The Architect of Aeons (15 page)

“It ain't no baptism sink,” said Montrose, during a moment of silence between two chords, using the highspeed, high-compression language of the Savants. “That was a joke, too. The water bowl is a cafeteria. Nanite liquid. Full of all the vitamins we need, proteins, and so on. You just gotta decide how much you trust her.”

Del Azarchel looked at the cup. In a ring circling the rim was an image of five loaves and two fish, and the cup itself was adorned with the scene of a bearded patriarch with a staff striking a rock from which many waters flowed.

He drank the contents without hesitation. Montrose held a cup of similar make, decorated with images of ravens bringing bread to a prophet, and he frowned at it sourly, but after a muttered curse or two, drank it also.

 

5

Celestial Hospitality

1. The Unfinished Symphony

A.D. 11058

The opening statement of the Monument turned out to be the simplest of the grand themes played. Time passed as they listened to the simple progression of the Alpha Segment, through the sinuous Beta Segment, the marching chords of the Gamma, the dizzying intricacies of the Delta.

Nuances of meaning, lost from the merely literal interpretation of the visual symbol groups, were startlingly clear to both men when heard as chords. When the music wove its way through the Zeta section, the song sung an image of the Milky Way into the brains of both of them, and game theory analysis of the Eta segment, with its play and counterplay, made them both laugh.

And then a day came when the songs passed beyond what they had translated in their era. The learning of the new millennia surged into their consciousnesses, wave upon rising wave.…

The revelation of the symphonies dazed them, as the thousand voices cried in countless counterpoints the entire song of the cosmos, the percussion clockwork of orbital mechanics, the trumpet blasts and cymbal crashes of subatomic and atomic fissions, the intense rafts of strings of organic chemistry, the complex dance of life, waves and typhoons of primitive cognition, of awareness, of self-awareness, in some ocean of pure form where each drop was a silvery and perfect note.

They heard the secrets of the mind-body relationship, the basic invariant systems for all possible psychological architectures, including human, of any mind either natural or artificial; the secrets of planetary formation; the mathematical description of galactic nebulae, spiral and irregular (but once their hidden designs were laid bare, surprisingly not irregular at all, but possessed of strange beauty) and elliptical galaxies; the patterns of history; the twenty-five possible non-Euclidean geometries; the nine stable higher intellectual topologies which can emerge from lower natural intelligence; the four possible institutional developments whereby a civilization can emerge from barbarism; the two possible systems of self-awareness that can emerge from lower forms of life, and the one possible mode called life, in its dizzying complexity, which can emerge from the deceptively simple mechanics of nonlife.…

They heard the echoes of the themes of largest and smallest. The superclusters formed by streamers of galactic clusters across the width of the universe were controlled by a few simple melodies of mathematics, and the same theme designed the tiniest parts of the fine structure of the universe, string segments of the superstrings, which were in turn the membranes in three-dimensional space of some intrusion from ulterior dimensions of infinite density and energy.…

The same simplicity emerged again at the level of DNA, or the countless other theoretical systems whereby biopsychological patterns could be embedded into molecular or submolecular strata; again at the level of large governmental-economic-megapsychological collaborations; and again at the galactic and galactic-cluster, and galactic-supercluster level. The universe itself, with its helices and nautilus spirals of streams of superclusters, seen as a whole, looked like a pearl streaked with irregularities, which looked so similar to smaller structures and relations found within them, that the whole of the macrocosmic universe could have been a vast tablet of symbols expressing laws, or genetics expressing life, or a neural system expressing thought, or …

And everything was based on certain subtle primal nonrepeating irregularities, as delicate, as arbitrary, as irrational as the ratio of radius to circumference.…

They heard the cosmos singing.

While they listened, rapt, intent, ecstatic, they made their hands move and lips open, so that they drank of the golden cup once every seven days. Without rising to their feet, they dipped the cup, one after another, into the low bowl atop the marble pillar, whose liquid never diminished.

From time to time, as months passed, their bodies had to be maintained by more than the draft of the golden cups. The music followed them as they moved from chamber to chamber. They feasted, exercised, excreted, suffered medicinal exercises and minor molecular surgery, and in the unadorned chambers of the monks they slept (all but the significant segments of their brains). The company of monks who ministered to them were a variety of races, Locusts and Witches and Giants, all biomodified for lunar conditions, tall and thin. Here were Chimera, looking almost deformed for carrying no weapons, and Melusine, whose whale and dolphin forms looked more like eels and dragons than like their earthly originals, moving without noise through the waters of unlit cisterns. The monks never spoke, or, if they did, only to brain segments in Montrose and Del Azarchel not concerned with the music of the universe. Always the two were returned to the dark and singing chamber, and the music grew and grew within their minds like some immense tower, level upon level of song, in ever greater variations and deeper insights.

Then, one day, when they were once again kneeling in the dark and oval chamber beneath the gold fountain and the red-and-black statues, in the middle of the soaring flight of song, it stopped. Silence like deafness was like a backhanded blow to their ears—the sound was cut off, jarred to a halt.

Del Azarchel felt as if his whole body ached to hear the next tone, the resolution of the chords and multitudes of chords. “Selene!” Del Azarchel shouted at the ceiling. “Where is the rest of it? Play on!” He leaped to his feet with earthly strength, and hung in the lunar air for a long moment, light as a moth, his dark Hermetic robes a stormcloud about his legs and upraised arms.

Montrose was kneeling in a circle of spent cigarette butts and ash stains he had accumulated over the months, since he had occupied himself rolling “quirlies” during parts of the symphony he thought were slow or predictable.

Montrose rose more gently, staring thoughtfully at the golden cup he was hefting in his hand. The material in the cup had altered the cellular structures in their bodies in a very subtle and sophisticated way, a specific application of the biosuspension technology, so that, when they made the motion to rise to their feet, the muscles in their legs responded as if they had only been kneeling a short time. There was not even a pins-and-needles sensation, not even a twinge. Not that kneeling on the moon was much of a strain in any case.

Montrose also spoke toward the ceiling, and said more quietly, “Thanks for the song, Mother Selene. Mighty hospitable of you, I am sure. Say! About this drink! I need to get a bathtub of this stuff for our next long sleep.”

A voice came from behind them, as pure in tone as if a silver harp spoke, humming with strange echoes. The statue of the black-robed figure was evidently made of a more mobile substance than the dark marble and white alabaster it appeared to be, because the face moved as it spoke. “That and whatever else you ask will be granted you, in gratitude for the aid you shall give.”

Del Azarchel slowly floated to the floor. As if some efficient squire serving an assassin had cleaned and sheathed his master's long dirk neatly beneath his freshly laundered cloak, Del Azarchel's rage was stored away, unseen but doubtless close to hand. His voice and manner were courteous: “With kindest thoughts we accept your offer to grant us a boon. We are awed by your generosity; without delay reveal to us the next movement of the symphony. The secrets of the universe…”

But now his bland expression slipped, and a naked hunger shined in his eyes. Nor was anger ever far from hunger, not in the soul of Del Azarchel. He did not continue speaking, but took a spaceman's oxygen pomander from his pouch and held it to his nose. This was not to measure his carbon dioxide output, but just to hide his expression.

The inhuman voice of the lunar intelligence came from the pale gargoyle face framed by the white wig and topped by the black cap. “I do not have the capacity to transliterate the next stage of the Monument into musical notation, and the Lunar Cenotaph language is asymptotically more complex. Once he is repaired, you will inquire of the planetary intelligence, called Tellus, who is beyond the Fourth Comprehension.”

Montrose said, “Well? Where and how do we do that? Can you radio the Earth for us?”

Del Azarchel gave Montrose a smug look, for he had realized something Montrose had not. Del Azarchel said, “Mother Selene, I have no reluctance to assume the stature of an Exarchel once more, but surely it would be easier were you to act as intercessor and emissary for us, telling and explaining what Tellus wishes to ask? For my somewhat rustic friend has shown himself to be reluctant to suffer augmentation to ghostly rank, for he does not foresee how any copies of himself could share in the nuptial bliss he foolishly imagines to be of his deserving once the Princess Rania returns to me.”

“Oh, pox and pustules!” growled Montrose, and he tried to pry the long-barreled pistol out of the hand of the red statue. “Hand it over! Be a pal!” he said to the figure.

“You must endeavor to forgive,” came the inhuman voice from the black statue behind him.

“I'll forgive you of whatever-the-hell you want, if'n you just hand over the damn shooting iron,” said Montrose through clenched teeth. “Pesterification!
Blackie!
Come y'here and put your face just so. Maybe I can work the thumb trigger even with the stone hand in the way.”

“Would you disturb the sanctity of this place?” said the dark statue softly.

“Only to murder Blackie. I'll mop up after.”

“The unforgiving shall linger unforgiven, and your love be lost. Can you be true to your beloved, and not be true?” And the strange voice hummed with echoes in the vast chamber.

Montrose let go of the pistol and looked over his shoulder. “I don't rightly much like the sound of them riddles.”

The black statue saluted him by raising its gold sword, saying, “I like them even less.”

“What the pestiferous taint do you mean? Who needs to forgive me?”

“Those from whom you beg alms, on whose imperfect grace you henceforth rely.”

“Can you translate that from fancy to Meany?”

The voice said, “Nobilissimus Del Azarchel must pardon you, and you him, if only for imagined wrongs.”

“Pox! I ask no adds of him! I'd rather roger him with a red-hot corkscrew.”

“Too, the human race entire must forgive you for what you are about to do; and No
ö
sphere called Tellus, or what remnant yet remains, for what in ages past you did.”

The red statue, at the same time (for all present could follow two or several conversations at once) had raised its balance scales, and was saying to Del Azarchel, “Love surpasses all barriers and bounds, for it is the fundamental substance of the universe. But I cannot abridge the legal and psychological requirements of the phantasm imperative. Dr. Montrose installed specific structures of behavior into all basic machine-language codes used by the entire Tellurian No
ö
sphere, which we, and all subsidiaries, are wise to honor. Until you are above the Third Comprehension, you will not comprehend.”

“One more thing to add to his account when the reckoning comes,” said Del Azarchel, looking sourly at Montrose.

“The reckoning has come and gone,” said both the black statue and the red, in unison.

And the floor as black as outer space lit up with a glittering dazzle of silvery lines, as if drawn in an ink made of mirrors, of the angles and spirals of the Monument notation.

2. The Concubine Vector

In the years since the rise of the Swans, thousands and tens of thousands of minds operating at the posthuman level had worked on translating the Monument, not just Montrose, Rania, and a half-dozen Hermeticists. New methods of translating the hieroglyphs had been perfected, which opened up additional layers of meaning, and made connections between disconnected segments of the Monument, in much the same way that a poem broken across lines has a different meaning than when read linearly.

This “enjambment” was difficult to read. Even all the resources of the Tellus Mind at the core of the Earth, for hundreds of years, could not perform the exegesis. One enjambed segment in particular defied analysis, where the Cold Equations describing the logic of the interstellar polity dealt with the special equations of quid pro quo that obtains when no mutual benefit is possible.

In each possible social and political system, there were certain circumstances where injustice was tolerable, or, at least, where the cost of detecting and deterring the injustice was prohibitive.

Both men knew examples. In the Spain of Del Azarchel's past, when he and his gang were shoplifters, he knew shops expected a certain amount of theft from walk-in customers because the economic loss from only inviting in trusted customers was too high. For specialty shops dealing in jewelry and the like, the risk-reward ratio differed. In each different case, Del Azarchel's gang was careful to steal just under the amount it would cost to build more heavily augmented guard-baboons or train the store alarms to more discriminating intelligence.

In the long vanished United States, which the Texans of Montrose's youth still in legend recalled, the laws made the conviction of criminals difficult, because his people held it wiser to let nine guilty men go free, than to condemn the tenth man who was innocent. In each case where Montrose was defending the guilty, his firm tried to produce enough doubt in the minds of the jurors, or enough nostalgia for the lax laws of gentler days, to make sure their client was one of those ten freed men, guilty or no.