The Judge of Ages
“Turn your heads and look at the portrait of the young lady yonder. I did it for her.
“She is my why.”
Menelaus was silent a moment, his head down, his eyes downcast and solemn. No one in the chamber spoke.
Without looking up, he said, “Expositor Illiance, is your question answered?”
Illiance said, “The question why can never be fully answered, because all answers open deeper questions yet. But I am content.”
Mickey the Witch said, “I am not content, Judge of Ages! Because magicians have vowed not only to dare all and to know all, but to achieve all, until the pinnacle of secret knowledge is ours, never to be shared. You have unfolded to us the hidden history of the world, of races and empires, and they rose and fell as you moved our fates like chessmen against each other.”
Menelaus said apologetically, “The Monument had the Cliometric calculus equations printed on it. Once we read, the genie could not be put back in the bottle. Letting nature take its course was simply not an option: it was either let Blackie be the undisputed Master of the World, or dispute it.”
Mickey said, “That is not my question at all. I ask: Where do things stand now? What is the next move in the Great Game? And what is my role in it?”
When that comment was translated by the talking boxes, there was a murmur of admiration, even applause, in the chamber. The Chimeresses looked eager for battle; the Witches seemed bitterly angry to learn how badly their gods had betrayed them; Illiance looked proud; and Gload looked hungry.
Menelaus answered in a voice of grim despair, and his words marched out of his mouth like soldiers assigned to firing squad detail.
“I hate to say, but it looks like my side, our side, ladies and gentlemen, monsters and Witches, has lost.
“Alalloel implied the world is under a regime of absolute mind control. Such a regime, once in place, if firmly in place, can never be removed, because you need to think to plan a rebellion. And it does not have the usual inefficiencies of slavery, because the slaves can be programmed to be content, or happy, or enthusiastic, or devout, or serene, or whatever else strikes your fancy. Hell, you can even let them stage a successful revolt once every fifty years as a kind of Jubilee, if it amuses you. And then turn it off after.
“So the chess game is over.
“Only two questions remain in my mind. First, I don’t know why I lost, or what the losing move was. The Melusine should be, according to what I did, the most freedom-loving creatures it is possible to be under heaven. Second, what the hell is up with that Bell?
“Above us is a spacehook, the biggest thing I have ever seen in the sky. On the one hand, it is physically impossible that the Hyades World Armada or anything from it could be here four hundred years ahead of time. On the other hand, it does not seem to be moving or acting like it would act if the Currents controlled it, Melusine or Blackie or whoever is running the store these days. Why would any of them go loot Raleigh? Why would they initiate a maneuvering burn when they saw the magnetic north pole shift to Fancy Gap, Virginia, just as if they wanted to investigate some unknown native phenomenon? Why would they react to ELF radio signals containing Monument hieroglyphs and not to any other signals on any other band?
“And I don’t know the answers to those questions.”
A silence as profound as the grave passed over the chamber. So it was shocking that the sound of a cold chuckle hung in the air. It was doubly shocking when everyone turned and saw that it was Ctesibius the Savant, his despair and aloofness for a moment gone from his face, replaced with a cold and satanic mirth.
Ctesibius said, “I know the answers, aftercomers. I know all.”
4. Star Raid
Menelaus turned to Ctesibius the Savant. “What did you say? What did you find out? Hell—how did you find out?”
“The snow told me. Haven’t you figured out where the people of this time are? Don’t you know what the Bell is?” smirked Ctesibius.
“Told you how?” demanded Montrose. “The nerve links in your head are one-way only. Transmit and not receive.”
Ctesibius shook his bewigged head with bitter mirth. Menelaus decided he liked laughing Ctesibius less than melancholy Ctesibius. Much less.
Now the Savant held up his glove, and showed its back to Menelaus, and pointed with his other hand. On the glove back was a telephone of the kind that had an onboard Mälzel to perform extremely complicated high-data-volume transmissions, so it had more memory than a midrange library cloth, and broadcasting shortwave, enjoyed a practically unlimited, worldwide range. It was beautifully made, coated with gold leaf and rimmed with diamonds, no bigger than a coin.
“Just because I have neurocybernetics in my head,” smiled Ctesibius, “does not mean I need not listen with my ear like any hylic.”
Menelaus rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, pinching his nose for good measure. Hylic. There was a word he had not heard in a while. It was what the Hermeticists and Scholars called anything they regarded as lower on the scale of evolution. It was another little reminder, small as a pinprick, why he hated the Hermeticists and the worlds they made.
But aloud Menelaus said, “Okay. I give. Uncle. I have not figured out where the people of this time are. I was thinking maybe the ocean, on account of the Melusine, but I vectored a social change into the sea life, and it seems like it had no effect. Are they on the moon? I don’t know what the Bell is. I know what it is not. It is not what it seems to be, because what it seems to be makes no sense. It looks like a human-made weapon of the Hyades.”
Ctesibius said, “That is exactly what it is.”
“I got two questions. One is: huhn? The second one is: if I am the coxcombliest smartest smartster on this planet, how come most of what I say most the time is ‘huhn’? Answer the first question first, please.”
Ctesibius said, “The Bell is an accurate mock-up of a typical Hyades attack instrument created from Monument blueprints. The space raid drill began in A.D. 10484, some three decades ago. In the same way civilians would clear the streets of their cities and retreat into underground bomb shelters and bunkers during the Hitlerian War to practice the discipline needed to survive a raid from the air, so, here, too, the surface of the globe, including the oceans, has been cleared of all human and domesticated life, to practice what is needed to survive a raid from the stars.
“Interstellar warfare is feudal,” said Ctesibius in the tone of one who confides a commonplace bromide.
“Futile?” Menelaus wondered if he had heard that correctly.
“Feudal. There is no substance more lightweight and more deadly than contraterrene. Payload mass considerations are paramount in interstellar travel. No other weapon is worth bringing across lightyears. No possible surface defense, nothing made of matter, can withstand it.
“It is the nature of total conversion reaction to react as violently against diffuse material, like atmosphere, as against dense material, like armor, and the concussion always drives the antimatter away from the point of contact. Therefore the best defense is layer after layer of light masses, such as atmosphere and hydrosphere, over layers of heavier mass, as a crust and core.
“This means people can survive even orbital antimatter bombardment if they retreat to far, far below the mantle of their world like the knights in a medieval fortress retreating behind castle walls. All the attacker can do is eliminate the surface biosphere, and besiege the defender, and hope to starve him out. It is to define and practice the institutions necessary for bathysubterranean life that the space raid drill was organized.”
Menelaus blinked. A thirty-year-long drill. All the people of the surface world in a bombproof shelter. And the presumably much larger sea population of whales and mermaids, also in a bombproof aquarium. An aquarium as big as the Great Lakes might hold all the intelligent sea life in the world, with a little crowding …
“Hey! Wait one pus-dripping minute! What would be big enough to hold—?”
Ctesibius talke
d over him, trampling the end of the question. “Fortunately there was an extensive and unoccupied system of hypocycloid curves of a long-abandoned evacuated-tube railgun-launched intercontinental train network—all the cities of the Melusine were lowered into the extensive volume for the duration of the raid drill—”
“Unoccupied my cankered cloaca-hole!” shouted Menelaus. “You mean the world is empty because everyone moved into my depthtrain system? My rail yards? My storage bays?”
Ctesibius continued, as if he were unwilling to notice or acknowledge that a lesser being like Montrose could be speaking while he spoke: “—had previously deduced the existence of an extensive body of self-replicating Von Neumann lattices, apparently without end—and therefore began growing a stalactite of logic crystal toward the inner core in A.D. 10401, roughly one hundred years ago. The lava displacement caused by the stalactite growth increased volcanic pressure worldwide, making it easier for you, Menelaus Montrose, to attempt worldwide climate adjustment. The Nobilissimus anticipated that you would employ widespread volcanism to terraform the climate via gas venting to alter the composition in the atmosphere. Your behavior made the stalactite growth easier, and sped the growth—”
At this point, Menelaus was distracted by the sight of Soorm climbing out of the central cistern, with the slender body of the Melusine girl, Alalloel of Lree, tucked under one huge arm. Soorm did not wait for a break in the conversation, but merely bellowed across the chamber. “Judge! I found her where the flooded section meets an underground river. Not a stream—a river bigger than the Ebro. And you will not believe—”
Ctesibius, just as rude as Soorm, raised his voice and kept talking: “—Melusine occupying cities and arcologies cubic miles wide inside the cool core of the stalactite. Would you care to hear the figures for the displacement volume? More significant is the memory volume. Being made of logic crystal, the Great Stalactite can hold emulations of the entire Melusine population who have achieved the rank of Glorified—”
Alalloel was not dead (as Menelaus first thought) but she did look annoyed as Soorm yanked her out from under his arm and held her up. “These scars on her back hide spinal ports. She was nerve-linking to her whales. They came back from the dead. Most of their internal organs are brain mass. Brain Whales. And these whales have wings, and the wings are covered with eyes—”
Ctesibius said, “The core-ward growing Great Stalactite is the second largest single coherent man-made object in history. You are right to fear it—”
Soorm said, “The real her is housed in the Melusine body in her mind-body group—”
Ctesibius said, “The first and largest, of course, is the mock-up of the Hyades Instrumentality, which is finally in position. You have run out of time. All things are ended!”
Soorm said, “The Iron Ghosts I met at the bottom of the Mariana Trench have been reincarnated.” He turned to Scipio and spoke in Latin: “This girl is a Cetus, preserved as an Iron Ghost from the old days. Your days.”
Scipio said, “A Cetacean. The ones who broke the Cryonarchic power by blockading the continents. The creatures we never learned how to fight.” And he said in English to Montrose: “They serve only their creator, and have no pity nor understanding of human beings. These are the most loyal and most effective servants Exarchel has ever commanded.”
Menelaus was more curious about Ctesibius, at the moment, than about Alalloel the Cetacean. “Run out of time, why? Why is the Bell coming here?”
Ctesibius smiled a thin, cruel smile. Menelaus thought he definitively liked moping Savants better than happy ones. Ctesibius said archly, “To answer your second question, the reason why you spend your life, for all your intelligence, grunting—huhn?—is merely because you cross wits with a man who is in every way your superior. The Bell is no longer coming. It is here. The Nobilissimus is here.”
12
Signs in the Heavens, Figures in the Earth
1. Signs in Heaven
There was a deafening noise overhead.
Blades made of what seemed to be plasma taken from the surface of the sun pierced and penetrated the golden ceiling of the vast chamber like awls. There were four, one at each corner, and they stabbed down through the roof ten or twelve feet. There was no dust or debris: the awls did not merely burn through the armor, metal, and bedrock of the roof material, but evaporated anything made of matter that was touched. The four blades were four noonday suns, one at each corner, and everyone, including Menelaus, cowered or hid his eyes.
Blinded, Menelaus did not actually see the moment when the entire ceiling of the chamber was torn free like the lid of a shoe box and flung away; but he heard the noise, or at least, he heard the beginning of the noise. After that, his ears were numb with the shock of sound, and all he heard was a distant humming or the ringing of chimes.
More light fell on his face, but also drops of rain. The air was hot and close, despite the arctic winter it should have been. There was a tropical warmth to the atmosphere, but also the closeness and weight of a lowering storm. The flashing of lightning in forks and sheets was continuous.
Menelaus squinted and looked up.
The outside of the Bell was dark, and its passage had stirred up thunderheads which hung, black as anvils, like the wake of spray before a rearing ship’s prow, boiling to either side of the astronomically titanic machine and trailing like the hems of tattered robes behind. Lightning bolts flicked between the foot of the Bell and the Earth, eye-dazzling. Despite his numbed ears, Menelaus could still sense the deafening thunderclaps in his bones.
Other lightning bolts flickered between points on the outer surface two thousand feet high and points three thousand, or between the first mile up and the second, as the friction of the motion through the atmosphere built up and discharged vast static voltages.
And the Tower went up and up like a dark road leading to the emptiness between the stars. Through a gap in the storm clouds, Menelaus could see what looked like a small moon in crescent phase at the vanishing point of that road, made of the same impossibly tough, dark substance as the Bell. This was its maneuvering anchor, somewhere at or near geosynchronous orbit, an object larger than the asteroid Vesta, or, for comparison, roughly ten times the size of 1036 Ganymed—a moon of Earth that Menelaus had never seen. It was large enough to be pulled into a spherical shape by its own mass. Menelaus saw a drive antenna, tens of thousands of feet long, ribbed by ring after ring of accelerators; bat-vanes of heat dissipaters, coming like a comet’s tail from the asteroid; and he recognized the characteristic contour of a low-speed, high-impulse ionic drive.
The foot of the Bell was not directly overhead, but was perhaps half a mile to one side. The nine-mile-diameter mouth hung overhead, and clouds, landscapes, and continents of buildings, mechanisms, factories, and energy systems of a vertical world could be seen, at an angle, through the vast opening. It was like a window gaping into another universe, one whose mountains were squares and rectangles of darkness and light and whose rivers were vertical lines straight as yardsticks and whose hills were sideways hemispheres bright and round as shields.
Issuing from one metal shore of the mouth of the Bell was a roughly conical cloud or swarm of machines, which hovered without any visible wings or supports. Each machine was shaped like a jellyfish of synthetic material, and their many arms were serpentines.
The larger cnidarian-shaped machines could have picked up an aircraft carrier with ease. The smaller cnidarians might have been designed by the same hands that made the aeroscaphes of the Sylphs. (And for the first time Menelaus realized the Giants who designed the airskiffs of the Sylphs used elements taken from engineering schematics written in the Monument, some unguessed or unexamined section neither Menelaus nor Rania had ever deciphered.)
The roof and upper levels of the Tombs were being hauled upward by a larger machine, and four of its serpentines were the white-hot cutting implements which had pierced the roof. Menelaus saw debris, and then a coffin, lit to show a person wa
s inside, dripping off the side of the broken Tomb layers. He watched helplessly as one of his clients fell; but the smaller machines, darting with supersonic speed, neatly caught that falling coffin.
Machines even smaller—he now saw cnidarian flying machines the size of a lady’s parasol, or the size of a child’s hand, or the size of a dragonfly—were catching the falling struts, rocks, stones, and pebbles.
Nothing fell to the ground.
Even the stormwinds, rain gusts, and lightning could not distract the cnidarians or make them miss their grip. Even the falling particles of dust were gathered up.
Menelaus saw what seemed like heat vibrations over the mantle or upper back of each of the cnidarian flying machines, and realized they could only fly in an atmosphere within the shadow of the Bell. The Bell was emitting a radiation that interacted with the metal. The metal was buoyant while in the field. He wondered if the vibration were something as commonplace as a partial vacuum created by a field, or if the Bell were merely raising and lowering the machines by magnetic monopoles, or if something more exotic, like antigravity, were possible.
2. The Dark-Palmed Hand
Then it happened. The side of the dark tower nearest was aflame. He realized these were maneuvering jets. Thousands and tens of thousands of pinpoints of light flickered into existence across the vast acreage of the dark hull. The light was brighter than acetylene. In the same way that skyscrapers in the days before Menelaus was born would turn on and off colored lights in all their windows, so as to make hundred-story-high billboards, but much bigger here, the acres and acres of white fire painted the outline of a symbol.
There must have been a maneuvering jet every few square yards, a caltrop of rocket vents larger than any Saturn V main cone, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. The amount of fuel being ignited just to paint this sign in light was immense: as if twelve hundred Capes Canaveral, and all their rockets, had lit up at once, merely for one majestic, awe-inspiring moment of pyrotechnic skywriting.