Superluminary

by perpetrator

  Decorative flowers the size of freighters floated on the purple waves as well, and mermaids and sea serpents sported in the waves. The sun was a vast, blurred, bright shadow igniting the cloudbanks that hid it. The reflections from the restless waves formed a moving web of light flicking on the bellies of the clouds above, like the reflection seen on the ceiling above an indoor swimming pool.

  Mermaids on the backs of dolphins blew on horns and called up to the floating mountain of Talos, demanding of the intruders to declare their business. Aeneas grimaced with impatience. He asked his ring to call her ring, but there was no response. “Lord Pluto, didn’t you have a telephone or something to talk to my mother, without going through her footmen and press secretaries?”

  Lord Pluto said, “Your Majesty, if I knew where she was, I could take you to her, unseen by all her guards.”

  Lady Luna said, “Remember, your mother does not know if you are alive, or are a puppet controlled by someone else, or whether you mean her harm.”

  Aeneas established the parameters needed to fold space and fling the planet Venus into the orbit of Pluto. He gritted his teeth and fought back the temptation to give the command. He said, “Are you afraid of my mother taking over your brain?”

  Lady Luna said, “No. I sometimes worry she did it long ago, when I was her apprentice. Do you want me to go down and act as your minister plenipotentiary, and negotiate arrangements for you to land?”

  Lord Pluto said, “You must assume that the Lady Luna who returns will be under your mother’s mind control, and treat her accordingly thereafter, as a threat or sleeper agent.”

  Lord Saturn said, “Majesty, your mother has led a very sordid and dissolute life, and I have gathered from nights long past an extensive file of her indiscretions. She would not dare move against you. So, if you wish...”

  Aeneas said, “I wish you not to finish that sentence. My first decree as Emperor Hypocriticus the First is that this insane family squabbling, backstabbing, and mistrust must cease forthwith, post haste, in toto, and ad infinitum!”

  Lord Saturn blinked in confusion. “Is – is that really to be your official name, Majesty?”

  Aeneas waited no more. He ordered a pearl thrown down from Talos, and contorted into the sea. He landed in the water, and found himself surrounded by mermaids and tiny gem-sized robotic insect. “I am Aeneas, Emperor of Man. My mother wants to see me. Take me to her.”

  With the mermaids was Beroe. She had been designed in the womb to be the most beautiful of women, but she wore no ornaments nor make-up, and never studied herself in a mirror. She said, “Little brother, Lady Venus says it is not meet that the emperor should come to his handmaiden. She will come to you. While you were gone, she built a palace with a roof of coral and pillars of nacre atop Mons Metis and there placed a throne to await your coming. Will you go?” And she offered him a pearl.

  The voice of Lord Pluto spoke in his ear: “Majesty, it is folly to trust an untried pearl. You could be sent into a jailcell or execution chamber.” But Aeneas took the pearl in hand. The universe dwindled to a point and expanded into a new scene. Beroe stood in an immense bright and airy space, beneath a dome upheld by antigravity beams, like a sky of gold. Countless acres of windows looked out upon the heavens of Venus, a larger sky of silver. Stairs of blue chalcedony and iridescent silver-blue corborundum led up to a dais of red coral and pink tourmaline. A semicircle of slender pillars stood behind. Atop was a throne of black onyx whose capital was carven with the heads of three wolves. One head bore a coronet, one a miter, and one a mortarboard.

  Standing to either side of the stairs were nymphs and graces, dryads and hamadryads, puttoes and genii, nereides and oceanids, who were of the various races created by Lady Venus. All the ladies curtseyed, and each putto or genius bowed.

  “The throne is yours, brother,” said Beroe softly. “Be pleased to sit. Lady Venus is summoned.”

  Aeneas looked up the long staircase with a sigh of annoyance, and seated himself on the lowest step, elbows on knees, frowning down at his feet.

  25. The Lady of Love

  Lady Venus arrived in a sedan chair carried by swans. She landed, and curtseyed, putting her crowned head very low to the shining floor, but her maidens put their heads lower yet. Her face was serene, but Aeneas could see the glint of anger in her eyes.

  “Freely I offer my fealty, my lord Emperor. Yours is to command, Imperial Majesty, and mine to obey,” she said.

  Aeneas did not rise from where he slouched. “And what of democracy?”

  Venus rose. “This moment is historic, and you sit like a sack of potatoes. I will have to erase the memories of all my servants and rewrite them, if history is not to mock us.”

  Aeneas stood, his face black with wrath. “You shall never do so! You will not touch a single brain cell of any soul here!”

  Venus smiled her winning smile. “Do you protect the people? That is the task of the Emperor.”

  Aeneas said, “We are in the midst of an emergency. A nightmarish horror from the stars has come to obliterate us with overwhelming force. We have no chance of fighting them, and only a slender chance to survive. We must move all our worlds to another star system.”

  Her normal self-control slipped. A look of wonder was on her face. “You — you have such power...?”

  “Yes, and more.”

  “But I thought Father’s secret only was to build starships!” She shook her head and shivered. “But I am glad it is you who have it. You are foolish, but not wicked. You will make a fair and stern Emperor.”

  “I am not Emperor! Aren’t you listening? There is no time to debate!”

  Venus said, “If there is no time to debate, then there is no time for democracy. Who will dictate commands in the meanwhile? You are emperor whether you say so or not. You might as well say so.”

  All the ladies in the room cheered. It was a high-pitched, sweet sound, and it rang from the golden dome above. Many voices hailed him as Emperor.

  Aeneas shouted at them, “Stop this nonsense!”

  The ladies were of many ages, but in appearance were in the first bloom of maidenhood. These maidens quailed, blushing with shock, bowing their heads nervously, faces hidden behind fans, teary-eyed.

  Lady Venus held up her hand, “My ladies, if you would give us some privacy, please?”

  It took several minutes for the lovelies gathered there to curtsey and walk away, graceful as dreams in their shining peacock-bright gowns, glittering in gems. Beroe, his sister, more beautiful than all the others, unadorned in her plain white dress, also curtseyed and departed.

  Lady Venus strode with dignified yet graceful step up to the black three-headed throne. Aeneas, unwilling to shout after her, perforce rose and walked after, taking two steps at a stride with his long legs.

  She said, “I had this throne spirited away by stealth from Ultrapolis and brought here to await your coming, and this palace was built as a sign of my faith that you would return, to claim your rightful place, and set the Empire to rights. Turn, and look out there!” She pointed behind him.

  He turned. “I see the purple sea strewn with flowers and the silver sky. I see towers floating in the heavens of Venus, and mansions shining in the sea.”

  She reached up to put her slender hands in his chest, and pushed. He was taken by surprise, and sat. Now he was in the throne.

  Aeneas said, “Mother...”

  She curtseyed, and then backed away, so that her feet where on the top step, not on the dais itself. She said, “Son, listen. This is the last time you will obey me as a mother! After today, I am your vassal and handmaiden! But listen. Do you know what happened while you were gone? Everyone but me thought you were dead, destroyed in some mishap of your terrible warpcore. Many suspected Lord Neptune had arranged your death in order to slay Lord Jupiter.”

  Aeneas squinted. “How could anyone believe that? Lords Uranus and Saturn support Neptune in every family gathering! And Lord Neptune would be outnumbered...” />
  Lady Venus said, “Yes. With those three gone, Neptune is alone, but he is opposed by three women, a child, and a monk.” She meant herself and Ladies Ceres and Pallas, Lord Mercury, and Brother Beast of Earth. “Do you think the family would support Lord Mercury over Lord Neptune as emperor? Everyone hates the little pest. So he had no support, but also no one who could stop him. He has placed gravitational amplifiers in orbit around every world, and threatens deluge and earthquake to those who will not bow.”

  Aeneas said, “Excellent!”

  She said, “What?”

  Aeneas said, “Those amplifiers should be able to create gravity wells deep and steep enough to allow my warpcores to grasp. Otherwise, I might not have the resources needed to encompass the exodus of man.”

  She said, “And his claim to be next Emperor?”

  Aeneas said, “It is nonsense for which there is no time. Besides, Lord Tellus is alive. I heard his voice on Pluto before it was destroyed.”

  She blinked. “What? Is Lord Pluto dead?”

  “Pluto is dead, the planet. The man is still alive. Pluto the planet was a weapon, launched in the dinosaur age, but wounded by too close an approach to our sun, and the race of space vampires inhabiting it were all eaten by their leader, who melted, turned into an amoeba that covered the entire surface, and then froze. This planet-wide glacier amoeba space vampire then woke up when a traitor in the family fed it, it turned the planet Pluto into a black hole, and shot through planet Saturn trying to shoot the sun, killing a trillion people. But I stopped it before it struck the sun and killed us all.”

  Lady Venus took another step back from her son, and now stood a step lower on the stairs. She was breathing heavily, and her fingers were at her lips. She trembled. “Oh ... my.”

  “Do you see why I have no time to debate Lord Neptune’s silly claims? He wants to be cock of the roost and lord of the chicken coop, but the farmer with his ax and his dogs is about to enter the coop and kill every last bird.”

  Lady Venus touched one of her thought-ornaments and made some adjustment to her own brain. Calm returned to her face, and her eyes grew bright and forceful. She said, “If you are the only man in position to save us, then you must do what is necessary.”

  He said, “I would rather do what is right.”

  She said, “The idealistic and the pragmatic always wrestle in the minds of the young, but an ideal is like a blueprint, or a gene sequence. If it is not thought out correctly, you can build nothing real on it, nothing that lasts.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that like it or not, human mob psychology is what it is. It means you cannot lead all the people unless you act the part of a leader. These signs and symbols of authority, our titles, that throne, were not made by us to glorify ourselves. They were made by the people to glorify the leaders and saviors of the people. They were made by tradition, by all the normal folk who need to be reassured that the man they trust to save their lives is more than a mere man. The insignia of royalty are not irrational, not meaningless, not signs of power.”

  “What are they signs of?”

  “Hope! The hope that the high command knows what it is doing, and can dig you out of hell!”

  Aeneas scowled, but he had no answer. The idea was new to him.

  She said, “Do you understand now why your talk of democracy and voting must cease? Nothing can be built with that blueprint, not at this point in history, not with the raw materials and tools available. I myself, just with the pantropy cells in my own palace, could give birth to ten thousand voters a month! The population of Jupiter’s globe outnumbers all the rest of the planets together. How many voters could he build? And here are you, who apparently has the power to toss planets across the abyss like juggler’s balls to other stars. Do you see?”

  Aeneas said, “I see a tyranny that cannot last.”

  She said, “Politics is based on power. Whoever has the power picks the leader. Any era that picks a leader no power backs, the power will rise up and destroy.

  “In some ages, the common man, because of his numbers, his common decency and common sense, had the power: democracy was for that age. In others, only the military had power, the Praetorian Guard, and who they picked to be commander in chief became emperor. In others, the wealthy families had the power, and the aristocracy selected the rulers, or selected a ruling family to pass the rulership from father to son. In more ancient times, in China and Mesopotamia, India and Egypt, the ruler was also worshipped as divine, and the priesthood had the power, because the conscience of the nation was in their hands.

  “But the Forerunner supersciences changed all that. Now only one family has the power: the House of Tell. Our powers are indistinguishable from magic. We are a family of witches and warlocks, of demigods and demigoddesses. It is us you must convince to follow you, if you want to lead mankind to life! Us!

  “If you don’t act the part of Emperor, the empire will break and scatter. No one, no one, will trust one of my bastard children, a crazy boy who experiments on his own brains and fills his organs with geegaws, to carry his family and world to safety! They will only trust an Emperor!

  “Emperors have dignity. They act with strength. They command.

  “You are the one who called the human race chickens: ...well then? If you cannot get the chicks to line up in order and stop the hens from cackling, all the birds will be scared and will scatter, and the farmer will find them one by one. You need the family behind you! Therefore you must be in front. Be Emperor! Otherwise, the worlds will lose hope, and panic.”

  Aeneas shook his head. There had to be something wrong with what his mother was saying, but he could not put his finger on the error.

  She said, “Did you not demand the family not to be ruled by fear when they were debating whether to kill you? Were you not right to make that demand?”

  He said, “And you told them that I did not have the warptech imprint. And then you told them you would make me into a zombie!”

  She shrugged. “The first was a lie, the second a half truth. They were trying to kill my son! You might be an idealist who thinks it better to watch one’s child die than to sully one’s tongue to tell a lie, but I am not.”

  He said, “But you are the boy who cried wolf. Now that there are real wolves out there, among the stars, thirsty for our blood, who will heed you?”

  She smiled and her eyes twinkled. It was a look he recognized, a look of love and romance, and so he groaned. She said brightly, “Lord Mars will hear me! I will call him here to swear to you! He has been neutral until now. But if he hears and believes your word, now that you have killed Lord Jupiter — that is a show of strength from you even I did not expect! — then Lord Neptune will have no choice but to be cowed!”

  “He’s not dead.”

  “Imprisoned? Even better. You are daring.”

  Aeneas rubbed his temples. “Please call Lord Mars. How long will it take?”

  “Less than half an hour.”

  “Time enough. While we await him, I will move Earth, Venus, Mercury and Mars into orbit around Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Jupiter. Call the terraformers on each world stand by to adjust the atmospheric temperature as the distance from the sun changes.”

  26. The Extinction of Sol

  Thucydides Tell, Lord Mars, was as naked as a jaybird and as scarlet as cardinal. He wore black sandals and a diamond-studded weapon belt. Pistol and longsword hung at his hip. His torch-red hair was clasped at his neck in a short tail. His eyes were deep-set, unwinking, cold as painted orbs of glass.

  He stepped out of a contortion pearl, came into the gold-domed presence chamber Lady Venus had erected, looked up at Aeneas on his black throne, and his expression did not change or flicker, no more than a face of carven stone would have.

  Lady Venus started a flowery and formal greeting, calling him by several titles, but Aeneas interrupted her to speak of the approaching enemy. Lord Mars interrupted him in turn, holding up his thin, re
d-colored hand.

  “For many years, I knew father had an enemy he feared, and knew it to be extrasolar. I knew using the faster than light drive would trigger a war, because, otherwise, he would have shared the secret with one of us. Majesty, I await your orders.”

  He knelt and drew his sword and tossed it to the bright floor, where the blade rang like crystal chimes.

  Aeneas said, “Just like that? You just declare me emperor, and vow to serve me? Don’t I get a vote?”

  Lord Mars said, “No, Majesty. No vote for you. None for me. I await your orders.”

  “And if I order you into jail for having assaulted me, stepped on me, and conspired with others to erase my mind?”

  “Then I obey and go while you waste a needed vassal,” said he, still on one knee, speaking without a smile. “Your Majesty.”

  Aeneas said, “Very well, but you don’t need to bow and scrape to me.”

  “No, Majesty. I do. That should have been explained to you by Nephelethea.” He nodded toward Lady Venus, a fond look in his eye.

  Aeneas realized that these two must have long ago planned out what they would say to him when he reappeared.

  Aeneas leaned back on the throne, noting how uncomfortable it felt. “You two have some plan to bring the other Lords of Creation to accept my leadership?”

  Lady Venus rolled her big, long-lashed eyes toward the golden ceiling overhead, and looked innocent. “No, not really... not a plan plan .... Just some ideas really...”

  Lord Mars said, “We have a plan. Did you kill Lords Saturn and Uranus? Both disappeared when you vanished. What about Pluto? And the new kid?”

  “No. Saturn and Pluto support me. Lady Luna also.”

  “Have them stand to either side of your throne when you summon Lord Mercury to come and bow. He fears Lord Saturn. Pluto, too. Once Mercury swears, Lord Neptune will be alone. Have you killed Lord Jupiter?”