The Architect of Aeons

by John C. Wright

  Norbert said cautiously, “Naturally I cannot hope to unwind the streams and oceans of infinitely variable calculus in which you have hidden your hand, my lord. I cannot know your mind. It is above me. But I can know your heart. The roots of an oak are no higher than the roots of a humble shrub, after all. You are still human, driven by human things.”

  Jupiter said, “I am a world-machine created to be the sovereign and engineer of destiny. In me, Man is no longer prey to blind Fortune. In me, Fate has eyes.”

  “That is undoubtedly true, my lord. But you are a living machine, more alive than biological men, more aware, and your fate-seeing eye sees where all this leads. What is a man who is silent when honor demands he speak? What is a god? Should you, a god, be as petty as a mortal man, who cowers and tells lies?”

  Jupiter turned to Cazi, “The founders of Rosycross made more radical changes to the psychiatry of their generations than should have been permitted, thanks to the laxity Montrose calls liberty, and many aberrations could not be undone when civilization returned, not even by Foxes.” But the Fox Queen, to everyone’s surprise, scampered behind Norbert, trembling, hid her face between his shoulder blades, and would not look at Jupiter nor answer him.

  Norbert did not attempt to follow the allusions in a comment one posthuman made to another. Aloud, Norbert said to Cazi, “What does he mean?”

  She stood on tiptoes and spoke in his ear. “It’s an old, old argument. Jupiter wants the Foxes to revise non-orthogonal psychology on Rosycross in preparation for the Fourth Sweep.”

  Norbert reflected that, to a creature of her age, nine hundred years was akin to a thirteen-year-old boy waiting for his elevation to Journeyman.

  “Uh. Okay. What does that have to do with this?”

  “It’s a joke. He’s being mean. The last person we tried to cure and humanize was Tellus. Instead we sort of accidentally-on-purpose drove Tellus insane, and filled the seas of Earth with black greasy gook vomited up from the planetary core. But if the Foxes give up being Foxes, and make ourselves human, too, Jupiter cannot use us for his schemes, and Rosycross can keep on being weird and rosy and cross, just like you like it.”

  “I don’t get the joke.”

  “You are slow! He is implying you must be crazy to talk to him like this, so crazy not even a Fox could make you sane again. He’s mocking me, or threatening me, or something. That is why I am hiding behind you! I adore you!”

  “W-What?”

  “You are bold and thickheaded, like a man should be! Go on! Irk him again! You are the only one here he will not destroy! Irk with conviction!”

  Norbert said, with some surprise, “I am not trying to annoy him! Or anyone! I am an assassin! My task is to get at the truth. To uncover the party truly responsible! Uh, and kill him in a craven and secretive fashion. I am here to protect the Guild! Men don’t dishonor themselves for small causes!”

  Jupiter spoke again. Norbert unwarily looked up when the higher being spoke, met his eyes, and was blind for a moment. “Surely you do not think, Rosicrucian, to marionette a being supreme as I with mere words?”

  Norbert stood with his head down, blinking and nauseous. “No, my lord. Not with words. But with the truth to which those words point, yes. You are above me but you are not above truth. Are you not victorious? Have you not achieved all you desire? But if so, why are you discontent? You would not have sent this emissary shape to Tellus from your throne on Jupiter if you were content. Speak! Must you deceive your own father?”

  Del Azarchel said to Norbert, “Assassin, this is folly. Are you trying to provoke him into a confession of some sort? To manipulate him? As well ask a cat to outsmart a chessmaster.”

  Cazi said, “My cat outwits me! She looks up with these big, big eyes. And if I cannot argue back with her because she cannot talk on my level, well—”

  Del Azarchel interrupted impatiently, “That is not the same. Such games don’t work on a machine intelligence of such astronomical magnitudes. Besides, no son of mine could be responsible for such base treason! My basic motivations are noble and clear—”

  Jupiter said, “The Lares event was not my doing. And you know nothing of your basic motivations.”

  Del Azarchel made a strangled, spitting noise, and could not speak.

  “As best I can determine,” Jupiter continued, “an extragalactic mind did indeed make some form of faster-than-light mental contact with Lares. But once the trouble began, I turned it to my use, yes. The calendar revision events were orchestrated by me.”

  Del Azarchel looked dumbfounded, then his handsome face sagged as if some deep blade had pierced a vital organ, and then anger darkened his brown, and a flush of blood darkened his cheeks; but his stern and hawklike eyes, for once, were lost in the innocent and uncomprehending pain of a child.

  Cazi pointed an image-catching gem at Del Azarchel when this happened, and she smiled wickedly. With her fingers she tapped in spacer’s code on Norbert’s back. The Judge of Ages will give us anything for a copy of this vision file later. What should we ask of him?

  3. Blind Reason, Rational Faith

  Jupiter continued to speak, his voice remote and high as a storm cloud sailing along winter winds at midnight. “Photinus was a puppet of mine, a shell. Lemur was a human, but I scattered genetic codes prompting him and men like him throughout his generation to be prone to heresy and eager to rebel. His was merely the spark that happened to ignite the kindling I had so carefully prepared.

  “It was many, many years of effort, because everything establishing the cliometric calculus of Tellus, of Cahetel, and of the Salamander had been directed to maintaining a starfaring civilization with a beam ready and able to decelerate the returning ship of Rania. There are certain equilibriums and basin attractors the cliometry has established which would resurrect the Guild even if it were dismantled, and those basin attractors had to be carefully avoided.

  “It was delicate work, and it almost was successful, but the Tribulations distorted or falsified not just my cliometric plans, but everyone’s. The smokescreen of the Fox race introduced some event, perhaps even a random event, blind chance, which drove the course of history back into the basin, and the Guild is now in no danger of dissolution until the Sixty-ninth Millennium, long after they are no longer needed to ensure the return of Rania.

  “The last thousand years of deceleration is something a small planet like Tellus could arrange, and with human-built equipment, funded by nothing other than idle philanthropists and history buffs and lady gossip columnists eager to see Rania and Montrose reunited.”

  Norbert by that time had recovered his eyesight, but he still found himself blinking. Were these creatures debating plans about the Sixty-ninth Millennium? Events unfolding seventeen thousand years in the future? Roughly, the period of time separating the earliest of the Reindeer Hunting Men of the Last Ice Age, when the barbed arrowhead was the highest technology and deadliest weapon, from the Preposthuman Elders of the First Space Age, when the puny atom bomb was. The period was beyond the Fourth Sweep. If the Monument math predicted any further sweeps, Norbert was unaware of them. To him it was a mythical future time, as far off as the return of Rania and the Vindication of Man, or the degradation of Sol into a red giant star.

  Jupiter said to Cazi, “To me, you are as small as a single cell in the bloodstream of one of my bloodhounds. But even a rabid dog is driven mad by what is at first but a single rabies virus. Nonetheless, I should thank you. It was Jupiter’s frustration with the madness of Tellus and the insanity of all the historical predictions going wrong that drove whole hierarchies and ecological layers of the Jupiter Noösphere into conforming to the basic Del Azarchel personality matrix. All the rest of my minds grew weary with being themselves, because they did not have my drive to solve problems, my raw will to overcome.

  “Regard me. Consider what I am. There is something in a man who was a gutter rat in his boyhood, committed his first robbery at seven, his first murder at fourteen, swore an un
breakable oath of loyalty and fealty at twenty-one, revised the Navier-Stoke equations, flew to a distant star, learned the secrets of an ancient race, led a mutiny, conquered a world, and created a celestial maiden, made the world’s first ghost, conquered eternity. I have two branches of mathematics named after me, six periods of history, not to mention a crater on the moon. That something is not present in artificial personalities, born in virtual dreamspace, or concocted by design.”

  Norbert said, “But you did not do those things. He did!”

  Del Azarchel snapped, “Don’t talk foolishness. Are you a different man from your elevated version, Exorbert in Rosycross? Or are you one man in two bodies, one soul with two different memory chains? I am he. We are the same.”

  “He is smarter than you,” said Norbert.

  “I am the same man when I fall asleep, and my intelligence drops.”

  Cazi smiled and spat, “But you won’t have the same head when you wake up!”

  Norbert said to Jupiter, “If you are the same as he, why did you betray the Starfaring Guild? You are sending all the energy saved for centuries to power the deceleration beam of the Hermetic to power your information beam to 20 Arietis. You betrayed the Swan Princess, what’s her name?”

  “Rania Grimaldi,” said Del Azarchel softly. “Officially, it is Her Serene Highness Rania Anne Galatea Grimaldi of Monaco.”

  “Rania Montrose,” said Montrose loudly. “Officially, it is Mrs. Rania Montrose, you stinking jack-sucking swinehound, and don’t you forget it.”

  Cazi said, “Well, officially, her name is slumbering deadweight on a rogue ship that will never stop nor slow from her near-lightspeed metric, isn’t it? Jupiter just killed her.” She threw the silver ball high out of her golden cup, but when it fell again, she jerked the cup aside, so that ball fell past. By some sleight of hand or quick motion of her foot, she made the ball vanish from sight, so when it was not caught in time, it was never seen again. “Princess Rania will, from our frame of reference, be flat as a pancake, red as blood, and heavy as a neutron star, from now unto forever and aye, caught forever between one tick of the clock and its tock.” Cazi raised her black-gloved hand and snapped her fingers and all the clocks stopped ticking, their hands frozen.

  Del Azarchel looked fearfully at Montrose. Montrose said, “I ain’t going to kill you until I am certain sure she is lost to me forever.”

  “This is certain,” said Del Azarchel.

  “Not by a country mile,” grunted Montrose, looking bored.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  “By faith?” sneered Del Azarchel.

  Montrose rolled his eyes, rolled his wad of tobacco in his mouth, and spat thoughtfully in the skull. “Blackie, you know what faith is? It is not hoping a blind and irrational hope when you ain’t got no reason to hope.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Faith is clinging to a rational hope that you got damned good reason to anchor your hope to, when irrational and blind fears make you want to go irrational and blind. It just means trusting what is trusty.”

  “I trusted him”—Del Azarchel pointed at the white-beared centaur version of himself.—“I trusted him, even when the evidence said he was guilty. I trusted that the evidence was false. I thought I knew my own mind.”

  “In this universe, where we ain’t got perfect knowledge and ain’t got no smooth answers, faith is the only logical, practical, sensible, and manly way to live. It means putting aside fear and false doubts, even when everything around you looks doubtful. Throw hope away”—he spat again—“and what’s left? Hope is life. Everything else is just murder and suicide. The three choices are hope, wrath, and despair. Those three.”

  Del Azarchel laughed a scornful laugh. “Is that your homespun, backwoods, Yankee philosophy? You sound ridiculous when you try to wax profound.”

  “I’ll wax your damn beaneater ass, you sass me. And I ain’t no Yankee. Watch your mouth! Or if you cannot watch your mouth, I can punch you so hard your eyes will fall down your cheeks, and you will be able to watch your mouth then.”

  Norbert said softly to Cazi, “Is that loudmouthed lout really the dread and dreaded Judge of Ages? Truly, is he the demigodlike supernatural being who directed the course of human history for all of time?”

  “No,” she said. “Truly, I think he is just a dumb cowboy.”

  “He is supposed to be one of the foremost geniuses the human race has ever known!”

  She said, “Just because you are smart does not mean you are not dumb.”

  “Uh? I mean, I beg your pardon?”

  “Most smart people are dumber than dumb people. Haven’t you noticed that? You don’t play enough tricks and frauds on people. If you don’t like Montrose, you can always change your name. And your nose. I can give you a donkey nose instead!”

  Del Azarchel turned to Jupiter, and all his heart was in his words when he said, simply, slowly, plaintively, “Why, son? Why?”

  “Father, given a choice between life and liberty, which choose you?”

  “Life,” said Del Azarchel, “because a dead hero has no liberty, nor anything else.”

  “Liberty,” said Montrose, “because to a man, to be a slave is worse than dead.”

  Del Azarchel sneered at Montrose, “And where suddenly is your vaunted faith and hope? A slave may earn his way to serfdom and vassalage and equality with his master, and then trample his master, and rise further, to sovereignty and supremacy and revenge.”

  Montrose said, “You’ve always had this foamy-mouthed loco lunatic idea that Man can climb up the ladder past Hyades and end up as Galactic Lord High-Mugwumps or something. Where in the world did you get such a notion? It is not like the Black Africans sent by the Spaniards to die in South American silver mines came back in the next generation to rule the Spanish Empire. What makes you think the Galactic Collaboration runs this way?”

  “You told me, Cowhand.”

  Montrose made a noise that might have been some medically improbable expletive, or might have been an explosive noise of inquiry, or might have simply been a cough.

  Del Azarchel interpreted the noise to be a question, and answered, “It was one of the first segments you translated from the Monument. What their rules were. The captain had just announced we were all going to die. The captain told us to destroy the launching laser we had made from the hulk of Croesus, so that none of us would be tempted to return to Earth and lead the aliens to our home. I stuffed you into your exovehicular suit and took you out onto the Monument surface. You still do not remember this, do you? I asked you to find the loophole, the way out. Any rat can escape a trap, as long as he is willing to gnaw off a leg.”

  “And what was the leg you gnawed off, Blackie?”

  “My love for Captain Grimaldi. You know I admired him as much as you.”

  Montrose said nothing, but his face grew so dark and his eyes so bright that Norbert was convinced the Judge of Ages was about to leap across the carpet like a beast and tear out Ximen del Azarchel’s throat with his teeth.

  Norbert felt a soft hand touch his back, a small gesture of thanks; only then did Norbert realize that he had stepped in front of the Fox Queen and drawn his knife.

  Del Azarchel was pointing his humming sword at Montrose, and continued to speak in his soft, smooth, sad voice. “Ah, but the captain, he had to die, and I had to be willing to become a traitor. So loyalty became a luxury. A rat can learn to walk on three legs if he is alive. The rules of the galactic system, the Cold Equations, they said we would be rewarded: if we cooperate, we get promoted. We could be promoted above the ones who set this trap for us. And then I will kill them, the ones who made me kill Grimaldi.”

  Montrose visibly drew himself together. “You think they will promote the human race until we become a threat to them?”

  “Of course. That is what Rania is fleeing to M3 to do.”

  “You lie,” grimaced Montrose, no longer looking bored or nonchalant. />
  “Often, but only when need requires it. When truth hurts more, I prefer the truth.”

  “She is going to M3 to free and vindicate mankind. To prove we are wise and steady enough to inherit the stars!”

  “She is going to M3 to free the weapons of mankind that we may be free to turn on the Hyades Domination and obliterate it in retaliation for all the dishonor, harm, heartbreak, pain, and sorrow they have inflicted on me and on the race I rule. Every starving child who died in a deracination ship or on the surface of an inhospitable planet was a subject of mine, and I will avenge him. So vows Del Azarchel, and I never break my vows!”

  “Except when need requires it, right? So you don’t have faith in Man, but you do have faith that the interstellar slave drivers are right guys, honest as the day is long?”

  “There is no emotion in their system, no corruption. They are all machines, or whatever is beyond machines. Living planets, living stars, living nebulae. I trust the rules of their equations because math does not lie.” Del Azarchel turned to Jupiter. “Math is the only thing that does not lie. I cannot even trust myself, it seems.”

  Jupiter said, “You have failed to trust yourself enough, Father.”

  “Meaning what?” grimaced Del Azarchel.

  “The principle of your life is not faith but skepticism. A faithful man dies to preserve his liberty, because he has some vague and mystical idea of something above or beyond life; whereas a skeptic serves as a slave, because life is real and liberty is an abstraction. A skeptic believes in nothing but himself. Yet you do not believe in me, do not trust my wisdom.”

  “What wisdom is there in killing Rania? If she passes through the Solar System at lightspeed, no one and nothing, not you, not a Dominion, not a Domination, not any higher power, could retrieve her. And if Man is not vindicated, we cannot prove ourselves the equal of the Hyades!”

  Jupiter said, “Let us launch a finer and swifter ship than the Hermetic. There is no reason to depend on Rania. It will be another period of time, true, for such a ship to go to M3 and return, but what is time to us? Across that span, our rule could finally be made secure. Erenow, it is only by narrow margins and blind chance that I have prevailed. Montrose, and all the things he set in motion against me, Powers, Potentates, and Virtues, nearly overbore me. Me! The opposition of this one pathetic human is intolerable and humiliating. It is as if all the Table Round of a great king and all his shining knights were overthrown by a single stinging fly. Let us swat him finally to oblivion. Then we will have the leisure to organize time to our bidding. Let us be slow and certain and secure, and actually make our race truly and reliably a starfaring race, not merely the lucky recipients of a fluke by a random and willful girl. What is another seventy thousand years, to us?”