The Hermetic Millennia (29 page)

“You do not hold such a person exists?”

Asvid said, “Rather, I hope for his sake he does not. For were there a Judge to which the suffering multitudes and slaves and slain children could appeal, he would have heard their cry, and condemned this age long since. If he were real, and so indifferent to his duty, surely I would slay him.”

We departed separately, for in our present forms, we could neither embrace, not so much as a handshake, and dared not exchange the kiss of peace, lest the allergic reactions sicken us. He spread vast wings of membrane and took to the air, and I bowed my head and dived into the black and rushing water, the river tumbling to the sea.

I knew we would never meet again. The Phastormoot was the summons of the loyal. And Asvid was no longer numbered among them. Nor, truth be told, was I. The Wintermind technique allowed me to resist the homing instinct implanted in me. I fled in the opposite direction, from Thule to Vinland and south again to New England, Columbia, Virginia.

Therefore I know Reyes y Pastor exists, because he summoned me. I know the Judge of Ages does not exist, because if he did, Reyes y Pastor would have been judged, and slain.

You have been patient to hear the whole of my life, for the whole of my life was needed to tell what I knew of Pastor. My life was hell. Pastor is the maker and master of hell, the chief tormentor. That is what I know of him.

I assumed Asvid would be alive when I was thawed. Legend said nothing could kill the Old Man, the First of the Phastorlings: and the longer I lived with him, the more I thought the legend true.

He is not here, is he?

10. Wintermind

After Soorm was done speaking, Illiance said in High Iatric to Menelaus, “You have heard the testament of the relict Hormagaunt. Did his words happen to open to you a more complete understanding of the causes of the decline of Hormagaunt civilization, or yours?”

Menelaus said, “I’ll say. Do you two gentlemen have any reason to doubt his tale?”

Illiance said cautiously, “No obvious element contradicts a known fact preserved in our historical records. On that level, it seems not to be a complete fiction.”

Ull gestured toward the dog thing hunched over the table of readouts. “We have some cause, in the absence of contrary evidence, to suspect that there is no deliberate deceit being practiced.”

Menelaus said, “Well, I just found out my entire search for the causes of the decline and fall of world empires is a fraud. There is no natural law or inevitable tendency to be found. If Soorm is right, history is controlled by some sort of mathematical science of statistics, and empires fall because the men who control that science, the Hermetic Order, decree it shall fall. I thought I was a doctor looking for the natural cause of a disease. I’m not. I am a detective looking for the poison used by an assassin.

“Where are the assassins now?” Menelaus continued. “Or doesn’t this tale ring any bells with you gentlemen? Were you aware that this current era of world history now is under the control of one of the Hermeticists? If so, which one? If not, why were you not informed?”

Ull said ponderously, “The simple academic reciprocity demanded by our way has been sated. You have asked your questions and had them answered.”

“Not quite,” said Menelaus. “I am also curious about the reasons for the decline of your civilization, my little blue guys. You cannot tell me you are still a going concern, can you? How many of you are left?”

Illiance said in a pedantic voice, “You show great charity to be concerned for our tribulations, but it appears best to accept your aid in the modes conformable to the contours of the situation, which is, to have you assist us in translation, rather than to answer a deposition. There is no need, at present, to rule out an expansion of such a broader basis for accepting your aid; but the matter is of lower priority at the moment.”

Ull said, “Ask him of this Wintermind of which he speaks. We have no referent for it.”

Menelaus translated the question.

Soorm had no eyebrows to raise, but something of a supercilious expression came over his stiff seal-like features when he goggled his eyes and gaped his shark-toothed mouth in a grin.

He spoke no word, but raised his hand and pointed with a webbed finger at the table on which the dog thing’s equipment rested. After a moment, the instrument began to whistle like a steam kettle, while the dog thing leaped to its hind legs and frantically touched control-points and clicked toggles and slapped mirror surfaces. Some crucial part of the mechanism failed: the little lights dotting the coral surfaces flared up and went dark, and all the mirrors faded to a dull gray.

Menelaus drew his hood up in order to hide his expression of disgust or anger.

But neither Ull nor Illiance seemed in the least perturbed. Mentor Ull said to Illiance in the fluting of the intertextual language of the Locusts,
“Wintermind is a primitive form of the Mind Discipline.”

Illiance opened his eyes wider.
“Instruct me, Mentor. I can see that it is a manifestation of biosoftware—the training that must be ingrained rather than implanted via needle. I see also that mental structures of the third order would be needed to instruct our detector to self-destruct. But how do you deduce that this is related to our Discipline?”

Mentor Ull said,
“The Mind Discipline contains systemic neural pulses and alterations of brain wave frequency to alter internal mind states. Reference that relict Soorm scion Asvid used what he called Wintermind to break instinctive genetically imposed control-methods or addictions, including the naturally addictive epiphenomena of family love, which can be interpreted to be just such an internal mind state.”

Illiance nodded gravely.
“Insightful! This suggests that your previous plan to use torment to deter uncooperative or inharmonious thought forms found in the organism is nugatory.”

Mentor Ull favored him with a dark and reptilian look.
“Is that your sole concern? The subjective well being of these erratic and misshapen ancestral creatures? We may be able to deduce which aspect of the Divarication formula was used to create this discipline form.”

Illiance said,
“That aspect seems unclear, Mentor.”

Mentor Ull said,
“Not to a mind fixed and attentive, Student, cleared of complexity and distraction! The initial evidence suggests a mental but not neurological use of the Continuity Code, which is the sixth of the seven solutions of the Divarication problem, used specifically to overcome the Addiction divarication, which occurs in any information system where units enter a positive feedback loop—merely stimulating their pleasure reward without performing the act that merits it. The Continuity Code adds the mechanism of time-binding, so that short-term gain no longer overwhelms long-term loss. Is it not significant that the Hormagaunts were effectively immortal?”

Illiance said,
“These conclusions remain tentative. It would be untoward to share this speculation with the—”
He glanced at Menelaus.
“—ah, with, ah whomever may be taking an interest in the research.”

Mentor Ull said,
“You refer to the Expositors of our Order gathered at Mount Misery? Agreed. We cannot approach greater certainty until we interview a Nymph, and determine the characteristics of the social-psychological control mechanisms involved in the communal relations of the Natural Order of Man.”

Mentor Ull said to Menelaus in High Iatric, “With our deception-detection equipment in disorder, no further testament is needed at this time. Tell the relict Soorm scion Asvid that the Followers will escort him, and you, back to the confinement area.”

Menelaus said to Soorm in Leech, “The blue lordling says the dog things will drag us back to the prison yard, thanks to your blowing up their lie detector. We’re dismissed.”

7

The Old Man of Albion

1. A Private Place for Private Deeds

The next day, it was snowing, and no work could be done at the dig. Instead, the machines of the Blue Men crouched beneath a snapping, wind-tossed tarpaulin, cleaning and oiling their blades and spades with an endlessly repeated gesture like the gleeful hand-wringing of misers, or perhaps like flies washing. The snow was blowing vertically, not quite parallel to the sloping ground, and the horn had not sounded for the mess tent.

Each individual was in the tent assigned him. Whether that could be said of the lone figure leaving a temporary line of naked footprints in the snow was a matter of semantics. His tent was folded around him like a hooded cloak, and he carried the long train of metallic fabric over his arm, like a senator of old holding the drape of a toga, or a princess in a trailing gown suddenly found without her maidens of honor.

He came to one of the tents and shouted a halloo. He waited unanswered for a while, and shouted and shouted again.

“Hail and parley! Weapons down!”

Eventually the tent flap drew open, revealing the scowling dark-furred beast-face of Soorm the Hormagaunt.

“I am armed with a rock, and my name is Beta Sterling Anubis. May I enter?” The hooded man spoke in Leech.

“Think you I so soon forget?” rumbled Soorm.

“To introduce myself by weapon and name is merely a Chimerical custom.”

“How odd. You do not smell like a Chimera.”

“Easily explained. I am a Beta, and imperfect. The other Chimerae in the camp are Alpha, well bred of long bloodlines. May I enter?”

“No. I will exit. The tent cloth can be stiffened without warning by an electric signal to form a nearly airtight prison, and I have no wish to be trapped in a small space with you. The Blues doubtless have other sleights and oddities they could perform as well, while their substance is around us. Come!”

The big dark-furred man lumbered out of the tent and, taking the arm of Menelaus, stalked toward the trees not far away, pine and spruce conical hats of snow, from which the wind drew plumes. Without waiting for an invitation, Soorm parted the garments of Anubis and put a furry arm around him, drawing the material of the robes of Menelaus around him for warmth. Menelaus made no protest, but walked huddled up to the other man, his head almost in his armpit.

Soorm said, “You show no fear to walk so nigh a Hormagaunt? I have both virulent pus and stench-cloud I can emit from several orifices, and beneath my hairs are needles I could stiffen into barbs.”

“It’s not that I am all that brave, it’s just that I figure we are all going to be killed by the Blue Men soon enough anyhow, so why worry? Besides, there aren’t that many people in the camp you can talk with. Who speaks Leech, but me?”

“Come, then. Let us walk up farther, and find a private place for private deeds. Your feet do not freeze, or bleed?”

Menelaus said, “My boots were stolen from my coffin while I slept. Made from the hide of a gator I shot myself, and I was damn proud of those boots! One of the Hospitaliers drew tattoos for me under the skin of my foot, with heating elements inside. Don’t tell my superiors, please. Chimerae have rules about bodily modifications.”

Soorm with his huge stride set a quick pace, and he dragged or drove an uncomplaining Menelaus to where a cliff clove the mountainside. Far underfoot between two converging rock walls, a rushing stream emerged, bubbling, from a doorway in the mountainside. The leaves of the door hung open at an odd angle, half torn from their hinges.

To either side of the doorway, a coffin stood upright, and glints of energy played through their metal surfaces. The waters in the stream swirled around the wreckage of several of the digging automata of the Blue Men. These formed a tangle of metal spiders and metal lobsters, and one treaded vehicle like a tortoise on its back. All were motionless in the white water, icicle streaked, pockmarked, broken, and burnt.

Soorm said. “Look down! I call this spot the Dying Place. The only approach is so narrow that the mechanisms have to come one or two at a time; even a small display of power from the Tomb defenses can hold them off. The Blue Men did not bother to scavenge their fallen.”

Menelaus said, “I know you can breathe water. Can you pass these defenses?”

Soorm tightened his arm, pulling the head of Menelaus closer into his musk-scenting armpit, and he caught the smaller man’s neck in the crook of his elbow. “No, I meant to show you a place where I can commit a murder, and no one would find your body.”

The man stirred uneasily, and this made the Hormagaunt snarl.

“
Boo!
You are pretending to be scared. Don’t bother! I can smell you are not afraid.” Soorm peered at the other carefully, first with one eye, then with the other, nostrils twitching. His muzzle whiskers close enough to tickle. “
Altruism and Agape!
Why are you fearless? What in the world is wrong with you!”

“It is a Chimera technique for controlling fear,” said Menelaus in little gasps. “All schoolboys learn it in boot camp.”

“I can also smell lies. That’s my technique! Quite useful.”

“Interesting … that so … useful … a technique … can fail.” His voice was little more than a squeak.

Soorm released the neck of Menelaus, but kept his arm around the other man, perhaps for warmth.

Menelaus massaged his throat. “You have odd swearwords.”

“Everyone swears by what he fears most.”

“You said you came to appreciate the benefit of altruism. When Asvid adopted you as a father. You still fear cooperative action?”

“Bah! We never overcome what is imprinted into us as eggs, or so Hormagaunt Moord taught me.”

“A dismal philosophy, but I suppose he learned it when he was young. In any case, I wanted to speak with you,” said Menelaus. “I think the Blue Men plan to kill us all, in order to hide the evidence of this dig. If they were legitimate, they would have their own translators and diggers, rather than have us do their work.”

“You are not going to ask me why I just threatened to spit flesh-eating acid in your face, twist off your head like a chicken, and throw your twitching body into the freezing rapids below?”