The Architect of Aeons Read Online Free Page B

swift and practiced motions dismounted and gathered themselves out of the way, and carefully pulled aside walking watchtowers, electric fence posts, basins, and battleflags, so that the Swan would not trip on them.
    The warlords did not try to move their now-riderless beasts aside, and when the winged figure raised his hand as if in greeting, the horses broke their pickets and came to nuzzle him, and the mastodons danced with massive mirth for him, and writhed their trunks like comic pythons.
    The wings the posthuman wore were not just antennae: the Swan, done petting the beasts, now expanded the wing surface to many times its size, and rose rapidly from the point of rock, effortlessly as a thistledown rising. The surface of his body changed color as he entered thinner atmosphere, as if he had biotechnological mechanisms for adjusting to extremes.
    The face was becoming hardened and featureless in preparation for vacuum: a statue of diamond.
    6. Phantasms
    Del Azarchel took the time to draw up a detailed version of a sardonic expression to his face, exaggerating the twist of the lips and making the supercilious eyebrow arch higher than he could in real life lift it, before he passed it to Montrose on the visual channel.
    Montrose said, “Are you surprised? You were expecting that my phantasm system would be broken by now.”
    Del Azarchel said, “It has been half a millennium. One would think a superior brain would notice the gaps in the visual patterns, the unexplained shadows, the unexpected and indirect clues.”
    Montrose did not point out that Del Azarchel’s pet brain Exarchel had been inflicted with the same phantasm program for ten millennia, and never combined the tiny irregularities or indirect clues to deduce that he had a blind spot. Instead, he said only, “The more superior a brain is, the easier it is for it to fool itself, and explain things away.”
    â€œEvery corpse on the battlefield below there, his blood is on your hands. If the posthumans were allowed to tame the humans, war would be gone. I suppose your posthuman intellect can easily explain your guilt away, Cowhand?”
    â€œWell, I can explain your guilt to you. You thought your posthuman brain gives you the right to rule humans. But logically this means the higher powers from the stars have the right to rule you.”
    â€œI have never rebelled against them. There is a natural order to the cosmos, like a ladder. Everyone has his place.”
    â€œI have never submitted. I reckon that is my place in the natural order. As for my guilt; what guilt? I did not put a bullet in any of those corpses down yonder. All I did was cut off the bottom rung of your cosmic ladder. The rest of y’all on the up-high rungs can enslave each other to your heart’s content, but the humans at the bottom, I dealt out of the game. But I was as fooled as you, old pal. I thought the Hyades were coming to set up shop.”
    â€œAre you as curious as I, amigo ?”
    â€œThat I am, partner.”
    â€œThen our alliance and nonaggression pact continues?”
    â€œWe need proper seconds and judges and a right good footing with no shipside Coriolis effect to throw off my aim. You don’t even need to ask. I ain’t going to shoot you in the back, and I know you ain’t going to shoot me in the back. The survivor will have to live with himself until the end of time. Cause both of us stopped aging a while back, and neither of us ain’t planning to cash out our chips early on … Jesus H. Christ in a thorny hat!”
    â€œPlease don’t blaspheme,” said Del Azarchel, which surprised Montrose, even though it should not have. Hard to remember that Blackie took his religion seriously, or seemed to.
    â€œThat weren’t no blasphemery! That was a pestilential prayer of poxed thanksgiving ! I been hanging out with you too long, Blackie, that I almost forgot that I don’t believe nothing you say! You