Still, something in her stirred. The measured layout of unfamiliar words sank deep, brought up memories she didn’t think she had personally lived to acquire.
Half asleep, before turning another page, she glanced at Jebrassy—so peaceful, lying beside her—and thought of partners, pairs, lovers—across all the incomprehensible words of time.
CHAPTER 41
The Astyanax met Ghentun standing before a transparent rack of glittering noötic instruments, which he was applying meticulously—without touch—to a simulacrum. The subject bore a faint resemblance to one of the ancient breeds, though larger, blockier, less graceful, and with less fur. All around them the chamber shifted at the whims of the Great Eidolon. Several times Ghentun had to move to avoid being burned, frozen, or simply crushed. Out of respect, he had set his cloak to minimum, but now he surreptitiously strengthened its protection.
And this was the Astyanax trying to be polite.
“I wonder,” he began, rotating the simulacrum. “Is this what our terrestrial ancestors once reallylooked like? Not as pretty as your ancient breeds, to be sure…but somehow, in its awkwardness, its crudity, more convincing.”
“Quite convincing,” Ghentun said. “But we’ll never know. Those records are long since lost.”
“Fun to speculate,” the Astyanax mused. “If you don’t mind a little competition.”
The simulacrum blinked at them both with obvious astonishment.
“Do you think if I confirmed its shape and set it loose in the Tiers, that it would dream, Keeper?” the Astyanax asked. “Would it behave as our ancestors once did, shedding their discarded world-lines, their untraveled fates, each time they sleep?”
Eidolons rarely mentioned fates. Their makeup precluded variation along the fifth dimension—all fates were automatically optimized into a single path. That inflexibility made them peculiarly vulnerable to the Chaos.
Ghentun walked around the simulacrum. “It’s a possibility,” he said.
“If we could ever trace back along the combined chord of this creature and its gens,” the Astyanax continued, “linking up such a sensitive animal, made of primordial matter, with its closest ancestors, however far back…could it actually testifyto those lost times? We would have to assume that its world-line would link and match with similar world-lines, retrocausally—like the mating of primitive genetic strands.”
“The experiment has been tried. It’s always failed,” Ghentun said, unsure what the City Prince knew, what the Great Eidolons had told one another across half an eternity of subterfuge.
“Yet that is precisely what you seek—confirmation of something in the remote past. The final destruction, am I right?”
“You are never wrong,” Ghentun said.
The Astyanax froze the simulacrum and then dissolved it. The primordial mass dropped into a glistening lump on the platform. “Idle play,” he said. “Have you spoken recently to the Librarian?”
“I made a visit to the Broken Tower seventy-five years ago,” Ghentun said. “A meeting was scheduled to discuss the Tiers, but I have not yet been summoned.” He knew better than to try to hide obvious truths.
“You reported a change in the Tiers to the angelins in the Broken Tower, Keeper. I assumed someonewould let me know eventually. The Librarian and I, after all, have long co-ventured in this study.”
“It is not my place to carry messages between Great Eidolons.” Ghentun knew he was being provoked. He expected little more from an Eidolon—compared to the City Prince, he was less than a pede crossing a dusty road.
“I’ve heard the Librarian is still working on his radical solution to our difficulties,” the Astyanax said.
“Many rumors descend from the Broken Tower,” Ghentun said. “I’m not informed enough to know what to believe.”
The Astyanax surveyed him. Little could be hidden—a Great Eidolon could map a Mender in seconds.
“Menders and Shapers have been engaged for half a million years at least with the current variety of ancient breeds.”
“Nothing our Shaper does would surprise me. She so rarely does what I ask.”
The Astyanax showed a glim of humor. The backscatter made Ghentun’s cloak fluoresce. “Sometimes I feel this city will never be controlled. I would almost welcome a chance to see how the Typhon could manage it.”
Despite himself, Ghentun shivered.
The Astyanax observed with approval. “You are obviously in no mood to betray the Kalpa, Keeper. Nor would you betray your Librarian. No secrets here, Mender—only your ignorance of the past, of what actually happened between the Librarian and the City Princes. Still, I would like a discreet and open copy of your report on the Tiers—the report you will deliver to the Librarian when he summons you.”
“Of course,” Ghentun said.
The Astyanax made no sign of dismissal. Something changed in the air of the chamber. The angelins shivered and blurred, on high alert—and with a jerk of surprise, Ghentun realized he was now facing the City Prince’s primary self, directly controlling this epitome—which looked as if it were barely up to the task. The glow stung Ghentun’s eyes. But the tone-color of the epitome’s words, directly from the core of the City Prince, became less provocative, almost casual.
The angelins now gave Ghentun full focus, a kind of astonished warning that this intimacy was unprecedented. Theirs had become a meeting of presumed equals, and the angelins found this almost unbearable.
“I remember him most vividly as the Deva, Polybiblios,” the City Prince said. “A tiny thing when he first came here, compared to what he is now. He has brought so much trouble, along with the grace of survival.
“I’ve supported—tried to control—supported again, the Librarian, tried to understand his plans, the way he thinks—all of him. I’ve failed. There is inequality even among the Great Eidolons, and I have become the inferior—no doubt about that. But the Librarian would long ago have destroyed what we have left of time, if not for the efforts of the City Princes. The Kalpa has survived an extra few hundreds of millions of years—much of a sameness, to be sure, an elderly repose after reckless youth and endless maturity.”
A simple visual appeared between them—three pieces of a twisted puzzle. They came together, making a deeply patterned ball smaller than Ghentun’s clenched hand.
“I’m giving you a memory, Keeper. A message to convey, if you will. It will rise again when the time is right—when there is no time. Until then, it will sink deep, out of sight.”
Ghentun felt his attention flick left, then right. The puzzle…swooping bands interlaced around a cross, the whole spinning and whirling at the center of…nothing…
The nothing drew him, and for an indefinite moment fixed his thoughts. Ghentun listened to the Astyanax’s voice, rich and compelling. Even as the story was told, and slipped down and away from consciousness, Ghentun asked, trembling at his boldness, “Why did you send her away?”
The answer remained in his immediate memory though all else faded:
“I doubt you can understand the humility of an Eidolon, Mender. But in all my extensions I have tried to exercise humility. I saw a grave danger to the Kalpa. Had all the parts of the Babel been brought together, they would have triggered the end of the Kalpa—and everything else. Their completion and unity would have beguiled the last great forces of our cosmos into starting over: Brahma, the moving stillness within, who will awaken; Mnemosyne, the reconciler, who walked among us for a time, but who must return to her true nature; and Shiva, who will dance in joyous destruction. Do you understand what a Babel is, Keeper?”
The Astyanax touched his cloak, and Ghentun saw homunculi—servants of the Babel—climbing spiral staircases from balcony to balcony, arrayed along a wall that stretched up, down, to left and right—seemingly forever. The balconies provided access to bookshelves bearing prodigious numbers of ancient bound volumes. Farther along, other staircases rose to impossible heights and descended to limitless depths.