“Look yonder. The nine recurring cycles in the Mu and Nu acreage of symbols—obviously meant to be read as one group, not two—the Monument Builders had an expression for the volume of information content in circulation in the combined mental systems of a civilization. It expresses nested topographies of ever-increasing levels of Superintelligence. From their point of view, the mental systems, computers and computer-engineers, libraries and librarians, is all one thing. One system, at least as far as their calculus is concerned. A Noösphere.”

Montrose pointed at the Monument image shining on the floor. “There. I think the mind-body expression is addressed in the main sequence of the Omicron group, which looks so weirdly like an E8 classification of complex simple Lie algebras. I ain’t surprised if the relation of self-awareness to inanimate matter falls into a that yonder root lattice: We’d expect any semiotic system to have the properties of trivial center, simply connected, and simply laced.”

He stared at the swirls and knots of the nonlinear writing system, trying to grasp the elusive half-forgotten thought.

“If I am right, the mind-body expression applies to any race, any planet, any form of intelligence anywhere. It is the nature of intelligence itself. The way matter encodes thoughts. Of course, I suppose anyone building a monument like this, a universal message meant to be read by any form of intelligence that blind and crazy Mother Nature can invent, the Monument Builders just have to have a firm understanding of the nature of the mind. They’d have to, wouldn’t they? Otherwise, there couldn’t be no monument to build.”

Father Reyes said delicately, “The yahoo?”

Montrose blinked as if waking from a trance, and stared at the other man uncomprehendingly. “Beg pardon?”

“You said you were trying to simplify things for the yahoo. Who is that?”

“Oh. That monkey thing that was in the room I was at. I am not sure what it was doing there, but it left once Del Azarchel and I started talking. It was in a little cart. I remember wondering if the creature had been brought from a zoo, or was a pet of Del Azarchel.…”

Reyes y Pastor gave a grim and ironic little smile. “It was Del Azarchel.”

“What? No. I remember talking with Del Azarchel. About the Monument.”

“You were talking with Del Azarchel’s model. The yahoo was the real Del Azarchel. That is what humans look like to the Posthuman, to the daemon, living in your head.” He uttered a chuckle, seeing the look on Menelaus’s face. “I do not mean you are possessed! In that same way that Socrates had a driving voice that compelled him to scale the slopes of highest thought, what he called his daemon, you have a daemon in you. It is benevolent, I am sure. Somewhat benevolent.” Reyes y Pastor turned to the group. “We have heard from this primitive version of the most Learned Menelaus Montrose. Is there anything more to be gleaned from him?”

A murmur ran through the chamber. Montrose saw the overhead screens record a vote of “nay.”

Reyes y Pastor continued mildly. “Then let us by all means move to the main business of the Conclave. I am assuming we all favor the creation of forms of intelligence to surpass Man. May I call the question?”

Another murmur of assent. There was no debate on the point: The screens overhead flashed a vote of “aye.”

Montrose was staggered by the overweening pride of it all. The Hermeticists fully intended to guide human evolution through the next eight millenniums of time.

But then he reflected. The threat from the Hyades was so remote in space, so far off in time, that only the most audacious plans could now be dreamed that might one day, centuries and millenniums hence, be fruitful.

And, come to think of it, what else could the Xypotech be meant to do? Montrose imagined hundreds, or thousands, of buildings housing these vast minds, fortresses and warehouses and factories of them, stretching from sea to sea, across Asia, across the sea-bottoms, orbiting in vast flotillas between Earth and Moon—and perhaps someday—the machines of man would make other machines to make other machines yet, years and centuries and generations of work. Would it be enough to mount a defense for the humans left on the green surface of the world? Could the Solar System be made into a fortification vast enough to hinder, slow, and fend off what came across the darkness from the Hyades? What kind of navy would match the godlike alien power? What kind of weapons? What kind of minds would be smart enough?

The vision startled him. Perhaps the Hermeticists were right to think big. Thinking small would not solve a problem like this.

Montrose snapped back to the present moment, wondering at what he had just heard.

Father Pastor had spoken: “We are crippled by a lack of data. Fortunately, we have exactly one prototype working model of a Posthuman consciousness as our ally! Therefore the chair will entertain a motion to put the question of the best design for a race to supplant Man to our own Crewman Fifty-One, whose usefulness to the Conclave in times past has proven itself.”

Montrose was frozen in that hush of shock that comes as a prologue to outrage. He could not believe such an idea could be proposed in such bland tones. The nodding and whispering faces around the table were blank and bored. To them the notion was routine.

Reyes y Pastor was still talking. “Her Serene Highness has made it clear that she wishes no one to interfere with the delicate neural surgery done so far, and yet I think we must discuss the possibility of, ah, a second medical intervention to waken the other Montrose, the daemon, to learn what we can from him. The floor is open to whomever wishes to speak.”

“I damn well wish to damn well speak, you pustulating bastard.”

Montrose stood up. He was not doing this to make himself look imposing (although this did) but to allow him to draw his heavy dirk from where it was tucked behind the folded of cloth of the long hood hanging down his back. He casually put one hand behind his back, and felt the grip of the knife handle.

The rational part of his mind told him he could not escape from a locked chamber with seventy-one men, now young and strong, and with who-knew-what additives and accelerants coursing through their bloodstreams, or tweaked into their nervous systems. Only Narcís D’Aragó was visibly carrying a weapon, but Montrose assumed the others were armed as well, because in their situation he would have been. So he told the rational part of his mind to shut up.

“What in the world, or in hell, make you gents think you got any right to say what happens to me? You thinking of tinkering with my brain without my say-so? My damned brain?! Sounds like you done it before. Did I help you conquer the Earth? I doubt y’all were cunning enough to do it by your own poxy selves. Did I help kill off the Captain, you hellbound traitorous mutineers? Well, I am not helping you again! I’ll see you in perdition being rogered by the scabby blue member of Old Nick first! And—”

And he stopped because the Hermeticists seemed startled. Startled at him? No. To judge by their expressions, they had already dismissed anything he was going to say. He was just a donkey in their eyes, a body that carried around the useful daemon of Mr. Hyde.

Was there something else in the room? He looked left and right only with the corners of his eyes, not moving his head. Yet he saw nothing that had not been there a moment ago. He looked up.

The screen showing the many-branching conversation tree had shot out a new thread or two, and the colors changed as a previous conversation was prioritized—the bookmark for the comment where D’Aragó had mentioned how they could destroy anyone they could not suborn, when Montrose asked if they meant for him to kill himself—that was now lit up in red, and had the floor.