But it would not wait for a reply. As best Montrose could guess, the whole Collaboration from Cahetel to M3 and beyond operated on what might be called speed-of-light federalism. Decisions had to be made locally, and whoever was around decades or centuries later, got the rewards or punishments for that decision. So the major decision structures were reduced, as far as possible, to algorithms propagated to each servant race and servant, telling it how to weigh and make decisions.
Nor did Cahetel make any announcement of agreement. From its inhuman point of view, apparently it was more efficient merely to start carrying out its side of the bargain without bothering to confirm the covenant by any further formality. Presumably, if mankind did not live up to mankind’s side of the bargain, some terrible vengeance would fall upon some remote generation in the far future, just as the cliometric equations shared between them specified.
But human psychology required ceremony.
Montrose drew a deep breath, and sent the words ranging over the loudspeaker, “Know ye all men by these presences that by their solemn oath and sacred honor, the Potentate emissary for the Virtue Cahetel, sent from the Domination of Hyades, the Dominion of Praesepe, and the Authority at M3 in Canes Venatici, and the officers and crew of the memory chain called Dissent, an emanation from the most noble and ancient Ximen del Azarchel, of the Third Humanity called Myrmidons, on behalf of all the peoples, races, nations, tongues, and machines of the Solar System, and also of Epsilon Eridani and Delta Pavonis, collectively called The Empyrean Polity of Man, have this eighth day of August, the feast day of holy Saint Dominic Guzman, Year of Our Lord Twenty-four Thousand One Hundred One, entered into a solemn and indestructible covenant to their mutual benefit, pleasure, and advantage, the terms whereof are binding on them and their generations forever. Witnessed this day by Menelaus Illation Montrose, vagabond. Nolite Vexare Texam!”
Montrose heard cheering issuing from many voices, many klaxons, echoing in the distance. He even heard the voices of the Firstlings and other non-Myrmidons mingling with the general outcry.
It was the voice of free men.
PART SEVEN
The Long Golden Afternoon of Man
1
The Starfaring Guild
1. A Fine Shot
A.D. 51554
The rumor that a Vindictive sharpshooter had established himself in stable orbit among the rubble of the broken flotillas of hulks and habitats still called the Asteroid Belt, and had a commanding vantage of Earth, Venus, and Mars, was not denied by the Archangels, but anyone who read this news from a public data fountain had his name and biometric response noted.
First Humans were immune from Archangels because of covenants with the Sacerdotal Order whom, it was rumored, even the higher Powers feared; but this ancient immunity did not prevent the posthumans from reporting the capillary responses and pupil dilations, as well as changes in neural flows in the cortex, of various True Human readers to other Humans, including Humans Not So True. The Great Swan of Malta was known to have left his mountain peak in midst of the seas of Libya, traveling by night on wide and silent wings over the Mediterranean across the island chain that once was Italy toward Egypt, where the Hidden Queen of the Fox Maidens was said to be sojourning in disguise, perhaps to bedevil the archeologists and theonecromancers meddling with the corpse of a fallen orbital Archangel found there. It was no good news for the True Humans when a hermit of the Second Humanity roused himself from his endless cybernetic dreamstates, and sought to consult the sovereign of the Fourth Humanity. The Foxes were closer to humans in their emotional matrix, more prone to meddle in human life, and correspondingly more dangerous than reticent Swans or dispassionate Megalodons.
Perhaps the two consulted over the human interest in the Vindicator, or perhaps the two conspired with the Judge of Ages, who was rumored to have his throne buried under the pyramids, as well as slumbering armies and sleeping treasure cities.
In any case, cavaliers and ladies among the True Humans avoided showing interest in the topic of the sharpshooter. Among the lower orders, the discreet silence was not so strict. One wag walking the frozen canals of New Ximenopolis carried an umbrella bearing the slogan in bright red ideoglyphs for the benefit of eyes above the atmosphere: FRIENDLY! NO TARGET!
This was the year Minus 444 by the shortcount calendar, reckoning the time until the next Sweep by Hyades; it was Minus 17444 by the Unrevised Vindication Calendar; and it was Minus 18944 by the Anomaly Calendar; and the Sacerdotes called it Year of the Lord Plus 51554, even thought it was unchancy for them to say who or what was their lord, or say why this calendar, of all the calendars, counted up rather than counted down.
By the reckoning of the Unrevised Calendar, the Feast of the Fourth Ignition stood at Plus 154, and yet no cessation of the Years of Fasting which led up to the Feast Years had been announced. Even Academics living the shadow of the mile-high dome over the mountains of the Madagascar peninsula, prone to skepticism about the claims of the Sacerdotes, marked the tally off the calendar with thinly disguised hope, waiting for the long-delayed Energy Feast, when men could turn on lights and power again.
In mid-September of Minus 444, after the Paleo-Myrmidon City Complex east of Jerusalem was reduced to rubble and sucked into its own crater by a NAFAL singularity-event bullet, the radio messages from the Chimera of Mars said nothing other than that the situation was being investigated.
The bullet accelerated only at impact. It maintained its existence in normal spacetime for one-half a nanosecond, and massed (relative to the target) an estimated 30,000,000,000 pounds. This was long enough to pull the central mass of the city into a pinpoint and deposit it twenty miles below the bedrock, drawing a large part of the suburban infrastructure, cables and power stations, switching nodes and magnetic rail lines, behind it into the crater. The tangled mass of iron and carbon was superheated and compressed into a half-square-mile volume shaped like a very narrow cone.
But the nature of not-as-fast-as-light acceleration is that the mass increases only in the direction of motion. Objects even slightly away from the straight line suffer less relativistic distortion. Mass meters in Jerusalem itself barely registered the tidal effect.
And the bullet-life was not long enough to disrupt the geological integrity of the mantle, or to disturb the irritable and nervous Archangel called Demeter, which had established herself across the inner plates of the crust, with structures extending to the core, as the nursemaid and life support and repair crew for the renascent version of Tellus.
There were no earthquakes, and only a few storms: the disturbance to the Weather Control predictions was below intervention threshold. The Retaliation Mechanism established by Jupiter crouching at Mount Erebus in Antarctica trembled and stirred uneasily, and fearful gams and teams of watchful Melusine beneath the Ross Ice Shelf noted the energy systems all along the volcano cone tick over from their fifth standby awareness-level to their fourth, but the nightmarish Retaliator did not wake.
By all accounts, it was a fine shot, expertly executed.
So it was that when the traveling mountebank Zolasto Zo announced his troupe would add the apostate pontiff Hieronymus to their entourage, to give a series of lectures on calendar reform, the Ship Yard Assassin for the Starfarer’s Guild assigned to the Stratospheric Tower in Spanish Guinea, where the Forever Village slept, was much disturbed in his mind.
2. A Reluctant Starfarer
The assassin’s name and style was The Glorified and Refined Quaestor Norbert Brash Noesis Mynyddrhodian mab Nwyfre of Rosycross. He had crossed the Vasty Deep but once, starfaring to Senile Grandfather Earth from the one satellite of Proxima Centauri.
Less than four home-years had been compressed into a few ship-months’ journey during his faring. Technically speaking, regulation permitted him to affix the praenomen Venerable to his name, as if he were from an older time; but he could not have sat at mess and met the eyes of Starfarers from the Third Sweep Worlds, Chrysoar circling 51 Pegasi or Ni
ghtspore of Alpha Boötis, men who lost one-third or one-half a century of home-years in passage. And some had five or ten cruises under their belts: what was four years of time-exile compared to four centuries? Some were from aeons so long forgotten that they did not use the term, but put Lorentzed before their name, in the archaic style.
The only praenomens he insisted be observed were those he had earned. When still a youth, unexpectedly and inexplicably, the Noösphere of Rosycross had offered him full immortal honors, a record made of his brain down to the subatomic level. His thoughts would endure as long as civilization had power.
Afterward, despite the normal savant precautions of hypnocoding and chemical intervention, a divarication had struck, and Norbert was torn in two. The flesh-and-blood version of Norbert suffered a painful infatuation with a girl half his age, the sloe-eyed and red-lipped eroticist Svartvestra. His ideal was Stoic, archetype called Traditional Brash, of the Fiercely Individualistic Nonconformist phyle. It was not a type known for romantic weaknesses, so Norbert was ashamed at how he failed to fit in when others of his Fiercely Individualistic Nonconformist gathered for the soul-sharing rituals. He wanted to be exactly like all the other Fiercely Individualistic Nonconformists. But he wanted Svartvestra more.
Her ideal was Hedonist of the Meretricious Revelry Artiste archetype, the precise mismatch of his. On her part, she was delighted to toy with his affections, always promising and implying more than she meant, since it outraged her clan and delighted her fans, and brought her an intoxicating notoriety.
The xypotech version of Norbert disliked the girl, then despised. They fell out of synchronization, and suffered a sharp divarication. From Norbert’s point of view, Exorbert’s behavior became odd, then erratic, then grotesque: Exobert developed interests in esoteric cults, chaos mathematics, theosophy, imaginary energies, and the claims of those who said they could speak with the dead or deleted, or could find lost colony ships.
Exorbert began making calls to Norbert’s friends both natural and assigned, first by phone and then by dreamscape; tweaking Norbert’s subpersonalities on the flimsiest excuses; making unauthorized sales, manipulating apple genetics; altering work schedules; and sending strange training drugs into the foodstock of the farm Moreaus, or Norbert’s show-winning near-hound, Chymical Wedding.
Norbert fought unsuccessfully to undo all the strangeness and madness his ghostly twin was bringing into his life, and he vowed to fight forever. But when Norbert returned one winter Sunday to the family farm, and found all the farmhands celebrating the Wednesday Ciderfest, and his beloved near-hound giddy with stimulant and dancing on his hind legs on the baking table, crushing apple pies beneath his paws, Norbert’s resolve broke.
He could not struggle against the invisible superior twin. He had to forswear the girl. When the Noösphere offered to edit the memory chains related to his infatuation to drive Norbert’s personality closer to his archetype, and perhaps form a reconciliation between Norbert and Exobert, Norbert accepted the dangerous honor.
Against the wishes of the Noösphere and his father Yngbert, however, Norbert refused to have the process remove any sense of guilt or regret which might haunt him in later years.
And the alteration in his mind, even if done awkwardly, counted as Refinement. It elevated him from a mere Rustic to a Gentleman-Farmer.
But not only was no reunification forthcoming, his family and his ghost became ever more strangers to him.
Svartvestra was so stung by the cruel rejection, she recorded a fornication performance just in mockery of his love-style. He could no longer go into public houses or pink sections of the dreamscape without encountering jeers and sneers from her subscribers, or hearing trained near-dogs whistle the theme song from her base sound track.
It drove him into his archetype indeed. His soul became iron: he turned off his emotions so often the parish peace officer Maier twice served him a writ for renouncing his humanity, and asked him sarcastically why he did not use Foxcrafty to become a Myrmidon entirely. Each time Norbert restored his emotion, bitter anger overcame him.
But the technique for assuming an aspect of that ideal stoicism was still open to Norbert. Brash thought patterns were permanently imprinted, and could not fade with time. He used to amuse himself by falling into that allegedly higher state of mind, and putting his ungloved hand above a candle flame until he smelled flesh burning.
The unremoved regret hardened into resolve, and he ate a dream-apple, opening his nervous system to strange influences, and fell in love again, this time with a hamadryad bound by land-marriage to a fertile valley near the North Pole, where the gentle shadows were always long and the sun never reached zenith, even at noon.
Her name was Rose, the most common name on the planet. She was in every way the opposite of the frivolous and glamorous Svartvestra, but the end was the same. He was too artificial for her, too willing to alter himself, yet, ironically, too unwilling to drink the mind-altering love potion that would make their emotion for each other permanent structures, buttressed by neuro-circuitry, in all their personalities. Exorbert objected to the love potion, and Norbert feared to overrule the objection, not knowing, if he fought in his thoughts with Exorbert, which meant fighting the entire Noösphere of Rosycross, who or what he might end up evolving into.
He was brash, was he not? To remain himself, he fled the world, joined the Guild, took their coin, and signed the articles on the first vessel from Promixa.
Had he known how mad Tellus was, he would have waited longer, slumbered longer, and fled farther.
Tellus disturbed his mind.
3. A Discontented Consciousness
His consciousness, even his conception of what a consciousness was, perforce differed remarkably from that of a dawn-age man.
Basically there were three zones of thought in his mind: an inner zone which he thought of as himself, his own basic memories, ideals, reasoning processes, passions, appetites, and drives; an outer zone, which was the shared memories of the world-mind in which he lived, the spirit of the age; and a large middle zone where the two mingled, where he kept, as a mental menagerie, a wide variety of servant personalities, which he could use like masks to fend off unwanted thought-streams from the outer zone. There were well-worn channels in this middle zone reaching to the outer, where entities like family albums and social organizations kept their thoughts, or ghosts met in parliament to discuss matters too remote in the future to concern him. It was also a lively market for exchanging intellectual property, which logicians bred like livestock, or daring hunters recovered from deep in the outer zone.
Intellectually, he knew this outer zone extended infinitely, into the mind of the Noösphere like an atmosphere; but for all practical purposes, it was like the dome of the sky, mere backdrop. Every now and again the world changed, like blowing winds that changed his mood. The spirit of the age only took over his mind and body during Mass, or planetary consensus, or for a riot or military exercise, and this was as rare as rainfall.
What he had not expected, when coming to senile Tellus, was to discover how little of the innermost zone was actually his own, himself. Most of his opinions about everything had come from his family or had been written in by censor of the Lord of the Afternoon of Promixa Centauri.
His taste in women was dictated by the seamstresses guild; his taste in sport by the gamesters guild; his sweet tooth was entirely an invention of the pastry and confectioner’s guild.
Once on Earth, the outer zone was an alien atmosphere to him, with roaring shapes larger than gods moving through it; the middle zone changed suddenly, and was filled with moods and merchandise stranger than the bottom of the sea. He was told he would become used to the revolting practices of the Earthlings in time. Everyone had assured him, from his ghostly counselor to his personality advocate, to his libido coordinator, to his cliometry planner, that while Tellus was insane, many of the outer systems, telephone and memory reflex storage, were perfectly safe, sagacious and discreet.
/>
But then one day he found himself without his clothing and feathered like a duck from crown to heel, having lost his skin in a haiku recital wager to a sly redhaired woman in a place that was a cross between a butcher shop and a gambling den. There, standing on naked feet in a stain of his own blood, he realized two things. First, he did not even like haiku, or, for that matter, the smell of duck meat. Second, everyone who so blithely said Tellus was safe was mad. Tellus was a world of fads and fashions and hysteria. Inviting the mind of Tellus into your mind was inviting disaster.
That same day he threw away all his receiver decks and augmentation sets, even the small coral button his mother gave him at birth. He sacked his advocate and coordinator and planner and reduced his interface to be the stark minimum necessary to carry out his duties as a Starfarer: public postal and library channels, navigation feeds, weather and riot reporting, navigational computation, and little beyond that.
He put in a request to be slotted to the Sky Island, which was a lighter-than-air platform in the stratosphere used for catching deorbiting cargo rigs, because it was the most dangerous and most highly rewarded duty station. He worked extra shifts, hoping a stray container, white hot with reentry heat, might accidentally miss the magnetic vortex, strike the cage, and crush his feathery body, which he hated. It was two seasons of frugal living, eating only noodles and vitamin slurry, until he earned enough to buy himself a proper human skin again. He deliberately bought one in a color modern fashion despised, a pinkish pale hue allegedly from a sunken land called Europe, very different from the jet-black, silver-eyed coloration of Rosycross.
Even after that, his austere habits remained. He spoke to no one save by voice, appeared on no bulletin board or staging boards, purchased nothing on credit, visited no calamity houses. And he never once used the Fox arts to turn himself into a dolphin during mating season, even though apparently every lunatic Earthling male in heat took to the seas in the spring, leaving the beaches empty save for hastily shed clothing. As far as the Noösphere of Earth was concerned, he was practically invisible.