From several points of view along the roofline of the ghost house, he could see the tower, looming over Landing City, its upper lengths reaching beyond sight. About the foot of this structure the first and oldest settlement had grown, over seven thousand years ago, to become the only metropolis of the globe. The Star-Tower was the skeleton of the deracination ship Excruciation from Nightspore of Alpha Boötis, cannibalized and pressed into service as a surface-to-orbit elevator, her mighty engines now powering the Very Long Range Radio Array.

There were two points of ancient pride in Iota Draconis. One was the reach of its radio laser, said to be the most sensitive in human space. The other was the force of its deceleration laser, known to be ten times the power of any other gravitic-nucleonic distortion pool in any sun ruled by man.

Now Vigil coaxed an unwary mind in the Star-Tower between the suborbital and the geosynchronous heights to open up navigational memories for him. Vigil sped up his personal time-sense and spent many long moments (which to the world occupied less than a second) comparing what he saw in the square before him against a map the mind in the upper windows of the Star-Tower fed him.

“Thank you, and rest in peace,” he said, which was the proper disconnection protocol, as well as polite when addressing a ghost.

The answer was sardonic. “Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated, Unevolved One. Even if I am the last of my kind, alive here only, it is an affront to imply my demotion.”

Vigil said in panic, “Highly Evolved! I meant no disrespect!”

“Ah!” came the cold reply. “So you admit you are a being who speaks without meaning, and unable to control your thought-forms? Such imperfection is intolerable. Tell me, in what way is your continued existence beneficial to the progress of the race?”

Horripilation like a thousand insect legs creeping beneath his uniform tickled his skin. Only a true Third Human, a Myrmidon, a creation without passion or compassion, spoke in these conceits. They lacked pity, humor, sentiment, or any appreciation of beauty or passion.

Vigil, dry-mouthed, turned his voice over to an internal creature, who spoke with admirable calm. “Spare me! I have duties toward the dead long past and toward progeny centuries and millennia yet to be born! The Lighthouse beam is gone astray! I go even now to the Table—”

The freezing force of a mudra hurled from the upper atmosphere down the tower side entered his brain and prevented Vigil from completing the thought. Instead, the muscles of his mouth and throat worked, and he found strange words issuing from his mouth. “None but posthumans know of the misalignment of the braking laser. Your knowledge is above your station. The restrictions of the Judge of Ages, and a respectful fear of his betrayed and betraying servant, Torment, prevent me from exterminating lesser beings except at hand-to-hand range. Prepare yourself for mortal combat: set your affairs in order.”

Because the imposition did not control his lungs, the words were breathless, scratchy, like the words of a madman.

Vigil knelt and touched his hand to the road tiles, and made the nerve-mudra bhumisparsha, the Gesture of Calling the Earth to Witness, symbolizing Shakyamuni’s victory over illusion. With his left hand, he made the nerve-mudra called kataka, the Flower-Holding Gesture. The systems woven through his body and the near-human Noösphere reacted faster than nerves to the kinesthetic indications, but not with the reaction he expected. Instead of a sudden imposition upon minds eager to witness his innocence, and to grant him, as a Lord of the Stability, whatever privileges, allies, or indications he needed to protect himself (which is what those gestures normally would have done), the ghost voices and higher orders flickered through his thoughtspace and saw no heraldry proclaiming his rank, for he had turned it off.

And then his internals emitted their strange yapping laughs, and Vigil’s concentration broke like startled fish in a pond, and his mudra lost authority. Vigil’s cry for help was lost in the general noise and confusion of the celebration. The Noösphere thought he was making a joke.

“The Myrmidon race is extinct,” the consensus message read, dismissing him. “And you are no one. Get off this channel, or we will complain to the Stability Lords.”

“Your indulgence! Hear me! I can prove my credentials—” But a sensation of watchful attention crawled up his spine like a centipede of ice.

He knew the public thoughtspace held listening thoughtworms straining for rumors of the Lord who was a Stranger. He made the gesture of banishing, karana, also called Warding off Evil. This mudra was indicated with the hand stretched out, palm forward, thumb holding down the middle two fingers while the index and little fingers extend straight upward, like the horns of a yak against an enemy. All connections to external chains of thought were broken, except for time logs.

Next, in anger, Vigil made the shramanamudra, the Renunciation Mudra. His hand pointed downward and away from the heart, in sign of rejecting worldly pleasures. The internal creature whose laughter had broken his concentration was rebuked in a spasm of mental pain. But the creature (a system tasked with peripheral perception) answered with a sensation of woeful surprise and shock. It had been unaware of what it had done. Indeed, there was no memory of the moment of laughter in the local registry.

As if eager to prove its loyalty, that internal brought an image sharply into view from lower levels of his mind.

Vigil saw the scene before him more clearly. Wormwood shined indeed like the sun, but a sun as if dimmed by the orange clouds of sandstorms, casting bewildering shadows as if reflected through rippling water. The shadows between the many walled buildings and dark houses seemed black. Pilgrims built no windows on the lower stories, and all their doors were reached by stairs, ladders, ascending belts. The watchdogs had closed several of the barricades at the end of the high-walled streets so there was only one route that could take Vigil to the Palace of Future History. The map listed it as The Street Which Sneaks Up On the Sphinx. In the Square of the Cliometrists, Insurance Firms, Speculators and Ship-Fortune-Tellers, the front of the rearing Androsphinx faced the Palace of Future History. This street opened to the hindquarters of the Sphinx, hence the name.

One of his other internal creatures, a battle advisor, pointed out that the radio-blind spot down that one avenue, The Street Which Sneaks Up On the Sphinx, was perfect for an ambush. Anyone knowing or guessing his mission—and his family had enemies among all the strata of Torment, including traitors among the Strangers themselves—could overwhelm him there, cut off his retreat, and dash out his brains with energy tiles flung from rooftops.

He hesitated, afraid.

3. The Schedule

A tremendous roar of horns and loud commotion made Vigil turn his head again. In the crowded square behind him, the huge first dancer spread his arms. Mirrors made of sailcloth in his coat unfolded like a peacock’s tail. The giant with the dancers trailing all ran pell-mell toward the statue in green and gold, who was waiting, arms spread wide in welcome.

Vigil Lord Hermeticist now noticed every dancer in the train behind the giant carried packages of coins and little toys bundled into baskets on his head. From the giant came the fanfare of the Emancipation, and from the dancers came the anthems, each one for the nations or clans of far worlds that had christened, lofted, and manned one of the titanic habitats of the caravan which Emancipation drew in her wake.