This anomaly was a sign of interference by Del Azarchel. Something important had happened in history while Menelaus slept. It was a clue to follow up. What the pattern meant, even he could not yet see.

But the effect of his ancestral weapon on Yuen, Menelaus could see. The man would lead the surviving Chimerae to suicide. Menelaus spoke in a respectful voice:

“Proven and Loyal Alpha Yuen, when your haunted weapon returns to your hand, can you protect us and the other prisoners from directed-energy fire, cannonade, or musket fusillade?”

Yuen said contemptuously, “Of course not. Where is the battle-death and the oblivion we seek? Not at the end of the safer path.”

Menelaus said to Daae, “My advice is to go the opposite direction.”

Daae said, “Opposite?”

Menelaus said, “The safer path. Not to break out of the camp, but break into the Tombs.”

Daae said, “This may be feasible. Before you woke from your coffin, the Blue Men twice sent gangs into the Tomb, to wrestle coffins won from the Tomb defenses. If there were a way to disable or elude such defenses, the Tombs would make an excellent citadel.”

Menelaus said, “We are Thaws, so the automatics should let us pass inside.”

Daae raised an eyebrow. “How so? The main doors open fire on any member of the work gang who exposes himself.”

Menelaus said in anger. “You mean the Blue Men are forcing Thaws into attacks against the Tomb guns?”

Daae looked surprised at the other man’s vehemence. “But of course. The big tattooed man was hurt so badly that the Blue Men took him to their hospital outside the wire, the pink shell, and has not been seen since.”

Menelaus blinked, trying to hide his sense of shock and dismay. Sir Guy wounded?

Then a second dismay struck him, and anger. “Wait. That cannot be. Is the postern door also malfunctioning? There is a radio shack on Level Four, which we might be able to reach from the postern door.”

Daae said, “The postern door spits out a waterfall. The seventh level is flooded, as is any nonwatertight level below that. At least two levels above that are also, or else the water would have simply drained away. No one can swim up two levels in the dark through locked doors to reach Level Four. And how do you know where the radio equipment for the Tombs is kept?”

Menelaus said in surprise, “Dark? Is the power out? Why haven’t the automatics repaired it? Why haven’t the pumps cleared out the water? What the hell is going on?”

Yuen tilted his head. In the far distance was a soft hooting, like an owl. “That is the signal from young Beta Vulpina. The dogs are about to do a tent check and will find where we dug our way out if we do not return. So there is no more time for debate. Alpha Daae! Beta Anubis has no plan—we cannot force the dogs guarding the Tomb and also fight the Tomb doors. Whatever you command, I perform, since you have seniority: but to rush the wire is the wiser course, and our deaths there more glorious. I say rush the wire now, tonight, before we are discovered.”

Menelaus gritted his teeth. He did not particularly cotton to the Chimerae. They had been genetically and psychoculturally designed to be what they were, so they could not really help it. Besides, some of his own stolen genetic material had been used in their progenitors, presumably to make them more likely to endure certain nerve alterations that Menelaus himself had survived. So maybe their nature was partly his fault.

But like them or hate them, they were people who trusted his Tombs with their lives, and so he could not stand by and watch them throw themselves to death in front of a machine gun emplacement.

He had to tell them who he was. Once they knew they were standing with the owner and architect of the Tombs, they would know that getting into them would be the best tactic.

“Gentlemen, I should have said this earlier, but I am really—”

There came a second owl hoot, louder and holding a note of desperation.

Daae said, “The time for talk is done. Beta Anubis, we know what you really are.”

Menelaus blinked. “You do? Well, that makes things simpler—”

“Yes. You overlook that I come from two hundred years in your future, and so things secret in your time were known and discussed by historians in mine. This includes historians who slumbered in your time and were thawed in mine, and gave eyewitness testimony of what, to us, was centuries past. My time knew that the Academic Command was under the complete control of Intelligence Command, and that academics were spies and propagandists, whose mission was not to educate the young, but to indoctrinate the loyalty programming. Schoolteacher, indeed! You are a spy. We know.”

“Oh, uh … yeah.”

“As an espionage officer, you are suited to your task. You must speak to as many of the undermen and aftercomers as you can and enlist them to our cause. We will not move until we have at least forty men. You have seven days. Then we rush the wire whether we have the manpower or not. Dismissed!”

And the two Chimerae rushed down the slope of the knoll, loping in opposite directions, passing over the dry grass and patches of snow with no noise, swift as leopards. Menelaus watched them depart, a great disquiet in his heart, and he turned and ran as quietly as he could.

4

The Warlock of Williamsburg

1. Melech, Chemosh, Shemyaza, Nagual, Witch

It took the better part of two hours to make it from the knoll in the glade halfway up the great hill to the swales at the foot of the hill, eluding the quiet rustle of dogs by following the marching clatter of the automata. The dog things did not bother searching areas the automata searched. He had removed his cloak, and the circuits in the machines did not react to his presence.

But the chill was atrocious, and the need to follow one automaton and then the next constrained him not to follow a straight or brief path down the hill.

He was also helped by using the terrain to his advantage when he could. Menelaus knew the hill contours perfectly well, having glanced at the topographical maps for a moment when the Tomb site was selected, and being able to deduce the changes in ground contour due to the passing years and passing glaciers.

In those two hours, clouds trudging up from the south had snuffed the stars and smothered the moon. The sky was black, except for one vague phantom of pale silver seeping through the vapor.

He left behind the final automaton near the foot of the great hill. The trees here were few, and nothing hindered the cold blades of the wind. It was with great relief that he redonned his cloak. He used his implants to tell the fabric circuits to generate heat.

Then he walked, first one way, and then the other. Finally, he heard the soft and eerie sound like that of panpipes.

He followed the haunting thread of sound through the gloom, stopping whenever the wind blew, for the noise of the wind in the grass drowned the piping. Soon he heard another noise. The fence was close enough that the snakelike slithering of the smartwire along its tops could be heard.

Menelaus came suddenly around a shoulder of ground and stood looking down upon a hollow that was closed on three sides by steep and rocky walls. The music rang out clear and cold across the scene.

The cliff walls of the surrounding hollow had kept snow from gathering here. In the hollow were two stunted and leafless trees with balls of mistletoe lodged in their branches. Between these two trees, with his back to the wall, was a grotesquely overweight blob of a seated figure. This was a man of the Witch race.

A circle was scratched into the gravelly sand around the rotund man, and he was seated before a smoldering campfire. Ever and anon he dropped spicy leaves into the flame, nor did he remove his head from the fumes of the smoke.