The Architect of Aeons (57 page)

Cazi clapped her hands. “That was flattery as creamy, thick, and false as anything a Fox could say! And yet Ximen cannot discount it, because of his pride. Masterfully done, O, masterfully done, pretty Norbert! Pity you were not born as one of my girls!”

Norbert bowed. “An assassin must learn many skills. Thank you, Cupcake.”

Del Azarchel cleared his throat and scowled, and said to Norbert, “To answer your question: nothing can be done while Jupiter lives.”

Montrose said, “I never did anything to him to drive him mad. It is your doing. That is your brain writ large. If you don't like the way it looks, look to yourself.”

Del Azarchel said, “Lesser beings cannot understand the sanity or insanity of gods, but I can know when Jupiter is serving my purposes and when he is not.” Del Azarchel shook his head and stared at Norbert. “I cannot believe he betrayed me. The report you saw must be in error. Or a deception by that Fox.”

Cazi pouted. “Not me. I'd boast.”

Norbert said, “I can prove my words.”

Even Menelaus Montrose looked surprised.

Menelaus said, “How are you going to prove it? The astronomical instruments out front are fake. You are not going to be able to pick out a stray interstellar asteroid from here, much less get the careful reading of which side melted how. And if it is not still in the beam, how would it be visible?”

Norbert said to Del Azarchel, “If I do prove it, prove the treason of Jupiter, what then? You say you have a means to destroy Jupiter. Can you?”

Del Azarchel nodded briefly. “I can. If you prove your case.”

Norbert raised his eyes and raised his voice. “Jupiter! I know you can hear me!”

Del Azarchel looked at Norbert sidelong, and said in a voice of disgust, “You do not listen. He would not plant bugs on holy ground any more than I would. I'd destroy the Church, if she crosses me, but I would never desecrate her.”

Norbert said, “By the same token, if you can walk onto holy ground with a clean conscience, so can he. Jupiter sent a kenosis, inhabiting a body.” And he raised his voice again. “Jupiter! I know in whose body you are hiding! You were the only one who did not stop moving when everyone else collapsed! Show yourself!”

The entire back of the tent was torn suddenly down as if yanked in a vast mouth of some rough beast with a twist of its powerfully muscled neck. And in the wide, square tattered hole, framed by night and twisted branches, it loomed. Ungainly, huge, and moving with a ponderous dignity, the vast bulk stepped forth, its footfalls strangely delicate. The branches of the dream-apple trees, as if in awe of the creature's majesty, or as if their internal circuits had been overwhelmed, had twisted silently and curled and pulled themselves aside, so that no twig barred the creature's way nor scraped its broad back.

It was the hippopotamus.

 

4

The Ire of the First Power

1. A Mortal Hour

The long, coffin-shaped head of the hippopotamus twisted oddly as the flesh and bone and blood ungrew and regrew. Eventually the being who stood before them had the aspect of a centaur, a quadruped from which a human torso, herculean chest, massive arms, and proud head emerged. The face was aquiline, dark-eyed and handsome, a mirror to Del Azarchel's, save with the one oddity that the hair and beard were white, not dark, and the beard flowed across the jawline ear to ear like a lion's mane, not like Del Azarchel's precise and pointed goatee.

But the difference between the higher and lower forms of humanity was made strangely clear during this transition. A Hermeticist with his amulet or a Fox Maiden with her whim could alter a human being from one preset form to another rapidly, because posthuman neural circuitry was relatively simple. To move and reorganize the complex cellular structure of so advanced a being was the matter of more than an hour. Montrose and Del Azarchel stood without moving, without fidgeting and without blinking, while the hippopotamus changed into a centaur and grew itself a human head.

Norbert, being mortal and growing weary, sat in the empty magician's chair, watching the slow and disgusting play of muscles and red flesh re-sculpting itself. Cazi, with an odd smile but no word of explanation, swayed over to Norbert and sat in his lap, sliding one sinuous silk-clad arm around the back of his neck, and filling his nostrils with the warm perfume of her hair, filling his lap with the rounded firmness of her peach-shaped bustle. With her other hand she took out a golden cup in which she tossed and caught a silver ball, and she laughed gaily at this simple game.

Norbert sat confounded in that supernatural fashion Fox Maidens always confound mortals, and that all-too-natural fashion women always confound men. Eventually he found his native brashness, without bothering to turn on his artificial brashness, put his arm around her tightly beribboned waist, and spoke small talk, and asked her questions about her history and youth. She giggled, teased him, replied in riddles, nibbled on his ear, and whispered to him horrifying secrets man was not meant to know.

Before the hour had passed, he had answered her riddles and made her laugh, and commanded her to allow him to be her escort to the next seasonal fair, where there was to be dancing and diversions, to be held at the Feast of the Assumption; and she had with seeming nonchalance and sidelong glint of eager eyes agreed.

“In August?” she asked in a taunting tone. “What year would that be on the calendar?”

And so he was reminded to return to the business. Reluctantly, he put her from his knee, and stood, for the face of Jupiter had finally changed, assumed a human hue, and opened its eyes.

“You called me, mortal man,” said Jupiter. “But know you what you call?”

In those inhuman eyes was an infinite depth.

2. The Roots of the Oak

Norbert, since he could not look the superior being in his face, made a courtesy of necessity and made a polite bow. “Sir, it is my hope that I have called a being too proud to lie. Your father has asked me to prove that the issue of calendar reform, the heresies of Photinus, Lares, and Lemur were cliometric vectors you imposed into human history.”

Jupiter said, “Know you my mind?”

Outside the tent, there was a flare of lightning as he spoke. Then came a sound of thunder rolling from one side of the sky to the other like a bronze chariot. It may have been a coincidence, or the electrostatic discharge of an improperly focused surface-to-orbit beam, or the flux of the never-ending core-to-surface adjustments in Tellus energy levels. Or it may have been supernatural. Norbert's theory was that any sufficiently advanced irate machine intelligence was indistinguishable from an angry god.

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.