Daae said, “Who leads their party? He looks like a poorly bred Gamma of our era.”

“He’s unmodified. His stock name is Quire, civilian; his agnomen, Larz. I counted him in the tally.”

Yuen’s face, without moving a muscle, grew ferocious. “A Kine! Is that one of our Kine leading their party? He earns a slow death, perhaps by flaying, for this insubordination.”

Menelaus nodded. “If things were as they appeared, of course, Alpha-Steadholder, you would be correct. But I urge patience!”

Daae regarded Menelaus with narrowed eyes. “Rumor has already reached us that the Kine says he can pry open the Tombs and deliver the Judge of Ages to the hands of the Blue Men. Do you imply that the Kine acts at your direction, Beta Lancer? Is he a double agent?”

“No and yes, Alpha Captain. I gave no orders and don’t know his plans, but he is clearly attempting to deceive them, and so, technically speaking, that would make him a double agent. Who does he work for? He has been kept in the hospital beyond the wire until now. I don’t know who he has talked to.”

Yuen said, “We should still flay him as an example to other Kine, who will otherwise revolt.”

Menelaus said dryly, “That precaution, though wise, is somewhat tardy. The Kine rose up in revolt and overthrew the Command in A.D. 5900. Except for the other three here in the camp, our Kine are as extinct as Chimerae.”

Daae silenced them with a slight, almost invisible motion of his head. “The conversation is supervacaneous.” He used a Chimerical word meaning “serving no military purpose.” “I see the Blues and their dogs and their machines approaching the dig. What do the Loyal and Proven of the Command have to say about the feasibility of attack?”

Daae looked at Yuen. Yuen said, “As soon as they reach the level that contains the ratiotech brain operating the Tomb defenses and coffin traffic, they can have the coffins guard us and send the dogs to go play. The arsenals just of buried Chimerae would strengthen them immensely: they could turn a wing of the Tombs into a prison far more secure that this lazy jury-rig of wire and tower. We must stop them. Kine Larz is the only one we need to kill. One of our Beta Maidens could pierce him with an arrow.”

Daae looked at Menelaus, who said, “Premature! Our chance of victory is slender. I strongly recommend a target in the opposite direction: now is the time to rush the wire. All the cannon-bearing automata are headed for the dig; a skeleton crew of dog things remains behind.”

Daae said, “To what end? What is our tactical goal, Beta Anubis?”

Menelaus said, “Sir! To rescue the Giant and the Knight, the posthuman and the servant of the Judge of Ages, and perhaps the Scholar as well, and use their expertise to seize control of the stores, supplies, weapons, and powerhouse of the Blues beyond the wire, then to close and hold the gate against them, and commandeer the aircraft. With air superiority, we can crush them.”

Yuen said, “Not if they force the door and retreat into the Tombs. I will point out that Anubis suggested the opposite strategy not long ago, and boasted that the Tombs have supplies to withstand a siege forever.”

Menelaus said, “They cannot force the door.”

The cold and stony eyes of Daae narrowed microscopically. He seemed intent. “You speak as if certain.”

“I am.”

“Justify this.”

Menelaus pointed. “Our Kine there, one of our cattle from our period of history, has buffaloed the Blues into thinking he can use Alpha Yuen’s weapon’s onboard brain to jinx the security on the automatics guarding the fourth door. It is some sort of computer-fraud technique from the last period of Chimera dominion, right before the Nymphs took over, called snake-charming.”

Daae said, “Since Larz Quire comes from our future, why are you so certain of his lack of capability?”

“Because that is not Larz Quire.”

“Explain.”

“There is no such person.”

“And yet my eyes say otherwise, Beta Anubis, for there he is.”

“Larz of the Gutter is a fictional character from a story called ‘Streetlaw Larz on the Isle of Fear’ written one hundred years before that man, whoever he is, was born.”

9. Hireling Bretchlouder on the Island of Foehr

Daae and Yuen narrowed their eyes abruptly while visibly raising their brows, a change of expression that was the Chimera equivalent to leaping about with mouths agape while whooping in surprise and astonishment.

Menelaus explained. “During the decline of the World Empire, when law and discipline broke down, Kine and Gammas often hired private facilitators to investigate crime and retaliate against wrongdoers. A romantic myth surrounded these law-of-the-street hirelings, but they did exist. One was named Larslin Bretchlouder.

“This Bretchlouder led a squad of mercenaries to assault the heavily fortified spaceport on Foehr Island, which is a real island in the North Sea, off the coast of Denmark. The last of the Imperator-Generals of the Germanic Ursine lineage moved his headquarters from the Imperial Capital at Richmond to Fortress Ravin on Foehr Island, because it was the only spaceport that had survived the succession war, and because the main crisis of his reign was the failure of the Cities in Space.

“The tale gets stranger. One of the Governor’s general staff was a civilian thawed from a long-vanished prior aeon, a crewman of the NTL Hermetic. As the only known survivor of a long-term space expedition from Second Age of Space, the choice was a logical one to serve as scientific adviser. That crewman’s name was D’Aragó.

“However, D’Aragó experimented with artificial intelligence, with Xypotechnology, and with the computer emulation of human brains, the abomination of Savantry, which has always been strictly forbidden under Chimera law not just in your own, but in all periods of Chimera history.

“Bretchlouder and his squad entered the island fortress unopposed, found and assassinated D’Aragó. The man who actually shot him was a member of the team purporting to be the Judge of Ages, someone come from the far past to kill an old foe for reasons both ancient and of no interest to the generation then current. Some of the images and sound files from his aiming camera survived, but no images of him.

“The fortress came under fire, or was destroyed by sabotage that same night, and so we will never know what really happened. Sober scholars from later time periods deduce that Bretchlouder was hired by the Imperator-General or someone in His Imperial Excellency’s innermost circle of favorites to do away with D’Aragó. Nothing explains how Bretchlouder’s assassination squad entered the most heavily guarded fortress on the planet without opposition, unless the gates had been opened for them from the inside.

“However, since both the Imperator-General and most of his general staff perished when the last spaceport on Earth burned, the evidence perished with them.”

Yuen said, “How can you know all this?”

Menelaus said, “I was ordered to study the decline of civilization. The end of the Ursine lineage, and the destruction of the last spaceport, figured prominently in the end of the Third Space Age. Without orbital support, the Command could not repress simultaneous rebellions, sea piracy, and work-revolts on a worldwide scale. I woke in a period where there were still some libraries and archives intact. The radioactive scald of Foehr Island was much studied and, as I mentioned, made into a popular fiction starring an invented hero. These were inexpensively produced texts called cheaplies printed without formatting onto pulp or scrap.”

Daae nodded. “They had them in my day. Cleaning the cheaplies out of the barracks and schools was a recurring problem. They were pornographic tales, where some low-caste but honest hero is saving a highbred Alpha lady from Witches or AWOLs or Pirates, or from the Servants of the Machine, and ends up coupling with her. And somehow he always is vindicated by the Eugenics Board, or he exposes corruption among them, and his particular combination of wild genes rewards him unexpectedly with a son even taller and stronger than he is. Such horrible, absurd stories!”