The Hermetic Millennia

by John C. Wright

  Yuen spoke with explosive passion, “But how did it happen? How was it permitted to happen? Whose army is so great to encompass us? Who overthrew us?”

  Menelaus shook his head. “No one. The Chimerae were invincible in battle.”

  Yuen said, “Then how?”

  Menelaus said, “By slow and easy stages of corruption. The specific causes were many and complex. The foremost was a biotechnical improvement during a time of moral decline. Like the Babylonians, we were undone by simple drunkenness. It was called ‘Greencloak’ technology: Implanted artificial glands to intoxicate and alter states of consciousness spread by illegal medics first among the Kine, then among the lower ranks. And then it no longer was illegal, and then it was no longer stigmatized, and finally it was not permitted to be criticized.”

  Yuen said in a strangled voice, “I don’t understand. Our greatness was unmatched. Whatever we faced, we conquered.”

  Menelaus said, “No Chimera understood it. For that reason I was sent back into the Tombs. The trends of our decline were too slow for one man to see in his lifetime, and I was the only one—the schools by that point no longer taught mathematics of the requisite level—to work out the Cliometric calculus. Academic Command believed that someone was deliberately manipulating history to obliterate our civilization. I was to discover who and how.”

  Both men stiffened.

  Yuen said, “You mean someone obliterated the noble civilization for which all my ancestors slaved and served and suffered and fought and died … deliberately? A man did this? There is not even a word for the crime of killing an age of the world.”

  Menelaus said, “Aeonicide. And yes, it is a man. I was sent into the Tombs to wake in a future day when I might trace the source of his historical anomalies, find him and confront him and kill him.”

  Daae said in a voice of soft surprise, “But I know who this man is.”

  Menelaus said, “Who? Is he here?”

  Daae said, “He must be, for he—”

  As if pulled by one invisible thread, both Daae and Yuen snapped their heads in the same direction. Menelaus did not have senses as sharp as theirs, but his neuromuscular control allowed him to turn his head the same direction at the same moment, as if he had the eyes and nose of a Chimera.

  Of course, he saw nothing, and, of course, he could not ask what they were eluding when Daae raised his hand and flicked his fingers in two quick motions. Menelaus was baffled to see that the trooper hand signals from his days in the Thirty-fifth Cavalry Division, in A.D. 2225 were alike enough to the hand signals of the Chimera Varuman linage from A.D. 5480, for him to read them. Daae’s gesture ordered Alpha Yuen to take point; rear guard and trace hider was Beta Anubis (as he thought of him).

  It was difficult to follow two men who made so little noise as they glided beneath the trees in pitch darkness.

  As they came to the edge of the wood, Yuen raised his hand. The other two stopped, tense, wary. Through the pine trees, Menelaus saw a rise of ground silhouetted against the stars, and a group of figures was coming over the rise, in twos and fours. From the occultation of the stars, it seemed a search party. They carried no lanterns, but they were making no attempt at stealth: Menelaus heard howls and barks, as if the creatures were searching rather than hunting, seeking comrades who might answer, not prey who would flee in stealth.

  Daae tapped Yuen on the shoulder, pointed at the enemy, shaded his eyes, wobbled his head, cupped his palm as if begging alms. He was asking what the dogs were looking for. Yuen’s answer was a shrug: another gesture that had not changed despite the change of times and races.

  Daae licked his finger and held it to the wind, and selected a path that would keep them downwind of the dogs.

  6. Ivinia

  At moonrise, they were far enough downslope to fear no patrols of dog things. The hand-stained moon was full, and illumed the scene with silver light.

  The three men came to a treeless knoll and climbed the side. It was a mound as symmetrical as an upside-down bowl. When Menelaus stepped on the slope, he heard a strange whine from his implants, and then silence.

  The other two men were more relaxed in their posture as they walked. Menelaus wondered how the Chimerae had detected that the trees blocked the medium-range instruments of the Blues; second, he wondered how they knew this mound of grassy ground issued the same interference as the trees did; and third, he wondered how the Chimerae knew the Blue Men had such instrumentation. Who had told them?

  The deduction was not hard to make. Daae spoke of the end of his world. The race that superceded the Chimerae called themselves the Natural Order of Man, or the Nymphs: it would be unusual, but not impossible, for a member of that race to be scholarly enough to retain an ancient language, and to have spoken with Daae. Looking at the trees around him, Montrose deduced several of the properties they must possess, including blocking some of the Blue Men instruments. He knew he would soon have an opportunity to speak with a Nymph: he gritted his teeth, wishing it could be immediate. He had set events in motion; now they moved without his control.

  At the crest of the knoll stood a thin-faced woman of middle years and regal bearing. Her hair was so blond that by moonlight it seemed a metal helmet. She wore her hair in a tightly drawn bun, which meant she expected battle and death. Her eyes were vivid without being beautiful, deeply sunken in her skull and having a disturbing stare to them.

  She was dressed in the same overalls as others in the camp, but she had fashioned a short stabbing spear out of a tentpole. From the tread marks in the spearhead, it looked as if she had forced the pole end flat merely by having one the digging automata of the Blue Men step on it for her. Then she had patiently sharpened it against a rock. Her gestures and expressions were stiff and queenly, but her eyes never ceased to gleam with a cold ferocity.

  All three men went to one knee. A human eye would not have detected that Menelaus started the drop to the kneeling position after the other two, because his knee struck the frost white wintergrass of the knoll first.

  The lady passed out combs of shell to Daae and Yuen. The two Alphas, still kneeling, unbraided and combed out their hair. Daae’s hair shone like snow, and Yuen’s shone like ink. Daae’s fell past his shoulders, and Yuen’s came almost to his waist, and it took them many slow and patient strokes of the comb to dress it.

  Daae and Yuen crouched, fussing with their hair. Menelaus thought the sight mildly disquieting, but he understood the symbolism: The male Chimerae of their rank wore no ornaments nor finery, so their only idle vanities were the length and shine of their hair. It was bound up in combat, so the act of combing it out after was their way of rejoicing in peace and survival.

  The lady cut the ribbon binding the tail of her braid with her spear tip, and shook the last two turns of the braid loose.

  She looked oddly at Menelaus. He, not knowing what else to do, pushed back his hood and drove his fingers through his hair once or twice, using his fingernails to straighten up his part, and spitting on his palm to pat down his unruly cowlick with saliva.

  She said, “My late lord bore the weapon Callixiroc the Dark, which his fathers in times past bore against the Witches and their Werewolves in the battle of Buffington’s Island, where Arthuna Ire Extet of never-ending memory fell.”

  Menelaus had never heard of any Arthuna. Maybe the epithet never-ending memory merely meant the fellow didn’t forget things, not that he was all that unforgettable.

  She said, “This spear in my hand is yet virgin and nameless, and has done no service, and bears no name: yet she is a true weapon. Do you contest this?”

  Menelaus said, “I would not dare, ma’am. Sometimes those virgins bite.”

  She nodded regally. “Grislac and the wand in the hand of Varuman Daae are pledged to my honor, for the good of the Eugenic Emergency Command. I am Dependant Alpha Lady Mother-of-Commandant Wife-of-Captain Ulec Nemosthene Ivinia née Echtal. My victory title is Septimilegens, for I have borne seven sons into distinguished ser
vice.”

  Menelaus pulled out the fist-sized stone from his robes and laid it at her feet. “This is my rock. I call him Rock. I gave one of the dog things a handsome clout across the jaw with it, and broke some teeth, and I might have killed another one. It’s not a confirmed kill.” Menelaus did not mention the dog things he had shot with his pistols, now lost. Losing a weapon to the enemy was grounds for ritual suicide among the Chimerae.

  “Confirmed or not,” she said, “I trust none loyal to the Command will contest the point. We are too few to spill our blood in contests.” Lady Ivinia turned her eyes to where Yuen and Daae were kneeling and dressing their hair. “Behold the loyalty of his lowly one! I have not seen such great heart, no, not in all of Virginia. Heroes have lain down at the feet of my linage weapons worth ten thousand medallions and twenty thousand tourneys, and yet this one, I tell you, lays down more, for he gives all he has. If he can slay the foe with a stone, it were shame indeed should higher men and better armed do less.”

  She turned back to him. “State your grade, rank, line, clan, name, derivation, and action.”

  “High-Beta Lance-Corporal Sterling Xenius Anubis. Homo sapiens and Crotalus horridus, proven of Mount Erebus on Ross Island, ma’am.”

  With a motion of inhuman gracefulness, the lady knelt, one hand on her spear, and with the other picked up the stone, and straightened again. She offered it to Menelaus. “Take your weapon from my hand, soldier, and bear it loyally in the name of the cause of racial perfection. It is not my hand alone who gives it, but every mother who has ever buried a fallen son. Freely we offer our sons into the oblivion we all crave. When you face death, think of us, who have already given all we love into the maw of war.”

  Lady Ivinia pointed with her spear down the slope. “Stand, Alpha Gentleman, and Loyal. Look about you. Here is our killing ground. Look closely.”

  7. The Camp

  From this prospect, they could see over the tops of the trees. The slope of the great hill was not regular, but rose and fell in mound and dell. The snowy knolls of the lower slopes looked as round and heavy as pregnant women with long white hair huddled against the winter in shaggy fur coats. The trees were merely masses of soft shadows in the moonlight.

  The fence formed a triangle, and the glitter of it could be seen, sinister as the heaving side of a breathing snake, through the boughs. The apex of this triangle surrounded the peak of the hilltop. The cleft that parted the hilltop was entirely within the converging lines of fence. Within this cleft were the exposed first two levels of the Tomb system.

  A second cleft, narrower and not so deep, was halfway down the slope, cutting at right angles, and from between the sheer cliffs of this narrower cleft arose a rushing white stream thundering or chuckling downhill. In this stream was the battle wreckage of several Blue Man automata, not visible at the moment. At the mouth of the stream was a lesser door, a back way into the Tomb system, opening into the Eighth Level.

  This rushing stream bisected the triangle of the fence. On one side of the stream was a cleared field where the metallic tents of the thawed prisoners gleamed. Here was a large infirmary tent and a larger mess tent.

  To the other side were the machine-pavilions and the exercise field for the insect-limbed automata: the snow had been trampled into frozen mud by metal feet.

  At the foot of the hill, a large but windowless egg-shaped structure, apparently a powerhouse, squatted at one corner of the triangular fence. At the other corner was a guarded yard containing a pile of broken coffins.

  Between these two points, the long line of fence forming the base of the triangle faced the landing field. This line of fence held three guard towers, one to either side of the gate, and one straddling the gap in the fence where the stream ran out. This third tower also acted as a control tower, with flags and lanterns dangling from a yardarm. These towers were little more than impromptu platforms atop narrow-based tripods which swayed alarmingly when the wind blew. The dog things would not climb them. The towers were manned by Blue Men.

  The control tower had a large parabolic dish, made of what looked like mother of pearl, lashed and rigged to its lopsided structure. Cables lying across the snowy grass snaked from the control tower to the egg-shaped powerhouse. The gaze of Menelaus rested on that radio tower for a while.

  Moonlight glinted ghostlike from the armored cylinders flanking the gate, and the slowly moving smartwire atop the fence, waving and swaying like thorny sea-grass.

  Beyond the gate, where the thaws could not go, rose the brick piles of the doghouses, and the taller spiral seashell buildings of the Blue Men. The doghouses had many small windows, no bigger than a man’s fist, for scenting rather than for sunlight.

  The seashell-shaped coral structures of the Blue Men had no windows at all. The largest was shaped like a nautilus, the Spira mirabilis of the mathematicians, and it rose up fifty feet. By day, it was sky blue dappled with silver spots. By night it was a looming round shadow, moaning softly when the wind walked past its mouth. It was flanked by spiral minarets like narwhale horns. Nearby four squat sheds like prone conch shells hunkered, crusted with barnacles and spires. To one side was a large pink structure shaped like a snail shell that served as a field hospital.

  Not far from these structures, the landing field contained a dozen cloth-winged flying machines: triplanes, biplanes, and motorized kites. By day, the brightly colored heraldic designs and totems painted on the wings were visible. These planes had rear screws rather than propellers.

  In their midst, a dun whale looming above a school of colorful fish, was an air-ironclad with a score of helicopter blades above and propellers fore and aft. Like Viking shields, the sides of this large craft were shadowed with many overlapping plates of solar energy material. The plates were ancient, yellowed with age and spiderwebbed with cracks, as if each shield had been meticulously pieced together, shard by shard, from fragments. And yet the smell of gasoline and oil could be smelled over the machine when the wind was right. The cracked solar plates were purely ceremonial, something left from other days.

  Beyond, the land was wraithlike, white and empty: a land of boulders and tufts of colorless grass. Where the sky met the ground in the dark distance, the rising moon glittered against a range of cliffs of ice, eerie silver blue in the moonlight. This was a spur the northern glacier had sent down along the crests of western hills. The land to the east, now merely shadow, held no ice outcropping, but neither did it hold any forest or tilled fields, no sign of croft or barn or road. The valleys of Virginia looked almost like tundra, acres of shrub and scrub and wiry grass, with boulders peeping from the soil like the helmets of buried trolls.

  The only trees in sight were pine and spruce, and they grew thickly only on this split hill, as if some heat or seeping chemical from the buried coffins had kept the greenery alive, or as if the memories of elder days, when this land was green, had somehow been preserved across the ages, and lingered here.

  8. Character

  Lady Ivinia said, “Alpha Daae, what is the character of this camp? Report.”

  Daae stood to speak. “Sloppy. Ma’am, the camp is a jury-rig. Someone tossed it together from makeshift materials. The discipline of the Witch-dogs is poor. If we move cautiously, and if the Blue Men find and wake more of our race, there is a possibility of victory, albeit slender. A cautious approach is best. We must dissemble our purpose.”

  Ivinia said, “Alpha Extet Yuen. Same question. Report.”

  Yuen also stood up, turned and pointed with his truncheon. “Behold yonder: an airfield. Here is a rotary-wing craft of unknown design, but known purpose. She is armored for war. The pattern of portholes and vents indicates a hold used for transporting live cargo. She is a slave ship, able and therefore meant to take us away to bondage. To display such a ship to us is to hiss in our faces. Before that, we see a fence. No one raises a fence and does not expect it broken. To erect a fence is to flourish a whip. And beyond the haughty slaver craft, we see waste. A wasteland is
a confrontation to a man of stature: an empty place, a gauntlet thrown down in challenge and defiance. A place that cries out to be conquered and civilized.

  “My word is the opposite of Proven Daae: Let us not dissemble.” Yuen continued, his eyes hard and bright. “To look upon us is to know how we must respond to a flung gauntlet, flourished serpentine, a hiss. We will break those who offend and trammel us. We will conquer yonder snowy waste and make it into a garden land. Any man of pure Alpha blood would know that was our destined path; how could we hide it, even were there need? Whom would we deceive? Are the deeds and nature of the Chimerae so soon forgotten?”

  Menelaus heaved a sigh, “Actually, Alpha Yuen, considering the gap of time…”

  Lady Ivinia turned her eyes to him. “You may speak, Beta Sterling Anubis. Report. What is the character of the camp?”

  Menelaus said, “This is a criminal operation. No warlord hunting for undefended men to loot and enslave, no bureaucracy trying to exact a tax from the Slumberers, and no university wanting to examine or interview the past would have sent out an expedition so ill equipped.”

  But Daae said, “Beta Anubis hails from an era of wealth, when there were roads and electrification. He is perhaps unaware of how often warlords with empty coffers make due.”

  Lady Ivinia said, “We are not Witches. Among the Chimerae, the men have absolute sway and command over the women. Such is our ancient law. As a respectful and obedient wife and mother of heroes, my task is only to be silent and obey. Therefore, in the name of the yet unborn generations entrusted to the motherhood, I can only tell you that you men must overcome this foe. If you do not, you will be found unworthy, and will commit ritual suicide. I would much regret that eventuality, O thou loyal sons of the loyal mothers of the Chimerae. The strategy and tactics I leave to you men, in whose hands the tasks of war are entrusted. Am I understood?”