How else was she like a Hermeticist? For example, did she know the Monument math?

As he approached, she turned from her meal, and rose to her feet, and looked up at him with an expressionless, inhuman stare.

The woman of A.D. 10100 had no sclera nor iris in her eye: every part of her eyes glittered black as a well of ink, so that she seemed blind. She had no eyebrows, and this gave her face a masklike appearance. Small, well-shaped, and symmetrical growths that no doubt were extra sense organs protruded from her skull: there were infrared pits like dimples on her cheekbones below her eyes, and also were two stubs of dark material above her eyes, which expanded as she turned her attention toward Menelaus. He guessed they were ultraviolet sensors. Above this, she had the same golden tendrils that the Grays sported issuing from her brow, except that her tendrils were so long, they fell to her shoulders. Smaller tendrils of silver hung down parallel to the gold ones, and feathery antennae of metallic blue likewise. Beneath each ear, high on her neck, were what looked like secondary ears, like folded flower petals made of flesh.

She was tall and slender, neither so lovely as a Nymph nor so ugly as a Witch. Her skin was almost as pale as an albino’s, but there was a silvery sheen or highlight to her flesh reminiscent of the Grays. Her hair was a dark cap above the ears, but the lower hemisphere of the back of her head was shaved, a tonsure which emphasized the odd elongation of her neck. The hair was longer in front than back: two locks of hair hung down before her ears to her jawline, framing her face. Her lips were a wide red oval, stark in the paleness of her skin, and her eyes were magnetically and inhumanly dark, as if the midnight sky were using her face as a mask. Her features were too long, too harsh, too serene to be beautiful.

Menelaus looked around the tent. There were, for once, no Blue Men here watching the revenants. All were occupied preparing for Larz to attempt the doors. There were dog things as guards, but they were well away from the dark-eyed woman.

He would have greatly preferred a slower and more thoughtful approach to making “first contact” with this woman, whatever species of humanity she might be. Using his implants on a short-range setting, he sent a Monument-hieroglyph message to her on several frequencies in several formats. Menelaus knew he was taking a risk using his implants inside a tent, which had circuits for detecting such energy activity.

Her antennae twitched but otherwise her face showed no reaction.

Menelaus spelled out the Monument hieroglyph that meant “unit” or “name” or “identity.” Monument code was a very time-consuming method of spelling out a message, even with an electric signal. The other Thaws in the tent were watching as the two stood looking eye to eye, neither apparently saying anything. The Chimerae seemed particularly interested, or perhaps were bewildered that Beta Anubis had not come over first to salute the Alphas present.

Once he had given the last nondiatonic note equivalent of the symbol for identity, he pointed at her, and cupped his ear.

She parted her lips, and a pleasant female voice issue from her throat as if from a hidden mic. She did not seem to have a tongue. The voice from her throat said, or sang, “Alalloel.”

Then she pointed at him and cupped her ear.

Very pleased at this progress, Menelaus pointed at himself and said, “Anubis.”

Alalloel (if that was her name) gave him a look of withering scorn and turned away. She sat and picked up her bowl of gruel.

4. Mystical Garb

At that moment, Mickey came in through the tent flap, blowing like a whale and stamping his feet. With him were two other Witch-men, Twardowski of Wkra and Drosselmeyer of Detroit. In their hands were fabrics of fabulous colors and hues, a stack of conical hats piled one atop another, rolls of fabric under each arm. Mickey strode hugely over to the circle of Witches, with Twardowski and Drosselmeyer capering behind, and with a gigantic cries, the three threw what they carried into the air above their heads.

All the Witches cried and screamed and laughed with delight, and some made howls and hoots like animals. It was their robes and garbs and costumes stolen from them by the Blue Men when they slept, now returned: shimmering red silks, satins white as snow, sable cloaks gemmed with patterns of stars and cabalistic signs.

Menelaus saw the flinty looks on the faces the Hormagaunts. The female Clade-dweller from the time of the Hormagaunts, Prissy Pskov, was looking particularly irate, and the porcupine quills in her mane of hair stood on her scalp and swayed angrily.

There were also flinty looks on the faces of the Chimerae, but such was their normal expression, so it was hard to say if they noticed the change of wardrobe. The Nymphs did not look bitter, but merely envious in an innocent fashion: and two of them, girls nubile and perfect in beauty, with yellow skins and shining black hair, tiptoed closer to the celebration of fabric and tried to stroke the stray scarf or pelisse that fluttered to the mats.

Menelaus deduced the reasons the Blue Men had returned the garb. First, Witch biometric was more sensitive to changes in costume than other races, so the recognition cameras in the Tomb were more likely to let pass a Witch in the same ritual garb he wore when he was interred. Second, by showing favoritism to an historically early group the later groups knew and disliked (for historical memory runs long), the Blue Men introduced an aggravating element of jealousy to hinder a unified conspiracy of the prisoners against them. Both reasons suggested that the Blue Men intended a very serious assault on the Fourth Door, no doubt with a backup plan involving war machines and siege equipment in case the boasts of Larz proved hollow.

This meant time was short.

Menelaus tried to catch caught Mickey’s eye, but that worthy was preoccupied passing out their robes to the delighted men and women of the Witch era.

The Witches retained a modesty custom, and so each man removed to his tent to change clothes. Mickey, however, was too impatient to climb back in his beloved robes, and so by pantomime he beckoned the Nymphs over to him.

Their names were Aea, Daeira, Ianassa, and Thysa, and they ranged from achingly sweet-faced to breathtakingly lovely to maddeningly voluptuous. All wore their hair to waist length or longer, and within the shadowed eaves of their bangs, their eyes were as mysterious and exquisite as the eyes of a tigress at midnight, when her pupils are bright as dark mirrors and round as the moon. To watch them walk was to see the music of flute, viols, and clashing bangles woven in song.

Smiling softly, with flowers of several hues grown from cooking coffins in their coiffures, swaying on silent steps, they came. Mickey had them turn their backs and hold up the straw floor mats behind them, to screen his vast bulk while he changed garments. They giggled, peered over their shoulders, and made sly rhymes to one another in their soft tongue. Mickey rewarded them with smiles and pinches on the cheek and with the voluminous silk of his undertunic, a vast enough fabric that, with a little clever work with needle and thread, they could all have silk blouses reaching at least to midthigh.

The Nymphs were kissing and fondling and petting Mickey, cooing their thanks in their melodic language, and the rest of the mess tent looked on in various shades of wonder or disgust, when Montrose walked through the midst of the warmly scented Nymph flesh, avoiding the various curves and elbows and clouds of lustrous black hair, took Mickey by the elbow, and guided him out of the mess tent into the snow.

The robes were splendid: chasuble; stole; maniple; burse in silks so black, they seemed almost purple; satins as scarlet as spurting blood, trimmed in the fur of winter ermine; sleeves long enough to sweep the ground with cuffs deep enough to hide a pumpkin; cinctures with tassels as long; shoes with points as curled a ram’s horn—and over all, inscribed with Icelandic runes, uncial elf-script, zodiacal, and esoteric signs, Solomonic seals circled by Latinate incantations and Monument hieroglyphs, trimmed in a geometric galloon. On his broad back was a shape of the cabalistic tree of life in colored thread, surrounded by Chinese trigrams, and an endless pattern of woven mazes.