The Architect of Aeons

by John C. Wright

  Isonadey seemed frozen in thought. The antennae on his head now stood, twitching, as if he were frantically radioing some other point.

  With a slither of steel, Del Azarchel drew his sword. The words Ultima Ratio Regum were written on the blade, along with the emblem of a horned circle of olive leaves surmounting a cross: the royal insignia of the Hermetic Order. At the same moment, Montrose raised his glass pistols.

  The Chimerae, moving with one accord, a blur of lizardlike speed, darted in front of Isonadey, blocking Montrose’s line of fire. Montrose stepped back, holding his pistols wide, trying to get a clear shot. During this moment of distraction, however, Del Azarchel had the tip of his sword at Isonadey’s throat.

  Del Azarchel said, “In your cliometric calculations, Captain, I decree that the laws make an exception when imperial blood is concerned. Any mother assigned me is gentled and ennobled by that assignment, becomes an empress, and is manumitted at public expense.”

  Isonadey said coolly, “A dozen weapons are on you. You cannot escape alive.”

  Del Azarchel grinned. “Escaping alive is the highest priority of a man without honor.”

  Isonadey’s eyes grew wide. Less coolly, he said, “You cannot fight the whole ship, the whole human world!”

  Del Azarchel laughed like a madman. “Can I not? History says otherwise!”

  Montrose said to the captain, “Ha! You flinched!” and to Del Azarchel, “He’s yellow. Stick him.”

  Unexpectedly, Isonadey threw himself forward, as if trying to impale himself on the sword of Del Azarchel. But, no, he was not throwing himself forward; he was crumpling up in a ball, clutching his head. At the same moment, the Locusts fell to the deck and curled into foetal positions.

  The cold-eyed Chimerae flourished their whips, whose metal lengths began to buzz with energy, but they did not strike.

  Del Azarchel stepped back and lowered his sword. He said to Montrose, “Whatever answer his message provoked must be alarming. Hold your fire.”

  “Dammit, Blackie! I don’t take orders from you!”

  “Then fire at will to each point of the compass, Cowhand! Burn the whole of the established Earth with your puny pistols!”

  Montrose snarled and tucked his guns away. The Chimerae did not put their whips away, but they did tighten the metal lengths into spears, holding them at the ready. With the typical rage of their race, their eyes were glittering points, hot as coals, teeth clenched so hard their gums were white, and yet with the typical self-control of their race, without an order to kill, they did not attack.

  A voice that was two voices said, “Even could he defeat the world with a hand weapon, she who speaks is not of the world.”

  4. Carmelite Satellite

  Montrose and Del Azarchel turned.

  The shoulders and head of a Giant were looming above the edge of the poop deck, roughly at their eye level. He was fifteen feet tall, and he leaned on a staff of smart-graphite steel. His coat was blue, and his coolie hat was the size of a wagon wheel, and even then seemed small on the Giant’s over-bloated and strangely delicate skull. The coat was coated with logic-crystal gemstones after the fashion of the Simplifier Order from thousands of years earlier. His skin was tainted blue.

  The Giant’s voice was oddly twyform: it came both from his throat, somewhat high and thin, almost childlike, and from his chest, where it rumbled like whale song. The slight nuances of pitch and tone and word choice between the two voices added additional dimensions to the language, and allowed for high information density.

  Without turning his immense head, the Giant raised his wand so that the two rings joining the Celtic cross atop it jangled with a clear chime, and pointed at the crescent moon. It was dusk, and in the darkening sky, the multicolored crescent hung like a drawn bow above a line of cloud. The cloud bank was painted into pale contours with moonlight above, red with the setting sun below, dark between. The moon was the oddly amber-gold hue of its glacier coat of logic diamond and marked with the labyrinthine swirling discolorations of Monument notations. Within the horns of the crescent, two pinpoints of acetylene-white light appeared, and then a third.

  Montrose calculated the power needed to make so visible a flare from that distance: it was equivalent to a multimegaton explosion.

  “I am Friar Sancristobal of the Remnant Order of the Post-Final Stipulation and a Brother of Penance of the Third Order of St. Frances,” the Giant said, his golden eyes growing brighter as he stared at Montrose and Del Azarchel. “The Archangel of the Moon casts an energy shadow into this area. It is interfering with the neurotelepathy of the local human infospheres.”

  Del Azarchel said, “The Lunar Mind is super-posthuman. She is beyond us, we mere posthumans, in mental configuration. Surely she is part of the Noösphere! Why is she trying to communicate with us? Are we not phantasms to her?”

  Montrose, leaping to the conclusion more quickly than Del Azarchel, laughed hoarsely and slapped his knee. “Wouldn’t my old ma be a-scorning me for my unchurchgoing ways! And lookit here! The moon is a nun!”

  Del Azarchel stared at Montrose a moment, and then squinted at the crescent moon as if he could pierce to the lunar core with his naked eye. “You are saying she is in communion with you, Friar? The moon is a mendicant?”

  The Giant flicked his eyelids in the gesture his race, with their thick-necked and immobile heads, used for a nod. “Mother Superior Selene serves as an Abbess of the Order of the Discalced Friars of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel. The whole lunar sphere is sacred ground now, for none but hermits and monks departed of worldly things would dare dwell in such arid wastes.”

  Seeing Montrose’s blank look, Del Azarchel said, “She’s a Barefoot Carmelite.”

  “Seeing how’s an airless satellite what’s got no feet, I guess that makes sense,” said Montrose, shrugging. “What’s a Carmelite? Type of sticky candy?”

  The Giant said, “As a Whitefriar, Mother Selene has taken vows of poverty and nonconnectivity. Although in reality visible to the Noösphere, as a member of a human sacerdotal order, she is legally considered of the human intellectual strata, and politely ignored. Neither her thoughts nor mine are transmitted into the information systems of the many levels of posthuman consciousness interpenetrating the Earth. Do you have instruments to detect and interpret her instructions? She forbids you from continuing in your act of piracy.”

  “Forbids?” Del Azarchel bristled. “By what authority?”

  “No authority aside from what your own conscience calls right. Forswear your suicidal pride. How will you contend with higher powers? Will you pierce the moon with your sword? The day when you were the paramount intelligence of Earth is past, sir. You are as a dullwit child, here.”

  Montrose said, “Blackie, those lights we see on the unlit hemisphere of the moon? I assume there is about a mile-wide circle of ocean being painted. That is a triangle of ranging beams. If Selene turned up the power, this boat will go up like matchwood.” Montrose turned to the Giant. “Brother Sancristobal, I take it Selene did not take a vow of peace?”

  The Giant said pleasantly, “How much of her most warlike mother, Diana, is still within Selene is a matter of speculation. The fiberglass deck of the ship will reflect the lethal dose of radiation. But she would not harm the Swan, who is part of the interconnected mental life of Earth, a living vessel of the living data streams.”

  I will harm no one, if the Nobilissimus and the Judge of Ages will accept my offer of sanctuary on the moon. There is a basilica in Tycho crater, from which, by an ancient and significant law, no slave nor indentured servant can be haled. The tip of the sword of law is broken at the doors of the Holy Church.

  It was Captain Isonadey speaking. He was supine on the deck. The voice was not his. His eyes were open. Since every part of his eye, pupil and sclera and all, were black as midnight, whether or not the eyes were focused on anything was a matter of conjecture. The Chimerae were inching away from their master, spears trembli
ng in their hands.

  Menelaus crossed his arms on his chest. “Blackie, this place strikes me as right medieval. The moon’s done joined up with the preachers.” He laughed and shook his head. “Every acre of lunar surface has an intelligence range above three hundred thousand. Lives by begging. Obeys a human priest—am I right, Brother Sancristobal? How did you work the baptism?”

  Captain Isonadey rose, or was pulled, to his feet. The motion was swift, somehow managing to look both unnaturally smooth and inhumanly awkward. The voice rang from his mouth. I am the Abbess and Mother Superior. I occupy the core, not merely the surface. Immersion, albeit preferred, is not necessary. The Bishop Hymir blessed an incoming comet, which was redirected to my surface. The crater formed is the site of a chapel dedicated to Saint Teresa of Ávila. There, Amphithöe may reside if she will join our order, or else slumber undisturbed until this current Concubine Vector passes. It would not be well for her to accompany you into the undisclosed far future. In any case, I will set her free. You may assist me in certain matters.

  “What matters?” said Montrose; almost in unison, Del Azarchel said, “What if we don’t agree to this exchange?”

  “It proves we’re stupid,” said Montrose loudly, rolling his eyes skyward. His expression of exasperation turned intent. “The iron core of the moon is fourteen sextillion grams or so, and forty percent of that, whatever used to be molten, I am guessing is now sophont matter. One big plaguey logic diamond. Why does a mind with an intelligence clearly past the ten thousand mark want help from us humble posthumans?”

  It is no exchange, spoke the voice, answering Del Azarchel. I shall grant sanctuary to Amphithöe because it is the right thing to do. You will assist me because it is the right thing to do.

  Del Azarchel said, “I can agree to nothing blind. Tell us the nature of this assistance we can offer? And answer the other mysteries that confound us. Why did Domination of the Hyades, so far above us in the evolutionary scale, attack us merely to depart again? Why did they not stay and rule, as is there right? Why? What purpose is served? Will they never come again? Must man ever be alone?” And into his voice there crept a note of inner torture.

  But there was no reply from Captain Isonadey, who was even then clutching his head, and speaking in his own strange three-part Melusine voice again. Montrose looked up. Beneath the horns of the crescent moon, all was dark once more. The three flares of extraterrestrial light had winked out.

  4

  Whitefriars of Tycho

  1. Visions of Stars and Clouds

  Compared to the distance separating Earth from Jupiter, the interval of airless void severing Earth from moon was small indeed. But the pinnace boat was not a great sailing vessel, and carried limited fuel. The voyage took weeks.

  Aboard were Amphithöe, Del Azarchel, and Montrose, each in a hibernation coffin. Del Azarchel and Montrose, as before, slightly thawed their neural tissue, and remained mentally active, as if disembodied.

  The boat’s telescopes studied an artifact found at L5, a stable orbital point directly between Earth and moon. The Swans had built, or perhaps grown, a cluster of space stations that looked like jellyfish or crystal wheels, and smaller vessels like origami foil or slivers of bright steel hung in a cloud around them, tethered or docked. The stations were dark, emitting neither heat nor energy, the remnant of some long-past space program or war effort.

  After that, Montrose from his coffin noticed the telescopes drawing power, turning outward. Del Azarchel was surreptitiously studying the black skies again. Montrose used the same trick he had used before—he was confident Del Azarchel had not detected his little mole in the data feed—surreptitiously to see what Del Azarchel was looking at.

  This time it was not exosolar planets.

  Del Azarchel directed instruments and onboard analysis resources toward PSR B2224+65 in the direction of Cygnus the Swan. This was a pulsar, a pulsating neutron star, six miles in diameter and yet with a mass greater than the sun, plunging through the heavens like a blind fallen angel, X-ray jets radiating from the dark body like torn wings of invisible fire. What cosmic disaster had accelerated two octillion tons of matter from a standstill to over 620 miles per second, about one-half of one percent of the speed of light?

  Slower, but more menacing, was Gliese 710 in the constellation Serpens Cauda, the Tail of the Serpent with whom Ophiuchus wrestled. This small K-type star was sixty-three lightyears from Sol and closing. It was destined to collide with the Solar System in one and a half million years.

  Del Azarchel turned the telescopes again. The images were from black and blank interstellar space.

  Except the space was not empty. The interstellar medium was much thicker than early, earthbound astronomy had predicted. Frozen gas giants like hulks of hydrogen by the hundreds, smaller solid worlds by the thousands, icebergs and mountains by the myriads, all thronged the alleged emptiness of space but, issuing no light, had been undetectable by the ancients.

  Montrose felt a pang of fear for his wife. How could any ship survive such hidden reefs and rocks? Rocks? No. At the relative speeds these bodies moved, call it a shooting gallery, a no-man’s-land of shells and bombs, or some roaring Norse pit of chaos older and deeper than Hell.

  Gas and dust were everywhere, in streamers and clouds, held away from each star by its tiny bubble of solar wind.

  The Local Interstellar Cloud was thirty lightyears wide and included the dim and nearby spark of Promixa, Altair spinning like a mad ballerina, blazing Vega, cyclopean Arcturus, and bright Fomalhaut ringed with its countless planetoids. The cloud was flowing ever outward from a star-forming region called the Scorpius-Centaurus Association, which in turn was merely an arm of a larger and older complex of star-forming molecular clouds, like a massed flotilla of thunderheads.

  Montrose could not shake from his imagination the odd fancy that he was spying the red-lit smolder and fume of smokestacks from the furnaces of great, blind, slow and antique titans, creating stars on their forges like weapons of fire, and shining planets like jewels.

  When its evolution across the eons was seen at once, the Local Interstellar Cloud waxed and waned like a campfire flickering, or like a vast, dark beast breathing. The Local Cloud eerily ate into the larger, finer neighboring G-cloud complex, which was centered around Alpha Centauri, almost as if struggling with blind and smoky limbs to consume it.

  Suppose the Local Interstellar Cloud were indeed a living thing? Could it even notice the existence of Earth’s sun, any more than a man could notice a mitochondria? Or notice Earth any more than a man notices an atom of carbon floating in the fluid of his eye?

  Montrose drove the nightmarish sensations crawling through his brain away with an effort of will. A simpler question was at hand. He wondered what Del Azarchel sought among these strange astronomical splendors.

  A few weeks later, nearing the moon, the pinnace passed not far from a rotovator. This was a shining length of ultra-tensile cable, miles long, used to add kinetic energy to vessels seeking higher orbit, or to subtract from those descending. It was old, unlit, unrotating, empty of ships.

  Their flight path required them to orbit the moon and shed speed. As they made the final approach, the antique rotovator sank in the distance in the east, fell behind the bright limb of the moon’s rim, and was gone.

  2. Tycho Crater

  His still-active nervous system connected to instruments in the hull, Montrose studied the orb below.

  Gone was the tide-locked moon of his youth, black and silver as a lapwing. Now it was black and yellow as a goldfinch, and the seas were peacock-hued like stained glass, and each hour new hills and maria came over the horizon into view. Eventually their destination passed beneath.

  Tycho had once been the youngest large crater on the moon, less than one hundred eight million years old, with walls tall and sharp. To each side smaller craters gaped, created by ejecta from the Tycho impact: Sasserides and Pictet, Street and Longomontanus. Shadowy impressions remained of
those once-vast craters now that a new crater, almost a sea, had been formed directly on the same spot as Tycho, and the new layer of lava and ejecta had bathed them. Tycho was therefore once again the youngest crater on the moon.

  Once there had been, radiating out in each direction, an immense system of rays partly reaching around the great curve of the moon formed by streams of tektites, countless pebbles bright as snow, each with its distinctive shape, tear-drop or sinuous or globular, depending on how far from the crater it fell.

  Most of those rays long ago had vanished, not just because so many tektites had been carried back to Earth during the Second Age of Space as fortune-telling charms, but because Del Azarchel had blacked out vast swathes of the surface to draw his hand there; and, ages later, the seas and dark areas of surface had been coated with self-replicating logic diamond tawny as the skin of a lioness; and, later still, the lunar face of living gold was first shattered and then inscribed by the weapons of the Asmodel of Hyades with notations: circles with ovals, triangles within triangles, endless nested sinewaves like the patterns left by a receding sea in the sand. The vast inscription covered about an eighth of the hemisphere.

  In all this rocky tumult, most but not all of those startling rays issuing from Tycho were gone forever. Someone had taken the time to reconstruct four rays of shining white gravel, glacier-bright, reaching miles across the moonscape. They were precisely perpendicular, and one arm was twice the length of the other three. The resulting figure embraced nigh half the globe. These new rays were younger than the Monument inscription, for the tektite streams lay atop them.

  Midmost in the circular sea of Tycho was a central peak, formed by the splash of the momentarily molten rock during the impact, rising a mile above the black plain.

  That central peak had been burrowed, cut, and carved by machines smaller than grasshoppers into a cathedral based on the eccentricities of Gothic design.