She said, “No harm is done, now that the events are played out, to tell you that we misunderstood his loyalties. He is apparently still carrying out some orders given him by Reyes y Pastor, or rather, given him by Expastor the Ghost.”
“Played out? You think I am finished?” Menelaus suddenly squinted toward the far end of the chamber. Putting his thumb and forefinger of his good hand between his lips, he gave a sharp, high, clear whistle.
No one answered.
He said, scowling, “You turned Exarchel’s motes back on, so that no one can see or hear us. God, how I hate nanotech.”
Her triple voice said, “Finished or not, you are confined until matters resolve themselves. I will permit you to consult with your friends, who perhaps can see to the wounds of that odd, one, solitary body you call your own. I have other arrangements to make throughout these Tombs pending the arrival here of the Paramount assigned to these revenants; or, more precisely, the completion. Consultations must be made before the Bell arrives. The Hyades practice deracination and removal of every surface structure encountered of the target species; this Tomb is now exposed, and, without intervention, will be converted.”
“Wait—you sound as if the Bell is not under your control. Is it actually a machine from the Hyades, which somehow got here faster than possible? But it can’t be! Hold it! Wait!”
She turned, walked over to the central fountain, hips swaying from side to side, paused at the brink, and dove in. She did not emerge.
Menelaus blinked. Maybe her outfit actually was a wet suit.
3. Pretenses
Soorm, who was still lying on the floor pretending to be frozen, opened his goatlike eye. His other eye, of course, was already and ever opened, since it had no lid. He said in Latin, “That was weird. But I told you there was a secret exit in that cistern.”
Mickey, who was also lying on the floor pretending to be frozen, spoke without raising his head or opening either eye. “Your breathing changed when you went from alpha wave state to beta wave state. If I noticed it, the posthumans noticed it.”
Soorm rolled to his feet, lithe as a bear. Mickey climbed heavily to his feet, round as a water balloon.
Soorm said, “So what is actually going on, again, exactly? Is this something the nonposthumans can be told?”
Menelaus said, “I think even a nonposthuman can understand the complex and abstract concept that Blackie has been puck-dithering with me.”
Soorm said, “If I knew what that was, I would say it sounds painful. Does it involve your anus in any capacity?”
“It involves my brain being too slow and too stupid. Ever since the moment Aanwen told me she knew who I was and walked out of here and over to my depthtrain station, I’ve just been gulled. He was not after me. Blackie was not trying to dig up this Tomb to find me. He was trying to dig up and capture a working depthtrain station. And he had to do it in such a way that I did not blow the station before it fell into his hands, so he had to have his people act like they were looking for me. Maybe he knew where I was all along; maybe he did not give a good goddamn.”
Soorm said, “Blow the station? Do you have all your rooms and chambers really wired with explosives and outfitted with guns and lethalities? That’s paranoid.”
Menelaus said, “Is your nervous system really hidden under two levels of fakes with three levels of encryption?”
Soorm said blithely, “It is not a matter for casual discussion. I have foes.”
“As have I, and I am usually asleep when they come a-calling.”
Mickey said, “But why does the Master of the World want a depthtrain? And why send Alalloel to tell you? Was she here just to tell lies?”
Menelaus glanced sharply at him. “Lies, plural? With an s? I only heard one. She was lying about the Tombs. But I don’t know the point of that lie…”
“She was so totally lying about Mentor Ull,” affirmed Mickey.
Menelaus said slowly, “What makes you say so?”
Mickey said, “First, Ull was about as good at lying with a straight face as you. Second, Alalloel is possessed. The woman who was just here was not the one who was sitting in the mess tent yesterday.”
Menelaus said, “Yeah. She aged four hundred years in one day.”
Mickey said, “No, that is not it. That demon is a type we call ‘Legion’—a manifestation with multiple centers. But Legion cannot coordinate well. When a demon like that tells a lie, one and only one voice ever speaks. When multiple voices lie, it sounds rehearsed rather than spontaneous, or the voices drop out of synch. So whatever Alalloel said in choir is true. What she said solo is false. She said the thing about Ull solo: Therefore it is false. QED.”
Menelaus said to Soorm, “You heard her. What do you think?”
Soorm flicked his two tongues in the air thoughtfully. “I don’t believe in spooks. But I have noticed that Reyes, and you, and other posthumans I have met have more ability to fool themselves than stupid and normal people like me. You have more spare brainspace or something to devote to explaining away the obvious. Ull had been posthumanized, and so he did not listen when Aanwen told him who you were. Like animals, we humans tend to have a sharper ability to see what is right in front of us. I was there. I saw the dumb look on his arrogant little face. It was right in front of me.”
Soorm shrugged and spread his webby hands. Then he said, “He was blind as a bat in a box down a dark well at the bottom of a coal mine shaft at midnight, overcast with no moon out. You cannot fake that kind of bone-deep stupid. If you had been wearing a yard-high pointy hat with two blinking eyes and the words I AM THE JUDGE OF AGES printed in seven languages circled by a trained magpie calling out the same words in seven languages … it still would not look as bad as what Mickey presently has perched on his head.”
“Hey!” said Mickey, sounding wounded. “This hat makes me look dignified. It is my Headgear of Power!”
“Clothing is overrated,” sniffed Soorm.
Menelaus said, “Why did Weird Girl say Ull was stalling me? It seems a pointless little thing to lie about.”
Mickey said, “Oho! What do you know about the ancient and honorable art of fabrication? If you want to know about lies, talk to a magician. Listen: that little lie was the most important thing Alalloel said, which is why she said it first.”
“Important that I was being stalled?”
Mickey said, “By the beard of baby Oberon, for a supergenius, you’re dumb! No! That is not what the lie was! How did you feel when you found out, not that you had fooled Ull, but that Ull (of all people) had fooled you? Miserable? Worried, weak, and stupid? Scared? Like your foes might be better than you? Or, in other words, you are put in the exact state of mind any foe would want you to be in.”
Soorm said, “She was also trying to make it sound as if Ull, who was a Hermeticist, and Aanwen, who was a personal vassal of Del Azarchel and him alone, were perfectly coordinated. What if they are not perfectly coordinated? Reyes broke with the Table Round.”
Mickey said solemnly, “It is not an unbroken circle. The ward is weakened.”
4. External View
Keirthlin, black parka flapping, came soaring over the floor toward them. She was skating like a speed skater. Menelaus saw that she had reprogrammed the smartmetal of her soles into frictionless surfaces. Her face was no longer grief-stricken, but instead looked preternaturally calm, hard, and intent, as if she had used some mesmeric technique or compartmentalization of her brain to store her grieving until it could be confronted without distraction. Had her expression been one of wild panic, it would not have more quickly imparted to Menelaus a sense of fear.