Vigil said to the Judge of Ages, “You are a man of legend—on Nightspore, in the buried nation of Threal, they worship you as a god. How do I address you?”
“Call me Meany. Or, if you want to be formal and proper and posh, call me Doc. I ain’t a doctor doctor, a real doctor, a sawbones, but I got a degree in math from Soko University in Oddifornia. They say the continent is tilted, on account of the Anglos is so light-headed they pull the East Coast up, so all the loose screws roll to the other coast. Heh. I hain’t told that joke since that continent was still around. Still funny, if’n you ask me.”
Vigil drew a deep breath, trying to bring order to his agitated inner creatures. “Why is there a warship coming?”
Montrose took a small twig out of an inner pocket and scraped thoughtfully at the gaps between his teeth. He paused to push his tongue into his cheek, as if chasing some stray scrap, and then he spat. “I could say ’cause Blackie’s coming. Well, he is sort of here also. That is a puppet of his that he radioed ahead. When he sent his gear, his crown and sword and stuff, near as I can figure, must have left Tellus on the same ship I shipped out on, the Errantry. Easy enough to do, since the Guild works for him. I was launched by the Starfaring Guild, but landed by the Stability, which tells you how long ago that was. It means he must have recognized what was going on same time I did, within ten years plus or minus. Right, Blackie?”
Before Del Azarchel, could answer, Vigil said, “Sir, that was not my question.”
“Well, ask what you mean, dammit. It’s not like I can read your mind! We ain’t on the same circuit.”
Vigil said doggedly, “Even before she departed for M3, the Swan Princess knew the secret of how to use the cliometric equations to reach peace. She could prevent world wars and defuse mutinies before they occurred. The Memento Stone would, if anything, include a more complete answer, allowing us to cooperate with the aliens without the horror of forced repopulation to far worlds. So the Stone could only increase, not decrease, her skill at reading the Monument and rendering peace! We know the aliens are not at open war. Therefore, there is a Final Peace Equation. We know that…”
Vigil realized he was rambling, telling the Judge of Ages matters this ancient being must have known before Vigil was born, or his world, or his ancestors’ worlds, or his family, clan, race, language.
Montrose did not seem impatient. He merely nodded. “You’re getting warm. Go on.”
“From these facts, we know the human race cannot be growing in any direction but more and more civilized and peaceful. And yet—look! There sits the herald of an incoming multigeneration warship, asking to set terms of the combat!”
Montrose shrugged with one shoulder. “Maybe you should be asking a different question, sonny.”
“What would that be, sir?”
“The peaceful future where we ain’t gunna study war no more, why, that future would not need Stability Lords as proud and picky about their honor as a pack of Spaniards, would it? So one question maybe you should be asking yourself is this: Why did the interstellar plans of future history give rise to customs and civilizations like what we got now? Like something from the Dark Ages? The First Dark Ages, I mean.”
Vigil looked uncomfortable but said nothing.
Montrose said, “Seems to me that what you is really asking is, what the plague is your life for, a man like you? You’d rather die than break your word, and there ain’t no such man like that when sweet reason reigns and all folks is fat and happy. So what is your life for, Vigil Starmanson? Why is there such a thing as a you?” He grinned and spat out the toothpick. “That is your real question, ain’t it?”
Vigil sighed. Everything in his life turned on the answer. “Yes, sir,” he said humbly. “That is my question. You said you know the answer and that no one heeds you.”
“Ain’t that so! Yessirree—I surely do know. It’s obvious.”
“Will you tell us?”
“Nope.”
Vigil restrained the urge to jolt the Judge of Ages with a mudra from the glance of an evil eye to induce vomiting spasms. It would be more in keeping with the dignity of the ancient man simply to smite with the sword. But he checked that impulse as well. “What? And why not?”
“And have you ignore me, too? Figure it out your own damned self.”
The Master of the Empyrean raised his hand and signaled with his finger lamp. “I ask the Lord Hermeticist grant me time enough to answer his query, that we might move rapidly on to other business? I mean to have that braking laser lit and properly presented, or else no one leaves this chamber alive.”
Vigil said, “One question first: You sent the Myrmidon to save me?”
“I did not.”
“Who did?”
“No one sent him. I am him. Despite their extinction, I still from time to time can find an empty body with mind-circuits formatted correctly to receive my imprint, buried in a library, or in various hiding holes in hollow asteroids, or bunkers on abandoned moons. I meant to have you do the duty I gave you and force this stubborn Table to do their duty I gave them, but unexpected events intruded. Your planet, Torment, somehow slipped the information about the true nature of Rania’s Final Peace Equation into the hand of your Cliometrician here. This made events spin out of control, requiring me to drop my mask and speak.”
Vigil said to the Aruspex, “This copy of the Final Peace Equation, this abomination on the table before us—where did you get it?”
The Aruspex made a fist: the gesture for assent. “He speaks the truth. It came from Torment herself. Thanks to our uniquely potent receivers, she has been spying for centuries on the other Potentates and Powers of the Empyrean, decoding the secret and subconscious thoughts of our Dominion as they as crawled at lightspeed from Altair to Proxima to 61 Cygni. She discovered the unedited versions of the severed plan for human evolution, beamed to each separate Stability on every world, and reconnected them. As if by mischance, my people came across her information in an unguarded file. I trespassed on my own initiative, no doubt with her awareness: whether technically that counts as intervention in human life, I leave to others to decide.”
Vigil turned to Del Azarchel, “You have the floor. Explain this enigma.”
Del Azarchel said, “If Rania, once returned from M3, has the power and motivation to impose peace on mankind, then there can be no war; and yet an interstellar war is and has been ongoing for centuries, and war will tear the Empyrean in pieces and force those pieces to flee to ever more distant stars and colonize there. Your question is, how can this be, and what is your life for?”
Vigil waited, seething with impatience. Del Azarchel paused, smiling, enjoying the unhappy silence. With a smile, the Master of the Empyrean spread his hands, as if to show he had no more tricks in his glove circuits, no mudras, no hidden finger-commands to make.
“Simple. Rania never returned from M3.”
9. The End of History
A dumbfounded silence clutched all the men there.
The voice of Montrose was as loud as the bray of a mule in the quiet chamber. “Like I been saying all along. The millions aboard the Errantry knew it, and so do their children sixteen hundred years later. Polite folk to this day will not sup with an Errant or walk into their shops or grottos because Errants will not mouth the polite lies. So much misery, so many years of prejudice and hate, just to save Blackie’s brittle little asinine pride, eh?”
Del Azarchel’s face grew dark with a blush, and his eyes narrowed.
Vigil said, “What do you mean?”
Montrose said, “I am sure the fake Rania who came back from the stars made a perfectly nice wife for Blackie. All he wanted was the reputation of it, right? Ain’t that right, Blackie? You never wanted the girl, just wanted the world to think she was your’n. And so you must have figured it out quick as I did, but you had all the media smother the knowledge and hired folk to spread rumors, rewrite history books, censor memories, all that stuff.”
Del Azarchel lean
ed back in the chair. “One day you will die and at my hand, I swear it. But let us not speak of such unpleasant matters now. The fate of worlds, of the destiny of man, hangs in the balance.”
Menelaus turned to Vigil. “Remind Blackie he ain’t got the floor to talk. Blackie is a big liar. He did not want the Empyrean to know that he was Mr. Rebound Guy, the one to whom Fake-a-Rania turned in sorrow for comfort when I walked away from her.”
Vigil said to Menelaus, “But she rejected you, not you her! That is what the histories say.”
“No kidding? I betcha they also say Blackie built the pyramids of Egypt all by hisself when he was a toddler. To have a place to stay while he wrote Plato’s dialogue in Shakespeare’s Hamlet? You know the one: To be, or not to be? And what is ‘Being’?”
Vigil said, “No, but history says you went mad and fled here, to the farthest star where mankind dwells—”
“If you read stuff in history books that sounds made up, trust me, they was probably made up. Son, I could have just unplugged by brain-phone gizmo and gotten on a slow boat to China, or whatever is occupying that part of Asia these days, and stayed on Earth, and had air and weight, bugs and diet like I’m damned used to, and been plenty alone. You don’t take two centuries and cross one hundred lightyears just to have a place to get drunk, get into a bar fight, and puke on someone. I arrived on the Errantry by way of Rasalhague and 12 Ophiuchi, and been here over a thousand years. What the hell you think I been doing all this time, wandering around in my skivvies, cussing at your pink sun and howling at your fat moon, with a five-o’clock shadow on my chin and a jug of cheap rotgut in my fist?”
“Ummm.…” Since this was exactly the mental picture Vigil has entertained of the fate of the Judge of Ages ever since he heard the tale in childhood, Vigil thought it more discreet not to say.
Montrose said, “It weren’t that hard to figure. She had all Rania’s memories all right, down to the last drop, but something was missing. She could not read the Monument no more, for one thing. She talked about divorcing man and wife like that was normal, for another, and didn’t bother with confession nor mass. It weren’t her.” He pointed his finger at Del Azarchel. “And that fellow there had the poets and tale-spinners spread the story that I was fooled for a season, and he coupled with her, defiling my marriage bed—and I would kill you just for that, you twin-tongued spirochete infecting the descending colon of a donkey with the clap.” He turned back to Vigil. “Don’t look surprised. I never been fooled by fake Ranias before. Yellow Door tried it, for one.”
Del Azarchel said wryly, “For the benefit of future historians who may interview you gentlemen about this hour, the Cowhand is referring to the highly evolved Sarmento Esteban Rolando i Illa d’Or, the Golden of Hermetic Order of the Irenic Ecumenical Conclave of Man, born A.D. 2196, died A.D. 10650, last ghost deleted A.D. 10927; he is the father of the Nymphs, from which the Joys of Charm, the Delectables of 47 Ursae Majoris all their posterity take their form, as well as the Rakshasi of Gliese 31.5 in Tucana and HR 6 in Phoenix. These in turn are the remote ancestors of your Meanderers, Exiles, and Expelled.” Del Azarchel hefted the pearl in his hand, his voice growing slower and more solemn as he spoke. When he finished, he looked at the Potentate of Torment. What the gaze meant, none in that chamber could say, since only he saw her eyes. “Eons turn and turn again, and all things pass away, and I would prefer he not be forgotten.” He smiled his dazzling smile. “All things, save me, of course.”
“Only damn Hermeticist who could shoot worth a damn,” said Montrose. “Sarmento, I mean. Nicked me once but good.”
“I regularly group better than he did in target shooting and pigeon,” said Del Azarchel. “I am eager to compare my skill with the pistol with yours. At times I wonder if these other matters will never cease to distract us.”
Vigil said harshly, “Matters like whether your servants will dash this world to bits, as we have vowed to do, with the sword you bestowed, sir?”
Del Azarchel leaned back. “By all means, take your time, come to the correct decision as I have ordained, find a way to find yourself alive to see another dawn! Whatever motions of thoughts or words are needed for his happy event to come to pass, I will wait as patient as a stone until … ah, let us say … for another twelve minutes and a half before unleashing weapons deadly beyond the conception of mortal or Angel, Potentate or Domination.”
Montrose said to Vigil, “Hey. If you use that sword, what exactly does it do?”
Vigil said, “Erases all human records and ghosts out of the Noösphere of Torment and the extended information systems of Iota Draconis. Our libraries, finances, laws, intellectual assistance formulae, ship brains, ecological controls, nanotech regulators, stored personalities, serving angels, everything that is ours, including any records and recorded ancestors. Just the diseases caused by nanotechnology malfunctions of every living spore and mite in the city severed from networked controls would suffice to kill all life on the surface, and the mudra and mandala would be meaningless gestures and lines. Cliometry shows a mutual extermination by the hostile clans and races of Torment within a century and a half.”
“So you cannot actually ignite Del Azarchel’s groin?”
“It is an informational weapon, more potent than those made of matter.”
“Just asking.”
“Torment would bring replacements from the buried cities of slumber near the core, and restore a working society to rule this world, and with a working Stability to maintain contact with far worlds. This happened once before in our history, when the Stability of this world failed and all were slain. From this event, the world takes her sad name.”
“Well, only eleven minutes left. Better get a move on. Have you figured what to do?”
Vigil stared at Montrose. “You seem not to care.”
“You seem a bright feller. Course I don’t care. None of this affects me. I played through all these jigs and antics on account of a Swan asked me to. You guessed my plans?”
Vigil said, “No. Only one clue is missing.” He turned. “Torment! You spoke of your fear. Of what are you afraid?”
Torment said, “I fear the long-term consequences of my acts will return to haunt me. In this, I am no different from lesser beings.”
“And these consequences are?”
“Triumvirate must know Rania is false: but the Dominion is as far above me as he is above you. To both of us, he is a mind whose workings none can know nor understand. If I keep faith with Rania, then I must oppose Ximen, who is in rebellion against her, and see that his vessel never makes port. But if I keep faith with the true Rania, or with her dream, she who never returned from M3, then I must rebel against the False Rania, and this puts me in the company of Ximen, whereupon I must welcome his vessel, war or no war.
“So, I fear the signals reaching me from other minds in the Empyrean Polity, including those of Powers and Principalities who can overwhelm my thoughts as easily as Foxes bedevil Men. Parts of my mind are swift, and parts are slow, so that to my swift thoughts, a century hence is too remote for worry, but to the slow, the retaliation is immediate. I do not dare defy the Dominion. Triumvirate is for the False Rania and upholds her.”
Vigil threw the sword on the table so that it rang like a bell, and slid, and came to rest just in front of Del Azarchel, who looked pleased and surprised.
Vigil said, “My Lords of the Stability, you may escape your penalty if you dissolve and adjourn forever. There will be no further meetings of this body, nor any need of them. The command of the Lighthouse, by terms of a covenant older than our planet, will return to the Starfarer’s Guild, whose only living member is seated here before us. The penalty for your disobedience I mitigate: instead of being destroyed at my hands, I leave to the mercy of the Emancipation. With this same one stroke, I can avenge my father, not with death, for Torment does not understand death, but with exile.”
Montrose said, “Whose exile? Yours? What, you think you are coming with me?”
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Vigil shook his head. “Everyone is coming with you, save for myself alone and the Lighthouse crew. I alone am faithful enough to tend the beam of Iota Draconis, the most powerful beam in all the human polity, and center it into your sails no matter how long the wait. I will keep the beam centered even if sixty thousand years must pass by.”
“How you know I ain’t got a ship of my own?”
“You have been constructing sailcloth on the moon called Hellebore. Who else has motive?”
“A man named Mickey is doing it for me, and a whole race of half-Sylphs he has fathered there, but yeah. I got me a sailworks there.”
“But you have no vessel, or else you would have departed erenow. And unless you had some understanding with the Lighthousekeeper and the Aedile and whole Table, you could have neither a launching laser nor the resources to power it and keep it powered. Why is that? As for the Imperator, he is unconcerned with retaliation from Rania or any Angel or Potentate. Why is that? Obviously he has the means to flee from the Empyrean as he did once before, during the legendary era of the White Ship, when mankind set foot in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way, and he flung worlds from star to star during their nova cycles. Obviously again, he cannot use that means, except as a threat. He boasted a moment ago of having weapons beyond any human technology, beyond what any Dominion could know. He means First Order technology. The sole example of this is the Solitudines Vastae Caelorum, the ship in which Rania, the False Rania, arrived. But he needs you to command the vessel.”
Montrose looked surprised and stared at Del Azarchel. “You got the giant Space Rose? That thing is bigger than the inner solar system!”
Del Azarchel said, “Six minutes left, Lord Hermeticist. And, yes, it turns out the sails are made of something that is neither matter nor energy, a collection of preons and quarks and antigravitons and other exotic particles for which we have no names. But the substance folds up into eleven dimensions quite nicely, like the mythical ship of the Norse gods, which could fit in a man’s wallet.