“Their names were Crucxit, Axcit, and Litcec of Seven-Twenty-One North Station. They were from a century when the Inquiline and nonjurors were not recognized as independent entities with any right to exist. They overstepped the ethical claim I respect, attempted to suborn the mental environment of the Blue Men, and were murdered in retaliation. Shall you indeed retaliate for that retaliation? If so, be deliberate and cautious: perspectives of differing ages disclose differing aspects of the complex edifice of proper conduct.”
Menelaus said, “The Blue Men are trespassing on the Tombs.”
Keir said, “If the Tomb system were functioning, it would not have brought us forth by accident in a time when the human world is dead. The failure of the Judge of Ages to carry out his obligations must be taken into account. There is no current civilization. Hence the Blue Men must trespass on the Tombs for supplies. They are compelled by necessity, which is your excuse for the deceptions you practice.”
Menelaus spat, “Nothing here has been an accident. There is a current civilization; and your damned Machine you love so much, Exarchel, that ran your age, is still active and no doubt running this one. He just has not shown his hand yet.”
“You speak in ignorance. Exarchel was merely one participant in a complex social and mental organization, treated warily, hemmed in by certain checks and balances and…”
“… And actually running things because he is smarter than you.”
Keirthlin interrupted. “Father, I submit that we are operating on partial information, and should assume the negative information space of the missing data matches the contour in the fashion most favorable to the case leading to the minimal-maximal solution to the conflict of ethical-legal claims here.”
Keir said to her, “You are urging we both act on the principle of absolute trust? But I cannot deduce his motives.”
Keirthlin said, “That is because our minds are complex, whereas his motive is simple. He is, in his own person, what the Blue Men artificially attempt to be: a man with no affectations or ulterior motives. The moral category distortions are caused by circumstances, not by him. The Blue Men are, after all, tomb-looters! That is the crucial trespass that defines and limits the possible legal resolutions.”
Keir said, “Violence is unthinkable!”
She flashed him a pert glance of her odd, metallic-white eyes. “Then don’t think about it.”
He said, “My internal emulation of you is not reaching the same conclusions you are. What additional thing does the real you know that my projection of you does not?”
Menelaus looked back and forth, his face almost blank with wonder, as if too many conflicting emotions, wonder and impatience among them, had canceled each other out on his features.
Keirthlin said, “I know his energy aura contains keys compatible with the coffin mechanisms.” She pointed a finger at Menelaus dramatically, accusingly. “The speculation of Aanwen must be correct. This is one of the Tomb Guardians. That means he is under a moral obligation to protect the revenants, including us, and including the Simplifiers; which means in turn we are under a moral obligation, even at our own expense, to assist him. Did we not take advantage of the Tombs to escape an era of glaciers? Is there no reciprocity for that?”
Father and daughter stared at each other. His eyes were troubled; hers were bright.
Menelaus said mildly, “Is this how your whole society worked? It is amazing anyone ever did anything. How did you decide when to take a coffee break, or when it was OK to filch a cigarette from the pack your brother kept hidden under his bed? Just curious.”
Keirthlin turned toward Menelaus, her eyes flashing. “Will you trust me, completely and absolutely, if only for a short time?”
Menelaus looked taken aback, but spoke in the voice of a man who comes to a quick decision. “If you are servants of the Machine, you would not know how Exarchel has been manipulating your memories or perceptions. But I will trust you now. I am desperate. It’s not like things can get much worse.”
“Then tell me your identity and motives.”
He put out his hand. “Okay, maybe they can get worse. I’ll make you a deal. You trust me first. Your personal infosphere is carried in capsules on your belts. Hand me one, attune it to me, and establish a link to any working Tomb channels. Once I am armed and dangerous, I can tell you who I am and what I mean to do.”
She unclipped one of the little cylinders at her belt and put it in his hand. Immediately he felt an ache in his back teeth as the two semi-incompatible systems worked out mutual formats and eventually—almost four seconds later—shook hands.
He clicked open the little golden tube with his thumb. It was a line of gems, just like the ones the Blues wore on their coats, held together one atop the next, like a finger wearing so many rings it could not bend: sardonyx, carnelian, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth.
From his implants, he received two sets of signals. The main and secondary power on the level where he was had been locked out. There was no response except for a simple denial signal. However, from the next level down, he could log on to the secondary and nonlethal weapons. Something or someone was blocking him from reaching the main batteries of the heavier weaponry. He gritted his buzzing teeth in frustration. Something in the Tomb brain was broken, or corrupted, or someone else was active in the system. He knew not which it was.
If he could get the dogs to carry him belowground, he would be within range to give commands to at least some nonlethals and automatics. It was something.
Like a whisper, he then picked up a third signal, a blank carrier wave. He moved his eyes without turning his head. It was coming from Alalloel. His implants, by themselves, had not been able to reach the strange-eyed woman. Whether she had been ignoring him or the Blue Men had been jamming him was still not clear, but these Gray instruments had opened a channel of communication.
He spoke in a low tone. “Your guess falls short. I am no servant. I am Montrose, the Judge of Ages. My men are buried here, and are starting to thaw. As soon as they wake, I will enact a bloody vengeance on those who trespassed in my Tombs. The horror of my retribution must be so great that it will echo through history for thousands of years, that generations yet unborn will fear to trespass again.”
Keir said in a voice hollow with horror, “You are the one who condemned the Noösphere to destruction. You introduced Cliometric variables into the scope of history to preordain its disintegration!”
Menelaus said roughly, “You should be grateful. That world was one big termite hive. It was one creature with infinite bodies and only one head. Well, brother, that one-headed world creature had only one neck, to make it easy for Exarchel to snap a collar on it, and then hand the leash to the Hyades. Whatever ain’t an individual ain’t rightly human.”
The gray twins stared at him with wide and silvery eyes. He could not tell if they were afraid because they thought him mad or speaking lies, or thought him sober and speaking truth.
He said, “Machinophiles or not, I will spare you. I will protect you and all innocent clients of the Fancy Gap Hibernation Facility, without reservation to the best of my ability, and yes, if there is a way to spare them, I will try to save the guilty clients too—but only if they surrender, and restore each thing they have looted or touched, and only if the persons directly responsible for the deaths of the three black Locusts are executed. Can you deduce my motives now?”
Keirthlin looked at her father.
Keir was scowling darkly. “All you have said is inconsequential. There is no need for vengeance. There will not be any future generations.”
An icicle of dread formed in the pit of Menelaus’ stomach. “What did you see?”
“The First Sweep. Look within. This is a true image.”
9. Raleigh
He seemed to be in midair, and snowy hills, green with pine, were flowing by underfoot. Menelaus said, “This image is coming from the missing wind-craft that Mickey launched.”
Keirthl
in’s voice was at his ear. “The serpentine that your friend cycled into its more primitive and self-aware phase of behavior gave out its normal call and response to find other mechanisms loyal to the Machine. Those process codes, being in the public domain of our Noösphere, were part of our Confraternal heritage.”
Kier added, “We violate no precepts by availing ourselves of the information content.”
Menelaus said, “You are telling me that even back in the Witch days, Exarchel had all the ratiotechs bugged?”
She said, “From even earlier. The Gigantic precautions limiting Sylph ratiotechnology to isolated handheld systems were not an overreaction. I will now show you an earlier image.”
The wind-craft hung like a kite over the scene.
Blocks of glacier, hundreds of feet high, reared above a ruined city. Even softened by shapes of snow, the soaring towers and lofty domes of glass gave the metropolis an air of classical beauty. The traces left by boulevards showed a clean gridwork of streets, and four public squares surrounded by a central square. He could see statues hooded with ice and the broken feet of triumphal arches mounded high with snow. He looked closer, and realized that those towers were merely stumps of what must have been superscrapers, and the domes were no more than surface vents for deeply dug geothermal power taps. From the arrangement, he guessed that these were an example of the very pyrohydroponic gardens whose quests to reach ever deeper levels long ago forced Pellucid to sink into ever more cautious secrecy.
Then he realized that the high, square shapes of white looming like titans above the scene were not glacier cliffs, but arcologies: massive, windowless buildings not meant for human life, containing nothing but mostly buried cubic miles of logic crystal. These were the Granoliths Pellucid had mentioned in his final report. These vast rectilinear monasteries represented land-based biological man’s last desperate attempt to understand and control the multiple-minds of the Melusine, semiartificial seagoing creatures apparently constructed from men, sea mammals, and Xypotechs.
The image seemed melancholy, but nothing to put a fright into so stolid a soul as Alpha Captain Daae.
Then he wondered if he was looking at the wrong part of the image. It was not until he turned his head that he realized this image was from a 360-degree camera, a global lens. Turning the goggles brought other parts of the recorded image into view.
Away to the south, past the barren white hills beyond, Menelaus saw what seemed to be giant dark thunderclouds gathered.
Menelaus realized there was something odd about the cloud. There was a band of blue sky (slightly brighter in hue than the sky to the left and right) issuing from the top of the thunderhead. It looked like a blue road, or perhaps a crack, as if the sky were pure blue glass that had developed two perfectly parallel, perfectly vertical fissures several miles apart, reaching directly upward.
Menelaus craned back his head, tilting the view from the goggles upward. The road of lighter blue sky receded in the upper distance. The far ends seemed to converge, the way the parallel rails of a track seem to meet at the horizon. Only here, there was no horizon. Directly overhead, the dome of the sky was cloudless, and the highest midpoint of the dome, the very zenith, was the point to which the lighter blue stripes converged. So the whole atmospheric disturbance or optical illusion or whatever it was looked like a very narrow and very tall triangle, perhaps a few miles wide at its storm cloud base, and hundreds of miles high as it reached to the top of the sky. Because of the fact that, to the human eye, the sky does seem to be a dome, the triangular stripe of lighter blue color seemed to bend like a hook or a claw, as if a Titan with his shoulder at the horizon were reaching a curved arm up and overhead, to place a menacing finger at the zenith.
It was certainly ominous looking, as if an immeasurably immense tower shaped like a half circle were about to topple on the scene.
Keirthlin, who could see him tilting back his head, gave a noise smaller than a sigh, as if anticipating what Menelaus was about to see. That small noise came just as his eyes adjusted, or perhaps his brain, and he realized what he was seeing. Perhaps he consciously noted now how disturbed the thundercloud was, or how large it was, or how far away. Perhaps he glimpsed, where the black clouds parted, the vast and round metallic surface of the lower part of the structure.
It was not blue, not really, any more than mountains seen on the horizon are blue. Mountains seem blue at a distance because of the hue of the mass of the intervening air. When they are closer than the horizon, of course, there is less air, and therefore the color is not as dark.
What he was seeing was a solid object. It was a cylinder, too large and far away for any surface details to be distinguished, reaching from the cloud level, perhaps five hundred feet off the ground, up and up through the atmosphere and stratosphere and perhaps beyond. The clouds parted as it advanced, and the air masses being displaced were condensing into a large hurricane and thunderstorm at the bottom of its foot.
The bottom was a circular plain of metal dotted with irregularities, surrounding the vast emptiness of a portal or mouth opening into the immeasurable cylindrical interior of the structure. Threadlike arms or instruments hung down, looking like the trailing tails of jellyfish.
Minutes passed, and more could be seen. The armored body of the cylinder itself was punctuated here and there with cross-shaped altitude jets, or black dots of weapon ports or antennae or instruments of some sort, about one every five or ten square miles. To be visible at this distance, the rocket cones must have been larger than skyscrapers.
Some segments of the vast curving surface were flat and dark like the oceans of the moon; others were stubbled with a pattern of irregularities, almost invisible at this distance, which may have been buildings, encampments, fortresses, or aerodromes larger than any major metropolis, their towers horizontal rather than vertical. There were some craters large enough to be visible on the sections higher in the atmosphere, or perhaps these were scars from strikes by old nuclear missiles.
With the effortless power and grace of a god, serene as a ship in full sail, the unimaginably titanic artifact moved across the face of the Earth, and the disturbed clouds formed eddies and swirls, larger than provinces, behind it as it came.
A little nimbus of glittering glints fluttered before the mouth of the cylinder, and tiny specks as if something was traveling up through the air into it.
The wind-craft that had recorded the image swooped closer to the city. Menelaus could see something being lifted up from the ground and into the opening of the cylinder.
Once the wind-craft was close enough, Menelaus could use a cortical interpretation technique to resolve the vision into meaningful shapes.
Machines, swarms of machines, on the ends of long lines like spiders on threads, descended from and ascended to the mouth of the cylinder. They were carrying buildings. Even the arcologies were but toy blocks compared to the size of the cylinder. Menelaus saw vehicles like trains, pulled out of the ice that had preserved them, drawn like links of sausage up and upward. Or they may have been lines of cable or pipe.
He saw oak trees and sculptures being lifted up. A geodesic dome, and many, many lesser buildings. Houses. Mansions. Gardens. Museums. Edifices he did not recognize.
The wind-craft moved closer to the great Bell, passing beneath the mouth. The cameras could see that inside the mouth of the Bell, the various components of the city were being put back together again, like a children’s puzzle, on a series of shelves that ringed the inner hollow space.
Keirthlin said in English, “It was Raleigh, one of the cities of the Carolinas.”
Menelaus snatched the goggles off. “The base of the machine was above fourteen thousand feet. The upper reaches must be above the atmosphere…”
Keirthlin said, “I estimate it to be 116 million feet high, or 19,100 nautical miles. To hold its own coherence under its own weight, descending from orbit to the surface, the material must exceed 200 gigapascals of tensile strength and elastic proper
ties of over 1 terapascal. The degree of tapering between the geosynchronous altitude and the Earth’s surface depends on the material: for steel, it is tens of thousands to one, whereas for diamond, twenty to one. In this case, there was no visible tapering, which indicates a strength of material above what is possible for molecular bonds: the strength is akin to the strong nuclear force. By any normal understanding of Earthly science, what we saw was impossible.”
“Plague and pestilence! Who on Earth could build such a thing? The space elevator Rania took off with was just a frail spider-thread compared to that. How far out into space does it go? Is it anchored to a geosynchronous asteroid? And if it is—sucking abdominal wound of Jesus Christ!—how can they maneuver it?”
Keir said, “Have you not studied the Monument? The great east-southeast cartouche element of the Pi hieroglyph segment displays image-algorithms, pictoglyphs, and other representations describing the tools the Hyades Dominion uses for its deracination, as well as other schematics of traditional mechanisms and systems. This Bell is identical to one of the instrumentalities so pictured. It is a device for absorbing into confinement a planetary population along with various tools and physical artifacts of their culture, and sufficient layers of the ecosphere to sustain them, and for placing the populations as payload in Clarke orbit pending solar sail launch outsystem. Different mechanisms than this are preferred by the Hyades for deracinating superterrestrial and subjovial worlds. This contrivance seems to be a Hyades war-object that arrived far in advance of the promised World Armada.”
“Impossible,” said Menelaus.
Keir said, “How can we know what is impossible for them? We are as ants.”
“The laws of nature are the same for ants as for bigger things. No one can exceed the speed of light; no one can create energy from nowhere.”
Keirthlin said, “Someone sent out an extremely low frequency signal to attract the Bell, and it answered in Monument hieroglyphs, describing its rendezvous with this location. The Bell should be here shortly. If you note the cloud cover gathering, and the drop in temperature, and the howling of the wind, you will deduce that the near rim of the mouth of the Bell is already visible above the local horizon. Would you care to see a view from the logic crystals in the camp?”