2. The Widow

The walls here were bright with luminous lichen. In the chamber was a coffin, apparently still in working order. Only the top third was open. Inside was an albino with a Negro cast of features, with a flattish nose, bold face, and full lips: but he was in no way black, since there was not one speck of melanin in his skin cells, nor in his hair, which was a striking silvery white, thick, and braided close to his skull. The hair did not look like the gray hairs of age, for the strands were rich and healthy.

The man was below the surface of the medical fluid, but he was not frozen or suspended, for his eyes moved under their eyelids, like a dreamer’s in sleep. Cables ran from plugs in his spine and skull out of the coffin to several small machines on a mat on the floor. The mat was one of the coats of the Blue Men, with its sleeves and other flaps unfolded, so it looked like a jeweled rug shaped almost like a triangle.

Seated in lotus position on the mat, tending the machines, was a woman of the Blue Man race, the first one Menelaus had seen. He looked at her with some interest.

She was dressed in a simple white garment from neck to waist, and wearing what looked like bloomers below, which was the same undergarment the males wore. Her features were fragile, elfin, and her scalp was bald of hair. Aside from eyes slightly larger than the males, and lips more delicate of mold, the sexual differences were minimal. She was flat-chested and slender-hipped. She wore no ornament, nor anything to emphasize her femininity.

For some reason, there were no dog things here as guards.

Illiance said, “This is Aanwen, eternally bereaved.”

Menelaus said, “Eternally?”

Illiance said, “Her husband did not survive their thaw. The Simplifiers do not remarry.”

“Wait a minute! Their thaw? Is she a revenant?”

Illiance peered up at his face. “Why does that question interest you?”

“Ah—no reason. I was just thinking that she might be immune from the terrifying vengeance the Judge of Ages is going to pour down on your heads like fire from heaven. On account of she’s his client and he has to protect her.”

“You said you thought the Judge of Ages was myth.”

Menelaus shrugged. “I can always hope.”

Illiance nodded. “The sentiment is noble and simple enough to be spoken by one of our order. Perhaps, Beta Sterling Anubis, you will consider renouncing the tedious conflicts of the artificial duties of your false life, and becoming as we are.”

“What, you look for recruits for your boot camp? You want I should paint myself blue? I’m flattered. Or insulted. Not sure which.”

Illiance said, “My offer, admittedly, has nuances of valuation not immediately evident. In any case, as are you, we are moved by hope.”

“What are you hoping for?”

“We hope to find the Judge of Ages.”

“He will punish you, probably kill you. I would use an indelicate term involving anal copulation and venereal disease, but there is a lady present.”

“We also hope he will be merciful.”

“You willing to bet money on that?”

“Wagering is an unnecessary complexity of life.”

“Well, you are a more reckless gambler than any I’ve seen. Want to hedge your bet? Maybe if you put everything back where you found it. Exactly where you found it. For example, why the hell is there a coffin here? Why is that man in it?” Menelaus looked at the monitors winking on the footplate of the coffin. “He is not even sick.”

Illiance said, “Aanwen is the closest thing we have to a cryotechnician. The coffin circuits contain a microbrain with interface systems we can jury-rig to access the cybernetics of this relict. He is a race called the Scholars, also called by the older name, Psychoi. They are perhaps the oldest of the artificial races of man, even though their modifications are minor: some intelligence augmentation; a set of cybernetic membrane locks used to download information into an infosphere of a type long, long extinct. Aanwen assures us she can compel the relict to cooperate, because she can introduce both hallucinations and intense pain into the nervous system, as well as detect deceptive intent and pick up certain simple surface reactions—”

“Hold it. Hold it. You robbed a coffin out of the Tombs and are perverting it from its original function, which was to protect and heal the client; but instead you are using it as a torture rack?”

Illiance nodded with an unearthly serenity on his features. “The metaphor is accurate.”

“The Judge of Ages is going to kill you painfully.”

“We hope we can placate him.”

“Painfully and slowly. Do you little blue twerps know what you are messing with?”

Illiance shook his head. “The first principle of negative information calculus is that the volume of the unknown is always greater than the volume of the known. It is in an attempt to discover ‘what we are messing with’ that we perform these regrettable acts. The relict speaks a dialect of the language of the Eldest World Concordat, called Spanish, which we cannot comprehend. As I mentioned, the coffin plates indicate an interment date of A.D. 3090, far later than the last known record of his race. I have outlined the areas of our interest; he will be returned, hale and whole, to the camp once we have the needed information.”

Illiance turned toward the Blue Woman and spoke in a fluid tongue of soft hisses. She made an adjustment on her machine.

The eyes of the albino man in the coffin opened, and focused on Illiance. (Menelaus happened to be standing by the controls near the head of the coffin, and hence out of the line of sight.) The albino’s mouth did not move, but a squawk emerged from some hidden speaker in the coffin surface, followed by the staccato sound of a harsh and glottal language of short-syllabled words.

“You understand this speech.” Illiance was looking inquisitively at Menelaus. “Your pupil dilations and subconscious tells show a commensurate reaction to the information volume.”

“The language is Korrekthotspeek, an artificially created dialect of English, Spanish, and Loglangwoj,” reported Menelaus in a dry voice. “He is cursing you, which is kind of sad, because artificial languages never have enough words for real heart-to-heart cussing.”

Illiance was unperturbed. “Had he proved tractable, he would not be in an unfortunate situation. Is there any worthwhile information in this stream of words?”

“Like I said, it is not like a real man’s language. He is calling you unintelligent, saying that you indulge in emotions of hostility—particularly race-hatred, misogyny, and hatred of practitioners of sexual deviancy—and he is accusing you of harboring inflexible or stereotyped opinions that you have judged before all the evidence is in. They don’t have a word for ‘sin’ or ‘evil’ in their language: all they can say is a word that means ‘judgment before all the evidence is in.’”

Illiance nodded, musing. “They are a race of scholars; so to them, of course, a premature judgment, without due consideration of all available information, would be the subject of opprobrium. What is he saying now?”

“More of the same. He is repeating himself, because they don’t have many curses in their tongue. Can I talk to him? Open a mic for me.”

Illiance gestured at Aanwen, who touched one of her machines. Menelaus spoke in a language that sounded like music. The harsh staccato tongue cut off. Then the voice from the coffin spoke again, hesitatingly. Menelaus answered. Laughter came from the coffin.

Illiance said, “What did you say?”

“I told him to curse in Spanish. It is a much better language for cursing. He agreed. Now he says that you are uglier than the buttocks of a monkey and that your brother has no groin.”

Illiance nodded. “The first is a matter of aesthetic judgment where reasonable people can differ; the second is accurate only in an ontological sense. Ask him about the Judge of Ages. We suspect he must know something of him, or else he would not have been stored in this location. Remind him delicately that we can stimulate the pain center of his brain.”