The Vindication of Man

by John C. Wright

  “I have the miracle vessel in tow behind the Emancipation,” continued Del Azarchel, “hidden from the gaze of Iota Draconis behind my aft push plate. But the fuel is just as exotic and cannot be manufactured with nanotechnology nor with picotechnology.

  “The vessel is a bastard. She can be used as a sailing vessel, riding an acceleration beam, or as a self-propelled vessel, using the sails to gather particles from surrounding media as reaction mass. The speeds the False Rania achieved returning to the galaxy from outside it, the speeds needed to reach M3, comes from propulsion, not sailing, but that option, at the moment, is beyond me. So I mean to sail the Hyades, to the star the Swans call Ain and the Patricians call Coronis, and see if I can bargain for fuel to power the vessel.”

  Montrose turned back to Vigil and said, “You seem to think he needs me.”

  Vigil said, “I only deduce from what has happened here. If the Master of the Empyrean could have departed without you, he would have raised sail and found his way to Hyades, and eventually to M3, to recover the woman legend says you both love.”

  “I love her,” said Montrose. “He’s just an ass.”

  Vigil said, “I can see his eyes when you speak. Your death he never ceases to contemplate, and before his mind’s eye, he holds the details lovingly. He must need you very badly indeed, for his desire to see you dead is being checked by a stronger desire.”

  Menelaus turned and looked at Del Azarchel. “I thought your hate for me was the only real, sincere, not-baloney human emotion inside that man-shape make-believe you call your immortal soul, eh, Blackie? What hankering you got in your black heart that is stronger than hate?”

  “Curiosity,” answered Del Azarchel. “I was a scientist before I was a sovereign, was I not? Not only do I wish to recover my bride and queen and greatest handiwork, but to discover who wrote the Monument, the original Monument—for you and I have seen only a redacted version, an edited and false copy. I want to know the reason and purpose of the message. Only then will I understand who Rania truly is.”

  Montrose uttered a curse. He turned to Vigil. “You are pretty damned smart. Can you figure what is his reason for needing me? Or why I should help him?”

  Vigil said, “No. But I do recall that Princess Rania was born and raised aboard the Hermetic, which was controlled by a very simple artificial intelligence, but one which was programmed with certain laws and customs, including such things as inheritance. Is that legend true? She was captain of the ship at a very tender age primarily because the ship’s circuits would not obey the mutineers, who slew the first captain, but would obey someone of his bloodline, and she was close enough, as a clone of the first captain, to fool the simple machine. I have an intuition—a level-three intuition, mind you—that Rania, during her solitary return journey, programmed the alien ship according to what she herself knew and thought proper.”

  Del Azarchel said, “You have struck the mark, Lord Hermeticist.” He scowled at Montrose. “The alien vessel is inhabited by an artificial mind which I cannot dislodge, which the False Rania, in perfect impersonation of the true one, for some mad reason taught and programmed with all her ideas, including her notions of marriage. Since you are the ex-husband of Rania, once I persuaded her that the False Rania was false, the ship declared you—as Rania’s lord and master—to be sole heir to her property. Rania is rather old-fashioned, even by my standards.”

  Montrose swore an oath and exclaimed, “Ex-husband?”

  Del Azarchel smiled thinly. “Your marriage was annulled by an act of Parliament of the Tellurian Concordat, sometime back in the Third Millennium. I forget which century.”

  Montrose said, “And the ship’s brain does not recognize the legality of an act of Parliament to abridge a sacramental oath, I take it? Not if Rania, false or true or any sort of Rania, was the one who programmed it.”

  Vigil said, “The alien ship is treating the discovery of the falsehood of Rania as the same as death, then. That is highly significant.”

  Montrose said, “Why?”

  “It means your voyage will not be in vain,” said Vigil. “This was not a deception practiced deliberately. Something beyond expectation, beyond even their expectation, happened at M3.”

  Montrose turned to Del Azarchel. “What now? If this Table don’t disband and let you use their Lighthouse, what then? Are you going to draw the sword and threaten this group here to turn the deceleration beam right and proper into your sails?”

  The Chronometrician spoke out of turn, cackling, his yard-long antennae swaying. “He has lost the desire and drive. The dark emperor of all mankind realized that he needs this world intact, unmarred by war, filled and overfilled with excess population!”

  Vigil nodded. He turned and squinted at the statue of Torment. “You will pass out of range of the most powerful broadcast apparatus of the Empyrean, and so be beyond the retaliation from Triumvirate or any of the Powers of the greater planets. What would be your desire then, O murderess world?”

  Torment said, “My thoughts are not like yours, but to be the mother of worlds, and to spread my children farther than even highly favored Tellus, that would be ambition indeed, and the old races that I love, the ancient things crafted by Hermeticists, nothing would be absorbed into the bland uniformity of the proud Patricians then. And you, my accuser, is your vengeance satisfied by exile, eternal exile?”

  Vigil said, “If I were not satisfied, I would order my internal creatures to adjust my thoughts until I were. For I am true to my vows and must ever be.”

  Montrose said, “Wait a sec. A minute ago, I was the only one in the room who knew what was going on. Have you all figured out what my plan is, that quick?”

  Vigil said, “I am descended from Narcís D’Aragó and share something of the sense of honor he wished planted in his creatures, the Chimerae, which in turn formed the first templates for the Myrmidons, the Third Human Race. Of the Five Races of Man, only that race, of which I count myself a cousin, traveled to the Second Empyrean in Sagittarius and looked on the legendary beauty and strength of the lost worlds of Aachen and of Avalon, of Trethevy and of Trevena, and Tintagel the Fair, whose name hangs in song like a bell of silver. Do you forget that the man who was master of that Empyrean is here?”

  Montrose said, “Sorry. What am I missing?”

  Vigil said, “You have sailcloth but no vessel, no launching laser. But you are patient, and you served aboard the Hermetic, whose laser was merely an orbital platform, not something drawing power from the core of a sun.”

  Del Azarchel said, “I had to tear out most of the interior of my vessel, the Emancipation—”

  “My vessel, you skunk!”

  “—to make room for cisterns to hold my migrant population, who are aquatic. The ship is not suited to make the voyage to M3. She may not make it to Ain without an entire redesign from the axis keel outward. I was planning on looting this entire planet to get the provisions I needed, but you seem to have a better plan, Cowhand. I do not know what it is, but I know this youth here deduced it, and that tells me enough. Lord Hermeticist! The orbit of your primary is highly elliptical, is it not? How do you survive the summers hotter than Mercury and atmosphere-freezing winters colder than Pluto?”

  Vigil said, “There are hibernation cities at the planetary core, with tombs enough for ten times the surface population. And I seek the return of the Strangers to their proper place. We will stay and man the acceleration beam for all the ages you may require. At long last—finally at long last!—the projects of terraforming Hellebore and Bloodroot, Sainfoin, Mandrake, and Nightshade, and the other wasted moons of Wormwood, which we of Torment abandoned only due to our racial hatred and pride and strife, will no more be neglected.” Vigil turned to Montrose. “Have I guessed correctly? You meant to take Hellebore with you.”

  Montrose nodded. “You got it. It would have been a slow, slow voyage, but I am used to slow. But now here is Blackie, who needs my help to sail my wife’s ship. As I recall, the alien s
hip anchored its sails to her hull with impalpable strings of force. I am assuming they can pass through solid matter without harm, without being noticed. The cities at the core are solid enough to serve as anchors. And I know how big the sails of Rania’s supership are. So we just anchor the ship at the core of Torment, erect the sails as large as the orbit of Venus, and the payload to surface area is still so huge it don’t matter, not with the amount of power the Iota Draconis beam can put out. We take the whole planet with us.”

  Vigil said, “It will be but a very short while, decades only, until the Argosy arrives with populations of Sinners from 61 Ursae Majoris and Delectables from 47 Ursae Majoris. They will bring enough peoples to overswarm Bloodroot and will complete the terraformation. However tenuously and thin the thread might stretch, it will not be broken, and a next Table of Stability be seated, and ensure the continuation of mankind as a star-faring race, resisting forever the thousand temptations of each planet to make herself isolated, autarchic, and alone.”

  “Sounds like everyone takes a cut of the kitty, then. Winners all round, eh? But what makes anything think I am willing to make another truce with Blackie? I did it once before and hated every minute. ’Sides, he means to kill me.”

  “If I may.” Del Azarchel leaned forward and pointed a finger at the black surface of the table and then, very lightly, tapped it. “This here is the cliometric design of the future of what happens as Triumvirate, carrying out the plans of False Rania. That is what becomes of the human race. Now, if you can do the calculus just in your head, or perhaps we should ask the Stranger boy, who seems to be something of a math prodigy, if he can do the calculus just in his head: What basic cliometric vector is introduced if this world-sized moon, the huge body called Torment, sails grandly across the sky? Suppose we use the mirrored sails of the Emancipation to deflect part of the acceleration beam from Iota Draconis into the sails of smaller vessels and send them out laterally to other stars between here and there? Suppose we form a Sixth Sweep all of our own? I understand the slumbering population here outnumbers the living considerably, due to wretched surface conditions. What happens then to the spirit of man?”

  But Montrose did not need to do any calculations. He merely laughed. “Well, you might call this world a hellhole, but damn my eyes if it don’t remind me of Texas in some ways. If we sail the whole planet with us, we spread the pioneer spirit. And your idea of a medieval hierarchy gets forgotten forever!”

  Blackie smiled, and there was a darkness and a cold, cold hatred in his eyes, but he laughed and pretended to smile. “What do I care if the lowest of the low, the mortal creatures, imagine themselves equal to each other? This whole galaxy vindicates my view, for everything is ranked and placed from humblest to highest, Principalities and Hosts, then Dominions, then Dominations, Authorities and Archons, Thrones and Cherubim and Seraphim. Besides, egalitarian societies always eventually break down as a natural aristocracy emerges. Come! If I depart the hundred-lightyear-wide bubble of stars called the Empyrean of Man, then no more wars nor mischief will proceed, not from my hands. Is there anything on Earth, or any world behind us, that you crave more than this?”

  Montrose smiled back, and the fire in his deep-set, unwinking, blue-white eyes was just as terrifying to behold, and there was some joy in his toothy grin, the joy of a man who imagines an enemy dead. “It is a deal, then, Blackie!”

  Vigil said, “I will keep my faith with you gentlemen, and prevent any interruption of the launching beam.”

  The Chronometrician cackled, and by the intuition of one of his internal creatures, Vigil knew exactly why Montrose, the Judge of Ages, had agreed once more to sail with Ximen the Black.

  Had the Judge of Ages not agreed, Ximen would have gone his separate route, in a vessel of different design and origin, and therefore, risk was too great, in all the endless infinity of space, the appalling abyss of eternity, that the separation between them would grow, one day becoming too vast to overcome; hence they would never again meet; hence never walk onto the field of honor together, that only one would walk away from it.

  Vigil Starmanson, the Lord Hermeticist, understood then that there were things as strong as honor, which would keep men chained to their fates for longer, far longer, than a normal human life span. Love was one such thing. Hate was another.

  He shivered.

  And the Aedile called to adjourn and disband. The Table surface grew dull and plain, and the mind within the metal slept, not to wake again until it was moved to Bloodroot, to empty buildings haunting that world and would once again house the Lords of Cliometry, decades or centuries hence.

  The statue of Torment shivered and grew still. What the mind at the core of this planet thought, no one could say, but apparently the world consented to depart human civilization forever, to be torn from her orbit and to be sailed across the stars.

  Outside the hall, very dimly, one of Vigil’s internal creatures picked up the sound of the bells, still ringing, and voices still singing out a welcome to a ship which now, as it so happened, actually was coming under friendly colors, with gifts and new sciences to bestow, much plenty, and new populations.

  So it seemed the song was not to be in vain.

  PART TEN

  The Seven Daughters of Atlas

  1

  The Eye of the North

  1. Braking Maneuver

  A.D. 72260

  All worlds when seen from space are breathtakingly beautiful.

  Torment in summer was a cratered gemstone of golden sands and green crater lakes, and, in winter, an opal of white on silver as the atmosphere froze, dappled with darker azure zones of crater lakes and frozen volcanic gases.

  Now, departed from her orbit forever, she sailed through the endless winter of interstellar space and was hanging in the middle of the spiral of sails sixty million miles in radius, pink at the center, purple at the topgallants.

  The average velocity of the planet Torment across the abyss of 194 lightyears separating Eldsich from Ain was roughly one-tenth lightspeed. The acceleration beam contained over one hundred yottajoules per second. The precision with which it was maintained in the sails was admirable. The acceleration beam was aimed by means of thousand-mile-radius Fresnel lenses stationed in a line through the Oort cloud of Iota Draconis. The planetary vessel fell out of the beam due to microscopic Brownian jittering in the aiming lenses only ten percent of the time. Out of the millennium of flight, the time spent in free fall was less than a century, all told.

  From time to time, Montrose would wake in his coffin at the world’s core and send his mind into such a body as could survive the Plutonian environment. He traveled to the aft pole.

  The Scolopendra, housed in armored cybernetic cetacean bodies like living submarines, circled and swam through the liquid nitrogen on high holy days about the monstrous mountain of ultradense artificial materials they had raised directly at the aft pole. The peak reached above the thin atmosphere. A golden space elevator reared beyond sight overhead. Swarms of assembly clouds moved slowly upward over the centuries, infinitesimally shrinking the globe and extensively lengthening the infinite tower of their space elevator, and power gathered from the sail electrostatically charged the great golden length. The assembly cloud drew upon the thinnest and most insubstantial of particles and motes swept up by the world-ship’s sails as Torment flew through the infinite night.

  As the journey neared completion, the tower’s length was such that it was more properly called a tail, for it streamed for millions of miles behind the body of Torment. A small section of sail directed energy against the threadlike length, building up a static electric charge greater than that found in the storm clouds of Jupiter before his fall.

  Perched on the hull of the lowest section of the tower, along the insulated miles forming the base, buffeted by the cold and screaming winds of hydrogen and helium, Montrose could look down at the roiling humps and odd waves of liquid oxygen, beneath which was a second ocean, like a rippling sand plain
, of liquid nitrogen; and farther down, but clearly seen through the young and pristine ocean layer, he saw the crags and glacier tops and crooked peaks of carbon dioxide ice.

  Storm clouds of tiny particles formed an immense spiral sweep of colored turbulence in each direction. Here, at the aft pole, it was always noon, and the laser pinprick of dazzling light from Iota Draconis was directly overhead, and the ever-growing topless tower pointed directly at it. The closer one traveled to the fore hemisphere, the lower sank the brilliant dot of sunlight. At dusk was a terminator belt of eternal storm winds circling the whole planet. The fore hemisphere was shrouded in Plutonian night, and the gases formed a perfect dome of atmospheric ice beneath a thin blanket of liquid helium.

  It annoyed Montrose that Ximen del Azarchel always seemed to be awake when he woke. Montrose sooner or later would sense or see him, hanging in a monstrous body sluglike to the vertical lengths of the tower or lounging in one of the many balconies etched into the side armor.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” growled Montrose.

  “I want to see the nearby stars change position,” said Del Azarchel.

  “If you expect to see background stars streaming past like telegraph poles seen from a train, that only happens in cartoons.”

  “You would know, my semiliterate friend!”

  “They’s too far away for parallax.”

  “Ah! But I don’t speak of parallax! Look there! With eyes like these in bodies like these, one can just barely detect the deflection.”

  “Funny. I don’t see any deflection…,” said Montrose. “None at all.”

  “Nor do I, Cowhand. Nor do I.”

  A charged object moving through a magnetic field experiences a Lorenz force at right angles to the line of motion and the direction of the field itself. The principle held true, even if the object was the size of a world and the magnetic field was generated by the dynamo of the disk of degenerate matter circling and falling into the supermassive black hole at the galactic core.