Once the wind-craft was close enough, Menelaus could use a cortical interpretation technique to resolve the vision into meaningful shapes.
Machines, swarms of machines, on the ends of long lines like spiders on threads, descended from and ascended to the mouth of the cylinder. They were carrying buildings. Even the arcologies were but toy blocks compared to the size of the cylinder. Menelaus saw vehicles like trains, pulled out of the ice that had preserved them, drawn like links of sausage up and upward. Or they may have been lines of cable or pipe.
He saw oak trees and sculptures being lifted up. A geodesic dome, and many, many lesser buildings. Houses. Mansions. Gardens. Museums. Edifices he did not recognize.
The wind-craft moved closer to the great Bell, passing beneath the mouth. The cameras could see that inside the mouth of the Bell, the various components of the city were being put back together again, like a children’s puzzle, on a series of shelves that ringed the inner hollow space.
Keirthlin said in English, “It was Raleigh, one of the cities of the Carolinas.”
Menelaus snatched the goggles off. “The base of the machine was above fourteen thousand feet. The upper reaches must be above the atmosphere…”
Keirthlin said, “I estimate it to be 116 million feet high, or 19,100 nautical miles. To hold its own coherence under its own weight, descending from orbit to the surface, the material must exceed 200 gigapascals of tensile strength and elastic properties of over 1 terapascal. The degree of tapering between the geosynchronous altitude and the Earth’s surface depends on the material: for steel, it is tens of thousands to one, whereas for diamond, twenty to one. In this case, there was no visible tapering, which indicates a strength of material above what is possible for molecular bonds: the strength is akin to the strong nuclear force. By any normal understanding of Earthly science, what we saw was impossible.”
“Plague and pestilence! Who on Earth could build such a thing? The space elevator Rania took off with was just a frail spider-thread compared to that. How far out into space does it go? Is it anchored to a geosynchronous asteroid? And if it is—sucking abdominal wound of Jesus Christ!—how can they maneuver it?”
Keir said, “Have you not studied the Monument? The great east-southeast cartouche element of the Pi hieroglyph segment displays image-algorithms, pictoglyphs, and other representations describing the tools the Hyades Dominion uses for its deracination, as well as other schematics of traditional mechanisms and systems. This Bell is identical to one of the instrumentalities so pictured. It is a device for absorbing into confinement a planetary population along with various tools and physical artifacts of their culture, and sufficient layers of the ecosphere to sustain them, and for placing the populations as payload in Clarke orbit pending solar sail launch outsystem. Different mechanisms than this are preferred by the Hyades for deracinating superterrestrial and subjovial worlds. This contrivance seems to be a Hyades war-object that arrived far in advance of the promised World Armada.”
“Impossible,” said Menelaus.
Keir said, “How can we know what is impossible for them? We are as ants.”
“The laws of nature are the same for ants as for bigger things. No one can exceed the speed of light; no one can create energy from nowhere.”
Keirthlin said, “Someone sent out an extremely low frequency signal to attract the Bell, and it answered in Monument hieroglyphs, describing its rendezvous with this location. The Bell should be here shortly. If you note the cloud cover gathering, and the drop in temperature, and the howling of the wind, you will deduce that the near rim of the mouth of the Bell is already visible above the local horizon. Would you care to see a view from the logic crystals in the camp?”
Numbly, Menelaus handed back the goggles. He had seen enough.
Keirthlin said, “Why did you call them here? What did you intend? What do these events mean?”
Menelaus said, “I am the smartest man on the planet, and I have no damnified and pustulating idea what is going on. The Currents, whoever they are, if they had the technology to create such a thing, would surely have left some sign, some energy signal, that the Locusts would have detected, or my radio. Are they hiding?”
Keirthlin said, “While I am not a Simplifier, I do admire the directness of their approach. In this case, the simple approach is best. If you are curious about the motives of the current generation, why not ask?”
Menelaus goggled at her. “You are the Currents?”
Keir made a curt, negative gesture with his hand. “We are not. She is.” And he nodded toward Alalloel. “Everyone else here is from our past. Only her energy signals contain fine emission nuances we cannot penetrate. Observe the small motions of her eyes and hands. She is a posthuman.”
10. Girl from the Eighteenth Configuration
Menelaus still felt an astonishment, great as anger, burning in his belly. He spun and glared across the space separating them at Alalloel.
He looked at the ornamental clasps adorning her shoulders, wrists, and waist. They looked like seashells. The tiny patterns of striations showed they had been grown using the same method as the shell-like buildings outside.
“You! You are a Current, aren’t you? World hasn’t changed that much in four hundred years, has it? You are a Melusine! You are in contact with them! You know what’s going on! Where is the world? Where did the human race go? What is that—that thing outside?”
The gold, silver, and blue antennae on her head stirred, and the second pair of ears below her human ears opened like little pink parasols, and tilted toward Menelaus as if tracking the source of the noise. But she said nothing, and there was a mocking look in her blind-seeming eyes.
He probed the clasps on her uniform with a signal from his implants; this time he used the Gray logic gems to heterodyne his signal onto the carrier wave he had detected earlier. From the energy echo, he realized she had the range and the power to reach not only the Bell, but whoever was in charge of this period of history, including whatever libraries and infosphere contained the answers to his questions. Questions she was not answering.
Menelaus adjusted the nodes the Grays had given him, and sent a signal strong enough that Alalloel winced. Aloud, he said the same words: “Who are you?”
She raised an eyebrow. She opened her tongueless mouth. From her throat issued a voice.
“Alalloel u lal rir Lree, u lal rir Enlil-Urthlolendthril.”
“Nope. If the Linderlings can pick up this language at their speed, you can at yours.”
The throat-voice changed, and now spoke with the same modulation, accent, and rhythm as Keir, but at a slightly higher pitch. The perfection of the impersonation was eerie. “Alalloel of the Lree of the Eighteenth World Mind Configuration.”
“You hid that you can grasp our talk? Why?”
“It would lack symmetry were you, given your actions, to criticize the pretense of ignorance to lure others to speak unguardedly.”
“You started to speak to me in the mess tent.”
“I started to offer you my name; you offered me in return a lie. Absent reciprocity, conversation halts.”
Menelaus said angrily to Alalloel, “Lady, you better tell me where is the human race.”
“Measured in terms of the majority of intellectual activity, the human race is no longer significant. The Eighteenth Configuration is no longer significant. The Earth itself is self-aware.”
He didn’t know if that referred to Pellucid filling the core, or the self-aware Del Azarchel snow-coating the outside of the planet. He said, “Go on.”
“The mentality involved has not yet achieved coherence. Rather, the conflicting polities have thought-structures issuing from two epicenters, creating mutual interference. Nobilissimus Del Azarchel and the historical and mental events he sets in motion occupy one epicenter; you and yours occupy the other. But who are you? The archives refuse to confirm that you are the Judge of Ages, Menelaus Montrose, despite your claim. There is an information lapse or blind spot when the inquiry is made. Something nulls the reply. Who are you?”