On his skull an unlikely seventeen-inch-high conical cap loomed and nodded, dripping with earflaps and neck scarf and chin strap and tassels, another scarf floating from the peak, absurd with a false mouth and two squinting decorations like eyes, with lids that opened and shut; and the brim was a dazzle of star patterns picked out in moonstones.

Menelaus could read Monument glyphs, as well as Icelandic and Latin, and knew the writings spelled out gibberish.

Mickey was grinning like an idiot. “Those geisha girls are certainly fine-looking! Such soft hands and long fingers! I will chain them with chains of gold in my floating harem of love when I sail about the world in a houseboat, and dote on them. They can trim the sails and prepare the meals, and during the long, warm, tropic nights … But, no! Gold sinks. I will adorn them in cork vests. Although with mammary glands so globular, they look buoyant enough—”

“Snap out of it, Romeo. You have a noseful of bioengineered pheromones. Your trace-amine-associated olfactory receptors just sent a complex chemosign to your orbitofrontal cortex, fusiform cortex, and right hypothalamus, and triggered an aphrodisiac response. By adjusting their allomones, they could have made you sexually attracted to a dog thing or an old tree stump. You are lucky they did not have their gear with them, or you’d be the one in their harem.”

“Gaah! You make life sound like a cold clockwork mechanism. I feel the stirring of the elemental powers of life, the very earth-energy itself! Those geisha girls—”

“Those ‘geisha girls’ as you call them, damn well ruled the eras from which they come. Not just the territory and the menfolk, but every living creature down to insects and bacteria were domesticated and in the palm of their oh-so-soft and gentle hands. You might escape because your olfactory and endocrinal systems are not designed and bred to be vulnerable to every nuance of their scent cues and flower language. Your brain is too primitive—if you are lucky—for them to invade it chemically and get complete control. They come from your future: the biopsychological mechanisms you Witches were beginning to play with, they actually understand. So I would not toy with those women, big buddy.”

“You should beware yourself. Did you not see the killing ferocity in the eyes of the Chimerae when you paid no obeisance to their Alphas, but came and touched me, an unclean Witch, and drew me aside to speak?”

“Nah, that is just their normal level of killing ferocity. When they get really puckered, they start combing their hair. Besides, they done told me to talk to the other Thaws and gather troops. Well, I am telling you, start gathering. Can you actually get your Witches from so many different periods to work together? I see some from the Nameless Empire period, another from the Sunless times, and the little blonde is from the days before the Witches were called Witches, the Simon Family era.”

Mickey said, “The little blonde, Fatin, is the key to winning the loyalty of the rest. She is actually the eldest virgin here, and this gives her power over us. But I have convinced her that I know secrets of many ages that passed while she slept, and so you will have to make it look like I do. What happened?”

“One of the Chimerae, a Kine named Larz, claims he can open the fourth door and identify the Judge of Ages. He’s lying, but it is going to draw all the Blues away from the other spots they’re protecting, such as the gate, the airfield, the hospital.”

“What if he opens the door for them? Or they break it down without him?”

“Ah—well, there are enough biological traces of me down there, not to mention internment records, or patterns in the arrangement of controls and architecture indicative of particular behaviors of mine—hellfire and pox, I left a coffeepot sitting on a plate down there, and I know I am the only man left alive who drinks that Arbuckle’s brown gargle—that anyone of my level of intelligence could figure out pretty damn quickly where I am hiding. Little Illiance is maybe two steps away from figuring it out anyway. We can meet in a large group on the shielded hilltop near the pass leading to the dig: this is a good chance to gather together in a large group without the dogs noticing and breaking it up. Go!”

Mickey departed, moving surprisingly quickly and silently for a man so large. Menelaus decided his fine new duds added a lightness to his step.

Montrose saw the flap of the mess tent move. Ctesibius the Savant had emerged, his face as cool and dignified as the face of the statue of the pharaoh Ozymandias. Ctesibius began to walk with slow and stately step, his hands clasped behind him, his head hooded in black cloth, toward the prison yard where the other tents were, all alone.

5. The Servant of the Machine

By the time Menelaus caught up with him, Ctesibius was at the flap of his sleeping tent. Menelaus reached out with his implants to deactivate the espionage recorders woven into the tent fabric and found to his shock that they were already deactivated.

Ctesibius was a dark-eyed, dark-haired man of olive complexion. He had fine, neatly arranged features slanting down to a narrow chin. He had the thin-fingered but muscular hands of a pianist. There were three diamond-shaped tattoos on his forehead in a down-pointing triangle, and additional lines of ink running from the outer corners of his eyes to hairline above his temples, and from the corners of his mouth to his jaw, giving him an oddly masklike but solemn appearance.

The man showed no surprise at Menelaus’ approach, but merely threw wide the tent flap and gestured politely for the other to follow him inside. Ctesibius sat on the metallic cot and drew around his shoulders the blue blanket provided, but he wore it as if had been ermine.

Menelaus addressed him in three different tongues. The man did not speak Merikan or Sylph, but understood the Merikan/Spanish/Nipponese pidgin dialect known as Pre-Anglatino. The conversation was halting, but not impossible. The difference was no greater than the gap in language between an Englishmen of A.D. 1500 and a Saxon of A.D. 1000.

Menelaus said, “I understand Savant, but cannot speak it. If you can jinx their smartmetal, you should have been helping us plan our escape, pal.”

The man uttered the rapid noises of Savant modulator-demodulator code. A second channel of information carried nonverbal cues, tones of voice, body language. Hence, in this second channel of information, even though not in real life, the man’s tone of voice was ponderous, his expressive grave. “Your words are improper, an affront. Am I not an elevated being of the third recital?”

“Are you not a prisoner in a death camp? Just today one of the Blue Men said he was going to kill us all, since we cannot serve in their society, even as slaves.”

With a nonexistent gesture in this information channel, Ctesibius pointed significantly at the three diamonds inked on his brow. “Do I fear death? What you see before you is a mere vessel of flesh. My soul and information have passed into the infosphere not once, but three times, and achieved a level of perfection undreamed by mere hylic and physical men!”

Menelaus narrowed his eyes. “You’re a Ghostfather. A Servant of the Machine.”

The man looked disdainful. “That is not the polite term. I have downloaded my brain information into the Xypotech system three times. I am a Savant of the Machine, not ‘servant.’ The partnership is mutual and cooperative. My name is Ctesibius, my title is Glorified, and you may address me as Donator. I am an Endocist.”

“I don’t know that word, ah, Donator Ctesibius.”

“An exorcist is one who casts a spirit out. I am one who casts my spirit in. The brain-reading and emulation process is very involved, and requires specific mental disciplines to endure without harm, and without data-distortion on the other side.”