“Do you believe that story?”

“No. Assassins do not believe in coincidences. Someone sent Cnaeus the Patrician to the Outer System where no man goes, and someone set the moons for him to find. Whoever made the moons fathered Neptune. If Neptune is meant to supplant Jupiter, then the opposition issues from the race who opposes all forms of authority and control.”

The squire said, “The Second Humans?”

“No, squire. Swans merely withdraw when rules and regulations gather like vultures, for they are too fine and austere to fight superior beings themselves.”

“Who, then? The Fourth Humans?” But he said it too casually. The squire’s expression sharpened, as if he were balanced halfway between eagerness and caution.

“Indeed. Your tone betrays you. Would you have preferred the Eidolons to take the position of Fourth of Man?”

“Bah! I have no love for Fox Maidens.”

Norbert did not reply, uncertain what to say. Something of paramount importance to the squire was at hand, but what? Norbert felt it was another blind step closer to the center.

“Who designs a race of all women, who all reproduce by parthenogenesis?” the squire spoke suddenly and loudly. “Think of it! Females without husbands and fathers—what could they be but shallow and erratic? And malign!”

Norbert said mildly, “We have Foxes also on Rosycross, in wild areas. They hold down pests, and destroy the native ecostructure, making way for earthly apple trees. They sometimes return lost children found in the woods, and sometimes kidnap children who do not say their prayers. The race is benevolent, provided men stay well away from them.”

“Benevolent? You have an odd definition of the word.”

“Did the Foxes not restore humanity to the wretched Eidolons, and elevate the Moreaus? Did they not take down the walls of separation and bridge the biopsychological chasms between Man and Swan, Man and Myrmidon, Man and Ghost? I could not have departed the Noösphere of Rosycross had it not been for the Fox Maidens of Proxima.”

“They created an homogenous mess mankind has suffered for five thousand years. Thank goodness those days are at an end!”

“What end? The Fox Maidens retain the power freely to make inhuman forms of man finally into humans.”

The squire scowled. “They exist, but it will no longer warp events. The Fox Maidens and their madness ceased to be a factor in the calculus of destiny half a century ago, in the Year of Our Lord 51015, on the fifteenth day of May, at three hours past noon precisely, Greenwich Mean Time, fifteen hours since dawn, a date certain to delight numerologists forever.”

“The coronation of Nemenstratus the Patrician as the Lord of the Afternoon for the Triplanetary jurisdiction. Earth, Venus, and Mars are under his sway.”

“Ah! You do know your Earthly history after all,” said the squire.

“It was the first time a member of the Fifth Human Race had been so honored,” said Norbert. “The Patricians were created by the Foxes. Why would they create their own replacement?”

“Who can explain madness?” The squire shrugged. “The Fox Maidens were mad to topple the Golden Lords from power, and bring on five thousand years of war and woe.”

“Madness? Nothing is more sane. Can you not see the wrongness of this era?”

The squire looked wary. “Wrongness?”

“The soul-crushing hierarchy, the stiff forms of address, the division of men into noble and peasant, ghost and flesh, high and low, possessing classes and laboring classes, and the Sacerdotes occupying an unlikely monopoly on all spiritual vocations. I can think of a dozen periods in the long, sad history of man that have this wrongheaded medieval quality, starting with the Dark Ages. And I mean the Dark Age period after the Fall of Rome, not the one after the Burning of New York, nor the one after the Burning of the World.”

“I am not sure I see your point, sir,” said the squire testily. “The Long, Golden Afternoon seems to be a self-correcting equilibrium, a natural culmination of history, a high point of civilization, a happy ending.”

That was the final step. Norbert now thought he perceived, as a man who peers through fog, the looming mystery at the center of this ancient being.

8. The Foxes of Democracy

“History has not followed any natural culmination of anything since the day when Rania read the rules of historical prediction on the surface of the Monument—no matter! You called this era a happy ending. A high point. Yet here we are, you and I, stalking a holy man to kill him in secret, without trial, who has committed no other crime but to disagree with the opinion of the world about the date of the calendar. Does that sound civilized?”

“The human mind is not content with too much civilization,” the squire mused in a philosophical tone. “More primitive neural structures demand that we abide by tribal norms. In order for the Golden Afternoon of Man to last, Man must have his helots and concubines to abuse: Moreaus beneath him to whip; Myrmidons to hate; luminous Swans to envy and revere; yes, and Ghosts to worship as ancestors, and Potentates of Earth and Powers of Heaven to adore as gods.”

“The Sacerdotes of rural Rosycross say there is one God, and to worship Him only. Do the Sacerdotes of senile Earth say otherwise?”

“The Sacerdotes exist to remove the pain from man of all the sins we are forced to commit to maintain so grand and farsighted a civilization, and to forgive our keeping helots and concubines, and killing Myrmidons, and falling down before living idols.”

“Why should we be forgiven? We now live in an age where the nobility alone go armed, and their dependents bow, their servants kneel, and their slaves fall on their faces.”

“Perhaps that is the natural way of things,” said the squire, with a smile of self-satisfaction.

“Nature says all men are equal.”

“She says the opposite. Read Darwin.”

“I read the Grand Charter of Liberty of my world, which all my ancestors swore to each other the day they were freed from the four hundred nightmare years spent in the dark, cramped, deadly dungeons, awash with murk, at the core of a cold Myrmidon moon flung across interstellar space. It says a man who slays a man with a knife is not less guilty for his lesser intellect than a Jupiter who slays an Atramental with an imposition of abstract logic.”

“Your world is young, and overrun with Foxes! Democratic ages always end quickly,” the squire said with great bitterness. “Democracy allows each man to rise to the level of his competence and greatness: it encourages high dreams and wide ambitions. That is their great boast over aristocracy, or any culture stratified by class. But democracy requires each man to fall to the level of his incompetence, does it not? And it is also a rule by majority, is it not? But the incompetent outnumber the competent by ten to one, or by hundreds to one. So democracy inevitably encourages ambitions which democracy inevitably then thwarts. A perfect engine for creating discontent!”

“Are men less discontented when kissing the boots that kick them?” Norbert asked savagely.

“The cold witness of historical cliometry says they are. The average man finds that while a democracy holds no ceiling overhead to halt his rise, it has no floor beneath him to halt his fall. But the average man is enfranchised with the vote, and so he votes in floors to prevent falls, laws concerning public welfare and minimum wages, and this forms the ceiling to prevent the rise of the poor under his feet. The wealthy above him, to secure their position, buy votes to do the same, making a floor of regulations for their industries and banks to prevent the middle from rising, and soon the hierarchy is back in place, but now it is sick and perverted, because all the so-called democratists are living a lie. His wealthy are not even required to dress and speak nobly, his poor are robbed of dignity, and no man feels the gratitude a man born in high position must feel, which spurs him to serve the highest ideal. They become plutocrats, not aristocrats. It is the same system, but less rational, less handsome, less honest, more fevered.”