In the Courts of the Crimson Kings (42 page)

Another shriek, but there seemed to be modulation in it now. A second column of light surrounded Franziskus Binkis; it whirled
inward
, into the substance of him. Jeremy stared with his mouth gaping, and . . .

He’s smiling. He’s smiling, and it’s dissolving him
.

“Jadviga,” the man said.

Blackness.

Teyud’s mind felt like a vast raw wound. Thought was excruciation beyond bearing; she stumbled and shook her head. Something fell away from her neck with a wet
thock
on the smooth marble.

Her father lay on his back in the Despot’s square. His face was smoother now; she saw the Imperial physician shaking his head in bewilderment.

“Come!” she said.

The word seemed to tear its way through her larynx; it sounded barely human, but he obeyed; the Thoughtful Grace stayed around their Emperor’s body, heads bowed in grief.

The physician reached toward her. “Attend . . .
him
,” she said. “Quickly!”

Encyclopedia Britannica, 20th Edition
University of Chicago Press, 1998

THE ANCIENTS
:
Purpose and the Lords of Creation

As the twentieth century draws to a close, humanity is confronted with an existential crisis, as the implications of what our astronomers and astronauts have discovered over the last two generations sinks in.

That we are not the only planet with intelligent life has been strongly suspected since the late nineteenth century, and obvious since the mid-twentieth. That life is common among the stars is now also obvious, and we have no reason to doubt that such life is intelligent, too. The truly troubling feature of the universe that we have discovered is this: Our solar system itself has been extensively reshaped by intelligent design, for at least the last two hundred million years. We inhabit not so much a world as an
artifact
.

We have dubbed those responsible the ancients, but other than one enigmatic artifact and the awesome power indicated by
their accomplishments, we know virtually nothing of them, not even whether they still exist.

We now know that Mars and Venus were sterile until terraformed and seeded with earthly life. We cannot
prove
that Earth itself was not turned into a life-bearing globe by the same ancients; all we can be reasonably sure of was that if they did so, they did it at a much earlier period. The same is true of our wider stellar neighborhood; we cannot tell whether the life-bearing worlds we have detected are “natural” or not, or indeed whether the evolution of the universe itself is “natural” in the sense of being the product of the blind operation of natural law. And the enigmatic objects observed farther in toward the galactic core—the near-invisible stellar-sized constructs detectable only by their emission of waste heat—pose questions even more troubling.

All we can say with any confidence about the ancients is that they possessed powers beyond our comprehension, in their nature if not their effects. What was their purpose? The general opinion among those in the scientific community, that they represent some gigantic ongoing experiment in the development and interactions of life, is plausible—but it may be simply a professional deformation, a projection of our own motives onto the alien other.

There are two possible responses to the universe in which we find ourselves. The first is despair that we are simply the laboratory rats of minds as far beyond our comprehension as that of a human is beyond a rat. The other is exhilaration in the knowledge that intelligence can transcend itself, and eventually wring from the fabric of reality powers equivalent to those mythology attributed to gods, and that we ourselves may become the Lords of Creation.

Mars, Dvor Il-Adazar
Hall of Received Submission
June 21, 2000 AD

“You sure you want to go through with this?”

“I just wish I had Sally here to be Best Person,” Jeremy said.

Robert Holmegard and Dolores were in Earth-style diplomatic garb, white tie and tails and long black dress respectively, with only the discreet earphones at all out of place. Jeremy wore a robe of
shimmering moth-silk that had been woven when Charlemagne was crowned. It looked almost plain compared to some of the others in the vast arched hall below the Ruby Throne. The scale of the building should have made the Throne look insignificant; somehow it didn’t. The rows of gorgeously clad dignitaries stretched back into the distance, leaving the central isle clear, lit more brightly by the glass-fiber circles in the uppermost arch.

Banners hung in the shadows above on either side—the banners of kingdoms thirty thousand years dead; the murals portrayed their lords kneeling in submission before Timrud sa-Enntar.

From their niches in the walls, man-high birds like living jewels sang of glory in a language long dead even on Mars. The ranks of armored Thoughtful Grace below them might have been carved themselves, save for the watchful golden eyes. Incense scented like cloves and cinnamon smoked into the air, like a soothing fire along the nerves.

“Washington is ripshit,” Holmegard said quietly. “You’re going to be in deep, deep trouble if you ever go home again.”

“I
am
home,” Jeremy said, and felt the same ridiculous grin trying to break through on his face.

He suppressed it; wouldn’t do to grimace like a monkey, not in public.

I’ve been keeping straight-faced all through the ceremonies
, he thought.
This is the end of it. Well, except for all the other ceremonies, which will be a pain in the ass, but it’s worth it
.

“And if you think Washington’s ripshit, think about how Beijing’s feeling. All their people
are
going home, the entire base.”

He nodded slightly to the glum-faced rank of Eastbloc diplomats. They were probably still adjusting to the fact that they’d been parasite-ridden puppets for years, something they’d realized only after the vile things had been removed . . . and he was very glad that Teyud had ordered the entire stock destroyed and the records of how to make them trashed and lethal excruciation decreed for anyone who tried to re-create them. A lot of the Martians had thought the decree unreasonable and hasty . . .

And I just don’t care
, he thought happily.

“Yes,” Dolores said. “But their toys are staying.”

Which was the reason the Despot of Zar-tu-Kan was here to
offer submission, as well as many others—that, and the presence of the Invisible Crown. One good thing about the Martian reasonableness that could be so annoying was that when they saw the game was up they shrugged and made the best of it.

“We’ll have a much better friend in a Mars that’s united and on the way up again,” Jeremy said firmly. “Just remember to bargain in good faith from now on. The bad guys didn’t, and look what it got them.”

The heraldic birds stooped from their perches in an aerial dance and cried out, in voices melodious but stunningly loud even in a space that dwarfed St. Paul’s:

“
Take knee before the Emperor who holds and sways the Real World!
The Tollamune comes! Bearer of That Which Compels! Wearer of the Invisible Crown of the Crimson Dynasty! The King Beneath the Mountain! The Crimson King! The Lord of earth and sky! Ruler of all who live!
Take knee and bow your heads to the Tollamune will!
”

A vast rustling followed as the last echoes died and the multitude knelt. All but the Holmegards; they were, after all, the representatives of the Republic, and just bowed or curtsied.

Jeremy took knee with the rest.
What’s good enough for the rest of the folks is good enough for you, old son
, he thought, looking down at the white marble set with semiprecious stones in High Tongue glyphs that recorded glories vanished before the ice came down from the north on Earth.
Besides, you get a special role
.

Up the living carpet of red fur that covered the pathway came the
pad-pad-pad
of many feet. The platform on which Teyud stood was platinum, burnished and set with intricate patterns in ruby and gold; the birds circled above it in a spiral that reached up into the light-haze along the arch of the roof far above, singing “Tollamune! Tollamune! Tollamune!”

Jeremy’s throat went dry as the platform halted. Teyud stood like an image; then her right hand came out, palm uppermost, the only motion save for the imperceptible rise and fall of her chest beneath the crimson robe.

He came to his feet gracefully—and, Jesus, but this would be a time to trip over the hem of the robe! He stepped up onto the platform and laid his hand on hers; she closed her fingers around it and the platform paced its stately way up the strip of red.

It sank to the ground before the Ruby Throne; there was a recess in the stone, so that it sank flush with the pavement. There was another chair, much more ornate than the monumental plainness of the Ruby Throne but smaller and three steps down on the dais. Jeremy stopped before it and turned; he kept his eyes firmly above the heads below. Having that many eyes staring at you—and knowing how many were alive with envy and/or hatred—was a bit disconcerting.

“The bitterness of thrones” was a saying around here. He suspected there were similar ones back on Earth.

Teyud stood for a moment facing the throng. “
Teyud
shall rule,” she said clearly, proclaiming her throne-name.

A vast murmur went through the throng. That was the first time any Tollamune had used it; a strong signal that precedent wasn’t going to dominate
this
Emperor’s reign.

A great rippling chant replied, Martian voices beneath the birds: “Tollamune! Tollamune! Tollamune!”

Then she sat and leaned backward. Jeremy licked his lips, waited the prescribed thirty seconds—the protocol-masters had casually informed him it would kill him if he didn’t—and did the same. He didn’t like the prospect of contact with another Martian nerve-interface machine-animal, but there wasn’t any choice. And Teyud had to do it, too; you couldn’t really
be
Emperor unless the devices accepted you.

At first there was simply a sting in the back of his neck. Then he was . . .

Here and not here. This is
amazing.
I can see and feel and smell just like always, and I could disengage and stand up if I had to, but
. . .

It was as if he had an extra set of eyes—thousands of them, in fact. Seeing thousands of
worlds
, created ones . . . while the one he usually lived in was immobile, like a freeze-frame.

The face of Sajir sa-Tomond smiled at him as he strolled up to the garden bench where Jeremy sat beside Teyud. The woman on his arm had a look of her; perhaps a little harsher and more eaglelike, but she was smiling, with a small bird sitting on one finger and preening itself. And Sajir was young, his sleek slim body clad only in a soft kilt. The gardens of a younger Mars spread about them, with a view over a balustrade down to a lake.

“I feel to a degree as if I were taking another’s credit,” Teyud’s father said. “My own personal memories only run to a few moments before I left the Tower to rescue you from the consequences of your haste.”

Teyud nodded. “I will share those memories, Father,” she said. “Though they were somewhat disorganized.” A smile quirked her lips. “One might say my mind was not my own just then.”

The dead Emperor laughed with the living. “And Mother,” Teyud added to the woman.

“Strange to meet one’s offspring so long after one’s death,” the woman said, and lifted her hand; the bird flew off, whistling. “But . . . Sajir says the
vaz-Terranan
have a saying: ‘Better late than never.’ ”

To Jeremy: “It is even stranger to realize that you are merely memories yourself, fellow consort. Enjoy even the least pleasant aspects of your real existence! But the company here is good, and the environment as pleasant as we can imagine . . . exactly as pleasant.”

Jeremy nodded.
I am seriously weirded out
, he thought.

The people in front of him didn’t exist, really. They
thought
they existed, and they had all the subjective
experience
of being alive; but all they really were was, as she’d said, memories—stored in the vast protein computers that were part of the Ruby Throne. One day he’d be nothing but memories here himself—or he’d be immortal, depending on whether you thought a perfect copy of something
was
the something or wasn’t. He supposed it depended on the soul and that sort of thing. Most Emperors apparently died in communion with the Throne, and didn’t experience any discontinuity; they went unconscious there and “woke up” here, wherever here really was . . .

Too complicated for a country boy from New Mexico
, he decided.
Jesus, though, what a way to do research! The whole of Martian history is stored in here—and I can get it from the Emperors who made it happen, and their consorts!

Sajir nodded to Teyud. “You are the working member of our lineage now,” he said. “We can advise you—all but a few who are somewhat sullen—but my first warning is that
tokmar
itself is by comparison a benign addiction. The world in which you must operate is the
Real
World. This secondary one that we . . . figments . . . inhabit is more appealing in many ways because it responds to our will; but it
is
secondary, and derivative.”

“I comprehend the temptation,” Teyud said gravely. “But I have far too much interesting work before me to feel any desire to linger overlong through despair or boredom. I will . . . visit.”

“Excellent,” Sajir said. “And now we must proceed to the integration. It has been a very long time since that could be done with full efficiency, since the Invisible Crown was lost.”

A brow raised. “And never before with a
vaz-Terranan
as consort.”

Both his brows went up. “Oh, remarkable!” he breathed.

Jeremy started to his feet. If that meant anything here; he could tell his body was simply sitting, on the consort’s throne back in the Hall of Received Submission. The gardens around him were suddenly . . .
gone
. Instead he stood in a gray nothing, with a gray surface under his feet which seemed to be
crawling
somehow, as if each individual nano-scale piece of it were blinking in and out of existence. Teyud’s mother and father were gone, but she was beside him, and—