“You reckon they have money?”

“They must have some means of economizing their expenditures. No matter what system of prioritizing benefits and expenses they use, sending a coherent beam of radio across one hundred fifty lightyears costs energy.”

The magnitude of time made the idea of contact absurd: as if Queen Victoria might hear the replies to messages sent out by Queen Elizabeth.

“This Hyades Cluster: they the ones who built the Monument?”

“Unknown. At the moment we don’t know if ‘they’ are really there.”

“So no voluptuous green-skinned spacewomen in silvery space-bikinis?” Montrose was thinking wryly that his childhood comics had been wrong about everything.

Del Azarchel looked amused. He said, “In that respect, the world is much as you left it. But in others, ah! You are wrong, I tell you, to mock this era. You have much to see! We may not have flying cars, but we have built an evacuated underground rail system which follows hypoclyoid curves deep through the molten mantle of Earth, allowing us to fling bullet-carriages, accelerated by induction coil guns, from continent to continent faster than even military jets can fly. It is amazing the public works projects one can perform if your energy budget is practically unlimited. We have melted Antarctic ice, opening vast tracts on that continent to cultivation, and used the water to turn the Gobi Desert green, and clothe the interior of Australia with fruit trees. Mega-evaporation, moving moisture, moving clouds, gathering sunlight, deflecting sunlight: everything that is technically possible is now technically feasible, because we have power enough.”

“Energy power or political power?”

“Both! We want for nothing. And, yes, the Hermetic Conclave has some advantages that previous rulers never enjoyed, thanks to the study of the Eta Segment, it is true. We can calculate some social trends to a nicety. The science is called Cliometry. You deserve credit for that. Not to mention that the Princess seems to have an analytical method, or a divine gift … well, no matter. The power is in our palm. The treasure trove is ours. You have the key. We need but turn the lock and listen as it all clicks into place.”

“What clicks into place?”

“The future! Don’t you recall what we stayed up all night discussing, that last night on Earth, before the liftoff? It has been years of time for me, and I recall it. It has been days only for you. Have you forgotten?”

“Talked about girls, as I recollect. All the pretty girls you knew were going to be long dead while we slumbered. You had quite the list, Blackie. We talked about leaving Earth forever…”

“And about returning in triumph with the lore of the universe! We talked of the future!”

“So why haven’t y’all translated more of the Monument while I was out?”

“Because the Monument was not meant for us. Man is a microscopic biological infestation clinging to the dry surface irregularities of the crust-folds of one small iron-cored rocky planet circling a medium-sized yellow star in the outskirts of the galaxy. We are like simple-minded monkeys who found an encyclopedia one savant wrote down for another. It was meant to be read by something far more intelligent than man.”

“You must have them by now.”

“Who?”

“Posthumans. Augmented Intellects. Odd Johns. Nexts. People who did right what I did wrong to my brain. What research in intelligence augmentation was done while I was in cold storage?”

“Almost none.”

Montrose could not express his disgust: He merely made a noise halfway between a groan and the noise you make to clear your throat before you spit.

Del Azarchel spread his hands. “Experimentation on human subjects was illegal in the year we sailed, remember? And your example discouraged further investigation.”

“Example? One hundred and fifty years! In that amount of time, we went from Ben Franklin pulling electricity down from the sky, to the Wright Brothers putting a man up into it! You are telling me one bad experiment set back the whole globe for two centuries? I don’t believe it!”

“Ah, but the New World between the day of Benjamin Franklin and the day of the Brothers Wright suffered no tyrannies, plagues, or famines, and their small wars were fought only with gunpowder, not lingering germs. Anglo-American laws and customs were especially friendly to innovators and inventors. Whereas Earth, while we were gone, was not so friendly. First it was overpopulated, and then it was underpopulated, ruled alternately by Xi Mandarins from the Peking, or by Bio-Warlords from Pretoria.”

Montrose followed his gaze to where Del Azarchel was staring thoughtfully at a painting of skeletal buildings toppling in the red shadows of a mushroom cloud.

“Well,” he muttered, “they should have been following up on my work, instead of messing around.”

“Now we can set things right.”

“We, meaning the human race?”

“We, meaning you and I. Your method, your Prometheus Formula, is the only technique, even after a century, that shows promise of evolving us to the intellectual plateau needed to unriddle the Monument. But your method proved too dangerous to use on a live human subject—ah! But what about a ghost? An iron ghost? What about a marriage of my methods and yours?”

Montrose recalled that his work in ultra-long-term neurohibernation had won him a berth aboard the starship. But Del Azarchel’s work had been just as crucial: The ship’s brain had been based on Del Azarchel’s work in Automated Intelligence. At the time, there had been powerful political factions who had not wanted the Spaniard or the Texan aboard. They were the wrong kind of people; it sent the wrong kind of message. They were troublemakers. But Captain Grimaldi, a prince in more ways than one, had pulled them aboard. There were some natural overlaps to the two fields, but how did they apply here?

“I don’t get it,” said Montrose. “What are you driving at?”

But the excitement of Del Azarchel’s words, the enthusiasm blazing in his eyes, was contagious. Montrose jumped to his feet and began pacing up and down the thick, richly-patterned carpet as if from an excess of energy.

“Just this!” Del Azarchel’s voice rang out. “We are about to create our future, the one mankind has more than deserved.”

“What’ch’ya got in mind?”

“Are you feeling healthy enough to take a short trip around the globe? Or, rather, under it? I have a project I have been working on, and out of the whole human race, out of the last fifteen decades of history, you are the only one qualified to help me. Forgive my impatience, but I have been waiting years, biological time, and over a century, calendar time, to show this to you. I call it The X Machine.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“The key to flinging aside the chains of that prisonhouse called being merely human. The key to the gates opening into … beyond!”

Menelaus Montrose felt a sense of restlessness. The chamber suddenly seemed too small, and the world beyond these walls full of mysteries and wonders. “I reckon I equal up to anything. Show me this beyond of yours. But get me the hell something to wear besides a bathrobe, cant’ch’ya?”

2. Xypotechnology

A man and two boys—wardrobe master, valet, body servant—came in the chamber to help him dress, but Montrose kicked up a row, and the trio retreated in disorder, bowing and kowtowing. Montrose was almost sorry he had kicked them out, because now he had to puzzle out the garments for himself, and they seemed to have no buttons or zippers.

The clothes laid out for him were more comfortable than what he’d seen the shiny courtiers wearing: a white tunic with a black kimono-like over-garment, loose hakama-style pants beneath. The only foolery was the red and white sashes: one around his waist and the other running from shoulder to hip. He left them off.