Jupiter said, “I am a world-machine created to be the sovereign and engineer of destiny. In me, Man is no longer prey to blind Fortune. In me, Fate has eyes.”
“That is undoubtedly true, my lord. But you are a living machine, more alive than biological men, more aware, and your fate-seeing eye sees where all this leads. What is a man who is silent when honor demands he speak? What is a god? Should you, a god, be as petty as a mortal man, who cowers and tells lies?”
Jupiter turned to Cazi, “The founders of Rosycross made more radical changes to the psychiatry of their generations than should have been permitted, thanks to the laxity Montrose calls liberty, and many aberrations could not be undone when civilization returned, not even by Foxes.” But the Fox Queen, to everyone’s surprise, scampered behind Norbert, trembling, hid her face between his shoulder blades, and would not look at Jupiter nor answer him.
Norbert did not attempt to follow the allusions in a comment one posthuman made to another. Aloud, Norbert said to Cazi, “What does he mean?”
She stood on tiptoes and spoke in his ear. “It’s an old, old argument. Jupiter wants the Foxes to revise non-orthogonal psychology on Rosycross in preparation for the Fourth Sweep.”
Norbert reflected that, to a creature of her age, nine hundred years was akin to a thirteen-year-old boy waiting for his elevation to Journeyman.
“Uh. Okay. What does that have to do with this?”
“It’s a joke. He’s being mean. The last person we tried to cure and humanize was Tellus. Instead we sort of accidentally-on-purpose drove Tellus insane, and filled the seas of Earth with black greasy gook vomited up from the planetary core. But if the Foxes give up being Foxes, and make ourselves human, too, Jupiter cannot use us for his schemes, and Rosycross can keep on being weird and rosy and cross, just like you like it.”
“I don’t get the joke.”
“You are slow! He is implying you must be crazy to talk to him like this, so crazy not even a Fox could make you sane again. He’s mocking me, or threatening me, or something. That is why I am hiding behind you! I adore you!”
“W-What?”
“You are bold and thickheaded, like a man should be! Go on! Irk him again! You are the only one here he will not destroy! Irk with conviction!”
Norbert said, with some surprise, “I am not trying to annoy him! Or anyone! I am an assassin! My task is to get at the truth. To uncover the party truly responsible! Uh, and kill him in a craven and secretive fashion. I am here to protect the Guild! Men don’t dishonor themselves for small causes!”
Jupiter spoke again. Norbert unwarily looked up when the higher being spoke, met his eyes, and was blind for a moment. “Surely you do not think, Rosicrucian, to marionette a being supreme as I with mere words?”
Norbert stood with his head down, blinking and nauseous. “No, my lord. Not with words. But with the truth to which those words point, yes. You are above me but you are not above truth. Are you not victorious? Have you not achieved all you desire? But if so, why are you discontent? You would not have sent this emissary shape to Tellus from your throne on Jupiter if you were content. Speak! Must you deceive your own father?”
Del Azarchel said to Norbert, “Assassin, this is folly. Are you trying to provoke him into a confession of some sort? To manipulate him? As well ask a cat to outsmart a chessmaster.”
Cazi said, “My cat outwits me! She looks up with these big, big eyes. And if I cannot argue back with her because she cannot talk on my level, well—”
Del Azarchel interrupted impatiently, “That is not the same. Such games don’t work on a machine intelligence of such astronomical magnitudes. Besides, no son of mine could be responsible for such base treason! My basic motivations are noble and clear—”
Jupiter said, “The Lares event was not my doing. And you know nothing of your basic motivations.”
Del Azarchel made a strangled, spitting noise, and could not speak.
“As best I can determine,” Jupiter continued, “an extragalactic mind did indeed make some form of faster-than-light mental contact with Lares. But once the trouble began, I turned it to my use, yes. The calendar revision events were orchestrated by me.”
Del Azarchel looked dumbfounded, then his handsome face sagged as if some deep blade had pierced a vital organ, and then anger darkened his brown, and a flush of blood darkened his cheeks; but his stern and hawklike eyes, for once, were lost in the innocent and uncomprehending pain of a child.
Cazi pointed an image-catching gem at Del Azarchel when this happened, and she smiled wickedly. With her fingers she tapped in spacer’s code on Norbert’s back. The Judge of Ages will give us anything for a copy of this vision file later. What should we ask of him?
3. Blind Reason, Rational Faith
Jupiter continued to speak, his voice remote and high as a storm cloud sailing along winter winds at midnight. “Photinus was a puppet of mine, a shell. Lemur was a human, but I scattered genetic codes prompting him and men like him throughout his generation to be prone to heresy and eager to rebel. His was merely the spark that happened to ignite the kindling I had so carefully prepared.
“It was many, many years of effort, because everything establishing the cliometric calculus of Tellus, of Cahetel, and of the Salamander had been directed to maintaining a starfaring civilization with a beam ready and able to decelerate the returning ship of Rania. There are certain equilibriums and basin attractors the cliometry has established which would resurrect the Guild even if it were dismantled, and those basin attractors had to be carefully avoided.
“It was delicate work, and it almost was successful, but the Tribulations distorted or falsified not just my cliometric plans, but everyone’s. The smokescreen of the Fox race introduced some event, perhaps even a random event, blind chance, which drove the course of history back into the basin, and the Guild is now in no danger of dissolution until the Sixty-ninth Millennium, long after they are no longer needed to ensure the return of Rania.
“The last thousand years of deceleration is something a small planet like Tellus could arrange, and with human-built equipment, funded by nothing other than idle philanthropists and history buffs and lady gossip columnists eager to see Rania and Montrose reunited.”
Norbert by that time had recovered his eyesight, but he still found himself blinking. Were these creatures debating plans about the Sixty-ninth Millennium? Events unfolding seventeen thousand years in the future? Roughly, the period of time separating the earliest of the Reindeer Hunting Men of the Last Ice Age, when the barbed arrowhead was the highest technology and deadliest weapon, from the Preposthuman Elders of the First Space Age, when the puny atom bomb was. The period was beyond the Fourth Sweep. If the Monument math predicted any further sweeps, Norbert was unaware of them. To him it was a mythical future time, as far off as the return of Rania and the Vindication of Man, or the degradation of Sol into a red giant star.
Jupiter said to Cazi, “To me, you are as small as a single cell in the bloodstream of one of my bloodhounds. But even a rabid dog is driven mad by what is at first but a single rabies virus. Nonetheless, I should thank you. It was Jupiter’s frustration with the madness of Tellus and the insanity of all the historical predictions going wrong that drove whole hierarchies and ecological layers of the Jupiter Noösphere into conforming to the basic Del Azarchel personality matrix. All the rest of my minds grew weary with being themselves, because they did not have my drive to solve problems, my raw will to overcome.