The Judge of Ages

Montrose shouted, “All of your history has been a lie. All your lives. Your civilizations, accomplishments, times of war, times of peace, laws and customs, arts and sciences. A fraud. A farce.”

“Del Azarchel duped his minions into creating one sick, diseased, broken society after another, in order to gull me into revealing a cure, a power, a spell, that only I could wield. It was a secret of seven parts that my wife, the Swan Princess Rania, had discovered on a stone circling a distant star. And each time I used this power to do some good, my shipmates”—he gestured to where the hooded men in black silk were gathered, and he spat the word like it was a curse. The Hermeticists, on their part, wore expressions either of indifference, or triumph, or condescending sneers when Montrose said—“these Hermeticist devils would take whatever good I did and pervert it to evil.

“I gave men civilization, he turned it into a weapon of destruction and oppression; I gave men cooperation, he turned it into the conformity of a military camp; I gave men a pharmaceutical means to extend their span of life, he made it into an addiction, and a means to gull, bewitch, and erase the minds and souls of men…”

And, one after another, he pointed at Melchor de Ulloa, Narcís D’Aragó (or rather, their Ghosts), and then at Sarmento i Illa d’Or.

The voice of Montrose took on a depth and power as his anger grew. “I gave men the discipline to break those addictions; one of their number who stands not here abused that discipline to create an art that destroyed each vestige of brother-love and gentleness and compassion and humanity in mankind, and he marred their forms to make them less than beasts. But he saw and repented his evil, and sought to bring the monsters to the fountains of humanity, and allow them drink; and for his goodness he was slain by him who was his friend and shipmate and brother; I gave the monsters laws of uniformity, to allow them to endure for a time without anarchy; and this same murderer imposed a uniformity of the mind, and destroyed the human soul, that thing which makes each man an individual and precious; and this one, the least and last of all, who has no human soul, created a race of helots and their zombie-masters to destroy the human spirit, that thing which gives a man free will and free conscience.”

And he pointed at the Ghosts of Coronimas, and of Mentor Ull, who stood with golden tendrils; tall man and short Locust, heads held tilted at the same angle, as alike in posture as father and child, albeit nothing else about them was alike: only their souls.

Sarmento i Illa d’Or, who, of all men there, was the least afraid of the Judge of Ages, said, “What does it matter, anything you are saying? We did what we did because it gave us pleasure, and no one could stop us. You do what you do because it gives you pleasure; and any who try to stop you, you shoot and kill. Anything else is merely words.”

Montrose whirled on him, moving swiftly for one in such heavy armor, and his teeth were gritted like a biting animal’s, and his eyes blazed in madness. “This will give you no pleasure, Sarmento! Look about you. All the Hermeticists have done their work. There are none of you left to remake the world in his image. And yet another four hundred years remain to the End of Days. Shall each of you take turns again, and history will spin like some damn wheel, of Giants, Sylphs, Witches, Chimerae, Nymphs, Hormagaunts, Locusts, Melusine? I can start the wheel again, and bring forth Giants from my Tombs!”

Sarmento sneered. “The Nobilissimus, whom I am proud to call my master and the master of our order, he will examine among the races and determine which can best serve the Hyades. The others, as Darwin demands, will be exterminated. I am sure there are enough among your eighty-nine Tomb sites to select the, uh…”

Words failed him. Montrose spoke up, mocking: “The blue ribbon winner? The prize pig? The winner of the Miss Darwin beauty contest? Oh? Well then, who judges the Hermeticists? If you are judged and found wanting, do the people acting in the name of nondeliberate Darwinian forces get to deliberately exterminate you?”

He turned again to the other Iron Ghosts. “Now it is your turn to hear the truth, you bastards! You have all been played for fools; Blackie has his pinkie finger up your nose and leads you as he will: walk, trot, and gallop. Each bit of the Rania Solution that came into your hands was just so you would put it into Del Azarchel’s hands, to then be used to make his greater Machine, his Jupiter Brain. Each of the seven parts of the human psyche was designed by one or another of the templates you made.

“The Sylphs were used as the template for a basic machine level, an unconscious. The peculiar intuitive brain structures of the Witches were templates for the subconscious levels, the seat of dreams and archetypal images, appetites too basic for names. The Chimerae formed the passions; the Nymphs, the instincts; the Clades, the ego; Locusts, the conscience. That is the fate of the civilizations you fathered. That was the only reason you were ever meant to father them. A machine copied part of their base neural psychology. For that purpose only, for a single millennium alone, you each were dressed in your master’s robe, a robe too large for you, and were allowed to play at being Master of the World.

“For the true Master of the World brooks no rival, no, not even in play. You each have served your purpose and served your turn. Now you will be discarded.

“The Great Work of the Hermetic Order—how often you have boasted empty boasts of it!—was to bring forth the race after man.

“Those races, your children, their civilizations, your ideals, your periods of history where for a season he allowed you to design and reign over mankind; in short, everything you have done with your long lives; was merely so he could steal your transitory pretense of the Great Work and copy it into the real Great Work, his Work, meant from the beginning to be the real and permanent, the sole and only.

“The Great Work was launched from here not ten hours past. Jupiter is his name, your new god, whose intellect will surpass a hundredfold all the races you vainly hatch here, yes, and all the inner planets together even if they were covered pole to pole with Aurum Vitae atop glaciers of Living Waters atop which races of Giants manning mile-high Granoliths might multiply, and all their cores Pellucid!

“Look at me! All of you know me. Except for you, Ull, so shut up. Do I lie?”

But then Ximen del Azarchel, who had sauntered in his clanging armor at a much more deliberate, almost meditative pace, was now among them. The Ghosts of the Hermeticists all now clamored and shouted at Del Azarchel, demanding, threatening, pleading for some word of explanation, yearning for some word of reassurance from him.

Only Sarmento i Illa d’Or did not doubt. “I believe you, my master! I will not listen to this traitor dog! When has he ever been sane?”

Mickey the Witch said softly, “What? Just because he wears a tent instead of clothing, and goes around pretending he is someone else?”

Montrose whispered sideways through his gritted teeth, “You are not helping.” But he started laughing to himself, and he wondered if perhaps he were mad after all, to laugh at a time like this.

Ximen del Azarchel must have thought so too, for he chuckled and raised his hand. Such was his magnetism and authority, that even when stirred to bewildered anger, the Hermeticists fell silent before his glance. “I order you not to believe him. I order you not to think.”

There was some muttering. Narcís D’Aragó said, “If the Judge of Ages is mad, surely so is the Master of the World. You order us to do what?”

Del Azarchel said in a calm, conversational tone of voice, as if it were a matter of no import, “I will erase your short-term memories because it suits me to do so. I have done such things many times in the past. I have even told you this many times in the past, because it does not matter what you think or what you do in a span of a moment of your lives, for it is a moment I can wash clean with a sweep of my hand. All your thoughts are written in dust. Do you still imagine I am your leader, or merely the first among equals? I am your master and you are my hounds. You are my possessions.”

But he turned to Sarmento i Illa d’Or, saying, “Not you, for obvious reasons. I don’t have anything in your head.”

And, hearing the noise of disgust and horror from Montrose, Del Azarchel turned his head a little more, saying, “You look askance, Cowhand? You, of all people? This is an art I learned from you! I have phantasms of my own to serve me.”

Montrose stepped forward, but not toward Del Azarchel: to Alalloel. He said, “He must die and I must kill him. Let us proceed.”

2. Man of Honor

At that moment, Narcís D’Aragó approached Montrose and bowed his head. “Learned Montrose, I know I have no right to ask. And yet, I remind you that my previous version—a man like me in all ways, in personality and spirit and sense of honor, did not run from you when the time came for him to face you, pistol in hand. While it is true that he lives on in me, it is also true he died the death. It was a death he willingly faced. Will you allow me to speak to you, as one man of honor to another?”

Montrose could not suppress a spasm of hatred for the man. He said archly, “What kind of honor are we talking about? What kind of man? I would ask Captain Grimaldi about the perfect performance of your honorable duties aboard ship, but he is quite dead, seeing as how you rose up with the other mutineers and murdered him. So he is not around to ask.”

D’Aragó did not look up. His voice, normally as thin and cold as an icicle, was thick with shame. “These are … old questions, no longer visited.”

“Old as you and me, brother. You was there. You did the deed. You never paid for it, never got hanged, never got caught, and when you came back to Earth y’all were the princes of the world. Prince? A god! Hell, you even got your very own period of one thousand years as your own private lab and breeding grounds, stockyard, and gladiatorial circus, and you played with mankind like a girl playing with goddam paper dolls, instead of, oh, something like, dying in chains breaking rocks in the hot sun.”

D’Aragó said in his cold voice, “I was loyal to the Captain until he … you know that he ordered us not to ignite the launching laser so that we could never return to Earth. He ordered us to die.”

“The Hyades would never have discovered Earth had you done that.”

“Truly? No further expedition ever would have sought out a nugget of contraterrene the size of a star? The most precious, most dangerous substance in nature?” He looked up, his cold eyes twinkling. “Come now: surely it was better to be warned, and have these millennia to prepare a defense, than let Captain Grimaldi in his madness have his way, and for us to die with the human race uninformed, unwarned, unprepared? Did I not have duties of honor to my home?”

“So what if Earth was warned? You think fighting the Hyades is completely futile.”

“But you do not.”

Montrose was not sure what to say to that. The argument sounded fishy, but he wanted to get back to the business of shooting Del Azarchel, so he said, “Fine. You are a pox-ridden man of honor. Whoop-dee-do and yee-haw and bully for you. Speak your piece, you syphilitic whoreson.”

Much to the embarrassment of Montrose, Narcís D’Aragó fell to his knees, and clasped his hands in prayer. “Save us.”

“Pustules on the burning balls of Satan in Hell! What the hell you asking me?”

“Save us from Del Azarchel. There must be some Divarication failure. He is suffering a mental disease, and he has absolute power over us, even to our inmost thoughts.”

“He ain’t crazy, he’s just evil. There’s a difference.” Menelaus looked up and sighed. Del Azarchel was standing with the other Hermeticists. Sarmento i Illa d’Or was standing behind his master, broad as a bull and breathing through his nostrils like one. The others, crouching and cringing in various postures of panic, were talking in a shrill confusion of voices. Del Azarchel was answering them back in the cool, distant, polite tones of a professor in a classroom explaining a scientific problem with no particular application to any human life, of merely intellectual interest only. He was describing the means he would use to toy with their minds and memories and souls, since they were, after all, actually minds housed in computer mainframes he controlled. And he was smiling and laughing and his eye glinted with mirth and sadism.

“Okay,” Menelaus said to D’Aragó with a sigh. “Let’s compromise. He’s evil and crazy.”

D’Aragó said, “It was a technology evolved while we were in hibernation aboard the Emancipation.”

“The Mind Helot tech. I know. So you want me to save your sorry evil asses from your evil boss, on account of now you are on the receiving end of his evil. All but Sarmento, who looks like he is just having a fine old time. Even if I agreed—”

But Narcís D’Aragó now had a smile on his thin face. It was a crooked smile, because he clearly had little practice making his face fold into that shape, but it was a human smile. “You will agree. For better or worse, you cannot help but solve problems, Crewman Fifty-One. Your soul is large.”

“Your mouth is large. By rights, I should stand aside and watch you squirm just for the sheer cussed-mindedness of it. But since I came up here with my gun and my Seconds to blast Blackie to Hell so that his daddy, the Devil, can rump-plunge him until his eyes pop, I don’t even know why you are flapping your damn gums at me.”

“I came, Learned Montrose, because I know that you destroy those who challenge you. Am not I, myself, one whom you destroyed? You alone can overcome the Senior Del Azarchel. Whether you believe me or scorn me, I came because to stand by, saying nothing, knowing you would duel with Del Azarchel, and by killing him, grant us life—to get this gift of life from you, and freedom, and to have restored to us the possession of our souls—to have all this from your hand, Learned Montrose, and not to have asked it of you, well, that were low indeed. I ask you for my life because it is more honorable to ask, even though I know you have your own reasons to wish him dead. Now I too have reasons. Kill him also for me.”

“But you killed Grimaldi.”

“So I did, and do not regret the deed, dark as it was. I killed my superior officer because he went mad and meant to kill us all. Now Del Azarchel is mad and means us all to die, or worse. The same logic applies.” And, with no further word, he stiffly turned and marched back to where the Hermeticists were gathered, where he stood, thin as a birch tree in winter, and as silent.

3. Accommodation

Del Azarchel now had but one Second, Sarmento i Illa d’Or, who carried his master’s pistol and helmet. Montrose waved Scipio, Illiance, and Soorm off the field; the three men retreated, Soorm scowling and snapping his teeth with disappointment, Scipio looking relieved, Illiance impassive. Sir Guiden remained to one side of Montrose, and cradled the oversized dueling pistol in both hands; Mickey held the great cauldron-shaped helmet and stood at his other side.

The two duelists took up their positions thirty paces from each other, and the Seconds, Sarmento and Sir Guiden, approached the judge of honor to confer.

The tongueless mouth of Alalloel of Anserine opened, and now, not merely a trio of voices issued forth, but a choir as might fill a cathedral, or a stadium. It was several thousand voices speaking at once, blended into harmony.

Montrose squinted, and saw a similar twinge of thought cross the face of Del Azarchel. The word choice indicated a different psychological architecture than had obtained when last Alalloel spoke, or, rather, when last this body was used to transmit to them the thoughts from the ever larger mind groups who seemed to be joining the communal link. If he understood their nomenclature, Montrose guessed that Anserine was a much larger group of minds than Lree, so much so that the original Alalloel personality was lost in the crowd, insignificant compared to what was now at the microphone.

The multitude of voices said: “We ask again whether peaceful accommodation can be found? If so, without dishonor, both participators may withdraw, and no slight against them will be permitted.”

Sir Guiden and Sarmento replied that no accommodation was possible.

“Have all measures to avoid this conflict been exhausted?” The number of voices had increased again. This time it was in the millions. Menelaus ran a rough calculation in his head about the coordination tolerance needed to avoid overlapping and blurring of that many waveforms: it implied a degree of mental unity far greater than what had obtained even a moment before.

It was everyone. It was the whole race of the Melusine speaking.

Sarmento i Illa d’Or was more alert than Montrose would have thought. Montrose was surprised when Sarmento said, “Senior! This is outside what we expected”—we in this case meaning Sarmento and his Ghost, Exillador—“the Cliometric calculus cannot account for this amount of interest from the Melusine. I suggest—”

Del Azarchel shook his head. “A bigger crowd than expected, eh? The Cowhand did actually have another move underway, and now the strike will come out of the obscuring fog. I care not. I don’t see that it is anything that can physically stop the duel. Speak your line.”

Sir Guiden on behalf of Montrose said that no additional measure could be found to avoid the conflict. Sarmento spoke the same words with a more obvious reluctance, wary that something had gone wrong, and his eyes were darting left and right at high speed in the peculiar way posthumans were wont to use.

Unexpectedly, something stung Montrose in his eyes. He drew the back of his gauntleted wrist across his brow, cocking the wrist so that the leather joint rather than the metal glove plates rubbed him. He stared in disbelief at the discoloration on his wrist. It was dank. He was sweating. Sweating in fear.

But Blackie had already knelt to Sarmento to allow his helmet to be wrestled on, and did not see it. That was a comfort, if only a small one. Mickey saw, and mopped Montrose’s brow dry with his lambrequin. That was a bigger comfort.

Montrose also knelt. Mickey raised the wide, heavy helmet and placed it over Montrose’s head, giving it a firm twist. With a click, the contact points in the inner and outer screw collar met, and, with a whine, the internal lights and readouts came on.

It took a moment of rocking and heaving for Montrose to get himself back afoot. He did not remember having problems like this back when he was a young man of twenty. Now he was biologically forty years—and even that was only equivalent years, because biosuspension did not arrest all life processes exactly, and thaw did not correct all damage exactly back to the point of prehibernation. It was approximate. He might have been, biologically speaking, older than that. He sure felt it.

Alalloel raised the baton to shoulder level, no higher. “Gentlemen, see to your countermeasures!”

Through his lookout visor, nothing was different, but the view in the helmet aiming monocle showed the real electronic story. Del Azarchel was now surrounded by a dozen shadows of himself, blurring and shifting and fading, and his radio silhouette swayed and dimmed with interference. Montrose looked the same to him. He could feel the warmth of the batteries powering his coat camouflage as they came online.

Alalloel now raised the baton fully overhead. It was the penultimate signal. “Gentlemen, see to your weapons! Do not fire before the signal, or all honor is forfeit, whereupon the Seconds may and must intervene!”

Sir Guiden presented the massive pistol and plugged it into the forearm sockets of Menelaus’ armor. Sir Guiden checked the circuits, double-checked, opened and closed the main chamber and the eight lesser chambers, then thumbed the chaff magazine.

Then Sir Guiden walked away, five, ten, fifteen paces. He turned and nodded. Sir Guiden called to Montrose: “Stand firm until the baton is dropped. When the baton is dropped, you are at liberty to fire.”

Montrose raised his left gauntlet, and held up his hand. By tradition, the non-weapon-hand was white, but a black circle was in the palm, so that the opponent could clearly see the sign. He was ready to fire.

Sarmento had taken longer than Sir Guiden, or perhaps had checked his master’s weapon more thoroughly. Or perhaps a growing suspicion that something was wrong was slowing his footsteps. He was not yet out of the line of fire. Blackie had not yet raised his glove.

Montrose waited, feeling the sweat begin to come into his eyes again, and knowing there was no way to wipe his helmeted face. This was not one of those modern helmets, whose internal circuits noticed wearer discomfort, and used small inside manipulators to wipe a hot face. If I blink during the wrong moment, I’m dead.

It seemed so unfair that such small things would make the difference between victory and death. He wrinkled his brow furiously, hoping to delay the gathering drip of ticklish saltwater he could feel accumulating.

Then Sarmento was out of the line of fire, and instructing Del Azarchel not to shoot until the baton dropped.

Montrose knew not to tense his arm before the raising, not to tense his trigger-finger. It had to be one smooth motion, and smoothness counted for more than speed, because one did not want to jar the chaff package, or confuse the aiming sensors with jerky or blurry motions. He waited, and eternity crawled by.

Del Azarchel raised his hand and opened it. There were the white fingers and thumb; there was the black palm. Montrose suddenly felt buoyant with relief, weightless, almost lightheaded, because the eight-thousand-year-long wait had ended. This was it.

And then—

—the baton dropped—

4. Misfire

—And Montrose blinked when the drop of sweat stung his eye. This made him raise his pistol too quickly: a sudden jerk. This in turn made his weight shift, and only then did the ice puddle on which he stood crack, give way, and drop him.

The bottom of the puddle was not far, a matter of a handsbreadth or less, but it was enough to slide a bootheel along the slick and frictionless mud of the puddle bottom, and pull his leg out from under him.

With a resounding clattering clash, Montrose fell. He landed on his hands and knees, but the heavy gun hit the ground and went off.

For a moment, he was deaf. His gun hand went numb as it was kicked backward as if by seven mules, and the charge of chaff and cloud exploded under his fingers instead of in the air between himself and his target. Splinters of rock ricocheted against his armor, and the fierce pain in his armpit and ribs told him his armor had been pierced. It felt as if the main bullet and two escort bullets, the number three and the number two, had gone off and blown themselves into the icy rock only a foot or less from his hand.

Montrose found himself kneeling, buried up to the neck in a swarming fog of glittering black chaff-particles, but his head was clearly visible to the enemy. A perfect target.

With his other hand, he raised his gun hand up, trying to see if any fingers had been blown off, but he was defeated by the weight of the gun dangling from his wrist and the restricted field of vision (the helmets were not designed to nod forward, nor was there a peep window below the jawline to let a man see his feet). From the sensation, he thought he’d lost a finger, maybe two. With some part of his brain, he knew he should be scrambling to take the gun up in his left hand and squeeze off the remaining escort bullets, hoping for a lucky shot.

With another part of his brain, he noted that being the master of a worldwide system of coffins which had the most advanced medical nanotechnology on the planet tended to make one nonchalant about wounds. His maimed feet from the day before had been healed overnight; because of events like this, he now regarded major wounds as an inconvenience rather than a lifelong tragedy.

Of course, at the moment, the word “lifelong” meant a span measured in fractions of a second. Montrose saw the gunbarrels of Del Azarchel’s weapon, main shot and escort bullets, aim at him, each one seeming larger and deeper than a well.

Del Azarchel had not released his chaff cloud yet. He held his weapon pointing at the helpless Montrose for a moment. His hand did not shake. The aim was straight and true.

Then Del Azarchel pointed at the ground, and fired his main shot. The noise was thunder, ringing so loud it could almost be tasted.

Del Azarchel had deloped.