The Hermetic Millennia (46 page)

So, submerged the whole time, we crept down the coast until we reached a clear spot, where I could loop in a buddy of mine. Oh-No pussed up, and we didn’t dare take him to the real hospital, or else the Chimerae would ask questions. The Lotus King was able to keep Oh-No happy, so he died giggling and kicking his heels like a baby. Hesp was downgraded to fertilizer early on, and I hated him more when he was a corpse, stinking up our floating coffin of a boat, than I ever did when he was alive.

Afters, Sugar-n-Slice was feeling lonely and in the need of male comfort, and we were the only surviving owners of this boat that contained maybe two dozen radically useful inventions that were worth millions of medallions to the black market quartermasters.

So
I
lived happily ever after.

10. The Search Is Ended

The trio of Blue Men—Yndelf, Yndech, Ydmoy—had a number of questions, which Menelaus translated with great precision and exactitude as Kine Larz got more and more surly and incoherent, throwing bowl after bowl of steaming-hot rice wine down his throat; and the responses from Larz of the Gutter Menelaus translated with equal precision, but he often failed to explain circumlocutions, allusions, metaphors, or ambiguities.

Eventually Ull raised his left hand and called a halt to these proceedings. “Beta Sterling Anubis! I suspect a deceptive intent on your part. A complications of motives leads to null sets of morally correct action-reaction—” And he used an expression from the Monument math, a description of a game-theory situation where any move led to mutual loss.

Menelaus spread his hands, “You caught me. I was wondering how long it would take you to figure out this prisoner is a bilko.”

“A what?”

“A sleek, a schemer, a scammist, a skunk, a yardbird, a goldbrick, a sadsack gob who takes the brevet for another man’s job. Do you guys really have no word for this in your language? A dishonest person who benefits from the credulity of others.”

Ull looked puzzled. “We have poets and artisans, of course, but their excesses are guided by a strict notation of coherence to accepted forms.”

“Ah, no. Well, on second thought, artists
are
actually a kind of— No, no! Wait! Your society does not have fraud?”

Ull favored him with a cold and snakelike stare, but Illiance answered, his voice light and serene. “Of course we have fraud. We are human, and suffer the limitations of human nature and their attendant miseries.”

“What do you do to perpetrators of fraud? Family impalement Chimera-style? Or are you like the Nymphs, and you just drug them up until they puke and apologize, and pay back what they took?”

“We register our discontent.”

“Uh—wow, you sure suffer the misery of human nature.”

Illiance said, “The configuration you are using is called sarcasm, where you say the opposite of your meaning? You honor us, if you think us so far above the wretchedness of mortal suffering. If one of our Order provokes sufficient discontent, the secular arm acts, and the malefactor is returned to the Locusts.”

“Sounds painful. What’s involved?” Menelaus asked Illiance.

Ull made a preemptory gesture. “Enough! Beta Sterling Anubis, you are altering your mode of translation to allure us to certain conclusions which we are competent to establish independently.”

“Then why are you asking this pook-jerker so many questions? He is making up his answers.”

Ull said, “We are exploring the negative information spaces. For example, we have already deduced that Fear Island is Foehr Island, one of the North Frisian Islands on the German coast of the North Sea. The location was one of the strongholds of the Nobilissimus, the first true world-ruler, during the period of his exile in
A.D.
2409 to 2413, and before this was merely an aerodrome. His tale, independent of any falsehoods, indicates a breakdown of the ancient depthtrain system that bored below the crust was far earlier than previously believed. Further, we can deduce from the fact that the Cities in Space were still aloft in this period, that the Hermeticists were keeping them staffed despite the long-term economic losses and political instability involved: which means that shipping Von Neumann self-replicating macromolecules into space was not merely a policy of the Hermeticists, but their prime priority at that time. The subject’s lies and exaggerations concern only himself and his own prowess, and therefore distort the visualization modeled from his thought-environment only in trivial respects, of no present concern to the Order of Simplification.”

Mentor Ull continued ponderously, “You see yourself how the words of a dishonest man can serve to expand knowledge. Do you have doubts what truly caused the downfall of the Chimerae? Or who? Sarmento i Illa d’Or of the Hermetic Order woke periodically from slumber to addict a whole generation of Chimera serfs to an advanced range of recreational pharmaceuticals, perhaps constructed using Monument mathematical tools of analytical biochemistry. Such addiction, subverting reason, made the spread of some hedonistic philosophy like that of the Naturalists to be inevitable.”

“How much do you know of the Hermeticists?” asked Menelaus of Ull, staring intently.

Ull waved his hand dismissively at Menelaus, ignoring the question. “For us, there is another question pending, and more pressing: Ask him what the Judge of Ages looks like, and where in the Tombs, on what level he is interred.”

Menelaus passed along the question and translated the answer.

“Larz says that the Judge of Ages is a man of middle height, with dark hair going gray at the temples, with penetrating dark eyes, slanted in the normal fashion, and his skin is medium-dark, his lips full and his face is roundish. Larz describes him as a man of immense dignity and personal magnetism, ‘majestic’ is the word he used. Larz says the Judge has small, almost feminine hands. He is economical in his body language, not given to extravagant gestures, and is somewhat stern and curt in his speech, and he has no sense of humor. He wears the traditional costume of a judge: long red robes trimmed with white and girdled with black, a shoulder-length white wig, a scarlet tippet, and a black cloth sentence-cap above that to show that the death penalty is imposed on any time period found displeasing to him.”

Ull said, “What is that snorting noise you are making?”

Illiance said, “He is laughing at us.”

Menelaus said, “No, gentlemen. Not at all. Uh-aha. Uh. I just had, a strand of celery, from uh, breakfast, stuck up my nose, and I had to clear my, um, sinuses to get it out. Why should I laugh? Is there anything remotely amusing in the, ah, mental environment?”

Illiance looked at Menelaus narrowly. “You suspect that Larz of Gutter is practicing a deception?”

“I do indeed, and he needs a lot more practice. Unless you think the Judge of Ages wears a long white wig?”

Ull said in his slow, grave voice, “Be not in haste to assume! The ways of the relicts from the Ere-now are strange to us. Our records do indeed show that the Judge of Ages passed the bar and practiced law. He may have a right to the costume of the judicial caste from his time and home. Also, there is a legend that his early attempt at intelligence augmentation disorganized his wits. Perhaps he has grown eccentric, or engages in unexpected antics!”

Menelaus seemed suddenly more sober. He nodded and stroked his chin. “You are right. He probably does not do normal, sane and ordinary things, like paint himself blue and rob coffins, and build houses like seashells without doors or windows or any way to keep the wind out.”

Illiance spoke in a voice of mild surprise, “But we did not raise these structures. We don’t know what purpose they serve.”

Ull snapped, “Achieve silence! Simplicity designates that we are here to gather, not to extrude, information!” He turned to Menelaus. “What of the remaining question?”

Menelaus talked with Larz, nodding thoughtfully, and with something of a stiff bow, said, “Gentlemen! Your search is ended! Kine Larz of Gutter says he knows exactly where the Judge of Ages is buried, on what level, and can tell you the markings by which his coffin can be distinguished from ordinary coffins. He furthermore offers his services, as an expert in bypassing alarms and traps and automatic defenses, to infiltrate a team of your choosing past the buried gates.”

The Blue Men showed a pleased, if muted, reaction: Ull nodded with solemn satisfaction, and the triplets murmured one to the next in whispered excitement.

Only Illiance was doubtful, and gazed up at Menelaus with narrowed eyes. But Menelaus had pulled his hood up, and nothing could be seen aside from the big hook nose and the sardonic, thin-lipped mouth. Illiance was unable to read his expression.

Menelaus leaned toward Illiance. “I gotta use the latrine.”

11

The Coming of the Witches

1. The Gems

The Blue Men were still human enough to honor the need for privacy during evacuation of the bowels. They were not so deferential as to allow for a lack of security, however. In the little shack, walled with tent material, built over the deep ditch that served as a privy, there was an open panel facing the wood where a dog thing, pomander held to its nose and one paw on its cutlass, could watch Menelaus squatting over the ditch, buttocks turning blue in the cold, in case he tried anything untoward.

Fortunately, Menelaus could keep the bulk of his tent-material robes between his hands and the eyes of the dog thing, and that worthy canine had not been instructed to be wary of radio waves issuing from prisoners in the privy.

Menelaus had also taken the precaution of asking the breakfast coffins in the mess tent to make him a particularly noxious combination of foodstuffs for breakfast. Based on Mickey’s description of how the nasal tissue cultures in these Moreaus were designed to react to specific odorant molecules, Menelaus had calculated how to have his bowels produce a particularly foetid excretion. He was gratified to see the dog thing, ears drooping, back several large steps away.

Montrose held seven of the logic crystals Illiance had worn on his coat: jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, beryl, and the seventh gem was a white oblong that looked like diamond. Fortunately, they were compatible at a base level with the circuitry in the tent material.

Since the apparent purpose of the gem display was to show reliance on the surrounding energy signal traffic, Menelaus concluded that the coats more thickly begemmed would be the ones with simpler circuits, hence simpler to hex.

Of course, the Blue Man technology was sure to come to the attention of the Blue Men scanning equipment at some point. However, all the Blue Men and dog things were pacing solemnly or barking and trotting friskily here and there throughout their encampment, gathering gear and preparing for the assault on the Tomb door. Menelaus estimated between thirteen and seventeen minutes’ transmission time before the signals were found.

The base language of the logic gems was the same as that of the dog thing voice boxes. His implants responded with a toothache and a cacophony of noise in the auditory nerves of his skull.

“Texas Horndog calling Jumbo Jugs. Texas Horndog to Jumbo Jugs. Come in. Come in. Do you read me? What’s your twenty?”

He was gratified when the response came immediately. Oenoe must have been sleeping with the signal board in her hands. She was as skilled as a harpist when it came to the board, which could produce a passable impersonation of her voice and pass it directly as radio pulses to his implants, which then needed only to trigger the corresponding neural stimulus in his ear. It was just like speaking, although nothing aloud was said.

“Beloved, my loins rejoice that my ears are caressed by your love-words. My twenty what? Your speech is obscure, and hinders the speech-joy. Have I not erenow bemoaned this?”

“Sorry. Next time I’ll use a cleaner callsign. I’ll be Chubb and you’ll be Chubbies. Plan A: Can you open the main doors from the inside to let us in?”

“No, Your Honor. The door mind will not respond to any of the words of command you gave us.”

“Damnation. That is a real bad sign. I had hoped the local nodes were not infected.”

“My ears take no joy from your saying, Your Honor, not understanding their import.”

“It means I am royally disadvantaged again. My critters, the machines that work for me, have been corrupted by an outside source. Either that or someone changed all the passcodes. Plan B: Can you switch the door automatics from nonlethal to lethal? The Blues have done something to prevent a massive retaliation from being triggered, as if they know the response pattern.”

“The doors will not answer our pleas at all.”

“More damnation. Plan C: Have you been able to raise any signal patterns on the radio on any frequencies?”

“There is a set of powerful static electric discharges.”

“Thunderstorm?”

Instead of answering, her voice was replaced by a cracking and crackling noise, irregularly repeated, like tinfoil being crumbled then torn.

He said, “Odd. It’s a mass of metal moving through the atmosphere, picking up static electricity by friction against different air layers. What the pox could it be? What the pox is that big?”

She said, “Can you truly deduce this by listening to … hisses and snaps?”

“Posthuman brains are good for something: I can plot the discharges on a graph in my head and deduce the properties of the originating mass. You get a static discharge pattern like that from an improperly grounded space elevator cable. It may be a superscraper. Put up by someone after my systems went blind in the ninety-fifth century.”

“Lovely Soorm and I, we have triangulated; and one hundred and thirty miles southeast of here is where the discharges occurred.”

“That’s in the Wake County, near Raleigh.… Occurred? Past tense?”

“We have checked it again. It is moving in a straight line toward this place. If its rate does not change, it will be here tomorrow.”

“Same day that whoever is active on the three- to thirty-megahertz band is coming. Now I am totally creeped out. The Hyades cannot have arrived before schedule. We still have five hundred years to spare. They don’t have the mass to burn to make that acceleration, and human civilization would have seen additional acceleration laserlight from Epsilon Taurus pointed our way one hundred and fifty years ago … uh … if there had been any human civilization one hundred and fifty years ago. Does that mean we cannot trust the Monument notation? The formula for their energy budget for the conquest of any solar system fitting our profile was clear. But if their civilization formula can change over time, it doesn’t serve any point!” Menelaus realized he was speaking in English, and gritted his teeth to silence himself. “Okay, Montrose, you gotta stop talking to yourself. That includes no talking to yourself to tell yourself to stop talking to yourself. And now is not the time to go crazy. Uh, again.”