This is a work of fiction.

All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE JUDGE OF AGES

Copyright © 2014 by John C. Wright

All rights reserved.

Cover art by John Harris

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Wright, John C. (John Charles), 1961–

   The Judge of ages / John C. Wright.—1st ed.

           p. cm.

   “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

   ISBN 978-0-7653-2929-5 (hardcover)

   ISBN 978-1-4299-4712-1 (e-book)

 1.  Human-alien encounters—Fiction.   2.  Interstellar travel—Fiction.   3.  Cryopreservation of organs, tissues, etc.—Fiction.   I.  Title.

   PS3623.R54J83 2014

   813'.6—dc23

2013025457

e-ISBN 9781429947121

First Edition: February 2014

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CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Copyright Notice

Epigraph

Part Five: The World Beneath the World

One: The Instrumentality of the Hyades

Two: The Tomb of Ages

Three: The Court of Ages

Four: Witnesses

Five: Jurors

Six: Deliberation

Seven: Darwin’s Circus

Eight: Verdict

Nine: Depthtrain

Ten: The Trial of the Judge of Ages

Eleven: The Hidden History of Seven Mankinds

Twelve: Signs in the Heavens, Figures in the Earth

Thirteen: The Judge of Ages and the Master of the World

Fourteen: Chessmaster of History, Fencer of Fate

Fifteen: The Conjurers of Fate

Sixteen: Ready to Fire

Seventeen: The Swans

Appendix A: Dramatis Personae

Appendix B: Small-scale Time Line

Tor Books by John C. Wright

Far along the worldwide whisper of the southwind rushing warm,

With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d

In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

PART FIVE

The World Beneath the World

1

The Instrumentality of the Hyades

A.D. 10515

1. In the Tombs

“O Rania, I was better off dead,” muttered Menelaus Montrose, in English, a language which, he reflected, was also long dead. “Unearthed and outmaneuvered, how in pestilent perdition am I going to outsmart getting myself killed entirely? How am I ever going to see you again?”

Above, the sky was gray with snow clouds, and leaden. A storm was gathering along the southern horizon, above the glaciers now shrouding the Blue Ridge Mountains, the source of some immense, unnatural disturbance.

Downhill, the pines and frozen rocks were bare of life. The prison tents were empty, the deadly wire was motionless, and the odd seashell-shaped buildings beyond the wire were silent.

Directly underfoot, down a dizzying drop of catwalks and scaffolds, lay the darkness of the archeological dig. No coffins moved or fired. They were deactivated, returned meekly to their recharging plugs, and were no longer attempting to defend their precious, slumbering contents.

Instead, wild packs of the dog thing soldiers were dancing, whooping, and barking with elation among the ruins, whirling swords and pikes, flourishing muskets, in the triangle of light that spilled from the broken doors across the silent firing range. Montrose saw none of the dwarfish little bald Blue Men in their jewel-adorned coats.

He wondered how many hours he had before the persons of ordinary intelligence figured out that Corporal Anubis, allegedly a Beta-rank Chimera of the Sixth Millennium A.D., was instead Menelaus Illation Montrose, experiment in intelligence augmentation gone awry, of the Third Millennium A.D., the so-called Judge of Ages and Guardian of the Cryonic Tombs of the Slumbering Dead—or how many minutes before Del Azarchel figured it out.

(That man was surely still alive! Fate was not kind enough to have killed off mankind’s other experiment in human intelligence augmentation, mechanical rather than biological, during the thousands of years while Montrose slept in suspended animation. The two of them were still in mid-duel, a deadly fight momentarily put on hold during the immensities of human evolutionary history.)

Maybe they would not find the coffeepot, or his notebooks, or his gun collection, or his clothing closet. Of course, there was still the giant Texas flag he had pinned up, or the portrait of Rania, or his collection of history books, Witch idols, magazines and old coins with his image on them … sweet Jesus up a tree! There were a lot of clues lying around.

Montrose watched in helpless anger as Rada Lwa was taken from him. He had carried the unconscious albino Scholar over his shoulder from the torture cell of the Blue Men. Rada Lwa was placed by the dogs into a sling and lowered from platform to platform into the Tombs.

Back in A.D. 3090 (over seven thousand four hundred years ago by the calendar, but just shy eight years ago by his oft-interrupted inner biological clock) Rada Lwa had attempted to assassinate Montrose. It was unforgivable. And yet the man, by entering the Tombs of the Judge of Ages, was under Montrose’s protection. He was a client. To have Blue Men excavate Rada Lwa, thaw him, torture him, in Montrose’s book, merited execution. But not ten minutes ago, he had discovered to his shock that the Blue Men were Thaws as well; in theory, his clients also under his protection. He blamed himself for not seeing it earlier. In hindsight, it was obvious.

While the dog things were busy lowering Rada Lwa, Montrose spoke to them in Intertextual: “You know your masters ain’t really and truly archeologists, don’t you, you sons of bitches?”

The Blue Men, all but whoever was behind them, thought they were looking for the mythical founder of the Tomb system, the demigod called the Judge of Ages: so called because he condemned to death any age of history which dared forget the reason for the Tombs, the point of accumulating slumbering knights and scientists.

The mythical founder was no myth, but stood among their prisoners, unrecognized, helpless as a child, and angrier than hell.