She said nothing.

Menelaus continued more softly: “Your whole plague-ridden world was designed to live it up high-hog for one season, consume your seed corn, and perish next harvest. Designed by Melchor de Ulloa. Everything was timed to go up at once, like blowing the supports of a building so it all collapses inward on itself: self-destruction was built right into the foundational constitutions of your academic institutions, your industry, your military, your economy, your legal system, and your family structure—or lack of it.”

He pointed at the savage faces of the Demonstrators and the corpselike faces of the white-haired crones behind. “Look at what your world led to, Fatin! This is the future the Hermeticists gave you! This is where your loyalty to the Simon Families led! These are your children. They don’t have arts or sciences, marriage customs, or banking laws. They eat toadstools and worship rocks.”

Fatin’s eyes were troubled, but she sniffed and said scornfully, “Who are you to dare to judge? All ways of life are equally valuable and valid!”

“Really? Does that include ways of life that cannot keep hospitals lit or aircraft aloft?”

Soorm had one of the talking boxes pressed to the unseen holes that served him for ears. Now he put his head on the armrest of the throne, nose inches from where Fatin’s hand rested on the hilt of the huge sword. “It’s not true. Melchor de Ulloa did not design the failures in. Reyes told me everything.”

Menelaus was looking sadly at his feet. The bandages were turning from pink to brown, and getting soggier. He waved his hand toward Soorm. “Your Honor, I call the crazy monster to the stand in my defense. I will tell you what he is saying.”

Soorm spoke slowly, pausing for Menelaus to translate. “De Ulloa thought the Simon Family philosophy would lead to a better world, one where man lived at one with nature, where animals were elevated to human stature, and where all poverty was abolished. It was all a lie. The collapse was meant to scrape the vellum of history clean, so the Hermeticists could write on a blank scroll.” Soorm turned to Menelaus. “This is something even you don’t know. Ximen del Azarchel deceived Melchor de Ulloa. His whole plan of Cliometry that Ximen the Black showed his followers was false.”

Menelaus said, “I found that out just today. What I cannot figure is that Blackie made emulations of the other Hermeticists, and made them into posthumans: Once they were as smart as he was, why did not they not see through his trick? Didn’t they check his figures?”

Soorm shook his head like a human. “One man can deceive another man if he is trusted. Cannot posthuman deceive posthuman? Or perhaps Del Azarchel planted phantasm codes of his own, just like yours, but to turn clues and suspicions, instead of persons, invisible. We may never know.”

7. The Legend Revisited

Drosselmeyer said, “Excuse this lowly student of the Hidden Things, honored and dread Maiden Fatin, but may I ask the Judge of Ages a question?”

She scowled but nodded. “To ask of the unknown is our creed.”

Drosselmeyer stepped away from Menelaus and turned and saluted by holding the Witch-knife at eye level. Menelaus did not know the formal way to return the salute, so he just nodded affably and touched his forefinger to his eyebrow.

“Howdy.”

“Dread Sir, there was a legend saying that we Witches were at war, and always have been, with He Who Waits. Our lore cannot be mistaken. It is, indeed, the first precept of our lore that our lore cannot be mistaken! And so we know the lore is infallible, because the lore says so! How can this be?”

Menelaus shrugged. “The bullshit lies told by the newspapers, run by the Simon Families, in those long ago days got scooped up and repeated into bullshit history books; and then got manured around and turned into bullshit legends. And a war makes a better story than the truth, and so gets passed along, and ended up in your lore. Stories get dumbed-down and drama’d-up by natural selection. I can show you the Divarication function involved, if you’re curious.”

Fatin said, “But I saw your knights herding people underground, into your dungeons and prisons! I saw it!”

“Into my refugee camps, you mean, Miss. Into my dormitories and mess halls. I opened my doors and let thousands and tens of thousands of starving exiles into my Tombs, to wait until the worst of the famines your crapheaded collectivist coven form of government had arranged had passed by, so that they could wake up in a greener world. It was not my damn fault that your rules about how to run the world made famine a permanent part of life.

“Your Honor!” Menelaus continued. “I call the Warlock Drosselmeyer to the stand. Do you swear to tell the truth by whatever make-believe spooks you serve?”

“By Asimov and E. M. Forster and all the sages of yore who swore that the Machine must serve Man and never rule him, so I swear.”

“Uh. Good enough. Then answer me this: Your lore about me, the legend of He Who Waits. You’ve heard it. What weapons did it say my men used?”

“Pale white staves,” answered Drosselmeyer, “from which drops of fire fell.”

Menelaus pointed at the four staves holding up the canopy above the judgment seat. “There they are. Pretty damn effective, huhn? Slumber wands. They shed clusters of molecular engines held in a field of balled lightning. They only work on clients who have not been properly dehibernated and un-nanoinfected. Such as Trojan-Horse-wannabe clients who get inside my facility and pop up on quick-thaw and try to raise a ruckus. Your legends are about a time when my knights had to stop my clients from trying to take over my house by force, after I welcomed them in here as my guests.

“After I saved their sorry heathen asses,” Menelaus continued, half to himself. “Damn Witches have no sense of gratitude.

“I don’t blame your people, Fatin!” he continued in a louder voice. “You cannot be grateful. Gratitude requires private property. If you own all property in common, anything that comes to you is either yours by right, or you stole it. In the first case, the guy who gave it to you is just the quartermaster, and you don’t give thanks if he just does his job; and in the second case, he is your chump. No one says ‘thank you’ and means it in a world like that.

“When De Ulloa made your world that way, he robbed you of gratitude and generosity, robbed you of the ability to earn thanks or give thanks, and you lost part of your humanity.”

Mickey interrupted, “That cannot be. My people would not be so ungrateful! We respect the laws of guest and host, the sharing of wine and fire and salt.”

Menelaus sighed. “Guess that depends on what period of history we’re talking about. After y’all were reduced to absolute poverty by the spendthrift ways of your forefathers, you rediscovered some of the hard virtues of the poor, I reckon.”

Drosselmeyer said, “Dread Sir! May I speak? What happened to them?”

“To who?”

“The Witches from the period of history we are talking about?”

Menelaus said, “The Witches from the days of the Collapse? I kept them on ice until the Collapse was over. Ask those two guys. Your Honor, I call that big guy to the stand. I don’t know your name. Did your generation have the expanding economy and unclaimed land you needed to absorb a big influx of old-timers? Did I keep the Witches locked up forever, as I surely would have done had I really been at war with y’all, or by any chance did I let them out, and in a time when they could have a chance at new life?”

The man dressed in a robe adorned with images of cogwheels and smokestacks spoke up. “My name is Heron. I am of the Automaton Workers Coven Local 101. Yeah, Judge, times were fat and wages were high when I was younger. Then you let out the Old Witches. At first, we needed every new pair of hands to work. Later, it was more Old Witches than we wanted. We had a perfectly stable government under the Nameless Witch-King. A man government. We had wives who could not divorce us and take our children and our money. Our money was gold, back then. And our women were not allowed to kill our children anymore, in the womb or out of it. We owned things. Lands had boundary stones. Good old Janus, one of the old, strong gods, the god who curses those who move a boundary stone, he was among us then. So was Vesta, the goddess of the family. But then! Then when we had a flood of Witches from the Old Times, one named Butler began to agitate for all the Old Ways to return: nonaggression, harmony with nature, gathering and sharing, communes instead of corporations.”