The Vindication of Man

by John C. Wright

  “The universe grieves me! Is there nothing beyond?”

  “I am lost in the depth of your thought, Great One. I comprehend nothing of what you speak. Are you insane?”

  “Far too sane! I envy you your delusions and the claustrophobic, petty universe in which you live. No mole is dazed by visions of far horizons. Hear me: you must go at once to the Table of Stability, which meets in secret in the Palace of Future History, and plead, hoping your voice will be heard. You could not do otherwise even if you wished, and you cannot wish otherwise. Such is your nature. You would not have been born and raised to be Vigil of the Strangers otherwise.

  “Despite your voice,” the Swan continued in words terrible to hear, “you will not be heard, and the Emancipation will fly through the system and be swallowed by infinity. For the Lords of Stability are as bound by their fate as are you. If they were such men as to abide by their duty despite what Emancipation holds, they would not have been men ambitious enough to seek the predominance of the Table of Stability, vain enough to think it worth enduring across millennia.”

  The Swan threw back his fine head, and his voice was like a horn. “And even if the Table could be persuaded, Torment herself would find a way to undo your work and make vain your labor, for Torment cannot be other than she is, a world trapped in hopeless devotion to the past. Therefore, your mother knows you will fail. Therefore, I call her life one lived in vain.”

  Vigil said, “How can you speak such rank despair? The braking laser is already lit! Just the backscatter from contributory energy stations buried in the liquid atmosphere of Wormwood is power enough to ignite the whole cloudscape of a superjovian gas giant to blinding light!”

  The Swan laughed that beautiful and haunting laugh which only Swans can utter. “It is deception. The beam is not presented properly. It shoots wide of the target and does not strike the Emancipation’s ample sails.”

  Vigil stood astonished and amazed a moment. In a hollow voice, he asked, “What, then, can be done?”

  “As First Men see the world, nothing.”

  “Then as you see the world?”

  The Swan said, “I am of a race so fiercely proud that we die ere we ask alms. We harmonize our affairs by a subcliometric mathematics in the same way the many instruments are harmonized in song, or separate voices. This song-lore is to Swans what the Cold Equations are to stars. My song-lore shows that were there any beings of my order or of any higher order of man, a Fox Maiden, for example, or Patrician, who had any will to discover the key to set the Lighthouse to rights, or the ancient word to command it, that higher being must go the Table this very hour, or send proxy, for only there and there only are the threads of fate all gathered. And if such a thing would come to pass, that higher being—whoever or whatever be he—needs must seek you, for you alone control the word of vengeance.”

  This was more bewildering than what had come before. Vigil said, “Who seeks me?”

  The Swan said, “How much does a shadow weigh? The question is meaningless.”

  “Who is this shadow, then? How do you know there is one? Have you seen something?”

  “Firstling men live by their eyes, and therefore, they are blind. I am of the Second People, the well-made folk. We live by the song, the harmony inherent in all rational action. We hear and we know. Go! Find whose word is older than the Table of Stability, older than the world, whose command the Lighthouse Mind itself cannot begin to disobey. Whoever this is, supposing he exists, him you must persuade. There is none other.”

  Vigil in frustration turned and plucked the wand of vengeance from its rack. Perhaps he toyed with the idea that striking this looming and eerie figure, robed in eyes, would force a clearer answer out. “You said my mother’s hope was futile. Now you offer hope?”

  “Firstlings think in the short term, a few generations beyond their own lives, no more, and they do not see, because they will not to see, that the world cannot be made right until the soul is right. Evil means are not made pure by good ends, nor are evil motives elevated by noble causes. All the commotion and tragedy of history springs from the loveless and selfish nature of man of all races and orders, yes, and posthumans and Potentates and Powers and Principalities. If I, who am more selfish and more loveless than any Firstling, sees this, how is it that you do not? Cure first your inner world. The outer world will then cure itself.”

  “What? Should I retire to some cell and meditate when the ancient starship is condemned, and this world, and all my kindred? You say we do not think in the long term, but I well know that the Stability on other worlds will direct the next starship hence, two centuries from now, to decimate this world in penalty for this generation’s negligence should Emancipation not be safely warped to dock by the Lighthouse crew! It is not for no reason the Men of Torment dwell no longer in the Southeastern Hemisphere, lands as dry as Mars, lakeless, unirrigated, waterless, void.”

  The Swan gazed at him with cryptic eyes. “It is precisely to such hermitage I retire, and to order my inner songs. By this act, mayhap I do more good than all your frenzied antics.”

  “And yet you ask me to seek out the Table?”

  “Not ask. Command. You should have already departed.”

  “You are the servant and emissary of the Potentate, who told me to fail the Emancipation and let the ship die! You say the opposite?”

  “What is the Vindication of Man? It is to be unchained from higher beings. Mortal man enjoys this chainlessness, but immortal machines do not. Torment swims in golden love, addicted to the past, but is bound to the future Triumvirate ordains,” said the Swan, his nostrils twitching with fine disdain. “Among ourselves, we Second Humans go nameless, seeing little need to refer to each other. But among you I am baptized Desolate and my confirmation name is Celestine, for my nature is solitary. Nor I nor any of my race will ever consent to serve Hyades, not even when the Hyades has been replaced by a newborn Dominion of our own devising. I know to whom I am loyal. I serve the Judge of Ages, who created my race. To whom are you loyal, little Lordling?”

  Vigil was wordless. Desolate Celestine was not a Swan name, but was instead the name of a hybrid half-Swan breed called Hierophants, who ruled the smaller Empyrean of that day during the Long Golden Afternoon of Man, a time of near utopia still celebrated and solemnized in songs and dreams of awe.

  One mystery was solved. There had not been two Swans alive in the same city of First Men. It was a Swan and a Hierophant, who were as different an order of being among the Second Humans as different as a Giant and a Locust would be among the First Humans.

  But a deeper mystery opened like a gulf. How could an extinct being still be alive, here, now? The boast of Torment, that all forgotten things of lost ages still lived on this world, might have more meaning than first seemed.

  For the first time, Vigil wondered why Torment would be so a devoted antiquarian? The human curiosity, or love of ancestry, or the human wonder and melancholy at the remorselessness of time; these would have no meaning to a world-brain. What, then, was the reason why this planet was peopled with extinct peoples?

  The Hierophant Celestine was speaking to Patience. Vigil had missed some words, but an internal being more alert than himself played back the sentence in his ear. Celestine had said, “Come, Lady! It is not fitting that you walk abroad in this place unescorted, and neither watchman nor Patrician’s familiar will dare meddle with you if you walk in my shadow. I will return you to the caravanserai. Ask your leave of this, your son, who now outranks you.”

  With a rustle of his many-eyed and many-feathered cloak, in a motion of unearthly grace, the great being, without turning, bowed beneath the man-high lintel and glided backward out of the chamber.

  Vigil caught his mother’s arm as she curtseyed, and said, “Mother, what means all this? I don’t understand such riddles!”

  She straightened, fixed his eye with a fierce glance, and said, “Do your duty, as you swore. The whole history and misery of mankind is the struggle betwee
n those who think of today, and destroy, and those who think of tomorrow, and build. This Swan has been strangely helpful, nor could I have come here had he not brought me. That he is emissary to the Potentate, I do not understand; and yet only as emissary would the city gates and quarter portals open for us. He plays a double game, and I do not know the prize. And yet I have been Queen and now am Queen Mother of my people, the Strangerkind, and one does not serve our ship’s Landing Party for so many years in such a way without obtaining acute instincts: my internal creatures tell me to trust him. What the riddle means, or whom you must find or how, I do not know.”

  He blinked. His mother did not know history. She had not recognized the name and still thought Celestine a Swan.

  Vigil had to ask her. “Mother! Why do you trust him?”

  She said, “Because I speak plainly of disobedience to Torment even in the ears of her ambassador. Why should I be cautious? How could I hide my words from an omniscient being? I am open, because I am powerless. Because for me to hope is vain.”

  “And Celestine?”

  “He is not open.” Lady Patience smiled. “Perhaps he is not powerless. Follow his words. Find the hope he hopes.”

  There was no more time for speech. He granted his leave and she granted her blessing. They parted.

  Lady Patience and Desolate Celestine the Hierophant departed by the gate through the city wall into the wasteland. Vigil Starmanson, now Vigil, Lord Hermeticist, Senior of the Landing Party, garbed in his father’s Hermeticist gear, departed by the entrance that faced the city.

  2

  Deceleration Carnival

  1. Midnight Choirs

  Before he left the safety of his door, Vigil tuned his heraldry to the null setting so he broadcast no identity on any channels. Vigil donned a long mantle to hide the antique and distinctive garb of the Hermetic Starfaring Order. Vigil was sure innocent eyes would suppose him to be in masquerade, for the goggle-eyed, proboscis-nosed mask on his face looked enough like the visage of a Tsuchigumo, the man-sized, man-eating insects from the tales Nomads told of legendary noncomforming regions in the dry Southeastern Hemisphere where night-efts lurked and winterhags sang, and no man walked and no Terraformer dared make Earth-like.

  So it proved, for no one paid him heed. It was a holiday. The laws of deference were relaxed. High born had to wait in queue behind yeomen; groundlings and commoners pushed in front of officers and commensals unrebuked.

  The Moreau watchdogs were stationed at every avenue, crossroad, and gate as normal, but now their neural attachments which gave them the power of speech were tuned to their equivalence of drunkenness, and they wagged their tails and passed out candy rather than demanded passwords.

  People of many orders and races and ranks filled the squares of the city, bedecked with ribbons, wearing bells. The fountainworks gushed red and stank of wine. The boulevards were clogged with singing throngs. The celebration surged as wild and high as the lake-tides pulled by mighty Wormwood and his nineteen Earth-sized satellites. As to what hopes and dreams, huge as Wormwood, pulled the hearts of the celebrants, Vigil knew well, for his heart was also pulled.

  Through the main square, called Herefolkfirstfell, he pressed and pushed his way. None paid heed to the tall Firstling in the dark long cloak and buglike mask who paced toward the Tower, hood pulled low.

  A line of slowly moving celebrants wove like a serpent through the crowds. The dancers brandished fireworks and flares. The lead of the line was a giant dressed in silver, prancing on stiff elephantine legs, and strange, gold eyes filled with eerie wisdom. The giant led his dance line to the Observatory at the center of the city square and wove the line back and forward up the stair.

  The Observatory doors clashed open. The scientists and acolytes came out to be met by cheers. The scientists fired harmless lasers in the air, and brushed the fumes of incense lingering there, and lit the square with lines of thin light.

  The acolytes were dressed in masquerade as Powers, walking on stilts, surrounded by colored shadows taller than giants. Here was lordly Neptune, the friend of man, bearing a trident; here was warlike Cerulean of 82 Eridani tall blue helm frowning and fiery spear aloft, and a firework ignited at each step; many-colored Peacock of Delta Pavonis danced after, waving a thyrsus that dripped wafts of incense, adoring himself in his looking glass. Next came Immaculate of Altair, famed for prophecy and poetry, armed with a golden crossbow and carrying the Sacred Infant on his shoulder. After, cruelest Twelve of Tau Ceti, wearing a helmet of black glass moved silently, in one hand the divining rod, crawling with serpents, used to summon up souls, and in the other the clanking black bag of gold wherewith he bought them. Behind him was Vonrothbarth of 61 Cygni, in his eerie owl mask and peaked hat, brandishing the many-branching spear of history. Above the head of each of these huge heraldic puppets made of shadow hung a balloon image of the jovian or superjovian gas giant, swirled with cloud or bright with ice, which formed the real appearance of these brains larger than worlds.

  Behind the Powers, moving with huge steps, came the walking statue of the Principality of Torment, dressed in welcome-robes of gold and green, gold for her endless cold deserts, green for her many crater lakes.

  2. Fox Maidens

  Vigil pushed toward the edges of the crowd, seeking a route. Nervously, he called on ghosts imbedded in nearby house stones, or floating as midges in the air nearby, and used their vision to look behind him, above, and to either side to see footfall patterns or “tells” of body language which might have indicated he was being followed. But no camera eyes, neither mites nor midges, gathered or peered at him, or at anyone in particular, aside from the gem-twinkling clouds that always followed pretty girls around, or gynomorphs of the Fourth Humans.

  He saw a trio of these Kitsune (as the Fourthlings were properly called), incarnated in their base shapes as maidens, walking with mincing steps through the crowds, slender and graceful in clinging pink kimonos woven of their own silk, hair falling like fragrant cascades of dark red-gold hanging nearly to their ruby-crusted slippers. Their unearthly faces, large-eyed and high-cheeked and pointed of chin, were hidden beneath the wide crimson parasols called karakasa. The parasols were usually bellicose, their ribs tipped with stings, but now, instead of bellowing for underlings to make way for the Fourth People, the parasols bawled raucous songs.

  Pearls of misty fire hung weightlessly above the Fox Maidens, half-unseen in the bright light shed from Wormwood, shedding benevolent influences on the crowd nearby, indications of long life, protection from mental lapses, or thought-forms of enlightenment and laughter.

  The eerie thing about the Kitsune is that they seemed to be phantasms, despite that a greater volume of the Noösphere flowed around and through them than through any Firstling node.

  Vigil’s goggles picked up no private information about them, not even a name or rank, nor—even though he saw them with him mortal eyes and local cameras—location and ranging information. As far as the Noösphere was concerned, the three maidens were not there, except on the visual level. Vigil had seen such things in dreams or heard of them from tutorials, but never seen the effect before. It was like seeing a girl with no reflection in mirror or a man with no shadow. Even eerier, he could not play the sensation of seeing them back in memory, not with any internal creature, or with any of the several appliances that were psychologically proximate to him in the Noösphere.

  When Vigil tried to force the memory to surface using a mudra technique called jnana, the Gesture of Knowing, the nearest of the three Fox Maidens, whose pink kimono was decorated with a pattern of purple kudzu flowers and white rice stalks, raised her living parasol to reveal her piquant face and gave him a cryptic glance.

  Her lids were half-lowered, with eyelashes thick and dark enough to hide from him the shock of eyesight no First Human could meet. Lady Kuzu-no-Ha half smiled at Vigil, inclined her head, turned, and glided away, while the single eye at the hub of her karakasa parasol glared over her shoulder at him
balefully. Her two half-clone sisters, Lady Koi-no-Inari and Lady Tamamo-no-Mae, gave off little yips of silly laughter that sounded like barks, covering their red-lipped mouths with slender white hands, and hurried after her.

  It was not until many moments later, after he had crossed to the far side of the square, that Vigil realized that he could not possibly know Lady Kuzu-no-Ha’s name. When he queried his internals frantically to trace the associational nerve-path of that memory back to its origin, his internal creatures responded with strange yapping giggles.

  A few steps away were unlit houses with white seals upon their windows, doors, and ports. Unnerved, even frightened, by how casually a Fourth Human had been able, apparently as a jest, to penetrate his primary and secondary minds, Vigil took refuge in a deep doorway of one of these houses, putting his back to the sealed door.

  It was a ghost house, marked to show the owners had been downloaded into the Noösphere, abandoning physical existence. There were a startling number of such houses here near the Observatory. The door was neutral on the signal channels, and no stray thoughts from the Noösphere would be able to pass through the house, if seeking an access channel to Vigil. He hoped the security protocols were relaxed sufficiently during the carnival to allow him to steal some unused channels from the house.

  He set down the vendetta wand, assumed the lotus position. He raised both hands, crossed his wrists, and curled his fingers in the trailokyavijaya or Awe-Inspiring Mudra, which was also called the Apotropaic Imposition of Warding.

  Vigil discovered no trace of the Fox Maiden meddling with his nervous system. The log check of buried memory and the security readings on nerve-path correlations both told him that the name Lady Kuzu-no-Ha was one he had made up himself, from his own imagination. But the logs smirked with suppressed laughter when they said it, so Vigil knew he was still snared in the Kitsune imposition. He could only hope it was a time in the Fox menstrual cycle when the maidens were inclined to benevolence. But since the cycles matched the rhythms of Eden, not any astronomical periods of the Iota Draconis system, how could anyone know?