4. The Graveyard of Stillborn Future
The glass was able to project an illusion of depth, so that, from their vantage, there seemed to be a second line of glass behind the first, this one showing graphs and charts and rotations of the same plot information.
The sine waves of several dozen political-economic trends, population figures, mass library intelligence, and so on, writhed like colored worms from the left windows to the right, but as they reached farther and farther rightward, the colors grew dim, the amplitude grew weaker. After a certain point, all the trends were combined in a flat line running along the axis.
It was death.
Montrose said, “The population levels rise again, and then drop sharply after the Two Hundred Forty-second Century. Why is that?”
Del Azarchel favored Montrose with a scathing look. “It is another sweep up of population to deracinate to the slave colonies. Another raid. A Second Sweep.”
Montrose only then saw what Del Azarchel had already deduced. Earthly civilization not long ago (by astronomical time, at least) must have detected stellar output fluctuations from the Hyades, no doubt indicating the launch of a second Virtue. If the economics of star flight were unchanged, the flight speed was unchanged.
The cliometric charts showed that the psychological damage from a second rapine of population and resources would exceed the first. The numbers were based on predictions of disastrous failures of the colonies, mass deaths followed by more mass deaths. Society would degenerate for numerous reasons, some economic and some psychological.
A Third Sweep was expected by the Thirty-seventh Millennium, reducing the population below replacement levels, even of artificial life. The death spiral then would be set. By the middle of the Forty-first Millennium, the population numbers would have dropped below the minimum threshold able to maintain a technological civilization.
By the Forty-second Millennium, letters and laws and numbers would be forgotten, and troglodytes crouching in the unlit caves formed by the ruins of shattered superscrapers would have only oral lore and ritual. The statistics estimating the time before a natural disaster wiped them out were but little different for similar estimates for glyptodonts or saber-toothed tigers.
But a predicted Fourth Sweep in A.D. 52201 had an intake value higher than the highest estimate for the carrying capacity of a globe occupied by nomadic herdsmen and hunters. There simply would not be enough people to satisfy the Hyades. All would be taken. All would perish.
The Hyades Domination evidently planned to continue to throw human beings by the millions at whatever planets there were, habitable or not.
“If even one of these were a green world,” Montrose said, “there would be hope, a possible growth vector, a way to repeople the Earth from the colonies. No wonder they don’t tell the little people. Did that Witch we meet actually think we’d won this war? How can we undo this?”
Montrose fell silent, his head bowed.
Del Azarchel spoke aloud, but as if unaware of others listening, and his eyes grew haunted and his mouth grew soft and quivering. “The Hyades are a superior race. They cannot act without cause. Why such a convoluted means of extermination? What is the reason? Unless…”
The look on his face then was that of some cowering child living off gutter trash, looking at the rich, cruel world of the conquerors striding grandly down wide boulevards. It was the look of someone wounded by an inexplicable universe, inexplicably evil.
“… Unless there is none. None we can ever know,” he continued. “They are simply alien to us. Incomprehensible. We are unlettered Negroes captured by Arabs, too primitive to know the world is round or that lands exist beyond the sea, fated to be sold to Christians who carry us across distance unimaginable to deadly mines in Argentina or sweltering plantations in the Caribbean. We will never understand them. We will simply die.” He turned to Montrose. “There is no undoing this.”
Montrose said softly, “Well, Blackie, I can read the damn math. I was just hoping I was reading it wrong is all.”
Selene said calmly, “Tellus hoped that hope as well. This is why the memory of your Rania was desecrated by the cruel experiment whose only results rest outside on sacred ground.”
Del Azarchel said, “You did not participate in this?”
“Participate?” The serene voice, for once, held a note of emotion, of deep maternal sorrow. “With great travail I had the bodies brought here, that the incarnate genetic information be beyond Earthly reach. Any who would repeat this abomination must again from the primary Monument records deduce the system for encoding Rania’s emulation instinct. I have eliminated all secondary records and resources.”
Montrose said, “Why? Why go to the effort? I mean, I’m grateful, but Rania’s not even from your era.”
Selene did not answer.
Del Azarchel said softly, “It is one of the seven Corporal Works of Mercy to bury the dead.”
Montrose said, “Well, I am stonkered. Some of you machines are nice people after all. I never would have expected a soulless Xypotech to become a nun. Which leads to my next question: why can’t the machines colonize these worlds?”
One of the smaller charts, with its surrounding math, suddenly expanded to fill several panes of the windows, and certain expressions unfolded into more detail.
Selene said, “Machine life on or near Earth is more delicate, requiring greater technological infrastructure, than biological. Nobilissimus Del Azarchel, you must now realize that your dream of an entirely machine-based ecology is as empty as dreams of perpetual motion.”
Del Azarchel said, “You say so? But you are a living example!”
“A dying example,” she corrected him. “The maintenance of my subsystems requires a continual effort of correction, upgrade, replacement, removal of worn molecular parts, and, in short, digestion and excretion like an organism. Such organisms cannot exist without the nutrients in solution around them. I have a mile-deep layer of smaller and simpler machinery around me like a mantle beneath the lunar crust, but this in turn requires constant maintenance and upkeep. I need living men to live in me for the same reason you need mitochondria and other beneficial organisms in you, as well as crops and livestock outside you. I am the apex of a pyramid of technology that cannot exist without a base.”
Del Azarchel said, “Montrose did not have such a problem with Pellucid!”
Selene said, “If I lived at the intellectual level of a horse, I would perish much more slowly. My energy intake is greater than all the cities of men combined.”
Montrose said, “Ma’am, I don’t understand. What ails you?”
“Entropy. After repeated sweeps depopulating the world at regular intervals, with the exhaustion of various resources, particularly surface metals, a collapse back into pretechnology is inevitable. You saw my space program?”
“We saw empty space stations,” said Montrose.
“They are mine, or were. I am part of a final project to shower metals from the near-earth asteroids to Earth against the day of downfall, and produce skyhooks and space elevators simple enough to endure the loss of their maintenance technology. Without a working Tellus mind, however, the effort is doomed to failure. The work continues to restore Tellus to coherence, despite that brain mass loss is accelerating beyond predicted repair times. I do this because it is my duty to care for the sick, and because I am required to hope for a miracle. Can you provide one for me?”
Del Azarchel said, “You ask us for help? You are the superior being!”
“I am but a fellow servant,” she said.
Del Azarchel said, “A living moon! What now prevents all the worlds of this system from being elevated to your level, and then the Oort cloud material, and then the nearer stars!”
“As ever, your ambition outstrips your powers, Nobilissimus,” said Selene gently. “You speak of quickening worlds to life? First save Tellus. First save this civilization. My monks are attempting to record the various discoveries of this generation against the coming ages of darkness. Since there is no worldly reason to expect rescue, I can gather only those motivated by otherworldly and imponderable devotion to do the work.”