“This is not ice. It is nanotechnological fluid. It is intelligent and active. The entire land surface of the globe may be covered with it. It is microscopic logic crystal. This is the Iron Ghost of the Nobilissimus Ximen del Azarchel. This ice; and that you see outside the door; the glacier beyond: His mind is now housed in a substance covering the planet. Of the volume of all the oceans of the world, I am not certain, but they may be his as well. The world is the Master of the World. All that remains is to wipe out the Tombs and eliminate the last of biological life. Nonmechanical life is no longer needed nor desired.

“And I—who was to be a part of the ascension—I have been left behind.”

The little bits of slush in his palm, the tiny fragments under his nails, began to glow with many colors.

6. The Last Message

Ctesibius slapped his hand against his knee, dashing the glowing droplets of snow from his hand. Like tears, they fell to the groundcloth and sputtered into darkness. “I can neither follow its thoughts nor attract its attention. This is the next evolutionary step of the human race. We have been standing and walking in it, and perhaps drinking it as well, taking it into our bodies. The frequencies used by the snowflakes to communicate one with the other I cannot detect.”

Menelaus stood looking down at the melting drops of snow in the cloth floor of the tent. “Damnation, but I hate nanotechnology. It gets everywhere! And if I had been smarter, I would have recognized this back in the shower tent. Remember how they made us all shower when we were first dug up? I detected particulate matter in the water stream, and I thought it was Blue Men nanotech. No. They just melted some snow and sprayed us down.”

Ctesibius said, “Do you see why your attempt is in vain? I could cup my hand and pick up a lump of snow with more intelligence and calculation power than every brain in this camp combined. I come from a day before the Giants burned the world, and survived only because the Giants were holding me for trial, and they thought it better I should be in hibernation than that I should perish in their fire. But, as I said, three times I made mental union with my Glorified Self in the infosphere, and he was in communion with Exarchel, who was an emulation of the only sane one of the three posthumans, the Nobilissimus del Azarchel. I saw the Cliometric calculations the parliament of Ghosts were contemplating. I know the scope of history.”

Menelaus said, “And what did you see?”

“It is all a falsehood. Del Azarchel never intended this world to bring forth the next evolutionary step beyond man.”

“Never intended? What the hell do you mean? His attempts have been going on for eight thousand one hundred years plus change! There is nothing else he is doing! You tell me what you know, you Swiss cheese head, or I’ll drill you a few more of them ugly holes!” But he realized he was shouting in English, and that the other man was looking at him with a blank-eyed, aloof, and uninterested glare.

Ctesibius said, “I will trouble to say no more. I have outlived my mind and soul, my world, and my usefulness. The asymptote has come and gone, and left all merely living things behind, far behind. My Glorified version did not survive the asymptote, and so no memory of mine will be preserved to the end of the universe.

“To be immortal is the only goal worth seeking. All else is merely vanity, for it will be swallowed by entropy, and perish.

“Whether the Blue Interfacers kill me or spare me, it means nothing to me. I have given you the help you need: My counsel is that you embrace despair and die, as I myself shall do. The audience is ended. Depart.”

At that moment, there came a noise of barking dogs and walking automata outside, and Menelaus could tarry for no more questions.

7. Approaching the Fourth Door

The wind had picked up, and sent streamers and shimmers of snowflakes racing along the ground, white dust devils, and plumes fled horizontally from each tree branch or dune-crest, so that anyone facing into the wind soon had a light crust of frost caking his windward side. Despite this, the sky was loftily blue overhead. Only in the south, opposite the glancing blue ridgeline of the glacier, was there a line of dark clouds, presaging storm.

Ahead of the dogs were the several of the Blue Men. Menelaus was familiar with Ull, Yndelf, Yndech, and Ydmoy. Menelaus heard the others being addressed: Docent Aarthroy was a diffident and thickset youth with a heavily gemmed coat, a head taller than the others. Behind Aarthroy were two serene, wrinkle-faced elders called Preceptor Orovoy and Invigilator Saaev.

Of Illiance there was no sign.

The dogs were leaping and gamboling, and the barks rang out along the snowy hillside with sharp, flat, echoes.

The Blue Men seemingly took no notice whatever of the snow, picked their way delicately across the snowdrifts, their slippers leaving footfalls as tiny as deer prints in the drift, and they walked upright, gems winking in their long coats, stately as a procession. Their heads did not seem to bob up and down as they moved, so it almost looked like they were gliding on the icy surface. Despite their reserve, there was an atmosphere of tense eagerness around them, a gleaming eye or quickly hidden smile showing their anticipation.

From the rear approached Preceptor Naar, leading a clattering flotilla of striding and loping machines, including the fifteen that had been outfitted with steam-powered Gatling guns.

Out in the front of the procession, waving his hands high in the air with every exclamation and snapping his fingers whenever he made a rhyme, the blond-haired, dark-skinned and sly-eyed Larz. Yndelf, Yndech, and Ydmoy (who were nearest him) must have understood enough of the dialect of late-period Chimerical to keep the conversation going with a question now and again; or perhaps Larz spoke merely for the pleasure of it, which he evidently relished.

In the hands of Ull was a serpentine, one of those long semi-intelligent whips made of memory metal used as ceremonial weapons by the Chimerae. Its hilt was wrapped with blue and red silk, and decorative amulets of carved and painted wood had been fitted over the original hilt and control-points.

Menelaus stood with Yuen and Daae amid the pines, hidden by the thick needles from a casual glance from below. He stood with his hood pulled close against the bite of the wind.

The other two stood as motionless as hunting cats. When the last of the procession passed out of sight between the snowy hillocks below, at a silent sign, the two turned and loped across the snow with alarming speed. Menelaus followed, careful to impersonate their peculiar way of running, which was to lean forward with their arms held horizontally behind them. They came shortly to a hill as even and symmetrical as an upended bowl. When they came up the slope, Menelaus felt in his implants a sudden silence of the surrounding signal traffic: an invisible field like a Faraday cage was around them, blocking radio and microwave.

8. The Rape of Arroglint

Yuen spoke without preamble to Daae. “The Blue Man called Ull has touched the sacred scourge, Arroglint the Fortunate, of the Yuen clan. I must either spill his blood, or request a reduction in rank to nonliving.”

Daae said, “Request denied. Ritual suicide is not in the best interest of the High Command at this time, as it would reduce our effective fighting force of Alphas by one half.”

Menelaus interrupted in a angry voice, “Damn! Did those thieving lepers actually break the seals on your coffin footlocker, Yuen? You’re not horsechafing my breeches? No matter how much they do, each time I hear of another crime, it seems worse! If the Judge of Ages were actually real, he would hide them till they squealed like stuck pigs, or rip off their heads and dook down their neck holes. No one breaks what he has sealed and lives to boast of it! Do they think they are immune?”