Illiance said, “The question why can never be fully answered, because all answers open deeper questions yet. But I am content.”

Mickey the Witch said, “I am not content, Judge of Ages! Because magicians have vowed not only to dare all and to know all, but to achieve all, until the pinnacle of secret knowledge is ours, never to be shared. You have unfolded to us the hidden history of the world, of races and empires, and they rose and fell as you moved our fates like chessmen against each other.”

Menelaus said apologetically, “The Monument had the Cliometric calculus equations printed on it. Once we read, the genie could not be put back in the bottle. Letting nature take its course was simply not an option: it was either let Blackie be the undisputed Master of the World, or dispute it.”

Mickey said, “That is not my question at all. I ask: Where do things stand now? What is the next move in the Great Game? And what is my role in it?”

When that comment was translated by the talking boxes, there was a murmur of admiration, even applause, in the chamber. The Chimeresses looked eager for battle; the Witches seemed bitterly angry to learn how badly their gods had betrayed them; Illiance looked proud; and Gload looked hungry.

Menelaus answered in a voice of grim despair, and his words marched out of his mouth like soldiers assigned to firing squad detail.

“I hate to say, but it looks like my side, our side, ladies and gentlemen, monsters and Witches, has lost.

“Alalloel implied the world is under a regime of absolute mind control. Such a regime, once in place, if firmly in place, can never be removed, because you need to think to plan a rebellion. And it does not have the usual inefficiencies of slavery, because the slaves can be programmed to be content, or happy, or enthusiastic, or devout, or serene, or whatever else strikes your fancy. Hell, you can even let them stage a successful revolt once every fifty years as a kind of Jubilee, if it amuses you. And then turn it off after.

“So the chess game is over.

“Only two questions remain in my mind. First, I don’t know why I lost, or what the losing move was. The Melusine should be, according to what I did, the most freedom-loving creatures it is possible to be under heaven. Second, what the hell is up with that Bell?

“Above us is a spacehook, the biggest thing I have ever seen in the sky. On the one hand, it is physically impossible that the Hyades World Armada or anything from it could be here four hundred years ahead of time. On the other hand, it does not seem to be moving or acting like it would act if the Currents controlled it, Melusine or Blackie or whoever is running the store these days. Why would any of them go loot Raleigh? Why would they initiate a maneuvering burn when they saw the magnetic north pole shift to Fancy Gap, Virginia, just as if they wanted to investigate some unknown native phenomenon? Why would they react to ELF radio signals containing Monument hieroglyphs and not to any other signals on any other band?

“And I don’t know the answers to those questions.”

A silence as profound as the grave passed over the chamber. So it was shocking that the sound of a cold chuckle hung in the air. It was doubly shocking when everyone turned and saw that it was Ctesibius the Savant, his despair and aloofness for a moment gone from his face, replaced with a cold and satanic mirth.

Ctesibius said, “I know the answers, aftercomers. I know all.”

4. Star Raid

Menelaus turned to Ctesibius the Savant. “What did you say? What did you find out? Hell—how did you find out?”

“The snow told me. Haven’t you figured out where the people of this time are? Don’t you know what the Bell is?” smirked Ctesibius.

“Told you how?” demanded Montrose. “The nerve links in your head are one-way only. Transmit and not receive.”

Ctesibius shook his bewigged head with bitter mirth. Menelaus decided he liked laughing Ctesibius less than melancholy Ctesibius. Much less.

Now the Savant held up his glove, and showed its back to Menelaus, and pointed with his other hand. On the glove back was a telephone of the kind that had an onboard Mälzel to perform extremely complicated high-data-volume transmissions, so it had more memory than a midrange library cloth, and broadcasting shortwave, enjoyed a practically unlimited, worldwide range. It was beautifully made, coated with gold leaf and rimmed with diamonds, no bigger than a coin.

“Just because I have neurocybernetics in my head,” smiled Ctesibius, “does not mean I need not listen with my ear like any hylic.”

Menelaus rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, pinching his nose for good measure. Hylic. There was a word he had not heard in a while. It was what the Hermeticists and Scholars called anything they regarded as lower on the scale of evolution. It was another little reminder, small as a pinprick, why he hated the Hermeticists and the worlds they made.

But aloud Menelaus said, “Okay. I give. Uncle. I have not figured out where the people of this time are. I was thinking maybe the ocean, on account of the Melusine, but I vectored a social change into the sea life, and it seems like it had no effect. Are they on the moon? I don’t know what the Bell is. I know what it is not. It is not what it seems to be, because what it seems to be makes no sense. It looks like a human-made weapon of the Hyades.”

Ctesibius said, “That is exactly what it is.”

“I got two questions. One is: huhn? The second one is: if I am the coxcombliest smartest smartster on this planet, how come most of what I say most the time is ‘huhn’? Answer the first question first, please.”

Ctesibius said, “The Bell is an accurate mock-up of a typical Hyades attack instrument created from Monument blueprints. The space raid drill began in A.D. 10484, some three decades ago. In the same way civilians would clear the streets of their cities and retreat into underground bomb shelters and bunkers during the Hitlerian War to practice the discipline needed to survive a raid from the air, so, here, too, the surface of the globe, including the oceans, has been cleared of all human and domesticated life, to practice what is needed to survive a raid from the stars.

“Interstellar warfare is feudal,” said Ctesibius in the tone of one who confides a commonplace bromide.

“Futile?” Menelaus wondered if he had heard that correctly.

“Feudal. There is no substance more lightweight and more deadly than contraterrene. Payload mass considerations are paramount in interstellar travel. No other weapon is worth bringing across lightyears. No possible surface defense, nothing made of matter, can withstand it.

“It is the nature of total conversion reaction to react as violently against diffuse material, like atmosphere, as against dense material, like armor, and the concussion always drives the antimatter away from the point of contact. Therefore the best defense is layer after layer of light masses, such as atmosphere and hydrosphere, over layers of heavier mass, as a crust and core.

“This means people can survive even orbital antimatter bombardment if they retreat to far, far below the mantle of their world like the knights in a medieval fortress retreating behind castle walls. All the attacker can do is eliminate the surface biosphere, and besiege the defender, and hope to starve him out. It is to define and practice the institutions necessary for bathysubterranean life that the space raid drill was organized.”

Menelaus blinked. A thirty-year-long drill. All the people of the surface world in a bombproof shelter. And the presumably much larger sea population of whales and mermaids, also in a bombproof aquarium. An aquarium as big as the Great Lakes might hold all the intelligent sea life in the world, with a little crowding …