The cold-eyed Chimerae flourished their whips, whose metal lengths began to buzz with energy, but they did not strike.

Del Azarchel stepped back and lowered his sword. He said to Montrose, “Whatever answer his message provoked must be alarming. Hold your fire.”

“Dammit, Blackie! I don’t take orders from you!”

“Then fire at will to each point of the compass, Cowhand! Burn the whole of the established Earth with your puny pistols!”

Montrose snarled and tucked his guns away. The Chimerae did not put their whips away, but they did tighten the metal lengths into spears, holding them at the ready. With the typical rage of their race, their eyes were glittering points, hot as coals, teeth clenched so hard their gums were white, and yet with the typical self-control of their race, without an order to kill, they did not attack.

A voice that was two voices said, “Even could he defeat the world with a hand weapon, she who speaks is not of the world.”

4. Carmelite Satellite

Montrose and Del Azarchel turned.

The shoulders and head of a Giant were looming above the edge of the poop deck, roughly at their eye level. He was fifteen feet tall, and he leaned on a staff of smart-graphite steel. His coat was blue, and his coolie hat was the size of a wagon wheel, and even then seemed small on the Giant’s over-bloated and strangely delicate skull. The coat was coated with logic-crystal gemstones after the fashion of the Simplifier Order from thousands of years earlier. His skin was tainted blue.

The Giant’s voice was oddly twyform: it came both from his throat, somewhat high and thin, almost childlike, and from his chest, where it rumbled like whale song. The slight nuances of pitch and tone and word choice between the two voices added additional dimensions to the language, and allowed for high information density.

Without turning his immense head, the Giant raised his wand so that the two rings joining the Celtic cross atop it jangled with a clear chime, and pointed at the crescent moon. It was dusk, and in the darkening sky, the multicolored crescent hung like a drawn bow above a line of cloud. The cloud bank was painted into pale contours with moonlight above, red with the setting sun below, dark between. The moon was the oddly amber-gold hue of its glacier coat of logic diamond and marked with the labyrinthine swirling discolorations of Monument notations. Within the horns of the crescent, two pinpoints of acetylene-white light appeared, and then a third.

Montrose calculated the power needed to make so visible a flare from that distance: it was equivalent to a multimegaton explosion.

“I am Friar Sancristobal of the Remnant Order of the Post-Final Stipulation and a Brother of Penance of the Third Order of St. Frances,” the Giant said, his golden eyes growing brighter as he stared at Montrose and Del Azarchel. “The Archangel of the Moon casts an energy shadow into this area. It is interfering with the neurotelepathy of the local human infospheres.”

Del Azarchel said, “The Lunar Mind is super-posthuman. She is beyond us, we mere posthumans, in mental configuration. Surely she is part of the Noösphere! Why is she trying to communicate with us? Are we not phantasms to her?”

Montrose, leaping to the conclusion more quickly than Del Azarchel, laughed hoarsely and slapped his knee. “Wouldn’t my old ma be a-scorning me for my unchurchgoing ways! And lookit here! The moon is a nun!”

Del Azarchel stared at Montrose a moment, and then squinted at the crescent moon as if he could pierce to the lunar core with his naked eye. “You are saying she is in communion with you, Friar? The moon is a mendicant?”

The Giant flicked his eyelids in the gesture his race, with their thick-necked and immobile heads, used for a nod. “Mother Superior Selene serves as an Abbess of the Order of the Discalced Friars of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel. The whole lunar sphere is sacred ground now, for none but hermits and monks departed of worldly things would dare dwell in such arid wastes.”

Seeing Montrose’s blank look, Del Azarchel said, “She’s a Barefoot Carmelite.”

“Seeing how’s an airless satellite what’s got no feet, I guess that makes sense,” said Montrose, shrugging. “What’s a Carmelite? Type of sticky candy?”

The Giant said, “As a Whitefriar, Mother Selene has taken vows of poverty and nonconnectivity. Although in reality visible to the Noösphere, as a member of a human sacerdotal order, she is legally considered of the human intellectual strata, and politely ignored. Neither her thoughts nor mine are transmitted into the information systems of the many levels of posthuman consciousness interpenetrating the Earth. Do you have instruments to detect and interpret her instructions? She forbids you from continuing in your act of piracy.”

“Forbids?” Del Azarchel bristled. “By what authority?”

“No authority aside from what your own conscience calls right. Forswear your suicidal pride. How will you contend with higher powers? Will you pierce the moon with your sword? The day when you were the paramount intelligence of Earth is past, sir. You are as a dullwit child, here.”

Montrose said, “Blackie, those lights we see on the unlit hemisphere of the moon? I assume there is about a mile-wide circle of ocean being painted. That is a triangle of ranging beams. If Selene turned up the power, this boat will go up like matchwood.” Montrose turned to the Giant. “Brother Sancristobal, I take it Selene did not take a vow of peace?”

The Giant said pleasantly, “How much of her most warlike mother, Diana, is still within Selene is a matter of speculation. The fiberglass deck of the ship will reflect the lethal dose of radiation. But she would not harm the Swan, who is part of the interconnected mental life of Earth, a living vessel of the living data streams.”

I will harm no one, if the Nobilissimus and the Judge of Ages will accept my offer of sanctuary on the moon. There is a basilica in Tycho crater, from which, by an ancient and significant law, no slave nor indentured servant can be haled. The tip of the sword of law is broken at the doors of the Holy Church.

It was Captain Isonadey speaking. He was supine on the deck. The voice was not his. His eyes were open. Since every part of his eye, pupil and sclera and all, were black as midnight, whether or not the eyes were focused on anything was a matter of conjecture. The Chimerae were inching away from their master, spears trembling in their hands.

Menelaus crossed his arms on his chest. “Blackie, this place strikes me as right medieval. The moon’s done joined up with the preachers.” He laughed and shook his head. “Every acre of lunar surface has an intelligence range above three hundred thousand. Lives by begging. Obeys a human priest—am I right, Brother Sancristobal? How did you work the baptism?”

Captain Isonadey rose, or was pulled, to his feet. The motion was swift, somehow managing to look both unnaturally smooth and inhumanly awkward. The voice rang from his mouth. I am the Abbess and Mother Superior. I occupy the core, not merely the surface. Immersion, albeit preferred, is not necessary. The Bishop Hymir blessed an incoming comet, which was redirected to my surface. The crater formed is the site of a chapel dedicated to Saint Teresa of Ávila. There, Amphithöe may reside if she will join our order, or else slumber undisturbed until this current Concubine Vector passes. It would not be well for her to accompany you into the undisclosed far future. In any case, I will set her free. You may assist me in certain matters.

“What matters?” said Montrose; almost in unison, Del Azarchel said, “What if we don’t agree to this exchange?”

“It proves we’re stupid,” said Montrose loudly, rolling his eyes skyward. His expression of exasperation turned intent. “The iron core of the moon is fourteen sextillion grams or so, and forty percent of that, whatever used to be molten, I am guessing is now sophont matter. One big plaguey logic diamond. Why does a mind with an intelligence clearly past the ten thousand mark want help from us humble posthumans?”