The only trees in sight were pine and spruce, and they grew thickly only on this split hill, as if some heat or seeping chemical from the buried coffins had kept the greenery alive, or as if the memories of elder days, when this land was green, had somehow been preserved across the ages, and lingered here.

8. Character

Lady Ivinia said, “Alpha Daae, what is the character of this camp? Report.”

Daae stood to speak. “Sloppy. Ma’am, the camp is a jury-rig. Someone tossed it together from makeshift materials. The discipline of the Witch-dogs is poor. If we move cautiously, and if the Blue Men find and wake more of our race, there is a possibility of victory, albeit slender. A cautious approach is best. We must dissemble our purpose.”

Ivinia said, “Alpha Extet Yuen. Same question. Report.”

Yuen also stood up, turned and pointed with his truncheon. “Behold yonder: an airfield. Here is a rotary-wing craft of unknown design, but known purpose. She is armored for war. The pattern of portholes and vents indicates a hold used for transporting live cargo. She is a slave ship, able and therefore meant to take us away to bondage. To display such a ship to us is to hiss in our faces. Before that, we see a fence. No one raises a fence and does not expect it broken. To erect a fence is to flourish a whip. And beyond the haughty slaver craft, we see waste. A wasteland is a confrontation to a man of stature: an empty place, a gauntlet thrown down in challenge and defiance. A place that cries out to be conquered and civilized.

“My word is the opposite of Proven Daae: Let us not dissemble.” Yuen continued, his eyes hard and bright. “To look upon us is to know how we must respond to a flung gauntlet, flourished serpentine, a hiss. We will break those who offend and trammel us. We will conquer yonder snowy waste and make it into a garden land. Any man of pure Alpha blood would know that was our destined path; how could we hide it, even were there need? Whom would we deceive? Are the deeds and nature of the Chimerae so soon forgotten?”

Menelaus heaved a sigh, “Actually, Alpha Yuen, considering the gap of time…”

Lady Ivinia turned her eyes to him. “You may speak, Beta Sterling Anubis. Report. What is the character of the camp?”

Menelaus said, “This is a criminal operation. No warlord hunting for undefended men to loot and enslave, no bureaucracy trying to exact a tax from the Slumberers, and no university wanting to examine or interview the past would have sent out an expedition so ill equipped.”

But Daae said, “Beta Anubis hails from an era of wealth, when there were roads and electrification. He is perhaps unaware of how often warlords with empty coffers make due.”

Lady Ivinia said, “We are not Witches. Among the Chimerae, the men have absolute sway and command over the women. Such is our ancient law. As a respectful and obedient wife and mother of heroes, my task is only to be silent and obey. Therefore, in the name of the yet unborn generations entrusted to the motherhood, I can only tell you that you men must overcome this foe. If you do not, you will be found unworthy, and will commit ritual suicide. I would much regret that eventuality, O thou loyal sons of the loyal mothers of the Chimerae. The strategy and tactics I leave to you men, in whose hands the tasks of war are entrusted. Am I understood?”

Menelaus dropped to his knees and bowed when he saw the other two kneel. Lady Ivinia raised her spear as if debating whether to plunge it into the back of one of the men kneeling and bowing before her.

Instead she said, “As a meek and gentle woman, I have no place in your counsel settling war matters. But these undercreatures have raised up Chimerae from our graves, and if our name is not to be shamed forever, you must punish the vermin for their trespass, and must obtain victory or embrace death. The lineage I represent commands it. Do not speak! I know you understand. Do not disappoint the motherhood of the race.”

Lady Ivinia lowered her spear, turned, and marched away down the slope in the moonlight.

Daae rose to his feet and wiped his brow, and put out a hand to Yuen, who seemed to be a little weak in the knees, to help him erect.

“Were the women that way in your time?” asked Daae.

Menelaus said, “In my day they were worse. You should meet my mother.”

Yuen answered, “Good thing our girls are meek. The heart quails to imagine what they’d be like if they were bold. May the nonexistent God of Nothing we never worship protect us!”

Daae said, “Victory or suicide. There are only four of us, two Alphas, a Beta, and a Gamma named Joet. We face an armed camp of two hundred dog things armed with muskets, thirty-three Blue Men armed with advanced energy pistols, and fifteen of the automata are mounted with steam rifles. What is our plan, gentlemen?”

Yuen said, “We rush the machine guns at the gate. The survivors cut down the guards, and we either commandeer or burn the aircraft. We follow the stream to the sea, living off the land as we go. We relax the eugenic protocols for a few generations, and allow both interbreeding and inbreeding, so that we can repopulate the Earth with the ten of us.”

Menelaus said, “Rocks and sticks against steam-powered machine guns?”

Yuen sneered, “Rocks and sticks in the hands of Chimerae. Steam-powered machine guns manned by Moreaus, who are merely walking artifacts.”

Menelaus said, “Yeah, but there are two hundred of them. Also, I have not seen what the muskets shoot yet, but I think it is an incendiary, not a musket ball.”

Yuen said, “We may have finer weapons anon. I was buried with Arroglint, named of the Extet and prized at a thousand medallions. The weapon is haunted. I have put forth my will; whatever unclean hands now clutch it, or whatever walls or wills oppose, Arroglint the Fortunate will seek me out and return to my hand; then let the foeman quail and scatter before my scourge.”

Menelaus was puzzled, wondering what type of weapon this was. The Chimerical word for “whip,” culwerin, with the accent of classical Virginian, colubrine, which literally meant “snake-shaped.” But coluber was an Anglatino word taken from a Meriken word for “most superlative” cool-über—a slang term referring to a plateau technology. But which technology?

Menelaus gasped, and raised his hand to his mouth, pretending it was a cough.

Thunderstruck, only now did he realize that the “named weapons” of the Chimera, the ornamental whips they were so proud of, were none other than the defining plateau technology of the Sylphs: self-aware smartmetal serpentines. The Chimerical practice of dubbing their thighbones or truncheons or rocks was nothing more than a sad echo of a tradition started when weapons created by a higher plateau of ratiotechnology had been smart enough to answer when called by name.

Menelaus had been thawed briefly in A.D. 5250, during the Chimera period, and had seen a civilization that, despite its flaws, was on the verge of rediscovering space travel. He had released from their Tombs two scientists from the Order of the Knights Hospitalier, Manwell Magri and Themistocles Zammit, to go out into the world and teach the Chimerae the theory and practice of atomics. During the few months when he was awake, Menelaus had come across countless references to the ritualized Chimerical reverence for the named weapons of their ancient and aristocratic bloodlines, but he had not seen one. Menelaus in his buried stronghold beneath Cheyenne Mountain had not exactly been invited into the parlors and parliaments of the Alpha-class Chimerae.

A plateau technology, like the shape of an ax or the hull of a ship, was that which showed no change over centuries, no improvements being possible. In this case, the serpentine weapons of the Chimerae had been constructed two thousand years earlier. For that technology to last so long did not fit the normal pattern of Cliometry. It would be as if Neil Armstrong had landed on the moon and while carrying Julius Caesar’s unrusted sword and camping out in a tent made by Saint Paul.