the Hermeticists ruled their subject populations in secret. What changed?”

The choir of female voices said, “All previous races were of inferior design, and not intended to survive long enough to witness the End of Days when the Hyades should descend; had they known the Hermetic intention, they might have objected to the prospect of their own scheduled extinction. Those considerations do not apply to the Melusine; therefore there is no need for deception on the part of the Nobilissimus. The remnant of previous race members will be taken up.”

He wondered why she phrased it that way. On the part of the Nobilissimus. Montrose said, “He must still need some damned deception. Your system of mental helotry is designed to be fitted into the Hyades social equations as neatly as a jack fits a socket, or a spurred boot fits a stirrup. Does your general population know that he intends to enslave us all to the Hyades?”

“Evidently he does not, as the current circumstances show.”

That was an odd, even astonishing, reaction. It did not fit into any pattern he could form in his mind of the historical events which created this era.

Montrose wondered if his ears had betrayed him. Had Del Azarchel changed his mind about resisting the invader? Or were his people simply deceived about his intent?

But he was more worried about her other words: “You said the remnants of the previous races will be taken up? What the hell does that mean? What are you doing to my clients?”

“We Melusine form gestalt minds of posthuman levels of intelligence beyond what even the Giants achieved. Brain masses the size of whales swim in the waters: the unit you see before you is merely an extension, a tool used for land-based operations. Each gestalt is controlled by a Paramount in a hierarchy, where the lesser minds are taken up into the greater.”

Again, two of her voices faded. The one voice that spoke next was cool and regal, but huskier, a tenor. She sounded like a Carolina aristocrat. “I hereby exercise my claim of possession, as your office of Judge of Ages and Guardian of the Tombs can be more aptly served by me.”

“Sez you,” he muttered.

“This site is mine. Even now, other Paramount Melusine have been dispatched to the eighty-eight other sites under your control,” one of her voices said.

Menelaus was looking at her with an odd, almost hungry look on his face. Then: “What is your interest in my Tomb sites?”

The cold and regal tenor said, “As I have already said. The raw materials you think of as people, which you have preserved for us, shall be thawed, revived, implanted, and willingly or not, brought into nerve-link with our Noösphere, to compel them into the condition you aptly call mental helotry, able to think only permitted thoughts.

“Minds of our scope can only mesh in groups of five or seven: but these lesser minds of the archaic men, lower on the scale of being, can be taken up in far greater numbers. In the case of this site, the Locusts, Inquline, and Savants found here, with very few modifications, can be adapted to be able to perform Melusinry, and so some of the lesser may be taken up under them.

“Our system is hierarchical and exact. No stray person, and no stray thought, is permitted to exist.

“Fear not! Your clients will not be disadvantaged. Their minds will be adjusted so that they will regard the helotry as a joyful rather than regrettable condition. The Melusine mind-gestalts thus will be elevated and augmented with the psychological richness, talents, outlooks, and diverse experience these lesser ones will contribute into the multiform mental unity: their memories, souls, and lives, which the lessers were unable to use or appreciate, will be his.”

“Sez you, and we’ll just see about that. More important topic: The fight in the chamber, and the duel with Rada Lwa and Yuen. So it was a stall tactic? Stalling for what?”

All three voices spoke: “Even a posthuman like you can have his attention occupied by sufficiently dire emergencies. Aanwen needed time to repair a depthtrain car, load it with equipment meant to discover and gather Von Neumann crystal, to calculate the path toward the Earth’s core, and prepare the various detonators she carried hidden in her body to initiate the magnetic overload and railgun launch. Even with the additional digging automatona brought back aboard the Albatross from the Vulnerary Simplifier Tomb site at Mount Misery, it was difficult to move so much equipment in the time available. She descended with the depthtrain, she being a necessary component to the mission, and will not emerge again. It is customary among the Vulnerary Simplifiers to program a widow to commit self-destruction should her mate die. This is done for the sake of the simplicity and tidiness they crave.”

“Hell, and I thought Scipio was kidding when he called people who wouldn’t touch a Bible barbarians. Maybe he weren’t too far wrong. So you are telling me that Del Azarchel sent that lady what lost her husband off to do herself in, because she carries some kind of trigger inside her he needed to hide? And it just slipped his mind to tell her that suicide is a sin? He calls himself a Christian and a gentlemen. He ain’t even a man.”

Menelaus sighed and rubbed his eyes, wondering what would happen if he shouted for Sir Guy to come back over. He wondered what it would feel like to die like the dogs Alalloel (as best he could tell) was able to kill just by looking at them. He wondered what it would look like if Sir Guy died in that same way, falling over without a mark on him. He decided not to call out for anyone.

Menelaus looked up. There was, of course, no expression in the eyes of the Melusine. He realized at long last what they reminded him of: they looked a bit like the eyes of some sea mammal.

Menelaus said, “The earthquakes—what are they? A beam being directed at this spot from Tycho crater? That same one that cracked the surface armor?”

She nodded. “Correct. It can only be used effectively at a given target location after local moonrise. The original plan had been to wait, but the speed with which you quelled the tumult in the chamber, and dispatched Yuen and Rada Lwa and Linder Keir the Gray—but perhaps this last was merely a casualty of the general violence?—it was thought that to act immediately was better.”

Menelaus said, “The dog things can sense something about your agents. Was Soorm one of yours?”