He noticed each man here was wearing a heavy armband of red metal, that same metal Montrose was sure had come from the machine shop aboard the Hermetic. From the way three or four of the men had inflammation and swelling on their wrists and forearms, Montrose realized these armbands were bioprosthetics: from the way the skin was pinched, he deduced that there must be more than one large intravenous needle or nerve-jack reaching from the inside of the armband into the inside of the arm.
The thick red bracelets could be medical appliances. The Hermeticists did not look like a healthy group.
There were three ancient figures near Montrose who turned and ambled toward him with a nightmarish slowness.
For one moment, they looked like crooked old men, murderers, mutineers, perpetrators of war crimes, and strangers. Then, suddenly, even though nothing changed, in the next moment, they were crewmen he had trained with, old drinking buddies, old friends.
Yes, he knew them.
The first was lean and lean-cheeked Narcís D’Aragó, thin as a rail and straight as a rapier, his hair little more than a hint of gray scruff above his ears. A saber with an insulated hilt, probably an electrified weapon, hung in a scabbard at his side. He still walked with a military posture, but he was a skeleton of his former self.
Next to him was Melchor de Ulloa, rheumy-eyed, with a wild thatch of white hair jutting from his skull in every direction. His spine was crooked, footsteps uncertain, the fingers of his blue-veined hands twitched and trembled. Melchor de Ulloa, who had been such a figure of romance among the ladies, now displayed his good looks lost beneath a wrinkled mask. He wore a medallion at his neck from some cult Montrose did not recognize: a circle inscribing what might have been a three-legged lambda, or else a chicken’s foot.
With them was Sarmento i Illa d’Or. The muscular, slablike body Menelaus remembered had all turned to doughy fat, his mouth surrounded by a tiny fringe of beard and moustache, white as snow.
In Space Camp, and aboard the satellite before boarding the Hermetic, these men, together with Del Azarchel, had formed the younger clique among the mathematicians of the expedition. They had been about Montrose’s age: the child prodigies. The young bloods. To see them now, wrinkled and thin or else stooped with years or sagging with fat, old as grandfathers, was quite a shock.
The final man of the clique had not come forward because he was parked near the huge table. Father Reyes y Pastor, like Del Azarchel, was wheelchair-bound. He was a splash of red in the dark room of dark-garbed men, for he wore his Cardinal’s robes, a ferraiuolo (a formal priest’s cloak), and biretta (a cap looking like a folded candy box with a puff atop it). Perhaps he took his uniform as a star-voyager and world-ruler to be less significant than his uniform as a Churchman. Or perhaps not, since the thick red amulet of the Hermeticists weighed on his wrist. Father Reyes y Pastor looked like a withered mummy, propped up in a wheelchair too big for him.
Montrose thought these three ancient figures were coming forward to greet him, but no. Melchor de Ulloa ignored Menelaus Montrose as if the other were a wax dummy, and spoke to Sarmento i Illa d’Or: “Glad this one’s finally here. A basic strategy of approach to the problem of forced evolution we’ve agreed beforehand, but the tactics will depend on what Crewman Fifty-One can tell us of the message details.”
With this, he reached out, and, as if Menelaus were a small child, took his hand and pulled on it, turning as if he expected Menelaus to follow him docilely.
Meanwhile Narcís D’Aragó stepped past Montrose and inspected a panel of read-outs bolted to the doorframe. “Scan shows no tattletales. We are secure.”
Menelaus yanked his hand out of de Ulloa’s grip. “What the pox?”
Sarmento i Illa d’Or was staring at Montrose, and his large, dark eyes in his baby-round face were cold and piercing. “We are not secure. This is the other one, isn’t it?”
Melchor de Ulloa now started and turned to look at Montrose as if Montrose had just materialized out of invisibility. “Learned Montrose! Is that really you?”
Montrose turned to Sarmento i Illa d’Or. “The other one what?”
Melchor de Ulloa gave an uneasy laugh. “Come, is this any way to greet old friends from old centuries? Good afternoon, Learned Montrose!”
Montrose spoke without turning his head. “G’daftanoon, gents—” His eyes never left Sarmento. “—the other one what?”
Sarmento i Illa d’Or uttered a noise like a dog’s bark, which may have been a sardonic laugh. “The one who does not bite fingers.”
Melchor de Ulloa stepped between the two, taking up Montrose’s hand once more, but this time to give it a vigorous shaking. He spoke slightly too loudly. “We have always felt you were something like our good luck charm, Learned Montrose. Agreed, you were in slumber during the days of tedium and terror, but the thought of you, ageless, in the coffin of your own devising—a martyr to science, no? The bravest of all of us, willing to risk everything!”
“Learned? What’s wrong with doctor? We all have doctorates.”
“It is an earthly title, fit only to represent earthly knowledge,” said Melchor de Ulloa, still shaking hands vigorously.
Montrose gripped the other man’s hand tightly, to stop it from moving. He tapped the heavy metal armlet with a fingernail. “What is this? A medical appliance? When did it become part of the uniform?” He felt the substance: not ordinary metal.
Melchor de Ulloa looked startled. “I would have thought Del Azarchel would have explained it by now! We have one prepared for you, of course, but—you are so young. What need have you to hide your years?”
Sarmento i Illa d’Or stepped forward, belly first, huge and black as a thundercloud in his silks, and Melchor de Ulloa moved aside for the big man. “Tell him nothing yet. I am not convinced of his fealty.”
From where he was seated several yards away, the priest, Reyes y Pastor, spoke up, pitching his voice to carry. “Learned Montrose has always been unstable. Why should today be unlike any other day? Besides, the decision rests with our Master of Arms, Learned D’Aragó.”
That was Narcís D’Aragó, who had been Master of Arms during the expedition as well. The thin, bald old soldier stepped forward, glaring. “With no ability to predict how the memory membrane operates across different intellectual topographies, we cannot say whether he knows more about us than we do. But I see no risk nonetheless. Is anything gained by continuing the masquerade inside? Is Montrose not a member? We have to show him sometime. Can we call the Conclave to order, so I can secure the hatch?”
The question was evidently directed toward Reyes y Pastor. “Not yet. The Senior member of the Landing Party is not arrived. But will you clear the Learned Montrose? Learned Del Azarchel has vouched for him in a private communication to me. Should we hold a formal vote, Learned i Illa d’Or?
Sarmento i Illa d’Or scowled so that his jowls bunched with displeasure. “Phaugh! I withdraw my objection!”
Montrose said, “What’s going on here?”
Reyes y Pastor raised both hands, touched his red armband, and worked some unseen control. The others in the chamber all copied the gesture, solemnly, all arms moving in unison, like a salute.
Reyes y Pastor answered him, “We meet in the Conclave to establish the destiny of the human race. We have the tools to shape the evolution of Mankind into higher forms: and since the Hyades will send emissaries to bind our remote descendants, we now have the necessity. And do not doubt we have the power. There are many mysteries our order learned in the deep of outer space we thought not fit to share with the base stock of Man.”
As he spoke, his voice changed, growing deeper and stronger. By the time he had done speaking, Reyes y Pastor had stood from his wheelchair on legs now perfectly whole. Dark color flushed through his hair. His skin was red, and his veins were visible, pulsing, and when the odd blush passed, his flesh was young, unwrinkled, without liver spots, moles, or marks. Age fell from him like a dropped cloak. His flesh was now plump and pink; a mummy no longer, he rose to his feet, kicking aside, as a discarded prop, his wheelchair.