2. Metaposthuman
The gathered voices of an entire world spoke from her mouth and said, “There shall be no next time! Your duel is ended, now and forever. Neither will we allow you to continue it, neither with pistols nor races nor worlds nor with the calculus of history.
“Eight millennia and more have been changed and marred by the insanity of hatred that endures between the both of you. The resources lost by you and by all the races you fathered, the opportunity cost in more perfect worlds which could have been born, but were not—the waste in human lives is beyond even our calculation power! Entire civilizations rose, flourished, sickened, and were discarded by you as merely resources expended in your conflict. The quarrel is done: we decree peace.”
Del Azarchel stepped toward her. “Silence! I command—”
“You command nothing!” The vibrant look in her eyes grew so powerful that Menelaus could not meet her gaze. When Menelaus looked toward Del Azarchel, he was shading his eyes as if against a strong light. Once and twice Del Azarchel nerved himself to look toward her face; but his eyeballs twitched, his gaze stammered, and he had to turn away.
Del Azarchel looked seasick. His eyes were wild. “Who—? What are you? No Melusine speaks this way!”
“We are their ultimate children. The Melusine created us, the final race, for the express purpose of halting your madness.” The myriad voices blended more harmoniously, sounding almost like a song: “All those who came before us are merely variations within the same species, Homo sapiens. Ours is a new genus, primate but not hominid: Pan sapiens. We are the first prototypes of the post-Melusine species, superhuman beyond even your superhumanity. In this new and final race, the awkward and ugly duckling of mankind, and of all the mankinds, has finally reached beauty, power, strength, and supremacy. We call ourselves the Second Humans: we are the Swans. Behold! We are now come!”
She spread her wings and soared upward, exulting, to meet the dancing and descending silvery thundercloud of winged beings in the midst of the air.
Del Azarchel recovered his aplomb in a deep breath. Now he was peering upward, saying, “These Swans of yours may prove difficult to overcome.”
“That is what I like about you, Blackie. You are stinking blind-drunk on rotgut optimism, and do not see the world around you.”
“A trait we share. But I prefer to think of it as megalomania,” said Del Azarchel coolly. “The cure, of course,” he smiled, “for the neurotic and false belief that one is possessed of godlike power is actually to obtain it; whereupon the belief is no longer false.”
“You are not overcoming these critters, Blackie. They are as much smarter than us as we are than a baseline human. They were clever enough to hide whole flying circuses of their Paramount bodies aboard your Tower without your noticing.”
Del Azarchel was staring upward, shading his eyes. “Since the Tower has more surface area than China, the feat is less astounding than may seem.”
“Not to mention smart enough to hide their damned world right in front of your eyes while letting you think you ruled it. Smart enough to see through your lies, which the Hermeticists never did, and to turn on you.”
“And smart enough to turn on you, as well.”
“What the pox do you mean?!”
“Look up, Cowhand!”
3. Turning
The falling figures were closer now. Montrose peered, using his cortical technique to make the images clear and sharp in his mind.
Flying down were men, women, Giant posthumans, dwarfish Inquilines of blue and gray, dark Locusts by the swarms hanging like a cloud of pitch. Chimerae were falling head downward in angled formations like diving geese, not having opened their wings yet. Witches, perhaps for ceremonial reasons, perhaps merely for joy, held broomsticks and besoms between their legs.
“I see that they raided your Tombs,” drawled Del Azarchel. “No respect for private property, eh? That was not in your plan, was it? Obviously, your plan was to have something happen that neither one of us could plan.” Del Azarchel started laughing. “So this was your final move! To throw yourself out of the game! Congratulations! Small wonder I did not foresee it!”
Montrose knew that Del Azarchel must have run Cliometric scenarios on the impact of Cliometry on a society. It had only one of two halt states: The first halt was one where everyone was under control of a plan, even the planners themselves, and every least act and smallest thought was unfree, controlled by a calculus no one controlled. The Melusine world Del Azarchel had tried to create was a model of that state. The other state was where everyone knew Cliometry, and could freely adjust his future to match and harmonize with all other like-minded future plans—or freely decline, neither interfering nor being interfered with. That was the new world Montrose had brought into being.
Montrose said, “These people are free of your Cliometric interference as well as from mine. Why are you laughing? It worked, didn’t it?”
“If kicking over the chessboard prevents the checkmate, certainly it worked. But it is the ingratitude that amuses me. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth!” he laughed and wiped his eyes. “That asteroid strike! Of course it wiped out all the threads of history I had been developing—but it wiped you out also. It blinded my satellites and blinded your periscopes. That is how desperate they were to get rid of you.”
“Of us.”
“Yes, as you say, but getting rid of me is not as deliciously funny. I regarded them as cattle anyway, and expected them to stampede. You are the one who thought of them as pets, and got bitten.”
“Laugh it up,” snarled Montrose. “Soon enough we’ll find out what they mean to do with us. You see it, don’t you? Explain it to your man.”
Sarmento spoke up, his voice a rumble, “Explain it to yours, Fifty-One. I am in communion with Exillador. I grasp the situation. Your pets whom you insist on treating as equals are the only ones here who are not posthuman.”
Montrose turned to Sir Guiden. Sir Guiden said, “I don’t understand. We won. They lost. The people of this era, these steel-winged angels, they have thrown off the tyranny of the Hermeticists. Have they not?”
“And they are throwing me off as well,” said Montrose grimly. “We are prisoners. They have to decide how we are going to fit into their society. Go over to the others and tell them the bad news.”
4. Swan Song
The figures in the air were touching down.
Two Giants, grotesque beetle-browed heads atop their elephantine bodies gleaming, their beautiful golden eyes glistening, landed as lightly as thistledown nearby. No higher than the Gigantic elbows were a coven of Witches, thin as rails and gray and wrinkled in their black habits and peaked hoods. A squad of Chimerae, eyes fierce and unblinking as the eyes of hunting cats, were no taller than the waists of the Giants; a host of Locusts, dark and solemn-faced with endless repetitions of the same face, tendrils glistering, were no taller than the thick knees of the Giants. Here and there, like some delirious dream of Egyptian pantheons, were freakish Hormagaunts, beast-headed or hawk-billed, furred like lions or shelled like armadillos, a nightmare of pincers and claws and writhing tentacles studded with mouths; here also were rank upon rank of Clade-dwellers, identical twins in groups of twelve and twenty, hair quills bristling. The six-tendrilled dark-eyed Melusine were present as well, standing in groups of three, with dolphins and whales, sleek as torpedoes, soaring and swooping and hovering above them, graceful as notes of music in a symphony.
Which post-Cetaceans went with which of the standing figures was not clear. All wore the shining neural cloaks of the Second Humans. Tallest loomed the two winged Giants, and their white pinions reached twenty-four feet from tip to tip as they furled and folded them. With them were winged Witches and winged Chimerae with ten-foot spans; and winged Locusts with stubby pinions like so many cupids from Saint Valentine’s Day cards. All the eyes on all the feathers were glinting and beating with light. Montrose tried to estimate the volume of information being passed back and forth between the gathered minds here, the core of the Earth, and systems the Tower was spreading elsewhere.