“Of course. I serve the pleasure principle. Everyone does. I merely admit it.”

Montrose looked up toward the second sun still hanging in the heavens, the visible reflection in the wide mirror surfaces of the unseen starship sails of a ship too small to see. “Would it please you to have us out of your hair? You, the Melusine, everyone?”

Sarmento’s eyes goggled, “Us?”

One advantage of dealing with a fellow posthuman was that there was no need to stand around and explain things. Montrose stomped in his armor over to where Del Azarchel stood facing Alalloel.

Del Azarchel turned his head when Montrose came up. “You will be fascinated by this, Cowhand. Your ungrateful creatures who have condemned us to live and die as mortals are attempting to negotiate how the upcoming ten billion from the past eras will fit into their social structure. They are finding the prospect somewhat overwhelming.”

Montrose said, “I am glad they ain’t so cold-assed as to merely beef them or set them down in the middle of icy nowhere to die. But the social structure should be obvious, if they are so much smarter than us. If I can see it, they can: The Witches are to look after the Moreaus and the environment, but any who grasp for long life will become part of the Swan Hierarchy, and get their souls absorbed. The Chimerae are to become the military caste, since their eugenic dreams have achieved more than success—the perfect race has, after all, been brought forth, but if the Chimerae start wars or kick up a row too great, the Swans can interfere. The Nymphs act as peacemakers and secret police, but they damn well better avoid the pleasures of electronic nirvana, or else they will get absorbed also. The Inquilines get to act as intermediaries between the First Humans and the Second. It is what they are suited for.”

Soorm spoke up in a gruff voice, “And what of us? What role can the Hormagaunts play in their many-racial world of races who all hate each other? We are a folk, a race, whose only virtue and talent is for cannibalism and genetic vampirism, a race too dangerous to live.”

Montrose said, “There is no place on Earth for you. Be pioneers, space explorers, since your people alone can adapt themselves to space conditions and not regret the loss of Earthly flesh. Your people can oversee the terraforming of Mars and Venus, and change each year as the environment changes and becomes more Earthlike.”

Montrose turned to the Anserine. “These options must have been clear to you from the beginning.”

Alalloel of the Anserine said, “You are assuming the Swan Paramounts will permit independent minds to exist.”

Del Azarchel said, “That is not the problem. The Swans do not have the mathematics worked out to express a solvable equation for how the seven races are meant to be interrelated.”

Montrose looked at him sidelong. “Give it to them.”

Del Azarchel raised an eyebrow. “Rather than burn my planet they are stealing from me? In heaven’s name, why?”

Montrose snorted. “And here I thought you said the Earth was irrelevant.”

Del Azarchel scowled. “Irrelevant if I give the Earth away. All-important if Earth is stolen.”

Montrose said to Alalloel, “The Jupiter Brain will wake up eventually, and vastly, vastly outmatch your intelligence. You indicated the event was beyond your timebinding threshold. You don’t give a damn about nothing that happens so far in the future.”

Alalloel said, “Indeed we do not. Why should we? If the Hyades conquer, what will the rest matter?”

Montrose said, “So. I assume that applies to me as well. You just want me gone, not dead. Am I right? Del Azarchel will agree to give you his equations—”

Del Azarchel said archly, “Oh? Will I?”

“—and you will have the tools needed to rule a world of impossibly incompatible subspecies of mankind, if in return you agree to declare any human being—or his property—who does not have any circuit installed in his nervous system connecting him to your Noösphere a free and independent entity.”

Alalloel said sharply, “You seek to possess the Emancipation, and to flee to space to escape our jurisdiction. To this, we will not consent.”

Montrose said, “You already have the laws and customs to deal with free and independent entities: just consider any Thaws, or all, to be legally the same as Inquilines and Anchorites. Anyone not mentally connected to your Noösphere will neither overwhelm your infrastructure nor have need to follow your chain of command. Exarchel occupied and killed Pellucid, and took over all his higher functions, and you in turn occupied and killed Exarchel, but I think you will find that certain base commands and attitudes are hardwired into the system that now forms the basis of your worldwide mind. Pellucid is congenitally unable to interfere with human beings, and not allowed to kill them if they are off Tomb ground, except in retaliation or self-preservation. Like it or not, that rule is part of your psychology now. It is programmed at a basic level where you are not likely to be able to get at it. Unless you want to back out of occupying Pellucid right now, and return to your previous levels of intellect, and just be a normal, slow, stupid old posthuman like Blackie and me? If you disagree, think of the time you will spend trying to figure out how to reprogram your own brain—assuming it can be done at all. If you agree, think of how much trouble you save yourself.”

Alalloel thoughtfully spread her wings. Her many eyes adorning the metallic feathers glinted and gleamed as countless invisible communication rays fed into the local area, communing.

Eventually she snapped her wings shut. Alalloel said, “We agree to the proposition, but to nothing further. Provisions will be made to treat all sub-posthuman life and disconnected life, both mechanical and biological, as Anchorites not obligated to our Noösphere protocol.”

Montrose glanced at Del Azarchel. “You asked me to set up a firing solution? This is it.”

Del Azarchel sighed. “I would rather burn the planet, but obviously, that would be a brutal gesture accomplishing nothing.” He fished an old-fashioned data coin out from his poke, and tossed it with a negligent flick of his thumb toward Alalloel. “My proprietary research on the psychological modes and methodologies of the Jupiter Mind. The same mathematical models can be applied to living beings as to emulations. These races were actually designed to have complementary strengths and weaknesses, checks and balances, to fit into my proposed overall system. Here: it is yours.”

Del Azarchel turned to Montrose. “Why did you not ask for a spare hibernation unit and a Xypotech to run it? We could have gotten that and more.”

Montrose said, “Nope. For one thing, this Noösphere is now a Potentate, a planetary mind. The only reason why it does not want to brute-force recalculate your works is because it’s inefficient to reinvent the wheel. They are actually doing us a favor, on account of they are tender hearted and don’t want to kill all the billions of Thaws about to be dumped on them.”

Del Azarchel scowled at Alalloel. “Then why did they bargain with us at all?”

“My guess is that the Swan Hierarchy is not going to maintain itself as a hierarchy very long. You saw the social vectors of their fundamental construction. They are archindividualists: I suspect they are only maintaining their group mind for so long as the current crisis lasts.”

Del Azarchel said, “What crisis?”

“Us.”

Alalloel said, “You speak with greater insight than one of your level of intellect should be able to reach. We find this disquieting, and yet it confirms our previous conclusion.”

Montrose said, “What conclusion?”

“You and Del Azarchel are too dangerous. There is something embedded in the Monument: a potential, an emergent property, which you unwittingly copied into yourself with your Prometheus Formula, and which you again copied into Exarchel, whose thought patterns have many times been recopied into the version of Del Azarchel you see before you. The matter goes beyond mere differences in intelligence. There is something, some spirit in you, some essential property that cannot be defined nor contained. You will live out your natural lives in this century, having no additional recourse to biosuspensive hibernation nor to computer emulation nor to any other method of perpetuating your patterns of consciousness.”