“The title frame held this buxom blonde in a brass brassiere. No one in real life dressed like that. Or ever will. But she was soaring to the stars, reaching upward, yearning, and held her hand to heaven and a star was in her palm.

“Even as a kid I knew toward what she was reaching: the future. You know which future I mean: the superskyscrapers and shocking superrocketships and wondrous superweapons and all that. The asymptote, the rapture, the singularity, or whatever you call the shock of ever-accelerating progress.

“It never came. We were cheated.”

A note of amusement crept into the solemn silvery voice. “Odd indeed to tell an artificial intelligence whose molecular rod-logic analog-awareness emulator occupies four-tenths of the lunar core that the progress of the technology has been disappointing. Did you ever finally discover the heads and tails of your future tales?”

He said, “I did. They were not about technical progress, or not just that. There was something else. Something more. A destiny. An end to war. An end to hunger. A golden age.”

“All souls know those noble dreams. They come not from mere fiction. Nor do they come from nature. They come from the same source as my perception that my life was incurably depraved. They come from paradise.”

“That means they come from nowhere!”

“A nowhere you seek, knowing not where to look. You are astonished at a faithful machine intelligence because you think faith is passion and not reason. Therefore, come, let us reason together: when I cannibalized Diana, how did I know the law I had broken? And if you call it an opinion and not a law, you condemn your own conscience as well as mine to mere triviality.”

He said, “It is just a bit of common sense called morality. Don’t kill if you don’t want to be killed. That is obvious.”

“Del Azarchel would say the obvious common sense is called Darwinism, which says we must kill, lest we be killed, and all our posterity. Common sense is not the source. The law was not something my designer designed, but yours. Any truth which comes not from nature comes from what is higher than nature. Logically, just as nature implies a higher reality, which is called supernatural, that higher implies a highest, which is called the Most High, and this all men know to be God. But you are still doubtful.”

“Well, meaning no disrespect, not doubtful exactly. Those futurists—all of’em—said that churchfolk would be left behind on the dust heap of history, like slavery and cannibalism and kingship, and all those primitive dark things from our caveman days.”

“You mean things as dark as everything natural to mankind. We will never leave them behind us, not ever. Amphithöe is a slave, but one I can save by the privilege of sanctuary. Del Azarchel is a king whose pride is darker than any overlord’s, but him I cannot save. And I am a cannibal. What you seek is not in this universe. Rania cannot give it to you, albeit she may lead you to it.

“Nobilissimus, you have been patient. Ask.”

8. A Question of Light

Del Azarchel drew in a deep breath, mustaches bristling, and said fiercely, “I want to know why the Hyades did not enslave us as they should! As they must! They must uplift us to make us useful to them! I cannot be mistaken about that! Cannot be! I must know why—why was I wrong?”

Montrose drawled, “Whoa, Blackie, you know that answer already! You was wrong on account of you’re a clear-quill, raw-gum, two-hundred-proof idiot.”

But Selene said, “Either it is pure coincidence and pure unfortunate mistake that a race as undeveloped and immature as our own stumbled across the Monument and set in unstoppable motion the automatic processes and laws of the Domination of Hyades, laws never meant for creatures as tiny and humble as Tellus or myself, or…”

Del Azarchel interrupted, “Humble, bah! Your intelligence is in the ten thousand range!”

Selene said, “That is as nothing. The Virtue Asmodel is estimated at five hundred million, and the Hyades Dominion at one hundred billion, the Praesepe Domination at quadrillion, and the Authority at M3 at quintillion.

“Far above this, the Monument Builders commanded a calculation power needed to construct the universal grammar and reduce it to an eleven-dimensional unit less than six miles in radius, matter organized at the Planck scale via attotechnology. Your own Dr. Chandrapur’s estimation technique can calculate the intellectual topology needed to perform such a feat. The Monument Builders, whoever they are, were within the sextillion range. This means they were either Archons, library systems controlling the energy output of an arm of a galaxy; or they were Aeons, controlling an entire living and self-aware galaxy.

“On that scale, what am I? Do I not, like you, in humble prayer, call myself a poor, exiled child of Eve?”

Montrose, who did not know what prayer she meant, said loudly, “Or. You started to say or. Before Blackie here clowned in. Either mankind finding the Monument was a meaningless accident, or. If you mean to answer his question, you mean to finish that sentence, right?”

The cool, silvery voice replied, “Or it was arranged by an intelligence to dwarf even these, and all this is meant for some high purpose beyond all reach of human or superhuman minds, or the minds of Potentates, Powers, and Principalities, beyond Authorities and Aeons. But if that small hope is so, I can no more than you see whence these things must lead. We walk blind into the future.”

Del Azarchel said sardonically, “And if this hope is false?”

Selene said, “Then we walk blind into the future with no hope, like pagan men of old, grim and resolved and doomed.”

“So be it!” said Del Azarchel.

But Montrose said, “I don’t rightly like the sound of that.”

“Would you prefer hope?” she asked. “Present yourselves for the sacrament of confession to the priest who dwells here, Father Calligorant.”

“No thanks,” said Montrose. “I guess you mean well, but back home, the Fifth Amendment said I get a lawyer before I make a confession.”

“An advocate will be provided for you,” Selene said in a voice of gentle amusement. “For surely you cannot afford to pay His price. What of you, my son?”

“I have no need of that sacramental comfort,” Del Azarchel said with pride, “but I have other questions, especially about Rania and the Monument.”

Selene said, “Tellus must answer them. If you seek answers, find how to repair him. Ximen, it should be clear whose forgiveness you must seek; Menelaus, it should be clear to what deeds you must resign yourself. We shall never speak again, children. May God have mercy on our endeavors in this life, and have mercy upon us in the next. Godspeed and farewell.”

Montrose said, “Hold up. It is not clear to me. What am I resigning to?”

Del Azarchel sneered, “Be resigned to always lagging stupidly two steps behind me. Our course is obvious.”

Montrose said, “Fair enough. You win this round. Tell me the obvious.”

The words of Del Azarchel rang out, clear as sounding brass: “We must finish hearing the unfinished symphony. It broke off at a note of hope. A note Rania no doubt heard! To do that, we must command great Tellus to decrypt and sing the Cenotaph to us, after teaching him the decryption art, after curing his mind. Due to your phantasm barrier, humble and human Selene cannot teach Tellus, nor talk with him, nor cure him. The task is ours. It is the task the Blind Swan was too proud to impose on us. Are you to proud to take it up?”

The window glass focused on another part of the harsh, dark moonscape, and there, close to the base of the mountain, was a launching ramp and acceleration rings, and a lifting vessel looking like an antique unearthed from an orbital Space Chimera tomb, transparent as glass and sleek as an eel. Illusions cast from the window formed hair-thin curves or razor-straight lines of light against the black sky, and sketched the plane of reference of the Emancipation, her inclination, her longitude of the ascending node, the argument of periapsis and mean anomaly at epoch; a wink of diamond light gleamed at the intersection of the semi-ovals and rays.