The Vindication of Man

by John C. Wright

  Perhaps, if he had time and energy, Montrose could have formed remote units like the once fairies, now teardrops, and sent them after the sails. But the little units, one by one, were running out of fuel, and they used the last of their maneuvering mass to set themselves drifting close enough to the gray sphere to rendezvous and be absorbed.

  The singularity drive was unharmed and still functioning, but there was no energy to spin the disk up to operational speed. The tiny bit of fuel needed to expand and contract the shrouds was gone. There was not enough cached energy left to erect a ramjet field and scoop up interstellar hydrogen. There was a trickle of energy from the still-connected sail as it absorbed a barely detectable trifle from incoming starlight. If the ship had retained any ability to navigate, Montrose could have pointed her toward the nearest star and waited to get close enough to absorb and use the solar power. But the vessel was stricken, able to alter course and speed only by the small impulse of the ambient starlight on the torn sail: a half a degree in any direction, or the loss of a few miles per hour over lightyears of distance.

  Blackie had thought of everything, taken everything, and ruined everything.

  It would be a while before he left the galaxy altogether, but his speed was so great that no star was within a vector he could approach. He could see the beautiful rose-red star called La Superba, also called Y Canum Venaticorum, only two degrees off his port bow, and only fifty lightyears distant. But at his immense current relative velocity to it, he could no more reach it than he could catch a bullet in his teeth. It was as far away, fuel-wise, as it had been when he was a little boy back in Texas, penniless and cold.

  Check and mate. Montrose had lost the duel.

  There was enough power to keep Montrose alive in a state of machine awareness, a ghost, overlooking his unliving body, a corpse. But even that was too much strain for the system: Montrose would have to sleep, leaving only a clock sequence awake to wake him every hundred years or so, just in case something in his hopeless condition changed.

  “Well,” he said, “if this is better than being buried alive, I am not sure how.”

  Foolishly, he used some of his last scrap of discretionary energy to form a radio laser emitter out of the gray substance, point it at M3, and send the strongest pulse he could manage, both in English and in Monument notation: Princess! I am coming!

  And that effort was all. Darkness swirled in. Ghosts cannot faint, perhaps, but they can fall below self-awareness.

  Neither alive nor dead, the featureless gray sphere with its black heart holding the ghost of Menelaus Montrose and his corpse sped through the void, and nothing but darkness was to every side.

  APPENDIX A

  Pedigree of Earths by Diaspora1

  1LEGEND: Each colony is to the right of her mother system. Mother world noted (in parenthesis) as needed. Dominant race in [square brackets]. Planets in bold. *indicates Potentate (terrestrial planets) CAPITALS are Powers (Gas Giants), BOLD CAPITALS are Principalities (system-wide). Question mark when no certain record establishes which planet is mother. LY = lightyears.

  APPENDIX B

  Posthumans

  Names of the Posthuman Species

  Swans (Second Humans)—includes the Hierophants of the Cherishing (28th Millennium)

  Myrmidons (Third Humans)—includes Megalodons (40th to 55th Millennium)

  Kitsune (Fourth Humans)—also called Fox Maidens or Foxes

  Patricians (Fifth Humans)

  Last Men (Sixth Humans)—called by the Patricians Plebeians or called by the Foxes Athymoi—that is, Men without Chests—is created as the final race. It is a race addicted to servitude, unable to alter the cliometric conditions imposed on them.

  Myrmecoleons (Seventh Humans)—found only on worlds in Orion beyond the boundaries of the Empyrean of Man, colonized by Torment in Exile. Also called the Evangels.

  NOTE: Eidolons (47th to 48th Millennium) are a failed attempt at creating a new species.

  Posthuman Subspecies (by Millennium)

  20th Millennium—Hibernal Men

  21st Millennium—Hibernals, Nyctalops, and Troglodytes

  31st Millennium—Ghosts, Locusts, and Troglodytes extinct

  46th Millennium—Vampires

  47th Millennium—Eidolons

  48th Millennium—Eidolons extinct

  49th Millennium—Parthenocrats (Fox-Swan hybrids); Myrmidons extinct; Megalodons created

  50th Millennium—Overlords created by Vampires; Vampires extinct (conformed into Patricians)

  54th Millennium—Ougres, Sworns, Loricates; Foxes extinct

  55th Millennium—Megalodons extinct

  70th Millennium—Last Men

  Other Variants and Hybrids—Nicors (Walpurgine sea-Hormagaunts); Optimates (Penitent Swan Patricians); Monsters (Terran Pericolosa Vampire-Myrmidons); Delectables (Nymph Patricians); Felicities (Melusine Non-Orthogonals); Sinners (Feline Chimera Patrician); Wraiths (Hungry Witch-Patrician); Joys (Fox-Nymphs); Renunciants (Willowflower Scholar Patricians); Nagual (Scholarized Fox-Myrmidon hybrids); Camenae (Asclepiad Fox-Melusine); Rusalka (Melusine Swans from Cursed Earth); Merrow (Giantess-Sylph Melusine); Rakshasi (Nymph-Fox-Sylph Vampiresses from Peachmountain); Asclepiads (Locust-Iatrocrats); Scolopendra (Melusine-Myrmidons); Myrmecoleons (Heirophant-Scolopendra of Torment)

  NOTE: A “subspecies” is not a hybrid properly so called merely for sharing genetic information, which, due to Fox biotechnology, can be freely swapped between any species. Listed here are cliometric rather than biological subspecies—that is, groups embracing a particular, exclusive, and distinctive pattern of genetic, glandular, parasympathetic, neural, and social-psychological structures which impose a definitive vector on the shape of planetary history.

  APPENDIX C

  Earths of the Empyrean Polity of Man

  —as of the 700th Century A.D. / Year Zero Vindication Calendar.

  FIRST SWEEP 12th Millennium

  Note that only Nocturne of Epsilon Eridani and Splendor of Delta Pavonis survived the First Sweep. The other stars were recolonized during subsequent Sweeps.

  Sol—Home of the power Neptune. Includes three Earths:

  Eden, also called Tellus, First Earth, or Matermundi. Original home of man. Binary planet with Luna. (Luna was inhabited by Crusader kingdoms between the 37th and 43rd Millennium.) Potentate with bouts of insanity.

  Mars, cold desert planet, later bioformed with fanciful short-lived subspecies by Eventide brethren. Inhabited by Chimerae.

  Venus, maneuvered into a “water ring” orbit by the Virtue Salamander. Inhabited by Fifth Men. Elevated to Potentate Status during the 54th Millennium; later, maimed and reduced to Archangelic.

  Alpha Centauri C (Proxima)—Rosycross

  A torch orbit world at 0.007 AU from C, flare-time red dwarf. The world is smaller and lighter than Earth, the peoples the most highly modified and strangely adapted: modifications to very deep neural structures were made which modern scruples would prevent. The main industry is “watermining” extraction of chemicals from the shallow seabeds of her inky-black, tideless, lifeless oceans. All life on Rosycross is land life.

  Predominant race is Non-Orthogonal Man. Abnormally high Fox population.

  Epsilon Eridani—Nocturne

  Is tide-locked: the dayside is uninhabitable, covered over with acres of solar energy cells. Gene-manipulation has modified humans and livestock to allow them to survive, different species for each ever-colder zone of the night side. The Nocturnals produce many freakish subraces and breeds. They are ruled by the Actuary, a cabal of cliometric historians who force families and clans to breed children into various biologically determined castes.

  61 Cygni—Odette and Odile

  Have the doubtful distinction of fighting the most interplanetary wars against each other, despite the separation (86 AU). The wars were provoked by exploitation rights to a 61 Cygnus C, a dark body called Siegfried, roughly eighty times the mass of Jupiter. A permanent colony of miners lives on the s
urface, their bodies radically adapted to endure the greater gravity. Later, when wakened to sapience, Siegfried is a Power christened Vonrothbarth.

  61 Cygnus A: Odette. The planet ventured into forbidden areas of pantropy, both mental and physical, eventually producing immortal and nigh-invulnerable Heresiarchs. The atmosphere is dense with inert gases. Only in the highlands can human life survive: poisonous clouds gather in the river valleys and lowlands at sea level. The high atmospheric pressure and low gravity allow lightweight aircraft and winged men to dart everywhere. Originally called Arcolith.

  61 Cygnus B: Odile. The planet orbits within a dust ring that settled around B, and the atmosphere is continually bombarded with spectacular meteorite showers, bringing rare metals to earth: the planet surface is heavily cratered and heavily mined. The star is a variable, and frequent solar activity prevents the emergence of a working world-communication satellite network. All cities are protected by domes for fear of asteroid strikes or are underground.

  The original colony work was done by monks, who still retain ownership of most of the planet surface. Ruled by a Grand Inquisitor, with local and temporary bishops, judges, princesses, and Golden Lords having sharply curtailed authority. Originally called Aerolith.

  Epsilon Indi—Porphyry

  A world of harsh desert, volcanism, and open lakes and rivers of lava. The equatorial regions are too hot for Earthly life: the original plant life, a coral growth of diamond spikes thousands of feet high and miles wide, endures here. Earth life is gathered near the polar regions, where large deposits of subterranean water can be found. The sun is active in the UV range, but dim to the human eye, a pale disk one can look upon without blinking. The trees and plants are leafless, but clustered with needles. Porphyry orbits one of the invisible brown dwarfs in the system and is tide-locked to its primary so that daylight (from Epsilon Indi) lasts half a Porphyry year.

  The Porphyries are savage and stoical people and make no recording of their brain information. The world is noted for being entirely free of ghosts.

  Predominant race is Chimerae.

  Tau Ceti—December, Wintertide, Yule, and Samhain

  An old, old world with silt-choked swamps, mountains worn to low nubs, a dull and salty sea without tides. Ice-coated, save at the equator, overcast, and foggy. There is a lower point of precipitation than on Earth, due to a different balance of gases within the atmosphere, so that it rains without ceasing. Ruled by Merchant Concerns, a callous plutocracy. The predominant race is Hibernals.

  Wintertide, Yule, and Samhain were eventually terraformed, not to mimic Earth climates but to mimic December. All four inner worlds elevated to Potentates.

  Outer giant planets were dismantled to create a Dyson sphere, a Principality called Catallactic.

  Omicron Eridani—Gargoyle

  A highly industrialized world where the terraforming was incomplete. The population wears gas masks, often highly decorated. Very close to her primary, Gargoyle has a year that is only twelve days long: her axial tilt is roughly the same as earth, so the temperature variation is like that of Earth. The moss-bush and colorful insect life reproduces and perishes in twelve-day cycles, which may add to the melancholy and frivolity of the Gargoyle character. All settlements and guild-mansions have large municipal greenhouses, which are a source of civic pride.

  The legal arrangements of this world are draconian and inhuman, with each man renting his life from a central quartermaster. Suicide via demasking is a common penalty for nonperformance of significant contracts.

  All social roles are stored in a man’s mask circuitry so that anyone donning another’s mask, for all legal purposes, becomes him.

  70 Ophiuchi A—Aesculapius

  Has a slow (two hundred–hour) rotation: the people sleep once every twenty hours and have a twenty-hour festival of rest at noon, resting in the great “shades” of the citywide parasols. Slightly lower gravity than Earth. The tree-life of Aesculapius is known for its large, colorful canopies and copious insect life.

  For half of the 227 Earth day–long year, the companion star illumes the night sky. Solar storms and variability are frequent, necessitating the adaptation of local biota to flare-time conditions and a hardening of the cells against radiation. Upon a flare signal, all plants and men suddenly grow thick, dark skins, and the vines and trees take on a repellant aspect.

  By ancient tradition, wars and murders are only attempted during flare time, when the worldwide panopticon system is down.

  Vanity, or some cultural quirk of the Asclepiads, conditions their womenfolk to submerge during flares in the many pools set aside for this purpose, rather than assume an ungainly aspect. The river-going Melusine of that world, called Camenae, are famed for their singing.

  The most subtle and expert of pantropists of the Empyrean, the Asclepiads are philosophically opposed to any centralized ecological control and forbid living weapons larger than a bee or wasp. The Leafsmith family is originally from Aesculapius.

  The Breatharians, a green-skinned photosynthesizing variant of Locust that can live without intake of food and water, originate from here.

  Originally called Carrion Flower.

  Predominant population is Locusts and Scorpions.

  Altair (Alpha Aquilae)—Covenant

  The Preceptors of Covenant are known for their strict and puritanical lifestyles and their systems of mental discipline. The Covenanters lived aboard their seed ship for two hundred years after arrival, not descending to claim the planet until the long and arduous job of clearing away the asteroid accretions had been accomplished. Very little bioadaptation was needed, but the Covenanters made several mental alterations to themselves, removing them from the mainstream of human psychological norm. The Preceptors live in a polite near anarchy, their disputes determined by a specialized caste of paid arbiters: the common folk are indentured to pay for the costs of the terraforming, practically serfs.

  Gliese 570 in Libra—Walpurgis

  The star is energetic, and the planet has no ozone layer: the Walpurgishmen, when they emerge during the day, wear traditional parasol-shaped hats, goggles, and reflective capes, their faces painted or tattooed with radiation-blocking grease.

  Year over four Earth years long, the axial tilt of the planet is more than sixty degrees, so that the sun never sets in midsummer, never rises in midwinter. The northern and southern oceans boil in summer, ice over in winter.

  Roughly half the population migrates seasonally. The main industries are located aboard floating cities called rafts fabricated from the local sea-sponge. Most of the world surface is tideless ocean choked by sea-sponge, and flotilla-villages follow multi-mile-wide herds of gigantic sponge-eating sea mammals on yearly migrations.

  The attempt to breed an amphibious race of humans, who could live safely under the water during light times, ended amid war and social upheaval when the Nicor (as they are called) proved ungovernable, anarchic, tribal, incapable of maintaining a social order or technological civilization.

  The government is simple in theory, complex in practice. All political, religious, and economic power is vested in a figure called the Metropolitan, which is an amalgam of ghosts of the original man, Ele’ele, a monk and sole survivor of the Second Sweep, who repopulated the planet with his clones and duplicates, and retained ownership despite the influx of giants during the Third Sweep.

  Eta Cassiopeiae—Outrage and Calm

  Eta Cassiopeiae A. Outrage. The world has a rapid rotation (five hours of daylight followed by five of night), a long year (fifteen Earthly months long), and a highly eccentric orbit. Outrage orbits a bizarre object, called Storm Worm, whose mass is greater than Jupiter and the size less than Mercury, apparently the remnant of an exploded star. The surface of Storm Worm is mined for unique heavy elements and chemicals, so it is a source of wealth, but the tides from Storm Worm agitate the weather patterns of Outrage and trigger seasonal monsoons of uncompromising violence. There are no land masses above water, but coral struc
tures form reefs larger than islands: famous also are the great leafy “floats” of buoyant plant life. The great polar reef is actually the safest place on the planet and the seat of the only urban population, mostly ghosts. The incarnate urban population must be fed by very-far-ranging fleets of aerial fishing craft (who dodge the horrific storms). The predominant population is Sylph.

  Eta Cassiopeiae B has a world within its “water ring” (habitable temperature zone) called Calm: a pleasant, green world, heavily farmed. The planet has no axial tilt and no seasonal changes. Year is 37 Earth days. The length of the day is frequently changed by rival factions of planetary engineers to match circadian rhythms of imported Earth life versus the native life.

  Calm is famed for having the most highly developed autochthonous life of any colony. The multicellular life is divided into five kingdoms rather than two: fragrant sea-jellies, canal-wading lotuses, rooted worms of prodigious length, semi-ambulatory five-sided pyramids, pentasexual pentagons with no discernible sense organs. Both pyramids and pentagons leave behind rows of shed shells as they mate and migrate, giving the Calm landscape its distinctive appearance. The majority population is Locust.

  36 Ophiuchi—Albino

  Albino is an icy moon of a superjovian. Albino and her companions are locked into Laplace resonance, causing tidal flexing. Albino’s oceans are heated by frequent volcanism.

  There are no surface structures on Albino; the Swans live in an endless labyrinth of ice caves and subterranean oceans.

  Note that the superjovian is close enough to the star to be suffering from loss of mass due to solar winds: there is a trail of dispersed atmosphere continually streaming from it, mined for tritium.

  Albino is colonized entirely by Swans, who maintain no social organization aside from voluntary commensalities needed to create and maintain ghosts. The Swans enacted a cliometric end state, ensuring their history would never change.