The Hermetic Millennia (53 page)

“You think this Tomb is a chessman in that game, like a castle? What about the theory that this Judge of Ages built the Tombs merely to have a place to lay his head? He sleeps in the cold ground while he waits for the human race to get advanced enough to build another starship, so he can go seek his wife. That is what the legend says.”

Illiance nodded thoughtfully. “The legends could have been started or encouraged by a deliberate manipulation of the statistical tendencies of history. And, also, it is possible that the Tombs were built for more purposes than one. A posthuman mind might foresee more goals than humans know. The idea that the entire worldwide system of Tombs was designed and built and maintained over millennia and aeons merely as part of a very long-term strategy enacted by the Judge of Ages against the Master of the World is strangely compelling.”

“Sure, the strategy of a man who wants to be left alone.”

“It is odd indeed that this site alone had armor breached so severely yet so neatly.”

“Are you implying that you
found
this site like this? Here I thought you folks ripped the roof off.”

Illiance spread his hands. “Do you see in our camp here the heavy machinery of the type needed to cut a hilltop peak in half or pull up a layer of carbon nanotube-fiber reinforced titanium alloy roof armor three yards thick? This was a man-made attack: our investigation of the trace energies left behind indicate a lased magnetic monopole beam reached down from Mare Cognitum’s Riphaeus Mountains on the Moon and introduced a potent upward vector to rip the armor upward. The assault at that range, two hundred thirty-eight thousand miles, would be beyond any conceivable retaliation of the Tomb defenses. The beam crossed one and one half light-seconds of distance, and would have been diffracted sharply when it entered the atmosphere: the calculation processing power needed for so delicate an operation over such a distance indicates superhuman intelligence. But you look skeptical.”

“No, that is just the natural cast of my features. It seems a really … odd … way to break in. So who cracked open the Tombs?”

“The superhuman intelligence to which I refer,” said Illiance, “is that of the Hermeticists. Kine Larz claims to have seen one: this suggests they are not mythical beings or, to be precise, that such myths as we know may have accumulated over millennia around a kernel of literal fact.”

Menelaus stared down at the little Blue Man. He reached out his hand as if he were about to take the other by the shoulder, but he did not actually touch the other man. “Illiance! If what you just said is the case, then the Hermeticists are the ones who broke open the Tomb armor, yet did not appear here to exploit the opening. Doesn’t that make what you and your blue buddies are doing here a little suspicious? Do you know who you are working for? Who arranged you to come here? Don’t give me guesswork. Do you
know
?”

Illiance showed no change to his tranquil expression, but his footsteps slowed, and he stopped walking.

Menelaus said, “Illiance, if what you just said is so, not only are you in grave danger, but you have also placed your dog things and everyone you dug up in danger. There are two posthuman enemies running around the blind corridors of history like titans, not caring what cities and empires and aeons they step on, one of them buried under the Earth’s mantle, and the other one hidden on the dark side of the moon, and they mean to destroy each other. If this Tomb site is part of that war, you are meddling in that war. You are stepping between two duelists about to shoot. Which side are you going to be on?”

“Such a decision would not be convoluted: Simple Men act primarily, as do all living organisms, toward our own self-preservation and toward the promulgation of the ideals and thought-structures of our mental environment. But this must be determined when convenient.”

Illiance gestured to an oval opening in the seashell substance ahead. “The first of the two relicts occupies the uppermost chamber, which we shall see first, and then we will return here.”

Menelaus glanced inside the oval opening as they passed. He saw a bald blue figure seated facing away from the opening on a spread of gem-dotted blue fabric, which seemed to be one of the coats unfolded to use as a rug. The figure was bent over several medical appliances and a reading machine, which were connected by a nest of cables to a coffin, angrily lit with little red lights. The sight was disquieting, horrible, though he could not consciously say why. There was no other prisoner in evidence.

Their footsteps carried them past and up the slope.

2. Ghost Death

“The first of the two relicts is from
A.D.
2525. He has a very complete, if very crude system of interface and interactive neural systems, much like a Locust, but no receptors. We can download what he thinks, but cannot upload to him queries to impel him to think on the topics of our interest.”

The corridor narrowed and the ramp of the floor grew more steep, and led through a sharp twist up to a small and final chamber very near the tip of the spiral tower.

Light here came from an oval opening high on the wall. Gray clouds and drifting snow were visible. It was cold. There was bioluminous fungi streaking the walls, but it was thin and patchy near the window, as if the fungi fared poorly in the cold. Heat came from an unadorned ivory bowl of black liquid resting on the floor. The inky liquid was motionless, not bubbling, but it nonetheless radiated a scalding warmth that robbed the air of moisture and scent.

Seated on a mat on the floor was Ctesibius the Savant, and the aura of his dignity seemed to fill the air even as the odorless heat of the black bowl. The bowl of hot black liquid was to one side of him, and a bowl of artificial peaches (Menelaus recognized them as grown from the half-dismantled coffins in the mess tent) was perched on a handful of snow in a matching bowl to the other side of him.

His clothing had been returned to him. The grotesque piercings of his skull were covered by a film of antiseptic cloth, covered in turn with a long white wig of curls that looked ridiculously like ones those courtiers in English courts in olden times were wont to wear, and, later, only justices in courts of law. He wore silk vestments of a striking green, the color the symbolized eternal life, trimmed with gold, to symbolize machine life. On his upper right breast and lower left skirt was the same emblem tattooed on his brow, the sign of three diamonds, to indicate his three donations, his three souls, which he had deposited by apotheosis into the infosphere.

Menelaus looked left and right. He said in Iatric, “No dogs? No bars on the window?”

Illiance said, “The relict seems to have little motive to attempt flight. We have attempted to speak through the talking boxes, to establish the offer of allowing him to download a version of his mind and memories into our local infosphere—we have more than enough capacity. It was our belief that this was the purpose of this profession and order of being, called the Savants. We thought by this to bind his self-interest to our own: but he remains aloof. I have told you the one question we seek—if he knows the Judge of Ages, and the meaning of his Judgments against the various ages he destroyed.”

Menelaus stepped forward and offered the seated Ctesibius the stiff-armed salute of a Chimera. Ctesibius the Savant nodded regally and said in early-period Anglatino, “The Hospitalier. Space Captain Sterling, named after a jackal who guards Tombs and a god who slays those who violate the guest laws. Are you here to observe my shame? I release you from your oath to guard my coffin and protect my life: if you have a knife or pistol, hand it me, that I might depart this life honorably.”

Menelaus was surprised at this speech. “What have they done?”

“Mind-rape. You do not know the term? To donate one’s memories is to glorify the soul and make it electronically immortal. It is an exact copy of one’s most inner self, every memory clear and dim, every triumph, every sin. These cretinous little blue-skinned Interactors forced a donation from me, and now a copy of my soul is lost somewhere without me in their infosphere. They are examining it while we speak, hoping to elicit from him the information by trick they cannot elicit by force.”

Menelaus said, “If I get them to shut down the emulation copy of you, would that make you happier?”

“To have him murdered? Then I must add another diamond to my heraldry, a black one, to show a failed donation. You think the shame is not greater? Do they now seek to please me?”

“Sure.”

“Do not say ‘sure.’ Address me as Donator Ctesibius.”

“Of course, Donator Ctesibius.”

“This alone would please me: that that time-honored penalty for mind-rape be accomplished upon all who performed, or failed to hinder, the deed: Our custom is to inject the perpetrator with fluids that separately stimulate the pain response from every nerve in the body, while dissolving the cortex one cell at a time. It is timed to lobotomize the perpetrator so he loses one degree of intelligence once a day for a hundred days or so, eventually becomes subhuman, but kept alive, screaming, in a glass cage in the public forum as a sign to passersby. To see this execution performed, and then to take my life in solemn suicide, this would please me.”

Menelaus said, “I don’t think I can arrange that. What about staying alive long enough just to see them shot?”

Ctesibius said, “When would the opportunity arise? But tell me nothing! They have an active copy of my soul in their hands.”

“The Judge of Ages is supposed to have xypotechnology of some sort in his lower Tombs: maybe he could find memory space for your copy. He does not much cotton to Xypotech emulations, but since the crime was done on his watch, in his yard, he will have to make an exception.”

Ctesibius said, “You speak as if you are not his servant.”

Menelaus turned to Illiance and said in Iatric, “Do you have a copy of Ctesibius the Savant that you downloaded from his nervous system?”

Illiance looked mournful. “Not as such. The copy was made with certain interleaf errors and memory compression distortions. It is mostly self-aware, but has degenerated into a psychotic strange-loop condition. It seems to be in considerable anguish. Certain of the nuances of the art of Savantry were evidently lost in the process of time: it is not our area of specialization. Preceptor Yndech did the work.”

“Ah. Tell Yndech that the Judge of Ages is going to kill him. You understand you are not supposed to do things like this, right?”

Illiance waved the question aside. “Events will unfold in our favor. Have you yet inquired of him? The emulation copy does not show clear reaction to bring forth the information we seek.”

“Hold it. You’re keeping the emulation online even as we speak? You are flushing it, even though it is wounded and psycho, with additional data streams coming from the Savant’s head?”

Illiance was blithe. “It is of no matter. We have introduced a time-nonbinding interrupt, so the mind does not remember the excruciation at any given moment of the previous moment. No pain is built up to a psychologically damaging level, and we are still able to discern surface thoughts.”

“Listen: I can get Ctesibius to talk, but you have to get the hell out of his mind, and stop looking at his thoughts, or his copy’s thoughts, whatever you are doing. Got it? He has been fooled into thinking I am a Knight from the mythical Hospitalier Order that the mythical Judge of Ages uses to guard his Tombs. So all I have to do is reassure him. Can you put his copy on standby, or put it to sleep, without killing it? It was not possible in his day and age to switch emulations into a standby mode without killing the information and killing them.”

“We have made no advance in this area. We can keep the copy of Ctesibius alive, or kill it, but cannot store it an unself-aware condition.”

Menelaus gritted his teeth in frustration. He turned back to Ctesibius. “Donator, I think—if you can cooperate—I can convince the Blue Men to transfer your copy to the Judge of Ages Xypotech system. They are trying to break into his Tombs, and may actually succeed. They made some sort of error while making the copy, so this version is insane and brain-damaged. However, I am pretty sure the Judge of Ages can fix your insane Xypotech emulation, on account of he is the world’s expert at this. He fixed Ximen del Azarchel’s emulation, and made him posthuman, and, in effect, created the Machine you serve.”

Ctesibius looked at him oddly. “What is the point of your concern? When a genetically defective child is born, civilized people perform euthanasia immediately, and inflict a legal penalty on the mother for absorbing scarce medical resources. If the defect is discovered before birth, the child is killed by aborticide. Any attempt to preserve the weak and unfit is against Darwin. Do you think I would not apply this measure to myself? Do they wish my cooperation? Have them bring me to the gray room where my soul is housed, and let me set the charges with my own hands. Autoeuthanasia is not just a privilege of the high minded; it is sacred duty.”

Illiance said, “You need not translate the comment: it was clear from the emulation reaction what was meant. Tell him our system is more compact than in his day.” He pointed at the bowl of black liquid. The substance within turned milky, then became transparent. Within, the bowl was packed with a pyramid of gems of the Blue Men; with the fluid moving through the interstices where the gem edges, rounded, did not cohere to one another. Menelaus could see filaments forming and dissolving in the fluid, finer than the veins in a leaf, connecting now one gem with a neighbor, now another, flickering into and out of existence almost too rapidly to be seen.

Ctesibius looked down without interest. He said in Anglatino, “What need be done to destroy the housing?”

Again Illiance needed no translation, but pantomimed the act of overturning the bowl. In Iatric he said, “Tell him that dispersing the fluid will disorganize the connectivity, and the emulation will be interrupted, and perish.”

Menelaus did not translate the comment, but Ctesibius did not hesitate. Kicking out with a foot, he sent the bowl flying and rebounding from the far wall, and a fluid turned black again as it trailed in a splatter, like unwinding entrails, across the floor. And the gems were scattered, and some were cracked by the violence done. Over his implants, Menelaus heard a thin and lingering wail of radio noise which trailed into horrid silence.