Psychohistorical Crisis
Page 73
The Osa-Scogil being was evolving. The mere fact that ghoul and man had developed a language contact seemed to have catalyzed a process in which they were beginning to develop shared coding at a more machine-language level. The ghoul would eventually see through Eron’s eyes, and Eron would feel the emotions of Hiranimus, perhaps already doing so if loyalty to a family back in the Thousand Suns meant anything: when he was reunited with his wife(?), he was going to demand that she deactivate that damned tuned compulsion to love and protect Petunia. Their daughter(?) was reaching the age when girls resent being overprotected.
The extended party was winding down. There was less revelry, less debate, and, more important, less hysteria. People were still asleep in chairs and zonked out in comers against the wall, or quietly chatting in groups of two. Some had even retreated to their own beds. Eron was too exhausted for that; he commandeered an empty divan and went to sleep.
And that was where the Admiral found Eron hours later, hidden away and asleep. He made enough space for himself to sit down where Eron’s knees had been and shook his prodigy until he saw an open eye. “How can you sleep with your Second Hundred Year War coming up so close on the heels of the First?”
“Aren’t you glad we can set the clock back eighty-seven years?” said Eron sleepily.
“No. I’ve lost my enthusiasm. I’m too old for this game. I’m more comfortable living peacefully in real time with my dog. Are you really serious about this second war? Can’t I just buy you out? Another three months of this nonsense?”
“A contract is a contract. War it is. I don’t want to have to slap your face with my glove. The Reformation isn’t over yet.”
“I’ll have to bring Hanis in to help me. I need his brains.”
“Inquisitor Hanis? You’re not serious?” Eron sat upright, then rose to his full height.
“I might be.”
“You never told me where you sequestered him.”
“I did. He’s toughing it out in an old experimental life-support module, all alone.”
“Mitigating his torture with hope?” Eron was still curious. Enough time had passed for the Admiral to relent and relieve the suspense. “Come on. Tell us! What kind of hope did you devise?”
The mood of the Rector of the Galaxy rose to good cheer again, remembering his last and greatest victory. “I promised him a parole hearing once he finishes, to my satisfaction, a penitence task I have assigned him. It’s a life sentence, a Sisyphus sort of task; once he gets the rock to the top of the hill, I’ve promised to review his case and maybe grant him freedom.”
“And the rock?” asked Eron impatiently.
“Oh, that. I’ve set him to writing your biography. He raged at first, refusing. But hope has a way of seducing the soul. He hopes to finish your biography soon, but he’s never been my student and isn’t aware that I constantly raise my standards of excellence to ever more impossible heights.”
“Writing about me is his penitence?”
“Writing up your childhood is the easy part. I keep supplying him with new material; Agander seems to be a place addicted to the creation of poetic myths, and your childhood seems to have achieved mythical status. You’re going to be surprised at all the things you did as a boy that you’ve forgotten about. As I said, that’s the easy part. The torture part is studying your dissertation, your Early Disturbed Event Location by Forced Arekean Canonical Pre-posturing” The Admiral, for the moment, had become his old teasing self.
“I thought my dissertation was elegandy beautiful, a masterpiece of clarity.”
“Eron, I’ve tried to read it. I can’t get through it. I assure you it qualifies as the worst sort of torture! So I’ve assigned Hanis the task of rewriting it until it is crystal clear to an old fossilized man like me who is probably getting older faster than Hanis can improve his style.” The Admiral was now smiling diabolically. “Hope for Hanis rests on his ability to understand you, a sufficiendy Sisyphean task since he did do his best to destroy all records of your existence short of burning you at the stake.”
“So when can we start our next war?”
The Admiral lay down on the now-empty divan and invited Eron to sit on the cushion above his head. Uniform rumpled, his body flopped out in dejection, he confided, “Eron, I don’t think I can go through another war like the last one. It’s too much. First you present me with a galactic psychohistorical crisis that arrives unexpectedly like a spaceship out of a black hole. Then some damn Protestant steals the Founder’s Bible from my burglarproof safe and invents the printing press. Theory says all that can’t happen, but it did—and so the theory is wrong in that aspect I tried to adapt. I thought I could handle your little war with strategy. My mature math is better than your inexperienced math. It didn’t work. I might as well have tried walking on the sun in my bare feet. So here we are. I have awakened from a bad dream, a nightmare that never happened, surrounded by hysterical revelry. But what lies ahead? Must I live that nightmare in the real world, playing it out again exactly as it happened in the dream but at a painfully slow pace?”
Eron had never seen the Admiral in such a tragic mood. “Predicting is only half of the game; counter-predicting nightmares is the other half. You forget what the Founder said: Psychohistory is all about choosing your future.”
“No it isn’t!” snarled the old man. “Did I choose the Second Sack of Splendid Wisdom? Damn right I didn’t, I fought it off with all the resources I had.” His voice was that of a proud man in chains. “7 wasn't in control of anybody's willy-nilly destiny!"
Normally brain activity flips back and forth across the boundaries twixt stability and chaos in the mind’s ever active war between knowing and the need to learn—this outpost ridge temporarily chaotic, that beachhead stable for the moment, the front flowing in battle flux across the neural net.
On quiet days the mind stays stable by using old solutions. On other days some internal field marshal calls for an offensive and drives his troops against chaos. To conquer chaos one must learn. To maintain stability one must know. The dual struggle can be exhausting.
The Admiral was exhausted mentally, but Eron was sure he could goad him back to life again—in the months to come. He took the old man’s head onto his lap and ran his fingers through hair he had never before dared touch. “Hey, you’ve been a father to me, a strange one, and I ran away from home, but I’m still your copilot and we’re on the way home and we’re going to come in for a smooth landing. Just another hundred years of war to go. We’ll make it. I can see what you’ll be doing five years from now. You won’t believe this, but I’m good at predicting. You’ll be sending out your students to teach psychohistory to the unwashed. Maybe, if Hanis learns his Arekean lessons up to your high standards, you’ll be able to send him out with them. You’ll be the author of a renaissance that Hanis could never dream of. And best of all—you’ll be free from the burden of carrying around a deadly secret.” He wet his finger wiping a tear from the Admiral’s cheek.
“You and your starry-eyed astrological predictions. Son .”
Later Eron’s lover Otaria found them, brought in tow by Scogil’s Petunia. “Is he all right?” Otaria asked.
“He’s asleep.”
Osa-Scogil felt very peculiar about having a wife and a Frightfulperson. And a daughter standing behind him with her arms wrapped affectionately around his neck. And an Admiral’s head in his lap who was also a madman and a father. “Life isn’t very predictable,” he said.
“I know,” replied the Mermaid of the Calmer Sea.
Appendix A
GALACTIC STANDARD TIME
One jiff is 3,066,899 cycles of light from cesium 133
One second is 9,192,631,770 cycles of light from cesium 133
Velocity of light is 100 million meters/jiff
Light year = 9,460.471452 trillion meters League = 10,000 trillion meters
A Galactic Standard Year: = the time it takes light to travel 10,000 trillion meters = 12.87 months = 386.067 d
ays
A Galactic Standard Month: = the time it takes light to travel 1000 trillion meters = 1/10 GST year = 1.29 months = 38.31 days = 926.57 hours
A Galactic Standard Watch: = the time it takes light to travel ten trillion meters = 1/100 GST month = 0.38 days = 9.26 hours = 555.94 minutes
A Galactic Standard Hour:
= the time it takes light to travel a trillion meters = 1/10 GST watch = .93 hours = 55.59 minutes = 3,335.64 seconds
A Galactic Standard Inamin:
= the time it takes light to travel ten billion meters = 1/100 GST hour = 33.356 seconds = 0.556 minutes
A Galactic Standard Jiff: = the time it takes light to travel 100 million meters = 1/100 GST inamin = 0.33356 seconds
An Archaic Year: = the time it takes Rith to orbit Sol = 0.946 GST years = 94,604,714.58 jiffs
An Archaic Month Varied at the Whim of Despots:
7,252,579 jiffs = 28 days
7,648,305 jiffs = 29.52 days, the time it takes the Moon to orbit Rith
7,770,620 jiffs = 30 days = 77.71 watches 8,029,641 jiffs = 31 days
An Archaic Day: = the time it takes Rith to complete one rotation around Sol = 2.59 GST watches = 25.90 GST hours = 259,020.68 GST jiffs
An Archaic Hour: = 1/24 archaic day = 1.08 GST hours = 107.93 GST inamins = 10,793 GST jiffs
An Archaic Minute: = 1/60 archaic hour = 1.80 inamins = 179.87 jiffs
An Archaic Second = 1/60 minute = 2.998 jiffs
Appendix B
TIMELINE OF GALACTIC HISTORY
Year Galactic Era:
time it takes light to travel 1.OOOOOOOOOO x1016 meters
Year Anno Domini:
time it takes light to travel 0.9460471452 x l016 meters
Conversion Equations: year GE = (year AD x O.946047)—61,248 year AD = (year GE+61,248)x 1.05703 year FE = year GE—12,068 [FE stands for “Founder’s Era.”]
64th Millennium BGE
Construction of the Great Pyramid (Rith), 63,591 BGE; 2478 BC
62nd Millennium BGE
Emperor Huangdi-of-Qin (Rith), 61,493-61,447 BGE; b259; reign 247-210 BC
Emperor Augustus Caesar of Rome (Rith), 61,273-61,233 BGE; reign 27 BC to 14 AD Missing year catastrophe, 61,247 BGE; 0 AD Jesus Christ bom, saving mankind from sin, 61,247 BGE; 1 AD
61st Millennium BGE
Conquest of England (Rith) by Norman barbarians, 60,240 BGE; 1066 AD
Pope Innocent III (of Rith) exterminates Christian rivals in Zara, Constantinople, and France, 60,114-60,097 BGE; 1198-1216 AD
60th Millennium BGE
Voyages of Discovery by sea (Rith), 59,929-59,808 BGE; 1394-1522 AD
Renewed religious dissent, Luther, 59,813 BGE; 1517 AD
Index of Forbidden Books, 59,773 BGE; 1559 AD
Astronomical mathematics, Johann Kepler, 59,762-59,706 BGE; 1571-1630 AD
Rediscovery of pendulum clocks, 59,700 BGE; 1636 AD
Begin 20th century AD, extreme population ramp-up, 59,451 BGE; 1900 AD
Max Planck’s Nobel Address, 59,433 BGE; 1918 AD
Intercourse Of Commingled Bodies legalizes metric-meter for Americ colonies, 59,424 BGE; 1928 AD
First Venteen Flying Fortress built, 59,417 BGE; c. 1935 AD
Nuclear fission discovered (Rith), 59,414 BGE; 1939 AD
Begin 21st century AD, population ramp-up continues, 59,356 BGE; 2000 AD
Great Die-off (Rith) c. 59,250-59,000 BGE (undocumented)
59th Millennium BGE
First Rithian Interstellar Wanderer (sublight), 58,912 BGE; 2469 AD
Last Rithian interstellar expedition, 58,056 BGE; 3374 AD
57-49th Millennia BGE
Sublight colonization radius reaches 1000 leagues.
Hyperdrive discovered at Eta Cuminga, 48,211 BGE; 13,780 AD
Galactic colonization explosion
48—47th Millennia BGE Eta Cumingan Empire
Cathusians of Rith begin to recollect old starship libraries
46—28th Millennia BGE First expansion era, only minor conflict Eta Cuminga gradually loses control Era of 100 empires, 1000 states
27—4th Millennia BGE Continuation of rapid colonization Beginning of Time of Troubles Core settled, Splendid Wisdom, 18,370 BGE; 45,323 AD
First Settlers in the Ulmat Constellation, 16,554 BGE; 47,243 AD
3-1 st Millennia BGE
Era dominated by Sotama traders and mercenaries, 2435-812 BGE
Rise of Machan Confederacy from 812 BGE onward General decline of Sotama influence Theory of multi-poled Hyperdrive invented, 111 BGE; 63,920 AD
Galactic center spawning ground of experiments for next hundred years.
Amateur engineers of Splendid Wisdom first to perfect design of the new Hyperdrive in 603 BGE; 64,104 AD Splendid Wisdom Traders competing with Machan, 500 BGE; 64,212 AD
1st Millennium GE
Kambal-the-First bom, 0 GE; 64,741 AD The army of Kambal-the-First takes over Splendid Wisdom’s trading confederation and crowns him Emperor, 32-62; 64,775-64,806 AD
Defeat of Machan attack on Splendid Wisdom, 400; 65,163 AD
Viceroy of Santar suppresses rebellion within Empire, annexes Machan, millions die, 567 GE; 65,340 AD
Civil War, 783; 65,569 AD
2nd Millennium GE:
Splendid Wisdom controls 90,000 star systems, 65,798 AD
Water ecology Splendid Wisdom nearing collapse, 1300
Kambal-the-Eighth, 1346-1378, coregent 1378-1382 Frightfulpeople infiltrate and dominate Splendid Wisdom and apparatus of fledgling empire. Tanis-the-First, often Tanis One-eye, 1378-1495, declared emperor during War of Two Emperors Six Billion on Splendid Wisdom die. Kambal-the-Eighth captured and murdered, 1382, end of Kambal Dynasty
Tanis-the-First dies at age 171 years, 1495
3rd Millennium GE:
Splendid Wisdom controls a million star systems, 66,855 AD
4th Millennium GE: Splendid Wisdom controls
I, 500,000 systems, 67,912 AD Emperor Ojaisun-the-Adroit, 3231-3245
defeated and executed by daughter, 3245, at Lalaw
II.
5th Millennium GE:
Splendid Wisdom controls two million systems, 68,969 AD
Emperor Harkon-the-Traveller, disappears while on tour, 4327-4357
Rise of Pupian Dynasty by election, 4512 Admiral Peurifoy’s preemptive campaigns, 4780-4822 6th Millennium GE:
Splendid Wisdom controls four million star systems, 70,026 AD
Pupian Dynasty ended by Etalun Military Family, 5220 Etalun Cotoya Court established to promote arts and refinement
Composer Saramantin of Rith at his height, 5390; 70,438 AD
Orr-of-Etalun, third Emperor Etalun Dynasty, 5395-5406
Orion Arm Regionate subjugated, 5397 Etalun Dynasty destroyed by internal conflict, 5413; 70,463 AD
First Horezkor class battleship commissioned, warship of Middle Empire, 5517
Emperor Daigin-the-Jaw, b. 5561, ascends throne 5578, d. 5632; 70,637 AD
Emperor Daigin-the-Mild, second son of the Jaw bom during father’s Persean-Cara campaign, 5597 coronation, 5632
castrated, exiled by Arum-the-Patient, 5641 died 5671
Emperor Arum-the-Patient, first son of the Jaw bom 5591
conquered the Ulmat, 5634-5637 takes throne by military coup, 5641 poisoned by mother, 5662 Time of 17 emperors, 5663-5678 Establishment of Som Dynasty ; end of confusion, 5678
7th Millennium GE:
Splendid Wisdom controls fourteen million systems, 71,083 AD
Establishment of the class of Hyperlords, 6654 Dashian Dynasty replaces Som Dynasty, administrative coup, 6987
8th Millennium GE:
Splendid Wisdom controls eighteen million systems, 72,140 AD
Composer Aiasin, 7028 Emperor Kassam-the-Farsighted, 7763-7775 Runs affairs by Mysteries of the Navigators Empire strengthens Ragmuk in preparation for war, 7770 Wars Across the Marche begin, 7774 Battle of Thirty Suns, 7775 Execution of Kassam’s confidant Cundy Munn Execut
ion of Emperor Kassam Admiralty has mystical Navigators tortured, 7776 Treaty of Sanahadra with 1000 Suns of Helmar Rift ends Wars Across the Marche, 7981 GE Oversee founded to pursue hostility to Empire by covert means.
Count Ism Notkin rules on Treaty of Sanahadra, 7992
9th Millennium GE:
Splendid Wisdom controls twenty-one million systems, 73,197 AD
Beginning of Time of Troubles: Oversee works from hidden bases
Stars&Ship Navy becomes supreme arm of Emperor Emperor Krang-the-Blind, 8025-8036 Emperor Takeia the Happy, 8625-8653, orgies, deposed by Navy
10th Millennium GE:
Splendid Wisdom controls twenty-four million systems, 74,254 AD
Emperor Stanis-the-Careful, 9103-9110, deposed by Navy
Emperor Ammenetik-the-Great, 9456-9504 End of Time of Troubles Helmarian Oversee survives in hiding Emperor Maximoy the Polite, 9700-9725 tradition of the Valodian Lament
Pax Imperialis; 9892
Splendid Wisdom declares suzerainty over Galaxy complete
11th Millennium GE:
Splendid Wisdom controls twenty-five million systems, 75,311 AD
Emperor Hagwith-the-Ingenious, 10,232-10,268 invents robot Danny-Boy
12th Millennium GE: