Menelaus said, “And you, Alpha Daae? Why did you inter yourself?”

Daae said uncomfortably, “I was of the party that opposed the dissolution of the Senate. Agathamemnon ‘Fairlock’ Raeus assumed certain emergency powers, combining the military leadership with the civilian government. I wished to preserve my bloodline to the day when Raeus would be forced out of office, and the Senatorial form of government restored. I suppose there was some error in my coffin brain, or—”

Menelaus said, “No error. The coffin never thawed you, because the conditions were never met. The World Empire lasted four hundred more years, and we never returned to our old form of government. Even by your day, the rot was too far advanced to halt.”

Yuen spoke with explosive passion, “But how did it happen? How was it permitted to happen? Whose army is so great to encompass us? Who overthrew us?”

Menelaus shook his head. “No one. The Chimerae were invincible in battle.”

Yuen said, “Then how?”

Menelaus said, “By slow and easy stages of corruption. The specific causes were many and complex. The foremost was a biotechnical improvement during a time of moral decline. Like the Babylonians, we were undone by simple drunkenness. It was called ‘Greencloak’ technology: Implanted artificial glands to intoxicate and alter states of consciousness spread by illegal medics first among the Kine, then among the lower ranks. And then it no longer was illegal, and then it was no longer stigmatized, and finally it was not permitted to be criticized.”

Yuen said in a strangled voice, “I don’t understand. Our greatness was unmatched. Whatever we faced, we conquered.”

Menelaus said, “No Chimera understood it. For that reason I was sent back into the Tombs. The trends of our decline were too slow for one man to see in his lifetime, and I was the only one—the schools by that point no longer taught mathematics of the requisite level—to work out the Cliometric calculus. Academic Command believed that someone was deliberately manipulating history to obliterate our civilization. I was to discover who and how.”

Both men stiffened.

Yuen said, “You mean someone obliterated the noble civilization for which all my ancestors slaved and served and suffered and fought and died … deliberately? A man did this? There is not even a word for the crime of killing an age of the world.”

Menelaus said, “Aeonicide. And yes, it is a man. I was sent into the Tombs to wake in a future day when I might trace the source of his historical anomalies, find him and confront him and kill him.”

Daae said in a voice of soft surprise, “But I know who this man is.”

Menelaus said, “Who? Is he here?”

Daae said, “He must be, for he—”

As if pulled by one invisible thread, both Daae and Yuen snapped their heads in the same direction. Menelaus did not have senses as sharp as theirs, but his neuromuscular control allowed him to turn his head the same direction at the same moment, as if he had the eyes and nose of a Chimera.

Of course, he saw nothing, and, of course, he could not ask what they were eluding when Daae raised his hand and flicked his fingers in two quick motions. Menelaus was baffled to see that the trooper hand signals from his days in the Thirty-fifth Cavalry Division, in A.D. 2225 were alike enough to the hand signals of the Chimera Varuman linage from A.D. 5480, for him to read them. Daae’s gesture ordered Alpha Yuen to take point; rear guard and trace hider was Beta Anubis (as he thought of him).

It was difficult to follow two men who made so little noise as they glided beneath the trees in pitch darkness.

As they came to the edge of the wood, Yuen raised his hand. The other two stopped, tense, wary. Through the pine trees, Menelaus saw a rise of ground silhouetted against the stars, and a group of figures was coming over the rise, in twos and fours. From the occultation of the stars, it seemed a search party. They carried no lanterns, but they were making no attempt at stealth: Menelaus heard howls and barks, as if the creatures were searching rather than hunting, seeking comrades who might answer, not prey who would flee in stealth.

Daae tapped Yuen on the shoulder, pointed at the enemy, shaded his eyes, wobbled his head, cupped his palm as if begging alms. He was asking what the dogs were looking for. Yuen’s answer was a shrug: another gesture that had not changed despite the change of times and races.

Daae licked his finger and held it to the wind, and selected a path that would keep them downwind of the dogs.

6. Ivinia

At moonrise, they were far enough downslope to fear no patrols of dog things. The hand-stained moon was full, and illumed the scene with silver light.

The three men came to a treeless knoll and climbed the side. It was a mound as symmetrical as an upside-down bowl. When Menelaus stepped on the slope, he heard a strange whine from his implants, and then silence.

The other two men were more relaxed in their posture as they walked. Menelaus wondered how the Chimerae had detected that the trees blocked the medium-range instruments of the Blues; second, he wondered how they knew this mound of grassy ground issued the same interference as the trees did; and third, he wondered how the Chimerae knew the Blue Men had such instrumentation. Who had told them?

The deduction was not hard to make. Daae spoke of the end of his world. The race that superceded the Chimerae called themselves the Natural Order of Man, or the Nymphs: it would be unusual, but not impossible, for a member of that race to be scholarly enough to retain an ancient language, and to have spoken with Daae. Looking at the trees around him, Montrose deduced several of the properties they must possess, including blocking some of the Blue Men instruments. He knew he would soon have an opportunity to speak with a Nymph: he gritted his teeth, wishing it could be immediate. He had set events in motion; now they moved without his control.

At the crest of the knoll stood a thin-faced woman of middle years and regal bearing. Her hair was so blond that by moonlight it seemed a metal helmet. She wore her hair in a tightly drawn bun, which meant she expected battle and death. Her eyes were vivid without being beautiful, deeply sunken in her skull and having a disturbing stare to them.

She was dressed in the same overalls as others in the camp, but she had fashioned a short stabbing spear out of a tentpole. From the tread marks in the spearhead, it looked as if she had forced the pole end flat merely by having one the digging automata of the Blue Men step on it for her. Then she had patiently sharpened it against a rock. Her gestures and expressions were stiff and queenly, but her eyes never ceased to gleam with a cold ferocity.

All three men went to one knee. A human eye would not have detected that Menelaus started the drop to the kneeling position after the other two, because his knee struck the frost white wintergrass of the knoll first.

The lady passed out combs of shell to Daae and Yuen. The two Alphas, still kneeling, unbraided and combed out their hair. Daae’s hair shone like snow, and Yuen’s shone like ink. Daae’s fell past his shoulders, and Yuen’s came almost to his waist, and it took them many slow and patient strokes of the comb to dress it.

Daae and Yuen crouched, fussing with their hair. Menelaus thought the sight mildly disquieting, but he understood the symbolism: The male Chimerae of their rank wore no ornaments nor finery, so their only idle vanities were the length and shine of their hair. It was bound up in combat, so the act of combing it out after was their way of rejoicing in peace and survival.

The lady cut the ribbon binding the tail of her braid with her spear tip, and shook the last two turns of the braid loose.