The Hermetic Millennia

by John C. Wright

  When the blow landed, Menelaus had sufficient control of his nervous system to induce a fainting cycle without anything more than a silent act of will. He slid down into the roaring darkness with a sense of relief, hoping the breathing tube still lodged in his face would hide any smile of victory.

  If all went as planned, they would place him back in a working coffin for the internal systems to heal his damage. And turn on the communication implants wired into his nervous system.

  The chance that they would kill him while he was unconscious was small; or, at least, small enough that it was worth the risk. And if they did kill him? He had already said his good-byes to Rania, and there was no one else he cared about, nor any group of people, nor any civilization, for thousands of years.

  That was his last conscious thought for a while.

  2

  The Pit of Revenants

  1. Three Locusts

  His next conscious thought was how cold it was, and he wished his brother Leonidas, whose bunk was near the window, would stand up and lever the darn thing shut. Still, it was nice to know he was home, with his brothers around him. By why were they all in his bunk with him? Why did Agamemnon have his elbow sticking in his eye?

  Menelaus pried an eyelid open. He was in a steep-sloped pit, in the mud, in the freezing rain, with other bodies cold as corpses huddled up to either side of him, groaning, and Leonidas had been dead for eight thousand years.

  All was not going as planned. They had not placed him back inside a working coffin.

  When he tried to stand, a naked, bald-headed, and big-headed boy put a hand, and then a shoulder, under his arm. He leaned, but the boy could not lift Montrose.

  Montrose focused his eyes, wishing the light were better. He did a mental trick to repeat the visual images in overlapping layers in his cortex, pick out details, and deduce a brighter and clearer picture.

  The one trying to help him up was not a boy: his frame and facial characteristics were the same as those of the Blue Men who had captured him and, like them, stood four feet tall—except that he was not blue. Instead the man was black as onyx. The fellow was an adult, for he had pubic hair and armpit hair, but no trace of beard stubble nor scalp hair.

  A more obvious distinction was that this man had two yellow tendrils coming from the crown of his skull just above his eyes. These eyes were large and lustrous, and his mouth a tiny rosebud. From what he could see, Montrose guessed the eyes had been modified to pick up ultraviolet. High on the skull, near the base of the two antennae, were two pit organs like those of snakes, able to pick up infrared rays. The Blue Men had displayed no such modifications.

  At that same moment, two other little onyx men, as alike to the first as twin brothers, came to the other side of Montrose and with soft hands helped him to his feet, and steadied him.

  Montrose, for a moment, was delighted to see people who looked so exactly like what his childhood cartoons imaged far future men should look like. “Take me to your leader!” he said in English. Then he scowled. “Or if I am any judge of genetic handiwork, your leader was Coronimas, that idiot. But why this design? Maybe he watched the same toons I did as a kid. That’s a creepy thought.”

  2. The Trench

  He used the same visual layering trick to look around him. It was not pretty. Men and women, both naked, were standing or sitting or lying in the mud. The captors had neither provided clothing nor separated the sexes. There were forty individuals here from a wide variety of millennia, some on the ground; some by themselves, weeping; and the rest huddled into five groups.

  The first group were the bald, onyx-skinned, antennae-wearing dwarfs helping Montrose. Second group were furry or scaly figures of monstrous aspect, animal-headed or headless, and with them, men of less obvious biomodifications. Third were brunette women whose overvoluptuous beauty no mud nor misery could mar, clinging to each other’s wet and nubile bodies and blinking at the rain with darkly exotic and overlarge eyes. With them were sloe-eyed yellow-skinned men whose faces were soft with boyish good looks. Fourth were stern-featured warrior-aristocrats with unblinking eyes, their long hair dank with rain and clinging to their shoulders, and a lady and two girls of their race standing stoically behind them at parade rest, none uttering any complaint, while their servants huddled and rolled in the mud, moaning and whining. Fifth were thin crones and unlovely hags, gross in their nakedness with dangling breast-sacs and wrinkled skins, but seven feet tall, or eight, gnashing their teeth and uttering curses, with their menfolk in a circle around them, in stature seeming like children beneath their grandmothers, shuffling their feet in a slow, mud-sloshing dance. With the hags was a man black as atrament, fat and round and sagging as a dumpling, who gave Montrose a nod of recognition and a small smile.

  The pit was about nine feet deep with sloping walls reinforced by wooden planks. From the resin smell, the planks had been cut within the last day or so. The planks had been stapled in place with thorns, not nails or spikes, which implied a higher level of biotechnology than ironworking present. The pit was about ten paces across, roughly oval. To one side was an wooden doorframe leading up three wooden steps into a trench. The trench ran directly away from his point of view like a roofless corridor in a house, and met another wall of muddy earth, where it forked left and right. There were steps cut in the side of the trenches for musketmen to stand and fire. Montrose did not hear any noise of gunnery at the moment: but it was clear from the slope of the ground that this earthwork was meant to approach the Tombs without exposing the Tomb-robbers to the largest guns by the main door.

  There were more figures in the trench, huddling to get out of the rain. He saw at least one giant, an elephantine silhouette twelve or thirteen feet tall, whose shoulders and head were above the level of the ground; and he saw an albino pale as paper. In the gloom and confusion, no details were clear.

  Dog things armed with pike, cutlass, or musket stood or crouched at the brink. They looked down with dull, disinterested eyes. The dog things were slightly protected from the rain by a tarp. A keg or tank of some sort stood beside them, with hoses and nozzles. Montrose stooped and ran his fingers through the mud, lifted it to his nose, sniffed. Almost lost amid the rain was a faint smell of antiseptic. He put his hand to his armpit and found some white foam, still moist, clinging to him where the rain had not reached. The shock of being hosed down with this disinfectant foam must have been what woke him.

  The antennae of the three small men at his side flicked in unison.

  The implants in Montrose’s chest, neck, and skull were made of organic material, not metal, similar to organs in birds, sharks, and eels that manipulated electromagnetic waves. The artificial nerve fiber leading from the medulla oblongata controlled their activity level, and the auditory centers in his cortex in his brain controlled their sending and receiving of radio data.

  The broadcast from the short, dark dwarf was in the code elements based on a simplified version of the Monument math, which Montrose had no trouble decoding.

  We are of the Noösphere, isolated elements. There is no signal on the airwaves, neither any carrier waves, no navigation beacons, anywhere within range. The world outside is dead and shows no radio traffic.

  This artificial race had been designed somewhere in the seventy-fifth century by the science of the Iatrocracy, were hunted almost to extermination, but eventually prevailed, rising to world dominion in the eightieth century.

  As the other helped him to his feet, the two were close enough that Montrose could detect the unique double pulse pattern of the two-hearted Locusts. The grace and control of a finely responsive nervous system were evident in the little man’s posture and poise.

  Montrose tried to send back a simple set of signals. “There may be some—” He did not know how to form the word for mainframe in this code. “—big-sized thinking machines in cities far from here. When the clouds clear up, seek signals on the shortwave band. You are not to commit suicide. Resources are scarce!”

&nbs
p; We are isolated and unable to assist the Noösphere. If biosuspension is not available, self-demotion is indicated to preserve scarce resources. The Noösphere is offline. Our mind-fragments are very alone.

  “I have resources to sustain you, and I will, as soon as circumstances permit. Listen! The Noösphere requires your continued functioning for now, attached to my entourage, economic unit, and military unit. See? I’m adopting you. I will help you. Self-demotion is strictly forbidden.”

  We must form unity with all. Unity to assist least-self-capable elements.

  Montrose sent, “Yes. We are all supposed to help the weak and wounded. Come on. Let’s start getting some of these people on their feet.”

  Montrose cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted left and right, “Ahoy! Any man jack of y’all savvy English? Do you know what these little men are saying? Se habla español?” He tried several other languages from different historical periods, as “Correct thought! Good speak! Silence ungood!” or “Whoso of ye knowst the Wise Tongue?” or “Attention! Do you read me? Report!” or “Who can ease the ache of my ear-loneliness with delight of the mouth?” or “Comprehend your ear-organ these words, here-now?”

  3. Prissy Pskov

  A woman, who had been squatting on the ground, arms wrapped about her knees, head bowed, rocking slowly back and forth, now uncurled and stood and stepped near.

  She was big-nosed and high-cheeked with stern, striking features, and lips so thick and full that they gave her otherwise harsh face a crude sensuality. Her hair had been biomodified so that quills like the spines of a porcupine cascaded from her scalp. Seeing his gaze, she raised a hand to cover her face and lowered another to cover her crotch, leaving her breasts free. Evidently her face was taboo but not her bosom.

  She spoke in a harsh, glottal, clicking tongue. It was a version of Iatric, the language of the Therapeutae used in Central Asia and Siberia, which he had learned during his short thaw in A.D. 7234.

  She said, “I will aid you if you will protect me. The danger is much.”

  Montrose said, “It’s a deal. I’ll do what I can.”

  “Then be still!” she said.

  “Eh?”

  “Silent! You know too many speech forms. You do not want to be taken off by the culls.”

  The word was a curse in her language, meaning a person so worthless that not even his organs could serve as transplants—someone whose only contribution to life was castration, and the infanticide of his children.

  Without moving his head, Montrose moved his eyes left and right. He saw no Blue Men in evidence, and the dog things were paying no attention.

  But it made sense that the Blue Men, wherever they were, would be watching to see, first, if any of the prisoners showed initiative or courage—it was important to remove troublemakers from the outset—and, second, to see if any scholars mingled among the thaws knew any of the dead languages from still earlier periods, otherwise forgotten.

  The stern-faced woman gestured with her thumb. Her thumb had been biomodified, so that something like the stinger of a wasp slid out from beneath her thumbnail when she pointed.

  “These three are Locusts, enemies of all law. These three urge you to health, and wish your aid in helping others, wounded or dazed, to the showers. It is altruism.” This last was spoken with a word-ending that indicated disgust.

  She crooked her thumb, and the stinger retracted.

  Montrose said, “Who is in charge of the world in this era? I don’t see how a place like this could exist. I would have thought it would be more advanced, with no room for large-scale crimes like this. Can satellites see us?” He interrupted himself. “Showers? I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

  Only now did he consciously notice that people in the trench were moving, if slowly. The giant and the albino he had glimpsed, for example, were out of sight around the turn, and others from the pit slowly filed in behind. The only reason why it was not obvious that everyone in the rain-chilled pit was inching toward the entrance was that various groups from various periods were trying to keep as far from one another as possible. He could see two Hormagaunts, for example, lumpish or dark-furred figures of monstrous form only remotely human, at opposite sides of the pit, as far from each other as they could get. One had his claws unsheathed; the other had deployed his elbow spikes.

  “Come on. Let’s start getting some of these people on their feet. You too, uh, lady, what’s your name?”

  “I am of Pskov, specific name Prissy. I am of three-layer defense, and cannot approach or be approached. You, after-lingerer, register neutral on the biotic scale. You I can approach.”

  “Pleased to meetcha. Wished it’d been under better circumstances. Come on. Help me get this lug to his feet. Get him out of the rain.”

  This was the closest stricken man. He was a gangling figure with coal black skin and a pattern of delicate white scars on his face and forearms and inner thighs. The man’s eyes were rolled up in his head, so only dull slits of white showed between his unclosed eyelids. The fellow looked human, and if the scars were from luminous implants, he might even have been from as far back as the Cryonarchy. Too bad he was stunned: if he were from that era, he might have been the only one in the whole pit who did not mind being nude.

  Prissy Pskov stepped back distastefully. “It is violation of quarantine.”

  4. Other Mankinds from Other Ages

  Montrose grunted and heaved the man over his shoulder, and took a step or two toward the opening into the trenches. Prissy Pskov followed. She looked left and right at the nude crowd. With a rustle, the black quills stood up like the feathers of a Sioux war-bonnet. It was an alarming sight.

  People stepped back, making room for her.

  Montrose stepped past two effete and sad-eyed and slant-eyed yellow-skinned men from the seventieth century, each as handsome as Adonis. He pointed at them with his free hand, and barked in a language called Natural, “You, there! And you! It is your pleasure to help with the carrying of the dazed and weakened. Stoop! These here on the ground are closer to your heart than incestuous-homosexual-love-partner.” This last was a one syllable word in their speech, which did not have a separate term for “brothers.”

  One of the two blinked at him in confusion, “But there is no wine of ecstasy. We must have the wine before we work, and enter the pleasure-trance, or else the delight is less. Why did we come awake in a day when there is no wine?”

  Montrose shouted, “Stoop and haul and help, or I will beat you bloody, and that delight will be even less! We are captives of a band of Tomb-robbers, and they will kill us each separately unless we couple together!”

  Neither of the beautiful men moved, but in the rain, Montrose saw first one, and then another, of the long-haired Chimera soldiers from the fifth millennium stoop and help people from other eras and centuries to their feet. One of the Chimera girls snapped out an order, and the slaves, muttering and cursing, began also to help the woozy and pick up the unconscious. One of the scarecrow-thin crones from the fourth millennium, seeing this, scowled and shrieked, and slapped the hugely fat black man next to her, until he, with a moue of resignation and the shrug of a philosopher, picked up two unconscious people and slung them under his meaty arms like packages, and lumbered forward with their four feet dragging in the mud behind him. Then other men from the same era did likewise. Soon all the prisoners of the pit, conscious or not, were moving or being moved toward the trench entrance.

  5. Dampened Spirits

  Stepping into the shower out of the rain was no real transition. Montrose was under the liquid before he paid it any attention. Something crackled in his implants as the stuff sluiced over him. He wondered what molecular mechanisms or microbe-sized machines were hidden in each water drop, and what frequencies they were using to coordinate. On the other hand, it was possible that the crackling noise came from the tent cloth, if it was smarted up and seeking system connections. Or the smartcloth—if that is what it was—could have been just
probing the prisoners for tools or communication gear. Such as, come to think of it, the implants in his body.

  Again, his thinking speed, crystal clear memory, various cognition tricks, and his ability to juggle vast realms of data: none of that could stop this. Without instruments, without tools, he could not even detect, much less counteract, any microscopic machines or weapons that might be even now worming through his outer skin layers seeking his bloodstream and nerve clusters. For all his gifts, he was as helpless as a goldfish in a toilet bowl.

  He muttered in English. “Damn, but I hate nanotech!”

  One of the Locusts shyly reached up and curled his thin, clammy fingers around Montrose’s elbow. “We sense information-bearing lasers focused on all our throats, picking up throat vibrations.”

  Montrose was aware of the danger, but he had been given only a few minutes. In that time he had gathered two allies, or, counting the Locust unit as three separate people, four. It was not enough. This was out of the seventy or so coffins he had seen stacked in the looting yard. They would need all to ally, all to act as a group, if there was to be any hope of escape or defense.

  And Montrose was responsible for all of them.

  6. Surrender

  He said to Prissy in Iatric: “If the Blues are looking for historians and translators among the Thaws, maybe we can get something from them in return. Have you noticed anyone aside of you and me that knows dead languages? You must have seen at least one translator hauled away. Who was it?”

  “A muscular man covered with markings. He fought them until a dog-man bit his crotch.”