“My ears take no joy from your saying, Your Honor, not understanding their import.”

“It means I am royally disadvantaged again. My critters, the machines that work for me, have been corrupted by an outside source. Either that or someone changed all the passcodes. Plan B: Can you switch the door automatics from nonlethal to lethal? The Blues have done something to prevent a massive retaliation from being triggered, as if they know the response pattern.”

“The doors will not answer our pleas at all.”

“More damnation. Plan C: Have you been able to raise any signal patterns on the radio on any frequencies?”

“There is a set of powerful static electric discharges.”

“Thunderstorm?”

Instead of answering, her voice was replaced by a cracking and crackling noise, irregularly repeated, like tinfoil being crumbled then torn.

He said, “Odd. It’s a mass of metal moving through the atmosphere, picking up static electricity by friction against different air layers. What the pox could it be? What the pox is that big?”

She said, “Can you truly deduce this by listening to … hisses and snaps?”

“Posthuman brains are good for something: I can plot the discharges on a graph in my head and deduce the properties of the originating mass. You get a static discharge pattern like that from an improperly grounded space elevator cable. It may be a superscraper. Put up by someone after my systems went blind in the ninety-fifth century.”

“Lovely Soorm and I, we have triangulated; and one hundred and thirty miles southeast of here is where the discharges occurred.”

“That’s in the Wake County, near Raleigh.… Occurred? Past tense?”

“We have checked it again. It is moving in a straight line toward this place. If its rate does not change, it will be here tomorrow.”

“Same day that whoever is active on the three- to thirty-megahertz band is coming. Now I am totally creeped out. The Hyades cannot have arrived before schedule. We still have five hundred years to spare. They don’t have the mass to burn to make that acceleration, and human civilization would have seen additional acceleration laserlight from Epsilon Taurus pointed our way one hundred and fifty years ago … uh … if there had been any human civilization one hundred and fifty years ago. Does that mean we cannot trust the Monument notation? The formula for their energy budget for the conquest of any solar system fitting our profile was clear. But if their civilization formula can change over time, it doesn’t serve any point!” Menelaus realized he was speaking in English, and gritted his teeth to silence himself. “Okay, Montrose, you gotta stop talking to yourself. That includes no talking to yourself to tell yourself to stop talking to yourself. And now is not the time to go crazy. Uh, again.”

Oenoe said in her language, “Your Honor, what is coming?”

“I don’t know. Something tall. In the meantime, I am worried about you and Soorm. How you two making out?”

“Soorm refuses the copulation arts.”

“Uh, no, I was asking whether you were surviving.”

“Surviving without the copulation arts? The idea is obtuse.”

“Woman, half the songs in Texas are about the bad results of cheating on your mate. The other half are about unemployment. Aren’t you married? You’d best act it!”

“Have I not acted so? Your ways are strange, and it seems insulting to treat Soorm as one might treat one of the nonzoophiliaworthy animals, but such is the code I adopted when I wed, and so do I comport myself. I did not say I offered the love-sports to Soorm; I merely said he does not participate.”

“Yeah, but I got to wonder about any folk in whose language nonzoophiliaworthy is a single word.…”

“I wonder of you, Tomb-maker, who inhabit this buried hell where there is no glance of sun nor guffaw of wind. My lord husband is he for whom I yearn, as you for your wife, you who dwell in misery forever. And have you found him? Is he in the Blue Man hospital beyond the most unlovely fence?”

“Haven’t found him and can’t confirm where he is. Did you find any food stores down there in your nonallergenic spectrum?”

“Feasts beyond count, and tools, and weapons, and all your treasures of many libraries.”

“Whoa! Are you on the Tenth Level?”

“Indeed.”

“I mean, right now, right this second?”

“Yes, beloved Judge. Soorm, in whom my heart delights, most carefully noted the position where air pockets had been trapped against irregularities in the roof, and he is mightily strong, strong enough to tow me in an airtight coffin behind him, from pocket to pocket of air.”

“But you found food. Food supplies are in large metal lockers to one side of the main corridor, and the armory is just beyond that. Is there a blank panel of wall between the two that you can see? And a decoration along the wall at eye height, shaped like scallop shells and roses?”

“It is not at my eye height, Your Honor.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Yes, beloved.”

“Go back to calling me that.”

“Yes, Your Honor. For what purpose do I behold this decoration?”

“The first and the third scallops from the southern wall are fakes made of glass. Smash them. Inside are two red D-rings.”

“The glass was smashed long ago. I see two red metal bits shaped like hollow plectra. They are too tall for me to reach.”

“Get Soorm to grab them, one in each hand, and pull.”

“You told us to touch nothing painted red.”

“Pull. The doors will open. Don’t step inside.”

“Zxx!”

Since she was sending only a simulacrum of her voice over the communication link, Oenoe must have dropped her signal board, or strummed a false note.

The played version of her voice he was hearing suddenly sounded dull and monotone. She was too excited to remember to put in nuances of pitch and accent. “I see slumbering warriors, knights of ninety-eight count, and great white beasts beside them, frozen, like deer, but not deer: the long dead horses of man. Treasures of many sorts are stored in their locker below the coffins, and massive metal apes with no faces, statues—they are suits of armor, stand at the head, with flags and pennants displayed. I see on the walls arms and weapons of many shapes, richly adorned, terrible, unnatural, deadly, and the far wall shows racks upon racks of missiles, and carriages and caissons. The treasures overflow the lockers, and coins of many different years and aeons lie underfoot, bright as fallen leaves—”

Menelaus interrupted. “Don’t step into the chamber! Those are my men. With that armor, they can wrestle Giants, and with those missiles, they can shoot down Sylphs. Ha-ha! Just one of those guys up and about could whip these dogs and send them whining, and the Blue Men would dance jigs or get their toes shot off. This whole nightmare would be over, and a little brutal justice would get done damn quick!”

“I rejoice in your joy. My nipples harden with exquisite excitement!”

“Yeah, doll, thanks for the little mental image. Can you describe the pattern of lights on the nearest coffin?”

“There are no lights at all, Your Honor.”

“Pest-il-ence with a capital Pest!”

“They are dead…?”

“Not a bit. The nanotech fluid keeping them alive is designed to power itself from Brownian motions of the surrounding molecules. They need external power to wake up, though, because the sequences needs to be computed, and it is unique not just for every man, but for every bodily state the man passes through when he sleeps.”

“Then how do we wake them?”

“We have to find a way to get some of those coffins, maybe only one, up to the Fourth Level. The power cell you are using to run the radio shack is compatible with the coffin fittings. Once it is powered up, you can initiate a thaw sequence. Even so, it will take hours, maybe days to charge up from a full cold-stop.”