Free The Architect of Aeons by John C. Wright Page A

them to retreat into various psychological deliriums and defense mechanisms. It renders them unproductive.”
    Montrose said to Del Azarchel, “So which is it? Are we victors? Or are we all slaves? Are the Hyades going to return, or is this the last of them forever? The Nymph says one thing and the Witch says the other.”
    Del Azarchel said, “How would the loyal hound know whether his master were bond or free, vassal or liege? He is beaten when bad just the same, and he obeys his master’s voice. How much less know the sheep the hound watches?”
    Montrose said, “Listen, lady. We was invited to your nice, cold, messed-up poxilicious world here because your local cliometric mugwumps want us to stop mucking with your history, right? So you want me and Blackie to suck lip and make nicey-nice, right?”
    She nodded pensively. “That is not precisely the way I’d phrase it—”
    â€œNo,” murmured Del Azarchel. “You would use real words.”
    â€œWell, we ain’t burying the hatchet, him and me, unless we know what is what and wherefore is whereabouts, savvy? One person says the aliens were victorious and left, and another says the aliens were defeated and left. We want to know why they came. What the hell did they write on the moon? Someone must have spoken to them. Who?”
    She looked thoughtful for a moment, touching her red amulet lightly. Montrose realized she was making a phone call, thinking to her radio, or raiding some sort of database or subconscious level of her mind. Then Zoraida said, “No one of the Second Comprehension can answer such questions.”
    â€œSomeone on this globe must know!” thundered Del Azarchel.
    Zoraida bowed again, and with a gesture even more stiff and formal than before, said, “I take you now to one who no doubt does.”
    4. The Third Comprehension
    They entered the ship’s cabin. The light from three large transparent windows built into the translucent stern of the ship filled a chamber made of diamond and paneled with silver. In the center of the cabin was a shallow pond. It was filled with a luminous substance the consistency of milk, swimming with sparks and motes and streaming scarves of light. Whether this was technology or biotechnology, Montrose could not say.
    Seated on a large lotus leaf floating in the center of the crystal pond was a slender manlike shape in a serene posture. The face was stylized, as perfectly white and fine-pored as porcelain, sharp of chin, with long, narrow, slanted eyes, high cheekbones, and oddly long-lobed ears. The mouth was wide but thin, nearly lipless, and never moved from a horizontal line. The hairs of his head were neural antennae, countless in number, and his hair swayed like the hair of a mermaid.
    Two wings like the wings of an albino peacock, each feather bright with an eye, mantled his shoulders; two others girded his waist like a cincture, forming a living skirt or toga; two final wings curved from his spine and covered his feet as if a glittering white blanket.
    Montrose noticed that none of the hundreds of eyes dotting the wings were looking at them. He said, “This is an element of the planetary mind, ain’t it? Just a flesh puppet run by the giant nanotech brain what I had fill up the nickel-iron core of the planet. But I thought the Virtue erased the core mind?”
    Zoraida said, “This is not the Potentate itself. As you deduced, the core mind was damaged during the war. The Swan is in the No ö sphere but not of it. His mind is not mingled with the damaged core mind of Tellus.”
    Montrose was staring at the winged and meditating figure in the center of the chamber pool. “I assume if we plug our brains into a nerve jack, and become part of the No ö sphere, the No ö sphere will become aware of us?”
    Zoraida turned toward Montrose. “That was needed in the early days. The Swan occupies an ambiguous and intermediary