Montrose said, “So M3 is like the mother sea turtle who lays eggs on the sand and never looks back.”
Del Azarchel said, “And those same practices were imposed on us, thanks to the interference of these ‘others,’ whoever they are.”
Torment said to the emissary, “Who has so afflicted us?”
You must inquire of the Authority at Messier 3 in Canes Venatici.
Finally, at the very core of the moonlet, at the last thread of any and all conversations no matter what windings or turnings they took, was a stark and horrid message:
Montrose and Del Azarchel continue onward aboard the attotechnology vessel M3 granted your race in the name of the advocate who vindicated you. Ain propels the vessel by conventional means to Vanderlinden 133 in Praesepe.
The planet Torment, and all her peoples, possessions and chattel, thoughts and actions, pass into my control and governance. I will remold them into more serviceable channels and broadcast their essential selves to such points in time and space as are needed to aid the ongoing sophotransmogricative efforts within the ambit of my cliometry.
Whether this will prove effective or not will be clearly known long before the vessel reaches Vanderlinden 133. If the effort proves effective, the vessel will be supplied fuel sufficient to bear you to M3. If not, the vessel will be confiscated and your lives impounded as partial payment for the debt thus incurred.
That was the end of all responses. There were no threads leading out of this center of the symbol maze.
2
Farewell to Torment
1. Unanswerable
Torment said, “I cannot compose a question that provokes any further answer. Ain is silent.”
Montrose said, “Here is a dam-rutting question which should provoke something: What the bloody flux does Ain do if we tell him to bugger himself and we turn down his deal flat?”
Torment spoke in a voice of mild surprise. “There is no conversation train recorded in the whole of this emissary moonlet volume which deals with that eventuality. Ain preestablished no response because the question can never come up. There is no room for bargain.”
“Why not?” said Montrose. “We say, ‘Pox you,’ and we find another way to M3.”
She said patiently, “There is no other way. And there is no future for this world if I and my people do not become part of the Hyades cliometric and intellectual order. The human race we left behind will no longer spread from the mother worlds—you all saw the cliometry on that. They are become the Last Men, living only for self-satisfaction. This world, me, us, we are the only hope to see the dream of mankind colonizing the stars made real, the dream of a frontier with no end, only endless hope!”
Torment turned her blinding gaze on Montrose. “Would you truly foreswear both your bride and your dream of a future without end? For what? For me? I am flattered, but a position of servitude is the only possible fate for an intelligent planet among superintelligent supergiants who overdwarf me in every way. There is no other path to Messier 3. You should be grateful that the opportunity exists at all.”
“Grateful? For the opportunity to sell a whole world to slavery?” retorted Montrose bitterly. “You, ma’am, you are the world which is going to be the mother of a whole newer, younger, and more numerous version of the pestiferous human race! That means selling not just one world, but all your children too, all your colony planets and little Potentates—”
Del Azarchel interrupted. “My one grace is that I know my place in the universe. I am superior to all human kind, but I am inferior to these alien machines larger than worlds, who are gods to us. I will welcome the bargain with Ain.”
Montrose said flatly, “You still need me to give orders to the ship’s brain.”
Torment said, “Clearly Ain has sufficient ability to disable or deceive the ship’s brain, if need be.”
Montrose said to Torment, “How is he—Ain, I mean—planning on doing this, again? Will it be like the diasporas from the First Sweep to the Fifth? We left those nightmares behind us long ago. What else was the point of the Vindication of Man, but to spare us from that horror?”
Torment said, “The brain information will be encoded according to Monument notational codes into neutrino packets and beamed to likely points in the Orion Arm and some additional locations in the Sagittarius Arm and Perseus and Cygnus. Any species able to receive and decode the packages will have the option to download them into any number of possible brains, vehicles, envelopes, or bodies. The humans will attempt to persuade the lost races to enter communion with Hyades, who is representing the Orion hierarchy.”
Montrose said, “And then what? They starve to death? They live alone in a robot or a mainframe or maybe inside the body of a giant sexless space clam forever? Alone? Because they cannot go home. They will go mad!”
Torment said, “Ain believes a special breed of men can be bred and modified to be able to withstand the psychological stresses involved. Either Swans or Myrmidons could be used for the basic template. The races must be combined eugenically and conditioned by various forms of stress to achieve the proper cultural sociopsychology and cliometric vector.”
Montrose glared at Del Azarchel. “Where the hell is your Lucifer pride when we need it, amigo? Don’t you claim to rule all people? Rule like a father, you always said. The subjects of a monarch are bound to him by a personal oath, you said, not a form of rule like a democracy, which you said was horrible and impersonal. Remember all that bollocks talk? Well, Pappy, they is going to twist your children into warped things that like dying alone among alien machines in far places just so Hyades and his bosses in Praesepe can make phone calls and open embassies.”
Del Azarchel said, “My subjects should be eager to make whatever the sacrifice is needed for whatever benefits me. You are talking to the man who ordered Jupiter to run the eugenics camps. I do not flinch from the task of staining centuries and scores of centuries with blood. I am the first Hermeticist and the chief of them, and their sole survivor. We sculpt races using the chisel of pain.”
“Whatever benefits you, yup!” Montrose smirked. “Where is the benefit here?”
“We get a ride to our next destination, in Praesepe, and then onward. All these people will be dead, less than memories, before we arrive at M3.”
Montrose’s smile widened. “Where the real Rania will find out how you treat your children, Pappy. Can I call you Pappy? I never knew my dad. Died before I was born. You had a dad. What was he like? Loving and caring? No? Not so much? More like—lemme see—you are right now, issat it, you damned bastard?”
Del Azarchel turned away, to hide the shame and anger in his face. “You presume to speak of matters beyond your ken and above your station. Were I not avowed already to kill you for your many offenses and injuries, I would make that vow anew, here and now!”
Torment said, “I can say part of what Ain is thinking. Either Montrose or Del Azarchel must go to M3 to offer eyewitness testament of the Monument and be examined in whatever way, invisible to me, the Monument changed you: not a physical change, for you have worn many new bodies since the days of the Hermetic expedition. It is something subtle, a distortion of timespace perhaps, a cloud of potentiality, which follows your memory chains each time your minds are downloaded from body to body.”
Del Azarchel said, “A soul.”
Torment said, “The word has misleading implications. But I am beginning to wonder how much Ain knows about the universe. I cannot guess. So, perhaps there is something like a governing principle, a monad, a soul, if you will, that was changed by the Monument.”