The Hermetic Millennia (33 page)

I served him well, Reyes y Pastor, and sabotaged the efforts of others who served him, and I flattered and fawned and lied, so that he was pleased with me, and he thought I loved him when my only feeling for him was absolute terror.

But my deception prevailed, and I alone was spared when many hundreds of his men, serfs, and loyal servants were slaughtered to keep the atrocity of Yap Island secret from all recorded history.

Do you see now why I will aid the Judge of Ages, and why I did not tell the Blue lordlings of my moot with Pastor? No man, unless he were a Hormagaunt in truth, could hear of such enormities and not vow eternal war against the Master of the World, or whichever of his Hermetic vassals presently wears in his name his iron crown.

5. Madness

I know the fate of Master of Fate: in the Year of his Lord 7466, Reyes y Pastor went mad.

Still in his household, I served, and I saw it all. Reyes began talking about a king in outer space who has a child but no wife, and Father Reyes was urging but not ordering his servitors and slaves to serve this king.

Reyes then enacted a strange make-believe type of glandular donation, but using bread instead of real glands from real children, wine instead of real blood. But he insisted that these are the proper mechanisms for producing the biochemical change into a new organism, which he called a glorified body.

Within the next few years, some of the other Hormagaunts were given an office as “Shepherds”—even though there were no sheep—and were called “Father” as Father Reyes was—even though they sired no sons.

The Fathers not only spread this imaginary biochemical change, but some also wandered the newly treeless lands, telling Iatrocrats that to kill and consume children was forbidden, telling the Clades to welcome the stranger and the sojourner, telling Donors to obey their masters in all things, but to disobey when ordered to cease to serve the imaginary space king, and to rejoice in the death that this disobedience would provoke.

The Old True Way was openly defied, and this new way, this thing for which we had no name, spread from the Pacific Islands through Indonesia to Indochina through Angkor to Tabrobane. It sounded like the Nymph-talk, but it was a nonsexual form of sex, a nonhomosexual nonincestuous form of brother-love: indeed, in its name, some of the Clades forswore reproduction altogether and became eremites, living in isolation and begging the king in outer space to forgive the crimes of the world.

Others of the Clade-folk took one and only one mate, freeing their harems and studs, and they claimed their flesh was one, but they did not consume each other or make the flesh to be one. Nor did they mate only in the mating times and seasons, but for lifelong. Bowers of blooming flowers they grew to solemnize and celebrate this wonder, even though it was nothing but reproduction using sexual organs to exchange fluid, rather than the more dignified and hygienic pods and matrices. They used the old instruments of long-vanished Witches to compose songs about this, called Epithalamia, and the songs were very fair to the ear, so that even Hormagaunts would weep to hear. It was insanity, and did not serve the progress of the race toward posthumanity, but it was a beautiful insanity.

Reyes y Pastor called himself the Master of the World, and Lord of History. Who could have stopped him and his madness? But one did. The real Master of the World sent another down from the darkness of heaven, from the morning star, your ship.

Sudden war and horror came, so swift and so complete that no mortal could have compassed it, only a posthuman. First, the foe raised a storm. How you posthumans can command the weather, I do not understand, but I saw it.

During this typhoon, Medusae dropped down suddenly from the night sky in many vessels as silver as fish and swifter than hawks. From these vessels, tendrils like the arms of Scylla reached down and plucked up and tore asunder all the Hormagaunts, Donors, and Clades found in the open.

All who served the make-believe king of space were slain by the real space lord, the Master of the World. Up from the sea, their approach hidden by the tidal wave, came Hormagaunts from Annam, offended at those who spoke against the One True Way. And there were diverse earthquakes in many places, wherever a rainbow of light reached down from outer space and touched the bottom of the sea.

Then one descended from the vehicle of the Medusae dressed as an Hermeticist, in the black silks of a starfarer. He had two tendrils made of biometallic gold issuing from his skull above his eyes. I did not know what it was I saw, but the coming years revealed what it was: This was the first of the Locusts. The time of the Red Hermeticist was done; the time of the Locust Hermeticist was come.

The cathedrals and nunneries and other buildings were inflicted with rabies, so that the doors all closed and those inside were digested and slain. No innocent life was spared, and those who did not resist were not killed cleanly but by slow torture, cut with knives so that strings of his own flesh could tie the victim between two fires to which wood was added one stick at a time. They were infected, so that when other prisoners were released from cages made of the bones of their loved ones, the infections afflicted sight and reasoning centers, so that these would-be saviors merely lit themselves aflame or brought more harm on the victim, much to the amusement of the Annam Hormagaunts.

I saw the coffin of the Red Hermeticist being loaded aboard the airskiff of the Medusa, but whether this was a slumbering coffin or a death coffin, I could not say.

History has heard nothing more of Reyes y Pastor.

And I? You know how I escaped. I fled to your Tombs for protection, Judge of Ages, knowing this the one place the Hermeticists could not come. That is how I came to be your prisoner.

What? No. No tales I told the Blue Men were truth, though perhaps some parts were closer to true than others. What right have they to ask anything of me?

8

The Testament of Oenoe the Nymph

1. The Tale of a Bride of a Dead World

After noon mess, a pack of eight dog things escorted Menelaus past the gate to the large sky blue nautilus shell.

There was a warm and steady headwind from the doorless opening as he entered, which stayed in his face as he climbed. The air pressure was slightly higher inside than out. Menelaus decided that the Simplifiers either had a religious prohibition on doors and chimneys and windows, or a deliberate preference for pretty but uncomfortable impracticalities. Not to mention lots of fuel to waste.

He was brought around one more half turn of the corridor, reaching a higher but smaller chamber than before. Here, a different architecture suddenly appeared. The floor was coated with living grass, surrounding a depression in the center of the floor where a green pool thronged with floating lotus blossoms shimmered. As the dogs escorted him in, a screen of leaves and lianas closed over the opening, moving just slowly enough to be unnoticeable. This living screen of leafy vines was the first curtain he had seen inside the nautilus shell; and the only barrier to the wind. The air within was humid and warm.

On the grass lay draped the beautiful curvaceous form of a She-Nymph, her midnight hair like a waterfall of ink, shining, falling in drapes and cascades adown her swanlike neck and slender shoulders. Generations of gene-modification had exaggerated her various sexual characteristics to a point just shy of absurdity. Her eyes were slanted and lustrous, so large as to seem a child’s eyes. Her eyes were underlined by an epicanthic fold, and shaded by eyelashes like two raven’s wings. Her face was round and high-cheeked, her lips so full and red, they seemed to burst with blood. The chin beneath was small and firm, coming to a dainty point. Her breasts were like those of a pregnant woman, while her waist was that of an untouched maiden, and the muscles of her belly formed a parenthesis around a perfect navel. Her designers graced her with wide hips sweetly rounded, long legs that were a symphony of curving length, firm thighs and pointed toes, all muscled like a slumbering lioness.

Even her hands and arms were more feminine than nature’s own design, as her elbows had more than normal range of motion at the joint, that when she straightened her arms they bent slightly backwards, graceful as a willow tree in wind.

Her blush response was likewise exaggerated. A she reclined, her flawless skin shaded from palest gold to lambent yellow like aged ivory to a rose red, and back again. One moment her skin seemed almost tawny, a goddess in warm bronze, but in the next moment her skin was so pale that the blue hint of arterial veins in her bosom could be glimpsed.

She wore nothing but a V-shaped garland of flowering lianas bright with little blue flowers and white, that snaked around her hips like a braided loincloth and fell in two ankle-length sashes trailing in meandering loops between her legs.

Several dog things hunkered near the walls, panting in the sauna-heat. The two Blue Men were seated cross-legged on the grassy floor, calmly sweating, having not removed their coats. The elder, Mentor Ull, regarded the Nymph with eyes as cold as a snake’s, and his half-closed lids gave him a sleepy look. Preceptor Illiance wore an expression of meditative serenity.

The Nymph was agitated, her eyes glancing left and right, and she lifted her hands nervously to toy with her hair now and again, or she swayed from left to right, reclining now on one rounded, marvelous hip, now tucking her long legs the other way to recline on the other. When Menelaus entered the room, she tossed back her hair in the flurry of darkness, her red lips parted, and she looked not quite toward him with hunger, and her dark eyes were like coals, and her pupils dilated hypnotically. He could sense the unscented natural perfume of a woman in heat from across the chamber like a kick to the back of his skull.

Illiance spoke without any preliminary, saying, “Lance-Corporal Beta Anubis, after some consideration, we have agreed to your demand that we depose a woman of the Nymph race. Frankly, we do not see how this will sate the academic curiosity which is part of your purpose in aiding us—she is not from an era of decline. However, Preceptor Ull agrees to host the interview of her, provided you also elicit answers to the questions that concern us. You seek to discover if the Tombs are hindering progress; we seek knowledge of the Tomb origins. Of the Nymphs so far exhumed, this relict is the only one from an era that is most likely to satisfy our mutual interests.”

Menelaus replied in High Iatric, “Preceptor Illiance, you may not know it, but you are afflicting this poor girl. Neither you nor the dog things here are giving her the normal nonverbal sexual cues she is used to, and so her body is automatically trying to become more sexually provocative. She might not even be consciously aware of it. Try to smile or get an erection or something. Give off musk. Do you have any cellular control over your bodies?”

Illiance said, “Our life modifications are almost entirely neurological, with hormonal and circulatory modifications no more than necessary than those to maintain balanced mental functions during high-speed neural activity.”

Ull spoke in Intertextual.
“Achieve discreet silence. It is not advisable for the relict to happen to grow aware of our biomodifications and limits.”

Illiance inclined his head toward Ull.
“May I reveal sufficient to quell his question? Otherwise the psychological discontent will resonate through the remainder of our dealings.”

Ull flicked his heavy-lidded eyes in a gesture of assent.

Illiance said to Menelaus, “We cannot mimic these subconscious responses. We are based on the Locust template, who, in order to achieve greater social harmony, are genetically imprinted to form lifelong pair-bonds. You may explain this to the she-relict before you ask her about the Tomb origins.”

“And you might explain what is wrong with all you future people? Why is everyone a nudist? She might be able to concentrate if you gave her some clothes. Hell, I might be able to concentrate better.”

“Like you, she seems to have haply refused our gift, and she tore the overalls and threw them at the muzzle of Follower Ee-ee Krkok Yef Yepp in a gesture we found disharmonious. The meaning of this act is obscure to us, and we ponder whether it was symbolic or functional, and in what proportions.”

“Which dog is Eek-Crap-Uck-Yuck-Whatever-the-heck-you-said?”

“Ee-ee Krkok Yef Yepp. Yonder.” Illiance inclined his head toward a stately Doberman Pincer. His eyes were bright, and he was wagging his tail happily.

“You want me to ask her about that too?”

Illiance said, “Our purposes mingle with yours, but do not seek to overpower them.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It may be. What is that loud breathing noise you make with your mouth?”

“It’s called a sigh. The technical term is exasperation. I never thought I’d miss having an Alpha bark orders at me, but at least they told you what they wanted cleaned or who they wanted killed. Learn something new every day, I guess.”

Illiance raised both hands and touched his forefingers, one to each ear, making a gesture that meant nothing to Menelaus. He said with quiet pride, “To lead a soul to new learning, however trivial, sustains the universal imperative of life.”

Menelaus answered nothing to that, but instead stepped forward and knelt by the pool in a slithering rustle of his bulky metallic robes. His face was already red from the heat, and he shrugged one arm and shoulder out of his garb, so that it hung over the other shoulder like a toga. With his naked arm he plucked a lotus blossom from the pond and tossed it lightly toward the Nymph, saying in her language, “For your delight.”

She rose to her feet and came swaying toward him, more graceful than a sinuous snake. “I have much for your delight, young bridegroom.”

He lowered his eyes and held up his hand. “While I am flattered, ma’am, I—” But his tongue failed him at that moment, because she did not stop her ballerina-smooth glide forward, so that his upturned palm was now pressed into the yielding and scenting flesh of her lower belly. Little flowers crinkled under his surprised fingers, and he was afraid to look up for fear of where his nose might land.