“The same thing Dr. Yajnavalkya tried, putting up nerve blocks to hinder the extra brain tissue you grew in yourself, but without stopping the essential functions the new tissue usurped. We have divined enough of the pattern, the algorithm, of what you did with your Zurich computer runs, to set up a block that will last.”

“But how do I make it work?”

Del Azarchel looked puzzled. “Make what work? The cure is permanent.”

“Make the cocktail work! I want the experiment to work. It might seem like years ago to you, but to me, I was just now in the middle of the test. Do you have a way to augment my intelligence without the side-effect of wiping out my self-awareness? Why are you grinning?”

“Because I had forgotten what you are like. Because I believe the answer to your brain augmentation theory is in the Monument. And I believe the answer to how to read the Monument correctly is in your brain! You might not remember, but when we reached our destination, we brought you out of suspension. We managed to, ah, wrestle you into your suit. When we took you to the surface, you had a reaction to it…”

“Reaction?”

“You calmed down. You were drawn to certain parts of the Beta and Omicron groups from the first radial area. You seemed happy—even awed. Like a child again. We thought maybe you would return to yourself. I hoped … well…”

“I remember that! The horizon was right close, like a stone’s throw away, and I could see Dr. Velasquez and Dr. Ramananda standing off a ways. Their feet were below the horizon, and their heads were pointing away from me, so they seemed to be leaning backward. The surface was like black glass. And I saw a dim bright star overhead. And it was too late … for something … I was afraid … afraid not for myself, but…” His voice trailed off.

Del Azarchel was staring at him carefully. In a neutral voice he said, “Do you remember anything else? Who you feared?”

Montrose shook his head. “Catching fog in a pail. I can’t bring it back. I really buggered up my brain something awful, didn’t I?”

“The basic theory was sound.”

“So I flew to the damn Diamond Star.” Montrose spoke in a tone of awe. “I was there. I was there! I flew all the way there and don’t remember a damned thing about the damned voyage!”

“Well, to be fair, there was not much to remember, not for you. When you were not tied up, we kept you in cryonic biosuspension. We feared further nerve degeneration. And as for what you forget: well, to call it ‘damned’ is not so wrong-tongued a word to use.”

Montrose shook his head, and his face was haggard with misery. All the work on the Monument had gone on without him. He was the kid who missed Christmas. Everyone else got a present.

“Years. Decades. Half a century there and half a century back again,” he muttered. “I slept—I slept through it—”

“And you are still young!”

4. Sadder Things of Long Ago

“Well, where is everyone else? Where is Ramayana, Bhuti, or that jackass Narcís? Where is the Captain? I want to see Captain Grimaldi.”

“She is in transit.”

“She? She who?”

“Ha! Sorry, my friend. Forgive a slip of an old man’s tongue. Captain Grimaldi is no longer with us. He did not return from the Diamond Star. The expedition ended in disaster, in tragedy. More than half the crew perished.”

Montrose turned his face away. On the walls he saw images of cities and ships burning. He should have known. Grimaldi had been a Brahmin, and practiced ahimsa, sacred respect for all life. He would not have opened fire on his fellow human beings, not even to stop a war, or bring peace to the world. Grimaldi could not have been in command of the ship shown in these pictures.

Montrose had a strange, dreamlike sensation, as if he had touched a corpse, but only now remembered the feel of the cold flesh against his hand. As if the corpse had rotated in zero gee, and he saw dead eyes staring blindly, wall-eyed, at nothing, the dry mouth hanging open, the motionless and shriveled tongue like a worm. The sensation made Montrose’s eyes sting, and he raised his arm to wipe tears against the back of his hand, at which he stared in surprise.

“The Captain is dead? How did he die?”

Del Azarchel leaned forward and touched his arm. “He was like a second father to you, was he not?”

“My life weren’t nowise hard as yours, Blackie, but life didn’t kiss my rump much neither, if you take my meaning. Grimaldi crow-barred me out of a pretty tight spot, and…” Montrose suddenly could see in his mind’s eye the barrel of the pistol of the last man he’d ever faced. What was his name? Mike Nails. He’d lost almost a year to hospital-induced slumber that time. Montrose had been slow on the trigger then, because he wanted to delope and walk away. Because he’d lost his nerve. “… and, by the Plague, I am sure to have died and been planted in the ground had Grimaldi not given me a new deal from a fresh deck. So I owe him everything.”

“We will have time later to speak of the sadder things of long ago.”

“It’s not long ago to me!”

“The Captain, he did not perish in a praiseworthy fashion. I did not wish to mar his memory by telling tales.”

“I got a right to know!”

Del Azarchel smiled and leaned back. “Why this talk of rights? What you ask of me is yours. We never would have made it to the Diamond Star had you not solved the difficulties surrounding neuro-memory Divarication in long-term suspension. All of us are in your debt.”

“All of us? Which us?”

“The Hermeticists. The crew.”

“Who made it back?”

“There are only seventy-two of us left.”

Montrose was silent, shocked. Two-thirds of the expedition had perished.

Del Azarchel said, “We did not return to our old homes and our old nations when we returned, for all those things were gone, or changed beyond recognition into crooked mockeries of what we knew.” He gave a moue of distaste. “I will not disgust you by repeating the conditions of Spain. She was not my country any longer; those occupying her were not my countrymen. The officers and crew of the Hermetic, the greatest ship ever aloft, they were my countrymen! The stars were my nation! We are the Conclave of the Learned, but we should be called the Brotherhood of Man, for we are loyal to no country, no tribe, no sect, no faction. We are the Men of the Mind, serving only the abstract ideals of the pure reason, and devoted to nothing less than the entirety of the human race.”

This reminded Montrose so strongly of the make-believe Science Councils that peopled the cartoons he read in his youth, and ruled the make-believe future world, that at first he grinned. Maybe it was high time experts, folk who knew what to do, were telling people what to do, rather than folk lucky enough to be born rich enough to buy, photogenic enough to win, or crooked enough to steal a bag of votes?

But a frown drew his eyebrows together even before the grin left his mouth. No self-respecting Texas mob would let anyone tell them what to do, and that went double for experts, and twice double for some high-pockets breed of anyone that couldn’t be voted out of office when he got caught.

“Sounds like all-you-all is running the show. I ain’t sure what to make of that.”

“Not all you. All we. You are of our number. You may make of it anything you wish! Did I not say this future was ours, our own?”

“And you? You look like you ain’t done so badly for yourself. What’s your part?”

“My official title is Nobilissimus ‘the most distinguished,’ but my roles include various presidencies, tribunates, and ministerial positions awarded by certain electors from Concordat members that still maintain democratic forms, and titles of royalty granted when I became regent for those ruling royal families from members that do not. Privately, I am the owner-in-chief of the World Power Corporation, a cartel that controls how and where the antimatter we brought back from the Diamond Star is employed—my private position gives me much more influence over world affairs than my public, which is occupied by a nonsensical amount of ceremony. But between us, my only title is Senior.”