And the floor was no longer the golden white crystal of the Myrmidon Aurum. Starting from the feet of the titanic black-skulled corpse, the floor turned dark. A black snowfall of tiny particles of the murk substance dripping from the skull, eyeholes, and throat-pit of the vast corpse were falling to the floor, and where they touched, the picotechnology was altering the nanotechnology, and the floor grew wrinkled and dark.
The chair next to Montrose flexed, turned black as India ink, and grew wrinkled and crooked all across its surface. Montrose, in a swift reflex, yanked the serpentine in his hand out of the socket connecting serpentine with the chair arm. There were other serpentines connected to the back of the seat. They turned black, writhed in a momentary spasm, and froze in position, looking like strange undersea weeds. The serpentine in his hand remained silver, apparently unaffected.
7. Everything Talks
“What the hell is going on?” Montrose said aloud.
The serpentine answered him and said, “We are receiving a signal from the survivor on Pluto, a subaltern from the Vingtener memory-chain.”
“Survivor?” There had been hundreds of men and thousands of minds aboard Pluto.
“Only one survivor. He reports that all of our technology based on murk pseudo-atomic logic patterns has been absorbed by control signals from Cahetel. The supersymmetrical particle breaking system allowed Cahetel to reflect all photons back toward the source. The emission point sources accelerated rapidly during the broadcast and blue-shifted the visible light into the radio spectrum, on the wavelengths to which the murk was inherently reactive. The solar beam signal which Cahetel reflected will reach Jupiter four months from now, and Earth, who will be nearly in opposition at that time, forty-nine minutes later.”
Montrose, standing with his fists clenched and the muscle in his jaw twitching as he ground his teeth, twice had to override the automatic rage and fear reactions triggered in his parasympathetic nervous system. (He enjoyed being able to do that: he recalled how often his natural body just plunged him into a rage or a panic without so much as a by-your-leave.)
But perhaps some panic was reasonable now. The agents of Hyades had left behind the murk traces and the interstellar beam elements deliberately. They were confident that even an attack coming at the speed of light, with no warning, could be parried, manipulated, and flung back at the attacker in the specific wave-forms needed to paralyze and mesmerize and enslave an entire civilization.
And anyone not using the murk, anyone backward enough to rely on nanotechnology rather than picotechnology, was probably not able to think quickly enough and carefully enough to form a threat anyway. What could technology on the biochemical level of artificial life do against technology on the atomic level of artificial elements?
And who would use anything other than the starbeam praxis to launch an interstellar-level attack?
But the kind of mind Cahetel commanded, the sheer thinking power needed, to catch a destructive torrent of energy, and transform it into control signals, and reflect it back across the entire diameter of a star system was appalling in its magnitude. It was beyond monstrous. It was godlike. Montrose adjusted his nervous system carefully, to let a moderate degree of awe and terror grip him.
It was not so much fear as to prevent his next question: “Can we warn them? The Solar System?”
“Subaltern Vingtener’s signal should reach any open receivers two minutes after the control signals take control of such receivers. Whether Cahetel allows the receivers to pass the signal through to any survivors, or permits the brains of the survivors to hear the warning, is, of course, a matter for Cahetel’s discretion. Anyone who is entirely disconnected from the Noösphere, such as yourself, and using no murk technology, will be spared.”
Montrose, although much less intelligent than the larger version of himself who had died, was still much smarter than a baseline human. He saw the implication.
He looked again at the ghastly spectacle of the ninety-foot-tall corpse, which as yet had not fallen. It did not even seem to be relaxed from standing at attention, despite that heartbeat and breathing had stopped.
Montrose studied the artificial memory chains which were installed in this body he was occupying, saw how to issue the commands to the multivariable cells in various parts of his nerves and organs, and in short order grew a triple set of Melusine antennae, which he used to detect the electronic and neucleonic activity rippling and throbbing through the black murk coating the faceless horror looming over him.
Montrose said, “Can you translate for me? It is thinking in a variation of Cenotaph code.”
The serpentine said, “Yes, although I do not have an access point.”
Montrose drew out his sidearm. He stared at it carefully, remembering what Big Montrose had said about the manufactured objects in this era, and realizing for the first time that he, Little Montrose, had almost no memory of this era. He did not recall the worldwide wars or riots he had launched, the ministers and dignitaries he had killed, the other men he had humiliated, or robbed, or slandered, or ruined, in his ruthless attempt to become the Master of the World. He remembered that he had wanted and needed to seize control of the war effort of the whole Tellurian Noösphere and of all three human races, and all the resources and manpower of an entire interplanetary civilization—because he did not trust anyone else to make the right decisions on how to fight this war. And his decisions had led to this.
The pistol said, “Sir? Are you contemplating suicide?”
He was not surprised it could talk. “Why do you ask?”
“You have the expression on your face typical of suicides.”
“No, that is just the natural cast of my features.”
“And you have the neural and glandular contour consistent with the profile.”
“Um. It is the natural cast of my glands. Can you configure yourself to—”
“Yes, sir.”
“What the pox? You didn’t hear what I was going to ask.”
“Your previous orders on the topic were clear. You wish me to act as a transmitter capable of interfering with picotechnology-based information cascades, to enable you to attract the attention of software embedded in murk fragments.”
“When did I give those orders?”
“Before you issued me, along with a uniform, to the smaller version of yourself you had formed from isolated biological matrices.”
“Suit!” He slapped himself in the chest. “Can you talk, too?”
A voice came out of his uniform buttons. “Yes, sir. Everything talks. All matter is programmable using the techniques Jupiter developed.”
“What did I order you to do?”
“To keep your smaller version isolated from any neural contact with logical crystal systems or Noösphere channels connected to any murk-based system.”
Montrose closed his eyes. He felt a hot sting of tears under his lids. Big Montrose had known. He had known from the beginning. Damn him.
He handed the pistol to the serpentine. “Use this. Establish contact.”
“Sir? What message do you want me to send?”
“Start with ‘Hello, you bastard.’”
“That concept may not translate.”
“Start with the opening of the Monument First Contact message.”
There was a quiet hum from the serpentine. That was a surprise. Serpentine operations were nearly always silent. This task, apparently, was straining it to the utmost.
Time passed. Montrose stepped off the balcony, floated down to the dark floor, and picked up the brain storage cylinder.