The Architect of Aeons (62 page)

“You mean we will be free and independent!”

Del Azarchel shrugged. “Free in name only. My vision will rule here, a vision of monarchy, authority, glory, and power, and your vision of liberty will fail. You have already shown yourself willing to compromise. I think she will cleave to me, and not you, when she comes.”

“You lie. You don't know her. You don't know her, and you lie.”

“Normally, such words would call for a passage at arms, but right now I am not in the mood, and you are a mess. I want you to see her on my arm, as my bride, before I kill you, Cowhand. And so our duel is over for now. I suggest a hiatus, a respite, a holiday, to last for seventeen thousand, five hundred years and change. Then we can take up against the disputes that separate us. Agreed?”

Without waiting for an answer Del Azarchel saluted Menelaus Montrose, smiled a wicked smile, handed the unfinished bag of popcorn to Norbert, and turned and marched off. Montrose attempted to rise and go after him, but Sgaire pushed him down and beckoned for his surgical trees.

5. Fox Maiden, Man Wife

Del Azarchel was surprised when he found Cazi sitting on a gravestone at a turning of the white walkway weaving through the graveyard. He looked back toward the hill, seeing what looked like two versions of Montrose, one in armor, one in the sober garments of a second.

He jerked his thumb back toward the Cazi who had been acting as the second during the duel. “Which one of you is fake, my dear?”

Cazi was dressed in a simple red dress with a wide black belt, cinched tightly to show off her figure, and she wore black gloves to her elbows and black stockings to her knees, and about her ankles were bangles and charms. Her hair was a wild red cloud, and her eyes yellow sparks.

“All of us, I think.” She shrugged, which emphasized her cleavage. “I lost track centuries ago. So are you going to resign as Lord of Evil?”

“Resign? No. Retire? Yes. For I've won,” said Blackie.

Cazi crossed her legs and kicked them back and forth, idly. “You always seem confident, even when you fib. My next lover will be an honest man.”

“I have a right to be confident.”

“You think you do, do you?” she said archly.

“You see, I was able to study the Second Monument of the Omega Nebula for years. It was redacted the same way as the First Monument of the Diamond Star, so it contained the same message. All the information for how to build Rania was there, and I know the genetic codes for Captain Grimaldi backward and forward. If Rania is as the Monument says a Monument emulation creature must be, then I have won her heart during these years.”

“I don't follow you.”

“The Monument was created for a higher purpose. What purpose that is, I do not know. Rania is designed to serve that purpose. Even if I do not know what it is, I know this: if all my work and all my wars and all my striving here in the First Empyrean Polity of Man fulfills some part of that grand plan, her designers would have rendered her unable not to favor me.”

Cazi said, “Montrose told me that the Monument was redacted—rewritten—by someone else, some other race, also for some purpose he thinks must be at odds with the first. And all your plans are all based on this cliometric calculus you learned from the Monument, right? But your blueprints included the redacted segments of the Monument. What if her purpose is grander than that? What if she is loyal to the older purpose, whatever it is? There is so much no one knows.”

“One day I will know all.”

“One day, so you say.”

“For now, I have preserved the human race, lifted it from its childhood on Earth to its maturity among the stars. Nothing can be greater than that.”

“Oh, really?” Her look of superciliousness was even more supercilious than his, for she could arch her eyebrow higher and wrinkle her mouth more deeply.

“You think he has won? The Cowhand? He will never win!”

“I think if you loved Rania, you'd talk about her, and not about him.”

“I had my doubts, but if it were not my love of Rania that made Jupiter hesitate to shoot, what did? I watched the duel carefully. The copy of my body was better, faster, more accurate. I cannot lose.”

“He lives for love. You live for hate. You will destroy yourself. That is what hate is.”

“What do you know of love and hate?”

She hopped to her feet. “I know that love is sacrifice. I am going to give up being a Fox Maiden, turn into a real woman, be fertile and have babies, and grow old and die, and I will never see the end of your duel with Meany. I have come to ask you to be the best man!”

“What? Me? We did not exactly part, my dear, on the best of terms.…”

“Men are always so freaked out by a little unexpected castration! I gave it back! You went to a shop and had it stitched back on! Besides, it will do me good to see you at my wedding, because you will be defeated by another man.”

“I can also lend him my dirty socks, and give him a toothbrush that I used to use.”

“So will you come?”

“Who is so insane that he would marry you?”

She looked scandalized. She pouted. “You are kidding, right? It is not obvious? Norbert. You know those Rosicrucians do not think like baseline men.”

“So you will be Mrs.
Unpronounceable Name That Starts With an M
. And you are going to give up shape-changing and politics and intrigue and toying with the destinies of lesser men? For what?”

“For babies!”

“To eat, knowing you. You will regret it. You will wake up at midnight, wishing you could grow wings, and go eat some politician you wish you could replace.…”

She shook her head. “Not if the Patricians are running everything. We made a race our own tricks would not work on. And if I regret it, I will have another baby!”

“Some women have higher ambitions.”

“Higher than life? I've been a queen and the mother of a race and a mistress of intrigue, and I've arranged a duel between an immortal man and a tyrant power of heaven. Isn't that enough for one life? Ambition is lonely. Even a fox deserves a den of her own.”

“You are too good for him.”

“Too wicked, you mean! Norbert thinks he can tame me. I intend to struggle and scratch, and drive him crazy if I can, and break him if he is weak like you. But I want him to win.”

“You are a mad thing,” said Del Azarchel. “But I will be your bridegroom's best man, if he will ask me, and be honored that you want to have me present. When is the happy occasion?”

She pointed. “There is the cathedral yonder. I will be baptized and alter my cells so that I can never alter them again; and this same day is the solemn wedding mass, and tomorrow we enter the lifting vessel to reach the Sky Island, and then the star port. The Interdict was artificial, a trick, and with Jupiter dead it must be lifted, and the next sailing vessel will depart for Proxima Centauri in a few months, a voyage of only four years at near-lightspeed. He will see the trees of which he dreams, and settle on his little farm, and we will have snow every Sunday and springtide every Monday. I will be his forever, and he will be mine. And…”

“I know. Babies.”

“Lots of them! Life serves life, right? Your Hyades monster friends would approve. What else is life for?”

“I want more,” said Del Azarchel. “I want the stars.”

“And do what with them? Without love, they mean nothing.”

“I will change the constellations to make them mean whatever I see fit that they should mean.”

“Poor, unhappy, doomed man! I pity you! But come and see me wed. I might let you kiss the bride.”

“But why wed him? Be my lover again. You will be dead long before Rania returns, and you are quite right that there are nights when I grow lonely.”

“For you, the story goes on and ever on to the end of the Eschaton, the end of evolution, until you count to infinity. Norbert may only be playing a bit walk-on part in the great drama of human history, but he has something you haven't got.”

“And that is?”

“A happy ending. For us, the story comes to rest. I can give him a happy ending.”

He nodded in defeat, smiling, and offered her the crook of his elbow. While Jupiter burned overhead, a freakish and unexpected second sun, brighter than the morning star, they walked together into the shadow of the nave, beneath the tall and richly carven doors that stood wide open, and into dark and solemn silence.

 

APPENDIX A
Dramatis Personae

Persons named but not present are listed in italics.

Tellurians

FIRST HUMANITY [Intelligence
=
100 to 650]

Elders, also called Early Posthumans

   Menelaus Illation Montrose—the Judge of Ages

   Ximen del Azarchel—Master of the World

Nymphs

   Amphith
ö
e—their Conscript Mother (of the First Comprehension)

Witches

   Zoraida—an Intercessor (of the Second Comprehension)

Giants

   Sancristobal—Friar Sancristobal of the Remnant Order of the Post-Final Stipulation, and a Brother of Penance of the Third Order of St. Frances, called Greyfriars

Melusine

   Isonadey, the Ship's Voice—Captain of the
Hysterical Blindness

   
Manitra, Angatra, Ranavalon
—Judicial, Military, and Royal Cliometric leaders of the Remnant Order of the Post-Final Stipulation, which is a Second Comprehension polity

Rosicrucians of Proxima

   Norbert the Assassin—Norbert Brash Noesis Mynyddrhodian mab Nwyfre of Rosycross

   
Exobert
—his emulation

   
Svartvestra
—his paramour

   
Rose
—his beloved

   
Yngbert
—Yngbert Perpension Mynyddrhodian; his father

   
Maier
—a peace officer for Dee Parish

   Zolasto Zo—a Rosicrucian expatriate and mountebank

Nocturnals

   
Nochzreniye
—a Zarya of Nocturne of Epsilon Eridani, Norbert's adjutant

SECOND HUMANITY [Intelligence
=
1,000]

Swans

   Enkoodabooaoo—an Inquiline of the No
ö
sphere (Third Comprehension)

   
Photinus
—a Hierophant and heresiarch of the 36th Millennium

   
Lares
—a prophetess

   
Lemur
—revives the heresy of Photinus in the 47th Millennium

THIRD HUMANITY

Myrmidons

   Dissent—emissaries to the Judge of Ages in the plutino Ixion

   Superintendent of the First Elite Process—a command segment of the Black Fleet. Slain by Montrose in a duel.

FOURTH HUMANITY

Fox Maidens

   Cazi—a sovereign and trickster

   Gitsune and Strega—her attendants

FIFTH HUMANITY

Patricians

   
Cnaeus
—called the Father of Neptune

   
Nemenstratus
—a Lord of the Golden Afternoon, that is, Cliometric Historian for the Triplanetary Jurisdiction

ARCHANGEL [Intelligence
=
10,000 or 10^3]

   Mother Superior Selene—Abbess of the Order of the Discalced Friars of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, called Whitefriars. The moon.

POTENTATES [Intelligence
=
800,000 or 80^4]

   Tellus of Sol

   Rosycross of Proxima

POWERS [Intelligence
=
250 Million or 25^7]

   Jupiter of Sol

   Neptune of Sol

   Cerulean of 82 Eridani; Peacock of Delta Pavonis; Immaculate of Altair; Twelve of Tau Ceti; Vonrothbarth of 61 Cygni. Atramental of Epsilon Eridani is technically a superpotentate, but not a power.

Hyades

VIRTUES [Intelligence
=
500 Million or 50^8]

   Asmodel the Living Planet—First Sweep in the 12th Millennium

   Cahetel the Dark Cloud—Second Sweep in the 25th Millennium

   Shcachlil the Salamander—Third Sweep in the 37th Millennium

   Achaiah the Immeasurable—predicted to arrive at the behest of Jupiter in the 61th Millennium

PRINCIPALITIES

   Ain—which men call Epsilon Tauri but Myrmidons call Oculus Borealis

ARCHON

   Circumincession—Sovereign of the Sagittarius Arm

 

APPENDIX B

Middle-Scale Time Line

(Thousands of Years)

Each entry on the list below represents a millennium.

Notable Events and Epochs for each millennium briefly noted.

Changes to Earth's pole star due to procession noted as aid in comparison of time scales.

Preposthuman Era

• 1st Millennium
A
.
D
. (Anno Domini) / -3 V (Antevindication or Precountdown)

Imperial Rome. Caesar, Christ born. Western Empire Falls, creating a Dark Age in Europe. Heavy cavalry. Islam rises.

Gamma Ursae Minoris (Pherkad) is the Pole Star

• 2nd Millennium
A
.
D
. / -2 V

Age of Discovery. Industrial revolution, scientific method. World westernized. Man walks on the moon.

Polaris is the Pole Star

• 3rd Millennium
A
.
D
. / -1 V

First Age of Star Travel. Diamond Star found.
Croesus
Launch. Little Dark Ages. The Jihad and the Japanese Winter.
Hermetic
Launch. Rania, “The Swan Princess,” first human created by mixture of human and Monument genetic codes. Monument partly deciphered.