This was what the ELF antennae had just picked up, and Oenoe, unable to translate it, sent it along to him through the tree network.

His message back to Oenoe—SOMEONE HEARD OUR CARRIER WAVE STOP STOP BROADCASTING STOP

Her reply—WHAT MESSAGE QUESTION

His—NO WORDS JUST TIME DATE AND COORDINATES STOP THEY ARE COMING HERE STOP

Hers—WHEN QUESTION

His—THIRTY HOURS STOP

Hers—WHO QUESTION

But for that, he had no answer to give her.

In his mind’s eye, he could see the acre-sized hieroglyph made of recursively interlocking Mandlebrot hieroglyphs: and he realized with a shock that this was not a segment of the Monument, neither of the deciphered part nor the undeciphered. This meant it was a new composition.

Back during the Second Space Age, when the Monument had first been discovered and photographed by the unmanned interstellar vessel NTL Croesus, a mathematician named Chandrapur had published a monograph on the degree of information embedded in the Monument writing system. Each glyph was composed of smaller subglyphs and also formed part of a larger superglyph, so that the disquiparant relationships between the microscopic and macroscopic also contained additional information. Dr. Chandrapur estimated the machine calculation time needed to formulate a single square inch of glyph material, and the numbers were astronomical. To fill one acre, much less a small moon, was a feat computers as large as planets working for tens of thousands of years could not accomplish.

Menelaus looked carefully in his mind’s eye at the immense logoglyph. Assuming it was not a new composition, but merely the normal method of taking parts from here and there and stringing them together without concern for any higher-order resonance or double meanings, there should be a detectable pattern relating some sections here to what Montrose had memorized of the Monument surface. Many minutes passed while he went through pattern after pattern. There was no resemblance.

The Monument code, by any account, was the most awkward and longwinded system of communication imaginable. The way they wrote the number equaling 4,294,967,296 was not to write 232 but instead was to make four billion little strokes around the edge of a logarithmic spiral: and then to repeat the number in multiple different locations embedded within the first in certain mathematically significant patterns, so as to hint that it was deliberate communication and not an unintentional pattern caused by coincidence. It took more than one acre to say something as simple as a time and place of a rendezvous.

But who had sent it? He concentrated, the image becoming clearer and clearer to him until the trees around him almost seemed not to be there. His head began to throb in time with this heartbeat.

There was a danger inherent in becoming too fascinated with a problem. His posthuman brain structure was flexible enough that it could turn more and more of its capacity to bear on one issue, and hence lose track of more and more things. It did not seem fair that smarter people, in some ways, were more easily to befuddle than simpler people. But there was, of course, a reason why Einstein was absentminded.

There were four separate human mathematical systems, like pidgin languages, made partly of human math and partly of Monument formalities, that various ages in history had devised. Menelaus could think of no reason for using a new composition method to write a new message from scratch, unless …

… Unless it was a message not from any intelligence born of Mother Earth.

He was jarred out of his reverie. In the distance, he heard the horns of the dog things blowing. Reveille had come some forty minutes earlier than it did yesterday. There was no way to get Soorm and Oenoe out from the Tombs unseen and down the hill back to their prison yard in the time remaining before morning inspection without being seen.

He ground his teeth.—STAY THERE FOOD IN LOCKERS DO NOT NOT NOT TOUCH ANY MARKED RED AREAS—but static answered him. The wind stirring the leaves, or perhaps the motion of his arm had changed the energy contour of the cloak, and the connection was lost.

“Pox and damnation,” he muttered. “I surely don’t feel like the smartest man in the world this day.”

But by that time, he was running down the slope, throwing off his robe, angling toward where he calculated the nearest automaton patrol would be.

10

The Testament of Kine Larz of Gutter

1. The Missing Windcraft

When Menelaus returned, he was surprised to see that only about thirty of the prisoners were standing in ranks before their metallic tents. The dog things were agitated: some of them were brandishing their muskets at the prisoners; others were on all fours running in circles around the prison yard, casting for scent.

Through his implants, Menelaus was able to send a signal to the other tents. The return pulse told him that they were still locked and the remaining prisoners still inside. The several little Blue Men present showed no particular outward sign of excitement, but the jewels on their coats flickered, and Menelaus could detect through the ache in his back teeth that high-compression data bursts were passing between them.

His implants then picked up a burst of radio-noise from beyond the fence, from near the airfield, startling as a trumpet call. All save two of the Blue Men turned in unison and began walking slowly and gravely in the direction of the camp gate. Half the dog things began loping pell-mell toward the gate, running in no particular order, their tongues lolling. Of the remaining dogs, some were near the prisoners, brandishing their muskets and snarling, and the others ran this way and that like mad things, barking.

Preceptor Naar, a Blue Man whose only distinguishing feature was that he was a somewhat more purple shade of blue than the others, was one of those who had stayed behind to guard the prisoners. Menelaus could see a dozen of Naar’s black and yellow automata had unlimbered their belt-fed steam-powered cannon from their insectoid shoulders, or raised their shovel blades menacingly. There were only seven of the Chimerae outside the locked tents, and this did not include any Alphas, so the display of menacing weapons did not provoke a suicide-charge.

The second Blue Man present was named Bedel Unwing, who worked in the egg-shaped powerhouse at the corner of the fence. He was the only Blue who had any trace of hair: little eccentric tufts of white wisp growing about his ears. He was also the only one who seemed to work with his hands: he carried a tool belt and hung a pair of goggles by a strap about his neck. All his gems were on the back of his coat, none on the front, as if to protect them from sparks or stains from his work.

Menelaus had long since programmed the metallic smartfabric in his robes to baffle and jinx the sensitive rays issuing from the logic diamonds with which the Blue Men adorned their coats. Menelaus was unfortunately visible to the automata the moment he donned the cloak.

It was a delicate business to elude the dogs, the Blue Man’s eyesight, his gems, and the automata, but Menelaus was able to detect the emergent patterns in their apparently chaotic eye and camera movements and locations, slip from tree to tree and stone to stone, and pelt across the open ground separating the tree line from the back side of the line of tents without being seen.

He used his implants to order Mickey’s tent to unseal the groundcloth from the back fabric, and to become momentarily as pliant as silk. He slipped under the tent flap and was inside.

Inside, the air was nigh opaque with fume. There was Melechemoshemyazanagual in all his glorious rotundity, eyes red and watering, and a small fire of opiate herbs burning in the midst of the cylindrical chamber pot.