“Why?” asked Norbert.

“The duel between the Judge of Ages and the Master of the World prevents the end of history. We have never reached a stable and self-perpetuating future because those two cannot agree on a future. History ends when one of them kills the other,” said the squire.

“That will not end history. They are not so important. They are men. Underfoot and overhead are machines so much vaster of intellect than they, that we call them angels and gods.”

“Machines based on forms those two devised. History will reach an end, for better or worse. The better is that the Swan Princess returns from beyond the stars to restore the world to peace and truth. Mankind submits to the rules she imposes, and enters into the pleasures of the futures she designs for them. If that submission is unwilling at first, there will be one final war after which war will be forgotten forever, and any enormities committed then are justified by the joy and prosperity to follow. That is a happy ending.”

“What is the worse?”

“Mankind goes extinct, and the machine life made by the Master of the World replicates itself endlessly and spreads infinitely throughout timespace. That is a happy ending, but not for man.”

Norbert said, “Why has not Jupiter, if great Jupiter is so great, brought about one of these two halt-states of history, the serenity of peace or the serenity of extinction? If he is so godlike, why does he let us suffer?”

The squire looked left and right. In the gloom, there was an oak tree not far away, its thick and gnarled branches raised in a menacing fashion. “You know the local plans of Judges of Decades for each ten-year span, and the Judge of Centuries for each hundred,” he said blandly. “Men control their own fates.”

“What of plans for longer than mortal lifespans?”

The squire spoke in a voice polite and remote. “Such things concerns the Potentates and Powers, and mortals are unwise to fret.”

That was the third step closer. Norbert was not sure what was at the center of the maze, but its rough outline was clear enough.

Jupiter had lost control of human history.

6. The Second Power of Sol

Where was the source of opposition to Jupiter? Norbert dismissed the possibility that a Potentate or Archangel could outwit a brain larger than worlds. The opponent was a Power.

In his mind he counted off the other gas giants which had been converted to sophont matter between the Thirty-second and the Forty-third Millennium: Cerulean of 82 Eridani; Peacock of Delta Pavonis; Immaculate of Altair; Twelve of Tau Ceti; Vonrothbarth of 61 Cygni, the double star of the double planets Odette and Odile. Atramental of Epsilon Eridani he did not count, for the Gas Giant Brain created by the men of Nocturne had gone mad and destroyed itself.

And there was one other, not so far away. It had first revealed itself in the Fifty-first Millennium.

Norbert waited until they had walked farther, and no oak trees were near. “You speak of a chaos factor in history. The Foxes say that Jupiter is no friend of man, but that the newborn Power in Neptune is, and one day will supplant him. The Summer Kings call Neptune a rival to Jupiter, one never to equal him. When Neptune reaches full growth in the Sixty-first Millennium, his intelligence will be one hundred million, less than half what Jupiter currently enjoys.”

The squire looked at him in puzzlement, but with no sign of suspicion on his features. “Neptune cannot be the source of the tribulations inflicted on mankind four thousand years before his creation. What is your question, sir? Speak more plainly.”

“Does Neptune hinder Jupiter, as the Fox Maidens claim?”

“As a lapdog hinders a bear, perhaps,” snorted the squire. “Neptune has entered a period of somnolence and internal reorganization which theopsychologists speculate is akin to REM sleep. They say he will not wake until the Fifty-sixth Millennium.”

“Neptune sleeps?”

“It was Jupiter’s doing. He imposed an indication of logic into a subduction layer of Neptunian psychology, which was slowly drawn into his core brain. It is the same fate Great Jupiter decreed to Atramental of Epsilon Eridani.”

“Why are men told nothing of this?”

“Men are happier when the doings of the Great Powers are unknown, lest they realize they are but cargo in the cattlehold of the vessel of time, and kick at the walls.”

Norbert thought of Nochzreniye, his adjutant. He must never come to know that the madness of the Power his people and their living planet Nocturne had slaved so diligently and lovingly for so long to create had been an act of murder. To love and lose a god was a sorrow civilizations did not throw off, not in numberless generations. The tragedy of Atramental hung behind the psychology, the songs and humor of solemn resignation for which the mournful Nocturnals were famed. But to have been inflicted deliberately?

Norbert sought for a way to reject the horror. “But Neptune speaks!” he said, weakly.

“Indeed. The high-level metasymbolic responses his orbital archangelic servants translate to mid-level symbols for Swans to carry as symbols to us all come from the first half-mile of his logic diamond surface, no deeper. These are as the words of a man talking in his sleep. To creatures of our humble intellect, of course, the difference between the statements of a fully formed intelligence at the one hundred million level, and the dazed or damaged intelligence fallen to the one million level, operating at one percent of capacity, cannot be discriminated.”

Norbert wondered how this man knew things hidden from the Archangels. His wild speculation was beginning to seem the only logical possibility.

7. The Fourth and Fifth Humans

Norbert said, “The origin of the Second Power is shrouded with mystery. There is no evidence of his existence before the Fifty-first Millennium of the Sacerdotal Calendar. Who built Neptune?”

“What do you know, sir?”

Norbert recalled an old annual from his middle-term memory. “It is said that the greatest of the Patricians, a segment of their sovereign mind named Cnaeus, once upon a time arranged the downfall of the Crusader Kingdom on the moon, without firing a shot. The remnant fled to Mars as the terraforming failed, and so began the slow loss of Luna’s artificial atmosphere, one of the Seven Wonders of the System. To this day, the seas founded by the Prestor Aiven are sublimating from ice to a vapor which escapes into space.” He pointed upward at the blue-green orb. “The moon, which has been the hue of an emerald for all of history, will one day pale to the hue of a pearl, and glare across your world like a skull.”

“It has not been all of history,” commented the squire pedantically, “but only since the Sacerdotes of Altair sent Knights Hospitalier to Sol thirteen millennia ago, and slew the followers of Lares. Perhaps when the frozen lunar seas vanish, now that the remnants of the Asmodel Cenotaph are gone, we will see the handprint again which once graced that globe, an emblem and an omen hung high over this world to show in whose hand this world rests. Ah! But pray continue the tale, sir.”

“Selene was in grief when her surface died, and imposed a strict penance. Cnaeus had exiled himself to the ring arcs of Uranus, far beyond where Potentate or Power could observe him, in order to suffer the purifying agony of isolation, to do the useful work of exploration, and remit the spiritual debt for distortions he had introduced into the cliometry of the inner system. Beyond all hope, he found a wonder: wandering moons left over from the chaos of the Second Sweep, including logic crystals of immense size containing the instructions to aid the birth of Jupiter. Convinced this was a sign, he armed the birthing moons and sent them on wide and secret orbits to collide with Neptune, striking the far side where no eyes saw.”