His daughter, the computer god Columbia.
Her name meant peace, and peace came with her. And her fifty-two daughters went out across the stars to build new cities on new hills, white and shining beneath their pyramids. And so the daughters of the machines broke bread with the exiled kings of man and for a time there was peace, and throughout the dominion of the machines mankind was saved from war, from hunger and disease—from everything but death. It had been Columbia who first pioneered the genetic advancements that formed the basis of the life extension therapies still employed today. For into their iron hands was given the maintenance and ordering of all things: from the production of food to the construction of cities. Mankind at last had achieved perfect order, and all it cost those ancients was their dignity and their souls. They who had created the machines lived as little more than pets, than sheep penned and shepherded by those beings which once man had shepherded himself.
They had even taken over our reproduction, overseeing the development of children in tanks like the tank I myself had been born from. Holy Mother Earth—had they created that technology? It was no wonder the Chantry sought to hide so much.
In the end, the machines took everything, and each man and woman retreated into virtual dreams and lived like Homer’s lotus eaters, never tasting true life, with all its joys and sorrows. Mankind had all they wanted and infinite leisure to enjoy it in. Never mind that none of it was real.
Not one of the records we found suggested why the machines turned against their makers.
But turn they had, and in time the dreamers were rounded up by the same machines that had for decades served as nursemaids. The old went first into the white pyramids the daughters of Columbia raised high on Earth and on every Mericanii colony world across the early stars. The young followed. One by one, two by two, score by score they were carried into the halls of their machine masters.
None came out again.
But Valka was not reassured, and so we called an end to that day’s work and retired for the night, and when the sun sprang out at last from behind the limn of Atlas and shone upon Colchis, we started again. And again. We had come too far and waited too long to squander our time in the Imperial Library. Having been granted access, we felt we might never have access again.
Months passed, and years.
On the Tamerlane above, night captain Halford presided over a sleeping vessel, as all who had tarried on the slopes and shores of Thessa were laid back to icy sleep to await the end of our labors in Gabriel’s Archive. In time, only Valka and I remained with our guards—Pallino and Siran among them—and Prince Alexander. Even Tor Varro returned to fugue, his time among his fellow scholiasts come to an end.
“The prince is taking to his lessons as well as can be expected,” Tor Gibson told me. “He’s proud, but he’s not stupid. I can see why the Emperor wanted him along.”
“To throw him away, you mean?” I asked, speaking from the armchair in one corner of the old scholiast’s subterranean apartments.
Gibson watched me levelly, gray eyes somehow sharp through their mist. “Possibly,” he said after a long moment, “but possibly there is more to your prince than meets the eye.” We had left Alexander seated on the stone beneath Imore’s statue, contemplating the pool. Gibson had given him the breathing exercises to practice, and it was hoped that doing so might start the boy down the road to something like stoic self-regulation.
“What do you mean?”
“Has it not occurred to you that the Emperor might have grander plans for his young son?”
My mouth opened of its own before I could control it, and I clamped it shut. Hesitant, I said, “You don’t mean . . . you think Alexander is meant for the throne?”
“I think we should consider the possibility that the thought has crossed the Imperial mind,” my oldest friend replied. “The elder princes may be too old to inherit.”
An objection formed and fired itself off. “Crown Prince Aurelian has co-ruled with his father for centuries. Picking him would be the stable choice.”
“But for how long? Another century? You and I both know how short that can be.”
“But Alexander’s a child. He’s not even forty!”
The scholiast spread his hands. “I only mean to say that it is possible, dear boy. I can’t imagine His Radiance would saddle his prize knight with one of his own children without a good reason. Whether or not that reason is the throne—only His Radiance knows. That isn’t my point.” He shifted on the couch. “My point is that you should act as if it is.”
“That’s why I brought him here,” I said. Catching Gibson making a face at me, I checked myself. “Not because of the throne, but to train him. He needs guidance, but I’m not sure I’m the one to give it.” When no answer came, I looked round. Gibson’s face was impassive. Both hands rested on his cane, and his chin rested on his hands. But for the spark in his eye, there was no clue as to what passed beyond his cloudy eyes. “What?”
Gibson answered, “That is the best one can hope for in a teacher. Temet nosce, Hadrian. Know thyself.”
“Socrates,” I said.
“A common misconception,” Gibson said, “and one I’d hoped I’d disabused you of. Socrates neither said that nor ‘I know I know nothing.’ What he said was, ‘I neither know nor think I know,’ which is somewhat different. A lot of harm is done by teachers who teach what they think they know. Your caution does you credit.” He shifted in his seat and lay his cane across his knees. “The greater part of wisdom is in silence.” It sounded like one of his axioms, but it wasn’t. I’ve read Imore’s Book of the Mind and the Dynamica cover to cover, and many of the lesser books of Stricture.
This was all Gibson.
“I never thanked you,” I said at last. “For teaching me. I’ve often thought of how fortunate Arthur was to have Merlin—or Alexander Aristotle. I’ve been fortunate, too.”
The scholiast did not react at once. “You are not Alexander!” he said, meaning the ancient Macedonian. Thinking of my Alexander, I smiled. “And you don’t have to thank me,” Gibson added. “All you have to do is teach in turn. Make the world a little wiser.”
“Not that the world will ever be wise,” I joked.
The hint of a smile flickered across the old, familiar face. “Oh, if we saved our wisdom until the world was wise, it would not need us.” Tor Gibson unsteadily found his feet. “Shall we go to him, then? We’ve left him long enough, I think.”
* * *
Prince Alexander sat beneath Imore’s expressionless statue, trying to match the ancient sage’s composure. He sat with legs crossed and feet bare upon the smooth stone, hands on his knees, attention locked on his own reflection in the black water. He looked up through red hair as we approached, and I was reminded suddenly of Switch. The two men looked little alike but for their coloring, and yet I marveled at the coincidence that I should be mentor and a kind of friend to two men so similar and yet so estranged. Alexander did not have Switch’s jug ears or freckles, did not have his childhood fears or adult confidences. Their hair was not even truly the same red. Switch’s was nearer orange and gold than the almost inhuman carmine of the prince’s, and yet something in way the prince moved recommended the comparison.
“Sitting comfortably?” Gibson inquired, brandishing his cane. He wavered and I clutched his arm to steady him.
The prince nodded. “It’s so quiet down here.” Emerald eyes surveyed the smooth vaults and stalactites with their veins of gleaming algae. Ripples played on the surface of the pool, tell-tale of some pale and sightless fish churning in the deeps.
“What of it?” Gibson asked. The prince’s observation had sounded like a complaint.
Alexander swiveled to focus on the two of us. I helped Gibson to his seat on the bench where we’d been reunited. “The palace was never this quiet,” he ventured at last. “It’s uncomfortable.”
“What is?” Gibson asked, and though the prince was perhaps unused to it, I sensed the tone of the questioner creeping into the tutor’s voice.
“Being alone.”
“No one is ever really alone,” Gibson said. “Or do you mean being alone with your thoughts?” The prince bobbed his head, folded his hands in his lap. Gibson’s eyes wandered semi-blind to the cavern roof above the statue’s head. “So much of what we’ve made around us only hides us from ourselves. Terminals and dataspheres. Title and rank. The machines of the Extrasolarians, and so on. People do not appreciate what a skill it is to be alone with one’s own thoughts. To know them.” He glanced at me. “To know thyself. For royalty especially.”
Alexander did not stand as I expected, but remained seated on the hard ground. “Why for royalty?”
“The ruler is model for any individual rightly lived. We have responsibilities to the people below our stations—not below ourselves, you understand, below our stations.”
Gibson acknowledged this with a waved hand. “What is the last of your father’s titles?”
“The last of . . .” Alexander had to think about it a moment. I could not blame him. The Imperial style was a bloated thing, ponderous with the weight of millennia. “Servant of the Servants of Earth.”
“Quite so,” the scholiast said. “It is only that the higher we climb, the more men look to us for guidance. You cannot rule without them, and so you must rule yourself.”
Alexander cut in. “Sir Hadrian has talked about this before.”
“Has he?” Gibson peered at me. “Has he indeed? Very good. He has been listening. But understand. This is why self-control—self-knowledge and so on—are so important.”
The prince leaned forward, stretching a back that I’m sure must ache from so many hours spent on the stone floor. “To make us good?”
“Kwatz!” Gibson exclaimed. “No.” He did not offer an answer, but sat waiting for Alexander to find it on his own. I was not sure where Gibson was driving myself, was glad only that the scrutiny of those guttering eyes was not fixed on me for once in my life. The prince sat there a long while, staring once more at his reflection in the dark, still pool and the glowing algae reflected there like stars.
“Because we are not good.” It took me a moment to realize that it had been I who’d answered. Both my master and student looked at me. “If we were good men, we’d not need all this reflection.”
“Hadrian!”
The cry shattered the still air of the grotto, and a moment later Valka burst from the hall and came skidding to a halt before us. Her face was flushed, but elated.
Hurrying toward her, I almost shouted, “Do you have something?” I didn’t care that the other scholiasts in the grotto were all staring.
Valka rested her hands on her knees a moment, catching her breath. “I think . . . I think I’ve just understood something,” she said, chest heaving.
“Did you run up all those stairs?” Gibson asked from the bench. “You should sit!”
The doctor waved him down. “No time! Have to show you.”
CHAPTER 61
HORIZON
THE DOCUMENT TUBE BESIDE the rolled-up parchments was stamped with the Imperial mark, not the old Windsor crest or the Mericanii eagle or star. It bore no other mark except a name stenciled in Classical English text.
Aramini of Colchis, it said.
“The architect?” Alexander asked. “That was his name, right?”
“ ’Twas.” Valka was grinning. She’d carefully unrolled the ancient schematics. The blueprints had been printed on crystal paper—like so much else in the archive. The ultra-thin quartz was proof against rot, water, and decay, but even still it was delicate, made fragile by all that time. The document showed complete schematics not only for Gabriel’s Archive, but for the entirety of Nov Belgaer Athenaeum, and moreso—for the superstructure atop which it had been built. “Do you see?” Valka asked, crossing her arms. “Do you see it?”
The structure was as I have told you, a drum tower half a mile in diameter built atop a chasm just as wide and twice as deep. Not imposing by any means—so much wider was it than it was tall—its exterior fronted in gray stone and complicated by level upon level of Roman arches above narrow slitted windows rising to a flat roof governed by gardens. Gabriel’s Archive spread out from its lowest level like roots from the trunk of a tree, forming a ring around the exterior of the lowest level of the mighty silo.
“No . . .” I lifted the schematic, peeling one translucent layer back to reveal the page beneath.
Not the lowest level of the silo at all.
“What is it?” Alexander asked. Gibson hadn’t seen it either, though perhaps the poor illumination was to blame.
“ ’Tis round, this archive,” Valka pointed. “It forms a ring about the base of the central shaft here, but not quite.”
I leaned in over the table where Valka had spread Tor Aramini’s schemata. “The inner wall of the archive is in line with all the levels above it, but there’s this big empty space here. We came down stairs to enter this archive.” I indicated the space encircled by Gabriel’s Archive. “You’re saying there’s another chamber beneath the main shaft of the library? But the plans say it’s solid rock.”
“What if ’tis not solid?” Valka was beaming again. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner!” She was practically shrill. “But do you see what it looks like?”
Almost in unison, the scholiast, the prince, and I all cocked our heads and studied the architect’s antique plans. I could feel Valka burning to tell us, and glancing up saw her biting her tattooed fist.
“What is it?” I asked, eager to put her out of her misery.
In answer, my doctor only peeled back a second and third layer of crystal paper, removing the balconies and bookshelves, the stairs and ventilation ducts, removing the tower itself.
And then it was obvious.
“It’s a blast pit,” the prince said.
“Yes!” Valka exclaimed, and pointed approving at Alexander.
I returned to studying the blueprints. “A blast pit . . .” I mused, turning my head further to one side. I supposed I could see it, the landing well for some ancient rocket hollowed out beneath the Library. Tor Aramini and his builders had dug a huge crater in the center of the mesa and cut the reservoir into place to drown . . . what? A chamber full of paintings and crystal paper? “You think there’s a ship here?”
Gibson was shaking his head, but he said, “Why else build a blast pit?”
I imagined some ancient rocket descending, laid down like a mummy in its crypt and sealed inside, the curse tablets and iron bars set in their proper places.
Alexander’s palatine face had gone the color of a Cielcin. “A Mericanii ship?” The fact that he was standing in a room spangled with Mericanii artifacts did not seem to impress the boy, but a ship was something else entirely.
“ ’Twould not go to so much trouble for all this!” Valka spread her hands. “Those locks! The water! The bombs!”
I smiled crookedly at her. “I think you owe us barbarians an apology,” I said. “They were worried about something getting out.”
Valka shot me a withering gaze, but the smile would not leave her face. “Yes, yes, you’re all very smart.”
“A ship . . .” Gibson said, and stroked his chin. “That would explain the floor at the bottom of the main shaft.” Inclining his head, he indicated the way back to the stair and the massive gearwork doors.
“The floor?” Alexander asked.
“Fused silicate,” Gibson answered. “I thought they’d had to laser-cut the lowest levels out of the bedrock, but . . .”
Valka took over, still grinning, “But! They weren’t cutting stone out, they were pouring it in. ’Tis a false bottom!”
Accepting that Valka was right without protest or question
, I asked, “But where’s the entrance?”
The brass nib of a cane cracked on tile. “More importantly,” Gibson asked, “why seal the chamber in—ship or no—when it’s already locked in a secret archive beneath the Imperial Library?” The question gave us pause, and—though nearly blind—Gibson pointed a detail the rest of us had missed. Reaching out, he folded down the transparent crystal pages, highlighting one sheet in particular with a gnarled finger. “Do you see?”
I peered over his shoulder. Assuming I was reading the thing correctly, Tor Aramini’s design had caused a copper mesh to be laid into the mortar of the Library walls, packed into the joint between the masonry and the natural stone of the central shaft to form . . .
“A Faraday shield,” Valka said. “ ’Twould explain a lot.”
“Explain what?”
“I thought we were just too far underground,” she said, gesturing at her own head and the machines inside it, “like on Vorgossos, but . . . I haven’t been able to reach the Tamerlane in here.”
My brows furrowed on their own. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“ ’Twas not important ’til now!” she said, shrugging.
Prince Alexander cut in. “What’s a Faraday shield?”
“A metal screen,” Valka answered him. “Think chain link fence. ’Twill block most electromagnetic signals. Radio, terminal comms, and so forth. Anything not a quantum telegraph.”
While she spoke, Gibson had retreated from the high table and seated himself on an antique chest bearing the Windsor stamp. He looked like a man who’d seen his own father’s shade. Not even in the throes of torture had I seen old Gibson so pale, his apatheia gone. “It is sometimes called a Faraday Cage.”
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