“Next, Asmodel inscribed the runes onto the moon. We cannot read the message. It is akin to the Monument notation, but a more complicated recursive version, as calculus would be compared to arithmetic. If it is their intelligence test, we have failed it.
“Then the Virtue lowered fourteen skyhooks from orbit to the surface, and both those who wanted to continue the fight and those who were eager to surrender were swept up.
“The black liquid flowed from the base of the great towers who walked, surrounded by storm clouds, across the face of the earth, and burrowing down into the tunnels leading to the buried cities, tearing roofs open to wild blue sky.
“By certain signs painted in the heavens, Asmodel showed to all parts of the globe the numbers of population needed. Those who wished to end the agony of Earth fled toward the moving mouths of the skyhooks—we could not see and stop them! The Second Humans were blinded by the madness of Montrose, and stood helpless as the millions rushed toward slavery and death!
“We do not regard you humans of lesser intellect to be pets. You were our children. With minds like ours, we could remember and cherish every nuance of personality, we understood you so much better than you understand yourselves! But when you unplug from the Noösphere, and seek isolation, you turn into a phantasm and fade like a shadow. We are not sure who of our beloved children tarry on the globe, and who were turned to black ice and taken up the towers into darkness.
“Those who fled away from the skyhooks vowed horrible vows of retaliation, ants from trampled anthills cursing mastodons. Those vows still live. In fury our children who linger here on Earth tear at each other: we are aware of the wars they fight, but the legal nicety of the phantasm protocol renders us unable to interfere. Perhaps that is best, because otherwise we would apply the stern correction as the wrathful gods once did who sank Atlantis or burned Sodom and Gomorrah.
“Decades were spent by Asmodel in consuming the billions of Earth. Children were born and raised in the shadow of topless towers, the rivers running black with murk, and knew no other world. Can you gentlemen contemplate the numbers involved in planetary colonization? We estimate that between a half to two-thirds of the world population was taken.
“One day, the skyhooks rose into space. As they rose, they rebuilt themselves to assume the form of vast lightsailing vessels of design so perfect, solutions of engineering so elegant, that only nature’s hand who made the butterfly and the ostrich, the stallion and the hippopotamus could possibly compare, or the design of the seashell, or the perfection of the rose.
“The sun, tormented by the alien technology, now sent out her beams from certain points in the photosphere, permanent sunspots. Coherent light issues from those dark spots on the face of the sun and, undimmed by lightyears, establishes bridges of pure light across the wide interrupt of interstellar void. Away the vessels fled, softly as thistledowns on the breeze, as delicate as the petals of the cherry blossom trees when they fall after so brief a bloom.
“We lost more people than the Black Plague lost out of Europe. Earth is empty, and there are too few of us to maintain what we now have of civilization. We will fall back to the condition men lived in back when men were mortal, or fall back on atomic energy or powers even more primitive, or use calculation machines that are not self-correcting nor self-aware. The nightfall of barbarism is at hand.
“For the sake of honor, for the sake of sanity, I renounce it all.
“We have watched over the world and were found wanting; we fought and failed. We are not high enough to serve the Hyades even as beasts of burden. Half our globe was despoiled. No social order can survive in the face of such loss. I foresee lesser men shall strain with magnificent futility against the nightfall of all the lamps of civilized life, as one by one the candles die. But that struggle will never be mine. Except for lamentations, the race of the Swans is done.”
The creature folded his wings and closed his eyes, and breathed a sigh so broken that it brought a tear to the eye of Montrose, and a sneer to the lip of Del Azarchel. Silence for many minutes reigned.
8. Pride and Atonement
Then the Swan, myriad eyes still shut, said in a still, deep intonation: “If there is an atonement you wish to make for your crimes of unparalleled magnitude, genocide many times over, you who led the Hyades here or you who crippled our ability to drive them off, you must volunteer it. I am too proud to ask.”
Del Azarchel said, “We must apply to the Hyades for aid, beg them to return. Was any communication method discovered during the war years? If there was some signal…”
The Swan interrupted. “Are you blind as well as stupid? Hyades painted their message on the face of the moon, and none of us can read it. Interpret the Cenotaph.”
Del Azarchel looked startled, then angry. “That is not within my power!”
“Then slay yourself, for you are useless.” The Swan still had his head bowed, but he turned his face to one side as if wishing to spit out some bitter thing on his tongue.
Montrose, who greatly enjoyed hearing Del Azarchel belittled, now grinned his toothy grin and spoke up. “Hey, Mr. Swan? Sir? Maybe I can volunteer something? I would not mind helping out if there is anything I can do!”
The Swan said simply, “Release us from your curse. Break the phantasm barrier. Allow us to see our children.”
Montrose looked as a man who is dashed with cold water. Whatever sympathy he had for the Swan vanished. He snapped, “Pox on you! I cannot do that. It would make them less than slaves!”
The Swan’s eyes snapped open, blazing with high emotion, both the three in his face, and the scores adorning his wings. Montrose staggered back, squinting through his fingers at the superior being as if against a great light.
Quailing, he turned aside his gaze and saw Del Azarchel also flinching and squinting. This shocked him. Montrose would have sworn Del Azarchel man enough to spit in the eye of the Devil himself.
Their eyes met. Blackie gave Montrose a rueful shake of the head, a wry smile that was halfway a sneer, yet a smile of sour mutual understanding. Montrose saw they were both thinking the same thing: each was obscurely glad that the other man was not better able to stand in that terrible gaze of the winged being than he.
The creature’s voice filled the chamber like a pipe organ, and a dreadful music marched through the words.
“Unless the shadows of the future shown to us by the cliometric science of the Monument are changed, the human race will die in the Seventeenth Millennium. This is fifty-four thousand years before the earliest possible return date for the Princess Rania. You, little man, you will have failed in all you seek and dream, and everything for which you hope will be as dust and ashes in your mouth.”
The Swan allowed a bitter expression to darken his solemn, ascetic features. “Perhaps then you will know the grief you have bestowed on us, your children, the race you created and set free. We are free indeed; free to die.
“I tolerate no more. Depart from me, you wretches.”
And he closed his wings about his bowed head, and would say no more.
3
The Barefoot Moon
1. Maternity
Amphithöe led the two men to where a tent had been set up for them on deck. She bowed a deep bow, her pretty cheeks pink with shame. “Because we are unseen to the higher forms of intelligence connected to the Noösphere, our quarters, and, indeed, our lives, occupy the overlooked spaces of the civilization: the spandrels, so to speak.”