The tag read: MONTROSE, MENELAUS ILLATION (FIRST, ELDER). HANDLE WITH CARE.
“You sentimental bastard,” said Montrose. And he began to weep.
It was his original, biological brain, held in suspended animation, slumbering.
3
The Virtue Cahetel
1. The Imperative
“I have an answer, sir,” said the serpentine after four hours. Montrose was back up on the balcony with the whiplike machine.
Even in the light gravity, Montrose had found his feet getting tired after a time. The cylindrical braincase he recovered from the floor far below was large enough that, upended, he could sit on his brains like a stool.
“Show me.”
And all the screens scattered across the balcony rails and about the dome lit up. They were black, crisscross with the thin silver lines, angles, and sine waves of the Monument Code.
Montrose read it.
TWO-WAY COMMUNICATION IMPERATIVE NOTIFIED.
That was its way of saying hello, he guessed.
“Who are you?” he said to the gigantic, appalling figure in the center of the silent dome.
The ninety-foot dead giant tilted its head as if turning toward Montrose, the empty eye sockets from which frozen streams of murk hung like icicles of ink. It must have been pure coincidence. The entity was perhaps trying to position some receiver buried in the circuits and lobes of the murk closer to the needle-beam of the communication laser the serpentine was shooting from Montrose’s talking gun. But it looked like a blind man trying to peer at someone.
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?”