Vigil sighed. Everything in his life turned on the answer. “Yes, sir,” he said humbly. “That is my question. You said you know the answer and that no one heeds you.”
“Ain’t that so! Yessirree—I surely do know. It’s obvious.”
“Will you tell us?”
“Nope.”
Vigil restrained the urge to jolt the Judge of Ages with a mudra from the glance of an evil eye to induce vomiting spasms. It would be more in keeping with the dignity of the ancient man simply to smite with the sword. But he checked that impulse as well. “What? And why not?”
“And have you ignore me, too? Figure it out your own damned self.”
The Master of the Empyrean raised his hand and signaled with his finger lamp. “I ask the Lord Hermeticist grant me time enough to answer his query, that we might move rapidly on to other business? I mean to have that braking laser lit and properly presented, or else no one leaves this chamber alive.”
Vigil said, “One question first: You sent the Myrmidon to save me?”
“I did not.”
“Who did?”
“No one sent him. I am him. Despite their extinction, I still from time to time can find an empty body with mind-circuits formatted correctly to receive my imprint, buried in a library, or in various hiding holes in hollow asteroids, or bunkers on abandoned moons. I meant to have you do the duty I gave you and force this stubborn Table to do their duty I gave them, but unexpected events intruded. Your planet, Torment, somehow slipped the information about the true nature of Rania’s Final Peace Equation into the hand of your Cliometrician here. This made events spin out of control, requiring me to drop my mask and speak.”
Vigil said to the Aruspex, “This copy of the Final Peace Equation, this abomination on the table before us—where did you get it?”
The Aruspex made a fist: the gesture for assent. “He speaks the truth. It came from Torment herself. Thanks to our uniquely potent receivers, she has been spying for centuries on the other Potentates and Powers of the Empyrean, decoding the secret and subconscious thoughts of our Dominion as they as crawled at lightspeed from Altair to Proxima to 61 Cygni. She discovered the unedited versions of the severed plan for human evolution, beamed to each separate Stability on every world, and reconnected them. As if by mischance, my people came across her information in an unguarded file. I trespassed on my own initiative, no doubt with her awareness: whether technically that counts as intervention in human life, I leave to others to decide.”
Vigil turned to Del Azarchel, “You have the floor. Explain this enigma.”
Del Azarchel said, “If Rania, once returned from M3, has the power and motivation to impose peace on mankind, then there can be no war; and yet an interstellar war is and has been ongoing for centuries, and war will tear the Empyrean in pieces and force those pieces to flee to ever more distant stars and colonize there. Your question is, how can this be, and what is your life for?”
Vigil waited, seething with impatience. Del Azarchel paused, smiling, enjoying the unhappy silence. With a smile, the Master of the Empyrean spread his hands, as if to show he had no more tricks in his glove circuits, no mudras, no hidden finger-commands to make.
“Simple. Rania never returned from M3.”
9. The End of History
A dumbfounded silence clutched all the men there.
The voice of Montrose was as loud as the bray of a mule in the quiet chamber. “Like I been saying all along. The millions aboard the Errantry knew it, and so do their children sixteen hundred years later. Polite folk to this day will not sup with an Errant or walk into their shops or grottos because Errants will not mouth the polite lies. So much misery, so many years of prejudice and hate, just to save Blackie’s brittle little asinine pride, eh?”
Del Azarchel’s face grew dark with a blush, and his eyes narrowed.
Vigil said, “What do you mean?”
Montrose said, “I am sure the fake Rania who came back from the stars made a perfectly nice wife for Blackie. All he wanted was the reputation of it, right? Ain’t that right, Blackie? You never wanted the girl, just wanted the world to think she was your’n. And so you must have figured it out quick as I did, but you had all the media smother the knowledge and hired folk to spread rumors, rewrite history books, censor memories, all that stuff.”
Del Azarchel leaned back in the chair. “One day you will die and at my hand, I swear it. But let us not speak of such unpleasant matters now. The fate of worlds, of the destiny of man, hangs in the balance.”
Menelaus turned to Vigil. “Remind Blackie he ain’t got the floor to talk. Blackie is a big liar. He did not want the Empyrean to know that he was Mr. Rebound Guy, the one to whom Fake-a-Rania turned in sorrow for comfort when I walked away from her.”
Vigil said to Menelaus, “But she rejected you, not you her! That is what the histories say.”
“No kidding? I betcha they also say Blackie built the pyramids of Egypt all by hisself when he was a toddler. To have a place to stay while he wrote Plato’s dialogue in Shakespeare’s Hamlet? You know the one: To be, or not to be? And what is ‘Being’?”
Vigil said, “No, but history says you went mad and fled here, to the farthest star where mankind dwells—”
“If you read stuff in history books that sounds made up, trust me, they was probably made up. Son, I could have just unplugged by brain-phone gizmo and gotten on a slow boat to China, or whatever is occupying that part of Asia these days, and stayed on Earth, and had air and weight, bugs and diet like I’m damned used to, and been plenty alone. You don’t take two centuries and cross one hundred lightyears just to have a place to get drunk, get into a bar fight, and puke on someone. I arrived on the Errantry by way of Rasalhague and 12 Ophiuchi, and been here over a thousand years. What the hell you think I been doing all this time, wandering around in my skivvies, cussing at your pink sun and howling at your fat moon, with a five-o’clock shadow on my chin and a jug of cheap rotgut in my fist?”
“Ummm.…” Since this was exactly the mental picture Vigil has entertained of the fate of the Judge of Ages ever since he heard the tale in childhood, Vigil thought it more discreet not to say.
Montrose said, “It weren’t that hard to figure. She had all Rania’s memories all right, down to the last drop, but something was missing. She could not read the Monument no more, for one thing. She talked about divorcing man and wife like that was normal, for another, and didn’t bother with confession nor mass. It weren’t her.” He pointed his finger at Del Azarchel. “And that fellow there had the poets and tale-spinners spread the story that I was fooled for a season, and he coupled with her, defiling my marriage bed—and I would kill you just for that, you twin-tongued spirochete infecting the descending colon of a donkey with the clap.” He turned back to Vigil. “Don’t look surprised. I never been fooled by fake Ranias before. Yellow Door tried it, for one.”
Del Azarchel said wryly, “For the benefit of future historians who may interview you gentlemen about this hour, the Cowhand is referring to the highly evolved Sarmento Esteban Rolando i Illa d’Or, the Golden of Hermetic Order of the Irenic Ecumenical Conclave of Man, born A.D. 2196, died A.D. 10650, last ghost deleted A.D. 10927; he is the father of the Nymphs, from which the Joys of Charm, the Delectables of 47 Ursae Majoris all their posterity take their form, as well as the Rakshasi of Gliese 31.5 in Tucana and HR 6 in Phoenix. These in turn are the remote ancestors of your Meanderers, Exiles, and Expelled.” Del Azarchel hefted the pearl in his hand, his voice growing slower and more solemn as he spoke. When he finished, he looked at the Potentate of Torment. What the gaze meant, none in that chamber could say, since only he saw her eyes. “Eons turn and turn again, and all things pass away, and I would prefer he not be forgotten.” He smiled his dazzling smile. “All things, save me, of course.”