“Potentate of Torment! Gladly would I give all which is mine to give, but I cannot disobey the will of all the human race, all men from Adam through Rania, Exarchel, Eden, Neptune, and Zauberring, to Triumvirate.”

The Potentate said, “The greater duty overwhelms the lesser. Child, it is your oath to serve the Stability which now commands you to betray the Stable Law and betray the Emancipation, let her pass through the system, and all her officers and men and passengers be swallowed by infinity.”

“The Judge of Ages will condemn us if we fail our duty.”

“He has quitted his authority. The Ages are ended.”

Vigil did not know what that meant, but the words seemed ominous. He plucked up bravery from one of his combat internals, and spoke again in a louder voice: “I am now a Lord of the Stability. I remember my duty! If I must die for this, I die. Am I better than my father? Will you kill me now, I, whose sole crime is to uphold your laws?”

But the Potentate drew back, retreating from the chamber. “The infirmities of man are not mine. I am bound by mine own laws. I cannot slay a Stability Lord in the course of his duties, despite his unwisdom, for the Swan Princess saves mortals from their gods. Yet, beware, and know indwelling fear, for if you halt the Emancipation, you disband the Table and thus foreswear the lordship that protects you.”

The intellect faded to a merely superhuman level, and the Swan, now alone and unpossessed, stood looking down sardonically.

9. Hierophant of the Second Humans

The Swan now spoke to Lady Patience, and now his voice was but a single voice. “Lady, you now are the mother of a Lord, and so the sumptuary laws return to you your many fine dresses and displays, armorials, and dignities.”

Lady Patience rose to her feet gracefully. Vigil was surprised to see the blush of anger in her fair cheek. His mother (so his smirking aunt Persistence gossiped) had been a fiery woman in her early youth. It seemed that now that long-lost passion had returned. “You mock me, posthuman! It is beneath you.”

“Sarcasm is decorous when used to instruct,” said the Swan gravely. “Learn this lesson, vain and foolish woman: The Swans were designed in our genes by the Judge of Ages to oppose the Hyades. For seventy eons we served what seemed an infinitely futile task, and so we suffered melancholy, despair, and madness, since we thought we sought the impossible. And then, beyond all hope, beyond all despair, Rania returned, and Man—and the whole volume of our hope—was vindicated. But for what purpose do we now exist? We were made to oppose Hyades, to be forever proud, to be forever in rebellion. Our goal is done. Before us, all the abyss of eons to come is void. How shall you escape my fate?”

Vigil listened in bewilderment, rising to his feet. He felt he should say something to oppose this obloquy against his mother, but he knew not what to say. “Secondling, as always, men cannot understand your words. Do you complain of ennui because you achieved your racial dream? Would you have preferred to fail?”

The Swan rustled his wide cloak of purple eyes and turned half of them toward Vigil. The many threadlike strands of shining thought-transmission tendrils that served him for hair swayed and stood, as if an impalpable wind blew upward from his feet. It gave his narrow features a sardonic cast. “This time, Firstling, my thoughts are simple enough even for you, if you clear your mind to hear. I do not rail against the destiny my creator built into my nature, because, at least, I have a creator. Your Lady Mother will not achieve what she craves, because your race was not created, not designed, but evolved from blind nature under Darwin’s lash and spur. Your nature is to flee from death, but death is more unconquerable than the conquering Hyades stars; and where our hopes have been fulfilled, yours will never be. And therefore you distract yourself with trivial things.”

At first, Vigil thought the Swan was mocking his mother’s vanity. But no, the Second Human was mocking his ambitions as vain. Vigil was shocked. “Trivial! Would that it were trivial! The fate of ship and world and generations untold is in my hand!”

The Swan said, “What fate?” The tone was scornful. “What generations?”

Vigil said, “Without the Stability, there is no history of man, and the Vindication is in vain! We are not starmen if the starmen do not remember and obey!”

“There is no history. There is only evolution. History is the acts of man; evolution is the movement of men into what lies beyond. History hence is a transitional stage between the apelike and the godlike; history is the breaking of the eggshell. The time of man is ended.”

The Swan’s eyes blazed with some emotion unknown to Firstling humans, and his living hair strands spread in each direction like a tail fan opening, so he seemed to wear strange headgear like unto an ancient kokoshnik. “Triumvirate is the greatest of minds ever built by Man. A thought package at the speed of light requires half a century to go from one brain-housing to the second to the third and back again. From these three man lobes of Triumvirate’s brain, at Altair, 61 Cygni, and Alpha Centauri, a web of lesser appliances as asteroid belts strung through interstellar void reaches like a bloodstream throughout the whole volume of space occupied by humanity. As glands whose secretions influence the consciousness of an organism, all the thought-currents of Powers and Potentates feed into and through the subconsciousness of mammoth, meditative Triumvirate. And you are less than a mitochondrion in one cell of the gland called Torment.”

“This I know as well, Great Swan. Have you median between the utterly obscure and utterly obvious? Have you a point?”

The Swan’s long hair lowered once more to his shoulders and lay trembling and breathing. “In spiral dance my speech approaches you. I must be indirect, or else the defenses of falsehood with which all Firstling brains surround themselves will misconstrue and elude my truth. Consider this: when Rania returned, even that one great Dominion called Triumvirate was subject to her, cowed by the warrant of authority she carried from a star cluster beyond the galaxy. That one Celestial Maiden who’s second advent forms the center of all our calendars uttered her command, all Dominions, Principalities, Potentates, and Powers avowed never more again meddle with mortal human life. Why was this done? Why such concern for what, to them, is microscopic?”

“Noble of the Second Race, I fail to see what is so hard to see,” Vigil said, smiling, spreading his hands. “Even microbes, when disturbed, bring disease. Rania brought peace!”

“Impossible. There is no peace. Neither the Judge of Ages, once her bridegroom, nor the Master of the Worlds, once her father, was hurled from his throne.”

“Their long duel was ended in days long past,” said Vigil. “Or so our old lore tells. The Judge of Ages came here, to far exile in Torment, to grimace and weep in some dark and hidden place, like proud Achilles sulking in his tent. The Master is victorious and magnanimous, and their conflict moot.”

“Find another reason why Rania severed men from higher ascensions. Can you see nothing?”

“Rania freed the human races from all imposition, both of the Hyades and of gods of our own making. Was that not the reason for her departure?”

The line of a frown appeared on the white brow of the Swan’s cold face. “If so, the Vindication was in vain.”

“Mankind is free of Hyades,” said Vigil slowly, puzzled. “Is that vanity? The chains of debt we owed to the alien stars are snapped.”

“Merely chained to new masters: austere Consecrate, mercurial Toliman, and Zauberring of implacable ire. We have become our own Hyades.”