He put his hand on the wooden crate, wondering where the wood came from in the barren world of ice.

Everything bespoke haste, as if the machinery had been in the process of being hauled out and crated up, but then abandoned by the workmen midway.

He looked at the tread marks. One had been an oversized coffin from the thirty-first century—the coffin of a Giant. The second had a tread pattern design from the twenty-sixth century, belted treads with parallel marks of millipede legs—it was the special coffin of one of his knights.

He counted the feeder ports and lines along the walls. There had been thirty-two additional coffins here.

Menelaus stepped through the hole in the wall and back into the snow. He reached up with his free hand (the one not holding Rada Lwa) and snapped off a bit of the abalone-like building material. He looked carefully at the striation marks in order to deduce the growth patterns. Then he looked at the cables and strips still hanging from the walls. It was two different levels of technology, from two different ages of history. And the snow under his feet, if Ctesibius had spoken true, was a third level.

“Rada Lwa, I am really sick of talking to your pale albino butt, but there is no one else around to talk to. I think I just realized my whole mental picture of what has been going on since the moment I thawed was wrong. All the Blues are revenants. They must have just been put in the ground very recently. I wonder if this ice age is very recent too. Less than four hundred years old? Something here is not adding up.”

He circled the pink seashell building. In the distance, he saw movement at the gate.

Menelaus did not resist when the pack of snarling dog things trotted at a quickstep out from the gate and, brandishing their pikes, took him into custody again. There were about forty of them, including some of the better-bred dogs, and two of Preceptor Naar’s armed automata were also there, clanking after on metal feet and carrying heavier weapons.

After removing from him the subsonic hose, the two railguns, and the laser pack, they escorted him back through the wire. He congratulated himself that he still had the splicing knife up his sleeve. It was not much, but how much would he need? The Blues had probably gathered everyone before the still-locked door, and were watching Larz putter and listening to Larz make excuses.

Menelaus smiled, counting down the time until his knights, thawed by Soorm and Oenoe awoke. The dogs brought him to the woods.

The sky had cleared, and overhead showed a brilliant arctic blue, but the southern horizon was darkened with approaching storm clouds.

Menelaus stood on the highest platform, under the watchful eyes and noses of armed dogs. Yuen, Daae, and the Witches were nowhere to be seen. The south part of the canyon was a set of platforms made of stiffened tent material lashed to poles driven into the rock, and a set of ladders fell from platform to platform into the dig proper.

Looking down, he saw that the great door leading into the undiscovered parts of the Tombs was open. The weapons were holstered, locked down, and silent. The great valves of the fourth door were thrown wide, and a wedge of golden light formed a triangle along the floor and up the armored blocks of the wall. The light and power seemed to be back on.

Larz had done it. The Tombs were open. Even if it took men of mortal levels of intelligence an hour or so to find the clues in the Tomb, it would take Del Azarchel or Exarchel only an instant, the moment the agent of Del Azarchel reported his findings to his remote posthuman master.

At that moment, he desperately wished he had never stabbed himself in the head with that needle, never elevated his brain beyond the human level. Because an ordinary man, brain clouded with ordinary clouds, could cling to hope in such times, make up some lovely fairy tale about how some unknown thing would pop up to make things right; or rage, or pride, or some other hard and hot emotion could blank out, for a few hours, the painful crystal clarity of what his intellect spread before him.

For painfully, simply, clearly, he saw that he had failed. Blackie Del Azarchel had won. The career and the life of Menelaus Montrose, Judge of Ages, were finished.

And from the open doors of the Tombs, where the light poured out, rich and golden, into the cold air, he could see the shadows of the dog things dancing and flickering. They were performing an antic jig, leaping and twisting and wagging their tails, biting the air for joy, and flourishing their cutlasses; and dimly he heard the wild music of fiddle and flute echoing against the canyon walls against which their angular shadows leaped.

PERSONS OF THE DRAMA

Characters named but not appearing are in italics. Dates given are of last interment date, unless otherwise noted.

Menelaus—Menelaus Illation Montrose, the Judge of Ages

Pellucid—His Xypotech

Rania—Her Serene Highness Rania Anne Galatea Trismegistina del Estrella-Diamante Grimaldi, Sovereign Princess of Monaco, Duchess of Valentinois and of Mazarin, Marchioness of Baux, Countess of Carladès and of Polignac; Stadtholder for Dutch North European Coalitie and Owner-in-Chief of the World Snow Syndicate; Captain of the NTL Hermetic, the Vindicatrix and Promised Savioress of mankind; also styled Mrs. Rania Montrose

Captain Grimaldi—His Serene Highness Ranier Grimaldi of Monaco, her father, and Captain of the NTL Hermetic before her

Hermeticists

Melchor de Ulloa

Narcís Santdionís de Rei D’Aragó—The Iron Hermeticist

Sarmento i Illa d’Or

Father Reyes y Pastor—The Red Hermeticist

Jaume Coronimas—The Locust Hermeticist

Ximen del Azarchel—Senior of the Landing Party, Nobilissimus of the World Concordat, Master of the World

Exarchel—His emulation

Astro-Exarchel—His emulation aboard the NTL Bellerophon

Cryonarch

Thucydides—Father Thucydides Acumen Montrose, Society of Jesus; later, His Holiness Sixtus VI

Scholar

Rada Lwa—Intermediately Evolved Learned Scholar Rada Lwa Chwal Sequitur Argent-Montrose

Savant

Ctesibius—Glorified Ctesibius Zant, Endorcist of Three Donatives, Servant of the Machine (A.D. 2525)

Hospitaliers

Sir Guy—Sir Guiden von Hompesch zu Bolheim, later Grandmaster of the Order

Sir Alof Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Manwell Magri, and Themistocles Zammit—Scientist-Knights

Giant

Name not given (A.D. 3090)

Sylphs

Woggy Soaring Azurine

Tessa Soaring Azurine

Third or Trey Soaring Azurine (tentative)

Brother Roger de Juliac, Society of Jesus

Witches

Mickey—Melechemoshemyazanagual Onmyoji de Concepcion, Padre Bruja-Stregone of Donna Verdant Coven; from the Holy Fortress at Williamsburg (A.D. 4733)

Chimerae

Daae—Alpha Captain Varuman Aemileus Daae of Uttarakhand, Osaka, Bombay, Yumbulangang, and other actions in the South China Theater; the Varuman blood derives from the Osterman, from the Homo sapiens, and Canis lupus (A.D. 5402)

Yuen—Alpha Steadholder Extet Minnethales Yuen of Richmond, Third and Second Manassas, Antietam, and various Actions against Pirates; the Yuen are of the Original Experiment Set, from Homo sapiens and Puma concolor (A.D. 4881)

Grislac—His current weapon

Arroglint the Fortunate—The named weapon of his lineage

Anubis—High-Beta Sterling Xenius Anubis of Mount Erebus (A.D. 5292) Dependent College, 102nd Civic Control Division, attached to the Pennsylvania third Legion: the “Virginianized” version of this name is Ir-Beta Sterlingas Xeniopater Anupsu-phalangetor Erebumontsangil