Superluminary

by perpetrator

  Pluto said, “There is no advantage to revealing what he cannot suspect, that Lady Luna and I were stowaways on Talos during the entire construction phase of the warpcore.”

  Aeneas took the phone in hand. “Hello? Is this one of my uncles who tried to kill me in cold blood?”

  Lord Saturn’s aged and creaking voice replied. “Well, so it seems young Aeneas has gained control of the Final Science, and can abduct whole planets. You have the upper hand. What are your demands?”

  Aeneas said, “You have made it so that I cannot be exposed to Sol . Reverse the process. I cannot bring you back to Sol until I can go back.”

  “Suppose I say no?”

  Aeneas said, “That would not be in your best interest. I have made first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. They are entirely composed of necroform vampires, their entire ecology down to the microbe level. Apparently every star in the galaxy has suffered the same fate. Organic life no longer exists, except, for reasons unknown, around Sol. Hence, there is no other star around which I can put your planet. We return to Sol together or not at all. There is no other star.”

  “You expect me to believe such an outrageous lie? Is this how you chose to abuse the despotic power you’ve obtained — threatening a trillion innocent lives with slow, freezing death?”

  Aeneas stared at the ringed gas giant. It was streaked with gold and green. The upper atmosphere was streaked with storm bands. Below this, artificial supercontinents, greater in surface area than all the lands and seas of Earth combined, hung at various levels in the gigantic atmosphere. Each was surrounded by layers of earthlike air, and floating buoyantly on strata of denser materials. Archipelagoes of floating islands drifted between the flying continents, minnows among whales. The population was a hundred times that of Earth’s ten billions, and yet the population density was far less.

  Aeneas replied, “I knew your escape hatch led somewhere on or about Saturn, its rings, its moons. I did not know where, so I brought it all. There is no threat. I desire no power over you. I merely want my life back.”

  Saturn said, “You would have to trust me as a man trusts his surgeon: you must bring me to where you are, personally.”

  Aeneas said, “The pearl from your quarters is still here with me. Come ahead, but come alone.”

  Saturn said, “What if you mean a trap for me?”

  Aeneas said, “You are already in a trap, one you set for yourself. I am offering you escape.”

  Aeneas tossed the pearl into a corner of the wardroom. Lady Luna stepped close to Lord Pluto. Both faded from sight.

  The pearl turned blue, and a line of distorted space unfolded from it, became a cylinder, and a thin, bright and stretched version of Lord Saturn stepped out of it, his face and limbs growing and dimming as he did so. By the time his foot touched the grassy floor, his proportions and color were normal. He was dressed in a gray cloak, the same hue as his beard. He leaned on the wand of his phimaophone.

  His eyes darted to the trees, the startled fawns, the nine-foot tall Aeneas at the table.

  “Where are your guards?” asked the old man.

  Aeneas said, “Think of this as a test of your fitness to live among free men as an equal.”

  The old man nodded, and then blurred into motion too swift to see. The room grew blindingly bright. The air was hot and thick around Aeneas like settling concrete.

  His special senses told him it was a time distortion, but not a spacewarp: he was in a lower energy frame of reference from the rest of the asteroid.

  Aeneas was dumbfounded with surprise, and blushed with shame. He had no idea Lord Saturn had controlled such a power as this.

  Here, seconds had been expanded to hours or days. Outside, Lord Saturn had time and leisure enough to replace all Aeneas’ servominds and instruments with his own, bring any number of people needed up from the nearby moons. It would all be over before Aeneas could blink.

  19. The Surrender of Saturn

  Lord Pluto’s voice sounded in the ear of Aeneas. “Lord Saturn, this is your brother, Darius. I am using my power of negative information flow in reverse, so that, no matter where you are on this asteroid, or in what time-frame, you cannot help but hear me. Your powers of time-acceleration are worthless. I have rendered all exits undetectable by any means. Your mind has already been contaminated by Lady Luna, who is here with me. She has introduced nightmare-level thought disturbances into your unconsciousness which will expand until you go insane. Only she can reverse the process. The longer you wait, the worse it grows.”

  The world of normal light and motion returned to Aeneas. A blurring, twitching version of Lord Saturn came into view, and slowed to ordinary speed. Aeneas scanned the fabric of space with his ring, but, despite what it seemed, this had not been a spacetime warp.

  Lord Saturn was disheveled, his clothing tattered. The deer in the chamber were gone, as were most of the trees. A pile of bones was in one corner, and burn marks from where the trees had been chopped into campfire wood.

  “You could have left me with something better than water to drink, you know...” Lord Saturn pouted. The bags under his eyes showed he had not slept in days, perhaps weeks. “I have this nightmare of walking down corridors and having the doors vanish behind me. I cut through the wall with a weapon, and there is nothing behind. I look in the mirror, and there is no one there. Each day one more corridor or cabin has vanished, until only this room is left! I could have killed you a dozen times over, Aeneas!”

  Aeneas recognized the handiwork of Lord Pluto. The growing insanity inside the old man’s subconscious would have made the mystery of the ever-shrinking and ever-vanishing satellite impossible for him to solve. Neither his senses nor his mind had been trustworthy.

  Aeneas said sternly, “I said this was a test to see if you were fit to be a free man. You have failed. Do you surrender?”

  Lord Saturn fell to his knees, weeping. The old man clutched the long, dangling white locks of his hair. “Yes, yes! Anything! Only stop my mind from disappearing ... I can feel it going ... my thoughts coming unraveled ...”

  Aeneas said, “I have Grandfather’s power. I am the new Lord Tellus. I am Master of the Empire of Man. Do you agree?”

  “Yes! By hell and perdition, yes!” screamed the old man, clutching at the knees of Aeneas.

  Aeneas knelt and lifted Lord Saturn to his feet. “I receive no fealty in those names, or under duress.”

  Louder, he said “Lady Luna, if you please...?”

  Aeneas detected a throb of power in the lower parts of the thought-energy spectrum. A light of sobriety, and sanity, came into Lord Saturn’s eyes then.

  Aeneas said aloud, “Lord Pluto, if you please, let the doors and corridors between here and Lord Saturn’s apartments be visible to him. He may need rest. Also, let the servominds hear his requests for food and drink.”

  Lord Saturn stood, leaning on his wand, and took a few unsteady steps. “My people are not frozen, are they? It’s been weeks for me, trying to find a way to escape. But its been less than a minute here, hasn’t it? And the nightmares came while I was awake ...”

  Aeneas steeled himself against pity. “As soon as you remove from my body the trap that makes Sol’s light deadly to me, your world will return with me to the Solar System.”

  Lord Saturn blinked blearily. “Done, my boy. Done long ago. The influx of chronic particles I used to slow your personal time would have washed away the energy structure I erected inside you. I can double check and remove any trace elements in the morning... must sleep now...”

  Lady Luna faded into visibility, scowled at the bones of her deer, but then smiled and put his hand to Lord Saturn’s elbow. “Come along, Uncle!” she cooed, “I’ll tuck you into bed. Tell me what dreams you want to have?”

  “Ones without vampires ... no more vampires ...”

  She and he departed the wardroom.

  Aeneas turned toward the table. Lord Pluto was seated there.

  Pluto said, “Ha
ve I proved myself sufficiently?”

  “You let me escape from your tower, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why help me?”

  “You need help. You are unalert and unsuspicious. I took the precaution of installing invisibility broadcasters on every exit and bulkhead. Even though I was excluded from Saturn’s high-speed temporal imbalance field, my preparations acted automatically. They removed the visual information from the universe, so that Lord Saturn could see no exit.”

  Aeneas said, “Why didn’t I see these invisibility broadcasters...? Um... never mind. That question answers itself...”

  Pluto said in his cold, ponderous voice, “Lady Luna also set up her equipment in this room, hidden inside her trees. You failed to look for an ulterior motive to her love of redecorating. Was she not seated in a garden when you were caught by her?”

  “Are you saying not to trust her?”

  “I am saying treat your allies wisely. Know their capacities. Lady Luna’s power over dream may seem slight, but she uses it well. Lord Saturn suffers dreams to make him more amenable to the task of fighting the space vampires. Obsessions are also a lunacy, and within her purview.”

  Aeneas said, “You insist on being mysterious.”

  Lord Pluto said in an icy voice: “Trust given, not earned, is worthless.”

  “You call me untrustworthy, then? I have been...”

  “Inconstant. You decreed yourself Emperor of Man, a thing you swore not to do. Either you vow rashly, or break vows lightly.”

  Aeneas thought of several sharp replies to this, but before he could pick one, Lord Pluto vanished.

  Aeneas moved the planet Saturn and its fifty three moons and countless moonlets, smaller bodies, space icebergs, satellites, flying palaces, gardenhouses, and ring system across the lightyears from Alpha Centauri to a position not far from Pluto, with Talos and Necropolis placed in orbit around the gas giant.

  He was pleased when the sunlight did not destroy him.

  Here was the ninth planet and its moons, Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Charon was a world of snowy pine groves free of animal life, a silent monument to Lord Pluto’s dead wife Cora. The other four had been terraformed into gardens and plantations by his two sons and two daughters, peopled with slender, solemn races.

  Aeneas, Lady Luna, and the Lords Pluto and Saturn were in the wardroom, which had been restored to its sylvan beauty.

  Aeneas said to Lord Saturn, “Pluto may have a small gravitational effect, but any orbital corrections to your moons and rings can be made once Saturn is back in its proper place.”

  Lord Saturn wore a guarded expression as he sat. It was the same look he wore when near his brother Lord Jupiter. Aeneas did not like what this implied.

  Lord Saturn said, “I do not expect my world, or any human life, to mean a great deal to you, youngster. Power over men and compassion for them are mutually exclusive.”

  Aeneas smiled without mirth. “My newfound power opened the stars to all mankind: but in the stars is a danger beyond belief. Compassion says you must help me fight it. Power over men I do not crave, nor need.”

  Lord Saturn said suspiciously, “So speaks the new Emperor! Why bother to convince me? I am your prisoner; my world is your hostage.”

  Aeneas said, “Your world is here to put any materials you need at hand. You have a machine for seeing into the past, or so I have heard. I want you to inspect planet Pluto. Do you have such a machine?”

  Lord Saturn’s eyes flicked to Lord Pluto’s helmet. He sighed. “The science is called Palaeoscopy. Lord Tellus instructed me in it, no doubt as one of his cruel jests. He thought it fitting to teach me a superscience with no military use, so that I would always be helpless before my brothers — and now, it seems, before my niece.”

  Lady Luna smiled as if flattered.

  Saturn said, “The first thing I did with it was examine the past of the Forerunner cache Father discovered, or try to. Something blocked my attempts, and turned the location invisible including backward through time. If that is why you rescued me, the secret is protected.”

  Lord Pluto said, “It will work now.”

  Saturn raised an eyebrow. “So it was you!”

  Lord Pluto said, “Not I.”

  Saturn turned to Aeneas. “I need to make contact with my people in Lesser Chronosopolis, and on Janus and Iapetus.”

  Aeneas said, “I have not tampered with your signet ring. You may broadcast commands to anyone you wish.”

  Lord Saturn was puzzled. “What if I command them to turn weapons on this asteroid?”

  Aeneas sighed impatiently. “You never wanted to be a Lord of Creation. It did not suit your artistic temperament. But you had to be one, to defend yourself against your brothers. Now you put me in your shoes! I decreed myself the new Lord Tellus! Your choice is to keep attacking me, or to allow me to abdicate. You are no prisoner, because the choice for peace must be free and mutual. Come: I must discover the origin of the Infinithedron, if we are to defeat the enemy.”

  It did not take long. Cone-shaped satellites teleported into orbit around the planet Saturn focused strange energies on the icy orb of Pluto.

  Lord Saturn said, “The data from any event must settle from the information layer to the memory layer of the universe, where time particles are produced, before this method can read them. The more current an event, the more difficult it is to read. Let us start with five million years ago. Lord Pluto will have to direct me.”

  Lord Pluto said, “Look to the foot of Wright Mons.”

  The image was carried through all their signet rings directly into the visual cortex of their brains. At the location named was the many-sided orb of the Infinithedron, half-buried in the oxygen ice, as complex as a human brain. It glowed orange-gold.

  Even as they watched, the orb wrinkled, and its many surfaces divided and divided again.

  A cry of alarm escaped Aeneas. “Impossible!”

  Lord Pluto said, “It is made of Schroedinger matter. The act of observation collapses the probability clouds of which it is composed.”

  Lord Saturn said, “This is five million years past.”

  Aeneas said, “How is the Infinithedron able to react then to the event of us here seeing it now?”

  But Lady Luna snapped her fingers, “Another observer must be alive, then and there.” Now she frowned, looking spooked. “In the Neolithic. On Pluto.”

  To the near horizon a mile away, a level expanse of oxygen ice beneath a layer of hydrogen snow reached, motionless, silent, dead.

  Lord Saturn displayed an avuncular smile to Lady Luna.”This would be in the Zanclean Age of the Pliocene Era. Australopithecus roams Earth now, but Neolithic man is yet undreamed.”

  Luna said, “Then what of Pliocene Plutonians?”

  Saturn said, “The Palaeoscope picks up life energy as easily as light waves. There is no living thing on this world.”

  Aeneas said softly, “Then who is looking?”

  Saturn said, “I can probe further back ... five million years... seven ... ten ...”

  Glacier-mountains shrunk and craters vanished as the planet grew younger.

  Suddenly, at the ten million year mark, the planet was covered with a hellish city from pole to pole, dark with factories and torture cages, armories, slave pens, cannibal feast halls, weapon vents. Despite the lightness of the planet, the architecture was squat, ugly, asymmetrical. It had a similar architecture to Necropolis: the buildings were wedge-shaped, wider at the top than at the base, and gates and windows likewise.

  “Where are the natives?” asked Lady Luna. For the city was empty and dead.

  The planet moved. At eleven million years, Pluto was moving through the Oort cloud, the outer asteroid belt surrounding the solar system. At twelve, it was in interstellar space.

  Lord Saturn said thoughtfully, “Our idea of history must be revised. Father was not the one who murdered the three hundred officers and crew of the Cerberus and changed them
into necroforms. Unlikely he could have created the complex equipment needed to induce the shadow-effect into the cellular life. He had not the means.”

  Luna said, “Then who did?”

  Saturn said, “The natives. The Plutonians.”

  The world-city of the sunless interstellar planet was now filled with moving things, manlike shapes. The narrow streets were filled with hot-eyed and pale-skinned hominids, moving with the jerky, unnatural energy of creatures whose dead limbs are animated by superhuman force. There were throngs.

  It was a vampire world.

  20. The Feast of Vampires

  Aeneas, Lady Luna, and the Lord Pluto and Saturn stared at the long-dead past of planet Pluto.

  Lord Saturn said, “Why do they look like people?”

  Aeneas said, “We wondered the same thing. Forms like this are also at Alpha Centauri and Zeta Herculis.”

  At twelve and a half million years ago, the planet changed: now there were green plants and trees on the interstellar world, despite the absence of a sun.

  Aeneas said, “Their terraforming was equal to ours. They have an artificial envelope of atmosphere, at least at that time. What happened?”

  Lord Saturn said, “My method crosses time, not space. More than half a lightyear outside the Solar System, I cannot see. The oldest image layer is here: thirteen million years ago.”

  The dark fanes and pillared temples were filled with living men, huge in the low gravity, but too large to pass between the pillars. The pillars were not pillars, but bars. The hot-eyed vampires gathered from time to time on the shining plaza grounds and esplanades to feast on them, but they never smiled at the lingering torment inflicted on their victims.

  Through the transparent layers of ice, the woebegone faces of the trapped giants could be glimpsed in agony as their life energy was drained from them.

  After each feast, the vampire creatures marched silently along the crooked roads of the world-city. They gathered into an arena. In the center, buried up to the neck, was a gigantic monster so huge as to make the giants minnows. To this half-buried head the vampires bowed and prayed. The skull was a dome. Its face was horrible, its mouth a gaping pit, its eyes filled with pain and pride. From out the ghastly mouth would reach a score of tongues like tentacles, yard upon yard, and eat their own worshippers.