Menelaus looked left and right. He said in Iatric, “No dogs? No bars on the window?”

Illiance said, “The relict seems to have little motive to attempt flight. We have attempted to speak through the talking boxes, to establish the offer of allowing him to download a version of his mind and memories into our local infosphere—we have more than enough capacity. It was our belief that this was the purpose of this profession and order of being, called the Savants. We thought by this to bind his self-interest to our own: but he remains aloof. I have told you the one question we seek—if he knows the Judge of Ages, and the meaning of his Judgments against the various ages he destroyed.”

Menelaus stepped forward and offered the seated Ctesibius the stiff-armed salute of a Chimera. Ctesibius the Savant nodded regally and said in early-period Anglatino, “The Hospitalier. Space Captain Sterling, named after a jackal who guards Tombs and a god who slays those who violate the guest laws. Are you here to observe my shame? I release you from your oath to guard my coffin and protect my life: if you have a knife or pistol, hand it me, that I might depart this life honorably.”

Menelaus was surprised at this speech. “What have they done?”

“Mind-rape. You do not know the term? To donate one’s memories is to glorify the soul and make it electronically immortal. It is an exact copy of one’s most inner self, every memory clear and dim, every triumph, every sin. These cretinous little blue-skinned Interactors forced a donation from me, and now a copy of my soul is lost somewhere without me in their infosphere. They are examining it while we speak, hoping to elicit from him the information by trick they cannot elicit by force.”

Menelaus said, “If I get them to shut down the emulation copy of you, would that make you happier?”

“To have him murdered? Then I must add another diamond to my heraldry, a black one, to show a failed donation. You think the shame is not greater? Do they now seek to please me?”

“Sure.”

“Do not say ‘sure.’ Address me as Donator Ctesibius.”

“Of course, Donator Ctesibius.”

“This alone would please me: that that time-honored penalty for mind-rape be accomplished upon all who performed, or failed to hinder, the deed: Our custom is to inject the perpetrator with fluids that separately stimulate the pain response from every nerve in the body, while dissolving the cortex one cell at a time. It is timed to lobotomize the perpetrator so he loses one degree of intelligence once a day for a hundred days or so, eventually becomes subhuman, but kept alive, screaming, in a glass cage in the public forum as a sign to passersby. To see this execution performed, and then to take my life in solemn suicide, this would please me.”

Menelaus said, “I don’t think I can arrange that. What about staying alive long enough just to see them shot?”

Ctesibius said, “When would the opportunity arise? But tell me nothing! They have an active copy of my soul in their hands.”

“The Judge of Ages is supposed to have xypotechnology of some sort in his lower Tombs: maybe he could find memory space for your copy. He does not much cotton to Xypotech emulations, but since the crime was done on his watch, in his yard, he will have to make an exception.”

Ctesibius said, “You speak as if you are not his servant.”

Menelaus turned to Illiance and said in Iatric, “Do you have a copy of Ctesibius the Savant that you downloaded from his nervous system?”

Illiance looked mournful. “Not as such. The copy was made with certain interleaf errors and memory compression distortions. It is mostly self-aware, but has degenerated into a psychotic strange-loop condition. It seems to be in considerable anguish. Certain of the nuances of the art of Savantry were evidently lost in the process of time: it is not our area of specialization. Preceptor Yndech did the work.”

“Ah. Tell Yndech that the Judge of Ages is going to kill him. You understand you are not supposed to do things like this, right?”

Illiance waved the question aside. “Events will unfold in our favor. Have you yet inquired of him? The emulation copy does not show clear reaction to bring forth the information we seek.”

“Hold it. You’re keeping the emulation online even as we speak? You are flushing it, even though it is wounded and psycho, with additional data streams coming from the Savant’s head?”

Illiance was blithe. “It is of no matter. We have introduced a time-nonbinding interrupt, so the mind does not remember the excruciation at any given moment of the previous moment. No pain is built up to a psychologically damaging level, and we are still able to discern surface thoughts.”

“Listen: I can get Ctesibius to talk, but you have to get the hell out of his mind, and stop looking at his thoughts, or his copy’s thoughts, whatever you are doing. Got it? He has been fooled into thinking I am a Knight from the mythical Hospitalier Order that the mythical Judge of Ages uses to guard his Tombs. So all I have to do is reassure him. Can you put his copy on standby, or put it to sleep, without killing it? It was not possible in his day and age to switch emulations into a standby mode without killing the information and killing them.”

“We have made no advance in this area. We can keep the copy of Ctesibius alive, or kill it, but cannot store it an unself-aware condition.”

Menelaus gritted his teeth in frustration. He turned back to Ctesibius. “Donator, I think—if you can cooperate—I can convince the Blue Men to transfer your copy to the Judge of Ages Xypotech system. They are trying to break into his Tombs, and may actually succeed. They made some sort of error while making the copy, so this version is insane and brain-damaged. However, I am pretty sure the Judge of Ages can fix your insane Xypotech emulation, on account of he is the world’s expert at this. He fixed Ximen del Azarchel’s emulation, and made him posthuman, and, in effect, created the Machine you serve.”

Ctesibius looked at him oddly. “What is the point of your concern? When a genetically defective child is born, civilized people perform euthanasia immediately, and inflict a legal penalty on the mother for absorbing scarce medical resources. If the defect is discovered before birth, the child is killed by aborticide. Any attempt to preserve the weak and unfit is against Darwin. Do you think I would not apply this measure to myself? Do they wish my cooperation? Have them bring me to the gray room where my soul is housed, and let me set the charges with my own hands. Autoeuthanasia is not just a privilege of the high minded; it is sacred duty.”

Illiance said, “You need not translate the comment: it was clear from the emulation reaction what was meant. Tell him our system is more compact than in his day.” He pointed at the bowl of black liquid. The substance within turned milky, then became transparent. Within, the bowl was packed with a pyramid of gems of the Blue Men; with the fluid moving through the interstices where the gem edges, rounded, did not cohere to one another. Menelaus could see filaments forming and dissolving in the fluid, finer than the veins in a leaf, connecting now one gem with a neighbor, now another, flickering into and out of existence almost too rapidly to be seen.

Ctesibius looked down without interest. He said in Anglatino, “What need be done to destroy the housing?”

Again Illiance needed no translation, but pantomimed the act of overturning the bowl. In Iatric he said, “Tell him that dispersing the fluid will disorganize the connectivity, and the emulation will be interrupted, and perish.”

Menelaus did not translate the comment, but Ctesibius did not hesitate. Kicking out with a foot, he sent the bowl flying and rebounding from the far wall, and a fluid turned black again as it trailed in a splatter, like unwinding entrails, across the floor. And the gems were scattered, and some were cracked by the violence done. Over his implants, Menelaus heard a thin and lingering wail of radio noise which trailed into horrid silence.