The Hermetic Millennia

by John C. Wright

  Menelaus carefully judged the position of each of the dog things, their weapons, and the objects in the environment, and ran through 207 alternative scenarios of attack, and spent some time idly putting numbers to his vector estimates, visualizing wounds, and so on. One particularly clever attack method would be to take over all the tents in the camp with his implants, and have them come stalking and rolling forward like gigantic metal slugs, slicing flesh and bone in twain with sharpened tent folds, before the Blue Men could reestablish control. That scenario ended with himself and the Chimerae dead, and at least one Hormagaunt, but more than half the dog things would be dead or wounded.

  For a moment, Menelaus was actually disappointed when the Blue Men, staring with somber eyes at the Chimerae, decided to do nothing. He had wanted to see how closely his mental scenario would match the reality. He wanted to see the looks on their muzzles when tents all rustled and stirred into an unnatural mockery of life.

  Then the moment passed, and he was sober again, and scared. This was not a game, and he was not a godling, no matter what Mickey said.

  His disappointment deepened and took on a bitter edge. He looked thoughtfully at the bandage Yuen wore as an eye patch. Why had the Alpha not allowed the Blue Men to restore his eye to working order?

  There was another commotion and consultation when the dogs reached the empty spot where the tent assigned to Menelaus was supposed to be pitched.

  Menelaus blinked, wondering how unobservant his captors could be. In a yard where only sixty-five people were standing in ranks and rows, how long would it take to notice everyone was in drab coveralls, except for one guy wearing a tent?

  The answer was fourteen seconds. Three Blue Men, as alike as triplets, were communing with one another, and all turned at once in his direction. One of the three triplets uttered a soft trill. Two dog things carrying muskets came trotting over toward Menelaus.

  The speaking machine from the harness of the Collie clattered, “You! Disinterred four days ago, coffin 4151, Level Three northwest. Coffin inscribed name ‘Beta Sterling Xenius Anubis, Proven in Battle of Mount Erebus, Genetic Unknown, Line Unknown, Possibly Crotalinae.’ Confirm!”

  The machine spoke in the stilted Virginian of an educated Chimera.

  Menelaus pushed back his hood, exposing his face, and answered in the same language. “I am he.”

  “You! Not wearing the uniform thoughtfully provided!”

  “Yes, me. I did not wish the tracking scent also thoughtfully provided to make it easy for you to find me, Lassie.”

  “You! Dismantled tent thoughtfully provided, altered its use! This is conversion of property!”

  “Me. I thought the tent was mine. So I decided to wear it. Bulky, but warm enough.”

  “You! Engage in unexpected acts!”

  “Me. Thanks. I try.”

  The Collie clicked off the speaking machine, then turned to his companion, an Irish Wolfhound, and whined through his teeth. The Wolfhound shrugged philosophically, a very human gesture, and uttered a bark. The two sniffed each other carefully.

  Click. “You! Come!”

  “Me! My pleasure.”

  “You! Why you say ‘me’? Why you start each speaking with this word?”

  “Me!! Monkey humor. They forget to equip you hounds with a sense of humor? Tell me, puppies, do you breed true, or are you Moreaus, like those whales from long ago?”

  “We are Followers. We Follow. We are loyal. We are not whales. Always loyal!”

  “Always is a long time, Lassie.”

  Menelaus was expecting them to take him over to the triplets for questioning. Instead, they walked away from the prison tents, and they passed beyond the wire. He saw the watchful eyes of Daae and Yuen on him as he walked away.

  2. Preceptor Illiance

  No door barred the curving passageway leading to the interior of the azure seashell-shaped building. Instead, a smooth-sided tunnel led from an openmouth halfway around the structure before disgorging into a wide circular interior. The light was dim, shed by bioluminescent substances in the walls. The ceiling spiraled up into darkness, out of sight. Another passage, mirror to the first, on the far side of the chamber, opened into a ramp leading upward, hinting at chambers above. The place was utterly silent.

  A bald man with skin as blue as a peacock’s neck was seated on the carpet in lotus position. He was dressed in a long jacket glittering with a design of crystals, circuitry, and gems patterned like the hood of a cobra. He rose to his feet with a single movement, ballet graceful, as if an invisible thread from the top of his head had pulled him upright. He stood four feet tall and looked like a big-headed child.

  The Blue Man took two strips of jerky from a poke and tossed them to the dog things, who caught them out of the air with their teeth. Then he raised a slim whistle to his lips and blew a signal normal human ears could not hear.

  The ears of the dog things drooped, and they shuffled their legs uncertainly. The Blue Man smiled gently and spoke aloud in a language of liquid syllables. The Collie made an adjustment to his speaking machine, and answered in the same tongue. The Blue Man laughed and waved his hand. The dogs crouched, tails lowered, and with many a suspicious glare at Menelaus, backed out of the chamber.

  The Blue Man now bowed toward Menelaus and gestured for him to seat himself on the richly patterned carpet.

  Menelaus grunted heavily, and slowly lowered himself into a cross-legged position.

  The Blue Man drew out what looked like a glass needle and put in on the carpet between them. He took out a gem-encrusted directed-emission pistol, cracked open the breech, and drew out a small cylinder, maybe a power cell. He placed the opened pistol on the carpet between them, and also the power cell.

  He spoke, in a voice surprisingly deep for one of his slight size, in the language of the Hormagaunts, which was called Iatric. “This weapon, in your language, is called venom, and that weapon is named after the lightning bolt. They are programmed for defensive events only. I have done no murders. Illiance, Preceptor, is my external referent and task category.”

  “Pleased to meet you. You know the customs of the Chimerae.”

  The Blue Man tilted his head sideways, bringing his right ear toward his right shoulder, and then tilted it the other way, bringing his left ear toward his left shoulder. It was neither a nod nor a head shake. The gesture meant nothing to Menelaus.

  “Well,” said Menelaus, “I had a weapon called Rock earlier this evening, but I dropped it. I guess I’ve killed a lot of people. My name is Sterling Xenius Anubis, proved by service in the battle of Mt. Erebus. I am a High Beta–rank Chimera from A.D. 5292, the fifty-third century. You know, there is really no point to having bodyguards if you are not going to listen to their advice about dangerous situations.”

  “You comprehend the intertextual exolanguage of the Locusts? This is a remarkable accomplishment for a Chimera, who did not specialize in intellectual augmentation neurobiomanipulations.” (This last phrase was a simple, two-syllable word in Iatric: skullvork.)

  “I comprehend dogs.”

  “Eie Kafk Ref Rak, you notice, has not had his speech box since the odd events of last night. He was assigned to patrol the Tomb site. Will you return it once you are done studying it?”

  “Would that be the Irish Wolfhound? They didn’t give me their names.”

  “You do not deny the theft, then?”

  From beneath his voluminous robes of tent material, Menelaus drew out one of the speaking machines, a black rectangle the size of a man’s palm inset with a touch screen, and tossed it lightly to the carpet between them. “I doubt we should call it ‘theft’ exactly. I consider the object to be an anthropological artifact, which I took aside for study.”

  “No human being of the first or second rank of augmentation would be able to read the linguistics from the data core of this instrument, much less teach himself our vocabulary, semantics, and grammar, in less than twelve hours, without a Locust interface.”

&nbs
p; Seen up close, the Blue Men were clearly the same race as the locusts, except tendrilless, and with a different pigment scheme. “Are you a Locust?”

  “No. I have renounced, and live in simplicity.”

  “What happens to people who do not renounce?”

  “Their skins are shaded a more conforming hue,” said Illiance with a slight smile. “The Locusts form a neuroinfosphere, a single interconnected system. We are apart.”

  “Is that thing you call a talking box part of their technology?”

  “Indirectly. The talking box is based on a decentralized system; following the self-corrective code, and provided a continual source of repair materials, such units are effectively immortal.”

  Menelaus tried to hide his shock. He had to balance the nerve impulses going to his eyes in order to avoid the posthuman effect of making normal mortals unable to stare him in the face. He had to close his eyes for a moment to regain his control. The self-corrective code was the one seventh of Rania’s divarication solution he had used to prevent the serpentines of the Sylphs from evolving into Xypotechs, self-aware machines. And yet here it was again, in the talking boxes. Effectively immortal? Immortal machines? Passing down from aeon to aeon unchanged?

  How had such a disturbance in the Cliometric predictions of history existed for so long without Pellucid’s model of history detecting the anomaly?

  He opened his eyes to see that Preceptor Illiance was watching him unblinkingly. Illiance said, “It is remarkable that a human being could take something from the person of one of the Followers without his being aware.”

  “Like I said. I comprehend dogs.”

  “Do you think it wise to appropriate belongings that are not yours?”

  “Oh ho. Look who is asking! You and yours are meddling with artifacts from my age, such as biosuspension coffins, some of which contain people and their possessions. Including me. I happen to know Alpha Yuen was buried with an ancestral serpentine worth at least ten thousand medallions of our money. It is called Arroglint; it is a named weapon and it has its own device in the College of Heralds, and it should have its own collectible bubble gum card. So where is it?”

  “I find I am an archaeologist. I peer with great interest at the relicts and remnants of your era.”

  “Well, I am returning the favor, and doing a bit of peering of my own. I am an academic myself, and a damn good one too.”

  “I am pleased that you say so. Will you confess that there is a brotherhood of scholars that can and must reach across all the ages of history?”

  “Brotherhood?”

  “A unity of interest, and a common purpose?” The little Blue Man leaned forward, his eyes intent.

  “Well … what exactly are we talking about?”

  “You must answer.”

  “Must I? Okay. Yes. All scholars of all ages have something in common. We are all curious bastards, and we poke into things we shouldn’t.”

  That answer seemed to satisfy the little Blue Man. He leaned back and smiled his small, cryptic smile.

  “The admission permits me to impose a moral obligation on you. I solicit your assistance and advice.”

  “My advice is to stop poking where you have no business before something really bad happens to you.”

  “While no doubt sound enough, I require your advice in another field of mental effort.”

  “Like what?”

  “Man called Beta Anubis, among your other accomplishments, you are a skilled linguist, are you not? You know the spoken language forms of several races of man.”

  “Do I?”

  “You speak Iatric, the language of the Middle Period of the Configuration of Iatric Clades, called the Hormagaunts; you speak Chimerical, the language of the Eugenic Emergency General Command of the Commonwealth of Virginia, called the Chimerae; you speak that which by the highborn is called the Tongue of the Wise, but by the common called Virginian, which is the language of the Delphic Acroamatic Progressive Transhumanitarian Order for the study of Longevity, called the Witches; and that dialect of Merikan called Korrekthotspeek, used of old only by the Order of Psychics, who were a servant race of the Hermetic World Concordat and the earliest known artificial race of man. The Hermeticists in turn used two languages that once were ancient dialects of Anglatino, whose names I do not know. This is noteworthy.”

  “Must be. You took notes.”

  “Your knowledge seems extraordinary, as your era is remembered as a Dark Age, when much learning would have been lost to you and your people.”

  “Well, Dark Ages are when some people make extra-especial efforts not to let some things get forgotten. Lots of sitting around copying old manuscripts by hand goes on.”

  “Even so, the accomplishment is unusual, Man called Anubis.”

  “Aw, shucks. You can call me Lance-Corporal Beta Anubis. You make it sound like there is more to boast of than there is. I learned Greek and Latin when I was young, and I had to learn English and Japanese to study the First Space Age. All educated Chimerae speak Virginian as well as Chimerical. But Virginian grew out of a dialect of Anglatino with many Nipponese loan-words and constructions thrown in. Anglatino comes out of Merikan and Spanish; Merikan came from English and Korrekthotspeek; Spanish came from Latin. So it was not that hard to pick up Merikan and Spanish.”

  Preceptor Illiance opened his mouth and made a shrill, clicking squawk of noise.

  Menelaus shrugged. “Yes, I can savvy Savant as well. The Sylphs used it to talk to their Mälzels, back when the Giants decivilized the world. I cannot make that modulator-demodulator squeal, because my throat isn’t adapted for it.”

  Illiance sang a few chords in a tonal language of the Naturalists, and the babbling of waters, the rustle of falling leaves, the bark of fox cubs, and the cry of the loon were in his words.

  “Yes, I speak Natural,” said Menelaus, scowling. “Probably better than you. You just invited me to sexual congress.”

  Illiance pursed his tiny lips. “I was taught that was a correct and formal greeting.”

  “Among the Nymphs, a correct formal greeting is an invitation to sexual congress.”

  “I am a simple man. Our lives conform to an ascetic contour.”

  “So, no buggery?”

  “Not at this time,” said the Blue Man, graciously inclining his head. “And how is it you are fluent in a language devised long after your recorded interment date, Lance-Corporal Beta Anubis?”

  “I wasn’t a medical case. I could thaw periodically, study my surroundings, and reinter.”

  “You did not have trouble finding a Tomb once you had left it, or negotiating past the various traps and lethalities?”

  “Some trouble. The coffins containing the techs who knew how to repair the worn-out coffin machinery were painted white and marked with big red crosses. They were supposed to keep all this stuff somewhere in the Tomb catacombs, in these big warehouses only they knew how to find—buried stores of gear, whole fabrication plants, nanotech-breaking columns, and other appliances of the lost technology of the Second Age.”

  “They? The Knights Hospitalier?”

  Menelaus narrowed his eyes. “You know the name?”

  “The Sovereign Military Hospitalier Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, of Malta, and of Colorado. The Maltese Knights. Yes. I happen to know the name. How do you happen to know it?”

  “I found one of their coffins once and puzzled out the cycle to thaw the man out safely. I needed his help to reenter the Tombs.”

  “What year was this?”

  “Why should I answer?”

  “As I said, you are under a moral obligation as an academic.”

  “And if I do not recognize the obligation?”

  “Ah … your father is still your father, even if you do not recognize his face in its sternness.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I will have the dogs tear your body to pieces.”

  Menelaus laughed.

  “You do not seem alarme
d, Lance-Corporal Beta Anubis?”

  “You threaten a Proven member of the Eugenic Emergency General Command of the Commonwealth of Virginia! Good thing for you I left my rock outside. Once you give a weapon a name, our customs do not allow us to bear insult or slight within the weapon’s hearing.”

  “Interesting! And how did this custom arise?”

  “Preceptor, let’s stick to the previous topic for a second. Do you really think you can affright a Chimera with threats?”

  “A Chimera? No.”

  “They why did you threaten me?”

  “I am a simple man, and we make a virtue of direct methods, even if extralegal. We live in the pursuit of an effortless, uncomplicated, unthinking grace of action from an actionless center.”

  Menelaus scowled. A moment passed in silence, with both men seated on the carpet, staring at each other, neither face showing much expression.

  Illiance sat so still, and with such a look of serenity on his features, that Menelaus wondered if the little man had turned off part of his nervous system. It was like trying to win a staring contest with a cat. So Menelaus broke the silence.

  “In my time, the record of the early days was lost, like I said. But there is enough evidence that a sufficiently smart man could piece together the clues.” Menelaus said, “The named weapons of the Chimerae originally came from the days of the Sylphs, the sky-drifting people, but the secret of their making was lost. It was the only part of their silk airskiffs that was nonbiodegradable, and survived to be found in ruins and wreckages. Each serpentine was a self-contained and self-repairing smartweapon, made of contractile metallic fibers studded with processor nodes and sensors. So they could be used as Seeing Eye dogs in the dark. They could be used as spears or lashes or flails depending on the variability settings, or as shock prods to paralyze, torture, stun, or kill. The serpentines were blood-coded to recognize owners. I suppose the early Chimerae lost the ability to change the blood-recognition codes, so the serpentines had to pass from father to son, and no one could take another family’s weapon. In any case, the serpentines could understand human speech, and the onboard weapon-brain would set its own level of lethality depending on its assessment of the nature of the threat.”