“Not in every particular.” The squire spoke sardonically.

“You seem not to favor the Fourth Humans,” Norbert said.

“They inflicted madness on history, from the day when the Salamander was lost. It has been a time of tribulations since then.”

Norbert thought carefully over what the squire had said, turning the matter in his mind this way and that, wondering at this man’s strange combination of clear knowledge about great matters, but inexplicable dimness about simple matters like cloaks and trees and knives.

A wild speculation rose up like a wine bubble in him, so outrageous that, like a bubble, it threatened to tickle him to laughter. Through the surface of his capes shoulder fabric, he studied the man laboring through the pathless wood in the night next to him. Norbert was struck again by the strangely archaic nature of his features and body language.

“Speaking to you is an interesting experience, squire. I have never met someone so traditionalist in belief. You say the Master of the World is true, and so is the Judge of Ages, and the Swan Princess—and now the Salamander in the sun is also?”

The squire gave him an odd and sidelong squint. “Our histories are filled with their doings from the Second Space Age onward. The calendar counts down from the date of Rania’s launch.”

“You think these events literally happened? Duels between underworld judges and heavenly moons; the creation of the races; the burning of the world; the cursed tombs and promises of duels renewed; and stealing stars from the sky? The princess assumed into heaven with a promise to return and free mankind? All this is figurative, surely, based on myths of dying and returning grain gods. Science is based on evidence.”

“An eyewitness is not evidence?” asked the squire, with a twinkle of repressed mirth in his eye.

“Those old accounts were written long ago, by men who lack our modern views. As for evidence: Who has seen the Salamander?”

“No man has seen the Salamander in the sun, because it is no longer in the sun. So long ago that Beta Ursae Minoris was the pole star, without explanation, in a fashion neither Potentate nor Power predicted, the Virtue we call the Salamander set forth from the depth of Sol in an eruption of fire, sailed across the Solar System, and was never seen again. After this, the tribulations began, and the Long Golden Afternoon turned dark. Three millennia of misery followed.”

Something about his tone caught Norbert’s attention: what about those years was so significant to this squire, whoever he truly was? There could not be many men to whom those long-vanished years were still important.

It was a first clue. He could not be what he said. A crewman of the expedition in Sagittarius would indeed have no interest in recent history, no plans for the future. So who was he?

“Is that so?” Norbert said noncommittally. “Go on.”

“On? There is not much to say. Each scepter was worse than the previous, and the world groaned under the despotism or folly of Shapetakers, Immortals, Vassals, Lectors, Parthenocrats, and finally Palatials. The Golden Lordship was reduced to mere figurehead and ritual offices, controlling neither decision nodes nor cliometric attractor basins. Like the imperial family of the Japanese under the Shogunate or the Military or the Diet, the rulers watched helplessly as their so-called vicars reigned.”

“I don’t recognize those names,” said Norbert, still holding his voice casual. “Parthenocrats or Japanese. Earth is not my world.”

“The Shapetakers ruled when wild Fox Maidens interbred the castes and quadrupled the lifespan of man and quintupled the beauty of women. After them ruled the Immortalists, exiled from 61 Cygni, whose minds are far modified beyond the legal human norm, and claim not to need the fear of death to give their lives meaning. The Vassals were peasants whose fathers were talking animals. Their respect for expertise allowed them easily to be beguiled by the corrupt Lectors of the Analects, who ruled the Earth next with such brutal incompetence. Then cunning Fox Maidens wed to Swan Mages created the Parthenocracy, perhaps in imitation of the lost Heirophancy, perhaps in mockery, and seemed to tame the Foxes. This won Jupiter’s favor and patronage; so the Swan-Fox hybrids were granted strange powers by Jupiter, overturned the Lectors, and ruled both sea and sky and solar system.

“This decision Jupiter soon came to regret,” continued the squire, “for the Fox-blood half-breeds reappeared in later generations, and they were far more fierce and free than any reticent Swan could be. Against them, Jupiter stirred up the ghosts of long-extinct Cetaceans still dwelling in abyssal palaces beneath the sea. The Palatials squeezed honor and ancient liberties out from all charters, till every Fox, Swan, ghost, prince, yeoman, serf, dolphin, dog, arbor, tree, and flower wept. Such were the conditions before the Final White Ship returned, and the Master of the World, and we his men, descended in wrath, and saw to the overthrow of all these ages.”

“Unleashing hell.”

“The Snow Wars were but purgatory. It was three thousand years of anarchy and tyranny between the flight of the Salamander and the fall of the palaces beneath the sea.”

“But, honestly, Squire End Ragon, was anything accomplished? Is the world better now? Whoever defies a Summer King lives in winter, dies in famine, and tornadoes scatter all his flotillas or all his towers uproot—and none can petition the Retaliator of Jupiter, who crouches like a sphinx, vast and blind and smiling, at the South Pole, for weather control abrogates no weapon laws. This means the Golden Lords are still figureheads. Even the elevation of the Patricians to Lordship positions did not change that. The golden calculations no longer have the power to throw down tyrants. Do not the Summer Kings still retain a veto power over the prognostic nodes that form in the cliometric manifold?”

“The Golden Lords no doubt encountered some chaotic factor slowing their calculations. The Aestevalarchy is a transitional stage to the Golden return to power.” The squire shrugged, looking nonchalant. Norbert, through the sensor points in his cloak, detected the muscular and neural actions betraying the emotion in the other man as clearly as a red-face scowl of anger.

This was a second clue. One step closer to the center of the puzzle, then. The Long, Golden Afternoon of Man was precious to this man. Why?

5. Fate and Chaos

Norbert wondered how far he could dare. If this man suspected Norbert were sniffing at the edges of his disguise, what would prevent him from throwing off his imposture with a gesture of superb disdain, and drawing his deadly, cold-voiced pistol? Despite Norbert’s boast about picotechnology, a stiletto could not parry a pistol blast.

The danger lured rather than repelled. So Norbert said, “You said something had thrown off the cliometric calculations: a chaos factor. There are always rumors of minor adjustments needed for the Lords of the Golden Afternoon to thread their disagreement back into harmony, or recalculate unforeseen glitches in the manifold. But you seem to indicate it is worse than this?”

“I said no such thing,” muttered the squire.

“Can anything hinder the cliometry? It is not a human invention.”

“Something is hindering it. Why has the discovery of cliometry not long ago have reached a halt-state similar to the Cold Equations of the aliens? Their society never changes.”

Norbert said, “Nor does ours, except in eternals. Mankind repeats the same suicidal folly, eternally. History is the dragon who forever devours itself by its tail. Neither biotechnology nor xypotechnology nor any improvement in tools can change human nature.”

“You are mistaken. You must be.”