The Architect of Aeons Read Online Free

able to take in the whole equation at a glance, but did not see the significance at first. He paused, divided his mind into several subsections working at different subjective speeds and organizing the information in different patterns and data-groupings before he saw the point. He rejoined his mind into one frame, and sent a low whistle of astonishment along the audio channel.
    Del Azarchel must have noticed the pause. “You could have asked.”
    â€œI like reckoning things out for myself. Besides, if we are both thinking what I’m thinking we’re thinking, that’s independent confirmation. You think the Potentate died, wiped clean by the electromagnetic pulse.”
    â€œCrippled rather than died, depending on electrically inert backups and failovers, but yes. And I think that such a pulse happened before the new orbit. We can reconstruct the order of events. The Hyades Virtue connected the Earth and sun with a flux tube. For what reason, I don’t know. That wiped the data out of the core mind. The whole mass of iron was aligned by the shock, and there was a line of plasma connecting the Earth to the sun. The Swans took advantage of it—I cannot tell if the flux tube lasted a second or lasted a decade—to maneuver the Earth into a new orbital inclination, at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic. Again, for what reason, I cannot fathom.”
    A flux tube was a cylindrical region of space where the magnetic field at the side surfaces is parallel to those surfaces. The sun had many such tubes rising from its surface and falling back again in vast arches, paths of least resistance followed by solar flares. Jupiter and Io were connected by a complex dance of flux tubes, carrying heavier and lighter cargoes of cold plasma, either buoyantly expanding away from the giant planet, or massively sinking toward its storm-filled atmosphere.
    Since Jupiter was Del Azarchel’s personal playground, the headquarters of the most massive project he, or any of the human race, had ever attempted, no doubt he was quicker to recognize the phenomena than Montrose.
    Montrose said, “If we hadn’t been kicked off the planet by the damnified critters we created…”
    â€œ You created.…”
    â€œâ€¦ that got created somehow-or-’nuther, we would have been here to see the shindig.”
    Del Azarchel sighed. “I am wondering where the aliens are. The Monument indicated that they were coming here to rule us. It would bring order and peace.”
    â€œPeaceful as a pigsty. Farmer makes sure his swine don’t fight each other. And all he asks in return is pork, bacon, and ham.”
    Del Azarchel said sardonically, “I can pick out human shapes occupying villages and towns, and the instruments show energy use along the seabeds, so the Melusine are not extinct. Our old friend the horse is still around, regrown from your Tomb archives. And … look at this image. Do you think it is a sporting event?”
    Montrose said, “War. Horse cavalry and Mastodon cavalry. Look at the line of organization: that is a posthuman general in charge, someone of our level of intelligence, but nothing as smart as a Melusine or a Swan, much less Potentate.”
    5. Battle in the 111th Century
    Across the mossy landscape of what had once been sea bottom, the battalions clashed. Soldiers garbed or painted all in green and gold, carrying an emblem of a balance scale, clashed with those in crimson, who fought beneath the sign of a winged hourglass.
    The heat was more than tropical, since steam arose from the moss at every footfall. The soldiers were a mix of human and artificial hominids from recent gene records, elephant-legged giants, half-animal Chimerae, dwarfish Locusts, and, from more ancient lines, Neanderthal troglodytes and nocturnal Cro-Magnon. The soldiers of all subspecies wore glass helmets and armor made of prismatic diamond glitter, and fought with energy rays,