“Don’t call them that.” Montrose’s voice was sharp.
The laughter turned to scorn. “They are lesser creatures to us.”
“They are not lesser creatures!”
“Then why not tell them the truth? If you thought they were our equals, you would tell them everything we do when we decide how to let them live their lives. But you don’t, do you? You never tell them anything,” said Del Azarchel in a tone of voice so smug that he needed no words to say You, like me, know full well that the Truth is not for such as they.
“God damn you!” shouted Montrose.
And in ten huge, Sumo-wrestler-massive strides, Montrose strode in his armor to where the solemn men stood, his Seconds and Del Azarchel’s. And the white-winged dark-eyed maiden, elfin and eerie, looked on with no expression from the dozens of eyes in her wings.
And Montrose began shouting the truth to them at the top of his lungs.
16
Ready to Fire
1. Not for Such as They
Montrose shouted, “All of your history has been a lie. All your lives. Your civilizations, accomplishments, times of war, times of peace, laws and customs, arts and sciences. A fraud. A farce.”
No one spoke. No one interrupted or turned away.
“Del Azarchel duped his minions into creating one sick, diseased, broken society after another, in order to gull me into revealing a cure, a power, a spell, that only I could wield. It was a secret of seven parts that my wife, the Swan Princess Rania, had discovered on a stone circling a distant star. And each time I used this power to do some good, my shipmates”—he gestured to where the hooded men in black silk were gathered, and he spat the word like it was a curse. The Hermeticists, on their part, wore expressions either of indifference, or triumph, or condescending sneers when Montrose said—“these Hermeticist devils would take whatever good I did and pervert it to evil.
“I gave men civilization, he turned it into a weapon of destruction and oppression; I gave men cooperation, he turned it into the conformity of a military camp; I gave men a pharmaceutical means to extend their span of life, he made it into an addiction, and a means to gull, bewitch, and erase the minds and souls of men…”
And, one after another, he pointed at Melchor de Ulloa, Narcís D’Aragó (or rather, their Ghosts), and then at Sarmento i Illa d’Or.
The voice of Montrose took on a depth and power as his anger grew. “I gave men the discipline to break those addictions; one of their number who stands not here abused that discipline to create an art that destroyed each vestige of brother-love and gentleness and compassion and humanity in mankind, and he marred their forms to make them less than beasts. But he saw and repented his evil, and sought to bring the monsters to the fountains of humanity, and allow them drink; and for his goodness he was slain by him who was his friend and shipmate and brother; I gave the monsters laws of uniformity, to allow them to endure for a time without anarchy; and this same murderer imposed a uniformity of the mind, and destroyed the human soul, that thing which makes each man an individual and precious; and this one, the least and last of all, who has no human soul, created a race of helots and their zombie-masters to destroy the human spirit, that thing which gives a man free will and free conscience.”
And he pointed at the Ghosts of Coronimas, and of Mentor Ull, who stood with golden tendrils; tall man and short Locust, heads held tilted at the same angle, as alike in posture as father and child, albeit nothing else about them was alike: only their souls.
Sarmento i Illa d’Or, who, of all men there, was the least afraid of the Judge of Ages, said, “What does it matter, anything you are saying? We did what we did because it gave us pleasure, and no one could stop us. You do what you do because it gives you pleasure; and any who try to stop you, you shoot and kill. Anything else is merely words.”
Montrose whirled on him, moving swiftly for one in such heavy armor, and his teeth were gritted like a biting animal’s, and his eyes blazed in madness. “This will give you no pleasure, Sarmento! Look about you. All the Hermeticists have done their work. There are none of you left to remake the world in his image. And yet another four hundred years remain to the End of Days. Shall each of you take turns again, and history will spin like some damn wheel, of Giants, Sylphs, Witches, Chimerae, Nymphs, Hormagaunts, Locusts, Melusine? I can start the wheel again, and bring forth Giants from my Tombs!”
Sarmento sneered. “The Nobilissimus, whom I am proud to call my master and the master of our order, he will examine among the races and determine which can best serve the Hyades. The others, as Darwin demands, will be exterminated. I am sure there are enough among your eighty-nine Tomb sites to select the, uh…”
Words failed him. Montrose spoke up, mocking: “The blue ribbon winner? The prize pig? The winner of the Miss Darwin beauty contest? Oh? Well then, who judges the Hermeticists? If you are judged and found wanting, do the people acting in the name of nondeliberate Darwinian forces get to deliberately exterminate you?”
He turned again to the other Iron Ghosts. “Now it is your turn to hear the truth, you bastards! You have all been played for fools; Blackie has his pinkie finger up your nose and leads you as he will: walk, trot, and gallop. Each bit of the Rania Solution that came into your hands was just so you would put it into Del Azarchel’s hands, to then be used to make his greater Machine, his Jupiter Brain. Each of the seven parts of the human psyche was designed by one or another of the templates you made.
“The Sylphs were used as the template for a basic machine level, an unconscious. The peculiar intuitive brain structures of the Witches were templates for the subconscious levels, the seat of dreams and archetypal images, appetites too basic for names. The Chimerae formed the passions; the Nymphs, the instincts; the Clades, the ego; Locusts, the conscience. That is the fate of the civilizations you fathered. That was the only reason you were ever meant to father them. A machine copied part of their base neural psychology. For that purpose only, for a single millennium alone, you each were dressed in your master’s robe, a robe too large for you, and were allowed to play at being Master of the World.
“For the true Master of the World brooks no rival, no, not even in play. You each have served your purpose and served your turn. Now you will be discarded.
“As your races and your dreams were discarded.
“The Great Work of the Hermetic Order—how often you have boasted empty boasts of it!—was to bring forth the race after man.
“Fools! It was done without you.
“Those races, your children, their civilizations, your ideals, your periods of history where for a season he allowed you to design and reign over mankind; in short, everything you have done with your long lives; was merely so he could steal your transitory pretense of the Great Work and copy it into the real Great Work, his Work, meant from the beginning to be the real and permanent, the sole and only.
“The Great Work was launched from here not ten hours past. Jupiter is his name, your new god, whose intellect will surpass a hundredfold all the races you vainly hatch here, yes, and all the inner planets together even if they were covered pole to pole with Aurum Vitae atop glaciers of Living Waters atop which races of Giants manning mile-high Granoliths might multiply, and all their cores Pellucid!
“Look at me! All of you know me. Except for you, Ull, so shut up. Do I lie?”
But then Ximen del Azarchel, who had sauntered in his clanging armor at a much more deliberate, almost meditative pace, was now among them. The Ghosts of the Hermeticists all now clamored and shouted at Del Azarchel, demanding, threatening, pleading for some word of explanation, yearning for some word of reassurance from him.