Menelaus shook his head, and sighed, and translated the question.
The gold-haired dark-skinned man looked tense, then confused, but then, as sinuously as a Nymph, he lounged back in the overlarge chair, laughed, and picked up his bowl of wine, which he tossed to the back of his throat with a supple, practiced motion.
“Sure, I can tell ya. ’Zat all the dwarfs be wanting to know? They got questions, I got answers. Come to the right man. I’ll tell ya right and steer ya right, and do right by you. My rates are reasonable, and my price is always right!”
One of the triplets standing overhead on a narrow circle in midair said in the High Iatric language in a toneless, nasal voice, “Chimera Relict Anubis! What is he saying? The communication register on a nonverbal level issues variable signification!”
Menelaus turned and tilted back his head, “He has not answered as yet, Preceptor Ydmoy. The verbiage so far has been reassurances of his honesty, expressions of friendship, and advertisements for his services.”
Another of the triplets, from even higher near the ceiling, leaned and called, “Does this proffer of service happen to be altruistic or commercial?”
“Commercial, Preceptor Yndelf. He has not finished his sales pitch yet, Preceptors, so I cannot identify what he is offering.”
The final of the three called down, “Ours is a noncommercial order, and the event-situation is coercive rather than commercial. Hence the language is symbolic; but what degree of relation does it bear to the signification-environment of reality? It is a metaphoric expression, or emotive?”
“Emotive, Preceptor Yndech. It is called braggadocio.”
Illiance raised his finger. “Pardon the interruption, Beta Anubis, but if I happen to ask a question, will you answer?”
“Shoot.”
“Why are you sighing and rolling your eyes?” asked Illiance.
Menelaus raised his eyebrows. “What? You are asking a question about me, now? What brought that on?”
Illiance nodded and smiled a seraphic smile. “You said ‘shoot.’ This means you have accepted the moral obligation placed on you, and must answer the question.”
“Well, to be blunt, I am annoyed at your comrades in the rafters. You and Ull always waited patiently for the full answer from your prisoners before you asked questions. I have not even found out this prisoner’s name yet. So why are these yammering parrots here? Do they want me to find something out from the prisoner, or to hear themselves yak?”
Illiance said, “I asked a single question. You cannot reciprocate with more than one.”
“Fine. Answer me this: When did you learn to read human expressions?”
“I am human.”
“That’s not an answer. You know what I mean.”
“At the request of Oenoe Psthinshayura-Ah of Forsythia, I altered the signal-condition of my nervous system and provoked a configuration of parasympathetic-endocrinal responses in my cortical-thalamic complex, so that my symbol-event responses would complement and correspond to her thought-environment. Do you happen to understand?”
“Sure. You turned on your emotion chip, and now your fellow weirdlings are weirded out.”
“I do not see an obvious one-to-one correspondence between my explanation and yours. Can you confirm that you understand?”
“I understand that the peanut gallery was invited, so you all could keep an eye on each other, just in case someone else was tempted to turn on his emotion chip. Right? You guys are getting nervous about something. You are trying to liquor up this new prisoner and ply him with goodies instead of just threatening him with dog-death, like you did me, but you must be getting more frightened—I am not sure of who—because each time I see you, there are twice as many dog things as the time before. Are the marines on your tails? Is your boss getting nervous? Time to report to your stockholders? Has there been a palace coup?”
Illiance radiated serenity. “You ask many questions, where one would do. Inquire of the relict what was asked.”
“No.”
“No?”
Menelaus pointed over his shoulder. “No, not unless you tell the peanut gallery to shut up. I cannot cross-examine the prisoner if Dopey, Doc, and Grumpy up there keep jostling my elbow.”
Ull addressed Illiance in Intertextual: “There is a meta-message behind the denotation. Beta Sterling Anubis attempts to explore the graduations of our power relation with him, perhaps to ascertain whether we prioritize his cooperation over the need to maintain credible coercion. Therefore underreact. Yield to his demand. It is not in our interest that he define the contour of our true interests in these matters.”
Illiance pursed his mouth in a moue of sad patience. “Mentor, he can understand what you are saying. Notice how he stares at the ceiling and pretends to whistle.”
Ull said, “I see the ceiling-staring and pretend-to-whistle behavior, but what does it mean?”
Illiance looked sidelong up at Menelaus and made a skeptical twitch of his lips. He said, “It means he is the least convincing actor imaginable.”
Preceptor Yndech leaned down from his overhead stand. “Brethren! I have deduced a stratagem to determine for what ulterior motive this relict, called Beta Sterling Anubis, if indeed he understands our language while maintaining a pretense of ignorance, maintains this deception. Allow me to proceed?”
Ull nodded ponderously. “Proceed!”
Yndech called down in Iatric, “Beta Sterling Anubis! Eschew deception! What is your ulterior motive?”
Menelaus rubbed his ungainly, hawklike nose, covering his mouth with his hand, and seemed to take a moment to smother a cough. “Ahem! Ah, what was the question again, heh, ahum, Preceptor Yndech?”
“Beta Sterling Anubis! Eschew deception! What is your ulterior motive?”
Menelaus blew out his cheeks and looked thoughtful. “Yup, I, um, thought you said ‘eschew deception’—good advice. I’ll take it to heart. Let’s see. Motive, eh? My ulterior motive is to have a good belly laugh watching you squirm, you damn looters, as whatever your scheme here falls to pieces in your hands. Something has happened to make you nervous, and I want the chance to smirk and watch you bungle and make things bad, worse, and worst for yourself as your time runs out. It’s not too late to change your course, you little blue dimwits, and tell me the truth. Anyone who surrenders will be treated mercifully. Take a few days to think about it. Or—do you even have a few days?”
Yndelf said in the shrill voice, “Signals from the Tomb, using the entire Earth’s crust as an antenna, were sent to the Bell, which immediately responded—”
Illiance raised his palm, and Yndelf’s sentence was snapped off as suddenly as flipping a switch.
Illiance said meditatively, “It may appear, upon reflection, that the request of Anubis is perfectly reasonable, and produces no disharmony when merging with the several purposes we follow. I affirm that Preceptors Yndech, Ydmoy, and Yndelf, lacking experience with dealing with relicts and their anachronistic yet unpredictable behaviors, should merely audit for a time, and not participate on a verbal level.”
Menelaus smirked, and reached down with both hands, and scraped a swath of stones and mirrors free from the cobra-patterned surface of the back of Illiance’s coat. This left two parallel stripes of blank fabric running from his shoulders halfway down his back.
There was a stir among the triplets, but Ull did not change his reptilian expression or even turn his eyes toward Menelaus. Illiance maintained his normal serene expression, but he could not hide something like an unseen glow that filled his chest, straightened his shoulders, and brightened his eye.
Menelaus straightened up, dashed the gems and trinkets to the ground, and brushed his hands against each other. “Now!” he said in Iatric. “Do you gentlemen have anything you want to tell me?”
Ull said, “Yes. We tell you to continue questioning the relict. We wish to know the cause of the hibernation spike in his generation.”
Illiance offered, “And, to be honest, w
e are also curious about the origin of the Tombs, and any information he has concerning … ah … the figure of the Judge of Ages.”
The man on the chair sat up straight and spread his hands. He called out in Chimerical. “Hey! What’s gives? You forgot about me? How long are you and your trained monkeys and dogs going to gab and gabber, Commandant?”
Menelaus snarled at him. “You’re damn lucky I’m not a Commandant. It’s Lance-Corporal. I’m a Beta. Beta Sterling Xenius Anubis, Academic Wing, Dependent College, Hundred and second Civic Control Division, attached to the Pennsylvania Third Legion—I teach freshmen history and predictive history, Cliometry, xenolinguistics, Monument mathematics, and also gunnery, whip drill, and prisoner beating and torture techniques, basic laceration, boot and thumbscrew, singeing and deprivation. The psychological torture techniques are taught sophomore year. So I am not a nice man and I am not in a good mood right now. Who the hell are you?”
“Well, Lance-Corporal Anubis, I am a nice man, and you are going to be glad today was the day you met me! The name’s Larz! Kine Larz Quire Slewfoot of Gutter, private invigilator, investigator, effectuator, and consummator, fixer and facilitator, procurer, perfecter, eavesdropper, nonstopper, go-getter, and gutter-ganger! Quire-for-Hire, that’s me! Streetlaw Larz, mercenary of mercy! I’ve taken stripes and earned my stripes! If you lost it and you want it, I can find it; if you find you don’t want it, I can lose it. I know how to mix it up and fix it up. Electronic, optic, cryptic, and Coptic, I never sleep and I don’t let whoever I’m after sleep neither!”
“Talk ’em to death, do you?”
“I am a Kine and I don’t mind. You Chimerae can do sheepdoggery drudgery, and I’ll run in the herd! But I was in uniform back in the day. I’ve served in private security and public unrest, spook and mook, and twelve years in Intelligence Command out of Kang Key, Eighth Division. You know Alpha Captain Stheno Alleret Anju of First and Second Bull Run? Family springs from a cadet mutation of the Anjusri Line, and I think that his kin got some tiger in their cocktail. I served under him, and he had me cleaning toilets in the stockade for a month. Served under his daughter, too, but not in the same capacity, and when the Chastity Police found out, I discovered scientifically that you can fit a five-foot-two-inch man through a foot-and-a-half-square window overlooking a three-story drop in two seconds, and there is nothing in your pants you really need to go back for, but some things it might be smarter to keep in your pants. Got me?”
Menelaus looked at the ceiling again and sighed again, and spoke in a monotonic drone. “You come from an era when the number of persons volunteering or being selected for long-term hibernation is statistically anomalous. As a native of that time, and an eyewitness, do you have any personal theories backed by evidence you’d care to describe, concerning the cause of this anomaly?”
“Lance-Corporal, you’re chewing my scrotum, right? That’s why you guys thawed me?”
Menelaus jerked his eyes down from the ceiling and laughed scornfully. “Lepers and scabs! You think I am dithering you? Me? Look what is talking! Shut your yap and open your ears, yammermouth! Look around you! We’re prisoners. The Blue Men are in charge, and they plan to kill us as soon as they get what they want. So smarten up and eyes front, Kine, if you want to see the end of the week. Whatever is happening is about to happen fast. You want to sober up, and talk without so much vinous crapulent goldbricking flummoxery?”
The man’s face fell. He spoke in a slow and serious tone. “So … we are in a deep hole, are we, Lance-Corporal?”
“Six feet deep and there to stay, safe behind wooden walls, unless we find a way to climb out. If you have a God you don’t believe in, start cursing him now.”
“Might die soon?”
“More than likely.”
“Then, um—those jewels and stuff you pulled off the dwarf’s coat? Guy who’s about to die don’t need ’em, so I’d be doing you a favor, taking them off your hands, check? They worth anything?”
Menelaus turned to Illiance and said in Iatric, “The man knows nothing of value.”
Illiance said, “Inquire of him concerning the other questions alluring us. Ask of the Tombs, and their architect, and of the Judge of Ages, if he has heard of him.”
Menelaus translated the question.
Larz Quire leaned back in his chair and spread his legs and let out a gush of laughter. “Hoo, boy! Did you ever find the right guy! The Judge of Ages? Heard of him! I used to work for him! I know everything there is to know about him! He might forget, but he hired me once. I bet you I could sit right in front of him, talking his ear off, and he’d never think about me. Never notices little people! That’s the kind of guy he is. No fun to work for, and we did not part on exactly friendly terms, no, sir! So I’ll tell you everything!
“His real name is Menelaus Montrose.”
4. The Name of the Judge
What! You did not think his family name was Judge, first name The, and that he proved himself in a battle called Ages did you? Nope, this is a real person, a real man, not a god or a demigod like the lying Witches say, and he invented the long-term hibernation process—and the first person he used it on was himself.
Why? Pass around some of this dandy hooch, gather round, round up your ears, and I’ll tell you the why and the wherefore and the who and the how and the how much it cost ’em!
He was born in Texas back before the days of fire, in AUCR 473 by the soldier calendar, but that would be A.D. 2210 by the civilian calendar. It was a little town called Nowhere, and the name suited. He had a dozen brothers, one mother, no father, and his sweetheart was a Princess of Monaco who was also the Captain of the White Ship.
Yes, that White Ship, the ship with silver star-sails, the one and only human-crewed interstellar vessel this poor planet ever produced, and that ship is real, and it’s coming back someday.
The Chimeras say that she was the first Chimera, the first artificial Homo sap created from Monument code, but I don’t believe it. I don’t think she was two genetic lines crosspatched together like they are. She was more than them. She was an Odd John, a Nietzsche-man, a Next, an Ugly Duckling meant to grow into something finer. A Swan!
Y’understand, this Menelaus Montrose was a bit of a Next himself, because he hackled on his own brain to bloom his intelligence, and at one point he ruled the world, and he had a monopoly on the world energy supply. He had everything, and it meant nothing.
So he was smart, and powerful, and rich, and all meant jakeswash to him, because his Swan Princess took the world’s one and only starship, and her one and only self, and she was called away to the stars to plead for the human race in the court of an Authority beyond the rim of the Milky Way, and she ain’t coming back no time soon.
I’m telling you this so you’ll understand his mind. Tom needs his pussycat, and bull needs his cow and a boar needs his sow, so you see where I am heading with this? Here is this bloke with the fattest brain and the richest poke the world’s ever known, and he is carrying a tentpole in his trousers for his chip, and any man stands in his way, stands under the treads of an avalanche.
Man could do most anything by himself, that’s the kind of cove he is, but when he woke up in a strange world, and he needed a fix, he came to find a fixer, and the one he found was me.
5. The Final Fix
So I was hired to do this fix for him, see? It was my last job. My final.
Not that hard, not for a man of my talents and tie-ins, but it had to be smooth and it had to be hush, and he, when he said secret, he meant tight as the lid of a napalm can. Airtight. But all it was, was a slip-and-slide job, just moonshining past the shore patrol, avoid the deepers, and go: no other package than one passenger. Him. He was the flash stash I had to pass without fuss or fash, and my fix was to glide him out of Norfolk without tripping over the watchdog’s nose.
It was December of 5884 when I first clapped eye on him. So you figure he is over three thousand years old, but he spent the years in the Witches�
�� Tombs, where they are frozen, and they freeze time—but you knew that part! So he is looking good. Armed to the teeth. Not only has he got a knife in either sleeve, a shiv in his glove, and a springwhip as a belt with a heater for a buckle, a matched set of hissers tucked into it, but he is also carrying not one but two powder pieces bigger than the sprong of a whale in heat: each one was a hogleg hand-cannon like the breed you only read in history books, and only if you take the time to read. Each was a rocket-launcher, I kid you not, shot eight autogyro missiles in one go, and blew chaff and camo to paint the air. I saw it work!
There is nothing like it these days—I mean, my days.
Those days. His smokewagon was from the ancient world, before the Thinking Machines, before the Giants and their augmented brains, before the Witchwives and their expanded lives. Those Americans were one gun-happy crew, and this gunner was their happiest, I tell you.
Why does a man pay top dollar, hard cash up front, to haul himself and his boom-finger all the way across the gray Atlantic, stealth at night and submerge by day, using a low-flow cold drive? To kill someone, of course!
Because I had friends and contacts among shippers and smugglers, including some hired muscle with really illegal modifications—when I say illegal, I mean capital penalty, family-out-to-the-cousins, them first, and you watch ’em scream–type illegal—he sought me out. He was introduced to me by the Lotus King, who was the head of a nest of Greencloaks, drop-outs, off-the-books and off-the-wire types, but with glands for adrenaline-boosters, amphetamines, alcohol, opiates, painkillers.
I don’t know if you still have Greencloaks these days, but they were a cult of rejectionists. They turned their back on Darwin, turned their back on improving the race, turned their back on the End of Days, the whole roast pig, apple to arse, they flung it and said no-thank’ee. What did they care what the ultimate fate of the race that replaced mankind would be by A.D. Eleven Thou? Let the dead bury the dead, they said, live for the moment, and let the unborn worry about the not-yet. So as you can imagine, they were a bunch of petty crooks, glandular and hookweasels, and they supported their high-minded orgies with low-level crime.
The Hermetic Millennia Page 33