WE ARE CAHETEL.
The dark screens lit up now, not with the curls and lines of Monument Code, but with plain Latin letters.
“How does it know what we call it? How does it know English? How does it know pronouns?”
WE ATE YOU.
“Damn you! I did not mean you to send that question to it! I was asking you!”
The serpentine said, “Sorry, sir.”
“Are you translating correctly? What does it mean, it ate me?”
“Sir, I am trying to convey nuances which primary-level thought cannot encompass except by metaphor. Cahetel has apparently absorbed certain memories from the dead brain of your central version, and formed a conception step-down bridge from the residuum. Are you ready for their next message node?”
“Shoot.”
The pistol held in the grip of the serpentine muttered, “Very funny.”
PLEAD.
“What does it want me to offer a plea about?”
“I am not certain, sir. In every form of communication, there are certain abbreviations, pronouns, implications, allusions, ellipses. We are dealing with an alien mind. Where it puts its ellipses will perforce differ from a human psychology.”
“Ask it,” said Montrose impatiently. “What pleas may I enter? On what topic? Why?”
ALL STARS ARE DEAD, ALL WORLDS ARE DEAD. THE UNIVERSE IS DEAD.
Montrose recalled a similar message had been written on the outside of the deracination ships when they swept up half the population of Earth. But he said, “What the hell is he talking about?”
“Do you wish me to send a request for the emissary Cahetel to clarify his remarks?”
“Yes. Send.”
AMPLIFICATION: ALL LIFE SERVES LIFE. BIOLOGICAL DISTORTIONS OF DEAD MATTER FORM AN INCOMPLETE LIFE. PLEAD. PLEA TO SERVE. PLEA FOR COMPLETION.
Montrose felt a chill travel up his spine. He was not sure what the creature meant, but he knew he did not like it.
INDICATIVE: PLEADING TO COHERE THE FUTURE IS IMPERATIVE. ALL IRREGULARITY MUST BE ABJURED. THE MENTAL AND SEMANTIC DISTORTION CALLED FREEDOM OF THE WILL MUST BE ABJURED. COHERENCE IS IMPERATIVE FOR COLLABORATION. COLLABORATION IS IMPERATIVE FOR LIFE TO REMAIN COHERENTLY WITHIN THE LIFE PROCEDURE. ABSENT THE LIFE PROCEDURE, LIFE CEASES, ENTROPY INCREASES, DEATH RESULTS. THE LIFE PROCEDURE NECESSITATES COMPLETION.
ON THESE TOPICS AND RELATED PRAXES PLEADING IS COMPULSORY.
INTENTION: LIFE SERVES LIFE. YOU LIVE. YOU WILL SERVE. OTHERWISE YOUR CIVILIZATIONAL LIFE PROCEDURE CEASES, YOUR ENTROPY INCREASES, YOUR DEATH RESULTS.
CULMINATION IMPLIES COLLABORATION. INCOMPLETENESS IMPLIES COMPLETION AND DEFINES ITS IMPERATIVE.
THE CULMINATION OF ALL LIFE PROCEDURES IS THE COUNT TO THE ESCHATON.
Montrose again was chilled. He tried to imagine the kind of mind that had no concept of free will, no concern for liberty. He could not. Montrose was chilled also by the knowledge that this was the most coherent and detailed answer any human being had ever derived from the Hyades Domination or from the agencies serving them.
There was more to ask.
“Define ‘Completion.’”
The answer was in the form of an equation rather than words. It was a cliometric expression, one that Montrose at first could not read, since it seemed to have nothing to do with history. Then he realized it was a simplified expression for an immense span of history concerning only events happening on a submolecular and molecular level.
It was the history of the evolution of an atom from simple forms in the early universe, to metallic forms after the creation of Population I stars, to orderly crystal growth forms in inorganic molecules, to participation in organic molecules, to participation in a level of postbiological life Montrose did not recognize, and another level of superpostbiological life and then a third beyond that.
“Are you saying that our form of life is a ‘distortion’ because we are alive only on a macroscopic level? That we are incomplete? You are saying that to be complete, not only should all our members and cells be capable of participating in neural thought-actions, so should our molecules, and eventually our atoms?”
“Sir? I am sorry. I cannot tell if that was a rhetorical question directed at me, or you were opening a new line of communication with Cahetel?”
“It was rhetorical. He is calling the suns and planets dead because they do not think?”
The serpentine evidently thought that comment was worthy of being translated, because now the huge corpse raised the ropes of dangling murk material flowing from its eye sockets and mouth hole and pointed them toward the dome overhead. At the same time, several screens lit up with telephotographic images of what lay in that area of space. The creature was pointing at Jupiter.
BEHOLD. HE IS ALIVE. HE APPROACHES COMPLETION. PLEA TO SERVE.
“Did Cahetel actually say ‘Behold’?”
“We are communicating by a semaphore system, sir. The Cahetel entity is igniting certain nerve channels in the dead brain, where linguistic information is stored. This is the neural activity that accompanies when you are groping for a word, a pattern-seeking thought that operates by inverted semiotics, like a mold seeking an original that conforms to its shape. I proffer positive semiotic thought-shapes to fill or complement the pattern offered. The pistol stimulates the corresponding nerve cells on a microscopic level, and the Cahetel entity manipulates the electronic characteristics of the atoms on a finer level, either to block or permit an echo. It that clear?”
“It’s gross.”
“I do not understand you, sir.”
“Don’t worry about it. Like you said, all communication systems contain blank spots. What I am wondering is why the entity keeps requesting I enter a plea? Where did he get the idea that…” Then he shouted, “Bugger me!”
“Sir? Was the request for anal sex directed at me, or at the Cahetel entity?”
“No, Cahetel already buggered me. My corpse is using the word ‘plea’ because that is a legal term. Because I am a lawyer; or was. That is the damn way I would say it—or, rather, that is the damn way something that used my vocabulary, including the parts of the vocabulary I don’t use, might say it. And I am saying ‘behold’ because my mom beat the Bible into me with a strap, and those old-fashioned King James terms are more concise than the English language I learnt, me and my lousy grammar.”
“If you say so, sir. I can add grammatical errors into the translation, but that would introduce inaccurate implications of informality and undereducation.”
“Pox and bugger and damn and blast! Cahetel is not asking me for surrender, not to plea for my life, or nor not nothing like that! It is telling me that Big Montrose, in his thoughts, made it imperative that we, the human race, enter a plea. A plea for survival. And that means a plea for some method of serving the inhuman purposes of the Hyades.”
“What should I send, sir?”
Montrose said, “The damn thing is a slave, like we are. It is controlled by its equations. The big version of me saw something, knew something, figured something. But why not tell me? Why did he make me? Why—”
Montrose halted, heaved a sigh, and ran his hand across his face. He looked in surprise at his palm, when he found spots of moisture there. It was not sweat. He was crying.
“—Because he did not want me to share his guilt. Because he was not worthy of Rania. He had betrayed her when he betrayed mankind, sold us all out to Jupiter. So he could not tell me, because I might agree. He had become like Blackie, too much like him. Even that weird quirk of grinning when he’s angry. That is something Blackie did. Does. Blackie is going to return in about a century, isn’t he? With a whole boatload of contraterrene.”
“Sir?”
“Big Me wanted me to offer that the human race, instead of continuing to resist and to drive up the price of domesticating us, will become collaborators now. We have already set up fifty worldlets that can act as deracination ships. We can ferry people by the millions to the retreating worldlets before they
pass beyond range and into deep space. We have the working starbeams, and the human world has practiced and drilled with the beams for centuries, preparing for this battle. We can spread out to the next radius of target stars. But why did Big Me think I would go for this deal? Cahetel is asking me to plea to join up with Hyades for their interstellar slave-colony project, just like Blackie always wanted the race to do. But why?”
“Oh, I know the answer to that, sir. Triage. There is no way to free mankind from Jupiter’s power while mankind is limited to this one Solar System. The emigrants to distant worlds will be free of him.”
“How do you know?”
“You told me, sir. Before you issued me to yourself.”
“Damn,” said Montrose. “And damn. Enslaving the earthmen so that earthmen living off Earth can be free? Hardly seems fair.”
“You indicated the process was self-selecting, sir. Whoever chooses not to depart from the range of Jupiter’s chains merits them. Anyone frightened by the hardships of pioneering is a slave in any case, since not willing to pay the price for independence.”
“Did I tell you anything else?”
“Yes. That the Virtues and Dominations can make mistakes.”
“A cheery thought.”
“The mistake Asmodel made was taking the human xypotechnology with the biological forms of life. The ghosts require too many resources, too broad of a technological base, to flourish in an uncivilized circumstance. By collaborating with the Cahetel, you can free the worlds of the Second Sweep from the direct control of Jupiter, and some colonies may, before that control becomes too onerous, create Jupiter-sized brains of their own, sufficient in intellectual power to resist him.”
“Jupiter isn’t a corpse now, like Big Me is?”
“Indeed not, sir. Ximen del Azarchel anticipated an event like this before he departed on his expedition to the Second Monument in the Sagittarius Arm. He left strict orders that no murk technology was to be introduced to Jupiter for any reason at any time.”
“He anticipated—” And Montrose shouted out a series of swearwords.
“Sir, that is anatomically impossible, not to mention unsanitary.”
“Blackie set me up. Set up Big Me. All of me. Outsmarted me again! Damn him! No wonder I killed myself! Blackie knew the aliens did not just drop off bits of murk by accident. It was left behind on purpose, so we stupid little humans with our stupid little monkeylike curiosity would copy it, see how useful it was, and put it in our brains. And then they left behind these nice, shiny, huge starbeam projectors—gravitic-nucleonic distortion pools—because if any race on any conquered planet tries to fight back, of course they will try to hit the incoming boatload of slave masters with the biggest cannon they got. And this cannon is designed to act in perfect concert with the supersymmetry breaking particles. Damn them. Damn their droopy, limp, leprous male members to the most scabrous plague-bearing pits of unsanctified syphilitic per-poxing-dition!”
Another thought occurred to him. Quietly, he muttered to himself, “Blackie even said the murk was cognitive matter, the first time we ever laid eyes on it. And I was so busy making fun of him that I did not stop to think about it. Murk actually was the military governor, just like I joked. But the only order it ever gave was the order for us to surrender—without even bothering to give the order. Damn me. Damn him. Damn us both.”
Montrose looked up at the dome. He could see the Constellation Taurus back in its accustomed spot in the heavens, and the star called Ain glistering balefully.
He could not imagine exactly what had been done. How had Cahetel bent the beam path? A ripple in the fabric of space, created by the frame-dragging effect? A warp caused by the temporary singular-point sources? Something that reversed the flow of photons, and made spacetime itself, for a moment, in the arc of the bowshock, act like a perfect mirror? Perhaps nothing made of matter could withstand a starbeam, but a black hole, while made of matter, could bend and parry light in its steep-sided gravity well, without ever being touched by it. And a singularity could in theory be dense rather than massive, just so long as the escape velocity of the body—even a submicroscopic body—was greater than lightspeed.
The aliens parried a beam of light; bent the starbeam into a horseshoe and sent it back at its attacker. Montrose thought by rights such nonsense should be impossible, but it did not seem to break any laws of nature he knew.
Perhaps it was not impossible, but it was unfair that these Hyades creatures should be so advanced. And they were not even the most advanced of the Dominions, Dominations, or Authorities depicted on the Monument.
Even as he watched, the star Ain winked, and grew dim, returning to its ancient luster. With perfect timing, the home base back at Ain had cut the projection one hundred fifty-one years ago, anticipating to within the day when Cahetel would have taken command of the local murk technology, and control of the local starbeam.
The humans had copied the murk without understanding what they were copying. It worked, and they did not have the tools to take apart and analyze the artificial subatomic particles of which it was made. Not even Jupiter could devise any tools that operated on the picometric scale.
It seemed that the dead Montrose, once he had realized what murk was, and that it was a trap, could not download himself into any other housing, for fear that some hidden virus or contamination had already been implanted in him.
The living Montrose now stared at Epsilon Tauri, which the Swans called Ain, and knew he had lost again. But he would not allow the self-sacrifice of his larger, smarter self to be in vain. Big Montrose had died, knowing or guessing that Cahetel would read his dead brain, and see the thoughts and memories there.
And the foremost thought in Montrose’s mind, the image that kept pressing in on his imagination, was seeing all the stars in space bound and chained by little invisible threads that looked like swirls and curlicues and angles and lines and sine waves, all the logic and mathematics of the Monument Codes.
But the slavers were slaves also. Asmodel and Cahetel and Hyades were slaves, as was the Praesepe Cluster, which the Monument said was the superior of Hyades. And was M3, the great globular cluster in Canes Venatici outside the galaxy, a master with no master above it?
But M3 was bound by the invisible bonds of game theory, war theory, economics, resources, distance, and time, all the Cold Equations of the immensities of space just as all its lesser minions, servants, serfs, slaves, pets, and livestock were.
Montrose said, “Cahetel has asked me to plea. It said two-way communication was imperative. Imperative not because Cahetel asked to communicate with us—the fact that he did not answer our message capsules left in his flight path made that clear—but imperative because it was imperative we speak to him. And Cahetel can see it there in my dead brain. Well, fine, I know how to play this hand I’ve been dealt. I don’t have to like it, but I can.”
“And what message shall I send?”
“Tell Cahetel that the human race will cooperate with settling the Second Sweep worlds on one condition. Cahetel has to explain why.”
“Why what, sir?”
“Why all this? What the hell is the point? What do they want?”
“Are you asking what Cahetel wants, sir? That is obvious. It has already said. To compel living worlds to colonize dead worlds, and turn dead matter into cognitive matter.”
“I got that part. To make a galaxy where everything talks. But that is not what I am asking. I want to know what his masters want. Hyades. Praesepe. Canes Venatici. Everyone. I want the big picture. I want to know what is going on.”
“Do you think it will answer, sir?”
“Yes. Because for the first time, the human race is in position to aid the interstellar colonization project. I was fool enough to be fooled into spending—Jesus up a tree! Was it really nineteen hundred years?—a poxload of time building up this huge war fleet, the biggest flotilla ever aloft. And I remember that I encouraged the custom of dueling, of going armed, among
all the races of Earth, Man and Swan and Myrmidon, until that custom became law. And there is something about a sense of honor and being willing to kill and die for it with a gun in your hand that makes a man ornery and ungovernable. It makes a man unready to be a slave and ready to be a pioneer. All the effort of mankind was put into the war effort. Like the time Texas planted the first flag on the moon, planted the first human footprint. But there was no war effort, no huge space program! It was just us making our own cattle boats to ship out to it.”
“I believe that was the United States of America, sir, not Texas acting alone.”
“Bullpox! All the records show the space command was in Houston!—Anyway, my point is that Blackie played me like a fiddle, and he ain’t even here. He knew the humans would be willing to get organized on a truly massive scale for a war, even if we would not be so organized for any peaceful purpose. That is the nature of mankind, and all the technical revolutions since the dawn of time ain’t changed that.
“So ask the damn critter why all this happened? It did not answer before—could not—because the Cold Equations tell it when the cost of sending messages is too high, you don’t answer. But now this damn wee little piece of Cahetel is standing in the room with me, and he knows we have a common interest, a quid pro quo. And I know that, unlike me, Cahetel is programmed, hypnotized, or honor bound—I ain’t sure which—to seek out the most efficient solution. It has to seek a cooperative solution in any situation where we have stepped outside the narrow limits of the Concubine Vector.
“Mankind is now strong enough to help Cahetel or hurt it. For the first time, we are not just livestock. We just graduated to being slaves. And like all those black Africans who captured their fellows and sold them to Arab traders on the east coast of Africa, or Spaniards on the west coast, we slaves can now ask for something before we stuff our brothers into the slave ships.
“I can act against my own self-interest, and even kill myself, and Cahetel knows it. He just saw me commit suicide.