The Vindication of Man

by John C. Wright

  11. The Lighthousekeeper

  Vigil now demanded, “By the testimony of all seated here, the Stability was dissolved a millennium ago … we have been shadows for a thousand years? Echoes of a bell long broken? Why maintain the charade?”

  The Lighthousekeeper said, “Because we love the Stability no less than you! Once the mad ship is dead, the Grand Schedule can be restored. A vast works of stellar sailcloth engineering has been accomplished on Hellebore, the next moon out, and we could, not without sacrifice and strain, expropriate this sailworks from its current possessor, whoever or whatever that may be—”

  “Good luck with that, jerkbag, and see you in hell first,” said Cricket the counselor, not bothering to lower his voice.

  But the Lighthousekeeper was too caught up in his own words to hear the interruption. “—once the sailcloth is ours, we can use the upper reaches of the Star-Tower as the skeleton of a hull. We will have to sever it from the base with the Lighthouse beam from the sun! It will require great sacrifice, but if we are willing to turn the Lighthouse into a weapon—yes, yes, I know this has been the fear of the Stability since its founding—but this is an exception, and no man alive will know what we do here. We must break the laws to uphold the laws! What nobler principle of action can there be?”

  But the Portreeve said, “If we used the immense power entrusted to the Stability to smite the warship that Emancipation has become, we would be no more right than she is!”

  It was said that eventually all Lighthousekeepers go mad, since the immensity of the power of the interstellar-strength beams at their command prey on their minds and the sight of cracking uninhabited inner worlds in two, or boiling away the atmospheres of gas giants during initial testing and target practice, sinks into their souls.

  And yet, it was with no glint of madness in his eye that the Lighthousekeeper said, “Our Anthroponomist has testified that into whatever strange form of ex-human life the Scolopendra of Emancipation have mutated, they are moved by metaphysical or unearthly sentiments and not to be reasoned with. Only zealots can make war across the wide emptiness of stars! Those who will not kill a murderer die at his hands! This is the sole basis for moral reasoning. War excuses all. Self-defense excuses all atrocities! This is a holy war!”

  Vigil looked back and forth at the men there. He did not raise his voice, but there was a tremble in his words which even his sternest internal creature could not suppress. “How can there be any war at all, holy or hellish? The Princess Rania promised us peace! Universal peace!”

  The one who spoke then was the Vatic Essomenic Officer, informally called the Aruspex. He wore chlamys of purple thought-wire and a petasos of orichalchum. He was blind, his two eyes and all his visual cortex replaced with a yellowish aurum substance to allow him to see directly into the notational layer of the Noösphere. His voice was like a ringing gong. “Wake from your dreams! There will never be peace. Behold.”

  12. The Aruspex

  At his gesture, the surface of the table, which held the somnolent arcs, curves, and multiangular notations of the Monument Code, rippled and presented a new set of equations.

  The gathered Lords and officers stared at the Aruspex, but he said nothing.

  Vigil said, “Wait. I recognize parts of this. This is Rania’s Equation from the Memento Stone. It is the plan for universal peace, the system of customs and laws we must adopt to become fully equal to Hyades and the other Dominions of the Orion Arm. But—why is it changed? I have seen—”

  The Aruspex spoke in a voice like iron. “It has not changed. This is the unchanged version of what Rania deduced from the Memento Stone. The parts of the plan were severally sent by radio laser to the Stability Tables each on its own world, to incorporate into the local planetary history. We alone, thanks to the potency of the receivers orbiting Iota Draconis, and our correspondents on other worlds, were able to gather the scattered plans back into one, and read the master plan intended for the whole Empyrean. Here is the authentic and complete plan of destiny set before you. We hid the truth from the public. If the material is too complex, I can summon a frenetic actuator—”

  “Not needed,” said Vigil. “I can read this by sight.”

  He saw the looks of disbelief on their features.

  Vigil said proudly, “You forget the blood of the Summer Kings of Nightspore runs in me, who fenced with storms and tilted with meteorological systems fiercely opposed as lance and shield, the calculus of which required the development special nervous matrices.”

  The Aruspex said, “Summer Kings cannot read this notation. It is not fit for human brains.”

  Vigil said, “The blood of the Iron Hermeticist Narcís D’Aragó is also mine. You are of the Five Families: you know what this means.”

  They did. Once history revealed that Rania, Ximen the Black, and the mad Judge of Ages were altered by stepping on the surface of the Lost Monument of the legendary star the Swan Princess later plucked from the sky, the Five Families had sought out and bred the descendants of the other Hermeticists known to have exposed themselves to the Monument surface and absorbed into their cell plasm whatever unknown force it was which made the Swan Princess, and, to a lesser extent, the Master and the Judge, able to read the Monument.

  The ruling families Xi Boötis had been subjected to a ruthless eons-long breeding program by the cunning of the Potentate Euphrasy, and—whether by coincidence or nonhuman design it was not known—these were among the millions torn from their homes in the Fifty-Third Millennium and flung to Arcturus by the pitiless Virtues whom human astronomers dubbed Lamathon and Nahalon: and from them arose the Aestevals of Nightspore, the ancestors of the Strangermen.

  Vigil pointed at the runes and hieroglyphs of the alien script. “These figures are nonsense. The extrapolations here and here show genetic drifts which will turn all the races of man, one by one, into placid and homogenous underlings, craving control by their superiors, then being addicted to control, then being incapable to live without it. These Last Men, once they are developed, would be congenitally unable to tolerate freedom, honor, virtue, truth, or beauty. This is not peace! This is an abomination!”

  He looked around the chamber, his eyes haunted and lost. “Is this—this insolent treason against everything for which we stand, everything we cherish, everything we are—?” He almost could not force the words out of his mouth. “Is this Rania’s plan?”

  Slowly he lowered the sword and hefted it in his hand. “How can she mean this to happen to us? It would be no different from if the Vindication of Man had never happened. All her tens of thousands of years of star-faring, beyond the galaxy, farther than the realms of death and back again—is all human history and struggle to be made into nothing?”

  The Aruspex said, “The cliometric calculus of what becomes of the Stability should this plan is made public is perfectly clear in the Chi and Psi region: no one follows any futurian leading him into the slave pit. All our friends and kin would be stoned, or deleted, or subjected to mind-desolation. The Tormented are a turbulent people, when provoked.”

  “What, then, did you intend? To allow this future to unfold and ensure the desecration of our race?”

  The Aruspex said, “No. We conspired to break our ties with the Empyrean, allow no further Great Ships to launch or land, and become the antithesis of the Stability in all ways, expunging all connections of trade and radio contact, knowing ourselves too minor to come to the attention of Hyades, or any greater Domination or Dominion. The stars and endless unhorizoned vistas of eternity which once so proudly we ordained our children’s remotest children would conquer, all this we foreswore.”

  Vigil shook his head. “But—wait. There is no vector showing the approach of a multigeneration warship. And the worlds conquered by the Emancipation in secret—where are the figures and vector sums for their new plotted courses in history?”

  The Aruspex said, “I will not hide the truth: your father wished the ship to land, uncaring of what would become of o
ur current social order, or perhaps desiring its overthrow, for the flooded world the Emancipation will impose also appears nowhere in Rania’s planning. He thought it better to shatter the chessboard of history than to continue the game where checkmate is inevitable. For this reason he perished—but whether it was suicide or murder, I do not know.”

  Vigil said, “He died to place me here, to make the decision he knew was right, but had not the strength to make. Halting the ship both breaks this horrible plan and fulfills all oaths as Stabiles—even though it means the end of the Stability.”

  The Aruspex said, “Will you use your terrible power to force us to betray the oath of the Stability and land a ship that we are sworn not to allow? This warship destroys, rather than upholds, the plan of history.”

  Vigil said, “Allowing the ship to land may introduce vectors to defeat what Rania has planned—if we are wise enough to know whether opposition to Rania is justified. We swore oaths to her, unbreakable oaths, and if the wisdom she brought back from beyond the galaxy is wisdom we cannot bear—who are we to pit our minds against it?”

  The Aruspex said coldly, “It may be that there are reasons sound and sensible to sacrifice our sovereignty of this world to upend the Plan for Universal Peace, which is a fraud. Maybe that is so. But whether so or not—you, My Lord Hermeticist, you have no right to threaten the world with destruction if the Table fails to halt this warship and make that sacrifice. You boast that you will never break an oath. Will you obliterate us with that sword for upholding rather than breaking ours? For to land this warship would be the abolition of the Stability, in whose name that sword is given its power, and your hand given to hold it.”

  Vigil raised his eyes, tilting the blade this way and that, as if reading the ancient letters again. “Well? Is there still a case against this Chamber, these men, this order, this world, this age? Do I still have jurisdiction here?”

  He winced as information forms like hot needles entered his brain. Despite all that was said, this remains a matter for the mortal order to judge. It is not permitted that we should advise you. Condemnation and clemency are still yours to grant or withhold.

  Vigil lowered the sword again, weary, confused, defeated. He turned and looked left and right. Here was the Terraformer in green, the Lighthousekeeper in white, the motionless Chrematist in red, propped up at the Table. Opposite him was the Aedile in gold, nervous, and the senile Chronometrician in saffron. He looked at the Portreeve in his dun uniform. “Who sent the Myrmidon to save me from my attackers? I assume it was you.”

  But the Portreeve touched one ear and displayed his palm, fingers spread. Signal loss: message not understood. It was the old gesture indicating confusion.

  Vigil supposed it did not matter. As if his eyeballs weighed more than nature allowed, he found his gaze being pulled back to the mocking horror of the Peace Plan inscribed in the Table. It promised so much and delivered nothing at all.

  Vigil tried to imagine the seventy suns of mankind shining on the fourscore worlds and the forty-two sailing vessels, larger than continents, carrying their millions in long flight through the night. Each sun and world, each radio house and interstellar laser, all were manned and crewed and served by the Loyal and Self-Correctional Order of Prognostic Actuarial Cliometric Stability.

  He said aloud, “How can the secret future brought back from M3 by the Swan Princess be so horribly wrong, so horribly false? Everyone knows she solved the riddle called history! How can there be a warship in existence at all? How can there be war?”

  The counselor behind him named Cricket said, “Well, scabby scrotum of the damned devil, I know the answer to that! It’s obvious. Been saying for years. No one listens to me.”

  But another voice spoke over him and drowned him out: There is war because the Master of Empyrean has willed it. He is conquering all the worlds as he comes!

  7

  The Ambitions of the Imperator

  1. The Dead Speak

  Vigil saw the potent glitter in every eye in the chamber and realized that the Lords of the Stability, Companions, and Commensals were all raising their intelligence as rapidly as they could, reckless of their energy budgets. Then he realized that the dead man had just spoken, and he started doubling his intellect as well.

  The Chrematist stood, and as he did so, the color left his red robes, turning all the fabric black. The whiteness left the skin cells of his face and hands as the hibernation of untold years was ended. The features grew young, sharp-cheeked; a face of striking aquiline comeliness peered forth from the departing hoarfrost. The white hair turned black as rapidly as burning paper, as did the pointed beard and slender mustachios beneath a long, straight nose. The wrinkled skin grew young. The eyes were green as the eyes of a beast of prey.

  He threw back his hood, revealing the crown upon his head.

  2. The Dead Coronet

  Despite the strangeness of this dead man seemingly returning to life, Vigil was fascinated, even shocked, by the sight of the coronet.

  As an antiquarian, Vigil recognized it as a material object which was not self-organized, as a living machine was organized, or a house, or a weapon, or any other thinking thing. Neither was it a man-made artifact, as he understood the term, meaning anything built up from the molecular level, such as an apple tree or an eyeball. Neither was it a Potentate artifact, built up from the atomic level, such as unobtainium or argent, or any of the other frivolously named elements nature could not make. The crown was dead matter crafted by hands, apparently without the use of machinery, since there were (so eyes like Vigil’s could detect) microscopic defects and asymmetries throughout. It was neither dead matter, natural, nor living matter, artificial.

  It looked like a thing a schoolboy would make, or a Nomad, or someone else whose matter-printer was rudely programmed. But it was not. It was not printed at all. It was bits of matter put together by hand, macroscopically, and the bits were dead throughout the whole operation. It was handmade in the original sense of the word: made by hands.

  Vigil sent an internal creature into the world archives, like a bright fish disappearing into a dark ocean, seeking a reference to what this crown was, or whence it came.

  3. The Living Master

  The Aedile, staring bright-eyed at this stranger, laid his hand on the table and spoke. “I call upon the Table itself to forefend us. We are breached!”

  The cold voice, speaking in the ancient language, hummed from the dark surface of the invulnerable metal, as if far underground thunder were speaking, and Vigil’s teeth ached with the echoes. “None is here unwarranted, unasked, uninvited, or without ancient right.”

  The dark stranger spoke in a voice of firm command, perhaps with a hint of laughter hidden in it. “I am the Founder of the Starfarer’s Guild, and my authority is supreme and paramount. Hear your master, and obey! Sieges! None sit in my presence!”

  Vigil had no idea how many thousands of years old these ceremonial chairs were or how old was their programming. But he leaped to his feet.

  Others were not so swift. The Terraformer and the Chronometrician were deposited unceremoniously on the floor. The other lords and dignitaries swayed or stumbled or clutched the Table edge when chairs bucked their occupants free, and then came to their feet with as much dignity as they could muster.

  The dark and princely stranger raised his finger and pointed at Vigil. “You alone have obeyed the most ancient rules and iron laws eons ago I here established. For this, I commend you and grant to your family, race, and clan a boon, anything you wish, up to and including sovereign rulership of this world as my vicar. But know this: there is no law requiring the Lords of Stability to ignite the deceleration beam for a warship! Therefore, they are not in violation, and you must put up your sword and yield it to me once more, its true possessor.”

  And he held up his left hand, drew back the dark fabric of the sleeve, and displayed an amulet of dark red metal, identical to the appliance connected to Vigil’s own wrist.

>   The internal creature he had sent into the archives returned and spoke inside his mind: This is the Iron Crown of Lombardy. He who wears it is the Most Noble Master of the Empyrean of Man.

  4. The Living Blade

  Vigil cautiously lowered the blade and put it home in its sheath, but when he kept his hands on sheath and grip, as if ready to draw it again, and made no move to surrender it, a silent force, like the pressure felt in the air before a storm, grew and grew beneath his gloves, and he could feel the impatient power in the sword swelling ominously. And yet he did not unhand the sheathed blade.

  Vigil said, “Claim you to be Ximen del Azarchel, the Nobilissimus and Master of Mankind?”

  The man smiled an alarmingly charming smile, tilting his head forward with a quirk of his eyebrows. “I am he. Among my other titles, my oldest and the only one I really cherish, is Senior Officer of the Landing Party. I am the founder of the Hermetic Order. You doubt? Don’t you have any coins in your pocket? Look at the profile on the gold royal. I am that man. That sword is mine. Hand it over.” The smile did not fade, but it somehow grew cold and menacing. “With haste. I do not repeat my commands.”

  Vigil’s counselor said softly to him, “Don’t let go of that blade. Ask him who is the captain of the ship.”

  Vigil understood. If Ximen del Azarchel was the captain of the Emancipation, he was in space, approaching at near-lightspeed. This, then, must be an emissary, a partial, a set of memories taken from Ximen and radioed ahead of the ship to prepare the ground for the ship’s arrival.

  Vigil said, “The boon I ask is this sword. I ask that the world-destroying power of the Lord Hermeticist be kept in my possession and that of my heirs and assigns forever.”

  Ximen snapped his fingers. “Very clever, but ask for another boon, and be quick about it. The blade is a precious heirloom to me and has sentimental value.”