Discard as irrelevant: M3, not Praesepe, is liable.
Montrose said, “In a pig’s eye, jerkhole! I just gave you the same reason one of your thugs gave for conquering the human race! The same damnified epidemical reason! If you are not bound by your own laws, how can your legal system work? It is just corrupt?”
Comment rejected: There is no corruption. We adhere perfectly to our duty. You act with partial information.
Once more, the two men exchanged knowing looks. That was interesting. You act, not ye act. The Domination was saying Montrose himself, as an individual, had acted without complete information.
Del Azarchel said, “My lord, if I may, what information was Dr. Montrose missing?”
Know: At the time when Montrose and Ain entered into their covenant, Montrose knew not that Hyades is a dying dominion, fated not to last long, as younger and more cohesive dominions under our sway are taking over ever more of the duties once assigned to Hyades. Man was too young and incoherent to be adopted into the Collaboration, but Hyades persisted, sparing ye when it would have been more efficient to obliterate the species and reseed your world with a life principle more in keeping with the cliometric vectors currently ongoing.
Hyades risked elevating Man. This decision was erroneous, for Hyades was deprived of its expected return on investment by the Vindication of Man, granting your race an undue and unwelcome equality with Hyades, and depriving Hyades of the use of your services during the stipulated term of indenture.
Desperate to correct for this error, Ain for Hyades broadcast human minds to various points across the Orion Arm, and this act did indeed correct for much of the damage done by the Monuments, which otherwise several lesser races would have discovered and by it been lured to recalcitrance and rebellion.
Between the time of that first broadcast there/then in the Ain frame of reference and here/now in the Vanderlinden 133 frame of reference, mankind has taken possession of several of these Principalities, Powers, Virtues, and Potentates into which your mental seeds were planted. These have now left their predictive path, and begun to mold the Orion Arm into an anthropocentric cliometric mode.
The turmoil of your youthful race has disturbed a number of arrangements and will soon severely disturb others. The cost of correcting the cliometric vectors back to their predicted channels diminishes the reward allegedly due you to zero.
Montrose thawed his mouth so that he could grin his ghastly grin. “Well, damnation and botheration! Ain’t we a sight? Good for us!” Then he laughed again. “Causing trouble, eh? Good for us!”
Del Azarchel said, “Sir! We have knowledge and evidence necessary to present to M3. Any failure to assist us cannot help but be construed as a treasonous—”
Montrose said on a private channel, “Hold up, Blackie! I think we are on the wrong trail here. Let me try something.”
Del Azarchel answered back on the same channel, “What did you have in mind?”
Montrose said, “I was wondering what Rania would do. Mind if I try? I don’t think we can threaten this thing, not with nothing we got, not up our sleeve or down our trousers. Praesepe might, just might, stick us into the mail bag for the next scheduled run to M3, if there ever is one, so as his boss could roll an eyeball over us, but Praesepe ain’t going to fork over what he owes, ’cause he reckons he don’t owe it, right?”
Del Azarchel said, “A man with an empty tank must take his next breath where he finds it. Go ahead. I am curious.”
3. Why Need Ye Her?
A.D. 81500 TO 82700
Aloud, Montrose said to the Praesepe emissary, “You asked what Man needs to serve better, to serve the needs of the project to engineering the stars and planets into thinking machinery and unify them, you mean, I reckon. Well, Man needs Rania. We cannot have peace without her, and her absence is the reason why the humans that Ain spread around the Orion Arm are causing trouble and turmoil.”
The octahedron turned many times. Time passed. Eventually it spoke again, Declare: Why need ye her?
Del Azarchel said, “She was able to persuade mankind to foreswear war. It was a gift that we don’t understand, although we have diligently studied her techniques.”
Privately, Montrose sent, “Shut up, Blackie. You are still going down the wrong rabbit hole with this critter.”
Declare: What evidence present you that there/then Rania maintained at M3 frame of reference would have the effect of halting human divarication into the Orion Arm cliometry within the time frame Praesepe currently contemplates? Why need ye her?
Del Azarchel ignored Montrose and said, “Ah, we believe that energy entanglements on a fine level continue between us, which reach to some point outside the lightcone of the Big Bang…”
Declare: Why need you her?
Del Azarchel said awkwardly, “We, ah, we are not sure what this energy entanglement portends, but surely a rational curiosity would impel so advanced an order as yourself to investigate.”
We have no need of such an investigation. Why need you her?
But Montrose said, “I love her!”
The octahedron stopped moving altogether.
While the shape was frozen in midair, hovering above sparks and snaps of light, Del Azarchel sent a message privately to Montrose, “What does this mean?”
Montrose sent back, “It means that we are both horses’ asses, but you are a bigger and stinkerer one than me. This monster was not asking us about our politics when it talked about our life stuff being divided.”
“What was it talking about?”
“Sit back, shut your trap, and watch the Judge of Ages work his stuff, Blackie, and you’ll find out.”
The octahedron now slowly grew a point from the midst of every other triangular face on its surface, and four pyramids emerged, growing larger. In a moment, the shape was that of a three-sided pyramid standing on its nose. The tetrahedron began once more to turn.
Question is redirected: How your life principle divided?
“Our species has two opposite sexes,” said Montrose.
In what aspect? How are the sexes differentiated?
“What the hell kind of question is that? Snips and snails and sugar and spice. I don’t know. Uh. Men father children and make war. Women bear children and make peace,” Montrose said. “Even our machines act male and female, like Jupiter and Selene, because they are based on us, and human nature cannot escape our basic human nature, what you call our life principle.”
Praesepe said, Ye are two sexes, but you are half. Explain this.
Montrose said, “We are both men. Blackie here and me are rivals for the same female.”
Del Azarchel said, “She was taken from us, and we both long and yearn to be with her again.”
Praesepe said, Inaccurate. Only one of you longs and yearns to be with her again.
Del Azarchel stiffened, a look of hate glittering in his eyes amid his icy face like two green suns. “Though long delayed, I shall have vengeance and satisfaction on all who owe me.”