He paused. "Now a question: why didn't the Makers stop the destruction? Surely they saw it going on. All they needed to do was return, identify themselves, and be served. Then the galaxy would be at peace. Yet they did not, and the carnage continued. Were they so indifferent to the welfare of other living species that they simply didn't care? This was hard to believe."
There was a general stir. Not everyone here was acquainted with this background.
"There is an explanation, but not a kind one. The Makers were not indifferent to the welfare of the living galaxy; they merely had a supremely difficult choice to make. Some few Makers fled because they saw that the service of the machines was destroying their culture. Not through any ill will or treachery by the machines. It was because the machines served too well. The original Makers became lazy and fat and lost any desire to pursue rigorous physical or intellectual labors. It was easier to be cared for and entertained by the machines. A few Makers saw that this meant long-term doom for their viability as a culture. Only by eschewing the service of the machines, they concluded, could they save their culture. That could not be done on the home planet, so they fled.
"Now consider what this meant. If the machines found them and served them again, they would lose their innovation, industry, creativity, and whatever else made them a type 2.5 species going for type 2.6. If they returned to the machines they would save the rest of the galaxy, but lose their own soul, as it were. That would be a short term gain and a long term disaster. So they couldn't return, though hell followed in their wake. But they did not give up their mission. They merely sought another way."
The audience had been interested. Now it was rapt. Havoc was answering the riddle of the galaxy.
"Meanwhile the machines' search for the remnant Makers—the ones who had fled their planet of origin—continued in multiple avenues. One thrust was to locate the planet where they settled, following whatever clues had been left. And they found it! They found where the remnant Makers had settled. Gale went there with Sphere, the controlling sapient machine in charge of this particular search, and verified it. The Makers were there, and had been for almost fifty thousand years. They had conceived an ambitious project, surely to stop the machines. They were not ignoring the plight of the galaxy. They just had to act in a way that would save the galaxy but not cause the machines to serve them again. This was a considerable challenge.
"What was this project? Let me pause to examine a parallel development to provide a context. In the absence of the Makers, the other living cultures of the galaxy got in touch with each other, organized, and formed the Living Cultures Coalition dedicated to stopping the machines. For fifty thousand years the cultures had been helpless against the onslaught of the machines, and a third of them had perished. Now there was effective resistance. How did this come about? Because the cultures discovered a way to relate to each other, surmounting the barriers of chemistry and communication. They related to each other through the Glamors.
"The Glamors have been a mystery from the outset, even to those of us who are Glamors. They started appearing several hundred years ago, and have continued appearing up to the present. They have extraordinary magical powers, and are generally invulnerable and immortal. They have appeared in most, perhaps all, of the living cultures. They exist in different contexts, and follow different rules, but their special powers are similar, and still being discovered.
Most important, Glamors recognize and relate to each other. A Glamor can trust a Glamor; we know that. We can communicate with each other telepathically. We can love each other." He glanced significantly at Voila and Rafal.
"Species no barrier."
There was sympathetic laughter.
"Glamors rose naturally to positions of leadership," Havoc continued. "Their powers facilitated it. As leaders, we have unified the galaxy and led the opposition to the machines. Because of us, the living cultures have finally stopped the machines. They have become our servants." He smiled. "No, we will not grow lazy, fat, and indifferent. Because there is little the machines can do for us. We already have the qualities we need. Glamors are virtually incorruptible by material benefits. We are not afraid of the machines, either as enemies or as servants. Indeed, we became the first effective resistance to the onslaught of the machines. They tried to study us, so as to discover how to neutralize us, but when they finally did learn more about our capacities, they realized that they couldn't stop us. They started cooperating with us, trying to enlist us in their cause. We were not interested."
He paused again, organizing his thoughts. He was coming to the crux. "But Glamors are not a natural phenomenon. Someone or something prepared the way for us. Something set up altars near volcanoes, looms with special threads, ikons to transmit power to us. Then the changelings, distributed by the Temple, a seeding of special people long before the fifths appeared, that we also accepted and integrated. The changelings were the basis for the most proficient human leaders, having essential qualities that ordinary people lacked. Qualities that enabled them to become Glamors. We did not evolve; we were designed. But by whom or what? That has been our mystery for centuries. The oldest Glamor I know of is Idyll Ifrit, who came into being to balk the machine scout Mino, fourteen hundred years ago. Four hundred years before the humans colonized Charm. There may be others dating back that far among other cultures of the galaxy, but I think not many. Most are centuries more recent. But the devices that enabled our appearance were placed before the Glamors appeared. The ones of Charm were made by human beings who responded to mental commands we thought originated with the planet itself; now I am in doubt about that. It was more likely an alien signal from elsewhere in the galaxy. What could have done it? Obviously not the machines."
The audience laughed. This was not humor so much as agreement.
"We Glamors were designed to stop the machines. And we have done so. Not in precisely the way we thought, however. We tried to reprogram the machines' Prime Directive, but it turns out that this was unnecessary. The machines were ready to serve us regardless."
Now there was amazement. This was new.
"To return to the planet of the remnant Makers. What was their big project? It seemed to have failed, because it was implemented by a group called the Dreamers, who seemed to have fallen prey to the same fate as the original Makers: lassitude. They had thought that avoiding machines would save them from this, but it seemed that the lesser Makers who became servants to the Dreamers accomplished the same thing. One by one the Dreamers disappeared into their dreams, not caring for their living bodies, until at last those bodies could no longer be sustained, and they died.
Today there are very few Dreamers left.
"But this is deceptive. Consider the challenge: the Makers had a problem: how to stop the machines without using technology. Because that was a trap, as the fate of the original Makers demonstrated. If they made machines of their own strong enough to defeat the existing machines, they would merely be creating new tools of indolence. In the guise of complete service, those new machines would inevitably become their masters. So they had to remain true to their creed: no new machines of any type. Yet what else could possibly accomplish their purpose? It seemed like an exercise in futility.