Del Azarchel eye’s were vibrating strangely, darting from object to object on the deck: the captain, the masts, the wheel, the binnacle, and the small dome of bio-organically grown metal, which was a fusion plant. “You were expecting serpentines, you mean. The technology here is paradoxical. I see some evidence of alien thought-patterns, but very unobtrusive. The Hyades overlords ruling the planet must rule with a very light touch, as bespeaks a truly enlightened sovereign.”

Montrose smirked at him. “But it does fit the technology growth patterns if some enemy equipment fell into human hands after the aliens was driven back into the black deep of space, don’t it? There ain’t no alien overlords here. Your mind is making up evidence out of random data patterns, like seeing a face in a Rorschach blot.”

“Oh? Convert the information spaces in the cliometric model of a fusion plant on a sailing ship to the Monument notation, and you will see what I mean: there is a low zeta-count in the juridical parameter. Does that match what you’d find for a general human victory? You are self-deluded, Cowhand.”

“It don’t match your model none, neither. You are the self-deludeder.”

“That is not a word.”

“Since no one’s talked the Queen’s English for some odd eight thousand years and change, I am the only one rightly set to write a dictionary, I figure.”

By that point, they were standing on the deck. Here were two giants of the ancient posthuman design from the Third Millennium, with bald, vast heads and childish features gathered toward the bottom of their skulls, four nostrils sucking in volumes of air, squat of midriff, standing on toeless elephantine legs. One was dressed in the rough garb of a sailor, the other, leaning on a staff, wore the blue coat of a Simplifier.

There also were sailors and hands very similar to ancient Locusts, the collective-mind race of the Ninth Millennium, black-skinned, quick and elegant of motion, moving with the precision of machines, golden tendrils coming from their bald skulls.

The marines had the racial features of Chimerae, a warrior race of the Sixth Millennium, hatchet-faced and burning-eyed.

Here also was a white-haired and black-robed priestess of the Witch race, her nine-foot-tall stature betraying the use of (by this date) ludicrously ancient life-elongating biotechniques, and her odd body language and haunted eyes betraying the foundational changes in her nervous system for which the Witches were famous, including a more direct access and control to the dreaming and intuitional centers than baseline humans.

The captain and the first mate were Melusine of the Eleventh Millennium, with eyes entirely jet black, all pupil without sclera, secondary eyepits in the brow for receiving infrared, and delicate secondary ears beneath their human-shaped main ears. They had gold tendrils rising from the forehead for brain-to-brain signal communication like the Locusts, and two additional tendrils sets, long silvery whips or short blue feathers, for other bands of signals.

An absurdly attractive brunette greeted them, bowing and offering bowls of tea. Del Azarchel looked at the steaming bowl skeptically, perhaps wary of adverse chemicals or nanotechnological agents, while Montrose gulped his down with gusto, grateful for the warmth, and burped and said, “Thank you, ma’am. Right kind of y’all.”

The woman had a sweet face, high-cheeked with a pointed chin, and dark and slanted eyes, larger than were ever found in unmodified humans, underlined by an epicanthic eyefold, golden-white skin, and hair as black as India ink falling to her narrow waist. Her lips were also larger, redder, and fuller than typical. Her body shape was an idealized form from Hindu mythology, buxom to the point of exaggeration, slender-waisted, full-hipped, with long dancer’s legs. She wore a kimono of green silk patterned with images of cranes ascending and starships descending, with dragons curling around DNA spirals. Over all this she wore a luxurious mantissa falling from a hair comb made of living grapevine twined with ivy. This was both the traditional dress of the Nymphs who ruled the Seventh Millennium, and one of their favorite bodily forms.

Her voice was like a wind chime, singing. The words were English. “The men, officers, captain, owners, and ghosts of Her Majesty’s Ship Hysterical Blindness tender greetings and adoration to you, Master of the World That Was.” And she inclined her graceful head toward Del Azarchel. Then, “We welcome you, as well, and extend you welcome and peace and free leave to come and go, as well, Judge of Ages Past. Our Prognasticators calculate your wish will be to speak with our Swan, and to have your landing vessel drawn readied for rapid launch from the sea-mountain of our Swan, to which we bend our destination.”

Del Azarchel looked at Montrose sidelong and smirked. Montrose realized that, by calling out the permission to board, and by drinking first, it now seemed to the currents as if Montrose was subservient, like a herald or a food-taster, and Del Azarchel his superior. But all he said in whisper to Montrose was, “We have found another English speaker, so your authority to mangle the language is curtailed.”

Del Azarchel, answering the emissary, said, “Your Prognasticators have calculated correctly somewhat. Our prime purpose is information. Who masters this world? Man or Hyades?”

Around her throat she wore a slim metallic band or choker made of a hard substance as pink as coral. She touched it with her slender hand, as if in unconscious gesture. “Ultimately, none is master of his own fate. Resignation is best.”

Montrose did not like the look of the pink metallic ring around her neck. It reminded him unpleasantly of a dog’s collar. He stepped forward. “Miss? Do you need help? If you know who I am, you know I have a knack for setting things right. And breaking skulls.”

She smiled, and glanced at the other sailors and officers standing about them. The captain, a Melusine dressed in a heavy coat of dark blue seal fur over a skintight sheath of black metallic mesh, twitched his tendrils at her, but did not speak aloud.

She turned back to Montrose. “Do not call me Miss, for no maiden am I. The name given me is Amphithöe. Our society is not yet recovered from the depopulations, nor have we successfully followed our cliometric plans to undo the rigid hierarchy of the Buried Years.”

She continued, “That same cliometric plan contains a glaring uncertainty, a blindness. No one can predict whether the ancient war between the two of you will introduce unexpected variations into the smooth patterns of history. I am given to understand that the Swans imposed exile upon you, banishing you from Earth?”

“Not exactly what happened,” said Montrose, raising his eyes skyward and pursing his lips.

She continued, “Be that as it may, the Voice of the Swan was impelled to summon you, so that you might inspect conditions within this historical period, and see for yourselves that no reasonable grounds for dispute between the two of you remain; or, at least, no grounds for a public dispute which might disturb our commonwealth.”

Del Azarchel said with harsh humor, “And by what means was this miracle manifested?”

She bowed. “I mean no disrespect. I was given to understand that the Judge of Ages wished to repel the Hyades invasion, and the Master of the World to welcome them. The agency of the Hyades, a Virtue we call Asmodel, troubled us for a season, and now does not. Your reasons for conflict are moot. What answer shall I bring to those who send me?”

Montrose simply laughed.

Del Azarchel said, “No answer. You cannot know Hyades will not come again. Nor, it seems, do your predictions take into account that the Great Work of Jupiter is still ongoing. When he arises, he shall rule earth and sky, Man and Swan and all, forever.”