Menelaus said, “It’s still wrong.”

Keir said, “The thought-process of biological life will continue in the nonbiological matrix, if needed. The Noösphere is not simply the Exarchel Machine. It is the conceptual unity of all thinking systems, both human and posthuman, machine emulation and neural emulation. Our brainpaths are not like yours. We have a solid mass of three-dimensional logic tissue rather than ordinary gray matter. Within this matrix we can construct or emulate any number of minds of human levels of complexity, to suit our needs and interests. The system is completely fluid: basically, in my head, I could make a virtual version of any sort of nervous system or brainpath and emulate it, play it out. That is what Illiance did when the Naturalist Oenoe forced him to accept emotional communion to her story, when she was being interviewed; you translated for them. You recall the event?”

“Sure. That’s when he turned off his weirdness chip, and I started liking him.”

Keir said, “There is no physical computer chip in his brain. It is a complex of logic crystal energies tainting his nervous system in a delicate balance of path preferences. You are speaking metaphorically, I assume?”

“Very metaphorically,” agreed Montrose. “Unduly so.”

Keirthlin said, “Oenoe the Naturalist did not know what she was asking. It is a classic example of symmetrical misunderstanding across two mutually incomprehensible mental texts.”

At that moment, once again, a squad of dog things accompanied by four clanking automata came up out of the fourth door, passed where Kine Larz lay, and herded the Hormagaunts back down into the depths, along with their Clades and Donors.

7. Last of the Iatrocracy

Montrose watched as the Iatrocrats were marched past him down the cold, dim, and roofless corridor.

Two looming Hormagaunts glowered at the guard dogs, eager to slay and careless of being slain. One was a man who looked like a leopard walking upright, thin and wiry, with elongated legs, walking on his toes, with an impressive array of barbs, spines, and knife-points growing from his spine. His neck was like that of a boneless giraffe or monster snake; his head like that of a saber-toothed tiger. This was Crile scion Wept.

The other had no head at all, merely a lump of bone between his shoulders, and he had placed his eyes in his chest, his shark-toothed mouth like a zippered band across his stomach. His body was apelike but hairless, squat and low to the ground, and his back was a tortoise shell. His tail was an armored limb of muscle tipped with an orb of bone. His genitalia and buttocks cheeks were bright red, like those of a baboon. This was Gload scion Ghollipog.

Scurrying after them were three nondescript and cringing men, dull-eyed and sullen, covered with the scars of old surgeries. These were the slaves “Anubis” allegedly had freed when he bargained with Soorm to form an alliance between the Hormagaunts and the other prisoners to cooperate in an escape attempt. With a pang, Menelaus realized that he had done nothing of the sort, having had no time to train the Donors out of the grip of their mental habit of servitude, or even to explain the new situation to them.

Prissy of Clade Pskov was from the same period as Crile and Gload. With her was a male of her subspecies, a Clade-dweller who looked more human than the Hormagaunt caste. Both Clade-dwellers had hawklike, high-cheeked features, and masses of bushy hair set with spines and quills trailing down their necks. The two stood as far apart from each other as the laxity of the dog guards would permit. The male was Zouave of Clade Zhigansk.

Prissy Pskov wore a blue fur coat embellished along the shoulders and upper back with amber and bezants of golden ivory. A wide scarf of woven zigzag pattern gathered the fur coat hem beneath her breasts, exposing them, but a diaphanous veil of antiseptic fiber modestly covered her nose and mouth. Her apron and skirts were embellished near the hem with clattering scrimshaws of horn and tusk. Her buckles and bracelets and the bells that fringed her shawl were all made of wood or pearl or enamel or horn: her metal-poor era made little use of gold or iron. She had tied a fan of colored feathers and beads in her hair, which would stand like a peacock’s tail when she spread her quills.

By contrast, the garb of Zouave Zhigansk was simple and severe: a bear pelt pelisse worn over a dark tunic, with split skirts below. His only ornaments were the bear claws that adorned the toes of his fur boots. He had the mouth-cup of a filtermask made of black ivory hanging by a strap around his neck, but he did not have it over his mouth and nose at the moment, because he was menacing the dog things with his retractable fangs. The porcupine quills that rose from his hair were glistering as if with oil: he had combed additional poisons into their tips, to make them more sweetly scented, and deadlier.

Seeing his eyes on her as she was hustled past, Prissy Pskov said aloud, “Anubis! These culls here-now understand not my speech. My kit has been returned, and primary formulations are mine to command. I can release a spore that will induce seizures in the dogs and leave the humans nauseous but mostly alive.”

Blackie del Azarchel was obviously expecting a fight between the Thaws and the Blue Men. But why? On general principle, it was better not to let him get his way.

“Do nothing! Nothing!” he shouted back to Prissy Pskov. “Await my signal.” But this shouting attracted the anger of the dog things, who brandished their muskets and cutlasses in his face and barked furiously. Menelaus raised his empty hands, backing away.

His voice roused the Hormagaunts, who roared and reared, and at their barking, more dog things rushed up to subdue the Hormagaunts.

So large a number of dogs escorted the Hormaguants down the stairs that only a dozen were left to guard Menelaus, Keir and Keirthlin, and Alalloel.

8. The Principle of Absolute Trust

Events were coming to a head. Menelaus turned back to the two strange and strangely elfin gray-skinned people. “You have to help me. For starters, tell me what you told Alpha Daae.”

Keirthlin took off her slitted goggles, revealing a pair of lovely yet eerie silvery-white eyes, fringed with long, dark lashes. She said, “Wear this. Look within.”

Menelaus did not don the goggles. “An image? Live or locally stored?”

Keirthlin looked uncomfortable, but did not answer.

Menelaus said, “You showed Daae a picture, right? But he could not ask you what data system you were using for transmitting the picture. If you have access to the Blue Man logic crystal system, you may be able to deactivate their weapons and energy sources, and trace their lines of information back to their real boss. How broad is your format? Can you make contact with the Tomb brains? And give me control of the major weapons systems?”

In the eyeslits of his goggles, Keir’s eyes of silver glinted with a stern light. “Your purposes are warlike, violent, and that behavior is unendurable to us. Even our right to retaliate in self-defense is severely curtailed by an overarching principle of long-term utilitarian altruism. We can only make local and limited exceptions under closely defined circumstances, which do not here and now obtain. We must respect the ethical claim of the Simplifiers.”

Menelaus said sharply, “Ethical claim? You mean you could meddle with the automata and muskets, maybe even deactivate them—and you choose not to? So you are the ones in charge of the camp, but you are sitting on your gray little butts, doing nothing while they run rampant?!”

Keir said loftily, “Our choice was defined when our order vowed devotion to world and racial reunification across all the disparities, mutations, and violent recriminations which the shattering of the Noösphere brought forth. That is the great evil we are oathbound to undo. The Linderlings are devoted to rapprochement even with Inquilines who reject mental unification, and so we are enjoined to nonreprisal, nonaggression, and noninterference.”