“Report to whom? You know that your Alpha-of-Alphas, the Imperator-General of the Commonwealth, passed away millennia ago, he and all his dynasty.”

Menelaus spread his hands. “Do tell? I heard about the event. But, so what? Maybe someone will show up. It pays to stay on your toes, buttons polished and powder dry, nevertheless, because you can never tell when one of the Alphas will pull a surprise inspection. So let me gather some intel. Are you going to introduce me?”

“It would be unsimplistic of me not to! I happened to have committed a gaucherie, for which I now amend. Lance-Corporal Beta Anubis, this one is an Expositor of the Mentor category, which reflects a class of achievement most honored of our way of being: his external-name is Ull.”

“He is your CO?”

“I happen not to understand that abbreviation.”

“He is your Captain, your Skipper, your Boss, your Big Cheese; the Leader, Drill Instructor, Head Honcho, High Muckety-Muck; your Patron, Patrician, Taskmaster, Top Dog, Loud Fart; he is the Brass, the Brains, the Chief, the Man?”

“You have many words for superiors of rank.”

“Chimerae have lots of ranks.”

“Among the Simple, we happen not to affix a formal structure, preferring impromptu fluidity. The distinction of Mentor Ull is one of voluntary recognition.”

“But he gets to say what’s going to happen, right?”

“Ah … in essence, yes.”

“Thought so.”

“Now I must introduce you to him. Do you have any small object on your person you can hand to me? It does not matter what it is.”

Menelaus sighed and pulled a fist-sized oblong stone out of a hanging fold of his bulky garment. “This is my honored and ancestral weapon. It is called Rock.”

Illiance took it gravely in both hands. “I happened to have understood you to have left this outside? Or so you said.”

“I said wrong. A Chimera is never without his weapon.”

Preceptor Illiance passed it to Mentor Ull, who held the stone delicately on his fingertips, bowed his head, inspected it for a long moment, before laying it carefully on the carpet. “It is both solid and humble, this stone, and will outlast many of the civilizations of man,” said Ull in flawless Iatric.

Menelaus rubbed his chin and cheek. “Pleased to meet you. I—uh—didn’t know you were savvy to my language.”

“Your word-forms are not particularly difficult,” said Ull ponderously. “It is your thought-forms that elude.”

“Thank you, sir. Um. I think.”

5. Myth Divarication

Mentor Ull pointed with one slender, powder blue finger up toward the curving ceiling

“Above awaits a relict from a relatively shallow stratum of the dig, but who may have information of allure to us. Carbon-14 decay dating puts him at era 63000 of our calendar, which is roughly 5200 years after the founding of Richmond. We happen to have some common language with him, but the particular dialect and declensions confound us. If it should occasion that you feel yourself morally obligated to translate between us accurately and clearly, then the flow of the events you set into motion, and our own, can become as one stream, without turbulence or complexity: a serene intersection.”

Menelaus asked, “Your prisoner upstairs, what could he know that would be so, ah, alluring to you, who live in this age?”

Ull said, “Like faded ink, the origin of the Tombs is fogged, and overwritten with the illuminations and shades of myth, and wish, and distortions imparted by interest or inattention. Yet the Tombs from all the continents retain the same basic features. All are armed and buried, but not far from some obvious landmark, usually an equestrian statue or horse-totem held in reverent regard by those who dwell nearby: sacred ground. Next, the Tombs are in remote but not inaccessible places. Third, there are always watchmen posted, who are thawed automatically when a stranger approaches. These watchmen emerge from a buried gatehouse always of the same design: smaller coffins for the watchmen; larger stalls for their white horses, a breed called Neohippus, which is otherwise extinct. Fourth, the hidden doors, when found, are marked with a cross formed by the intersection of four chevrons, shaped like an eight-pointed star. Can parallelism explain such coherence of items, enduring beyond the reach of records?”

“Well, if you ask me,” said Menelaus, rolling his eyes to the ceiling thoughtfully, “if they were not near landmarks, no clients could find them, but if they were too near places where people were, they’d be looted. So just by a natural selection, they would tend to end up in such locations. And the watchmen take on the protective coloration of successful Tombs, and so adopt their emblems. How’s that for a theory?”

“Ingenious,” murmured Illiance.

“It enjoys a certain superficial feasibility,” Ull said coldly, “but there are legends of Tomb systems buried even deeper, beneath the crust and well into the mantle, beyond where geophones or other seismic instruments reach. Maintaining such a system would require interconnection by depthtrain, which implies central organization. Only the examination of a working Tomb with a working depthtrain station would confirm the theory.

“By great good fortune,” continued Ull, “It so happens that a Tomb almost intact, suffering only minor surface damage, has been opened to our inspection, and the major automatic weapon systems hindered to such a degree that it allows the recovery of some coffins and the relicts therein to be examined. It would be erratic, the product of an overcomplicated sense of deference, not to exploit the opportunity.”

“That’s a debatable point,” drawled Menelaus. “You don’t want people pawing through your stuff while you are asleep, do you? And you don’t know what you are meddling with, or who or what you might stir up.”

Ull waved the objection aside with a small motion of his hand. “Our order is unattached to such formalities and scruples. The opportunity exists, and we exist, and our desires match with the facts of reality without undue transformation or distortion.

“The course suggesting itself is a natural one, and elegant,” Ull continued dourly, not smiling. “We take coffins from each layer, finding those on the upper layers whose knowledge of the immediate past allows us to find and communicate with those in the middle layers; and, when found, their knowledge is used to find and communicate with those in the deep. Soon, the knowledge of who and what made the Tombs, and for what purpose, will not be a matter of legend, rumor, and speculation. It will be the living and firsthand memory of someone in the Tomb itself. The Thaws will give their testimony and the Tomb will, by its own nature, reveal the secrets of the Tomb.”

Menelaus said, “Let me ask you straight up, gentlemen. What secret are you seeking? What is your point? You are committing what anyone would regard as a trespass and a crime of monstrous proportions. What do you need so badly that it is worth it?”

Illiance spoke up. Instead of answering, he asked, “Lance-Corporal Beta Anubis, are you familiar with the mathematical theory of divarication? Perhaps the question startles you—You have an expression on your face that is odd. You are staring.”

Menelaus said, “No, this is my normal expression. Merely the cast of my face. But divarication theory is a particular study of mine.”

Illiance tilted his head. “A historian has interest in mathematical theory? Unexpected.”

Menelaus uttered a noncommittal grunt. “What about it?”

Illiance said, “Divarication theory was originally devised in relation to information transmission systems, such as iterations of legacy computer data. To make a copy of a human mind into a machine emulation is fraught with risk of madness, merely because maintaining sanity is a difficult balance of a large number of information streams. A healthy informational system has self-correction features, methods of checking falsehoods, data mutations, and encouraging true ergo accurate iteration.”