The Hermetic Millennia (6 page)

The illusion of equality a nearly round table might create was broken, for looming between the open horseshoe ends was a dais. At one time, the round table had been whole, but he had commanded artisans to cut away the length of table where once had sat those of his order who dared opposed his elevation from first among equals to master.

Upon the elevated dais was a judgment seat of ivory hammered over with fine gold, set on a massive base and wide, adorned by spiral narwhale tusks that gleamed like the horns of mythic unicorns and reared like spears. The high and arching backrest was adorned with the dark, triangular visage of a bull in rage.

In the deadly brightness of a sun undimmed by atmosphere, the gilded and argent chair blazed like a mirror in the desert, a striking contrast with the dark-garbed figure seated between the narwhale horns: a bright flame with a black heart.

The throne sat foursquare, and before the footstool descended six steps broad and shallow. Twelve life-sized lions hewn of black marble stood rampant in pairs, one to either side of each step, frozen in midlunge. Scribed into the surface of each stair and set with star-sapphires, a different creature or emblem representing a figure of the zodiac cowered beneath the paw of each of the twelve black lions: the throne almost seemed a chariot trampling the constellations underfoot.

The senior of the landing party of the
Hermetic
expedition, the Nobilissimus Ximen del Azarchel, called Ximen the Black, sat alone in state atop the only throne ever to exist upon the gray and lifeless globe that formed the sole remnant and remainder of his reign.

It did not seem arrogance to Del Azarchel to make his seat to match the throne of Solomon described in the Book of Kings, for he deemed himself, with his multiply augmented mind, wiser than any ancient monarch, prophet, poet, or magician. Nor did the Djinn that ancient sorcerer-king was said to have sealed in brass jars and bent to his command seem any less fearsome and terrible than Exarchel, the mind housed in the amber pillars that arose to either side of the judgment seat. Traces of fluorine hidden in each rod-logic macromolecule gave the pillars a lambent fulvous hue, as if they were hewn of transparent gold.

Del Azarchel wore the dark and silken garment of a starfarer, and needed no other sign of royalty, save only for the dark metal circlet atop his air cowl but beneath his scholar’s hood.

This was the Iron Crown of Lombardy, a band of gold and emerald segments jointed with hinges and set with precious stones in the form of crosses and flowers. Within the band was a narrow circle of iron, if legend spoke true, beaten out of one of the nails taken from the True Cross. It was the most ancient insigne of royalty surviving Christendom, and held its most precious relict, and had been kept, until late, in the Cathedral of Monza in Milan. A delta of scar tissue running upward from the corner of his right eye to beneath his cowl was a memento of an assassination attempt, and surely made the wearing of that crown painful in his brow, even under the elfin gravity of the moon. Painful or no, he did not set the crown aside.

Within the triangle of the mouth of his hood, the glint of his white teeth between dark mustachios and goatee could be glimpsed, the drops of cold fire caught in the diamonds of his iron crown, and the strange light from no-longer-human eyes.

2. The Hermeticists

He raised a hand gloved in what seemed black silk. Although there seemed to be none within the chamber to see that signal, nonetheless, upon that gesture, five of his fellow Hermeticists rose from three circular iris-hatches in the floor, drifting upward with the eerie grace only lunar gravity allowed.

The men did not quite land, nor quite walk, but moved toes against the dark deck with ballet smoothness. Their black garments rippled like silk, and silvery antiradiation mantles fluttered like capes as they passed.

All men in the wide chamber wore similar bodies. The Hermeticists in their lunar-adaptive forms were tall and emaciated, lacking in water weight, with dry cracks at lips and nostrils. Even the heaviest of them had a sunken, skull-like cast to his face, a strange leaden highlight to his skin, a side effect of the special nanomachinery lining their bones and filling their bone marrow to prevent microgravity decay. Their eyes were as mirror-shining as the eyes of a cat, or filmy as the eyes of a sea beast, for growing additional microorganisms meant to shield their eyes from accidental radiation exposure turned out, unexpectedly, to be less cumbersome than polarized faceplates or dark goggles.

Their shipsuits were built along lines opposite to those of the bulky atmospheric armor of the First Age of Space: an only mildly biomodified human skin, when mummified by skintight garb, was discovered to have sufficient tenacity to resist vacuum. A second cushion of very light material was used to hold a layer of partial atmosphere next to the skinsuit, in order to help with pressure differentials the free motion of human joints necessitated. This outer silk was like a living layer of air pockets that expanded and contracted with each movement, granting the Hermeticists an eerie shimmering to play over them, like ripples seen on the scales of restless sharks.

There were silver fittings at waist and shoulders, and the heavy ring of a collar at the neck. All the men were bald as a monks, with skull-tight cowls that covered ears and cheeks and buckled beneath the jaw. Each wore his hood drawn up, but not sealed nor inflated. Goggles and mask hung below the throat like a second face.

There were only minor variations to the uniforms.

Melchor de Ulloa was a very handsome man, even in his lunar form. He was always wreathed in smiles of bewildered good cheer and in the scent of lavender. At his throat was an ornament like chicken’s claw within a circle, representing peace, a symbol called Nero’s Cross. He was the ship’s political officer.

Narcís D’Aragó, the cold-eyed master-at-arms, dangled a powered rapier from his baldric and an Aurum pistol in his thigh holster. This weapon fired a nanotechnological smart package designed, upon impact, to disassemble nonliving material such as armor or clothing, and nonimportant material such as flesh and bone into a puddle, and next to form electroneural connections to any nerve cells it encountered floating in that puddle, such as disembodied eyeballs, brain or spinal tissue, linking those cells to the nearest signal nexus for download.

Sarmento i Illa d’Or was a man of muscular bulk, broad shouldered as a bullock, light of step even under Earthly gravity, and in his gauntleted hand an emission wand called a soul goad, used to control thralls, parolees, or courtesans modified with skull implants via shocks of pleasure or agony that left no marks. Aboard ship he had been the quartermaster, and during the time of the World Concordat, the master of the feasts.

Jaume Coronimas, who had been an engineer’s mate aboard ship, and the broadcast power master during the Concordat, wore a cowl pieced by two small holes, and through these rose from his scalp two tendrils like whip-antennae made of yellow bioprosthetic metal, and these gold tendrils swayed softly toward the signal sources in the room, peering forth from the mouth of his hood like two inquisitive snakes. His face would have been thin and gray even had his skin not been adapted toward lunar conditions.

One man was not like the others. Father Reyes y Pastor, the expedition chaplain, was in red, and wore ermine and scarlet cardinal’s robes atop his black silk. Hanging down his back was a broad-brimmed red hat with elaborate tassels upon tassels, the
galero
. The hat was not on his head, for he wore the black hood of a scholar, proud of his academic achievements above his ecclesiastical station.

The coppery eyes of the Hermeticists glinted under their hoods like red coals in the mouths of dark, triangular furnaces.

The five drifted in soundless grace to their places at the round table. Places, not seats, for no chairs were needed, nor did human legs grow weary in a world of one-sixth weight.

There were more than six score empty places to each side of them. Each empty place was covered over with long, triangular silken lengths. These were the hoods removed from the shipsuits of the departed. Their tassels hung mournfully to the deck, swaying ghostlike in the ventilation of their own internal circuits.

The Hermeticists were alone. No servant had ever set foot in this upper sanctum, not a chambermaid to sweep, not a butler to present a bulb of wine, not a technician to set to rights the thousand intricate circuits of the information systems. No unmodified human could withstand the radiation that time to time poured invisibly from naked outer space a few feet overhead, detected by the dry clicking of counters. Nor was it in the present purposes of the Hermetic Order to acquaint mankind with the full spectrum of biotechnological modifications they employed for their own uses.

Del Azarchel spoke: “Faithful and beloved friends, equal partners in my reign, partners now in my downfall, the entire living world, the Mother Earth so fair and green, is lost to us, with neither a drop from her endless seas nor a wisp of her abundant airs and winds allowed to us here.

“This Luna, this hueless world of lifelessness, through turmoil and fire we achieved with the daring theft in her orbital shipyard of the great ship
Emancipation
. Her sails, as nothing else could do, turned aside the deadly force of the mirrors of the Giants, those same orbital mirrors which burned the civilization whose glory we represent. That power became propulsion for us, for we turned death to life by that same alchemy of knowledge which assures us our supreme authority above mankind.

“As if sailing hither on a sea of fire, this dead world our new world we made, and found this ancient base, long forgotten from the First Age of Space Travel, on the far side of the moon, and far from the orbital mirrors of the Giants, and with diligent work, and not without the sacrifice of loyal servant’s lives now mourned, our genius restored it from death to life.

“Here allow me to restore our hopes. History is merely one more language the Monument Builders decoded, and only we, only we anointed few, can speak this language to issue decrees and cast spells in it.”

Del Azarchel pointed, and all the floor lit up with branch on branch of Cliometric equations.

The calculation set was profound, reaching an illusory dozens of feet down below what now seemed a crystal floor. De Ulloa cried out in awe, Sarmento grunted, and the golden antennae of Coronimas perked up in surprise. Reyes y Pastor crossed himself, and even the impassive masklike face Narcís D’Aragó twitched and raised an eyebrow.

3. The Allotment of the Eons

Del Azarchel addressed the remnant of the Hermetic Order.

“Each of you have seen the Cliometric projections. Some lines of evolution are dead ends. One will break through to the next level of intellectual topography, an event horizon of human augmentation beyond which no predictions can be made. Study the chessboard, gentlemen! Where would you make your move? Not just Montrose, but human nature and inhuman entropy are all your oppositions in this game. Learned Melchor de Ulloa, you speak first.”

Melchor de Ulloa spread his supine hands, a gesture that could have been used either to placate or to beg alms. His voice was honey. “A society where everyone’s rights are respected produces liberty and this produces invention, discovery, change, and evolution. The main hindrances to man’s ever-upward triumph are hatred, aggression, and fear. The only cure is toleration, education, and the growth of institutions based not on rigid rules and dogmatism, but on open-minded willingness to attempt all options, seek all experiments, try all, dare all, risk all: and thus will man discover all. This willingness is based on social factors independent of political economic structures: it is the artistic vision, the worldview, of the consensus of the people that eventually shapes society.

“Scientifically speaking, this consensus is based on structures in the lower brain, related to various subconscious symmetry-recognition ganglia whose nature we have examined intimately during our work to elevate the Cetaceans to sapience. The Monument describes eighty-one nonverbal communications systems, of which one, music, is comprehensible to the nervous patterns of mammalian Earthly life.

“Artistic vision fathers cultural values, not the other way around; all moral codes are merely the epiphenomena of the irrational subconscious, and of the dreams only freedom can free. I see the doubt on your features, gentlemen, but I can demonstrate my claims with a simple spline equation. Give me control not of the laws nor the religions nor philosophy of man, but merely of their music, and I can guide Man to the Asymptote.”

Del Azarchel said, “I have already set in motion what is needful to destroy the Giants, and set the humans of normal intellect free from their control. I foretell a dieback, and Dark Ages lasting until the Fifth Millennium. Once this is accomplished, I will grant to you between the years
A.D.
4000 to
A.D.
5000 to play out your experiment. Remake mankind as you wish. Learned Narcís D’Aragó, I see you object.”

Narcís D’Aragó stood as if at parade rest, hands clasped behind his back. His voice was ice. “Let us talk no more of natural right, or of phlogiston, or of fairy godmothers. Does a man have a natural right to life? That is quaint poetry, but let him beat against the waves of the sea when he is drowning to see what rights nature gives.

“We should stick to facts. The fact is that rights are artificial, a legal fiction, a man-made mechanism to increase group survival value, nothing more. Justice is strength. Without strength is no survival—and all rational moral codes have survival as their object.

“You recall the Fifth Postulate of the Negative Sum divarication proof? It proves that the individual cannot survive without the group, and the group cannot survive unless the individual is willing to die for it. What is needed for mankind is logic, the stern and simple logic of survival.

“The existence of religion—pardon me, Father, but it is true—is based on a genetic marker inclining toward mystical altruism, all men being brothers and all that saccharine fluff.