Leigh Kimmel’s Reviews > Count to Infinity > Status Update

The final duel having ended in tragedy, Pastor Reyes prepares to bury the remains, and is told that it is not necessary, that time and death are no more. Appendices dealing with history after the timeline given in The Judge of Ages. The Petty Sweep, the founding of the Tables of Stability.

The duel, so long postponed, ends in a way that echoes the Cold War strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction. You fight, and Everybody Loses. Now Pastor Reyes is left brokenhearted to somehow pick up the pieces.

The trial concludes. The Maiden decides to give Montrose, Ximen, and Rania the ultimate "I'm gonna kick you all the way to next Tuesday" -- they're sent forward to the end of time. Montrose awakens in what appears to be his old lair in the Crystal Palace of Cheyenne Mountain -- but the date readout on his coldsleep coffin reads "Eschaton." IOW, the End of All Things.

Montrose and Raina pilgrimage to Virgo for an audience with its Cherub, the Maiden. Passage through a region torn by war, the adoption of orphan motile planets that come to beg. And now they are at last in Virgo, and Montrose has been punished for telling off the Maiden in defense of his beloved Raina. Permanent erasure of the memory of his harsh words. They are on trial for lese majeste and insurrection.

Horrific vision of the destruction of the Local Group. Blackie used the Eschaton Engine as a weapon, determined to destroy any copy of Montrose that might be there. Montrose wants to kill him, both as justice for mass murder beyond imagination, and to protect the rest of the universe from this man's obsessive hatred. Rania believes she can reform him.

Sorting out Le Gentil, and tracing the transmission paths of the egocasts of Del Azarchel and Rania. Realizes that Blackie's been had. Montrose locates Rania's hiding place and creates a nuptial bower for their long-delayed wedding night. Shades of Adam and Eve in her re-bodying. Will it be the long-awaited moment -- there's still a lot of book left here.

The arrangements have been made for the marriage of Milky Way and Andromeda as equal spouses. Montrose is egocast to Le Gentil, a satellite galaxy of the new bi-galactic system, where he surprises the local security systems by taking over and fixing everything he can get to. In return, he just wants help finding Rania.

Andromeda reveals her reasons for the war -- and her reasons for capitulation. She's hoping to alter Milky Way's fundamental political and informational structure into a more centralized system, simply through what is necessary to assimilate the spoils. And she believes that it is necessary to operate an ancient devising that will save a portion of the universe by destroying the rest.

A sequence that reminds me of the part of EE Doc Smith's Spacehounds of IPC after they crash on Ganymede. Montrose single-handedly rebuilds technology from stone knives right up. Only in this case it was a test, to see if it was worthwhile for the Andromeda Mind to speak with him. Now to find out why Andromeda lost the War in Heaven.

The defeat of Andromeda, and the effort to reconstruct its Throne enough to understand how victory had been achieved by a loose Collaboration over a unified, centrally controlled Mindfulness. And the resurrection of Montrose and transmitting him there as an emissary.