The Lords of Creation Page 4

  The neuropsionic energy output dropped to zero. The great shout ceased.

  Aeneas recovered before Lady Luna or Lord Pluto. His instruments showed the populations of Saturn and its moons were stilled stunned. His head and his right hand were missing, and his signet ring had fallen a few inches outside the thoughtproof warp. He gestured in sign language for a robot to pick up the ring and return it to him. He grew a hand, filling it with brain cells, into which he programmed a set of commands. He put the ring on that hand, which he removed from his body, and ordered it to crawl outside the range of the thoughtproof warp. The hand also ignited when it passed beyond the thoughtproof warp, but the faster than light circuits Aeneas had established in the surrounding control boards were able to react even faster: the commands in the hand were sent to the ring and then to the warpcore.

  Again came the moment of the passage along the closed timelike curve segment of a tesseract: it looked like a hollow looking glass reflecting the distorted image of Saturn’s clouds expanding outward suddenly to infinity, and then a starry sky collapsing back inward.

  With a sense of relief, Aeneas dropped the thoughtproof warp around himself, and reconnected his headless body through his ring to various instruments and sense impressions. He could see through cameras until his head regrew.

  He gave orders that Lady Luna also be looked after. She had not yet recovered from the shock of the Great Eye’s mental shout. Aeneas did not bend to pick her up himself for fear of defensive traps or robotic reflexes hidden on her person, or in her accessories. Serving machines carried her gently to her quarters.

  Lord Pluto was nowhere to be seen.

  The giant planet Saturn, all its ring and moons, the pyramidal asteroid Talos, and the dead planet Necropolis with its bright miniature sun were now in normal timespace. Three bright stars, two yellow and one small and red, shined to one side. These were Alpha, Beta and Proxima Centauri, half a lightyear away.

  Aeneas asked the navigation systems to recheck all calculations, and he opened the analytical screen to its full aperture.

  The calculations had been precise. Even as he watched, a microscopic red dot appeared in the Alpha Centauri system, swelled up in size, and resolved itself into the asteroid Talos, at that time a smoothly polished sphere of rock with lights shining from gaps in the surface. The light beams were visible because Talos was shedding oxygen snow. A hailstorm of tiny debris was expanding like a soap bubble, being pushed outward by explosive decompression.

  The light which had bounced off the asteroid when it first arrived half a year ago at Alpha Centauri was even now reaching Aeneas’ receivers half a lightyear away. Lord Pluto’s invisibility field took a moment or two before it cloaked the asteroid. These were the images that escaped before that moment.

  He saw the flicker of energy as the shattered asteroid surrounded itself in a forcefield to prevent the escape of air. He saw the crawling black ooze of nanomachinery appear at the edges of each brightly-lit hole or break in the hull begin to paste the breaks shut.

  There was a twitch in his instruments a moment later. A space contortion wave passed through the area. It was a mass of probability waves, lacking any extension or precise location, roughly equal to the volume and particle count of a tall man.

  Aeneas could not smile without a head, but he felt a sense of satisfaction. He turned off the miniature sun, knowing that Saturn and all its moons, as well as the dead planet Necropolis, could survive for a few hours without any incoming heat or light.

  And then he had himself carried to his quarters to see about various medical and biotechnical operations to restore himself to fitness.

  It was four hours later that the message he had been expecting came. Aeneas went to the wardroom, to find Lady Luna and Lord Pluto already there. Lady Luna had redecorated the room, filling it with slender birch trees, changing the floor to grass, and introducing does and fawns grazing. She sat on a blanket of antigravity half an inch above the grass, with silver bowls of fruits and sweets hovering near to her hand, a decanter of wine and a crystal wine bowl.

  Lord Pluto sat at the original wardroom table, except that he had turned the mahogany surface to black iron. There was a pot of hot coffee at his elbow; he had thrown a drinking pearl into the fluid. Presumably the pearl’s mate was in a drinking nipple inside the mouthpiece of his helmet.

  Aeneas seated himself at the table. “Why do you never remove your helmet?”

  Lord Pluto said, “The human brain has special nerve paths for face recognition, among the first nerve paths children develop. A face is therefore more difficult to remove from visibility than any other visual information.”

  Aeneas said, “I still do not know your motive.”

  Pluto said, “It is a simple one, therefore I keep it carefully hidden.”

  Aeneas turned to Luna. “With what did you blackmail him?”

  She smiled and showed her dimples. “A secret that is worthless if not kept secret.”

  Lord Pluto said, “I see I must prove myself again. Here.”

  There was an old fashioned upright phone in the center of the wardroom table. It rang with the sound of a bell. Aeneas stared at it blankly, wondering how old Lord Pluto really was. Lord Pluto pushed the phone toward Aeneas. “Geras is on the line.”

  Geras was Lord Saturn. Aeneas said, “You did not speak to him?”

  Pluto said, “There is no advantage to revealing what he cannot suspect, that Lady Luna and I were stowaways on Talos during the entire construction phase of the warpcore.”

  Aeneas took the phone in hand. “Hello? Is this one of my uncles who tried to kill me in cold blood?”

  Lord Saturn’s aged and creaking voice replied. “Well, so it seems young Aeneas has gained control of the Final Science, and can abduct whole planets. You have the upper hand. What are your demands?”

  Aeneas said, “You have made it so that I cannot be exposed to Sol. Reverse the process. I cannot bring you back to Sol until I can go back.”

  “Suppose I say no?”

  Aeneas said, “That would not be in your best interest. I have made first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. They are entirely composed of necroform vampires, their entire ecology down to the microbe level. Apparently every star in the galaxy has suffered the same fate. Organic life no longer exists, except, for reasons unknown, around Sol. Hence, there is no other star around which I can put your planet. We return to Sol together or not at all. There is no other star.”

  “You expect me to believe such an outrageous lie? Is this how you chose to abuse the despotic power you’ve obtained—threatening a trillion innocent lives with slow, freezing death?”

  Aeneas stared at the ringed gas giant. It was streaked with gold and green. The upper atmosphere was streaked with storm bands. Below this, artificial supercontinents, greater in surface area than all the lands and seas of Earth combined, hung at various levels in the gigantic atmosphere. Each was surrounded by layers of earthlike air, and floating buoyantly on strata of denser materials. Archipelagoes of floating islands drifted between the flying continents, minnows among whales. The population was a hundred times that of Earth’s ten billions, and yet the population density was far less.

  Aeneas replied, “I knew your escape hatch led somewhere on or about Saturn, its rings, its moons. I did not know where, so I brought it all. There is no threat. I desire no power over you. I merely want my life back.”

  Saturn said, “You would have to trust me as a man trusts his surgeon: you must bring me to where you are, personally.”

  Aeneas said, “The pearl from your quarters is still here with me. Come ahead, but come alone.”

  Saturn said, “What if you mean a trap for me?”

  Aeneas said, “You are already in a trap, one you set for yourself. I am offering you escape.”

  Aeneas tossed the pearl into a corner of the wardroom. Lady Luna stepped close to Lord Pluto. Both faded from sight.

  The pearl turned blue, and a line of dis
torted space unfolded from it, became a cylinder, and a thin, bright and stretched version of Lord Saturn stepped out of it, his face and limbs growing and dimming as he did so. By the time his foot touched the grassy floor, his proportions and color were normal. He was dressed in a gray cloak, the same hue as his beard. He leaned on the wand of his phimaophone.

  His eyes darted to the trees, the startled fawns, the nine-foot tall Aeneas at the table.

  “Where are your guards?” asked the old man.

  Aeneas said, “Think of this as a test of your fitness to live among free men as an equal.”

  The old man nodded, and then blurred into motion too swift to see. The room grew blindingly bright. The air was hot and thick around Aeneas like settling concrete.

  His special senses told him it was a time distortion, but not a spacewarp: he was in a lower energy frame of reference from the rest of the asteroid.

  Aeneas was dumbfounded with surprise, and blushed with shame. He had no idea Lord Saturn had controlled such a power as this.

  Here, seconds had been expanded to hours or days. Outside, Lord Saturn had time and leisure enough to replace all Aeneas’ servominds and instruments with his own, bring any number of people needed up from the nearby moons. It would all be over before Aeneas could blink.

  Episode 06: The Surrender of Saturn

  Lord Pluto’s voice sounded in the ear of Aeneas. “Lord Saturn, this is your brother, Darius. I am using my power of negative information flow in reverse, so that, no matter where you are on this asteroid, or in what time-frame, you cannot help but hear me. Your powers of time-acceleration are worthless. I have rendered all exits undetectable by any means. Your mind has already been contaminated by Lady Luna, who is here with me. She has introduced nightmare-level thought disturbances into your unconsciousness which will expand until you go insane. Only she can reverse the process. The longer you wait, the worse it grows.”

  The world of normal light and motion returned to Aeneas. A blurring, twitching version of Lord Saturn came into view, and slowed to ordinary speed. Aeneas scanned the fabric of space with his ring, but, despite what it seemed, this had not been a spacetime warp.

  Lord Saturn was disheveled, his clothing tattered. The deer in the chamber were gone, as were most of the trees. A pile of bones was in one corner, and burn marks from where the trees had been chopped into campfire wood.

  “You could have left me with something better than water to drink, you know…” Lord Saturn pouted. The bags under his eyes showed he had not slept in days, perhaps weeks. “I have this nightmare of walking down corridors and having the doors vanish behind me. I cut through the wall with a weapon, and there is nothing behind. I look in the mirror, and there is no one there. Each day one more corridor or cabin has vanished, until only this room is left! I could have killed you a dozen times over, Aeneas!”

  Aeneas recognized the handiwork of Lord Pluto. The growing insanity inside the old man’s subconscious would have made the mystery of the ever-shrinking and ever-vanishing satellite impossible for him to solve. Neither his senses nor his mind had been trustworthy.

  Aeneas said sternly, “I said this was a test to see if you were fit to be a free man. You have failed. Do you surrender?”

  Lord Saturn fell to his knees, weeping. The old man clutched the long, dangling white locks of his hair. “Yes, yes! Anything! Only stop my mind from disappearing… I can feel it going… my thoughts coming unraveled…”

  Aeneas said, “I have Grandfather’s power. I am the new Lord Tellus. I am Master of the Empire of Man. Do you agree?”

  “Yes! By hell and perdition, yes!” screamed the old man, clutching at the knees of Aeneas.

  Aeneas knelt and lifted Lord Saturn to his feet. “I receive no fealty in those names, or under duress.”

  Louder, he said “Lady Luna, if you please…?”

  Aeneas detected a throb of power in the lower parts of the thought-energy spectrum. A light of sobriety, and sanity, came into Lord Saturn’s eyes then.

  Aeneas said aloud, “Lord Pluto, if you please, let the doors and corridors between here and Lord Saturn’s apartments be visible to him. He may need rest. Also, let the servominds hear his requests for food and drink.”

  Lord Saturn stood, leaning on his wand, and took a few unsteady steps. “My people are not frozen, are they? It’s been weeks for me, trying to find a way to escape. But its been less than a minute here, hasn’t it? And the nightmares came while I was awake…”

  Aeneas steeled himself against pity. “As soon as you remove from my body the trap that makes Sol’s light deadly to me, your world will return with me to the Solar System.”

  Lord Saturn blinked blearily. “Done, my boy. Done long ago. The influx of chronic particles I used to slow your personal time would have washed away the energy structure I erected inside you. I can double check and remove any trace elements in the morning… must sleep now…”

  Lady Luna faded into visibility, scowled at the bones of her deer, but then smiled and put his hand to Lord Saturn’s elbow. “Come along, Uncle!” she cooed, “I’ll tuck you into bed. Tell me what dreams you want to have?”

  “Ones without vampires… no more vampires…”

  She and he departed the wardroom.

  Aeneas turned toward the table. Lord Pluto was seated there.

  Pluto said, “Have I proved myself sufficiently?”

  “You let me escape from your tower, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why help me?”

  “You need help. You are unalert and unsuspicious. I took the precaution of installing invisibility broadcasters on every exit and bulkhead. Even though I was excluded from Saturn’s high-speed temporal imbalance field, my preparations acted automatically. They removed the visual information from the universe, so that Lord Saturn could see no exit.”

  Aeneas said, “Why didn’t I see these invisibility broadcasters…? Um… never mind. That question answers itself…”

  Pluto said in his cold, ponderous voice, “Lady Luna also set up her equipment in this room, hidden inside her trees. You failed to look for an ulterior motive to her love of redecorating. Was she not seated in a garden when you were caught by her?”

  “Are you saying not to trust her?”

  “I am saying treat your allies wisely. Know their capacities. Lady Luna’s power over dream may seem slight, but she uses it well. Lord Saturn suffers dreams to make him more amenable to the task of fighting the space vampires. Obsessions are also a lunacy, and within her purview.”

  Aeneas said, “You insist on being mysterious.”

  Lord Pluto said in an icy voice: “Trust given, not earned, is worthless.”

  “You call me untrustworthy, then? I have been…”

  “Inconstant. You decreed yourself Emperor of Man, a thing you swore not to do. Either you vow rashly, or break vows lightly.”

  Aeneas thought of several sharp replies to this, but before he could pick one, Lord Pluto vanished.

  Aeneas moved the planet Saturn and its fifty three moons and countless moonlets, smaller bodies, space icebergs, satellites, flying palaces, gardenhouses, and ring system across the lightyears from Alpha Centauri to a position not far from Pluto, with Talos and Necropolis were placed in orbit around the gas giant.

  He was pleased when the sunlight did not destroy him.

  Here was the ninth planet and its moons, Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Charon was a world of snowy pine groves free of animal life, a silent monument to Lord Pluto’s dead wife Cora. The other four had been terraformed into gardens and plantations by his two sons and two daughters, peopled with slender, solemn races.

  Aeneas, Lady Luna, and the Lords Pluto and Saturn were in the wardroom, which had been restored to its sylvan beauty.

  Aeneas said to Lord Saturn, “Pluto may have a small gravitational effect, but any orbital corrections to your moons and rings can be made once Saturn is back in its proper place.”

  Lord Saturn wo
re a guarded expression as he sat. It was the same look he wore when near his brother Lord Jupiter. Aeneas did not like what this implied.

  Lord Saturn said, “I do not expect my world, or any human life, to mean a great deal to you, youngster. Power over men and compassion for them are mutually exclusive.”

  Aeneas smiled without mirth. “My newfound power opened the stars to all mankind: but in the stars is a danger beyond belief. Compassion says you must help me fight it. Power over men I do not crave, nor need.”

  Lord Saturn said suspiciously, “So speaks the new Emperor! Why bother to convince me? I am your prisoner; my world is your hostage.”

  Aeneas said, “Your world is here to put any materials you need at hand. You have a machine for seeing into the past, or so I have heard. I want you to inspect planet Pluto. Do you have such a machine?”

  Lord Saturn’s eyes flicked to Lord Pluto’s helmet. He sighed. “The science is called Palaeoscopy. Lord Tellus instructed me in it, no doubt as one of his cruel jests. He thought it fitting to teach me a superscience with no military use, so that I would always be helpless before my brothers—and now, it seem, before my niece.”

  Lady Luna smiled as if flattered.

  Saturn said, “The first thing I did with it was examine the past of the Forerunner cache Father discovered, or try to. Something blocked my attempts, and turned the location invisible including backward through time. If that is why you rescued me, the secret is protected.”

  Lord Pluto said, “It will work now.”

  Saturn raised an eyebrow. “So it was you!”

  Lord Pluto said, “Not I.”

  Saturn turned to Aeneas. “I need to make contact with my people in Lesser Chronosopolis, and on Janus and Iapetus.”