The Judge of Ages Read online

  He heard the noise and commotion of footsteps receding as the other Chimerae were herded away. To his surprise, he heard no noises of struggle, smelled no blood.

  Dimly, he was amazed that they had been persuaded by him, and then he realized to his chagrin that they had not been persuaded. He was the ranking male present, and by Chimera law, women were noncombatants and must obey—including armed women who were ready to fight in combat. And, of course, Beta outranked Gamma, and freemen outranked Kine.

  The dog things pulled him to his feet, and pushed him to stand with the gray twins. Alalloel was not far away, and stood to one side, and the Hormagaunts and their Clades and Donors stood to the other.

  6. The Gray Twins

  The Grays were blue-haired: the male wore his short, and the woman’s reached past her shoulder blades. The male had no trace of facial hair. The pair were also slightly taller than the Blue Men or the onyx-skinned Locust men, and the gestures more fluid and graceful.

  The woman wore a fur-trimmed black parka of a smartmetal substance not unlike the tent material, trimmed and lined with seal fur and webbed with heating elements. From her belt hung a fur muff, as well as gold capsules Menelaus’ implants told him contained energy sources. Her boots had soles of smartmetal as well, and could probably be programmed to various degrees of friction or traction, or to form snowshoes, cleats, or skates, depending on the substance underfoot. Her twin was likewise wearing a parka of black metal of the same design; heavy fur gloves were tucked in his belt. Gold capsules hanging from his belt likewise gave off a faint radio signature. Both wore snow-blindness goggles with thin slits over their eyes, giving them a sharply alien look.

  Menelaus studied the energy contour coming from the golden capsules clamped to their belts, and realized it was consonant with certain types of nonlethal, short-range electroshock weapons, or radiant neural agents. The gray twins were armed.

  Menelaus was burning to speak with them, because of Alpha Daae’s cryptic unfinished sentence: “It is far more important that we get underground as soon as possible. You see, we found something dreadful. The gray twins discovered it…”

  What had they said to Daae?

  Said? Rather, since they shared no language in common, what had they shown him?

  Menelaus turned to the man and the woman, and said in Intertextual, “Do you happen to understand this language?”

  Seen closely, the gray skin was many-hued and subtle, like the color of a pigeon’s wing, or silvery silk. Highlights and subtle shadings of pearl and platinum differentiated the eyelids, cheekbones, and jawline, lending the faces a peculiar exaggeration and vivacity. This close, Menelaus could see through the slits of their goggles that the pupils of their eyes were as silvery-white as polished foil. The blue and cerulean hair formed a handsome contrast. Their faces were like works of art, and their features were stamped with the signs of refined and energetic personalities.

  The man said, “All Locusts are programmed with the applicable prenatal speech templates.”

  Menelaus, with some surprise, said, “You are Locusts?”

  A smile answered him: “Yes, if isolated individuals without tendrils, and with no connection to any outside mental environments, can be called Locusts. I am Linder Keir and this is my daughter Linder Keirthlin. We call ourselves ‘Linderlings’ or Reestablishmentarians, since we still hope to restore the disintegrated Noösphere to working coherence. We adhere to protocols devised by a man named Elton Linder, and became Inquiline. As nonessentials, we entered hibernation at the time of the Reductions, in order to escape the coming of the ice.”

  Menelaus looked back and forth. Daughter? She looked like a twin sister. Cloning? Gene manipulation? It implied a longevity technique that not merely slowed aging, but halted it altogether. That implied a sophisticated genetic correction system, which, in turn, implied Xypotechnology.

  Eager as he was to learn what they had shown to Daae, he thought it best to follow up this other thread first.

  Menelaus said, “An inquiline is a bug that lives in an ants’ nest or termite mound without being one of them.”

  Keir said, “Such is the relation of our order to the planetary neurocybernetic mental hierarchy. Inquiline are in the Noösphere but not connected to it.”

  Keirthlin spoke up for the first time. “Do you also speak English?” She had a flawless Oxonian accent.

  Menelaus looked even more surprised. “I’ll be hornswoggled. How could y’all possibly know English?”

  Keirthlin said, “Earlier, we were placed in close confinement with the Savant called Ctesibius. He has a fully functioning emulation broadcast path woven into his brain from cortex to brainstem, with pinpoint emitters that were only switched off, not removed. I was able to pick up a signal through a short-range resonance, and induce signal flow from his cache. The traces were enough to use a holographic memory technique—you understand this technique works both for endogamic and exogamic memories?—to build up a perception of his language structure.”

  “He only spoke Pre-Anglatino.”

  “But the earlier language forms can be deduced from traces, residuum, and atavisms. I used a negative information intuition procedure to fill in the patterns. It took the better part of a day. Language patterning is not my strong suit.”

  Keir patted her hand with fatherly affection. “There, there. Under less adverse conditions, results would have differed; and we judge by intention and effort, which you can control, rather than by any result influenced by factors no one can control.” He lowered his slitted goggles onto his nose, and, peering over the top of them, transfixed Menelaus with his bright, silvery eyes. It seemed an oddly avuncular or professorial gesture. “Can you understand us at a conversational level?”

  “Uh, sure. It was an ancient language in my day, but I reckon I can speak it well enough.”

  Keirthlin fixed him with a particularly penetrating gaze, her head tilted to one side, as if toying with a thought. “You reckon so, do you? It is your native language. I cannot determine whom you want to fool. I assume it is the Witches. Anyone from a time later than the Chimerae would see your deviations from their behavior standards. As for contemporaries, well, Mr. Slewfoot Larz the Pinkerton—that is the correct term in English?—the Pinkerton knew immediately you were not a Chimera when you failed to punish him for remaining seated while you stood…”

  Menelaus said, “Wait, wait. You saw my interview with Larz?” Thunderstruck, he realized these two had some implanted system to pick up what the Blue Men were recording or sending to each other with the gems on their coats. They had been spying on the camp. They knew the Blue Men’s plans. “What are the Blue Men planning?”

  Keir said placidly, “Our ability to intrude is hindered by those rather complex codes of behavior that the Blue Men have decided no longer to follow. Some of their information is proprietary, and since the Blue Men have violently trespassed on our integrity, we can audit certain streams of it, in certain ways, but our retaliation has to fulfill specific requirements before we can act more directly. Take my daughter’s hand.”

  Menelaus shook her hand. It was small and slender in his fist. Keir looked at his daughter, and said, “Well?”

  She puffed out her cheeks in a sigh. “I can detect that he has a short-range electromagnetic aura of the first complexity. It should allow him to neurointerface with certain simple circuits and switches, but he lacks the direct thought-to-thought inputs of a Locust. He is not legally an Inquiline because he has some active wiring, but he is not ethically or aesthetically one of us, because we can never reciprocate his mental information. But I think we have to trust him in certain areas, more than what would be expected by the intersection of our limited altruism precept against zone-of-privacy considerations.”

  “Do you guys run through this kind of rigmarole every time you decide to answer a question?” Menelaus asked sardonically. “My rock-bottom respect for the Blue Men has lifted a half centimeter from the floor of hell. You are the
people they are trying to live more simply than?”

  Keir said sternly, “The complexity you mock is the byproduct of a successful attempt to sculpt laws and customs to a sufficient level of detail as to allow for both world peace and personal liberty, considering both the complication of every possible scenario of human interaction and considering the innate depravity of the human race. The difficulty of all previous cultural systems was that they were insufficiently tailored to reality: all laws had to be broad stereotypes to be simple enough to rational men to anticipate what conduct was permitted, but Divarication ensured laws soon would become corrupt. In contrast, Xypotechnological modeling and emulation of major possible behavior patterns is more efficient than having legislators make laws, or allowing blind chance to establish arbitrary or historically specific customs and cultural habits. The Noösphere makes this level of detail possible.”

  Menelaus said sharply, “Your Noösphere was based on Xypotechnology?”

  Keir said, “We are reconciled to a certain degree of cooperation with the Exarchel Machine, and allow it to influence our legislative modeling process.”

  Menelaus said, “The Machine means to exterminate the human race. Ctesibius thinks it has already done so, and that now all that need doing is to clean up the biological life left—us relicts from the past, in other words.”

  Keir said, “If the humans are guided slowly and gently to underpopulation, and then extinction, where is the harm? If the process is voluntary on all sides, no specific rights are being violated.”

  Menelaus said, “It’s still wrong.”

  Keir said, “The thought-process of biological life will continue in the nonbiological matrix, if needed. The Noösphere is not simply the Exarchel Machine. It is the conceptual unity of all thinking systems, both human and posthuman, machine emulation and neural emulation. Our brainpaths are not like yours. We have a solid mass of three-dimensional logic tissue rather than ordinary gray matter. Within this matrix we can construct or emulate any number of minds of human levels of complexity, to suit our needs and interests. The system is completely fluid: basically, in my head, I could make a virtual version of any sort of nervous system or brainpath and emulate it, play it out. That is what Illiance did when the Naturalist Oenoe forced him to accept emotional communion to her story, when she was being interviewed; you translated for them. You recall the event?”

  “Sure. That’s when he turned off his weirdness chip, and I started liking him.”

  Keir said, “There is no physical computer chip in his brain. It is a complex of logic crystal energies tainting his nervous system in a delicate balance of path preferences. You are speaking metaphorically, I assume?”

  “Very metaphorically,” agreed Montrose. “Unduly so.”

  Keirthlin said, “Oenoe the Naturalist did not know what she was asking. It is a classic example of symmetrical misunderstanding across two mutually incomprehensible mental texts.”

  At that moment, once again, a squad of dog things accompanied by four clanking automata came up out of the fourth door, passed where Kine Larz lay, and herded the Hormagaunts back down into the depths, along with their Clades and Donors.

  7. Last of the Iatrocracy

  Montrose watched as the Iatrocrats were marched past him down the cold, dim, and roofless corridor.

  Two looming Hormagaunts glowered at the guard dogs, eager to slay and careless of being slain. One was a man who looked like a leopard walking upright, thin and wiry, with elongated legs, walking on his toes, with an impressive array of barbs, spines, and knife-points growing from his spine. His neck was like that of a boneless giraffe or monster snake; his head like that of a saber-toothed tiger. This was Crile scion Wept.

  The other had no head at all, merely a lump of bone between his shoulders, and he had placed his eyes in his chest, his shark-toothed mouth like a zippered band across his stomach. His body was apelike but hairless, squat and low to the ground, and his back was a tortoise shell. His tail was an armored limb of muscle tipped with an orb of bone. His genitalia and buttocks cheeks were bright red, like those of a baboon. This was Gload scion Ghollipog.

  Scurrying after them were three nondescript and cringing men, dull-eyed and sullen, covered with the scars of old surgeries. These were the slaves “Anubis” allegedly had freed when he bargained with Soorm to form an alliance between the Hormagaunts and the other prisoners to cooperate in an escape attempt. With a pang, Menelaus realized that he had done nothing of the sort, having had no time to train the Donors out of the grip of their mental habit of servitude, or even to explain the new situation to them.

  Prissy of Clade Pskov was from the same period as Crile and Gload. With her was a male of her subspecies, a Clade-dweller who looked more human than the Hormagaunt caste. Both Clade-dwellers had hawklike, high-cheeked features, and masses of bushy hair set with spines and quills trailing down their necks. The two stood as far apart from each other as the laxity of the dog guards would permit. The male was Zouave of Clade Zhigansk.

  Prissy Pskov wore a blue fur coat embellished along the shoulders and upper back with amber and bezants of golden ivory. A wide scarf of woven zigzag pattern gathered the fur coat hem beneath her breasts, exposing them, but a diaphanous veil of antiseptic fiber modestly covered her nose and mouth. Her apron and skirts were embellished near the hem with clattering scrimshaws of horn and tusk. Her buckles and bracelets and the bells that fringed her shawl were all made of wood or pearl or enamel or horn: her metal-poor era made little use of gold or iron. She had tied a fan of colored feathers and beads in her hair, which would stand like a peacock’s tail when she spread her quills.

  By contrast, the garb of Zouave Zhigansk was simple and severe: a bear pelt pelisse worn over a dark tunic, with split skirts below. His only ornaments were the bear claws that adorned the toes of his fur boots. He had the mouth-cup of a filtermask made of black ivory hanging by a strap around his neck, but he did not have it over his mouth and nose at the moment, because he was menacing the dog things with his retractable fangs. The porcupine quills that rose from his hair were glistering as if with oil: he had combed additional poisons into their tips, to make them more sweetly scented, and deadlier.

  Seeing his eyes on her as she was hustled past, Prissy Pskov said aloud, “Anubis! These culls here-now understand not my speech. My kit has been returned, and primary formulations are mine to command. I can release a spore that will induce seizures in the dogs and leave the humans nauseous but mostly alive.”

  Blackie del Azarchel was obviously expecting a fight between the Thaws and the Blue Men. But why? On general principle, it was better not to let him get his way.

  “Do nothing! Nothing!” he shouted back to Prissy Pskov. “Await my signal.” But this shouting attracted the anger of the dog things, who brandished their muskets and cutlasses in his face and barked furiously. Menelaus raised his empty hands, backing away.

  His voice roused the Hormagaunts, who roared and reared, and at their barking, more dog things rushed up to subdue the Hormagaunts.

  So large a number of dogs escorted the Hormaguants down the stairs that only a dozen were left to guard Menelaus, Keir and Keirthlin, and Alalloel.

  8. The Principle of Absolute Trust

  Events were coming to a head. Menelaus turned back to the two strange and strangely elfin gray-skinned people. “You have to help me. For starters, tell me what you told Alpha Daae.”

  Keirthlin took off her slitted goggles, revealing a pair of lovely yet eerie silvery-white eyes, fringed with long, dark lashes. She said, “Wear this. Look within.”

  Menelaus did not don the goggles. “An image? Live or locally stored?”

  Keirthlin looked uncomfortable, but did not answer.

  Menelaus said, “You showed Daae a picture, right? But he could not ask you what data system you were using for transmitting the picture. If you have access to the Blue Man logic crystal system, you may be able to deactivate their weapons and energy sources, and trace their
lines of information back to their real boss. How broad is your format? Can you make contact with the Tomb brains? And give me control of the major weapons systems?”

  In the eyeslits of his goggles, Keir’s eyes of silver glinted with a stern light. “Your purposes are warlike, violent, and that behavior is unendurable to us. Even our right to retaliate in self-defense is severely curtailed by an overarching principle of long-term utilitarian altruism. We can only make local and limited exceptions under closely defined circumstances, which do not here and now obtain. We must respect the ethical claim of the Simplifiers.”

  Menelaus said sharply, “Ethical claim? You mean you could meddle with the automata and muskets, maybe even deactivate them—and you choose not to? So you are the ones in charge of the camp, but you are sitting on your gray little butts, doing nothing while they run rampant?!”

  Keir said loftily, “Our choice was defined when our order vowed devotion to world and racial reunification across all the disparities, mutations, and violent recriminations which the shattering of the Noösphere brought forth. That is the great evil we are oathbound to undo. The Linderlings are devoted to rapprochement even with Inquilines who reject mental unification, and so we are enjoined to nonreprisal, nonaggression, and noninterference.”

  “Why do the tomb-robbers have a greater claim to your moral protection than the innocent clients here?” Montrose shouted.

  Keir drew back fastidiously. “How innocent are any here? In any case, the Blues are a cousin species to the Grays, and we must reestablish our broken communion with them. We were designed for this cause by our creator-parents’ cells.”

  Menelaus gritted his teeth. “The cause you serve is long dead. These Blue Men are killers. Your indifference aids and abets their crimes. They killed the three Locusts who tried to help me when I first woke up. I promised to save them, and I failed to do it. The least I can do is make sure blood is paid out for blood spilled.”