The Vindication of Man

by John C. Wright

  After some fumbling, he found a set of cells in his cortex that could impose a pattern on a focused magnetic flux he could establish passing between the two of them. “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning you will be fined a monetary amount equivalent to the labor costs of manufacturing this remote unit, if you destroy it. Better just to slap this unit in the face, if it is necessary to reduce your animalistic tensions.”

  “I don’t slap women.”

  “And I do not crush insects. Fortunate for you. Do you see the star system receding behind us? Principality of Ain is there as well as here, watching, measuring, and observing us. It would be better to be on our best behavior.”

  “Behind—!” Montrose felt his anger drain away. He grounded the energy building up in his fingers against his mantle and wiped the sparks absentmindedly against his golden thigh, swearing at the unexpected pain.

  His new Patrician eyes could gather information from a number of sources or even use the sail of the Solitudines as a baseline. The planet Torment had passed through the Ain system without striking the superjovian. At present, there seemed to be two gas giants in the system, a bright one and a dark. The dark giant was the inky-black atmosphere of the superjovian, which had removed itself from the planet, solidified into a black sphere, and assumed orbit about it; or, rather, the two were orbiting about a common center.

  The gas cloud, to judge from the degree of light distortion of stars it occluded, had more mass than could be accounted for by its volume and density. There was also indirect evidence of an immense heat source at the core of the black giant: an engine warping space.

  Montrose said, “Life is poxy mocking me. First, I don’t recall deciding to come up here. Second, I see that they have the technology to create gravity out of nothing.”

  “Not out of nothing,” came the cool, soft voice of Torment. “The star Ain lost gravitational mass in equal amount to what the artificial gas giant gained: the star entered an excited state when the balance between the reaction pressure and gravity was thrown off. How the gravitational mass was transferred between the two points is unclear, particular since the volume and density remained the same; but changes in the Higgs boson properties detected throughout the system took place at the time of the near miss, changes that were suggestive of an interaction between gravitons across macroscopic distances.”

  Montrose said, “What? Something that takes the gravity particles generated in one spot in the universe and yanks them hither and yon to come out at another? That cannot be possible.”

  “You forget that the phenomenon or entity we call Cahetel displayed a similar ability to warp spacetime. This is the seat of power from which Cahetel came.”

  “Missing a target big as a gas giant takes some doing. You did not correct the aim? What happened? Self-preservation instinct take over?”

  “I have had no desire to live since the day, before even I was self-aware, when my terraforming and pantropic machines, who inhabited the world before mankind, witnessed the genocide of the second generational deracination ship by the descendants of the first, attempted to resurrect the slain race from recordings and samples, and failed. Look at the distribution patterns of dust and energetic particles in the Ain system, and measure the magnetic field strengths.”

  With his new eyes, Montrose examined the local area to about half a lightyear distant and realized how the near miss must have played out.

  The light from the star Ain had simply been blocked by black inky clouds maneuvered to orbits between Ain and the incoming world-ship, leaving the sails with no light pressure to use. And there was insufficient magnetic strength in the system to tack.

  With no way to maneuver, the planet Torment passed through what had been exact dead center of the gas giant, which was now the gravitational center of the two giant planets: and there just so happened to be no physical object there at the time. There had been minor damage to Torment from the tidal effects. The speed gained when falling into the immense gravity well was lost again as Torment receded from the double planet against the pull of gravity.

  Montrose looked over the mind-dazing immensity of the sails of the Solitudines Vastae Caelorum. There were twin puncture holes somewhere the size of a two supergiant worlds, but the scale defeated even his miraculous new powers of vision. The diameter of a superjovian would not even be a pinprick to a sheet of ultrafine material wide as the orbit of Venus.

  Montrose said, “You and I worked together for a long time. I helped you create a world where all the old memories of the past could be kept alive. But you were thinking of selling yourself to the Hyades since—well, since when? Since the hour you figured out my Rania never came back from M3?”

  Torment did not answer directly, but spoke in a casual, almost absentminded, tone. “There is a vast sail array positioned six hundred AU fore of us. The Principality of Ain would not have maneuvered the array save that they will offer to decelerate us and even to impart acceleration back toward Ain. The superjovian orbit is not only similar to that of Wormwood of Iota Draconis, upon dissolution of the black gravitic body back into a cloud cover, the orbit will be identical, allowing Torment to have precisely the same seasonal variations of precisely the same periods as we enjoyed back home. What does that suggest?”

  Montrose said, “It suggests their damned Concubine Vector: the allowable amount of scabby clapmembered-up-your-hinderparts anyone in a strong position can shove up into those in a weak position. The Cold Equations show that they are still legally required to halt us and grant us port. But there is some fine print in the Monument you and me never saw, or never saw the implications to, is that it?”

  “As you predicted, the Principality governing this solar system is required to spend the energy to bring us to port safely. However, Ain has elected to spend considerably more energy that is strictly necessary, in order to place us into an indentured servitude much longer than you calculated. The arrangement of bodies in this solar system make that clear. We must pay for the gravitational engine operations, the cost to restore the superjovian to its previous condition, the cost to create a remote deceleration beam station six hundred AU away, and so on.”

  “Why go to so much trouble? Build a birdcage just to suit you, and then lure us into it?”

  The throned figure shook her veiled head. “That, Ain has not revealed.”

  “But you have a guess?”

  “Think you so, mortal man? Observe the nearest of yonder parasol-shaped memory habitats. Each of the macroscale dendrite structures in orbit around the star has a mental carrying capacity equal to my own. Look more closely at what seem to be four asteroid rings, or at what seem to be gas clouds. Your eyes should be able to resolve the images. The same dendrite shapes also exist as forty-kilometer-long vehicles, nine-centimeter-long tools, and as nanoscopic molecular assemblers. Every single last scrap of rust and rock and ice in this star system has been sophotransmogrified. Were you impressed at seeing that Sol is now a system with five hundred worlds? It is a circle of mud huts surrounding a single fire pit compared to this. The intellectual volume of the Ain System taken as a whole is in the five billion range, whereas mine is in the five hundred thousand range.”

  A figure in a rotund suit of armor came suddenly over the too-near horizon of the miniature moonlet. The boot soles were coated with a layer of material that changed state with every step, solidifying into glue when the boot made contact with the surface to anchor the walker in place, then liquefying again to release the rear foot for its next step. The midsection of the armor was round like a ball, and the helmet was topped with a conical section like a dunce cap. There was no faceplate, of course, merely a cluster of pinpoint cameras on the front of the solid helm.

  “Howdy. What are you going here?” Montrose had to send a signal on several bands and got no response. Then he tried sending the words as small seismic vibrations through the ice moonlet surface into the approaching figure’s boots. The boots were evidently smart enough to recognize t
he wave-patterns and transform them into something audible inside the suit.

  The reply came by shortwave radio: “How did you know it was me?”

  “Who else but Mickey the Witch would put a pointed hat on a space suit?”

  “I am Mickey the Sacredote now. This is the miter of my bishopric. I have a flock and everything. Mostly they are twenty generations of my own children, but still. You’ve been asleep six hundred years.”

  “Kept asleep, you mean. Since when do bishops get married? And I can’t imagine you not as a Witch.”

  Mickey turned his gauntlets’ palms toward each other and spread his armored fingers as if grasping an invisible ball, which was the spaceman’s sign showing nonchalance, a nonemergency condition. “The Sacerdotes have a lot more rites and rituals than we ever did, and, with no disrespect meant to my ancestors, they make a lot more sense. I mean, I always did used to wonder why Zeus was supposed to punish lawbreakers, him being an adulterer and a parricide and all. And seeing Earth and all the other planets thronging the solar system messed up my astrology something awful, and four of the nine sacred trees to which I used to sacrifice animals are all extinct. Two of those animals I sacrificed are extinct as well, and one of them was uplifted into sapience. Witchcraft is not very portable to other eons.”

  “And Bible-thumping is?”

  “You’d be surprised at the number of circumstances Roman law, Greek philosophy, and Jewish mysticism can find accommodating. Just knowing that Ain is my brother, the child of the same God who made me, I find to be quite a source of courage when my courage runs dry. A Witch stranded as I am in this alien star system would be required to assume that the Hyades were made and ruled by Hyades gods, masked and eyeless Demhe, Cassilda dressed in yellow tatters, or unholiest Yhtill, who once were served and worshiped in lost Carcosa on the misty shores of Lake Hali where black stars rise. How, then, could I know the rules of right and wrong, logic and illogic, were the same for me as for the Principality of Ain? If the gods were different, how could our nature be the same? How could I know that the little gods of wind and hill, howe and rill, would still protect me? There is no wind here, and Mount Olympus is sunk beneath the sea.”

  “You gave up all your mumbo jumbo? You’ll hardly be the same man.”

  “Even had Trey not forced my conversion, it was needed for this journey.”

  “How so?”

  “It is no coincidence that the one and only culture in history back on the home world that made a habit of discovering and exploring the unknown was not pagan. Who would dare venture into new regions and worlds of mystery and wonder, enigma and fear, save he knows which god rules there? Achelous of the silver-swirling river is a mighty god, but his reach extends no farther than Aetolia and Acarnania. That is not true of the Wounded God whose flesh each Sabbath I consume, whose reach is boundless. Here, in this horribly alien system, with its hidden gas giants and hollow suns, and leafless trees for worlds, my cruel and little pagan gods are left far behind in all senses of the word.”

  Mickey passed to him a small, flat package. It was a case containing his glass railgun pistols. “I did not want you to shoot anyone before I had a chance to talk to you. Don’t be mad at Torment for keeping you asleep. I am the one who by my potent enchantments—ah, I mean, by my prayers, of course—persuaded her to keep you under.”

  “You? How?”

  “I prayed a rosary to each of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, starting with the noble youth Exacostodianos; followed by a novena to Saint Elijah and to Saint Christina the Astonishing, whose sway over these matters is uncontested.”

  “Hm, maybe you ain’t as changed as much as I thought. No, I meant, how did you get something as smart as her to listen to you? Or to anyone of our level of smarts?”

  “Same reason a hunter takes along a dog when he hunts. I can see things she can’t, despite all her superhuman intelligence.”

  Torment said, “There is more to it than that. When compared with Ain, your friend Mictlanagualzin occupies the same intellectual topology as I do, or any of my servants, archangels, angels, ghosts. Moreover, he possesses an uncanny ability to guess Epsilon Tauri behavior patterns.”

  Montrose said, “So why did you and she pox with my alarm clock, Mickey, and keep real-world info out of my dreams as I slumbered?”

  Mickey said, “Once it was clear that Ain meant to have us pass the point of no return, the zero point after which no deceleration beam in the system could halt us safely, the result seemed obvious. Ain was not going to break the Cold Equations, right? So there had to be a deceleration beam stationed outside the system, or a mirror array to dogleg one, or something. And Ain is the star from which all the Virtues that ever interacted with the human race originated, all except one—Nahalon in the Fourth Sweep. So this star both has the most experience with mankind and the most interest in keeping us indentured. Ain must have been heartbroken when Rania returned and mankind was vindicated. The Beast, that last ruling Virtue to come out of Ain and alter the history of mankind, it must have seen Rania on the way home and known she had been successful on her mission, since she was sailing in a vessel more advanced than anything the whole Hyades Cluster could produce. So what did the Beast do, before it left?”

  Montrose said, “It populated worlds far from Sol but closer to target systems the Hyades wanted us to be able to visit or colonize and gave Iota Draconis that famous superpowerful launch laser. But Iota Draconis is farther from Ain than Sol is, by some ninety-three lightyears. We are on the wrong side of the celestial globe. So are all the other worlds of the Petty Sweep. If anything, Ain was trying to colonize worlds with human civilizations far away from it…” He frowned. “It wants to spread us around.”

  Torment said, “There is nothing in the Cold Equations to explain this.”

  Mickey said, “Ain clearly has some great interest in our race, an interest above and outside the Cold Equations, and has had since the advent of Asmodel. So Ain went to a great deal of trouble to get one planet full of humans, including the only remaining original primitive humans in existence.”

  Montrose said, “Meaning me and Blackie?”

  Torment said softly, “Montrose is unaware of the signals we have received from the stars we fled.”

  Montrose said, “Let me guess. Everyone back home is a Patrician now, and the eighty earths of the sixty-nine human stars have fallen into a long somnolence, just as the False Rania predicted and wanted.”

  Mickey said, “A good guess, but wrong on two counts. First, not everyone is a Patrician. The planets colonized by the Beast—namely, Feast of Stephen, Perioecium, Terra Pericolosa, Aerecura, and the World of Willows and Flowers are still inhabited by the variations of the races of Loricates, Myrmidons, Vampires, Overlords, and Sworns, and the capital world of Iota Draconis, named Bloodroot, remains in the hands of the Strangermen, who bribed the incoming Argives with the moon called Nightshade, whose crystals ring with strange music in the many magnetic fields of Wormwood. These last two worlds were both elevated to potentate status in record time, as were the other planets in the rosette of Vindemiatrix, the pilgrim worlds of Saint Agnes and Saint Wenceslaus. Something the Beast did when it selected the Petty Sweep planets to colonize keeps the ancient vitality of the human race alive.”

  Montrose was appalled. “Sounds like the polity of man is a corpse, but with the outer parts, the hair and the fingernails, still growing.”

  “And I think this world, Torment, is meant by Ain to be the seed of a new human polity.”

  “Why?”

  Mickey said, “Instead of explaining that, take a moment to cool your anger, and let me make one more prediction: I predict the Principality of Ain will be ready, no, will be eager to talk to us, and in as clear a fashion as possible. It will take the time and trouble to study our language and our forms of thought and make itself clear. That is what his logic diamond is for.”

  Montrose looked down and picked up his feet. He floated about a yard high above the surface
, peering at the soles of his sandals nervously. “This is Ain thinking-crystal?”

  Then he realized he had lost his channel to Mickey, and he used one of his newfound Patrician energy-manipulation organs to pull his himself back down to the surface and magnetically anchor his feet there.

  Torment said, “Yes. This moonlet is being formulated from our exosphere material. It has been growing here for some time. Not long ago, this location was nothing but the four dendrite mechanisms touching their tips together. The gathered and transformed material has been growing between the tips, forcing them apart. I assume Ain created this area of electromagnetic silence to aid in the reception of signals from the home Principality.”

  Montrose peered at the figure representing Torment more closely. The symbolism of her dress and throne was clear to his new pattern-seeking Patrician brain. The bridal gown represented her willingness to assume orbit around Ain and become a satellite of Epsilon Tauri, a member henceforth of the Hyades polity rather than the human one. The throne of bones represented the cost in human lifetimes spent to pay back the debt incurred by Torment and her subject populations. In other words, the cost of slowing Torment and navigating her to an orbit optimal for his surface life would be measured in so many lifetimes that it was as if she sat on a heap of lives and lifetimes all consumed.

  Montrose felt a stab of guilt. How many of these events had been his doing? What percent of blame fell at his feet? Whatever that percent, it was measured in centuries and millennia of servitude imposed on his fellow man, servitude that Rania had arranged mankind to escape, or, to be more exact, this was servitude the advent of the False Rania had arranged mankind to seem to escape. And this was servitude which Montrose had arranged the world of Torment to reenter.

  With his new brain, he could see other patterns in the events leading to this moment, and other symbols in the scene. The chalice in her hand was a stirrup cup. The snakes represented a bitterness she could drink but survive. He said, “You mean to send me and Blackie onward, the two of us, by ourselves.”