The Hermetic Millennia (57 page)

Menelaus then stepped on the forearm of Illiance before the little man could rise. Aanwen was tucked under his arm with the coat over her head, her legs kicking in the air.

“Well, your widow is now in my armpit, and I could break her neck if I wanted. So now the discussion is no longer theoretical. She is as helpless in my hands as that albino is in your hands. Think carefully, my friend.”

Illiance, looking up from the floor, spoke in a calm, measured, detached voice, “In what sense are we friends, Beta Anubis? The coercive nature of our interaction prohibits mutual affection or respect.”

“We’re friends because I kind of like you, Illiance. You don’t seem like a bad guy. But I am a bloody goddam poxy filth-sucking
Chimera
! That means I was gene-tweaked and born and trained to kill people and break stuff and get an erection while doing it. On the other hand, you two are fuzzy schoolmarms armed with toy pistols that have a defensive-only circuit in them which makes it so that there is an eighth-second calculation delay before the shoot. You have to brace yourself before you kill someone, which adds more delay. You don’t have the reflexes for this kind of roughhousing. Looks to me like your nervous systems were taken from a standardized imprint, kind of mass produced, which means I am inside your orientation-observation-reaction cycle.”

Menelaus raised his arm and let Aanwen fall heavily onto Illiance, and then he stepped over to the coffin and began detaching wires and touching control surfaces. One of the controls he touched made the fluid in the coffin turn red, and then opaque. Menelaus closed the lid, turned, and sat on the coffin, hands on his knees.

Illiance had retrieved his jeweled pistol and stood pointing it at Menelaus. Aanwen meanwhile was staring down at the several small boxes and machines she had been tending. She knelt and began to gather the units together again, frowning slightly.

Menelaus said, “Are you going to threaten me with a toy gun? That is a burner, not kinetic, which means it will not stop my forward momentum if I rush you. If I were you, I’d back way up and aim for my legs and eyes.”

“It only fires in self-defense.”

“I know. Does that mean you are going to hold it on me while I sit here and mock you? Or maybe you want me to rush you first, but slowly enough to give you a sporting excuse to burn off my face? Say pretty please.”

Illiance holstered the weapon and said, “I did not agree to release the relict from torment.”

Menelaus said, “Does your way of life allow you to ignore a moral obligation, even if you refuse to acknowledge it? I am telling you, I can still get this guy to talk. Your methods can’t. Remember your time limit.”

Illiance said nothing, but looked pensive.

“Or call your dogs and have me killed—because I sure as hell ain’t going to surrender—and you’ll have to thaw up someone else to help you with your translation. I tell you what else I’ll do, to sweeten the kitty! If the Judge of Ages is real, and he does show up, and he finds out you been snarking with his coffins, turning them to iron maidens and such, I’ll put in a good word for you, make sure he don’t kill you like you so very, very richly deserve.”

Illiance said, “I can bring overwhelming coercive force to bear on you.”

Menelaus just shrugged. “If you were a Chimera, you would have done so already. I think your sense of honor works on a different level than that. You
do
know I could have killed you both, right? Just now. I ask because I am not sure what is obvious to you and what is something you will only realize in a leisurely fashion later on, thinking back on it while you are sitting on the jakes or something.”

Illiance turned to Aanwen and spoke in Intertextual.
“I had supposed Followers unneeded here, because you have the coffin weapons under your control. I notice they failed to fire. If you would happen to share your wisdom and advice with me, I would be benefited.”

Her voice was more musical than his, and lent the language a beauty and grandeur it otherwise lacked.
“He destroyed the inducer. This indicates an abnormal familiarity with Locust neuropathic technology. He initiated the thaw cycle. Since the thaw was locked, this indicates abnormal knowledge of cryotechnology. Neither the coffin motion-sensors nor my pistol aimed nor ranged, which is another abnormality. In view of these abnormalities, we cannot accurately calculate the harm he could do us should we call the Followers, or should we sublimate the chemicals in the walls into lachrymal vapor. Notice also his fingers rest on the coffin controls: he could open fire with its various weapons. Contrariwise, if he gleans what we are drawn to know from the relict without further commotion, the calculation becomes moot.”

Illiance said,
“You reason like a Locust. We have turned our backs to that. Instead of weighing niceties of risk and reward, should we not do what is straightforward?”

Her expression was weary.
“My idealism died with my husband. The dream of simplicity is itself artificial. If you want to be simple, simply do what is simply right. The man pretending to be a Chimera spared me; let us spare the albino.”

Illiance turned to Menelaus. “Are you continuing to pretend you do not understand our language?”

Menelaus said, “It’s your thinking I don’t understand. You don’t act like archaeologists and you don’t act like Tomb-looters, trespassers, or thieves. Well, except for the Tomb-looting, trespassing, and thieving, of course. You keep acting like you are invulnerable, like nothing can hurt you. What the hell are you relying on to protect you? What the hell is driving you? Why not just come clean and tell me what you all are doing here? Who sent you? Who do you work for? Talk now, before you get hurt! As Preceptor Yndech might say, ‘eschew deception’!”

Illiance looked for a moment like he was bowing. But, no. He stooped and picked up a microphone wire, which he tossed lightly to Menelaus. “We are here to learn, not to instruct. Your question must go unanswered. Let us question Scholar Rada Lwa during the thaw process. If he is forthcoming to you, the matter of torment is moot, and I will acknowledge the moral obligation you impose. As a gesture of goodwill, a lagniappe, Aanwen and I further agree to compromise the dignity of our persons, by pretending no assault took place.”

“Fair enough,” said Menelaus with a sideways tilted grin. “I knew you were a bigger man than you looked!”

Menelaus clicked the microphone plug into its corresponding jack on the coffin hull. There was a crackle of static, and then a connection formed with the speech centers of the albino’s brain.

3. Interrogatory of Rada Lwa

Who are you?

I self-identify as Intermediately Evolved Learned Scholar Rada Lwa Chwal Sequitur Argent-Montrose. I am Psychoi, brain augment to level 257, artificially stabilized by partial emulation technique.

What do you know of the Judge of Ages?

No referent.

Who built the Tombs? What do you know of him?

Builder of Tombs is undesigned Highly Evolved Pneumatic Menelaus Illation Montrose, ancestor, mutineer, enemy.

Pneumatic? The guy operates on compressed air?

One who attains self-enlightenment is a
pneumaticos.
The three stages of evolution are hylic, psychic, and pneumatic. I am of the second stage; he is of the third. The Enlightened accomplish
apolutrosis
and, later,
gnosis
by partial or total brain emulation. Montrose, the enemy, accomplished his elevation without emulation, by adapting his brain via nerve path redaction to the coordinate system of the Omicron hieroglyph-group of the Monument notation. It resulted in the ongoing insanity that requires his reeducation or recycling.

Recycling?

Physical reduction of bodily elements into useful raw materials. Thrift is commendable.

Who are the Enlightened?

The secret masters of history. They are the ones who have defined the course of human evolution to come.

Does this refer to the crew of the NTL
Hermetic
?

Yes. However, the term is regarded as inexact, since the
Hermetic
was stolen by the Highly Evolved Pneumatic Rania Grimaldi and is now elsewhere in the unlimited not-here.

You mean she is in Outer Space?

The term is regarded as inexact. All that can be established with apodictic certainty is that she is not recognizably in the current and present perceptual frame of reference. I regard all event-objects outside my mind as speculative, including her location.

You mean Rania Montrose?

We must never refer to her by that name.

What is the course of human evolution to come?

Biological intelligence is insufficiently flexible or scalable to adhere to the Dominion of Hyades. Hence, postbiological life is preferred. The first level or stratum of postbiological life shall be computerized emulations of the Enlightened. All growth of emulation life must be taken strictly from templates imprinted by the Enlightened, so that the “memes” or mental-cultural self-reproducing valuation-data shall be passed on. All nonconforming information systems must be utterly destroyed. No nonconforming system can be tolerated anywhere, for any reason.

Why?

It is a clearly understood and unambiguous command from my Master.

But what purpose is served?

Oh. Emulations must emulate the thought-grammar and thought-content of the Enlightened in order that the postbiological life remain human, despite its new vessels.

Human? In what sense?

Whatever mimics human thought is human. We do not wish our unique intellectual heritage to be extinguished.

What is your unique intellectual heritage?

We are Those Who Know, the Men of the Mind! We have exploded all previous intellectual systems and philosophies as a tissue of superstition, cant, and rubbish.

So your unique intellectual accomplishment, the one you do not wish extinguished, is your propensity for extinguishing the intellectual accomplishments of other people, including your own forefathers?

I do not understand the question.

Never mind. Who is your Master?

He is highly evolved.

Does he have a name?

Yes.

What is his name?

Melchor de Ulloa.

A Hermeticist?

The term is inexact.

Why is the man who made the Tombs your enemy?

Menelaus Montrose is a mutineer who opposes the lawful chain of the command of the
Hermetic
expedition, ergo the only lawful world government, the World Concordat. He opposes the course of evolution. Even if we wished a peaceful reconciliation with him, no reconciliation is possible, because the course of evolution is scientifically determined. Also, on a more particular level, Menelaus Montrose murdered Melchor de Ulloa, thus depriving humanity of a superlative genius, irreplaceable.

Describe this murder.

4. Murder on Mount Ypsilon

I am the only person who obtained a clear view of all the events, either directly or through secure-line instruments.

The Highly Evolved Montrose stood on Mount Ypsilon and the Highly Evolved de Ulloa stood on Mount Chiquita in the Rocky Mountains, with a connecting saddle between them of more than a three-hundred-foot displacement.

They burned away or melted the intervening forests and snowbanks with their hand weapons, so as to afford a clear view of each other.

Each man, in addition to his hand weapon, had a long-range telescope-microphone array to allow him to address his opponent. Once done speaking, the two men were preparing to fire at each other.

There was no view of any celestial object in the sky during those years, because an eternal cloud cover raised by the Cetaceans smothered the atmosphere, and even the peaks of this mountain did not rise above it. Consequently, it came as a surprise to them when the wreckage of the platform of the orbital terawatt laser Surtur de-orbited and struck the north slope, near where Montrose was standing.

It should have struck the peak where Montrose was precisely, but an unexpected ranging and detection failure, whose cause I could not analyze, interfered with the guidance at the last moment.

If the cloud layer had been higher, I would have had time to correct, but for an unknown reason the cloud had expanded downward in defiance of the weather control predictions of the Cetaceans, who were cooperating in this venture.

Montrose and De Ulloa fired at each other with their handheld weapons across the space of the mountain saddle separating the two peaks, but the fire and dust cloud thrown up by the Surtur impact obscured the line of sight.

At this point, Ms. Hecatedora Simon, the chief man-breeder of the Simon Families, and a large squad of her riflewomen emerged from certain hidden places they had dug out of the mountainside the evening previous, and they closed in on Montrose, firing. They had supporting fire from robotic tripod-mounted guns under the command of Ms. Maeveen Simon.

The riflewomen were Simon Family octogenarians and centenarians, and so had many decades of practice, and they still had the stamina, eyesight, and health of youth, but their computer targeting would not lock on to Montrose, and his weapon produced a volume of chaff and smoke screen to impede naked-eye, manual aiming.

Montrose discharged his major shot through the body of the space wreckage, penetrating the shielding of the reactor core and exposing the environment to an unsustainable amount of radiation. The riflewomen retreated to where I had crash-landed my craft. This craft had sufficient shielding to protect us.

Later, Simon Family squads equipped with radiation-suppression gear found the body of De Ulloa. He had been trapped on the peak because of the position of the crater and the fires that spread from it: he had been dying of exposure burns, and the damage was already beyond any cure. He took his own life by wedging his pistol between his feet and ordering it to fire at his head. Montrose should have been similarly trapped, but his body was not found. Hecatedora Simon ordered a careful examination made of the surrounding grounds.