9. The Anthroponomist

The Commensal who spoke next was the Anthroponomist, a figure in gray gauze and dark goggles of his office, seated between the Portreeve and the Theosophist. His organization was expert in the myriad arts predicting the development of the human organism in relation to other organisms and to environment.

“My preliminary estimates show that the Scolopendra, once in space, could have mutated toward a non-self-correcting belief-node and commanded the angels of the ship to go mad. Recall that this ship suffers the longest route between port and port. Odd madnesses arise in isolation. I conclude the crew is fallen under a glamour or a theurgy. No war for gain, terrain, or glory can reach from star to star: only a holy war.”

“It must be lies! It must be!” Vigil said.

His counselor behind him said, “Son, I think they is telling the truth. But there is more to come, I bet.”

10. The Chronometrician

But the Chronometrician, who now seemed fully awake, opened wide his heavily lidded eyes and spoke in a creaking voice.

“I recall the arts of the Joys from my forefathers’ worlds, and I still, in taped memories, can recall and relive the eon, ages past, when my race ruled this dry skull of a planet! We have no swords nor pistols beneath the sunlight of Beta Canum Venaticorum, no diseases, and no nanites, for we hold all weapons in contempt save one. Truth is our only sword, and nerve-to-nerve war, one mind to another.” He pushed back his hood, revealing antennae over a yard long, which stood erect menacingly. “Ye, my brother Lords, mayhap have suspected or mayhap did not, but with many worms and viral words I wove my way past all your petty defenses and read your minds. There are no lies here. The matter is far too dire for that.” Now his eyes fell again into their half-closed, half-dreaming dullness, and his wrinkle-creased mouth puckered oddly. “Yes, I read them all, you filthy people. I know all your sins. Well, not you, Lord Chrematist! You are dead. You only ever said one thing to me: You are now as I once was. As I am now, soon shall you be. Heh. Heh-heh. So much empty brainspace!”

All in the chamber stared uncertainly at the little old man as he sank back down into silence, muttering.

11. The Lighthousekeeper

Vigil now demanded, “By the testimony of all seated here, the Stability was dissolved a millennium ago … we have been shadows for a thousand years? Echoes of a bell long broken? Why maintain the charade?”

The Lighthousekeeper said, “Because we love the Stability no less than you! Once the mad ship is dead, the Grand Schedule can be restored. A vast works of stellar sailcloth engineering has been accomplished on Hellebore, the next moon out, and we could, not without sacrifice and strain, expropriate this sailworks from its current possessor, whoever or whatever that may be—”

“Good luck with that, jerkbag, and see you in hell first,” said Cricket the counselor, not bothering to lower his voice.

But the Lighthousekeeper was too caught up in his own words to hear the interruption. “—once the sailcloth is ours, we can use the upper reaches of the Star-Tower as the skeleton of a hull. We will have to sever it from the base with the Lighthouse beam from the sun! It will require great sacrifice, but if we are willing to turn the Lighthouse into a weapon—yes, yes, I know this has been the fear of the Stability since its founding—but this is an exception, and no man alive will know what we do here. We must break the laws to uphold the laws! What nobler principle of action can there be?”

But the Portreeve said, “If we used the immense power entrusted to the Stability to smite the warship that Emancipation has become, we would be no more right than she is!”

It was said that eventually all Lighthousekeepers go mad, since the immensity of the power of the interstellar-strength beams at their command prey on their minds and the sight of cracking uninhabited inner worlds in two, or boiling away the atmospheres of gas giants during initial testing and target practice, sinks into their souls.

And yet, it was with no glint of madness in his eye that the Lighthousekeeper said, “Our Anthroponomist has testified that into whatever strange form of ex-human life the Scolopendra of Emancipation have mutated, they are moved by metaphysical or unearthly sentiments and not to be reasoned with. Only zealots can make war across the wide emptiness of stars! Those who will not kill a murderer die at his hands! This is the sole basis for moral reasoning. War excuses all. Self-defense excuses all atrocities! This is a holy war!”

Vigil looked back and forth at the men there. He did not raise his voice, but there was a tremble in his words which even his sternest internal creature could not suppress. “How can there be any war at all, holy or hellish? The Princess Rania promised us peace! Universal peace!”

The one who spoke then was the Vatic Essomenic Officer, informally called the Aruspex. He wore chlamys of purple thought-wire and a petasos of orichalchum. He was blind, his two eyes and all his visual cortex replaced with a yellowish aurum substance to allow him to see directly into the notational layer of the Noösphere. His voice was like a ringing gong. “Wake from your dreams! There will never be peace. Behold.”

12. The Aruspex

At his gesture, the surface of the table, which held the somnolent arcs, curves, and multiangular notations of the Monument Code, rippled and presented a new set of equations.

The gathered Lords and officers stared at the Aruspex, but he said nothing.

Vigil said, “Wait. I recognize parts of this. This is Rania’s Equation from the Memento Stone. It is the plan for universal peace, the system of customs and laws we must adopt to become fully equal to Hyades and the other Dominions of the Orion Arm. But—why is it changed? I have seen—”

The Aruspex spoke in a voice like iron. “It has not changed. This is the unchanged version of what Rania deduced from the Memento Stone. The parts of the plan were severally sent by radio laser to the Stability Tables each on its own world, to incorporate into the local planetary history. We alone, thanks to the potency of the receivers orbiting Iota Draconis, and our correspondents on other worlds, were able to gather the scattered plans back into one, and read the master plan intended for the whole Empyrean. Here is the authentic and complete plan of destiny set before you. We hid the truth from the public. If the material is too complex, I can summon a frenetic actuator—”

“Not needed,” said Vigil. “I can read this by sight.”

He saw the looks of disbelief on their features.

Vigil said proudly, “You forget the blood of the Summer Kings of Nightspore runs in me, who fenced with storms and tilted with meteorological systems fiercely opposed as lance and shield, the calculus of which required the development special nervous matrices.”

The Aruspex said, “Summer Kings cannot read this notation. It is not fit for human brains.”

Vigil said, “The blood of the Iron Hermeticist Narcís D’Aragó is also mine. You are of the Five Families: you know what this means.”

They did. Once history revealed that Rania, Ximen the Black, and the mad Judge of Ages were altered by stepping on the surface of the Lost Monument of the legendary star the Swan Princess later plucked from the sky, the Five Families had sought out and bred the descendants of the other Hermeticists known to have exposed themselves to the Monument surface and absorbed into their cell plasm whatever unknown force it was which made the Swan Princess, and, to a lesser extent, the Master and the Judge, able to read the Monument.