Vigil in frustration turned and plucked the wand of vengeance from its rack. Perhaps he toyed with the idea that striking this looming and eerie figure, robed in eyes, would force a clearer answer out. “You said my mother’s hope was futile. Now you offer hope?”

“Firstlings think in the short term, a few generations beyond their own lives, no more, and they do not see, because they will not to see, that the world cannot be made right until the soul is right. Evil means are not made pure by good ends, nor are evil motives elevated by noble causes. All the commotion and tragedy of history springs from the loveless and selfish nature of man of all races and orders, yes, and posthumans and Potentates and Powers and Principalities. If I, who am more selfish and more loveless than any Firstling, sees this, how is it that you do not? Cure first your inner world. The outer world will then cure itself.”

“What? Should I retire to some cell and meditate when the ancient starship is condemned, and this world, and all my kindred? You say we do not think in the long term, but I well know that the Stability on other worlds will direct the next starship hence, two centuries from now, to decimate this world in penalty for this generation’s negligence should Emancipation not be safely warped to dock by the Lighthouse crew! It is not for no reason the Men of Torment dwell no longer in the Southeastern Hemisphere, lands as dry as Mars, lakeless, unirrigated, waterless, void.”

The Swan gazed at him with cryptic eyes. “It is precisely to such hermitage I retire, and to order my inner songs. By this act, mayhap I do more good than all your frenzied antics.”

“And yet you ask me to seek out the Table?”

“Not ask. Command. You should have already departed.”

“You are the servant and emissary of the Potentate, who told me to fail the Emancipation and let the ship die! You say the opposite?”

“What is the Vindication of Man? It is to be unchained from higher beings. Mortal man enjoys this chainlessness, but immortal machines do not. Torment swims in golden love, addicted to the past, but is bound to the future Triumvirate ordains,” said the Swan, his nostrils twitching with fine disdain. “Among ourselves, we Second Humans go nameless, seeing little need to refer to each other. But among you I am baptized Desolate and my confirmation name is Celestine, for my nature is solitary. Nor I nor any of my race will ever consent to serve Hyades, not even when the Hyades has been replaced by a newborn Dominion of our own devising. I know to whom I am loyal. I serve the Judge of Ages, who created my race. To whom are you loyal, little Lordling?”

Vigil was wordless. Desolate Celestine was not a Swan name, but was instead the name of a hybrid half-Swan breed called Hierophants, who ruled the smaller Empyrean of that day during the Long Golden Afternoon of Man, a time of near utopia still celebrated and solemnized in songs and dreams of awe.

One mystery was solved. There had not been two Swans alive in the same city of First Men. It was a Swan and a Hierophant, who were as different an order of being among the Second Humans as different as a Giant and a Locust would be among the First Humans.

But a deeper mystery opened like a gulf. How could an extinct being still be alive, here, now? The boast of Torment, that all forgotten things of lost ages still lived on this world, might have more meaning than first seemed.

For the first time, Vigil wondered why Torment would be so a devoted antiquarian? The human curiosity, or love of ancestry, or the human wonder and melancholy at the remorselessness of time; these would have no meaning to a world-brain. What, then, was the reason why this planet was peopled with extinct peoples?

The Hierophant Celestine was speaking to Patience. Vigil had missed some words, but an internal being more alert than himself played back the sentence in his ear. Celestine had said, “Come, Lady! It is not fitting that you walk abroad in this place unescorted, and neither watchman nor Patrician’s familiar will dare meddle with you if you walk in my shadow. I will return you to the caravanserai. Ask your leave of this, your son, who now outranks you.”

With a rustle of his many-eyed and many-feathered cloak, in a motion of unearthly grace, the great being, without turning, bowed beneath the man-high lintel and glided backward out of the chamber.

Vigil caught his mother’s arm as she curtseyed, and said, “Mother, what means all this? I don’t understand such riddles!”

She straightened, fixed his eye with a fierce glance, and said, “Do your duty, as you swore. The whole history and misery of mankind is the struggle between those who think of today, and destroy, and those who think of tomorrow, and build. This Swan has been strangely helpful, nor could I have come here had he not brought me. That he is emissary to the Potentate, I do not understand; and yet only as emissary would the city gates and quarter portals open for us. He plays a double game, and I do not know the prize. And yet I have been Queen and now am Queen Mother of my people, the Strangerkind, and one does not serve our ship’s Landing Party for so many years in such a way without obtaining acute instincts: my internal creatures tell me to trust him. What the riddle means, or whom you must find or how, I do not know.”

He blinked. His mother did not know history. She had not recognized the name and still thought Celestine a Swan.

Vigil had to ask her. “Mother! Why do you trust him?”

She said, “Because I speak plainly of disobedience to Torment even in the ears of her ambassador. Why should I be cautious? How could I hide my words from an omniscient being? I am open, because I am powerless. Because for me to hope is vain.”

“And Celestine?”

“He is not open.” Lady Patience smiled. “Perhaps he is not powerless. Follow his words. Find the hope he hopes.”

There was no more time for speech. He granted his leave and she granted her blessing. They parted.

Lady Patience and Desolate Celestine the Hierophant departed by the gate through the city wall into the wasteland. Vigil Starmanson, now Vigil, Lord Hermeticist, Senior of the Landing Party, garbed in his father’s Hermeticist gear, departed by the entrance that faced the city.

2

Deceleration Carnival

1. Midnight Choirs

Before he left the safety of his door, Vigil tuned his heraldry to the null setting so he broadcast no identity on any channels. Vigil donned a long mantle to hide the antique and distinctive garb of the Hermetic Starfaring Order. Vigil was sure innocent eyes would suppose him to be in masquerade, for the goggle-eyed, proboscis-nosed mask on his face looked enough like the visage of a Tsuchigumo, the man-sized, man-eating insects from the tales Nomads told of legendary noncomforming regions in the dry Southeastern Hemisphere where night-efts lurked and winterhags sang, and no man walked and no Terraformer dared make Earth-like.

So it proved, for no one paid him heed. It was a holiday. The laws of deference were relaxed. High born had to wait in queue behind yeomen; groundlings and commoners pushed in front of officers and commensals unrebuked.

The Moreau watchdogs were stationed at every avenue, crossroad, and gate as normal, but now their neural attachments which gave them the power of speech were tuned to their equivalence of drunkenness, and they wagged their tails and passed out candy rather than demanded passwords.

People of many orders and races and ranks filled the squares of the city, bedecked with ribbons, wearing bells. The fountainworks gushed red and stank of wine. The boulevards were clogged with singing throngs. The celebration surged as wild and high as the lake-tides pulled by mighty Wormwood and his nineteen Earth-sized satellites. As to what hopes and dreams, huge as Wormwood, pulled the hearts of the celebrants, Vigil knew well, for his heart was also pulled.