“So ordered.
“Do you understand the grave sentence that has been laid upon you? If you have any bar or hindrance or objection that might prevent your performance, speak now.”
Illiance said only, “I have nothing.”
“To carry out the sentence, you better go find and unhex whatever biotech hex you placed on Sir Guy. Court is dismissed. And if you see the Beta Maidens, Suspinia and Vulpina, send them over here, please.”
Illiance nodded, and rose from his knees. With no ceremony or formal word of departure, he turned and departed.
At this, Montrose raised his hand to Fatin and beckoned her forward. “And what complaint is yours, young Miss?”
4. Motion for Dismissal
Fatin the maiden stepped forward to speak for the Witches. The mention of the Christian faith had set her teeth in a grimace, looking as allergic to the mention of such things as a Clade-dweller to anyone not his clone.
“You dare sit in the seat of judgment?” said she in a fiery tone. “This is a farce.”
“Maybe so,” said Montrose wryly. “But it is not a farce of my making.”
“We reject that the Judge of Ages has any authority to sit in judgment over us.” She pointed her charming wand at him. “You should be standing trial, not trying others! You murder whole periods of history, condemning aeons and civilizations, and imagining you have the right to judge them? Are you a god?”
Menelaus said mildly, “You say it. I never claimed to be a god.”
Mickey cleared his throat, and bent, and whispered in Menelaus’ ear, “Actually, I think at least once in the last hour, you said you were.”
Menelaus raised his good hand as if to rub his nose, and spoke from the side of his mouth, “You are not helping.” Then to Fatin he said, “Okay. Fair is fair. You caught me.”
There was a murmur of confusion as Menelaus rose wobbling from the judgment seat, reached with his one good arm, and took up the claymore of Sir Guiden, fumbling to try to draw it from its sheath. Mickey, eyes wide with silent questions, leaned and drew it, dropping the scabbard, and proffered an arm to Menelaus.
Down Menelaus limped, leaning on the arm of the stout man, and when he came to Fatin, he passed the massive blade from Mickey to her. The sword was too big for her. Even in both her small hands, it wobbled.
With a nod, Menelaus gestured at the iron throne. “Take a seat.”
Fatin said, “What does this mean?”
Louhi, her gray and skull-like face high above Fatin’s like a vulture circling in a desert, said in a voice of spits and coughs, “Beware, maiden Fatin! He practices his craft on you. Take no gift of the underworld! Recall the chair where Theseus sat!”
Menelaus said, “Hope you don’t mind if I sit down? My feet are killing me.”
Menelaus with a grunt sat on the ground, and tugged at the torn garb he had stolen from Rada Lwa, wiggling to get comfortable. Seeps of blood were beginning to turn the bandages wrapping his feet pink. “Who the hell makes a floor out of gold? Next netherworld, plush carpet, for sure.”
Then he looked up, saying to Fatin, “You were made a promise. I was there. If you helped the Chimerae fight the Blue Men—which you did—the Judge of Ages would be delivered into your hands—which I am. So I am giving you a turn. There is the judgment seat. Sit in it. Make your accusation, hear my defense, pass judgment. The little boxes will translate your words to everyone here. Crappy translation, so avoid colloquial expressions.”
The line of Witches armed with muskets and pikes, given no orders, parted and shuffled left and right, forming a half circle with Menelaus in the midst. Menelaus realized he had spent too much time among the Chimerae. The sloppiness of the maneuver made him wince, and he wondered when it would be that the half circle of musketmen would realize they were standing in each other’s line of fire like pantomime footsloggers from a slapstick comedy.
He was alone in a wide space of bloodstained floor, with only two or three corpses to his left or right.
With a dignity almost equal to that of Ctesibius, Fatin mounted the dais, sat, and grunted and lifted the swaying claymore, and dropped it, clanging, so that it rested across the armrests. The friars carried the weight of the overlarge sword on their bowed heads like Atlas carrying the globe.
Fatin raised her slender hand and said, “Earth and sky, wood and water and hill, magnetism and electricity, attend me now and be my witnesses! The trial of the Judge of Ages is come. I myself will speak the accusation. Hear my story, elements of the world—and you human people, hear me as well! I accuse him of being the greatest of criminals.”
Menelaus made a little gesture of circling one forefinger around the other, like a fisher reeling in a line. “The Defense moves that you make it a little snappier, Your Honor. We are kind of pressed for time here. Of what am I accused?”
The expression of Fatin at first was one of simple surprise at the audacity of the question, but hardened into a look of injured anger that Menelaus would pretend not to know. “You slew our world. Do I need to conjure up images of the dead cities, slain by starvation and power loss, the once-proud skyscrapers showing the skeletons of their girders against a sky empty of planes and rocketships forever?”
Menelaus looked at her quizzically. “I did not destroy your civilization. It self-destructed. It was poxy meant to immolate itself from the get-go. Your Honor, I move to dismiss on the grounds that a cause of action has not been stated for which relief at law can be granted. Are we done now? The Bell is coming. I want to see if maybe we can get out of the chamber through the cistern. Alalloel went that way.”
Fatin screamed, and, at that moment, looked every inch a Witch. She tossed the huge claymore, ringing, to the dais floor, and rose and pointed one trembling finger at Menelaus, spitting the words as if delivering a curse. “The Hermetic Order knows the science to predict the future! They created the Simon Families. They meant us to prevail. They gave us the future! The future belonged to us! It was the prize and the possession of the Witches!”
Menelaus thought bitterly of all the people who thought the future belonged to them, as if it were a tract of unclaimed frontier. They had calculated without the presence of men like Blackie, who had already fenced off the free ranges of the future with a barbed wire called Cliometry.
Back Fatin sank in the throne, her head tilted forward, her girlish mouth sullen. In a colder voice, she continued, “Only someone who knew their same predictive calculus of history could steal our future from us: only a fellow Hermeticist in rebellion against them. You, in other words!”
“They wanted you to fail,” said Menelaus heavily. “You don’t think Del Azarchel gives a rat’s filthhole about your polygamy and your polytheism and your airy-fairy belief in dancing wood sprites? He is a Spanish Roman Catholic, very old-school. He just needed you to destroy his Church so he could have his toys take over the world. The Church outlawed Xypotechnological emulation of human brains: and so was in the way, and had to go.
“The means he selected were elegant and unexpected. I can see here that most of y’all here don’t know the origins of your race.
“Here we go. I’ll keep it short.”
5. The True History of the Witches
“Blackie captured a posthuman Giant named Og, drilled Savant reading circuits into his head, brain-raped him, made a copy, and then over the phone or by remote lecture, had Ex-Og persuade the Consensus of Giants to embark on a program.
“The idea for this program was to crossbreed certain volunteer families through arranged marriages and bribes and insurance schemes and the like to solve certain problems no one generation was long-lived enough to solve. You know how like the Bach family had a knack for music? Og, or, rather Blackie, used the Monument methods to decode genetic emergent properties in human DNA, to breed the Simon Families for mathematics and obsessive-compulsive behavior. Then he used Cliometry to design the Longevity Institute, breeding the Simon Families to have transmission and inheritance laws to pass
down ownership and rewards of research patents in what were basically living versions of complex information feedback loops. These loops were established with people and their roles acting just like the attractor nodes in a game theory lattice—ah, never mind. Let us say he blessed the families to increase and multiply and keep to one task forever, and they formed hereditary orders.
“The Order of Transcendental Mathematicians was one such hereditary task force, and they were set to solve the problem of the One and the Many; the Order of Reductive Neurologicians was another, and were set to solve the problem of Free Will; the Semantic Order were set to solve the problem of the relation of Symbol to Thought, and establish the Philosophical Language; the Order of Empirical Utopiagenic Engineers were to devise the perfect form of government, and the perfect form of man to cohere to it; but the Longevitalists, your order, was set to find the secret of Eternal Youth.
“The secret was really not that hard to find, since Blackie just slipped it to your grandmas, who took credit for it.
“So all the wealth and fame and rejoicing from a grateful world (or at least, from every mother who wanted her daughters to have a very long and very healthy life) landed square in the laps of the Simons. Blackie had released part of the secret of youth, but gene-locked it so that women and only women were long-lived. The secret is in bone marrow production of telomere-repair enzymes, and turning off the genetic clock that tells adolescent bones when to stop growing—which is why you dames are crazy tall.
“And the inheritance laws and tithes built into the clan structure accumulated all the wealth of the scientific revolution into the hands of a few old ladies at the root of the family tree—it is amazing how much wealth you can keep if you have two or three generations of husbands and children feeding into the family trust funds, especially if the rest of the world dies off and pays estate taxes and changes management three times quicker than you.
“After that, the all-male hierarchy of the Church was like a club run by teen boys in a world run by wise old grandmas who’ve been around the block and know which side of the egg to blow. The Simon Family organization also triggered a scientific revolution like a controlled reactor explosion, because all the scientists of that generation were in those families. So the Simons had not only wealth, but prestige greater than any institution in the world, secular or ecclesiastical.
“But there was one other thing the Simon Families had: They had an idea. The Simon Families, one and all, believed that man’s ideas were built into his genes because that is the situation Blackie set them up to live in and raise their kids in. The idea of generational inheritance of ideas implies that ideas are carried in your genome. And once you believe that all ideas are little double-helices of molecules and nothing more, you don’t believe in ideas, not really. You don’t believe in the design of the cosmos. You don’t believe the universe is a rational mystery, just a mystery; and you don’t think man is a rational animal, just an animal.
“The Simon Family belief in eugenics led to your children and grandchildren believing in Witchcraft as easily as arson leads to ashes.
“Once your so-called science tells you to believe human beings, including scientists, are simply not rational beings, you stop doing real science, or doing anything reasonable, and magic is the order of the day. Science becomes just a cult like any other, except with an idol uglier and duller than most; and it becomes part of the structure that the powers of the world use to cow the unruly and cull the weak, just like any other cult.
“And once you start worshipping power for its own sake, you stop looking to see what ideas are objectively true or honest, real or sane, you turn into Witches, and pick your ideas how you might pick to decorate your mantelpiece with bric-a-brac: by how they happen to strike your fancy.
“When that happens, you no longer have ideas, they have you.
“And when the emergency comes like an Indian War-Band howling over the harvest fields, and you really need a good idea as badly as a settler needs his rifle, well, all you got is bric-a-brac on the mantel, not a weapon that shoots.
“You witches were the fiery torches Blackie used to burn down the cathedral called Western Civilization that was standing in the way of his Machine taking over.
“And once the torches were but used-up stubs, he threw you away.”
6. Monster Witness
Menelaus started to climb heavily back to his wounded feet. A Warlock pushed through the line of musketmen, bent over Menelaus, and put a hand on his good arm, helping him to rise.
Menelaus whispered, “Who are you, friend? Your crones won’t like your helping me.”
The man was tall and lean; his eyes were dark and unblinking, as if haunted with wild thoughts, with a skeletally thin face, and a moustache that drooped past his jawline. His robes were adorned with patterns of holly and ivy and mistletoe, and images of wooden soldiers dueling crowned rats. At his brow he wore a horseshoe magnet, the ancient and ridiculous symbol of a machine-hunter.
He whispered to Menelaus, “My name is Drosselmeyer. Once, before I lost my youth, I slew five Savants whom I found nude upon a midnight in a frenzy of machine-worship atop a windowless building where ancient lights still burned, and ancient voices spoke; and the moon above shone clear.”
“Pleased to meet ya,” said Menelaus, wondering if the man were crazy.
“Is it true? The Hermetic Order made us, our race, our way of life? Then I stand behind you. Am I not an exorcist? Do I not hunt the Machine?”
Menelaus smiled. The man might be crazed, but he was not crazy. He patted the man on his shoulder. “It is all true. You were made by your enemies. I am your friend. We stand together.”
Drosselmeyer took this literally, for he drew his athame, his Witch-knife, of sharpened black basalt from his sacred belt, and stepped behind the shoulder of Menelaus. Tiny little movements and whispers from the gathered Warlocks, crones, and Demonstrators ceased: a wintry silence was about them, and all eyes were on Menelaus.
Menelaus turned back to Fatin and raised his head and raised his voice. “You’ve declared your case. Now answer mine! Riddle me this: How do you maintain a scientific civilization when your scientists are forbidden from reaching politically inconvenient results under your Thought Decontamination Laws? Or maintain an industrial civilization without factories, defend it without an army, pay for it without a currency, run it without laws, or civilize the next generation without marriage? Answer: you don’t.”
She said nothing.
Menelaus continued more softly: “Your whole plague-ridden world was designed to live it up high-hog for one season, consume your seed corn, and perish next harvest. Designed by Melchor de Ulloa. Everything was timed to go up at once, like blowing the supports of a building so it all collapses inward on itself: self-destruction was built right into the foundational constitutions of your academic institutions, your industry, your military, your economy, your legal system, and your family structure—or lack of it.”
He pointed at the savage faces of the Demonstrators and the corpselike faces of the white-haired crones behind. “Look at what your world led to, Fatin! This is the future the Hermeticists gave you! This is where your loyalty to the Simon Families led! These are your children. They don’t have arts or sciences, marriage customs, or banking laws. They eat toadstools and worship rocks.”
Fatin’s eyes were troubled, but she sniffed and said scornfully, “Who are you to dare to judge? All ways of life are equally valuable and valid!”
“Really? Does that include ways of life that cannot keep hospitals lit or aircraft aloft?”
Soorm had one of the talking boxes pressed to the unseen holes that served him for ears. Now he put his head on the armrest of the throne, nose inches from where Fatin’s hand rested on the hilt of the huge sword. “It’s not true. Melchor de Ulloa did not design the failures in. Reyes told me everything.”
Menelaus was looking sadly at his feet. The bandages were turning from pink to brown, and getting so
ggier. He waved his hand toward Soorm. “Your Honor, I call the crazy monster to the stand in my defense. I will tell you what he is saying.”
Soorm spoke slowly, pausing for Menelaus to translate. “De Ulloa thought the Simon Family philosophy would lead to a better world, one where man lived at one with nature, where animals were elevated to human stature, and where all poverty was abolished. It was all a lie. The collapse was meant to scrape the vellum of history clean, so the Hermeticists could write on a blank scroll.” Soorm turned to Menelaus. “This is something even you don’t know. Ximen del Azarchel deceived Melchor de Ulloa. His whole plan of Cliometry that Ximen the Black showed his followers was false.”
Menelaus said, “I found that out just today. What I cannot figure is that Blackie made emulations of the other Hermeticists, and made them into posthumans: Once they were as smart as he was, why did not they not see through his trick? Didn’t they check his figures?”
Soorm shook his head like a human. “One man can deceive another man if he is trusted. Cannot posthuman deceive posthuman? Or perhaps Del Azarchel planted phantasm codes of his own, just like yours, but to turn clues and suspicions, instead of persons, invisible. We may never know.”
7. The Legend Revisited
Drosselmeyer said, “Excuse this lowly student of the Hidden Things, honored and dread Maiden Fatin, but may I ask the Judge of Ages a question?”