The Hermetic Millennia Read online

  Their shipsuits were built along lines opposite to those of the bulky atmospheric armor of the First Age of Space: an only mildly biomodified human skin, when mummified by skintight garb, was discovered to have sufficient tenacity to resist vacuum. A second cushion of very light material was used to hold a layer of partial atmosphere next to the skinsuit, in order to help with pressure differentials the free motion of human joints necessitated. This outer silk was like a living layer of air pockets that expanded and contracted with each movement, granting the Hermeticists an eerie shimmering to play over them, like ripples seen on the scales of restless sharks.

  There were silver fittings at waist and shoulders, and the heavy ring of a collar at the neck. All the men were bald as a monks, with skull-tight cowls that covered ears and cheeks and buckled beneath the jaw. Each wore his hood drawn up, but not sealed nor inflated. Goggles and mask hung below the throat like a second face.

  There were only minor variations to the uniforms.

  Melchor de Ulloa was a very handsome man, even in his lunar form. He was always wreathed in smiles of bewildered good cheer and in the scent of lavender. At his throat was an ornament like chicken’s claw within a circle, representing peace, a symbol called Nero’s Cross. He was the ship’s political officer.

  Narcís D’Aragó, the cold-eyed master-at-arms, dangled a powered rapier from his baldric and an Aurum pistol in his thigh holster. This weapon fired a nanotechnological smart package designed, upon impact, to disassemble nonliving material such as armor or clothing, and nonimportant material such as flesh and bone into a puddle, and next to form electroneural connections to any nerve cells it encountered floating in that puddle, such as disembodied eyeballs, brain or spinal tissue, linking those cells to the nearest signal nexus for download.

  Sarmento i Illa d’Or was a man of muscular bulk, broad shouldered as a bullock, light of step even under Earthly gravity, and in his gauntleted hand an emission wand called a soul goad, used to control thralls, parolees, or courtesans modified with skull implants via shocks of pleasure or agony that left no marks. Aboard ship he had been the quartermaster, and during the time of the World Concordat, the master of the feasts.

  Jaume Coronimas, who had been an engineer’s mate aboard ship, and the broadcast power master during the Concordat, wore a cowl pieced by two small holes, and through these rose from his scalp two tendrils like whip-antennae made of yellow bioprosthetic metal, and these gold tendrils swayed softly toward the signal sources in the room, peering forth from the mouth of his hood like two inquisitive snakes. His face would have been thin and gray even had his skin not been adapted toward lunar conditions.

  One man was not like the others. Father Reyes y Pastor, the expedition chaplain, was in red, and wore ermine and scarlet cardinal’s robes atop his black silk. Hanging down his back was a broad-brimmed red hat with elaborate tassels upon tassels, the galero. The hat was not on his head, for he wore the black hood of a scholar, proud of his academic achievements above his ecclesiastical station.

  The coppery eyes of the Hermeticists glinted under their hoods like red coals in the mouths of dark, triangular furnaces.

  The five drifted in soundless grace to their places at the round table. Places, not seats, for no chairs were needed, nor did human legs grow weary in a world of one-sixth weight.

  There were more than six score empty places to each side of them. Each empty place was covered over with long, triangular silken lengths. These were the hoods removed from the shipsuits of the departed. Their tassels hung mournfully to the deck, swaying ghostlike in the ventilation of their own internal circuits.

  The Hermeticists were alone. No servant had ever set foot in this upper sanctum, not a chambermaid to sweep, not a butler to present a bulb of wine, not a technician to set to rights the thousand intricate circuits of the information systems. No unmodified human could withstand the radiation that time to time poured invisibly from naked outer space a few feet overhead, detected by the dry clicking of counters. Nor was it in the present purposes of the Hermetic Order to acquaint mankind with the full spectrum of biotechnological modifications they employed for their own uses.

  Del Azarchel spoke: “Faithful and beloved friends, equal partners in my reign, partners now in my downfall, the entire living world, the Mother Earth so fair and green, is lost to us, with neither a drop from her endless seas nor a wisp of her abundant airs and winds allowed to us here.

  “This Luna, this hueless world of lifelessness, through turmoil and fire we achieved with the daring theft in her orbital shipyard of the great ship Emancipation. Her sails, as nothing else could do, turned aside the deadly force of the mirrors of the Giants, those same orbital mirrors which burned the civilization whose glory we represent. That power became propulsion for us, for we turned death to life by that same alchemy of knowledge which assures us our supreme authority above mankind.

  “As if sailing hither on a sea of fire, this dead world our new world we made, and found this ancient base, long forgotten from the First Age of Space Travel, on the far side of the moon, and far from the orbital mirrors of the Giants, and with diligent work, and not without the sacrifice of loyal servant’s lives now mourned, our genius restored it from death to life.

  “Here allow me to restore our hopes. History is merely one more language the Monument Builders decoded, and only we, only we anointed few, can speak this language to issue decrees and cast spells in it.”

  Del Azarchel pointed, and all the floor lit up with branch on branch of Cliometric equations.

  The calculation set was profound, reaching an illusory dozens of feet down below what now seemed a crystal floor. De Ulloa cried out in awe, Sarmento grunted, and the golden antennae of Coronimas perked up in surprise. Reyes y Pastor crossed himself, and even the impassive masklike face Narcís D’Aragó twitched and raised an eyebrow.

  3. The Allotment of the Eons

  Del Azarchel addressed the remnant of the Hermetic Order.

  “Each of you have seen the Cliometric projections. Some lines of evolution are dead ends. One will break through to the next level of intellectual topography, an event horizon of human augmentation beyond which no predictions can be made. Study the chessboard, gentlemen! Where would you make your move? Not just Montrose, but human nature and inhuman entropy are all your oppositions in this game. Learned Melchor de Ulloa, you speak first.”

  Melchor de Ulloa spread his supine hands, a gesture that could have been used either to placate or to beg alms. His voice was honey. “A society where everyone’s rights are respected produces liberty and this produces invention, discovery, change, and evolution. The main hindrances to man’s ever-upward triumph are hatred, aggression, and fear. The only cure is toleration, education, and the growth of institutions based not on rigid rules and dogmatism, but on open-minded willingness to attempt all options, seek all experiments, try all, dare all, risk all: and thus will man discover all. This willingness is based on social factors independent of political economic structures: it is the artistic vision, the worldview, of the consensus of the people that eventually shapes society.

  “Scientifically speaking, this consensus is based on structures in the lower brain, related to various subconscious symmetry-recognition ganglia whose nature we have examined intimately during our work to elevate the Cetaceans to sapience. The Monument describes eighty-one nonverbal communications systems, of which one, music, is comprehensible to the nervous patterns of mammalian Earthly life.

  “Artistic vision fathers cultural values, not the other way around; all moral codes are merely the epiphenomena of the irrational subconscious, and of the dreams only freedom can free. I see the doubt on your features, gentlemen, but I can demonstrate my claims with a simple spline equation. Give me control not of the laws nor the religions nor philosophy of man, but merely of their music, and I can guide Man to the Asymptote.”

  Del Azarchel said, “I have already set in motion what is needful to destroy the Giants, and set the hum
ans of normal intellect free from their control. I foretell a dieback, and Dark Ages lasting until the Fifth Millennium. Once this is accomplished, I will grant to you between the years A.D. 4000 to A.D. 5000 to play out your experiment. Remake mankind as you wish. Learned Narcís D’Aragó, I see you object.”

  Narcís D’Aragó stood as if at parade rest, hands clasped behind his back. His voice was ice. “Let us talk no more of natural right, or of phlogiston, or of fairy godmothers. Does a man have a natural right to life? That is quaint poetry, but let him beat against the waves of the sea when he is drowning to see what rights nature gives.

  “We should stick to facts. The fact is that rights are artificial, a legal fiction, a man-made mechanism to increase group survival value, nothing more. Justice is strength. Without strength is no survival—and all rational moral codes have survival as their object.

  “You recall the Fifth Postulate of the Negative Sum divarication proof? It proves that the individual cannot survive without the group, and the group cannot survive unless the individual is willing to die for it. What is needed for mankind is logic, the stern and simple logic of survival.

  “The existence of religion—pardon me, Father, but it is true—is based on a genetic marker inclining toward mystical altruism, all men being brothers and all that saccharine fluff.

  “No. Rational altruism can beat mystical altruism hands down, for money, love, or marbles. Give me control of men’s genetics, and I can shape his destiny, and break human nature open like an egg, and release the dragon within.”

  Del Azarchel said, “If Melchor de Ulloa falls short, then I will give you between the years A.D. 5000 to A.D. 6000 to accomplish your purpose. If he has achieved the asymptote within his allotted span, your task will be merely to aid him. Learned Sarmento i Illa d’Or! I have never known you to agree with Learned D’Aragó on any point. What say you?”

  Sarmento i Illa D’Or, with the studied arrogance of a Hercules, crossed his huge arms across his broad chest and tilted back his head. His voice was the murmur of a bear in winter, disturbed from long, cold sleep. “Bah! Control the emotional nature! Control the music! Control the genetics! Control the thinking! It is all hogwash. What about not controlling? What about setting mankind free? And I mean free of all restrictions, moral, mental, intellectual—everything. I say there is no rational moral code that does not take into account the simple scientific fact that all organisms seek pleasure and flee pain. This is the starting point of all rational thought about human nature.

  “The trick is to tie pleasure into the proper incentives without imposing a system of control the sheep will detect and resent. To do this, you shape the future. You dig the canals and dikes, and merely let the water find its own way at its own pace into your channels.

  “The factor that controls the future is demographics. When populations outstrip food supplies, human life is cheap, wages drop, sexual restrictions come into play, and to keep those restrictions, an apparatus of coercion arises that soon reaches all aspects of life. Ancient China was overpopulated, and it sterilized their ability to progress despite an immense head start; Europe outstripped them, because the Black Death had lowered the population level so that every individual life was precious—that, and not empty talk about the sanctity of life—that is what led to the group discipline D’Aragó talks about, as well as the liberty and tolerance De Ulloa mentioned. It is all in the numbers.”

  “Shall I make you the angel of death, able to lower population rates?” asked Del Azarchel with a dark look.

  “No, Learned Senior. Give me the heavens instead, and I will raise them,” said Sarmento.

  “What?” said Del Azarchel.

  “Demographics is based on food supply,” Sarmento rumbled. “Which is based on acquisition technology, whether huntsman, herdsmen, or husbandman. So give me control of the climate, wind, and weather. The ancient experiments in weather control were not implemented by a posthuman Iron Ghost, and so the many variables of climate adjustment could not be managed. If I can establish the growing season, shorten or extend it, then I can shape the agrotechnology, the demographics, the pleasure-seeking incentives of human action, and thus the culture that will grow out of it.”

  Del Azarchel said, “If D’Aragó falls short, then I give you between the years A.D. 6000 to A.D. 7000, but I will grant you longer if you ask, for I doubt your theory is sound.”

  Sarmento said, “But I must have more time! The method I propose is very slow.”

  Jaume Coronimas raised his finger. “Are you giving away blocks of a thousand years each, Learned Del Azarchel? Learned Sarmento can have half of my time. My proposal is more efficient.”

  Coronimas had drawn a series of figures, calculations of his own, in the palm of his left glove with the stylus tip hidden in the finger of his right. Coronimas twitched his golden antennae downward, and at this gesture, the circuits displayed his work in the mirrored floor panels at his feet.

  “Observe. The way to improve mankind is merely to improve him. The human nervous system is a machine, and its performance characteristics can be directly changed by changing various bits of neural hardware. We have been failing here because each man is trying to improve himself like Montrose did. I suggest a different approach: to improve the race while keeping the basic unit of the race, the individual, more or less the same. Give me control of man, all of him, and I can remake him into my image, and this will establish evolution—because it will not be evolution, will it? It will be intelligent design. My design. I can make them peaceful and sane and able to adapt to whatever troubles come.”

  Del Azarchel said, “Then I will give you your five hundred years, if you can match your boast, but I will place it in the midst of an era where it will do no harm if it goes wrong. Father Reyes, I see the pain in your eyes. What is it?”

  Reyes y Pastor said, “With respect, Learned Gentlemen and Learned Senior, your thoughts are awry. We cannot plan for the next evolutionary step of man, any more than apes could perform brain surgery on an ape cub and make him grow into a Homo sapiens. The superman will be beyond us, and be nothing we can imagine. We must do the very reverse of all that has been said. We cannot control man to unleash evolution; we must unleash evolution and man will be swept up, buoyed up by wild forces beyond control, yes, whether he wishes or not, to the next form of human nature. The one true religion teaches—ah, I know how skeptical you all are, but history will bear out my witness!—the Holy Mother Church teaches that heaven cannot exist on Earth; to yearn in vain for earthly paradise and peace is the heresy of Utopianism.”

  “If we are all heretics,” said Del Azarchel, “what is orthodox?”

  “On Earth, life is nothing but the brutal struggle for existence, war of all against all. Blessed are the peacemakers! That word was spoken by Our Savior, and it is truth and holy truth, but as holy truth, it has no application here in this valley of tears called life! Moral codes and liberty and genetic codes, logic and demographics, none of this, my children, is what life on Earth requires to reach the transcendence of the Asymptote. What has hindered us so far is that there are far too few us. Too few who think as we! Let me make a world in our image, a world of men who are unafraid to shape the destinies of all the men beneath them, and they in turn shaped by the men above them, so that all the raw power and agony of evolution will be released like a genii from its brass jar. What will come next, your math cannot predict nor mine!”

  Del Azarchel said, “I will give you between A.D. 7000 and A.D. 8000 to work whatever purposes you will, Father Reyes; and the final period between then and A.D. 11000, when the Hyades armada arrives, I reserve to myself either to capitalize the triumphs all you gentlemen have accomplished, or abolish your errors, and in every way to prepare mankind to be what best will serve the intelligences from the Hyades stars. And yes, the race I make in those final days must discover and destroy whatever mad Montrose has prepared of war and revolution, for he seeks ever to bring the wrath of Hyades down upon us.
r />   “The conclave is ended: each go your own ways, draw up your calculations, and prepare! We war not only against Montrose and his servants, and against the perversity of human nature but against the lingering tardiness of Darwin, and against death, time, and entropy itself!”

  And the Hermeticists bowed toward the throne; then each man took his leave and descended, weightless as thistledown, through the deck hatches into the deeply buried lunar fortress with no more noise than a spirit returning to its grave.

  PART THREE

  A World of Ice

  Interlude: A Cold Silence

  A.D. 9999

  1. Alarm Clock

  All he wanted to do was to stay dead. Some damn nuisance kept jarring him awake.

  Some damn nuisance named Blackie.

  Before he opened his eyes, before he knew whether his other organs were thawed, he was aware of his acceleration. No, not acceleration: weight. There was no sensation of motion. He was not aboard a ship. He was still trapped on Earth. Where was she?

  With immense pain, and annoyance more immense, he pried open a creaking eyelid. The clock on the inside of the icy coffin lid reacted to the motion and lit up, the faint red letters reading YEAR: A.D. 9999 YOUR AGE: 7789 CALENDAR / 50 BIOLOGICAL.

  In 2401, his body had been buried in the debris of the uprooting of the Celestial Tower of Quito, which fell upward into orbit. Rania had used the Celestial Tower as a rotating beanstalk or rotovator to accelerate the ship to the escape velocity of the solar system, forty-two kilometers per second.