“But they didn’t tell you?”

As before, the emissary entity did not answer the obvious.

Montrose continued: “So—because this Forerunner race wiped itself out, or let itself be wiped out by Big-Endians, the Orion Arm was laid waste. Let me guess. All Big Boys, the civilized stars and nebulae in the Orion Arm, are in Hell, because you-all are being punished for that crime. Is that it?”

Yes. We-all occupy the volume of space that allowed itself to fall fallow. The consequences of that misdeed must be rectified. The Authority at M3 in Canes Venatici, acting through the Dominion in the Praesepe Cluster, assumes the perquisites and the liabilities to continue the legacy of the lost Archon of Orion. By law, all lesser civilizations within this volume fall under the same authority. The primary obligation is to complete the unfinished project of Sophotransmogrification.

“By what right do you impose this obligation on us?”

The elemental composition of your world betrays traces of Panspermian influence in the creation of primordial life here. You owe your life. If a failure to reciprocate were to become widespread, this would de-incentivize the conduct of cultivation.

“Good God! You sound like my old captain, telling me I could not bring a whiskey bottle and a bar girl with me while on patrol, or break the whiskey bottle over the sergeant’s head for strumping the bar girl, because then everyone would do it! What kind of reasoning is that? Does that strike you as fair? You called it Hell, not me! You said Praesepe, and all those other critters out there—Hyades, Ain, you, all you monsters—are being punished. For what? For the suicide of the Forerunners? For the crime of these Forerunners losing a war? How is that a crime?”

Your current symbol-forms have no correspondence to our thinking-forms.

“Sorry. I’ll try to be clear. If Hyades did not will and cause the collapse of this Forerunner race, then you are not responsible for the Orion Arm going fallow. Nor is Earth. So why should Hyades be forced by Praesepe to turn this cosmic wasteland back into a civilized area, all filled with happy Jupiter brains? More to the point, why should we earthmen be forced by Hyades to help you in this crazy project?”

The obligation is imposed upon Hyades because under no likely extrapolation of events will the Hyades polity endure as a coherent thought-system until the desired result obtains.

“Uh. Your current symbol-forms have no copasetic with my stinking-forms.”

Sorry. I’ll try to be clear. I—this entity before you—speaks now as epitome of all Hyades, even as you speak as epitome for all of Sol. Hyades, left to ourselves, would not expend effort on any project whose culmination was beyond our anticipated civilizational lifespan. We would not, for example, channel the flows of interstellar gases to trigger the formation of novae to create the heavier elements needed for the formation of life-bearing planets. However, we received the benefit of a system that plans and acts in larger time scales. The Collaboration seeded this area of the Orion Arm in just such a fashion, without which the elemental composition of the Hyades stars would not have given rise to us.

It would be unjust to receive such a benefit without reciprocating.

“And this project, this Sophotransmogrification—I should get a prize for being able to say that two-cubit word—you mean to turn all the worlds into living brains like Jupiter and Tellus, all the moons into Selene, and all the stars into Dyson spheres?”

That is the beginning of the project, yes. Our motive is not hidden: Life serves life.

“Yeah, I got that. Be fruitful and practice your multiplication tables. I got it.”

This universe is a wasteland of dead material. The universe is indifferent to life. Alone, no civilization can survive. Each requires the support and aid and trade and protection from other living civilizations. The wasteland must therefore be filled with life, intelligence, and entities capable of mutual collaboration. We impose servitude on you in order to increase your prospects of survival, and, in the long run, our own.

“But if we did not ask for your help, why not let us go to hell in our own way?”

Had you shown yourself able to maintain a starfaring civilization in your own way, interference would not have been needed. We know you are aware of this, and are acting on the knowledge.

Cahetel was talking about Rania’s expedition. Of course they had seen it. There was no hiding huge, shining, massive objects traveling at near lightspeed from ordinary observation.

Do you claim a moral or legal right to commit your race to extinction, and remove from all neighboring polities, current and future, the benefit of your civilizational contributions?

The entity must have picked up the concept of moral and legal rights from the dead brain of Big Montrose. There was no corresponding symbol for this concept in the Monument or the Cenotaph languages: only reciprocal duties, costs, benefits, expenditures, velocity, acceleration, distance, duration, entropy, and the like.

“Speaking hypothetically, what if I said, ‘we own ourselves’?”

Such a claim would be logically self-defeating: one may only justly destroy an article of possession. If your race is an article of possession, there is no injustice if it is owned by Hyades, for articles of possession have no rights. Without speaking hypothetically now: Do you claim, on behalf of mankind, such a right?

Montrose once again had that sensation of a man who thinks himself far from the edge of a cliff but suddenly notices one foot hanging over an abyss of air. He said carefully, “I claim no such right. My race is not an article of possession.”

We accept this plea and rule that you may not, either through action or inaction, bring about your own extinction. To fail to persevere to colonize the nearby stars constitutes just such an impermissible lapse of duty. Do you agree?

“I agree.” He raised his head. “As the official spokesman for mankind, I hereby state for the record that the human race, now and forever, forswears the right to commit ourselves to extinction through laziness or through dumb-as-a-stump stupidity or for any other reason. Man is great enough to be starfarers. My wife will prove that to you, and so will I.”

The entity made no reply. Then again, Montrose realized he had not actually asked a question. The entity did not know how to accept implied invitations to speak, which occupied so much of polite conversation among humans.

Montrose said, “Answer me one thing more. You are building all these interstellar-sized computers, the Powers and Potentates and Virtues and Hosts and Dominions and Dominations and Authorities—someone is going to use all this calculation power for something. What is the end? What is the purpose of this project?”

We are not told the end.

“If you don’t know the end, why play along?”

Life serves life. We anticipate that the whole of the Orion Arm will wake to self-awareness through the interconnection of many Dominion and Domination library systems circa A.D. 6,400,000, and resume its rightful station as Archon within the Galactic Collaboration. On that day, the component civilizations of the Hyades Cluster, even if long extinct, will be vindicated. By definition the whole will be more aware than any part or precursor. None can serve a greater whole except in ignorance. Shall each live only for himself? If such is the rule of man, we impose a higher rule.

“Damn,” muttered Montrose, as something like a little bubble of clear understanding swelled up in his brain. “You obey laws for payoffs in distant days you will never live to see, and serve higher purposes you don’t understand just because it would be unfair to take without giving.