Zoraida handed the dark amber to Menelaus, who inspected it in wonder, and handed it to Del Azarchel.
Menelaus said, “You said a few solid bits of that black murk was left behind. That’s all?”
Zoraida smiled. “I did not mean to imply that: I meant nonsolid bits were left in larger amounts. Your language is difficult for me, since my nervous system operates by different semiotics at the base level than yours. No, there are small pools and ponds of the substance in its liquid form, which to approach is death for Earthly organisms. And there are clouds. The weather control system of the Noösphere operates primarily by sending electron beams into the atmospheric murk clouds, so that their agitation will produce wind or heat along the desired vector.”
She pointed upward. “I do not know how good your senses are, My Lord, Your Honor, but the gray black cloud like a thunderhead, flat on the bottom, which follows this vessel—can you see it? Such a cloud follows the vessels of all Swans. It provides the wind and hence the motive power. Consider it a trophy of triumph. It is free energy, because the cloud will chase the provocation beam the Swans employ to annoy it. The sails allow us to tack against his winds, and so, at times, we can take the vessel in the direction opposite of the desire of the Swan.”
The old woman smiled apologetically and shrugged. “We believe he takes the matter with philosophical resignation, since he can range with his mind farther and more completely than any physical body. But I am careful, as befits my Intercession, to restrict human interference in posthuman things to gentle annoyances, in faith that those great spirits who control the winds and destinies will, if it pleases them, reciprocate, and be gentle with us. One must be careful from tiniest clues to extrapolate their moods.”
Del Azarchel listened with only two or three of his centers of attention. With the other part of his mind, he said, “Are these murk clouds where the alien intellectual machinery is hid?”
Zoraida looked at a loss. “Is this cognitive matter? If so, it should be gathered into some far place, for it cannot be destroyed.”
Del Azarchel was disturbed. “Madame, I mean no disrespect, but you have been conquered by a force so superior to us, that you are unaware of the conquest.”
Montrose said, “He’s just sad because he hates to see freedom enjoying itself. Pay him no mind. It ain’t much of a conquest if the conquerors never give orders, never say nothing, is it?”
Zoraida’s look was slowly stiffening into a look of fear. “But they did.”
“Did what?” asked Montrose.
“Give orders.” Zoraida shook her head sadly, and raised her arm. Clasped around her wrist was a heavy bracelet of red metal, a twin to the band on the wrist of Del Azarchel. “I can read the Monument by adjusting my brain chemistry to the levels which you two discovered in prehistory. I was one of those few, in my youth of long ago, posted to the surface of the world during the invasion. I saw with my own eyes what was written on the hull of the skyhooks. I saw more than one lower its endless length through the thunderstorms to crack the earth in lava spouts, and pull all the works of man into its mouth, and millions of men and tens of millions. I read the hieroglyphs written on the hulls. Life is enslaved to life.”
Montrose said, “We heard a slightly different translation. But what does that mean?”
Del Azarchel said, “I assume it refers to the process Rania dubbed Sophotransmogrification. Am I correct?”
Zoraida nodded and said, “You are. What was written on the skyhook hulls was an excerpt from the Cold Equations. The message said that all matter and energy is wasteful if it is not put to the service of life. The aliens are driven by one simple and terrible purpose. To alter what is called the Encephalization Ratio of the galaxy: this is the proportion between thinking mass and nonthinking mass.”
Del Azarchel and Montrose both understood the concept. A man’s body is only one part in forty of cognitive matter, since only the organ of the brain thinks. The rest is for life support. But even that was not the true ratio, because the cattle and the land on which the cattle graze or fish and the sea in which the fish swim or the crops and the soil in which the crops grow, are also used for support of those few thinking cells. The ratio when the whole atmosphere, the rocky and liquid core of the planet, and all matter needed for those crops and cattle was included was immense. An entire unthinking world used all its mass to sustain a few kilograms of gray matter in the human skull. But if the core of the world were rod-logic crystal, the ratio was reversed, and the continents and oceans and atmosphere of the surface became an insignificant unthinking skin on a titanic mass of thought.
Zoraida continued, “Upon us the Hyades wished to impose a moral absolute: it is not right that so much should be dead in order that so little should be self-aware. With the growth of a blanket of self-awareness in the hydrosphere…” (She bowed to Del Azarchel.) “… and a core of self-awareness filling the world’s interior…” (She bowed to Montrose.) “… it pleased the Hyades to uproot our many peoples and cities and societies and fling them to the stars, that we might serve this purpose forever hereafter. Had the two of you not proved to the aliens that we humans have the ability to create new forms of sophotransmogrified life, it is more than likely we would have been ignored, and the expedition returned in failure to its home star in Taurus, never to meddle with us again.”
Montrose and Del Azarchel stared at each other.
“You provoked the aliens by mining the Diamond Star,” said Montrose to Del Azarchel, “But they would have just gone away, if I had not created Pellucid at the core of the world? That don’t sit right.”
Del Azarchel smiled a cruel smile. “You created Pellucid out of fear of Exarchel, which I created out of fear of you. Perhaps I should be grateful that you opposed me! Evolution proceeds through war. It stirs the survivors to greatness.”
“Greatness? The Hyades just stole more than half the globe. We caused it, and you smile. How do you live with your stinking self, Blackie?”
“I fix my eyes on the future. Regret is for the weak.”
Montrose turned to Zoraida. “Why spread our life around? Why not their own?”
“The glyphs on the skyhooks did not say. Perhaps the Hyades also spread their own colonies, at a higher cost of resources, from their own people,” said Zoraida. “All that the message glyphs written in the hulls of the slave ships revealed was that the life of man is cheap. Hyades did not spend any resources building us. We are a windfall.” She tapped the temple of her skull. “To find the human race is like finding a billion cheap computer chips made of meat lying in the wild wood, unattended.”
Del Azarchel said, “But then we spread our culture, not theirs. Humans, not Hyades, occupy more stars.”
Zoraida said, “No doubt the corn seed says the same thing about the farmer and his children. In this case, we are seed which grew too many thorns, and scratched their grasping hands. I interpret the Cold Equations to say that they will not return for a second sweep. Can we not trust the Monument in this? We repelled them. Mankind will be left to our own devices forever after: free, ignored, unhindered.”
Del Azarchel said, “But Amphithöe said the opposite. She said the aliens departed at their will, not that they were repelled.”
Zoraida said, “Those of the First Comprehension operate from limited information, and supply the defect from their own imaginings. Of course, one theory is that Hyades did not linger because our race is too belligerent to survive the long aeons needed to be servants useful to them. They will not come again because, by the time they return, the world will be overrun by rats and roaches, and all our cities empty—I do not speak what I myself hold true. This is the theory of the Epicureans who rebel against the local Judge of Years, and seek to change the cliometric plan to allow us to exhaust our wealth rapidly in dissipation.”
Montrose wondered blankly if this was the identity of the mastodon cavalry he and Del Azarchel earlier glimpsed. Montrose said crossly, “But you are pretty sure we human
s drove the Hyades off?”
She nodded. “Does that anger you?”
“There should be poxing celebrations and fireworks! Who wins a war and doesn’t tell their own common folk? You’re keeping the little people in the dark.”
Zoraida said serenely, “We of the Second Comprehension do not tell the underlings needless information. If we were victorious, it would make them proud. If the losses victory cost has doomed us to extinction, it would make them despair. Their nervous systems cannot stand the strain: it causes them to retreat into various psychological deliriums and defense mechanisms. It renders them unproductive.”
Montrose said to Del Azarchel, “So which is it? Are we victors? Or are we all slaves? Are the Hyades going to return, or is this the last of them forever? The Nymph says one thing and the Witch says the other.”
Del Azarchel said, “How would the loyal hound know whether his master were bond or free, vassal or liege? He is beaten when bad just the same, and he obeys his master’s voice. How much less know the sheep the hound watches?”
Montrose said, “Listen, lady. We was invited to your nice, cold, messed-up poxilicious world here because your local cliometric mugwumps want us to stop mucking with your history, right? So you want me and Blackie to suck lip and make nicey-nice, right?”
She nodded pensively. “That is not precisely the way I’d phrase it—”
“No,” murmured Del Azarchel. “You would use real words.”
“Well, we ain’t burying the hatchet, him and me, unless we know what is what and wherefore is whereabouts, savvy? One person says the aliens were victorious and left, and another says the aliens were defeated and left. We want to know why they came. What the hell did they write on the moon? Someone must have spoken to them. Who?”
She looked thoughtful for a moment, touching her red amulet lightly. Montrose realized she was making a phone call, thinking to her radio, or raiding some sort of database or subconscious level of her mind. Then Zoraida said, “No one of the Second Comprehension can answer such questions.”
“Someone on this globe must know!” thundered Del Azarchel.
Zoraida bowed again, and with a gesture even more stiff and formal than before, said, “I take you now to one who no doubt does.”
4. The Third Comprehension
They entered the ship’s cabin. The light from three large transparent windows built into the translucent stern of the ship filled a chamber made of diamond and paneled with silver. In the center of the cabin was a shallow pond. It was filled with a luminous substance the consistency of milk, swimming with sparks and motes and streaming scarves of light. Whether this was technology or biotechnology, Montrose could not say.
Seated on a large lotus leaf floating in the center of the crystal pond was a slender manlike shape in a serene posture. The face was stylized, as perfectly white and fine-pored as porcelain, sharp of chin, with long, narrow, slanted eyes, high cheekbones, and oddly long-lobed ears. The mouth was wide but thin, nearly lipless, and never moved from a horizontal line. The hairs of his head were neural antennae, countless in number, and his hair swayed like the hair of a mermaid.
Two wings like the wings of an albino peacock, each feather bright with an eye, mantled his shoulders; two others girded his waist like a cincture, forming a living skirt or toga; two final wings curved from his spine and covered his feet as if a glittering white blanket.
Montrose noticed that none of the hundreds of eyes dotting the wings were looking at them. He said, “This is an element of the planetary mind, ain’t it? Just a flesh puppet run by the giant nanotech brain what I had fill up the nickel-iron core of the planet. But I thought the Virtue erased the core mind?”
Zoraida said, “This is not the Potentate itself. As you deduced, the core mind was damaged during the war. The Swan is in the Noösphere but not of it. His mind is not mingled with the damaged core mind of Tellus.”
Montrose was staring at the winged and meditating figure in the center of the chamber pool. “I assume if we plug our brains into a nerve jack, and become part of the Noösphere, the Noösphere will become aware of us?”
Zoraida turned toward Montrose. “That was needed in the early days. The Swan occupies an ambiguous and intermediary position. I may be able to attract his attention by telephony. You have seen that we mortals can maintain Melusine and Locusts, at least in small groups, in our polity, without lapsing the boundary of the phantasm which hides us from the higher awareness. But much depends on the skill of the Intercession! Adherence to ancient precept is crucial, nay, tantamount! Even the most minor abrogation is never forgotten. You must not refer by name or title or any indirect means to any of the crew when speaking to the Swan, except those persons whose names you were told. Not even a wry hint about how difficult it was to raise your landing boat to the deck surface unaided! Do you understand me, and do you understand the spirit of what I am saying? Do you agree to be bound not only by the word, but by the spirit? Otherwise, I cannot intercede for you, and you are at liberty to go your way and try to attract the attention of the Noösphere to yourself for yourself.”
Montrose squinted at Del Azarchel. “This is what you meant by resonance effect?”
Del Azarchel smiled cruelly. “In any hierarchy, the lessers impersonate their betters. You scoff at the information strata the Seconds use to control the Firsts? You established the precedent by erecting a barrier between Man and Potentate.”
They both solemnly agreed to her terms, and Zoraida slid back her left sleeve and tapped the surface of the large red metallic amulet affixed to her wrist. She engaged the touch-sensitive layer, and tapped out a quick code. “This may take several hours. I can send for the slavegirl to bring you refreshing beverages to … ah!”
The meditating figure had opened his eyes, and opened a vertical slit in his forehead to reveal a third eye, and his uppermost pair of wings now spread out, and all the eyes on all the bases of the feathers turned and regarded Montrose and Del Azarchel gravely.
Both men flinched and raised their hands before their eyes, Montrose smirking and Del Azarchel grimacing, unable to meet the gaze of the hundred-eyed creature before them.
“Menelaus Montrose and Ximen del Azarchel, you are the fathers of our loss. Your folly too large for words has led to grief too great for tears. Hear me, and comprehend the nature of your iniquity.”
5. The Lamentation of the Swans
“I am called Enkoodabooaoo,” the august figure intoned gravely. “Though I appear to your eyes as an Archangel, what you call the superior intellectual level beyond man, I am not. I am a severed and separate being: an Inquiline, to use a term you know.
“The psychological need for independence and self-assertion which you, Menelaus Montrose, designed into the souls of Swan-kind served us so ill during the End of Days, by preventing that perfect cooperation and self-sacrifice that war demands, that the effortlessness of our defeat, our utter overthrow, choked us with shame. As independent beings, we cannot survive without honor, and the departure of our honor with all our loved ones crippled us.
“We Swans departed the mental matrix of the Noösphere, leaving it in the care of minds not organized in the same way as ours. I am now a hermit, living in isolation, seeking a metaphysical balance pointless to describe to you. In losing this war, we lost our souls.
“No! Do not speak! You are as ignorant children compared to me, and I have no love for you, and no obligation moral, legal, or otherwise running to you! Silence! What I say shall answer any questions worthy of asking.
“Because I no longer participate fully in the Noösphere, I can, at times, with a certain part of my mind, become aware of the phantasms which mortal men are now to me. The mortals may remain outside the mental civilization of Earth, in the independence of barbarism, merely by never seeking to have any nerve-machine interfaces implanted in their brains. I permit them to exploit my powers: this vessel, for example, exercises control over wave and wind via my appliances which agitate the huma
n nanotechnology in the water or which disturb the alien picotechnology in the murk clouds which mar the atmosphere. And yes, like tricky elves the rustic cannot see, I am aware that my vessel will visit destinations I did not seek, as if blown off course by errant wind or playful Ariel.
“Your phantasm system, by which you sought to preserve your race at its lowest level of evolution, in the name of the undomesticated chaos you call liberty, is by now no more than a legal nicety. It is to preserve the customs and protocols by which the Noösphere prioritizes its internal mental balances that we all agree to the blindsightedness, to be aware of the unintegrated men, and to pretend to be unaware.
“But that system lost for us the war, and the blame is entirely yours, Menelaus Montrose.
“Your theory that independent men, independent minds, would be better suited to fight off these invaders is true on a small scale, and in limited engagements, but it is not true when world fights world! Your requirement does not scale up.
“For one mind the size of Earth to contest the fate of man with one mind the size of Uranus, that Earthmind cannot, at the same time as it maintains its unity, maintain, for each brain cell of its nervous system, conditions allowing each nerve cell to go its own way for its own monocellular reasons.
“During peacetime, when there are no schedules, and no crucial minutes count, the elfish and invisible tricks of the phantasms you introduced into our eyesight, the blindspots you built into us, can be tolerated. But in wartime, when needed supplies go astray, or humans, being human, commit their various crimes and combats against each other on levels where we could not interfere to halt them, despite the damage to our equipment and personnel, the enemy, hindered by no blindness, and seeing the works of men, could exploit.
“And we Swans were too independent, too fierce, to combine all our posthuman minds harmoniously into one Potentate. Instead, we fell to quarreling among ourselves. Left brain against right brain, one split personality against another. Earth was psychotic. The Virtue of the Hyades regarded us with contempt. Asmodel did not bother to conquer us. We did not deserve the compliment.