The Judge of Ages
Montrose turned to the others gathered there. “Anyone else? I don’t have time to speak to every member of each race that comes up, so you people gathered here have to decide for them. ’Taint very democratic-like, but we’re pressed for time.”
Soorm said, “If you can turn us invisible to the Noösphere, what was the point of negotiating our places in the civilization that is to come?”
Montrose said, “My magic only affects their perceptions, not their memories or legal agreements. They won’t be able to see you, up until the moment any one of y’all is dumb enough to stick a telephone or a library chip in your head or something like that. I cannot make the Locusts into phantasms. But that does not mean they cannot make a deal with you, make swaps and trades, all that good stuff. The shoemaker does not need to see the elves to make a deal, just leave out the shoe leather and a bowl of milk. Who wants in to the world of phantasms? It will be a life of hardship.”
Trey Azurine would not answer, but merely shrugged.
Scipio said, “There are no Giants here, but I will speak on their behalf, as the only surviving Cryonarch. Hide them in the phantasm system.”
Ctesibius said, “It would ill behoove the glory of the Savant race if we hid from the world that is the expression of what we sought. For myself and for the Scholars, I say we shall be visible. We decline the offer.”
Sarmento i Illa d’Or said, “The Hermetic Order will also decline the offer. These Swans are insane if they think to oppose the Hyades, but we have learned over the centuries never to dispute creatures higher on the Darwinian scale. We will remain visible. They have offered us a place in their service.”
Mickey said, “How are these Swan creatures different from the Machine? Make the whole race of the Wise into your phantasms, I beseech you.”
Vulpina said, “The Chimerae are a free people. We can survive without the eyes of these godlike, therefore hateful, creatures on us. Camouflage us.”
Sir Guiden said, “Any men from the world before the Giants could not understand the thoughts or the meaning of these Swans, and it would crush their spirits. The elder race of which I believe I am the only representative here, base-stock Homo sapiens, on their behalf, I ask for the sanctuary of invisibility to their eyes.”
Oenoe said, “Our race was made to carry no metals and emit no waves, so that the men of the factory-dark cities and the bloodstained iron fastnesses of war would never see us. We will live in the woods unseen: this is our way. The Einheriar and Valkyrie, our military orders, you must excuse, however, from your work. The Swan must see and speak with them, if they are to be used against the Hyades in the futile gesture of impossible war for love of which they entered your Tombs, O Judge of Ages Past.”
Soorm said, “Is this a trick question? I don’t want those creepy things watching me.”
Ull said, “I speak for the Locusts. We are part of the Noösphere of this age.”
Keirthlin said, her strange, silvery eyes gleaming, “And I speak for Inquilines. When and if we are convinced the Potentate of Earth is benevolent, it will be simple enough to restore our tendrils and seek union. Make us phantasms.”
And everyone was surprised when Alalloel said, “And us as well.”
6. All Bets Are Off
Only three voices came from her mouth.
Montrose stared at her. “How come you can still see and hear me?”
She said, “I—this one whose body this is—I am of the Lree. I am a Melusine. The Melusine did not slay Exarchel or invade the brain space of Pellucid. We are not Swans. Our psychology and philosophy is nothing like that of these semianarchic Pan sapiens creatures you accidentally created. We have no interest in being forced to be part of their system, until and unless we are assured that the principle of strict reciprocity is followed, both on a personal and on a macroscopic scale.”
Montrose touched the feather of her cloak again and he issued the commands.
The winged men, women, dwarfs and giants, dolphins and other shapes either hovering in the air or standing throng on throng along the steaming, vapor-breathing hillsides staggered and spread their wings in alarm, countless eyes glinting frantically.
Montrose said, “You will still be able to speak with them, make deals, even go them to settle disputes, by talking through Ctesibius or any other Savant who wakes. He touches the Noösphere only with a one-way link. Locusts might also be able to act as intermediaries, depending on their degree of neural immersion.”
Mickey stepped forward. “Where are you going?”
Montrose said, “Where you cannot follow. This has only been one-sixth of the time between Rania’s departure in A.D. 2401 and her earliest possible date of return in A.D. 70000 when Kochab and Pherkad are the pole stars. And even that shall be only the first beginning of my life.”
“Or mine,” smiled Del Azarchel darkly. He said to Mickey in Latin, “Come with us. Montrose will not mind, and perhaps I can persuade you to take up my service again, be a Savant, and create an emulation of yourself, a greater soul. You will be deathless.”
Sir Guiden stepped near, and spoke. “Before you hear him, discover from the Hermeticists if his offers lead to joy or grief.”
Del Azarchel narrowed his darkly glimmering eyes. “I spoke no false things to them. I told them plainly they were my dogs, and I their master. Had they obeyed me in all things and in all thoughts, they would know no reason to utter complaint. I was honest in my word.”
“Honesty in word is laudable, Master of the World, but it excuses no sins,” said Sir Guiden.
Del Azarchel turned his head and said to Montrose, “Is this your creature? Tell him to curb his tongue and remind him who he addresses. If he is not your creature, then do not interfere should I deign to smite him.”
Montrose said, “Climb off your buggerified high horse, Blackie, before you get a nosebleed. You ain’t smiting nobody, not for a goodly parcel of time as yet. Sir Guy, this here is my friend Blackie, and he is a pullelo, a gutter rat from Toledo in Spain, who is trying hard to live up to some crazy-ass notion of chivalry he learned from a man named Trajano during a hard period of his hard life, so don’t tell his flaws out to him, it ain’t fitting. Blackie lost his empire today, so don’t irk him. Again. What can I do for you, Sir Guy?”
“Liege, I have kept faithfully your service for lo, these thousands and thousands of years. But now all the Tombs are being raised, and all the dead shall waken, and many of these will be weakened and wounded and seek of many cures. The mission of the Knights of the Hospital of Jerusalem is with the sick who seek our sanctuary; and my heart is here.” He held out his left hand, and Oenoe took it, smiling, her beauty made all the more beautiful by her joy. She blushed, and did not look the posthumans in their eyes.
“I release you,” said Montrose, with a note of sorrow in his voice. “We’ve been through a lot. Well, slept through a lot. Almost the same thing.”
Mickey said, “Am I not to come with you?”
Montrose said, “I am not going to tell you yes or no, but I have a woman waiting for me up yonder in the far tomorrows, and I do not give a good goddam how many lives and how many centuries I have to tuck behind me. You can come if you like, but I have found out there just ain’t no guarantee that the future will be any better than the past, no matter what the optimists say, and there just ain’t no guarantee that the future will go on getting worse and worse, no matter what the pessimists say. For that matter, there is no guarantee that things will stay mixed good and bad, sinners and saints together, with no great change to human nature, because there have been times in the past that things turned a corner and nothing was never the same again. I don’t know what the people are called who think things don’t get worse and don’t get better. Mediocretists? But whatever they are called, there is no guarantee of them being right neither, because there just is no guarantees about the future. All bets are off. That goes double for the far future.”
Mickey said, “But I heard the Swans pronounce your sent
ence. Long-term biosuspension requires the use of a Xypotech to track all the cellular movements in a man’s body. No machine on Earth will serve you, even if you were visible to any of them.”
Del Azarchel said, “All things have come together, my dear friendly Witch, in just such a way that Montrose and I cannot do, either one of us, without the other. He has made a bargain with Sarmento so that the now-empty Xypotech core at the axis of the Emancipation can be filled and reestablished from my Xypotech, a new version of Exarchel, which he and I have the skills to create from the raw materials we have at hand, but neither of us alone. I have hibernation cells aboard the ship, he knows how to program them; I have savant equipment to create a new emulation of myself, he can use his solution to make him sane. And this time, I can make sure he puts no extra codes inside me. And I have a ship.”
“My ship,” grunted Montrose.
“Our ship,” said Del Azarchel graciously. “The only place we can go, now that the world and the world’s mind is hostile to us. We have a long hike ahead of us, not to mention a sea voyage, since the Tower will obey my command no longer to carry us aloft, and the only launching-landing craft in service, not beholden in any way to the Melusine or the Swans, is the one hidden in the bay of Saint Christopher’s Island, just offshore of your Mount Misery Tomb facility. Unless you have a closer one tucked away? We will also need to raid your fabulous storehouses of legendary wealth, if you have some stout walking shoes and coats worth wearing.”
Montrose said, “I will open my storehouses. Your eyes will fall out of your head when you see the treasures I’ve accumulated, because they bring me gifts, each one of the billions who sleep, or their close relations. But walk? Why walk? Mickey here stole a Witch plane not so long ago, and programmed the serpentine guiding it to land the crate not far away. I know the location. The serpentine power will last forever. It is a two-seater, and I am sure I can figure out how to pilot the darn thing after a crash or six. The thing is at least as steady as a World War One biplane.”
“And the average life-span of a Flying Ace from those days was, what, again? Fourteen days?” asked Del Azarchel archly.
“Long enough to get us to Mount Misery.” And the crooked grin on the lantern-jawed gargoyle face of Menelaus Montrose was something fearful to behold.
Mickey the Witch said, “I will stay in this era, and seduce a buxom Nymph or two, and find my love now.”
Oenoe said softly to him, “Aea looks with favor on you, or can be made to do so once she adjusts her brain chemistry correctly. You will soon be hers.”
Montrose said, “I warned you. Those women will take over your brain.”
Mickey said, “I have no further use for it. Have you seen the size of her—”
“Those women are dangerous!” said Montrose.
“Should I live a nice, safe life like yours, then, Menelaus Montrose?” retorted the Witch.
“Well, if you are so reckless,” said Blackie with a smile, “then come with us.”
Mickey pondered, frowning. Then he said, “No. The depth and strangeness of the centuries and millennia you mean to cross appalls me: you will emerge from your sleep in a world as strange as some unnamed orb that circles Archenar or Bellatrix, but with no way home to any world you knew. Montrose will find his Lady Love, if the gods are with him and the world is just, and Del Azarchel will find despair, and a hell of eternal time unending.
“But as for me, what shall a Witch of simple tastes do in such unguessed aeons far remote? How can I worship oak and ash and thorn and all the sacred trees, if they are all extinct?
“No. My people are here. The future is not mine; but the present.
“For, see! Even now the first of the great doors on the far hillside moves earth and melting ice aside, and the golden light spills up. I hear the psalms of the Christians mingled with the chants of the Witches and the paeans of the Chimerae, and so, perhaps, the ancient enmities are for a season put aside.
“The men of every era emerge blinking into the sunlight of the latter-day world. It is already far too far in the future for me.
“Go, then, Judge of Ages and Master of the World, away from the Age and from the World that has exiled you, and seek you your strange dreams of love for a more-than-human girl. The blessings of earth and sky, hill and wood and water, and all that dwell therein, now and for aye be with you!”
APPENDIX A
Dramatis Personae
Last interment date in square brackets
Hermeticists
Menelaus Illation Montrose
Melchor de Ulloa—Master of the Witches
Narcís Santdionís de Rei D’Aragó—Master of the Chimerae
Sarmento i Illa d’Or—Master of the Nymphs
Venture Reyes y Pastor—Master of the Hormagaunts
Jaume Coronimas—Master of the Locusts
Ximen del Azarchel—Master of the World
Ghosts
Exarchel—the Dreagh or emulation of Del Azarchel
Exo-exarchel—the backup template of Exarchel expelled into space
Exulloa, Exarago, Exillador, Excoronimas, Exynglingas, and Expastor—emulations
Scholar
Rada Lwa—Intermediately Evolved Learned Scholar Rada-Lwa Chwal Sequitur Argent-Montrose; Psychoi, brain augment to level 257, and a servant of De Ulloa [A.D. 3090]
Cryonarch
Scipio—Advocate-General Scipio Cognition Montrose of the World Concordat, Regent at Large, Lord Protector of the Dead, Director of the Endymion Hibernation Syndicate, aka Glorified Scipio Cognition Montrose, Endorcist of One and a Half Donations [A.D. 2519]
Knight Hospitalier
Sir Guy—His Excellency Grandmaster Emeritus Guiden von Hompesch zu Bolheim [A.D. 2509]
Savant
Ctesibius—Glorified Ctesibius Zant, Endocist of Three Donatives, Servant of the Machine [A.D. 2525]
Sylph
Trey—Third or Trey Soaring Azurine (tentative) [A.D. 2537]
Soaring Azurine, her aeroscaphe
Giant
Bashan—Dr. Bashan Christopher Colligorant Hugh-Jones [A.D. 3033]
Witches
Mickey—Melechemoshemyazanagual Onmyoji de Concepcion, Padre Bruja-Stregone of Donna Verdant Coven from the Holy Fortress at Williamsburg; his true name is Mictlanagualzin of the Dark Science Research Coven [A.D. 4733]
Fatin—Fatin Simon Fay, a maiden from the Simon Families period [circa A.D. 3300]
Fuamnach—a crone of the Whalesong Coven
Ajuoga—a crone of the Stone Telling Coven
Lilura—a crone of the Clear Green Coven
Louhi—a crone of the Self-Esteem Pro-Choice Coven
Lorelei—a mother of the Mystic Crystal Revelation Coven
Drosselmeyer—a Warlock of the Old Iron Dreams Coven of Detroit
Crowley, Castaneda, and Twardowski of Wkra—other Warlocks
Heron—Heron of the Automaton Workers Coven Local 101, a factory hand from the Butlerian Restoration [A.D. 4455]
Parnassus—Parnassus of the Golden Golem Coven of Lake Superior, an apothecary from the Nameless Empire period [A.D. 4490]
Various mundanes (lower-caste Witches)—12 Demonstrators (their warrior caste), a hunter, a farmer, a vintner, a mason, a factory hand, and an alchemist
Chimerae
Daae—Alpha Captain Varuman Aemileus Daae of Uttarakhand, Osaka, Bombay, Yumbulangang, and other actions in the South China Theater; the Varuman blood derives from the Osterman, from the Homo sapiens, and Canis lupus [A.D. 5402]
Yuen—Alpha-Steadholder Extet Minnethales Yuen of Richmond, Third and Second Manassas, Antietam, and various actions against Pirates; the Yuen are of the Original Experiment Set, from Homo sapiens and Puma concolor [A.D. 4881]
Grislac—his weapon
Arroglint the Fortunate—the named weapon of his lineage
Anubis—High-Beta Sterling Xenius Anubis of Mt. Erebus Dependent College, 102nd Civic Control Division, attached to the Pennsylvania 3rd Legion; geneti
cs unknown, line unknown, possibly Crotalinae; the “Virginianized” version of this name is Ir-Beta Sterlingas Xeniopater Anupsu-phalangetor Erebumontsangil [A.D. 5292]
Rock—his weapon
Phyle—Gamma Joet Goez Phyle of Bull Run, lineage discontinued
Ivinia—Alpha Lady Mother-of-Commandant Wife-of-Captain Ulec Nemosthene Ivinia nee Echtal; her victory title is Septimilegens
Callixiroc the Dark—the named weapon of the lineage of Ivinia
Vulpina—a young Beta women’s auxiliary [A.D. 5316]
Suspinia—a young Beta women’s auxiliary; originally named Handmaiden Seven of the Suspiring Nature Coven of Nome [A.D. 4812]
Kine
Larz—Kine Larz Quire Slewfoot of Gutter [A.D. 5950]
Franz, Ardzl, and Happy—other Kine
Nymphs
Oenoe—Oenoe Psthinshayura-Ah of Crocus with Clover and Forsythia [A.D. 6746]
Aea, Daeira, Ianassa, and Thysa—other Nymphs
Celaineus, Argennos, Aegicoros, and Omester—He-Nymphs, also called Satyrs
Iatrocrats
Soorm—Archormagaunt, also called Asvid the Old Man; originally, a Satyr named Marsyas of Saffron, with Oakwhite, Oleander, Rocket, and Mandrake [A.D. 7466]
Gload scion Ghollipog—Hormagaunt [A.D. 7520]
Crile scion Wept—Hormagaunt [A.D. 7810]
Prissy Pskov and Zouave Zhigansk—Clade-dwellers
Toil, Drudge, and Drench—Donors
Locusts
True Locusts (Onyx Men)