The Hermetic Millennia (23 page)

“You employ suppositious phrasing?”

Menelaus shrugged. “What I am telling you is an educated guess.”

He did not mention that he had worked out the theory while he sat there, organizing the scattered clues into a pattern, based on what little he knew of the Chimera history and customs, and what he could extrapolate from their etymology, and the great deal he knew about the serpentines, whose final and perfect form he had designed.

Illiance said, “Thank you. That account has scholastic value.”

Menelaus said, “Well, no reason to cheat out of a moral obligation if I don’t have to. You’re welcome.”

“And the year you learned the Natural language?”

“
A.D.
6064. I would give you the date in their calendar, but every year was Year One to the Nymphs.”

“The Gregorian calendar continues in use by the Sacerdotal Order, who also renounce the Neurosphere, and are nonjurors. It is known to antiquarians for documentary purposes. But in our calendar, the current year is 59485
A.V.
”

“Hm. In that case, I learned their tongue in what would have been 55034 of your calendar. What event are you counting up from? The invention of agriculture? The Seven Daughters of Eve? The Extinction of the Neanderthals?”

Illiance smiled shyly. “Oh no, you have reversed your calculation. By our reckoning, you were among the Naturalists in the year 63936
A.V.
; which stands for Antevindication, or ‘Before the Vindication.’ You see, we do not count up from a past event. We count down to an event yet to come.”

Menelaus put his hand before his face to hide his expression, but his eyes were wide with astonishment, and wet with tears.

“What if the … event … you hope for never comes?” Menelaus asked, frowning and wiping his face hastily.

“Then our calendar system will be held up to the scorn of whatever creatures possess the mandate of history after we pass into extinction. Or, it may be that they prove to be right-minded creatures, and therefore will admire the serene steadfastness of our hope, even though the hope eventually proved false.”

Preceptor Illiance leaned forward and picked up his glass needle, and reloaded his sidearm. “I intuit that you desire to assist my efforts. I am interviewing another disinterred hibernaut, what you call a Thaw. Not only his dialect—he speaks a variant of this tongue puzzling to me—but also his mannerisms and mental frame are obscure to us. Haply, you might perhaps audit the interview and share your conclusions. If you would happen to follow where I walk, perhaps?”

He put the whistle to his lips and silently whistled for his dogs.

3. Mentor Ull

The upper chamber occupied a kidney-shaped space of curving walls and ceilings. It was more like a vacuole swollen in the midst of the ramp (which continued still upward) than it was like a room. The dog things, a Mastiff and a Bulldog, armed with musket and snickersnee, hunkered to one side, and they stood and pricked their ears when Illiance and Menelaus (with Collie and Wolfhound) approached.

There was a Blue Man in the room, seated in lotus position on the carpet, and the split skirts of his long coat made a semicircle around him, glinting with gems. Like Illiance, he was bald. His face was lined, his cheeks sagged into jowls, and his eyes had crow’s-feet at their corners. He wore a heavily-lidded, sleepy expression. This was Ull.

Ull was dressed much like Illiance, except that his coat had a simpler snake-pattern of jewels and circuits running through it, making his coat look almost Spartan in comparison with the dazzle of Illiance’s.

At his elbow was a small table or plate of glassy coral substance. It had no legs, but was suspended from the ceiling on a curving limb. On the plate was a bowl, a flask, and a circular looking glass.

In the looking glass appeared some scene from another chamber: shadows of a bald and dark-skinned man of heroic proportions, perhaps nude, surrounded by dog things. The man seemed to be crouching, or perhaps seated in a chair. (If so, this was the first chair Menelaus had seen in the camp: even the mess tent served the food on heated mats on the grass.) There was something odd about the man’s face and skin, and he seemed to have patches of white frills along his chest and armpits. He was either wearing a cap, or he had no ears. At a guess, he was a Hormagaunt from between
A.D.
7000 and
A.D.
8000. There was little time for a clear look, since Ull tapped the glass, and the mirror went black.

Illiance without hesitation lowered himself smoothly to sit next to the other. Menelaus took up a position behind him and stood at parade rest, hands behind his back, feet slightly spread, his eyes focused on nothing in particular. Perhaps he was studying the pattern of swirls and striations in the substance of the walls, which seemed to have been grown rather than made.

Ull picked up the bowl and set it before him. He then broke off a nine-inch-wide segment of the table and prodded and kneaded the segment with his fingers until it bent and assumed the shape and size of a bowl.

Next he reached for the flask. There was no cap or cork; the top of the flask dilated when Ull touched it, and he poured out a clear liquid into the bowl. The scent of alcohol entered the chamber, and the air above the bowl was disturbed with invisible steam.

He offered the bowl to the Illiance, who received it in both hands with an inclination of the head. Illiance took out the glass needle he had previously told Anubis was a weapon, dipped it in the bowl, and watched the needle serenely as it turned from white to green. The needle uttered a pleasing chime of noise. Illiance inclined his head again, took up the bowl, sipped three times, uttered an exclamation in his language of sonorous sibilant trills, and passed the bowl back.

Ull went through the same steps in the same order, testing the liquid with a needle, sipping, and uttering a phrase. The difference was that his exclamation was perfunctory, glum, and curt.

Ull, the elder of the two Blue Men, spoke their sonorant language.
“The relict of the before-times who provokes most interest is constrained above. I happen to have entered the second stage of mind-discipline, and inferred the extent of his modifications. The biotechnology is relatively primitive, and relies on microscopic rather than nanoscopic redactions. This implies a binary cellular logic routine, namely, that his whole immune system is programmed to shut down during grafts and repairs. If so, even if we do not know his particular chemical vocabulary, the base-forms of neural logics which are the same across all organisms are open to us. Any number of diseases or parasites could be introduced to produce nausea or pain. I submit that true simplicity and directness implies torment as the recommended approach.…”

Illiance held up an admonishing finger.
“I happen to have presented to you that the relict who stands here-now within-earshot behind me understands our speech-forms. I submit that true simplicity implies to say nothing which might later lead to complex performances, such as explanation, justification, retraction, revisitation, apology, and the like.”

Ull scowled.
“I apprehend your presentment and happen to discard it. No one can learn a language in one day from an isolated speech box.”

Illiance unobtrusively angled the bowl in his hand and caught a shimmering reflection of the hooded figure of Menelaus. The tall man was not looking down, and seemed to be paying attention to nothing.
“He may have found tools from still-operating coffins to open the isolation. He is clever enough to have attempted to use the tent material to block the responder signal.”

“Clever? I happen to think it foolish. The signal is not blocked. He does not know we retain control of the tent material permeability and tension through the mind-discipline.”

Illiance leaned back, and raised the bowl for another sip, and sighed,
“He knows now.”

Ull said:
“The Chimerae were bellicose militarists, conforming to a highly artificial life-rigidity. Behold him! He stands like a stiff-spined, blank-eyed manikin! It suggests a low-order intellect!”

Illiance said:
“It happens to suggest to me that he is too polite to take note of your misjudgment, Mentor.”

Ull said:
“Achieve silence! You will happen to remember who is tutor and superior here! Yours is to learn, not to instruct! Paranoia is both complex and delusive, since it leads to filtering facts to suit theories, and not allowing the serene mind, as still pond, to reflect the true picture of the cosmos. Contemplate this!”

Illiance, still smiling, touched his fingers to the carpet and then to the top of his own head, a humble gesture.
“With gratitude for your instruction, I shall, Mentor.”

4. Rice Wine

At this point, Illiance craned his head and looked up at Menelaus. “I happen not to know if the customs of the Chimerae allow one of their kind to sit and sip warm rice wine with us. Does your biological composition permit you to partake of such a substance without harm? For us, it is a mild intoxicant, producing euphoria.”

Menelaus grunted, knelt, and sat down heavily, reaching out with his hand to pull his feet into a cross-legged position. He did not reach for a bowl. “If I am your guest, my customs permit. If I am your prisoner, you can try to force talky-juice into me, but I’d feel a fool if I took it with my own hand. Besides, I am on duty. What were you fellows talking about just now?”

“The unwisdom of attempting transparent deceptions.” Illiance spoke dryly.

“Hm. Interesting topic.”

“On what duty do you happen to be?”

“The Academic Command was part of Intelligence Command, in my day. Since my whole chain of command got wiped out by history, that makes me the ranking officer, doesn’t it? So I am here to observe and report.”

“Report to whom? You know that your Alpha-of-Alphas, the Imperator-General of the Commonwealth, passed away millennia ago, he and all his dynasty.”

Menelaus spread his hands. “Do tell? I heard about the event. But, so what? Maybe someone will show up. It pays to stay on your toes, buttons polished and powder dry, nevertheless, because you can never tell when one of the Alphas will pull a surprise inspection. So let me gather some intel. Are you going to introduce me?”

“It would be unsimplistic of me not to! I happened to have committed a gaucherie, for which I now amend. Lance-Corporal Beta Anubis, this one is an Expositor of the Mentor category, which reflects a class of achievement most honored of our way of being: his external-name is Ull.”

“He is your CO?”

“I happen not to understand that abbreviation.”

“He is your Captain, your Skipper, your Boss, your Big Cheese; the Leader, Drill Instructor, Head Honcho, High Muckety-Muck; your Patron, Patrician, Taskmaster, Top Dog, Loud Fart; he is the Brass, the Brains, the Chief, the Man?”

“You have many words for superiors of rank.”

“Chimerae have lots of ranks.”

“Among the Simple, we happen not to affix a formal structure, preferring impromptu fluidity. The distinction of Mentor Ull is one of voluntary recognition.”

“But he gets to say what’s going to happen, right?”

“Ah … in essence, yes.”

“Thought so.”

“Now I must introduce you to him. Do you have any small object on your person you can hand to me? It does not matter what it is.”

Menelaus sighed and pulled a fist-sized oblong stone out of a hanging fold of his bulky garment. “This is my honored and ancestral weapon. It is called Rock.”

Illiance took it gravely in both hands. “I happened to have understood you to have left this outside? Or so you said.”

“I said wrong. A Chimera is never without his weapon.”

Preceptor Illiance passed it to Mentor Ull, who held the stone delicately on his fingertips, bowed his head, inspected it for a long moment, before laying it carefully on the carpet. “It is both solid and humble, this stone, and will outlast many of the civilizations of man,” said Ull in flawless Iatric.

Menelaus rubbed his chin and cheek. “Pleased to meet you. I—uh—didn’t know you were savvy to my language.”

“Your word-forms are not particularly difficult,” said Ull ponderously. “It is your thought-forms that elude.”

“Thank you, sir. Um. I think.”

5. Myth Divarication

Mentor Ull pointed with one slender, powder blue finger up toward the curving ceiling

“Above awaits a relict from a relatively shallow stratum of the dig, but who may have information of allure to us. Carbon-14 decay dating puts him at era 63000 of our calendar, which is roughly 5200 years after the founding of Richmond. We happen to have some common language with him, but the particular dialect and declensions confound us. If it should occasion that you feel yourself morally obligated to translate between us accurately and clearly, then the flow of the events you set into motion, and our own, can become as one stream, without turbulence or complexity: a serene intersection.”

Menelaus asked, “Your prisoner upstairs, what could he know that would be so, ah, alluring to you, who live in this age?”

Ull said, “Like faded ink, the origin of the Tombs is fogged, and overwritten with the illuminations and shades of myth, and wish, and distortions imparted by interest or inattention. Yet the Tombs from all the continents retain the same basic features. All are armed and buried, but not far from some obvious landmark, usually an equestrian statue or horse-totem held in reverent regard by those who dwell nearby: sacred ground. Next, the Tombs are in remote but not inaccessible places. Third, there are always watchmen posted, who are thawed automatically when a stranger approaches. These watchmen emerge from a buried gatehouse always of the same design: smaller coffins for the watchmen; larger stalls for their white horses, a breed called Neohippus, which is otherwise extinct. Fourth, the hidden doors, when found, are marked with a cross formed by the intersection of four chevrons, shaped like an eight-pointed star. Can parallelism explain such coherence of items, enduring beyond the reach of records?”