And the foremost thought in Montrose’s mind, the image that kept pressing in on his imagination, was seeing all the stars in space bound and chained by little invisible threads that looked like swirls and curlicues and angles and lines and sine waves, all the logic and mathematics of the Monument Codes.
But the slavers were slaves also. Asmodel and Cahetel and Hyades were slaves, as was the Praesepe Cluster, which the Monument said was the superior of Hyades. And was M3, the great globular cluster in Canes Venatici outside the galaxy, a master with no master above it?
But M3 was bound by the invisible bonds of game theory, war theory, economics, resources, distance, and time, all the Cold Equations of the immensities of space just as all its lesser minions, servants, serfs, slaves, pets, and livestock were.
Montrose said, “Cahetel has asked me to plea. It said two-way communication was imperative. Imperative not because Cahetel asked to communicate with us—the fact that he did not answer our message capsules left in his flight path made that clear—but imperative because it was imperative we speak to him. And Cahetel can see it there in my dead brain. Well, fine, I know how to play this hand I’ve been dealt. I don’t have to like it, but I can.”
“And what message shall I send?”
“Tell Cahetel that the human race will cooperate with settling the Second Sweep worlds on one condition. Cahetel has to explain why.”
“Why what, sir?”
“Why all this? What the hell is the point? What do they want?”
“Are you asking what Cahetel wants, sir? That is obvious. It has already said. To compel living worlds to colonize dead worlds, and turn dead matter into cognitive matter.”
“I got that part. To make a galaxy where everything talks. But that is not what I am asking. I want to know what his masters want. Hyades. Praesepe. Canes Venatici. Everyone. I want the big picture. I want to know what is going on.”
“Do you think it will answer, sir?”
“Yes. Because for the first time, the human race is in position to aid the interstellar colonization project. I was fool enough to be fooled into spending—Jesus up a tree! Was it really nineteen hundred years?—a poxload of time building up this huge war fleet, the biggest flotilla ever aloft. And I remember that I encouraged the custom of dueling, of going armed, among all the races of Earth, Man and Swan and Myrmidon, until that custom became law. And there is something about a sense of honor and being willing to kill and die for it with a gun in your hand that makes a man ornery and ungovernable. It makes a man unready to be a slave and ready to be a pioneer. All the effort of mankind was put into the war effort. Like the time Texas planted the first flag on the moon, planted the first human footprint. But there was no war effort, no huge space program! It was just us making our own cattle boats to ship out to it.”
“I believe that was the United States of America, sir, not Texas acting alone.”
“Bullpox! All the records show the space command was in Houston!—Anyway, my point is that Blackie played me like a fiddle, and he ain’t even here. He knew the humans would be willing to get organized on a truly massive scale for a war, even if we would not be so organized for any peaceful purpose. That is the nature of mankind, and all the technical revolutions since the dawn of time ain’t changed that.
“So ask the damn critter why all this happened? It did not answer before—could not—because the Cold Equations tell it when the cost of sending messages is too high, you don’t answer. But now this damn wee little piece of Cahetel is standing in the room with me, and he knows we have a common interest, a quid pro quo. And I know that, unlike me, Cahetel is programmed, hypnotized, or honor bound—I ain’t sure which—to seek out the most efficient solution. It has to seek a cooperative solution in any situation where we have stepped outside the narrow limits of the Concubine Vector.
“Mankind is now strong enough to help Cahetel or hurt it. For the first time, we are not just livestock. We just graduated to being slaves. And like all those black Africans who captured their fellows and sold them to Arab traders on the east coast of Africa, or Spaniards on the west coast, we slaves can now ask for something before we stuff our brothers into the slave ships.
“I can act against my own self-interest, and even kill myself, and Cahetel knows it. He just saw me commit suicide.
“Cahetel cannot act against his equations, and I know it.
“So I know I cannot make any sort of bargain with it to stop the forced colonization of hell planets out there with mutated versions of humanity. But I can twist his arm to make it talk.
“So it has got to talk to me. In fact—come to think of it—you tell him to increase whatever energy budget and mental resources he is using to determine how to talk to me. He can damn well learn how humans think and learn to express itself more clearly. He has not had to be clear before because the Equations forced him to conclude it was inefficient. But it is efficient now.
“So you tell that damn bastard to talk or else.”
2. The Second Sweep Stars
Montrose saw on higher and lower bands of the spectrum the increase of electronic activity in the dripping murk clinging to the dead skull, and also saw heat radiate from the black floor on which the giant stood. Other signals showed that the Sedna brain that was woven throughout the volume of the little world, the brain which was also made of murk, also now part of Cahetel, increased its activity.
“Is English that hard to learn?” muttered Montrose.
“Artificial beings tend to be quite logical, sir,” said the serpentine delicately.
Now the screens of the dome lit up with diagrams of a volume of space centered on Sol.
Montrose saw stars that he recognized from the extensive atlases lodged in his eidetic memory: He recognized 107 Piscium and 41 Arae and Alula Australis, variable double star. Here was Wolf 25 in Pisces and HR 4458 in Hydra and Zeta Reticuli orbited by a vast ring of debris. There was Tabit, and Chi Orionis and 61 Ursae Majoris famed in ancient tales. Montrose recognized Zeta Tucanae and Xi Boötis and Beta Canum Venaticorum Formalhaut surrounded by its many disks of debris, and a dozen others.
These were all stars of Sol-like characteristics known to hold Earth-like worlds. All rested within twenty to thirty-three lightyears. Cahetel was presenting the targets of the Second Sweep.
Next, were displayed certain of the stars of the First Sweep. Lines indicating possible shipping flight paths connecting the second group of stars to the first. Perhaps Cahetel was indicating that eleven more colonies survived than anyone knew, surviving only as a few wretched and starving stragglers unable to mount an interstellar-strength radio laser. Or perhaps Cahetel was indicating that the Black Fleet, now impressed into service as deracination vessels, would visit and recolonize the failed worlds en route to the new colonies.
Lines issuing from Delta Pavonis and Epsilon Eridani indicated that Cahetel had indeed read and understood the message capsules left in his path by the humans, and knew that these colonies had survived. These worlds, too, would be forced to contribute a certain large percentage of their populations into the deadly maw of interstellar colonization.
Now the view on the major screen moved outward, and maps and navigation charts displayed a larger segment of the Orion Arm of the galaxy. Again, lines and spheres showing the growth over millennia and billennia of colonies were displayed, but these were not the human colonies.
Montrose straightened up, eyes wide.
He was being shown the presence of other alien races, and their plans for expansion.
3. The Potentates and Powers
Here was the Hyades Cluster at 151 lightyears away, the cluster of civilizations Rania had christened The Domination.