The Grand Conjunction: Astropolis (Astropolis Series)

216 Pages·2009·0.91 MB·English

by  Sean Williams

The Grand Conjunction
Sean Williams
Penguin Group USA
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over
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ASTROPOLIS: THE GRAND CONJUNCTION

An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Ace mass-market edition / May 2009
Copyright © 2009 by Sean Williams.

All rights reserved.
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375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
eISBN : 978-1-101-04508-4
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Praise for the Astropolis series
Earth Ascendant
“Fans of hard sci-fi will love this look at a far-future society where nearly anything is possible . . . Within
the framework of technology and intrigue live individuals who are still quite human and familiar. Read it
for [the] technology, read it for the politics, read it for the space opera; no matter how you approach it,
it’s an entertaining ride.”
—CA Reviews
“Sean wastes no time introducing the reader back into the fray of his Astropolis universe, [which] was
begun with such skill in Saturn Returns . . . With answers to unanswered questions coming thick and
fast, Earth Ascendant is a remarkably good ride. The prose is how first-rate space opera should be:
lyrical, philosophical, and poetic. It does the job of putting things into perspective regarding our own
earthen empire and how religions can manifest and evolve. Truly unexpected villains greet us toward the
conclusion as the story runs riot with doppelgängers, parasites, and a broken higher intelligence. The third
in the series, The Grand Conjunction, promises to be an epic thrill ride tapering off a remarkable
journey that might well be the author’s greatest achievement.”

—HorrorScope
Saturn Returns
“Action-packed SF that has a good deal of wry wit and a desire to innovate . . . an intriguing mix of
balls-out space opera and head-spinning conspiracies that take in not only the end of civilization but also
the nature of the self . . . The action sequences are exciting to read, and the book’s pace accelerates
toward the end, leaving you eager to find out what happens next in this projected three-book series . . .
well written, exciting, and surprisingly smart . . . Saturn Returns is a great little book, and I honestly look
forward to the rest of the series.”
—SF Diplomat
“Williams renders the passage of eons, and the rise and fall of civilizations, with cosmic poignancy.”
—The Guardian (UK)
“Features a busy far-future (some 870,000 years ahead); a mysterious, memory-damaged, morally
ambiguous but militarily potent hero; even more mysterious masked opponents; a gang of companions
evincing varying degrees of loyalty, sympathy, and resentment; wildly various, extra-large-scale,
magical-technology-filled environments; murky pasts, secret histories, hidden agendas, sudden reversals,
murky and shifting alliances; plus the usual amusements of chases, captures, escapes, kidnappings,
rescues, befriendings, betrayals, and blowing stuff up.”
—Locus
“The first in a promising new series from one of the few writers still producing consistently excellent space
opera.”
—Don D’Ammassa,
author of Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction
“Sean Williams entertains his readers . . . This is space opera at its very best with its exciting scenes and
the descriptions of a puzzle that destroyed the structure of the known universe. Readers will like Imre, a
combination of a hard and vulnerable person.”
—Alternative Worlds
“Here’s a space opera that spans the breadth of the Milky Way galaxy while it focuses on the similarly
extant breadth of the internal spaces of humanity that make identity . . . Williams knows how to intrigue
and maintains it throughout the novel by answering some questions but opening up bigger questions as the
plot unfolds.”
—AntipodeanSF
“Well written . . . a fast, thrilling, fun read that will give you a few things to think about too.”
—The Bookbag
Praise for the novels of Sean Williams
“Splendid fun, brimming with heroes, villains, chicanery, neat imaginative details, some seriously cool
space battles, and one of the most mind-twisting alien artifacts ever imagined.”

—Alastair Reynolds, author of The Prefect
“Thoughtful and imaginative . . . superb.”
—Library Journal
“One of the best writers of future noir thrillers around.”
—Emerald City
“Convincingly realized . . . The vigorous narrative whiz[zes] along at hyperspeed.”

—Kirkus Reviews
“Pure space opera with intriguing speculation.”
—VOYA
“Expertly twists the familiar into the grotesque . . . deeply spooky.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A dark and compelling tale.”
—Fiona McIntosh,

author of Royal Exile
“Compulsively readable, utterly enthralling, seriously disturbing. One of the best fantasy novels I’ve read
in a long, long time.”
—Sara Douglass,
author of The Twisted Citadel
“A master storyteller . . . a celebration of his wild talent.”
—Jack Dann,
Nebula and World Fantasy award-winning author
“One of the brightest new-generation Aussie SF stars.”
—Damien Broderick,

award-winning author of K-Machines
“Magically prefigures those childhood terrors of tomorrow . . . a police procedural that is unblinking,
noirish, and gnawingly compelling.”
—Scott Westerfeld,
author of Extras
“Sean Williams is one of the most successful and amazingly prolific science fiction and fantasy writers.”
—Stephen Dedman,
author of A Fistful of Data
“An unusually fine storyteller . . . phenomenally prolific.”
—Dave Wolverton,

author of Jedi Apprentice: The Rising Force
Ace books by Sean Williams
SATURN RETURNS
EARTH ASCENDANT
THE GRAND CONJUNCTION

With Shane Dix

THE PRODIGAL SUN
THE DYING LIGHT
A DARK IMBALANCE

ECHOES OF EARTH
ORPHANS OF EARTH
HEIRS OF EARTH

GEODESICA: ASCENT
GEODESICA: DESCENT
For the real Mr. Webb, with real thanks

For my ways are strange ways and new ways and old ways,
And deep ways and steep ways and high ways and low;
I’m at home and at ease on a track that I know not,
And restless and lost on a road that I know.

—Henry Lawson, “The Wander-Light”
All quotes attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson are taken from
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886).
Once every twenty years or so, Saturn and Jupiter form a Grand Conjunction in the Earth’s night sky. To
astrologers, this symbolic union is one of great dynamic tension, heralding upheaval in both secular and
religious circles. Seven US presidents were born under a Grand Conjunction. All died while in office.

The Muslim philosopher Albumasar believed that such conjunctions usher in prophets and new religious
understanding, such as that wrought by the reformer Martin Luther, whose birth is associated with the
Grand Conjunction of 1484.

Roger Bacon and Pierre d’Ailly went further, proposing that the world’s last prophet would appear with
a conjunction between Jupiter and the moon.
Such an alignment would bring together elements of opportunistic expansion, the unconscious, justice, the
past, and the hunt.

Many believe that this last prophet will be a false one, the Antichrist, and that the peace he brings will be
but a precursor to the final war.
METAPSYCHOSES
When does recollection become history, memoir biography, and a name just words in a dead language?
Imre Bergamasc is a man widely known for changing his mind. As a mercenary in the Corps, he served
his masters faithfully and well—until he turned on them, perceiving in their desire for long-term stability
that the Forts were overreaching their responsibilities toward “lesser” forms of humanity. The bitter and
bloody conflict that followed, known later in the galaxy-spanning Continuum as the Mad Times, was a
bold gesture, perhaps even noble, but there could be only one winner. Imre’s surrender sealed the fate of
his revolution. His subsequent disappearance came as no surprise to many.
Few knew that he had entered into a pact with his former masters, a pact aligning his interests with theirs
through a project called Domgard. Its purpose was kept from the majority of humanity; only Forts could
be trusted with the secret. Imre Bergamasc became, therefore, identical to those he had spent 172,000
years fighting.
As part of their Graduations, Forts commonly adopted a new name, one based on the old but with
multiple layers of meaning. Forts are wordsmiths as well as worldsmiths. Imre Bergamasc took over half
a million years to choose his new name, but choose it he did. That name is presently known only to him.
The art of changing one’s mind, like much in life, is easy to learn but hard to master. Imre Bergamasc
attempted to preserve his reputation by systematically erasing or altering all records that might reveal the
truth of his betrayal. Such records included the testimony of his former friends and allies, those members
of the Corps who had faithfully served with him during the Mad Times and now regarded him as a traitor,
or at best inconstant. The records also included the comprehensive backups of his life scattered far and
wide across the galactic disk, from which a new version of himself could be created should some
disastrous fate befall the original.
Imre Bergamasc is a man determined to survive whatever fate throws at him. He is not, however,
omniscient. Even as he emerged once more into galactic society, apparently to resume his work as a
servant of the Forts, he left loose ends behind him. One concerned the only living man who knows the
truth of his betrayal. That man is the Old-Timer best known as Render, and he is the one man Imre can
never kill.
Another loose end would cause him considerable grief in times to come. Of the many backups destroyed
by Imre’s own hand, a single example survived complete destruction. The Drum was discovered as a
cloud of radioactive dust on the edge of the galaxy and reassembled by the group mind called the Jinc.
An obsessive cataloger of extragalactic material, within which it hopes to find the truth regarding
humanity’s creation, the Jinc re-created Imre Bergamasc from the ruins of the Drum—a version of him,
anyway, patched and imperfect, and briefly the wrong gender. It is difficult to say what went through his
mind during this difficult rebirth, but the experience marked him as a very different man from his original,
whom he ultimately rejected. Call this version of Imre Bergamasc Imre-Prime, not because he is in any
imaginable fashion more authentic than other iterations of himself, but because he later turned his back on
more advanced modes of being in order to appeal to the galaxy’s common denominator: Primes, those
multitudinous people most resembling our distant ancestors, the Old-Timers.
The template from which the Jinc “resurrected” Imre-Prime had been recorded by his original shortly
after the end of the Mad Times. Imre-Prime possessed, therefore, no memory of anything that had
transpired since then. He was unaware, for instance, that a weapon of considerable potency had recently
destroyed nearly every Fort in the galaxy. The Slow Wave radiated out from Spargamos, a small planet
near the galaxy’s core, cutting off the drone-like frags that were every Fort’s component parts. The only
Forts to survive the catastrophe were those linked by means other than loop shunts—advanced
technology that made the very existence of such galactic superminds possible, and which the Slow Wave
specifically targeted. Imagine a human brain with the axons removed, leaving individual neurons isolated:
such was the hammerblow to human cognition in the Milky Way. All advanced thought ceased. The great
work of humanity came to an abrupt halt.
Imre-Prime was also unaware that his Fort-self had (a) ever existed and (b) survived the Slow Wave.
(The Fort-self, of course, had contingencies in place—pockets of himself that operated without loop
shunts—because you can never be too prepared for disaster.) Components of Imre Bergamasc swarmed
across the galaxy in the wake of the Slow Wave, seeking by any means to reconnect and rebuild the
mind they were once part of. His priorities were, and remain, simple: the work of Domgard must
continue, and whoever destroyed the Forts must not be provoked to mount further attacks on what
remains of humanity. The long-term survival of the species is paramount.
By the time Imre-Prime escaped his Jinc creators and returned to the greater galaxy, several attempts to
re-create the Forts had been interrupted by Imre Bergamasc and his band of saboteur Barons, plus
another agency, the enigmatic Luminous, who manifested as swarms of silver spheres with lethal intent.
The Luminous communicate via loop shunts, the same technology targeted by the Slow Wave, suggesting
that they or their makers are responsible for the murder of the Forts. The two forces independently
ensured that humanity remained in a kind of Stone Age, lacking everything the Forts had once provided:
stability, unity, and the long view. Barons and Luminous coexist uneasily in the Milky Way, with
unthreatening humanity caught between them, but there have been no major flare-ups for half a million
years. The deadly phenomenon of the Slow Wave has never been repeated on such a large scale.
Imre-Prime, reunited with his former comrades, wasted no time returning to his correct gender and
mounting a campaign to restore order to the mess that had once been his home. The First Church of the
Return was his principal vehicle of reconstruction, with former lover and nominal ally Helwise
MacPhedron its high priest and he himself its figurehead, the First Prime. Together they fashioned a
Returned Continuum and brought a large percentage of the galaxy under Imre-Prime’s control.
He did his best to bring peace to the many ordinary humans of the galaxy, but a single Prime cannot
possibly manage such a complex beast. Unrest was widespread. After an attempted coup by the more
pragmatic Helwise, Imre-Prime abdicated, leaving his former bodyguard Emlee Copas in charge. To her
he bequeathed: full control of the galaxy; responsibility for his unwanted son, Ra MacPhedron; his allies
Render and Al Freer; and a considerable mess.
He could have managed his affairs more successfully had he not been distracted by other matters.
Immediately prior to the coup, Imre-Prime was taken to Spargamos to see the ruins of Domgard. There
he came face-to-face with his Fort-self, whom he had last encountered shortly after his “resurrection” by
the Jinc—once to be attacked, the second time to be warned away from anything to do with Domgard.
On Spargamos, Imre-Prime was used as bait to trigger a battle between the Luminous and the Barons, a
battle that served as a testing ground for new weaponry against the perpetrators of the Slow Wave.
Imre-Prime was shot by his own hand, by his Fort-self, who had no further use for him. And that
appeared to be the end of that.
Fortunately for Imre-Prime, death is not the absolute it used to be. Humanity is an infovore endlessly
chewing the vast cud of data it has accrued down the millennia. We cannot forget, and we cannot let go.
Baron spies in the Returned Continuum soon leaned that Imre-Prime had been resurrected from a
hardcast record by Emlee Copas and returned to Earth via surreptitious means. There, during the
attempted coup, Imre-Prime issued Executive Order KISMET, which resulted in the murder of every
iteration of Helwise MacPhedron in the galaxy. For once, his mind was made up.
There is little the Barons do not know about the galaxy’s would-be savior, although some details they
have discovered only after the fact. They have learned, for instance, that Imre-Prime governed the
Returned Continuum with the assistance of an advanced artificial intelligence, the Apparatus, and one sole
remaining Fort, MZ. Both beings were written directly onto the fabric of space-time—using an arcane
technology developed by the ancient minds of Earth, whose legacy Imre-Prime inherited. It was in the
belly of this virtual Fort that Imre traveled to and from Spargamos, taking both the Barons and the
Luminous by surprise.
The spies also learned that much of the unrest in the Returned Continuum was driven by a movement
associated with the Veil, an alien parasite that allows the expansion and transmission of biological
memory. They know that a former lover of Imre-Prime brought the Veil to Earth in the hope that he might
use its unifying influence to bring peace to his troubled realm. They suspect that a trace of Helwise
MacPhedron has survived in the Veil, and lurks there still, undetected by the Apparatus.
For all the Barons have learned, however, questions remain that they cannot answer. They do not know
how much Imre-Prime has learned about the purpose of Domgard. They do not know what took place
between Imre-Prime and the Luminous in the heart of Spargamos. They do not know where Imre-Prime
is.
Perhaps most perplexingly, they do not know why Imre-Prime changed his mind about ruling the galaxy.
Official histories fail to explain why a man who has successfully quelled rebellion among his own
ranks—and has in addition to that been offered an olive branch from the very forces threatening his
regime—would turn his back on everything he worked for. Rumors were rife at the time, but none has
withstood close scrutiny. It is possible that he realized the futility of his task and fled before the full
consequences of his hubris came to bear upon him. (Fear would be his motivator, in that case.) Perhaps
he felt regretful about Helwise’s betrayal and the revenge he took upon her. (Guilt, then, would guide him
into oblivion.) Another possibility is that he has struck a deal, such as the one his Fort-self made with the
Forts in the distant past, but this time with a power that has yet to reveal itself to the greater
galaxy—more hidden Forts, perhaps, or a consortium of Old-Timers who have realized the truth about
the fate awaiting us all. (Could hope possibly lie at the heart of his actions?)
Mercenary, Fort, First Prime, fugitive . . . No number of spies can tell us who Imre Bergamasc is now.
Once declared to be anything other than a decent man, he remains changeable, unpredictable, and
chaotic. That fatal flaw may yet be the undoing of all his plans. Until history has relegated him to the dusty
drawer of oblivion, until his name is forgotten along with all who knew him, and until his deeds become
mere footnotes in the vast list of humanity’s great works, he remains a threat to everyone, including
himself.
Imre Bergamasc is his own worst enemy.
The feeling, I suspect, is mutual.