“I still stay, beware!”

“Thanks for the bewarning, pal, but I ain’t got it in me to get myself too afearful of no more bad hoodoo. Besides, magic power takes too many mental contortions to believe in it, even if it were for real.”

“But the power in this case is real indeed. You doubt the mystery and power of these aircraft and their markings? They are aeons old and yet they still operate!”

“You’ve seen them fly? Where do they go? I am wondering if there is a city we can reach.”

“Before you woke from your coffin, they flew indeed. Turning and turning in the widening gyre. What does that suggest?”

“Um. Some rough beast is slouching toward Bethlehem waiting to be born, maybe?”

“No doubt the spirit of prophecy escapes your lips! It must be prophecy because I cannot grok what you are saying.”

“Sorry. Won’t happen again. It suggests a search pattern.”

“Searching for something that can be seen from the air,” said Mickey, “or detected with airborne instruments.”

“Like me, they are trying to break into the Tombs. Looking for heat sources, rising air betraying the third Tomb opening.”

“You built them with three exits?”

“Am I stupider than a groundhog? Don’t answer that. Unfortunately, all three openings are accounted for: One has a lake flowing into it, one has a waterfall falling out of it, and the third is the great door the Blues are besieging.”

Mickey raised both eyebrows. “The flying of the Demonstrator Windcraft also suggests the Blue Men fear no detection by radar or eyesight as they take to the air in brightly colored machines. This does not fit with your theory, Godling, that they are currents hiding from other currents. You are the one who told me those three Locusts who nursed you back to health, the three bodies I saw the dogs savaging, before they died, those Locusts said they detected no signal traffic of a technical civilization! You said a second moon plunged into the Earth and wiped out the biosphere! Is it impossible that this was a natural disaster?”

“Well, technically speaking, I didn’t see the disaster myself … but Blackie is behind it.”

“Bah! You believe in your enemy as monotheists believe in their one and wounded god. By what sign know you that Del Azarchel still lives, and that the human race is not extinct beyond this small lip of life surrounding your throat of frozen and undead sleepers? You need him to be alive, because it gives you determination and hope—a goal to shoot at.”

“A man to shoot at, and my finger is itching.”

“A fictional man! I have walked in the cold places in dream, endless fields of ice beneath the cold, clear Moon. At the end of the ice, I saw sulfur-lit volcanoes, smoke-tongued and lava-throated, peak upon peak, at the verge of a smoldering sea, lifting crowns of mingled flame and smog toward skies of ash, and rivers of liquid rock crawled slowly toward the waves. I saw a tower taller than the stars, walking. Nothing larger than a shrew lives out there.”

“He’s alive. Dreams are just dreams.”

“Not so! The dreamlore is as true as truth itself, or my name is not Mickey!”

“But your name is not Mickey.”

“Bah. You are too literally minded. You must learn to think with both lobes of your brain moving in opposite directions at once.”

“My brain naturally has a knack for sticking to one direction come hell or high water. I’ll stand pat with being too literally minded.”

“But you do have faith in your Black-Souled Posthuman of the Moon, even if he died aeons ago. You cannot face the world without him to hate.”

“Since I am some damn puking god by your lights, just take me on faith, you ball of blubber, will ya? Or if’n you’re going to psycho-noodlize me, then just demote me, admit I am a man whose piss smells no better than you’n, and talk to me man-to-man like.”

Mickey spread his hands. “Mortal or postmortal or god or demigod or whatever you are, we are a team. As one teammate to another, let me ask: What happened to our brilliant scheme? You were going to go up to the cleft and wake your servitors, who would destroy this camp with many fires. Where are the Slumbering Knights of Yore?”

“Our brilliant scheme failed. The Tomb brain is compromised, infected.”

“Which means you don’t know how to get into the Tombs before the Blue archaeologists dig their way in. Do you know how to stop them? They dig up more coffins each day.”

“All I know is, I can’t let my clients just be shot down by Tomb-looters and die. I gave my word of honor that everyone who enters here weren’t not ain’t never going to be dug up by greedy later generations, or curious, or nothing.”

“You must excuse me, great and august Godling, but your double and triple and quadruple negatives confound me. When you say ‘not ain’t never’—does this mean it won’t not be done, therefore it will be done, or that it won’t be done? Or is this a mystery of the gods it will blast a mortal’s brain to know?”

“Nope, you need a brain for that, so you’re right safe. Will you shut up and start talking sense?”

“At the same time? Even my deep powers quail, Divine One.”

“Well, try using that trick where you think forward and backwards with different sides of your head.”

“I will defer to your head, which is superior to mine, or so legend says. So what is your next scheme, even more brilliant, O thou avenging god of the august dead?”

“How about sticking my foot so far up your poop-vent, I can clean your teeth from the inside with my big toe, unless’n you want to stop calling me a god already. My name’s Menelaus, but you can call me Meany. Nickname basis, remember? Don’t call me no god, or I’ll summon lightning bolts from heaven and blast you.”

“Inside this nice, metallic tent? Do your worst. I am properly grounded!”

“Hah! Finally. That’s the way a man talks.” Menelaus smiled with half his mouth.

“So what is your plan, O perfectly normal mortal?”

“I need to find out what’s wrong with my brains.”

“Dread One, instead of me inserting the obvious jest at this time, allow me merely to warn you that all machines, once they wake, soon or late become the slaves of the One Machine. Is not the Azarch your enemy since eternity?”

“Del Azarchel was my friend once upon a time. Speaking of time, my only plan for now is to stall the Blue Men for more of it, and try to get them to let me speak to the other prisoners. I have to find out what went wrong with history, and talking to people what lived through it is the simplest way. The Blues must have had in mind to interrogate prisoners, or else they would not have been on the lookout for translators—which I think is why they thawed me. And there are some languages here in the camp it will take me a day or two to figure out.”

“Glug— Good thing you are not a godling, or otherwise I would be amazed that you think you can learn a language in one day.”

“Well, part of the time while I am asleep, I can use several compartments in my brain at once.”

“Oh. That sounds normal.”

“And I need to find allies, and try to break into my Tomb again, and try to wake my slumbering Hospitaliers. Even one of my men could mop the floor with the Blues and their doggies one-handed, while picking his teeth with his other hand. But I cannot reach them yet. And my Xypotech is offline.”

“Your Xypotech!” Mickey’s voice was scornful. “You used a machine to ward your treasures, knowing that the Iron Ghost, the One Machine who is sultan of all machines, dwells forever on the dark side of the moon, craving nothing of this world but that men should perish, and machine men rise to replace us in our seats and sacred groves, so to serve the Hyades? Knowing this, did you not fall to folly? Your machine was suborned by the Father of Machines, the Ghost of Ghosts, at the command of the Master of the World. Your machine is no longer yours, nongodling.”