Without specifying their intentions, the Librarian and his daughter began to fashion their first prototypes of ancient humans. Since histories of the early Brightness had long since been lost, their designs were conjectural at best. Some scraps of ancient data suggested that early humans could not live without being surrounded by leaping and flying insects—and so, insects and arthropods were designed and incorporated as well.
Ishanaxade oversaw the opening of the lowest levels of the Kalpa’s first bion and the repositioning of the foundation piers that divided the ancient flood channels, creating three islands. Upon completion of the empty blocs and the landscaping of the primitive but eerily attractive meadows—overarched by a false sky that divided time into bright and dark, wakes and sleeps—an allotment of primordial matter was moved from the holdings of the City Princes. The first of the ancient breeds began their hidden lives. But the Librarian’s plans were interrupted.
The Chaos pushed in again. Ten of Earth’s last cities were consumed—transformed, played with, tortured. Their former citizens even now haunted the vast broken deserts, parodies and playthings of the Typhon—monsters beyond the imagination of even an Eidolon.
Only the Kalpa and Nataraja remained. And then communications between these two cities were severed.
The Astyanax of the Kalpa, the last City Prince, lost what little faith he still had in their erstwhile savior. Ishanaxade was exiled—or left the Kalpa to go to Nataraja—though none could say why, and none even knew whether Nataraja still survived.
From the Tower, Sangmer studied the new configuration of Earth—and crossed the freshly roiling Chaos to find his wife. He was never seen again.
A terrible conflict now broke out. Some believed the Librarian vented his wrath at the Astyanax for banishing his daughter. He reduced power to the suspension. Four of the Kalpa’s seven bions were surrendered to the Typhon. In return, the Astyanax sterilized the Tiers and ended the first population of ancient breeds—those nurtured and taught by Ishanaxade.
The Tower was almost destroyed—broken in half. But the Librarian survived. And it finally became horrifyingly clear that the last humans, whatever their shape or construction, whatever their philosophy or ambitions, could no longer fight.
Under extraordinary pressure from his fellow Eidolons, the Astyanax conceded. Joining forces with the Kalpa’s finest minds, and using more than half of the city’s resources, the Librarian reconstructed a much smaller, more concentrated ring of reality generators—the Defenders—and thus pushed back the Typhon one last time.
Exiled it beyond the border of the real.
Most believed Nataraja and its rebels did not survive.
After Sangmer’s final pilgrimage and disappearance, the Astyanax banned all attempts to leave. The outward windows of the last three bions were sealed shut—all but in the Broken Tower, still the preserve of the greatest and most curious Eidolon of all.
Work on the Tiers resumed, with a new, redesigned population of ancient breeds set in place of the old. A young Mender of no special distinction, Ghentun was summoned to Malregard, interviewed by angelins, and chosen to be Keeper of the Tiers—and that was that. There was no contest, no list of applicants.
Like many of the young Menders of that era, he had converted to noötic mass—fashionably giving up his gens inheritance. Yet to accept the position of keeper, the Librarian’s epitomes insisted he must reconvert—he must become primordial again.
In the process, something went wrong. While retaining his knowledge of history, he lost all personal memories. The old Ghentun vanished; the new was born. Yet how could he have regrets? Mere Menders did not question the decisions of Great Eidolons.
Sometimes, when Ghentun watched his breeds sleep, they would shiver with a strange resonance, as if listening to death-cries out of the deep and broken past—sensing their compatriots, made of the same ancient matter, flesh of the same flesh, crawling along their mashed and bundled fates, until they reached the severed ends—and fell into the dimensionless maw of the Typhon. As they had been designed to do. Canaries in a coal mine.
Proving—if true—that the Tiers were not the idle toy of a demented Great Eidolon, but the one last, true chance to save their tiny scrap of universe.
Finished with his inspection, Ghentun ascended in secured lifts through the outer thick walls to the source of all breeds, the crèche, high above the Tiers.
At the outer circle of the crèche, the Keeper made his signs of respect before the fluid, light-absorbing draperies. Beyond lay the Shaper’s rotating nurseries, where hundreds of new-made breeds slept in quiet rows, awaiting their nativity—should it ever arrive. The curtains swung wide and a golden light spilled over, warming the Keeper’s skin. He had always enjoyed seeing where his breeds were formed, nurtured, and subliminally instructed through infancy, then prepared for transport to the Tiers by the umbers—slender grayish-brown wardens, low and swift.
Several of these umbers met Ghentun beneath the wide sweep of the Shaper’s pallid caul. Two escorted him through the caul—proceeding without escort might subject him to unpredictable fields and pressures—and higher still, between green curtains of gel and tall, eerily still cylinders of primordial ice—into the lambent mist of the vitreion, the Shaper’s inner sanctum—where machines could not go. Here, on natal pads arranged in counterrotating spheres, the golden glow intensified. Spin-foundries like frantic bushes—all silvery vector-curves and whirling branches—surrounded and refined a dozen half-formed infants, their motions so rapid Ghentun could not track them at his highest frequency. The last Shaper in the Kalpa, the crèche’s mistress of birth stood on six slender legs beside an elevated natal pad. At Ghentun’s approach, her small head popped up from a radiance of dark, field-wrapped tool-arms. Shapers and Menders had long since parted ways in physical appearance. She acknowledged his presence, then finished imprinting an early layer of mental properties into a small, quivering thing covered in fine white fur, its large eyes tightly shut, though its lips moved continuously, as if it might awake at a whisper.
The Shaper put away her kit and joined Ghentun on a walk through the prototypes annex.
“I’m not sure what more can be done,” she said as they slid between the history pallets, on which were suspended most of the second-stage proposals for the inhabitants of the Tiers—a sobering record of extended development, indecision, and failure. Ghentun himself had made a number of significant mistakes early in his tenure.
He transferred his notes to the Shaper, who read them with several of her many eyes.
“No instructions. No orders,” she complained.
“Am I to make last-minute improvements—if they areimprovements—at my own discretion? We’ve already given a few the capacity to reproduce—outside my control. That’s dangerous enough—though it increases their sensitivity. If we make them any more sensitive, they’ll tremble at a breeze—and die of stress. And if we make them any smarter, they’ll die of boredom.” She made a small whirring sound of irritation. “One could hardly call all those booksamusing.”
Ghentun touched the outline of the single book in his bag. “They’re smart enough,” he said. “The Librarian wishes to examine an exceptional specimen.” He projected an image—a young male breed, bristling with aggression. “I saw this one first when they were sport-fighting along the fallow meadows. And once, I caught him staring in my direction as I walked past, almost as if he could see me.”
The Shaper thrust two arms forward, grasped the image, spun it, and let it go. It flew off and faded to nothing. She had an aversion to images. “His name is Jebrassy. I tuned him a bit hot. He’s a born marcher—he’ll join one of your suicide groups soon enough.”
“Reproduction?”