“One night, as he stood staring at the nineteen moons of Wormwood casting colors shadows across the dunes and rocks of his beloved land, the memory returned, and the torture of the decision you now face.
“He knew what must be done: the warship decelerated, the war welcomed, and fought, and lost, and all surface life washed away in the terraforming of the Scolopendra, who have no use for life like yours. This alone sated the duty imposed on the Stability of Man.
“He also knew that the senile Chronometrician could see into his mind and would see the lack of heart to carry out the threat, even should he ever find the heart to draw the world-destroying sword. But he knew you did, and do, have the heart to carry out the heartless duty, and the only way lawfully to put the sword into your hands was to die.
“It was the only way to carry out his oath. His honor he loved no less than you, yours.
“The loss of nine-tenths of his person was sufficient to render him unfit for duty, legally dead, and the remaining one-tenth, his tithe, he returned to the hands of his wife, to live out his days with her in happiness and peace, with no knowledge of what the horrid future would bring.”
“So you want me to halt the warship and bring war?”
She said, “Most emphatically I do not, and I would slay you now, and all within this Chamber, and all who dwell upon my surface, as easily as a boy swats a fly glued to a honey-leaf, to avoid that fate. But wars between humans are to me like a fever in you, when the white blood cells that serve you eject an invading germ. This is not what I fear. You have deduced that the Master of the Empyrean cares nothing for the Empyrean Polity: his eyes are set on larger things. When his Great Ship makes starfall here, all is changed.”
Vigil said, “What are you afraid of?”
“My mind is not as your mind, nor my thoughts like your thoughts. I do not fear what you fear, and yet I am tormented. It is not death I fear, for I cannot die, but changes to my core self, what you would call a soul. I fear to be changed beyond recognition, to remember all I once was and yet forget myself. I have nothing I love so much that I am willing to die for it, and, without such self-obliterating love, I cannot maintain my life in the face of the obliteration of entropy. The source of my fear stands within the Chamber with you: the mortals call him insane, but he is not.”
Vigil said, “You speak in riddles!”
Torment said, “I wait for him to reveal himself.”
Del Azarchel straightened up, staring at the figure wearing a Hermeticist mask and dressed in the red robes and long wig of a lawyer. “Mother of God! Is that you, Cowhand? I’ve been looking all over for you, damn your eyes! You are on this planet, just as everyone said! What in the name of Santiago are you doing here?”
The counselor, who was also the janitor and many other things besides, removed the breathing mask and goggles, revealing the hard planes of his face, the lantern jaw, deep-set eyes, square brow, and great hooked beak of a nose. He also threw the long white wig on the floor. “You still have the floor, Veggie, or whateverthepox your name is, so tell Blackie to hold his plague-spotted tongue.”
7. Flabbergasted
Vigil stared at the man. An alert internal creature, seeing Vigil stunned, forced shut his mouth and manipulated his facial muscles into an alert expression so that the full comic befuddlement was not visible to onlookers—who, Vigil noticed, had similar expressions anyway, except the withered Chronometrician, who cackled at them.
Other internals were going rapidly over his conversations, and only now seeing the ambiguities and lapses in judgment. Between his learning of his father’s murder and learning he must murder his whole world in retaliation, Vigil had overlooked many clues or comments which would have been obvious on a calmer day with a clearer mind, a mind less often jarred or stunned by mudra or mandala or Fox-trick.
Vigil realized that the Judge of Ages had not been here to aid him or halt him. Whether or not this world’s surface civilization rose or fell was a small matter to him, a temporary thing. His eyes were on some object beyond Vigil’s mental horizon.
But this was not the madman history and legend had portrayed! He was a little crude and direct, but clearly he was sane. Which meant …
8. The Final Peace Equation
Vigil said to the Judge of Ages, “You are a man of legend—on Nightspore, in the buried nation of Threal, they worship you as a god. How do I address you?”
“Call me Meany. Or, if you want to be formal and proper and posh, call me Doc. I ain’t a doctor doctor, a real doctor, a sawbones, but I got a degree in math from Soko University in Oddifornia. They say the continent is tilted, on account of the Anglos is so light-headed they pull the East Coast up, so all the loose screws roll to the other coast. Heh. I hain’t told that joke since that continent was still around. Still funny, if’n you ask me.”
Vigil drew a deep breath, trying to bring order to his agitated inner creatures. “Why is there a warship coming?”
Montrose took a small twig out of an inner pocket and scraped thoughtfully at the gaps between his teeth. He paused to push his tongue into his cheek, as if chasing some stray scrap, and then he spat. “I could say ’cause Blackie’s coming. Well, he is sort of here also. That is a puppet of his that he radioed ahead. When he sent his gear, his crown and sword and stuff, near as I can figure, must have left Tellus on the same ship I shipped out on, the Errantry. Easy enough to do, since the Guild works for him. I was launched by the Starfaring Guild, but landed by the Stability, which tells you how long ago that was. It means he must have recognized what was going on same time I did, within ten years plus or minus. Right, Blackie?”
Before Del Azarchel, could answer, Vigil said, “Sir, that was not my question.”
“Well, ask what you mean, dammit. It’s not like I can read your mind! We ain’t on the same circuit.”
Vigil said doggedly, “Even before she departed for M3, the Swan Princess knew the secret of how to use the cliometric equations to reach peace. She could prevent world wars and defuse mutinies before they occurred. The Memento Stone would, if anything, include a more complete answer, allowing us to cooperate with the aliens without the horror of forced repopulation to far worlds. So the Stone could only increase, not decrease, her skill at reading the Monument and rendering peace! We know the aliens are not at open war. Therefore, there is a Final Peace Equation. We know that…”
Vigil realized he was rambling, telling the Judge of Ages matters this ancient being must have known before Vigil was born, or his world, or his ancestors’ worlds, or his family, clan, race, language.
Montrose did not seem impatient. He merely nodded. “You’re getting warm. Go on.”
“From these facts, we know the human race cannot be growing in any direction but more and more civilized and peaceful. And yet—look! There sits the herald of an incoming multigeneration warship, asking to set terms of the combat!”
Montrose shrugged with one shoulder. “Maybe you should be asking a different question, sonny.”
“What would that be, sir?”
“The peaceful future where we ain’t gunna study war no more, why, that future would not need Stability Lords as proud and picky about their honor as a pack of Spaniards, would it? So one question maybe you should be asking yourself is this: Why did the interstellar plans of future history give rise to customs and civilizations like what we got now? Like something from the Dark Ages? The First Dark Ages, I mean.”
Vigil looked uncomfortable but said nothing.
Montrose said, “Seems to me that what you is really asking is, what the plague is your life for, a man like you? You’d rather die than break your word, and there ain’t no such man like that when sweet reason reigns and all folks is fat and happy. So what is your life for, Vigil Starmanson? Why is there such a thing as a you?” He grinned and spat out the toothpick. “That is your real question, ain’t it?”