Another man, this one dressed in an alchemist’s robes gilded with a pattern of birds and snakes wrapping in spiral DNA patterns, spoke up. “I am Parnassus of the Golden Golem Coven of Lake Superior. I was alive then, too. Your generosity with our age ended our age, Judge of Ages! The Butlerian Witches gained control, held a purge as dread as any of which ancient reports in whisper speak. Industries were placed under communal control, or outlawed altogether. The Old Witches wanted to stop the use of human-animal gene-hybrids. The General Genetic Science Covens were using the hybrids to find a new form of human life hardened against radiation and bioweapon contagion: the hybrids were our only hope to reclaim the war-poisoned coastal areas; no one else could work the land. The Old Witches, the damned Butlerians, were rounding them up, shipping them off to a concentration camp in the middle of the radioactive hellscape surrounding the Richmond Plague Zone, where the only buildings standing were haunted by Ghosts, emulations long since gone mad. So you did not do us any favors, Judge of Ages.”

“I am not in the business of doing favors. I just store cold meat,” Menelaus Montrose said. “Let me call my next witness. Beta Suspinia! What was your name? Originally? Before the Great Mutiny?”

For the two young warrior maidens, their hair still braided close to their heads as if for battle, but bows unstrung and slung over their slim shoulders, had come marching up in step, hips swinging in unison, and now halted and stood at parade rest to one side, heads tilted toward each other, whispering. Menelaus wondered sadly if the two young ladies realized yet that they could unbraid and comb out their hair, now that the battle was over, without waiting for official orders to do it. All the Alphas were dead. There would be no officer to give the order to relax, not ever again.

The two long-legged teenaged Chimerae began staring, Vulpina giggling and Suspinia frowning, at the sight of the half circle of the Witches with their muskets pointing at each other, as if the girls did not believe the weapons were meant to be used by ancestors of the Kine, any more than one expects a child disguised as a wolfman at a Halloween masquerade actually to bite anyone.

When addressed, Suspinia straightened, blushing to find all eyes turned toward her. “Sir? They did not give us names. I was Beta Class Handmaiden Seven Dormitory Two of the Suspiring Nature Coven of Nome. Nome was an old Hot Site. The Suspiring Nature Coven was doing ecoreclamation work.”

Menelaus translated the words and turned to Fatin. “There she is: a first-generation Chimera. The Witches are the ones that ranked them from Alpha to Epsilon, based on breeding data. Do I need to say anything more? Can I rest my case? Sometimes I cannot tell what normal humans are quick enough to grasp.”

Mickey the Witch said, “I will explain it to our maiden. Wise and eldest Fatin, the Judge of Ages is telling you that he tried to save the witches of your generation. By his arts, he created the conditions that brought forth an industrial revolution, to have a civilization into which he could release them safely; but once he released them into this later industrialized period of history, they destroyed that civilization, too, for they were manipulated and set to do this by the Iron Hermeticist, Narcís D’Aragó.”

Menelaus said, “Exactly right. Draggy wanted to scrape clean the scroll of history again, to make room for his idealized version of warrior-aristocrats, an idea he picked up from Plato, or maybe a comic book, about how to organize society like an ant farm of workers ruled by a wolf pack of soldiers ruled by a philosopher-king of him.”

Vulpina had moved to stand next to where Soorm crouched, her hand on his huge furred shoulder, her cheek next to his jowls, so her ear was near the talking box he held. But now she straightened, her vivid young face blushing with anger. Hers was one of those faces that looked prettier when angry. The Chimerae were built for anger. She did not like hearing her way of life called an ant farm, but she was too well drilled in discipline to interrupt.

Menelaus raised his voice, and said scathingly to Fatin: “So you want to blame someone for your collapse? Go ahead. Blame me. I confess. I lost that round of the great chess game of history to outsmart the Hermeticists—the guys you poxing worship and are poxing trying to help. Can we end this farce now, and get back to the business of organizing a way to dig out of here? The Bell is probably overhead right this damn second!”

When the two white-haired crones joined Drosselmeyer and stepped up behind Menelaus, the rest of the menfolk shouldered their arms and followed.

When Fatin saw she was alone, she stood up out of the judgment seat, and walked to the side of the dais, and sat down, her back to the chamber, hugging her knees in her arms, and rocking back and forth.

11

The Hidden History of Seven Mankinds

1. Manumission

Illiance had returned, and with him was Sir Guiden in his powered armor, his great helm doffed, his head visible above the wide neck ring. He was still wearing the metal coif and black cowl of the lesser or inner helmet. His face tattoos were turned up to their brightest setting, making him look like a Japanese demon; his white beard seemed almost dark by contrast, and his eyes unlit pits. Clinging to him like a grapevine to a strong tree was Oenoe, her slender feet twinkling as she walked, her walk a dance, her eyes wreathed in dreams of joy.

Behind them came Scipio in his splendid scarlet robes and absurd white wig, carrying a Blue Man energy pistol gleaming in either hand, and two more tucked in his belt. Trey Azurine was clinging to Scipio’s arm and smiling absent-headedly, healed now of her wounds, with deadly silks floating lightly about her, sparkling.

Next came also marching Buck Gamma Phyle, who carried a machine gun he had dismounted from the wall, with belts of ammo wrapping and re-wrapping his chest in crossed bandoliers. Behind sauntered Gload the Hormagaunt, picking the teeth of his huge midriff-mouth with a crowbar.

Sir Guiden came forward, and he and Drosselmeyer helped Menelaus back into the judgment seat. Sir Guiden sent silently over his implants, “You know that between me, Trey’s hunger silk, Gload’s strength and the Gamma Chimera’s skill, we could have crushed these Witches as easy as a brace of stallions trampling a snake. Not to mention Scipio is carrying as many pistols as Rada Lwa was—your family has an obsessive gun fetish I call hoplophilia, you know—but you told us to wait, so the heathen devil worshippers could point barrels and blades at your ugly face. How so, my Liege? Did you know it would turn out this way?”

Menelaus sent back, “Don’t be ridiculous. You’d have to be super-smarter than a human being, or be like an adult among heavily armed and highly emotional children, to be able to see and plan out something like that ahead of time. Remember to pick up your sword. Fatin dropped it.”

Scipio had a spare red robe from the voluminous wardrobe he had packed, and he threw this over Montrose like a blanket. Two Nymphs, Aea and Thysa, helped Montrose out of the scholarly undersuit, cutting the suit where the fabric was wedded to burn wounds. Keirthlin, having wheeled a coffin up behind the throne with the help of Soorm, now sent the tubes and metal tentacles of the internal coffin appliances moving up and down Montrose’s body, stripping away dead and burned tissue, and replacing it with new growth.

Somehow, even though the nerve sensations from those patches had been shut off—he had reprogrammed the Blue Men nerve mites and given them honest work to do—the process contrived at the same time to be uncomfortable because it was numb, and uncomfortable because it was painful.