The Judge of Ages

  “You recognized Captain Sterling from Asymptote. The only other person I met recently who did that was Ctesibius. You recognize the name?”

  “Sure. Asymptote became famous when it was found that Mad Montrose the Fallen Hermeticist read it as a kid, and one of the characters was Cyrano Widget the Living Brain, and he became a mascot for the Order of Transhumanitarian Emulation Advocates. Aside from that, I read the dumb thing in First Ancestor class in school. As a comic, it was juvenile trash.”

  Menelaus was taken aback for a moment. “Trash? It was about the dreams of the future.”

  “Dreams of adolescent idolatry of science, you mean. Just everything gets better and better, and the women get fast and the cars get faster and the skyscrapers get scrapier, until one day we all download into machines that live forever and ever? Ri-iii-ight. I downloaded myself into a machine, and what did I get for my pains, my biofeedback training, and my radical brain surgery? My soul is dead, and I don’t look like I am going to waltz out of here whistling. Here I am buried alive in a Tomb with a bunch of poxy gene-tweaked freaks, and overhead is an empty world and a talking glacier. As far as happy predictions go, the comic missed the bull’s-eye.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the comic. You recognize the name Ctesibius? You Savants were not in charge of the world for all that long, and there were not that many of you.”

  “Fifty years is pretty long! How long do most Advocacies last? Yeah, I knew him. He was a Copt. He was one of the main planners for the Day of Gold. That is what pushed me over the edge.”

  “Is that why you are a ‘sort of’ Savant?”

  “That is why. You can call me a traitor, if you like. No sooner was I done betraying the Clan to the Machine, when I betrayed the Machine to the Giants. I turned myself in to the Giants to warn them about the Day of Gold. I let them make yet another copy of my thought patterns, a soul to serve them, so there could be no doubt of me. Maybe I thought if I had souls on both sides, I would survive no matter what happened. Then I realized that the Giants were crazy. They were planning to burn the whole Earth. They called it the Ecpyrosis. They gave me, and any other Savant they caught, a choice between burning up or long-term slumber: fire or ice. They did not want to kill us, just our Ghosts.”

  “When were you interred? Before 2525? You didn’t live long enough to see it, but they did their job. The Giants burned all the power plants and cable nodes and torched the cities, towns, and villages; any outhouse large enough to house a mainframe.”

  “Why are any people still alive?”

  “It’s sort of a Noah’s Ark deal, except there were flotillas of arks, and they floated like Zeppelins.”

  “You’re poxy kidding me.”

  “Zeppelins with tentacles. That were atomic powered. And supersonic. And could turn into submarines. And strip all the proteins and complex molecules out of any life-form they passed over. With simple decentralized ratiotech brains. Which adored their masters and sang them songs.”

  “Atomic-powered supersonic amphibious Zeppelin airships with tentacles…?”

  “Right.”

  “… that sing?”

  “Um. If you saw the construction details, it is not as strange as it sounds.”

  “Who built these again?”

  “The Giants built them for the Sylphs, so that they could airlift the entire earth, all the populations of billions of survivors, to become nomads in these airskiffs, while the world underneath them smoked like the crater floor of hell.”

  “And who were they?”

  “The Sylphs?” said Menelaus. “Call them Noah’s family. Or his zoo. Sylphs were gene-engineered for lightweightness, with birdlike direction sense in their heads, and some were grown with an inbuilt moder-voder so to interface with their Mälzels and shipboard gimcracks more easily.”

  “Jesus pissing in Palestine!” said the Savant. “Slumber for a few centuries, and you miss all the cool, weird scat.”

  “Millennia. And there is a twenty-mule-team wagontrainload of weird scat left. All your Ghosts are long dead. Why are you pretending to be Montrose?”

  “Just a misunderstanding,” the man said. “I was talking to the blue dwarfs through their little boxes, but those don’t do such a good job of translating. They got all a-twitter when I said my name. They took a blood sample and checked it against gene traces they found on a coffeepot. They offered me a cup of coffee. It twitter-pated them even more when I drank it.” He shrugged. “It seemed best to go along with their misapprehension.”

  “What is with the fancy room?”

  “Like it? It’s family only, direct lineage from the main bloodline. Even though I am incarcerated here, the local Prior for Knights of Malta, Sir Romegas, let me slumber here with my cousins. Once I made a hefty donation to their cause, of course. Even the damned Papists and bead-mumblers were not so bold as to deny me, keeping me locked up in my own stronghold. They were pretty decent about everything, considering. In any case, the whole chamber used to be packed full twice and thrice deep. Weird to see it empty. I assume my cousins got their Thaws as soon as the we took over the world again. I mean, if you run the Tombs, you run the Currents, right?”

  “Why do you assume there are any Currents?” asked Montrose.

  “You just said so. Besides, the Montrose family will live forever, so that means the human race will.”

  “I hear Montrose did not get along with his descendents. Yanked the rulership of the Earth out from under them and gave it to the Uniate Catholic Orthodox Church.”

  “That did not last, did it?”

  “Not forever.”

  “But the Cryonarchy is back in charge by now, isn’t it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Ah, give it a few more years! People need the Tombs. We form the bridge between past and future. Without us, what happens to tradition? It is not like the Europeans have the population levels to sustain a Current-to-Thaw ratio, what with their aging rates, that can…”

  “Europe is gone.”

  “W—What?”

  “That land mass is called Baltica now. The Cryonarchy is not coming back. The Dawn-Age men, that is us, we are not coming back either.”

  The other man was silent a while, appalled by the crushing weight of aeons that had gathered on his coffin while he slept. Menelaus waited patiently. He was so familiar with the sensation that he had dubbed it with a name of its own: chronovertigo.

  Eventually Menelaus said, “I’m curious. Why did you call this your stronghold?”

  “Sorry, but I was kind of famous in my day, so I guess I am used to people recognizing me on sight.”

  “I know the feeling. But sometimes you just don’t recognize the people you know, even if you look right at ’em. Funny, ain’t it?”

  “Well, I call this our stronghold because it belongs to us. The whole chamber here—it was designed by Gascoigneux himself, you know—used to be at Cheyenne Mountain. That statue there is the Abduction of Proserpine by Phidias. The ceiling is by Jourbert and programmed by Lockheed-Smith-Wesson. That Rania Clock is an original by the Pitcarne Studio, foremost radioactivists in France…”

  “Yeah. Swell room. Who is ‘us’?”

  “The World Advocacy. The government. The Clan.”

  Menelaus was staring at him in puzzlement. “Mister, what is your name, anyway?”

  “Montrose.”

  “Uh?”

  “No, really. Advocate-General Scipio Cognition Montrose of the World Concordat, Regent at Large, Lord Protector of the Dead, Director of the Endymion Hibernation Syndicate, and so on. After the First Ancestor blew the Cryonarchy to smithereens and stole our antimatter, leaving us shamed and penniless, I thought I would try working for the other team.”

  “Your antimatter?”

  “Simon-pure straight it was ours! If I ever get my mitts on that thieving crowbait of a First Ancestor, I’ll knock him galley west till he screams like a whore on nickel night,” said Scipio.

  “Mm. He likely deserves
it.”

  “Amen, and you’re not stringing windy, brother! Anyway, my other name is Glorified Scipio Montrose, Endorcist of One and a Half Donations, but I don’t cotton to that name so much no more, as I am not really a Savant. Sure, I got holes drilled in my head, and for a while I had a supergenius copy of myself I could talk to on the phone, who could solve all my problems for me. Gave me personal advice, too, which I did not much appreciate. He seemed to think I was screwing up my life and the lives of the people he cared about, our friends and family. He was trying to keep me married to that shrew. I think she called him behind my back, the trollop! After a while, he got spooky.”

  “Spooky how?”

  “I think the Machine got him. Ate him. Ate my soul.” Scipio shuddered. “The Machine had all my memories and personality and habits, so he could talk like me when I called on the phone, and what he said was possibly things I might have thought if I were smarter than myself, but I had this hunch I just could not shake. Creeped the plague out of me. I kept thinking of this … copy … of the Nobilissimus going over my memories of my wedding night. I guess I don’t much care for being a Savant. I am actually a Cryonarch, one of the Lords of the Slumber. I am in exile, until we get our rightful power back.”

  “Sure. Good luck with that. What is with the getup?” Montrose nodded toward Scipio’s costume.

  Scipio looked slightly miffed. “It is my right. This is Cryonarch court wear of the first form.” Then with an eyebrow he made something resembling a microscopic shrug. “At least, it was in the sixties.”

  “The sixties of what century?”

  “Sorry; The Twenty-fifth Century. Just before the Fifth Global Civil War, in 2461 the Gallic Directorship granted the Northern Advocacy judicial dignities, and we started dressing this way. In Northern Europe.”

  “You don’t have any glow-in-the-dark tattoos. No diamond showing your donation.”

  “You mean like kids wear? What do you take me for? A plague-carrying newborn-greenhorn Current? I am a Second Ancestor. I hail from A.D. 2409, the Nevada branch of the Clan, and I made my first hibernation when Del Azarchel fled to Prussia, with orders to wake me for the next war, which I knew was coming. I thawed again in 2413, in 2439, 2450, 2467, every time Ximen the Black struck. I was there to fight him. The Montroses are a fighting breed!” Scipio laughed softly at himself, shaking his head. “Listen to me go on. Like anyone cares how often I slumbered, or what my seniority is. The First Ancestor robbed us of all our power and threw us into the cesspit. We used to run this place, these Tombs, the whole world. We were the men immune from time, the changeless ones. I guess that is all changed now. It is no fun being Rip van Winkle, though. Every time I thawed, things got weirder. It was like waking up on Mars.”

  “And what about the wig? Cryonarchs don’t wear wigs.”

  “Savants do. The wig is to cover and protect the ugly in-jacks they had to drill in my skull for my donation. And to show we are as good as Scholars. Nobilissimus del Azarchel gave the Scholars the right to wear such wigs, when the sumptuary laws denied it to everyone else.”

  “And where are your loyalties now? With the First Ancestor, or with the Master of the World?”

  “What the hell year did you say it was? The fight between them must be long over.”

  “Nope. In about five minutes, we are going to see the next round of it, and if I have calculated a-rightly, Blackie his own damned self will show up, guns blazing. So pick a side, Cryonarch.”

  “Which side are you on?”

  “I am a good guy. Mostly.”

  “Okay, I’ll trust you, Mister Good Guy. You did not give me away. And you seem to know what’s what.”

  “I know a Scholar and a Savant contemporary with your era are about to enter the chamber. Ctesibius the Savant will recognize you. There is a Scholar named Rada Lwa who will at least know you are not Menelaus Montrose. I have a theory that he will not recognize me even if he looks me straight in the face, due to contamination.”

  “I recognize his name. Rada Lwa Chwal is from the Argent-Montrose branch of the Clan. It was a junior branch that got involved in some scandal; I forget the details. Him, eh? So the plan is, you sent the dwarfs to gather those two guys here, so that they can shout out I am a fake. Thanks a lot, Captain Sterling! Sorry I trusted you.”

  “Shout out in a language no one speaks but me.”

  “And then what happens? The real Judge of Ages pops out of a hidden coffin and saves us from this Bell? What is it going to do, anyway, ding-dong at us?”

  “It’s shaped like an Oriental bell, a cylinder; not an Occidental bell, a cone. It is an orbital skyhook, a massive one, big enough to hale a major city aloft easy as a chickenhawk snatching up a peep, and it’s made of some impossibly strong material. What is going to happen is very simple: I am going to jam the door shut, and trap them in here with me.”

  “Lock yourself in the room with the musketeer dogs and the pistol-packing blue goons. Good plan. What happens when they scald your ass with laser-guns set to deep fat fry, Space Captain Sterling?”

  “Their weapons will be not much use. I’ll destroy whoever opens fire first.”

  “Destroy how?”

  “The coffin is armed with twin infinite repeaters and rocket-propelled grapeshot. The vents can flood the room with phosgene gas. The floor is wired for electrocution. Those pineapple-looking ornaments all over the ceiling are self-aiming heavy-caliber guns. There are secret panels in the upper walls behind which are other automatics and emitters. The fountain in the middle of the room can be switched to spray the chamber with lethal fluid. The doorposts are armed with chemical shot, linear accelerators, jellied gasoline, sonic weapons, and particle-beam projectors. The globular structure to the left of the fountain is a working atomic pile, and to flood the room with radioactives, all I’d need do is release the magnetic containment. I won’t tell you what I can do with the nanomedical fluids in the structure to the right: give you bad dreams. And you’ve got a sword in your hand. And I have a rock.”

  “That is why you wanted to get over to the sarcophagus: to reach the general security channel from the local channel. Let’s say those dogs let you by. And what exactly makes you think you can operate all these weapons? Or that they are still loaded? For that matter, how do you know they are there?”

  “Because I know the architect who built the place, and I know any changes to any chambers made by the Hospitaliers would follow his designs. I do not think there is an object in this room that does not have a weapon built into it, except maybe the portrait. For her sake, I’ll try to spare as many as I can. I pacify them, disarm them, and then we sit and wait for my men to thaw out. I hope Soorm set the process in motion. I have been having a lot of trouble with my systems, which have been partly compromised. I’ve been getting better responses from the lower levels, however, so…”

  “Your men? Your systems?”

  Menelaus drew back his hood and stared at the man, giving him a good look at his face.

  “Jesus poxing Christ up a tree,” breathed Scipio.

  “Don’t poxing swear,” said Menelaus. “And congratulations. You passed the test. I thought you might have the Machine in your head. You’re just unobservant.”

  4

  Witnesses

  1. Entrance

  The Blue Men were gathering everyone into the chamber in order by age: Alalloel first, her walk stately, the gray twins next, followed by the Hormagaunts and their Donors and Clade-dwellers. Soorm was on his feet, and appeared unharmed, but his shoulders drooped, and his fluked scorpion tail lashed.

  The Nymphs danced in, graceful as willow branches in the breeze. They wore green tunics, and the women had long green scarves in their hair, shedding petals. They had been given their lutes and fiddles and flutes and panpipes, and they filled the chamber with a wild, elfin air like the sound of the robin, the thrush, the lark, and the loon. A quartet of effete, sloe-eyed males were they, and the quartet of slim-ankled hetaerae flinging their
dark hair in twirling ecstasy. The smell of wine and the scent of roses came with them. The green silks of the girls’ curving girdles or corsets were tied tightly about their slender waists, to emphasize the exaggerated roundness of their hips, the over-fullness of their breasts. Male and female both had oiled their luxurious midnight-black hair so that it shined like fresh ink. As she whirled past, Oenoe tossed a petal toward Menelaus—it was a myrtle blossom, which meant I am ready.

  Next came the Chimerae marching through the doors, bows strung and spears ready.

  Menelaus caught the gaze of Daae and Lady Ivinia, and saw that they were ready, too. Alpha Yuen had his bone truncheon in his hand, not hidden, but he was staring at the floor, his one eye sullen, his posture tense with anger.

  Mickey the Witch strode ponderously through the door as if to grand and inaudible music. The crones next came stalking in, grave and solemn in black, leaning on their charming wands, and the more mundane menfolk in their various heraldic robes came after, and fierce Demonstrators in their coats of human-skin leather. Mickey, less solemn than the rest, gave Menelaus a cheery smile, and an eye-decoration on his ridiculous pointed hat winked. He mouthed the words what’s going on? The other Witches were behind his broad back, and did not see his facial contortions.

  Menelaus could think of no way to answer the question.

  2. Scipio in Storybook Land

  Scipio, seated on the throne of the Judge of Ages, raised his hand to cover his mouth, and said softly, “Okay, First Ancestor, I take back what I said about your cartoon. Looks like it came true. This menagerie doesn’t have a single unmodified nonfreak in the lot. Who the pox are the half-naked dancing girls in flowers, and the dead-eyed SS troopers in samurai drag whose girls are dressed like Minerva and the Drum Majorettes? And the gross hags looking like they were stretched on racks? And that thing with no head? Are those space aliens?”

  “Lemme sum up,” sighed Montrose. “The sequence of extinctions goes like this: That girl with antennae and weird eyes is a Melusine, and her kind wiped out the two gray dwarfs in the parkas toward the front, called Linderlings. The gray dwarfs and the blue dwarfs are part of a race of black dwarfs called Locusts, who are radio-telepaths that formed a mass mind and are color-coded for your convenience. The Locusts exterminated the Hormagaunts, who are the biotech monstrosities there. The Hormagaunts are Nymphs gone mad, who are the Geisha girls and the sissy-looking boys. The Nymphs drugged the Chimerae, who are the Spartan Nazis there. The Chimerae wiped out the Witches, who are the tall ugly women there, and that whole group from Halloweenland. The Witches wiped out the Giants, whom you know all about and I can hear one coming now. We also have coming a Savant and a Scholar from your times, and, if God is in a good mood and decides to stop cat-playing with my life, my knight will be here too. He’s from the poxy Middle Ages.”