The Judge of Ages

Book 3: The Eschaton Sequence

by John C. Wright

Genres: Alien Invasion; Hard Science Fiction

Synopsis

The year is 10,515 AD. The Hyades Armada, traveling at near lightspeed, will reach Earth in just four centuries to assess humanity's value as slaves. For the last 8,000 years, two opposing factions have labored to meet the alien threat in very different ways.

One of them is Ximen del Azarchel, immortal leader of the mutineers from the starship Hermetic and self-appointed Master of the World, who has allowed his followers to tamper continuously with the evolutionary destiny of Man, creating one bizarre race after another in an apparent search for a species the Hyades will find worthy of conquest.

The other is Menelaus Montrose, the posthuman Judge of Ages, whose cryonic Tombs beneath the surface of Earth have preserved survivors from each epoch created by the Hermeticists. Montrose intends to thwart the alien invaders any way he can, and to remain alive long enough to be reunited with his bride Rania, who is on a seventy-millennia journey to confront the Hyades' masters, tens of thousands of light-years away.

Now, with the countdown to the Hyades' arrival nearing its end, del Azarchel and Montrose square off for what is to be their final showdown for the fate of Earth, a battle of gunfire and cliometric calculus; powered armor and posthuman intelligence.

Judge of Ages is the wildly inventive third volume in a series exploring future history and human evolution from John C. Wright.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Release date: February 11, 2014

Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Print pages: 384

Sample

1
The Instrumentality of the Hyades
A.D. 10515


1. In the Tombs
"O Rania, I was better off dead," muttered Menelaus Montrose, in English, a language which, he reflected, was also long dead. "Unearthed and outmaneuvered, how in pestilent perdition am I going to outsmart getting myself killed entirely? How am I ever going to see you again?"
Above, the sky was gray with snow clouds, and leaden. A storm was gathering along the southern horizon, above the glaciers now shrouding the Blue Ridge Mountains, the source of some immense, unnatural disturbance.
Downhill, the pines and frozen rocks were bare of life. The prison tents were empty, the deadly wire was motionless, and the odd seashell-shaped buildings beyond the wire were silent.
Directly underfoot, down a dizzying drop of catwalks and scaffolds, lay the darkness of the archeological dig. No coffins moved or fired. They were deactivated, returned meekly to their recharging plugs, and were no longer attempting to defend their precious, slumbering contents.
Instead, wild packs of the dog thing soldiers were dancing, whooping, and barking with elation among the ruins, whirling swords and pikes, flourishing muskets, in the triangle of light that spilled from the broken doors across the silent firing range. Montrose saw none of the dwarfish little bald Blue Men in their jewel-adorned coats.
He wondered how many hours he had before the persons of ordinary intelligence figured out that Corporal Anubis, allegedly a Beta-rank Chimera of the Sixth Millennium A.D., was instead Menelaus Illation Montrose, experiment in intelligence augmentation gone awry, of the Third Millennium A.D., the so-called Judge of Ages and Guardian of the Cryonic Tombs of the Slumbering Dead—or how many minutes before Del Azarchel figured it out.
(That man was surely still alive! Fate was not kind enough to have killed off mankind's other experiment in human intelligence augmentation, mechanical rather than biological, during the thousands of years while Montrose slept in suspended animation. The two of them were still in mid-duel, a deadly fight momentarily put on hold during the immensities of human evolutionary history.)
Maybe they would not find the coffeepot, or his notebooks, or his gun collection, or his clothing closet. Of course, there was still the giant Texas flag he had pinned up, or the portrait of Rania, or his collection of history books, Witch idols, magazines and old coins with his image on them … sweet Jesus up a tree! There were a lot of clues lying around.
Montrose watched in helpless anger as Rada Lwa was taken from him. He had carried the unconscious albino Scholar over his shoulder from the torture cell of the Blue Men. Rada Lwa was placed by the dogs into a sling and lowered from platform to platform into the Tombs.
Back in A.D. 3090 (over seven thousand four hundred years ago by the calendar, but just shy eight years ago by his oft-interrupted inner biological clock) Rada Lwa had attempted to assassinate Montrose. It was unforgivable. And yet the man, by entering the Tombs of the Judge of Ages, was under Montrose's protection. He was a client. To have Blue Men excavate Rada Lwa, thaw him, torture him, in Montrose's book, merited execution. But not ten minutes ago, he had discovered to his shock that the Blue Men were Thaws as well; in theory, his clients also under his protection. He blamed himself for not seeing it earlier. In hindsight, it was obvious.
While the dog things were busy lowering Rada Lwa, Montrose spoke to them in Intertextual: "You know your masters ain't really and truly archeologists, don't you, you sons of bitches?"
The Blue Men, all but whoever was behind them, thought they were looking for the mythical founder of the Tomb system, the demigod called the Judge of Ages: so called because he condemned to death any age of history which dared forget the reason for the Tombs, the point of accumulating slumbering knights and scientists.
The mythical founder was no myth, but stood among their prisoners, unrecognized, helpless as a child, and angrier than hell.
Montrose was answered by snarls and a prod in his back with the muzzles of muskets. The captain of the dogs, a stately Great Dane of heroic build, pointed with his cutlass, motioning Montrose to descend.
Montrose, with a smirk and a shrug, politely raised his hands in surrender, and walked and climbed down the last length of scaffolding into the cleft.
He tried once again, this time only addressing the Great Dane by name: "Rirk Refka Kak-Et, you do know your masters are Thaws who just so happened to wake up earlier than their fellow clients, and looted our coffins and thawed us against our will?"
Looking down, he saw that the armor was gone, peeled away by some immense force, along with the bedrock and the first three levels of the Tomb. Avalanches and snowfall had toppled this first level onto the second, and the second had been cut or blasted open to reveal the third, leaving only a set of protruding decks to the east and west like bookshelves.
As he descended, he saw above a squad of dogs lowering an oversized coffin using a block and tackle. As it passed him, swaying in the wind, he was close enough to read its alert lights: The Giant inside was awake, only mildly sedated, fully thawed and healed. The coffin was being used as a claustrophobic prison, not a hibernation unit.
Creaking, the lines lowered the Giant's coffin faster than Montrose (with dogs above him and dogs below) could negotiate the rungs of the synthetic tubing which formed the ladder. Montrose ached with the desire to speak with the Giant. His brain, due to its size, could match the feats Montrose's, due to its composition, could perform. A short conversation with him, and the many mysteries plaguing Montrose might be answered.
The wind grew soft as the sky shrank to merely a narrow blue ribbon above, and the sunlight grew dim. It was cold between the narrow canyon walls of stone, and colder still between the metal walls of the Tomb.
"Your masters, they do not know any more than I do who or what—if anything—is alive out there in the snowy wilderness of the Ice Age. Some human civilization is still on the surface, perhaps extremely advanced, and they will surely notice this activity here."
The armored floor here was all but gone, and at the lip of this huge hole, the scaffolding the dog things had erected led down to the third level. Roofless, the floorplan of the third level was exposed.
To one side, the southern half was a labyrinth of cells and corridors worm-ridden with smaller passages designed for coffins to slide easily through, where men must duck walk or crawl, and murder-holes and ambush vents led from the smaller passages to the maze of main corridors. The northern half of the floorplan was an empty space of metal like a firing range, overlooked by a massive door. This door was thirty feet tall, with gunblisters and energy emitters thick as grapes on a trellis on its massively armored doorposts and lintel. The beetling cliff above the door to the fourth level was intact, so that the door was like a metal plug at the back of a throat of stone.
And the door was open. Gold light poured up from shining stairs.
"You know that, right? You savvy? Thaws are clients of the ultra-long-term hibernation tombs—sleep in the ground, under the armor, for centuries, millennia, waiting for the End of Days when the star monsters come from the Hyades."
Montrose did not mention that he, personally, was waiting for an event predicted to happen long, long after that. Driving off the Hyades invasion was meant merely to preserve the Earth in her Earthly state until Princess Rania returned.
He looked down at a noise. He saw Oenoe, garbed in her green mantilla, walking serenely between two lines of cavorting and howling dog things. The strange angle of the light from the open door cast the shadows of the dog things like angular phantoms across the walls, whose jerking dance was a thing from boyhood nightmares.
With her was Soorm the Hormagaunt, unconscious, or dead, being hauled limply in the metal clamps of a lumbering automaton. Preceptor Naar, looking bored, rode atop the walking machine.
"Did your little Blue bosses warn you about the star monsters? They will be here in a century. A dark mass, equal to a small gas giant, has been approaching us from Oculus Borealis for the last eight millennia."
Down the final ladder, there was steel floor underfoot. Menelaus and his dog escort stood in a narrow corridor which connected both halves of the level. The connecting corridor was supposed to be the most dangerous spot here. To the east were powerhouses and storage vats for the dangerous nanomaterial used in biosuspension, as well as the main and secondary refrigerant systems. To the west were staff living quarters and utility rooms and guard stations with periscopes leading to the surface. This corridor was open both to the massive guns of the door, and to the sniper fire from the secretive coffins.
"When the Hyades arrive, the Master of the World, a posthuman named Del Azarchel—even you have heard of him, I see—and the externalized Machine Intelligence of Del Azarchel, Exarchel, wise beyond all the genius of the Blue Men, will sell mankind into slavery, and the Blue Men will be to the Domination of the Hyades as dogs are to men—no matter how smart, still just pets."
The artificially anthropomogrified creature did not speak, but from the flex of its spine and the prick of its ears, Montrose saw that his words had struck home. Now the dog captain was listening carefully.
"Is that what you want for your masters? For Mentor Ull and Invigilator Illiance? Lives of servitude? Or worse?"
The dog thing said nothing, but looked at Montrose with eyes as hard as stones, ears laid flat against its skull.
"Do you know Ull and Illiance and all the Blues here are serving the Machine? Well? Did you know that?"
The Great Dane's answer was to cuff him backhand across the mouth.
2. The Connecting Corridor
By the time Montrose had reached the level in the gloomy corridor where the other prisoners were being kept, the Giant's coffin was out of sight. There was a splash of light on the wall opposite, a reflection of the golden light pouring out from the opened door, which was blurred and darkened for a moment with shadows as the bulky coffin of the Giant was maneuvered into the stairwell. A moment later the shadows passed, and the reflections gleamed again undisturbed.
At the northern mouth of the connecting corridor, the Blue Men had piled their sandbags, raised square shields of refractory reflex metal, pulled up floor plates, and dug in their gunnery nests. A second line of defense had been erected at the other end of the long corridor, to fend off still-active coffins that attempted from time to time to sally and dislodge them. Beyond this line of sandbags, the wreckage of such sallies clogged the labyrinth of corridors to the south.
Menelaus, his robes of metallic tent material clashing as he stepped, walked down the connecting corridor.
Larz the Fixer, one of the prisoners, relaxed, chuckling to himself. Larz was lying on his back atop an impromptu cot of toppled sandbags with an enormously smug look on his face and his hands tucked behind his head. Next to him was a bowl and several small bottles of rice wine, some empty and some not.
This was the man, this worthless little man, a low-caste Kine from the time of the Chimerae, who had boasted to the Blue Men that he could force open the Tomb door.
Larz was not dressed in his prison overalls, but was in an extravagant civilian costume from the late 5900s: The half cloak of the overalls of the Kine, instead of bearing his name and assignment, was covered with gauds and bezants, with coils of braid at the shoulders and colored scarves hanging from the armpits. He wore the bright pink boots of a professional kick-fighter. The switchblades in the boot toes clicked open and shut like little blunt-nosed creatures flicking out their tongues as Larz idly drummed his heels against the deck.
The serpentine stolen from Yuen the Alpha Chimera was lying near his hand, and it was extended to its full length: it lay like a thread of silver water across the empty expanse of steel floor, winding here and there to avoid buried mines and pressure plates, reaching from the sandbags to the door controls, where it had found a compatible plug.
"Impossible," Montrose muttered in English, his eyes narrowed. Larz could not have hacked his locks and wards. Either Soorm had opened the Tomb doors from the inside, or something equally unlikely. Could Larz be a Hospitalier in disguise?
He tried to stop and speak to Larz, but Larz, thinking him a Beta Chimera from his era, cowered back, whimpering and calling on the dogs to protect him, and the dogs in turn hustled Menelaus down the corridor past Larz.
Midway between the northern and southern defensive positions were bales of ammo and other supplies, as well as angry digging automata in need of minor repair.
Nearly a score of figures could be seen there, separated by armed automata and watched by their assigned guard dogs, who were looking with envy at their dancing brothers not far away, yapping and yammering, tails wagging.
The prisoners were all dressed in their period costumes. Menelaus wondered why the prisoners, now, had their garments returned to them. The Blue Men were very naïve and stupid in some ways, but sharply intelligent in others, close enough to posthuman in their thinking patterns that they could control lateral thought-techniques to see gestalt patterns in events. A man with his clothing and possessions on him altered his "tells," his body language and subconscious reactions. All the Blues need do, if they were as smart as Menelaus thought they were, was observe the prisoner's behavior in the Tombs, and compare this to the reactions of any undamaged information systems in the Tombs to the prisoners. Any wrong reactions would pinpoint the imposter. Had Montrose been visible to the Tomb systems, this tactic would have no doubt already revealed him.
Coming down the corridor, passing within perhaps three feet of Menelaus, was Invigilator Illiance in his jeweled coat. He gave Menelaus a polite nod, but did not pause to exchange any words.
In his hands was the coffeepot from Menelaus' workroom.
Illiance glided down the corridor toward the silent firing range chamber. He was too small to block the light from the door when he went downstairs, or at least, not enough to alter the reflection of the light bouncing from a distant floor to the nearby wall, but Menelaus could hear the soft, light footsteps passing without hurry down and down.
Menelaus observed his fellow prisoners.
There were seventeen Thaws here: First was the waif perhaps named Alalloel from the Eleventh Millennium. Only four hundred years displaced from her native time. He attempted to contact her with his implants, but the signal did not generate any return. Perhaps she was ignoring him, or perhaps the Blue Men were wise enough to dampen her instruments.
Second and third were the two gray twins, a male and a female, from the Ninth Millennium. They were very similar to the Blue Men, but seemed to be a later development from them.
Next were two Hormagaunts, two Clade-dwellers, and three Donors from the Iatrocracy period in the Eighth Millennium.
After that were four Chimerae and three Kine from the Sixth Millennium.
The Thaws were not standing together, but rather were grouped by aeon, so that Alalloel had a group of cringing dogs around her, away down the corridor, out of sight; the gray twins were next, and armed dogs separated them from Alalloel on the one side and the Iatrocrats on the other.
There were more guards blocking the way between the Iatrocrats and the Chimerae, the group to which Menelaus was brought. He saw no Nymphs, nor anyone of earlier eras. He wondered if they had been taken below.
The Chimerae were closest to the line of sandbags facing the firing range; Alalloel was farthest. All prisoners were huddled against the eastern wall, since the wind was less there.
Now he was among the Chimerae. Here were three underfed and overworked Kine, muscular dark-haired men with dark and stoical expressions. There were subtle asymmetries and incongruities in their features, odd shapes to their teeth or ears, which hinted at experiments done on generations of their forefathers. Their names were Franz, Ardzl, and Happy.
Their native garb was not that different from the overalls the Blue Men provided, except that each sported a short half cape, where emblems showing their names and assignments were displayed. Menelaus was pleased to see, from certain irregularities in the way their overalls hung, that they had sharpened tent pegs into knives and had them hidden under their clothes.
Near them were two Beta maidens. Above knee-length skirts they wore tight, dark pinch-waisted jackets that buttoned up the side like fencing jackets, tight at the neck, with decorations on the exaggerated shoulder pads. Menelaus was reminded of doormen's costumes at old hotels. Their world had been warmer than that of the gray twins: instead of boots, they wore sandals with laces that ran up their thighs.
The warrior maidens had carved serviceable bows out of the branches of yew trees and strung them with strands of their gene-modified, nigh-unbreakable hair. Each maiden had fletched a dozen arrows, feathered from slain owls, but knapping flint to make a workable arrowhead was beyond what their auxiliary corps girls' schools had taught them. The arrowheads were shards of glass taken from shattered bottles from the infirmary tent, lashed to the arrow shafts with adhesive medical gauze. From the way their tunics hung, he guessed that wider strips of medical gauze had been used to bind their breasts flat: impromptu plastrons. More medical tape wrapped their left arms from palm to elbow, as protection against the bowstring, and their left sleeves were folded up and buttoned short.
Here also was a Gamma. His skin was peeling and pockmarked, a mixture of dark and white patches, and his lower jaw protruded like a Neanderthal's. He had clipped a lock from his long brown hair and woven the strands into a functional Goliath-killing-type sling.
The sleeve of his uniform bulged, showing he kept the water-smoothed stones that formed his store of ammunition in his rolled-in shirtcuffs. His name was Buck Gamma Joet Goez Phyle of Bull Run, Lineage Discontinued.
The male uniform was severe and unadorned, except for a cloak of livid scarlet; shoulder boards extended a hand's length beyond his shoulder, giving his costume something of the look of an ancient samurai's. On these shoulder boards were small electric pins displaying his line, rank, and regiment. His only other adornment was a cloak pin of brass shaped like an upside-down letter L. On his head was a cap of leather and horn.
Alpha Lady Ivinia, splendid in the metal breastplate and tiara of her dress gear, a jet-black tunic decorated with silver skull ornaments, and a long black leather skirt hemmed with iron bosses, still carried her spear. Her red cloak was pinned with a letter shaped like a fish.
3. Reporting for Duty
In his role as Beta Sterling Anubis, he crossed over to her, and knelt, head bowed and hand out in a straight-armed salute. "Milady. Uh, reporting for duty, Ma'am."
She bent and touched him on the shoulder, which surprised him; and drew him to his feet and kissed him on the cheek, which surprised and alarmed him. (She was a tall woman, but even she had to stand on her tiptoes to do this.)
Lady Ivinia said, "This is not I who gives you this kiss, Loyal and Proven Beta, but, rather, the motherhood of all the race, including your own mother, who is not present to give it."
Menelaus touched his cheek, strangely moved. He knew what a horrid and bloodthirsty race the Chimerae were, and yet still they were human beings. Almost.
Lady Ivinia spoke in a hushed voice, with great dignity, "That is the farewell kiss of the race that bore you, for it may well be that we die this day, and reach the longed-for oblivion which will quench the memories of all our crimes and shortcomings in beautiful, unending nothingness. They have taken away Alpha Daae and greatly I fear for his safety. I charge you that should the chance come, his life must be saved, even at the expense both of your life and honor, and of his honor. No glorious death is to be his: Should he so command, and with the strongest oaths bind you, I charge you by the womb of the mother that bore you, and the paps that nursed, to betray that command, and break those oaths. If the name of Anubis must be sunk forever in shame and cursed, let it be so, but he must survive." She did not even mention the name of Alpha Yuen.
Menelaus then realized that the Alpha Lady meant to marry, no doubt to begin the Chimera race again, and that her only choices for the next Adam were between gray-haired Daae and young Yuen. And she had selected Daae.
He felt both awed and saddened by the ambition of her daydream, and its unlikelihood. It was nearly as unlikely as his own dream of finding his own true love again.
Menelaus said, "Ma'am, I will do what I might to save him. The sacrifice of the name Anubis to shame I do not regret, nor will I hesitate." (It was not, after all, his name.)
She inclined her head regally, but then turned her nose aside, to look at him sidelong, a strangely coy and demure look on the face of a woman whose normal expression was one of cold and direct ferocity. "You speak as one almost not fully a Chimera. There is more to you than seems at first inspection. And yet Yuen says you bested him…"
"By a trick, Proven and Loyal Ma'am. He is Alpha; I am Beta."
"… but I am convinced you are loyal to the race. You do not apprehend how near the race teeters to being utterly expunged, nor your own role in these events."
"My role? Beggin' your pardon, my Lady?"
Her eyes grew vivid as she stared at his face. "Alpha Daae realized that the Blue civilian named Illiance interrupted our briefing, and took you from us, merely to have you away from the field of action, while the camp was broken down and withdrawn with all personnel to the belowground here. You were meant not to be present when Kine Larz forced the great door to the lower levels. They did not return your uniform to you. This was not to shame you: they understand you are significant."
Menelaus did not mention that he had not been buried with a uniform, Chimerical or otherwise.
He looked again at the Beta girls with their bows, Phyle with his sling; not to mention the belt capsules of the gray twins, or the poisonous oil in the hair barbs of Zouave Zhigansk.
Menelaus wondered at the nonchalance of the Blue Men. Perhaps the Blues wanted the Thaws to be armed, to have an excuse to slaughter them that would ease their consciences.
It took him a moment to realize that something more was involved in returning the native period garb to the prisoners. They had been allowed to retain their makeshift weapons in order to provoke a disturbance in the behavior patterns of the prisoners.
With hope of violence in the air, their actions would be tested under stress, and once again anomalies in behavior would be more obvious. It was a dangerous tactic meant to flush out the imposter among the prisoners, and it bespoke desperation on the part of the Blue Men.
Something was terrifying them into rash action.
4. Hairdressing
The Chimerae also sensed the terror in the air, and it gladdened their hearts. The Chimerae were relaxed, which was an odd sight, like seeing a pack of wolves suddenly learn how to smile. A certain degree of informality seemed to have overcome them: they did not address each other by rank.
Lady Ivinia whistled and doffed her tiara, pushed back Menelaus' hood, and gestured for him to sit on the cold metal floor beside her. Then the Chimerae took out oils and combs and began dressing each other's hair. Gamma Joet Phyle stood behind Lady Ivinia, who maintained a stoical expression as her hair was yanked by the apologetic Phyle. Vulpina and Suspinia stood behind Menelaus and began combing his hair, marveling at how short he wore it. The three Kine, Happy, Ardzl, and Franz, backed away on their knees, bowing, as far as the dog things would permit, frightened to see their master race wax merry.
Lady Ivinia said, "Brothers and sisters! For you are all ennobled to my blood this day: The oblivion we crave is upon us now! Let us each, in our hearts, curse the nonexistent God for his indifference, and dare him to destroy us! The more lingering the death inflicted, the longer the time to display the stoicism and bravery by which our descendants and lineages shall be judged by future Eugenics Boards…"
Her voice trailed off. Her words had no doubt been something she had been wont to say, a habit, and spoken before she could catch herself. A pall of silence hung in the air after this; no one of the Chimerae was willing to say that there would be no more Eugenics Boards, and no lineages, forever.
Menelaus stirred and said, "Well, don't give up hope yet; it's possible we can talk our way out of this. We all might make it out alive, if we only keep our heads…"
They looked shocked for a moment, and then, suddenly, the Chimerae opened their mouths and laughed peals of laughter, Gamma Phyle in bass, Lady Ivinia in a contralto, the two Beta maidens in sopranos.
Phyle, the scabrous-skinned Gamma, spoke up, "Good one, Sterling! Had me going!"
Vulpina, behind him, giggled and shrieked and said, "Oh, Anubis, you are too funny!"
Suspinia, the other Beta adolescent, said doubtfully, "He wasn't really, I mean, not for real, wanting to live, right? It was just a rec hall prat, right?"
Lady Ivinia said, "Of course, my sister. Merely a comical word to unknot the tension! All Chimerae know that life is pain. Life is grief. The only joy of life is to inflict death on those who want so desperately to live. The only peace in life is to yearn for death, so that those who inflict death on you are cheated of this same joy. That is the Chimera way. In our blood, and in our genes, we are half beasts, and we despise the nature of pure men, who love good things." But she said this not in a stern tone, but lightheartedly, as if she were speaking sentiments known to all; reminding, not instructing.
Menelaus jumped when Beta Vulpina spoke in his ear. He had not forgotten that the hands rubbing oil into his hair belonged to the maiden pressing against his back, but now her lips were dangerously near his ear, and he felt the intimate tingle of her breath on his cheek. She said softly, "Listen to the Alpha Lady! We must learn to love pain, and to love to inflict it!"
"Lovely," muttered Menelaus in deadpan sarcasm. "How old are you, what, sixteen? Fourteen?"
"I am as old as I will ever be! This hour you and I will die together! Won't that be fun? If we time it right, we can have the entrails of our corpses mingled together in a huge pool of blood. I ask this as my dying request. Do you really think me lovely?" And she kissed him on the ear.
He brushed her lips away from his neck like a man brushing a fly. "I am still married until death us do part, sister. I appreciate the offer—who does not like a romantic double murder-suicide in battle?—but let's keep our guts inside us to digest food, and spill theirs on the floor."
She pouted. "You un-face me! If I were not about to commit suicide in battle, I'd commit suicide just to spite you!"
Lady Ivinia was done with her coiffure, and now she had Vulpina sit down before her, and began combing out the girl's hair with practiced, businesslike strokes. "Sister Vulpina! Self-demotion is a sacred rite among us! And too good for you!"
All the Chimera laughed again, and Vulpina turned beet-red, but she also laughed, and did not draw her suicide dirk and plunge it into her own throat.
Lady Ivinia said, "The duty of virgins is to survive combat and be raped by their conquerors, so that they may bear male children, teaching them to slay their fathers and avenge us. Remember this! I am the mother of seven I can name with pride and others I do not name. My duty to the race is fulfilled, and painful death in melee is an honor I can claim."
Suspinia said in a saucy voice, "Well, you're too old to get raped anyway!"
Instead of drawing a weapon and killing her on the spot, Ivinia threw back her head and emitted a peal of laughter, and Gamma Phyle slapped the ground, guffawing, and said, "Aye! But them blue Kine ain't got no wagglies bigger'n my pinky nohow, so who could they plumb?"
Menelaus said, "Since we are all about to die, let me just be frank and say, Chimerae are a sick, sick race. The only thing that is really good about Chimerae is that we are not as disgusting as Nymphs."
Suspinia sniffed and snapped her fingers under his nose. "Well, that's not fair! Chimerae have good points! We love fighting, for one thing. And we are tidy. Have you seen how squared away our tents and grounds in the prison camp are, compared to those sloppy Witches'?"
More laughter. Vulpina chimed in, "She is right! The Witches don't even walk in step when they walk. They are like toddlers who haven't learned how to march. At dawn they are still in their sleeping rolls when the dogs blow reveille—except unless they stayed up all night!"
Phyle said, "Anubis! You're not saying aright, Brother Beta! Chimmers are the best o' the best. 'Specially our womenfolk. I figures there be but two kinds of frails, those what like getting beaten a bit before bunk-up time, and those what stab their men in the kidneys with a stiletto whiles we're asleep. Meek and feisty. Both have their good points, mind you! But b