The Hermetic Millennia (56 page)

“Spooky. I can solve that mystery for you.”

“Unlikely. The event happened in
A.D.
7985, some seven hundred and fifty-five years before I was born, and I have described none of the details, nor the dispositions of the various investigations—”

“The Judge of Ages killed him.”

“What?”

“Just like he did Narcís D’Aragó, the Iron Hermeticist. Just like he tried to do with Sarmento i Illa D’Or, but failed. The method was the same, the means used was the same.”

“And his motive?” asked Illiance, his eyes bright and intent.

Menelaus shrugged. “You’d have to ask him. If you find him. Why are you looking for him, again, exactly?”

“The motive I can deduce,” said Illiance. “At least in this last case. During the Age of the Scorpions, rival groups of Locusts were hunting one another to extinction, including those who took refuge in long-term hibernation. There was, only four years before the murder, a worldwide effort to seize control of all known Tombs sites, to allow the Noösphere a more rational control over the ratio of population numbers hibernating versus thawed.”

“Gee, you mean this famous Coronimas guy got good and beefed dead because he trespassed on the Tomb system? Do you suppose he dug up coffins, and stole stuff from people? What in the world could ever, oh, ever have driven the Judge of Ages to such a random and unforeseeable act of violence?”

“The question also perturbs me,” said Illiance, his face earnest. “It is to determine the contours of the psychology of this Judge of Ages that we here and now gather the testimony of the final of the ancient relicts.

“We have determined,” Illiance continued, “at least in part, the meaning of the Judgments of the Judge of Ages from relict Ctesibius Zant; likewise, the other question, referring to the meaning of the manipulation of history, may well be answered by the other surviving ancient relict.

“Ah, we are arrived!” Illiance interrupted himself. “The interment date on his coffin is given as
A.D.
3090, but we disregard this, for we have cause to believe this was merely the final in a series of hibernations, since DNA analysis places his generation in the late 2400s, making him the earliest relict recovered so far, and his information correspondingly valuable. This one proved tremendously recalcitrant: We were moved to fearsome measures.”

2. The Widow

The walls here were bright with luminous lichen. In the chamber was a coffin, apparently still in working order. Only the top third was open. Inside was an albino with a Negro cast of features, with a flattish nose, bold face, and full lips: but he was in no way black, since there was not one speck of melanin in his skin cells, nor in his hair, which was a striking silvery white, thick, and braided close to his skull. The hair did not look like the gray hairs of age, for the strands were rich and healthy.

The man was below the surface of the medical fluid, but he was not frozen or suspended, for his eyes moved under their eyelids, like a dreamer’s in sleep. Cables ran from plugs in his spine and skull out of the coffin to several small machines on a mat on the floor. The mat was one of the coats of the Blue Men, with its sleeves and other flaps unfolded, so it looked like a jeweled rug shaped almost like a triangle.

Seated in lotus position on the mat, tending the machines, was a woman of the Blue Man race, the first one Menelaus had seen. He looked at her with some interest.

She was dressed in a simple white garment from neck to waist, and wearing what looked like bloomers below, which was the same undergarment the males wore. Her features were fragile, elfin, and her scalp was bald of hair. Aside from eyes slightly larger than the males, and lips more delicate of mold, the sexual differences were minimal. She was flat-chested and slender-hipped. She wore no ornament, nor anything to emphasize her femininity.

For some reason, there were no dog things here as guards.

Illiance said, “This is Aanwen, eternally bereaved.”

Menelaus said, “Eternally?”

Illiance said, “Her husband did not survive their thaw. The Simplifiers do not remarry.”

“Wait a minute!
Their
thaw? Is she a revenant?”

Illiance peered up at his face. “Why does that question interest you?”

“Ah—no reason. I was just thinking that she might be immune from the terrifying vengeance the Judge of Ages is going to pour down on your heads like fire from heaven. On account of she’s his client and he has to protect her.”

“You said you thought the Judge of Ages was myth.”

Menelaus shrugged. “I can always hope.”

Illiance nodded. “The sentiment is noble and simple enough to be spoken by one of our order. Perhaps, Beta Sterling Anubis, you will consider renouncing the tedious conflicts of the artificial duties of your false life, and becoming as we are.”

“What, you look for recruits for your boot camp? You want I should paint myself blue? I’m flattered. Or insulted. Not sure which.”

Illiance said, “My offer, admittedly, has nuances of valuation not immediately evident. In any case, as are you, we are moved by hope.”

“What are you hoping for?”

“We hope to find the Judge of Ages.”

“He will punish you, probably kill you. I would use an indelicate term involving anal copulation and venereal disease, but there is a lady present.”

“We also hope he will be merciful.”

“You willing to bet money on that?”

“Wagering is an unnecessary complexity of life.”

“Well, you are a more reckless gambler than any I’ve seen. Want to hedge your bet? Maybe if you put everything back where you found it.
Exactly
where you found it. For example, why the hell is there a coffin here? Why is that man in it?” Menelaus looked at the monitors winking on the footplate of the coffin. “He is not even sick.”

Illiance said, “Aanwen is the closest thing we have to a cryotechnician. The coffin circuits contain a microbrain with interface systems we can jury-rig to access the cybernetics of this relict. He is a race called the Scholars, also called by the older name, Psychoi. They are perhaps the oldest of the artificial races of man, even though their modifications are minor: some intelligence augmentation; a set of cybernetic membrane locks used to download information into an infosphere of a type long, long extinct. Aanwen assures us she can compel the relict to cooperate, because she can introduce both hallucinations and intense pain into the nervous system, as well as detect deceptive intent and pick up certain simple surface reactions—”

“Hold it. Hold it. You robbed a coffin out of the Tombs and are perverting it from its original function, which was to protect and heal the client; but instead you are using it as a torture rack?”

Illiance nodded with an unearthly serenity on his features. “The metaphor is accurate.”

“The Judge of Ages is going to kill you painfully.”

“We hope we can placate him.”

“Painfully and slowly. Do you little blue twerps know what you are messing with?”

Illiance shook his head. “The first principle of negative information calculus is that the volume of the unknown is always greater than the volume of the known. It is in an attempt to discover ‘what we are messing with’ that we perform these regrettable acts. The relict speaks a dialect of the language of the Eldest World Concordat, called Spanish, which we cannot comprehend. As I mentioned, the coffin plates indicate an interment date of
A.D.
3090, far later than the last known record of his race. I have outlined the areas of our interest; he will be returned, hale and whole, to the camp once we have the needed information.”

Illiance turned toward the Blue Woman and spoke in a fluid tongue of soft hisses. She made an adjustment on her machine.

The eyes of the albino man in the coffin opened, and focused on Illiance. (Menelaus happened to be standing by the controls near the head of the coffin, and hence out of the line of sight.) The albino’s mouth did not move, but a squawk emerged from some hidden speaker in the coffin surface, followed by the staccato sound of a harsh and glottal language of short-syllabled words.

“You understand this speech.” Illiance was looking inquisitively at Menelaus. “Your pupil dilations and subconscious tells show a commensurate reaction to the information volume.”

“The language is Korrekthotspeek, an artificially created dialect of English, Spanish, and Loglangwoj,” reported Menelaus in a dry voice. “He is cursing you, which is kind of sad, because artificial languages never have enough words for real heart-to-heart cussing.”

Illiance was unperturbed. “Had he proved tractable, he would not be in an unfortunate situation. Is there any worthwhile information in this stream of words?”

“Like I said, it is not like a real man’s language. He is calling you unintelligent, saying that you indulge in emotions of hostility—particularly race-hatred, misogyny, and hatred of practitioners of sexual deviancy—and he is accusing you of harboring inflexible or stereotyped opinions that you have judged before all the evidence is in. They don’t have a word for ‘sin’ or ‘evil’ in their language: all they can say is a word that means ‘judgment before all the evidence is in.’”

Illiance nodded, musing. “They are a race of scholars; so to them, of course, a premature judgment, without due consideration of all available information, would be the subject of opprobrium. What is he saying now?”

“More of the same. He is repeating himself, because they don’t have many curses in their tongue. Can I talk to him? Open a mic for me.”

Illiance gestured at Aanwen, who touched one of her machines. Menelaus spoke in a language that sounded like music. The harsh staccato tongue cut off. Then the voice from the coffin spoke again, hesitatingly. Menelaus answered. Laughter came from the coffin.

Illiance said, “What did you say?”

“I told him to curse in Spanish. It is a much better language for cursing. He agreed. Now he says that you are uglier than the buttocks of a monkey and that your brother has no groin.”

Illiance nodded. “The first is a matter of aesthetic judgment where reasonable people can differ; the second is accurate only in an ontological sense. Ask him about the Judge of Ages. We suspect he must know something of him, or else he would not have been stored in this location. Remind him delicately that we can stimulate the pain center of his brain.”

Menelaus said, “I’ll get him to talk, if you agree to thaw him fully and take him out of there. No more torture, no more misuse of the coffin. Is it a deal?”

Illiance said, “Were I to make such an agreement, it may happen that I would encounter criticism from my peers.”

“You more afraid of your peers than of your goddam conscience?”

“Your question contains an obscurity whose import I fail to grasp.”

Menelaus said, “What if that was Aanwen in the coffin? You said she was a revenant. Maybe she was only in for a day or a year, but you never know how long you will be under, because you are utterly, ridiculously helpless when you slumber, ain’t you? She just climbed in and put her faith in the future. This guy, whoever he is, put the same faith in the future when he climbed in—and that is a faith you betrayed.”

Illiance said thoughtfully, “You imply that I am under a moral obligation to a person of whom I know nothing, an obligation to which I never agreed, based on a reciprocity which, to be frank, is theoretical rather than actual.”

“Are you a civilized human being?”

“Perhaps too civilized.”

“But human?”

“I am human.”

“Then you agreed.”

“I fail to see—”

Menelaus held up his hand and interrupted. “It does not matter whether Aanwen, or you, or me, will ever be in the same position of weakness and helplessness you found this albino in. Maybe you are strong or smart or lucky enough to prey on others without being preyed upon. Maybe no one will ever torture you, rob you, or kill you. That does not matter. What matters is you lost the
right
to object. You are not being tortured or killed merely because of a lucky accident, not because you deserve it. You deserve torment. Do you want to deserve better? Then act better. Otherwise, we got no deal, and I get out my rock and kill you and the girl and I wait and see how many dog things that come running I can take with me as an escort into hellfire when we all die together. You’ve already called some dogs here using your gems, haven’t you? Told ’em to come a-running? They’ll never make it in time.”

Illiance said, “I have called no Followers. Why do you think you can threaten us? Aanwen and I are both armed with sophisticated and powerful weapons.”

“Really? Draw.”

Menelaus was somewhat surprised that Illiance actually went for his weapon.

Menelaus closed the distance between them before Illiance could even close his fingers on his pistol grip. As Illiance pulled the jeweled energy weapon from its inner holster, Menelaus jabbed both his hands at the face of Illiance, right curled but not closed in a fist, the left hand open. Illiance instinctively put his hand up to block, but it was his gun hand, so that for a split-second he was not holding it tightly, nor pointing it at Menelaus. Instead of landing either blow of his odd, two-handed punch, the left hand of Menelaus caught the wrist of Illiance while the right hand closed its fingers on the barrel and snatched the gun free.

In a continuation of the same motion, Menelaus spun and threw the gun at the face of Aanwen, who was drawing her own weapon. She had the same instinctive nervous-system reaction as Illiance, and put her hand up to block. Menelaus stooped and yanked up the jeweled coat she was sitting on, sending her and her machines toppling pell-mell in an atrocious clatter. He then threw the coat over her head and grabbed her, pinning both arms to her sides, and he swung in a huge half circle, so that her legs caught Illiance across the upper body, throwing him to the floor. Menelaus aimed a kick at one of the small machines connected to the coffin and punted it into the hard substance of the wall. The mechanism housing shattered, and gems and crystal tubes fell to the deck, leaving smoking stains of dark discoloration on the luminous lichen-coated walls.