Daae’s eyes narrowed. “What inconvenience?”

“Sir! No foe is ready to hand, and if I commit an act of insubordination against the Loyal and Proven Alpha youth helplessly dangling below me, surely you, sir, would be duty-bound to reciprocate by chastising me, perhaps by unearthing the stake on which I currently depend. This would rob the Emergency Eugenic Command of two of her surviving veterans in this strange and cold far-future era.”

Silence. Daae said nothing.

Menelaus offered: “I await with pleasure the orders of my superior officer, sir.”

Daae called down, “Loyal and Proven wielder of Grislac, is your weapon still in your hand?”

The white truncheon had a thong looped around the dark-haired man’s wrist. The youth flourished it lightly in the air.

Daae said, “Then what say you?”

But the younger warrior was laughing softly. He spoke in Chimerical, in the dialect used in the western hemisphere during the forty-ninth century. “Loyal sir, if this man is not a Chimera, then sever the line and let me drop with him! If a baseline stock or Kine or underling can defeat me so handily, I am no further use to the Command, and will go without complaint into the promised oblivion we all seek.”

Daae said, “Our race is extinct, and the Command consists of we two, and the Alpha Lady Ivinia. Therefore the Command—such as it is—cannot afford the loss of one-third its number, one half its Alpha line fighting strength.”

Menelaus called up, “Sir, if I may, there is a block and tackle hidden under a gray tarp next to you, bolted to a plate. It might be wiser to have us up and out of sight before the commotion among the coffins summons the dogs, the Blue Men, or their automata.”

3. The Plaque

After more effort than might be expected, the two men were hauled safely back up the cliffside. The tackle gear was made fast to a plate bolted to a stone set to the ground. Yuen, the one-eyed, dark-haired Chimera stared curiously at the ancient letters on the stone as Daae bound the cuts on his legs with medical tape.

Yuen looked at the plaque. “You smile at the writing. What does it say?”

Menelaus read it aloud:

Devil’s Den Long-term biosuspension Facility, Hibernation Syndicate of Fancy Gap, Virginia—M. I. Montrose, Proprietor—This Site Declared a Sanctuary by Order of the Marchioness of Carroll County—These lands under the Protection of the Sovereign Military Order of Knights Hospitalier of Saint John of Jerusalem: Trespassers Killed On Sight. No Soliciting.

“And those?” Below it, in the stone, was a series of linear scratches, a simple code of strokes and angles.

Menelaus said, “Slumber marks. I cannot read them, Proven Alpha.”

Their voices attracted attention. Echoes of metallic noise and reflections of distant and buried light haunted the edge of the pit. The Chimerae wore faces as calm and stoical as if carven from stone, but they moved quickly away from the brink on their silent, catlike feet, alarmed, perhaps terrified. Menelaus knew the era from which they came was famed for its rejection of supernaturalism; therefore, the unknown unnerved them, because they had no category in which to place the uncanny.

Menelaus and the two Chimerae moved into the wood and squatted behind a thicket, keeping a wary eye on the cleft.

Menelaus said, “The dog patrols may come back.”

Yuen said, “Something in the trees interferes with the instruments of the Blue Men. We are safe from eavesdropping here. Do you know what drew the dog things away?”

Menelaus said, “Magic.”

Yuen sighed, and said to the white-haired Daae, “The Beta cannot lawfully answer to us until we establish our chain of command.”

Daae was bent over Yuen’s leg wounds and spoke without looking up. “We should establish how we were betrayed. We were meant to come by surprise. I thought none of these before-men nor after-men speak our tongue. Is there spy in the mess tent?”

“Many spies, I am sure, but none of them speak to me,” answered Menelaus.

“Then how were you forewarned?” asked the older.

“Deduction. I knew I would not look like a proper Chimera to you. The Eugenics Board in my centuries was experimenting with different bloodline factors. Redheadedness is an atavism from Neanderthal genes, a melanin deficiency reintroduced in my forbearers from archive reconstruction.… You did not have this technology? You are from the earlier days, are you not, young sir?”

Yuen’s voice held a shrug. “Oho? Early compared to what? Until I was thawed here, I thought my days were the last days. The wars against the Witches were going badly. You gentlemen are a surprise and joy to me, the fulfillment of many dreams of breeding.”

Daae spoke out of the darkness, “None from before the time of the Chimerae could know it is our custom to slay imposters and wrongbloods, and no kine from our time would dare play the imposter.”

Yuen said doubtfully, “He could be a historian from after.”

“Perhaps,” Daae said, “but we were superceded by creatures I have heard called the Naturalists, also called the Nymphs. You have seen them in the medical tent: a race of gold-skinned and slant-eyed fructivores of superlative and delicate loveliness. And after them come the monster-things called Hormagaunts. After that I know not what.”

“Locusts,” said Montrose. “Then, sea-things called Melusine. Then history stops.”

Daae said, “Each race of man is more artificial, more highly engineered than the ones before. Does this phenotype look deliberate?”

Yuen peered thoughtfully at Menelaus. “Ah, you speak truth! Who would deliberately affix a great hooked claw of flesh to the front a man’s face?”

Menelaus said, “My nurse always told me the Eugenics Board was breeding me in case the lighthouses on the coast failed, with a nose I could blow when the seas were fogbound.”

Yuen chuckled softly in the dark. “Oo? You dare mock the Command?”

Menelaus said, “Before I answer, let me ask this: Did the Eugenics Board breed themselves for intelligence, or did they breed their women to ripe-melons front-up in full kit?”

Yuen gave a louder, shorter laugh. “He’s Chimera, sure enough. No underling would know what ink-stained butterbars and groin-thunks our high brass are.”

Daae said to Menelaus, “Which of this menagerie are the Locusts?”

Menelaus said, “Black dwarfish men with big heads and gold tendrils growing from their brow. Those tendrils are radiotelepathic, some sort of remote nerve-link technology from future time now long past. It allowed them to detect that the world outside is empty of all electronic and mechanical activity.” Montrose waved his hand in a broad sweep, as if to indicate everything in the world. “There is no civilization out there. In any case, these Locusts looked to me to protect them, and now they are gone. The Blue Men killed them. I saw the dogs dig their graves.”

Daae said, “I am out of my reckoning. Which race comes after them? Who inherited the earth?”

Montrose said, “That is a mystery I am burning to solve. I assume these Blue Men are the current landlords of Mother Earth. The asteroid impact that wiped out the surface life and kicked up the dust that brought this ice age was sometime in the seventy-eighth century AUCR.”

AUCR stood for Ab Urbe Condita Richmondus. The Chimerical calendar reckoned from the founding of Richmond in 1737. The seventy-eighth century was equivalent to ninety-sixth century by the Gregorian calendar.

Yuen interrupted, “Wait. Asteroid impact? Sometime in what century? How long have we been in hibernation?”

Montrose said, “I estimate you were in slumber for five thousand years.”

There was a rustle in the dark as the two stiffened slightly. “How firm is this intelligence?” said Daae.

“Perfectly firm,” said Menelaus. “I have studied the stars. From the size of the circle Deneb makes around the north pole, I can calculate the procession of the equinoxes.”