“Like us humans?”
“Like us, we who occupy this chamber. We who do not cooperate with the world, but decree the destiny for it.”
“What destiny?”
An odd light shined in the eyes of Reyes y Pastor, and his voice soared up: “Our children, like us, will be Hermeticists, creatures of pure intellect, unmoved by mere sympathy or pity. Ruthlessness is the central characteristic to be pursued in the initial design phase. And a love of efficiency, of course. The designs of second generations will be self-directed from the first generations: They will know better than we how to direct their child iterations!”
“That is a Simon-pure mess of yack-stupid destiny, if you don’t mind my saying. You mean your goal is just to make some sort of—freakish soulless gruel—set it in motion, let it loose, and let it grow up any which way it likes?”
Reyes y Pastor spoke in unctuous tones: “The goal is to remove human interference from the evolution as early as possible, lest sentimentality hinder the process of culling the weak. You see, natural evolution requires death to do its work: artificial evolution will require failed branches and dead ends be pruned away, them and their children.”
Montrose grimaced and said, “Creating a child-race that is completely ruthless and ungrateful will merely sign the death warrant for the parent-race. At least teach them to respect their elders, so they don’t turn on us! Ain’t you never heard of the Fourth Amendment? Honoring your father and mother against unreasonable searches and seizures?”
“They will be intelligent creatures. We can rely on their perception of a natural harmony of interests.”
“Natural puke! Children have to be taught right from wrong, even if you have to beat it into them!”
Father Reyes spread his hands and curved his lips in a condescending smile. “But the rules of morality only apply to humans, do they not? We do not teach monogamy to bees, or vegetarianism to lions! Each created being must act according to its true nature, unhindered by conventions. To defeat the aliens, the angels we create must be lacking in sentiment and weakness. It is not right for a man to live past his appointed hour and deny his heirs his legacy—why should it be right for a breed? I, for one, am willing to allow my race give way, and yield to that greater race which we shall design to displace us. How else is evolution to be achieved? The survival of the fittest requires, does it not, that the less fit shall not survive? That is the true meaning of the cold equations of power and weakness described in the Monument.”
Montrose felt a stab of blinding hatred at those words, something based on a childhood memory he could not bring to mind. But anger boiled in his stomach.
He drew in a deep breath, telling himself to be reasonable. A small voice in the back of his mind told Montrose that perhaps a race of monsters was just what the situation called for. A friendly race might not have the bloody-mindedness needed to kill the enemy from Hyades when the time came.
Then an even smaller voice from the back of his mind told him that something was not right. How had Father Reyes known what the equations from the Eta and Theta segments read?
“But I thought the game-theory equations were something I translated today, just for the first time. Or was I only giving you a second opinion?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Montrose realized that the Hermeticists had indeed read further into the Monument than what they had told the world, perhaps further than Montrose himself had done under the influence of his daemon: at least into the Omicron group of symbols. But the symbols were hierarchical: no one could translate one section without reading the key in the section before it. Which meant—
“You knew!”
2. Admission and Expulsion
There was a stir among the Hermeticists. No one even bothered to pretend not to recognize what he was talking about.
“You mined the damn contraterrene out of the heart of the Diamond Star even though you knew it would call down the Hyades Armada onto the Earth, and turn us into slaves! You knew and you did it anyway! Why? Tell me why!”
No one answered.
No one needed to. He knew that answer also: they did it because they needed the antimatter to get back home. They also needed it to conquer their homes once they got back here. Only the Captain, only Rainier Grimaldi, the Prince, had been unwilling to preserve his life, preferring instead preserve the liberty of the far tomorrow of the human race. And he had been murdered for his scruples.
“It was just too way off in the future for y’all to worry about, wasn’t it? I bet you had not made your magic amulets yet, those armbands to feed whatever medical molecular technology is keeping you young. Is that it? You were lost and far from home, and homesick and sad and gray-haired and feeling all a-pitying of yourselves, and you did not think you would live out the year, so what was a few thousand years to you?”
Again, no one answered, not even Del Azarchel. Those proud men, masters of the world, pursed their lips and cast down their gazes and did not meet his eyes.
Reyes y Pastor broke the silence. “The, ah, Chair will entertain a motion, ah, to…”
“Never mind,” said Montrose. “You don’t have to expel me. Open the damn door. I’ll leave under my own power.”
He walked to the doors, turning his back to the whole table of black-garbed, dangerous men. Montrose wondered if he would feel it, the blade, the bullet, the energy beam, or whatever they meant to use to cut him down. Surely they were not going to let him walk out of here, free as air, free to tell the world what he knew. Surely not.
He stood with his nose pointed at the steel valves of the massive door to the chamber, his back to his executioners, waiting for them to get up the nerve to kill him. He waited, listening to the blood pounding in his ears, a sound so like the sea.
It came as no surprise to hear the rustle of black silk as hands moved stealthily. Perhaps there were hidden holsters. Montrose did not turn his head, knowing any sudden movement would be his last.
The surprise came when a voice rang out. It was the machine again, the Xypotech Del Azarchel.
Do not harm him! He has been under my protection all these years, and I see no reason to alter. I value his life above your lives.
The human Del Azarchel cried out, “But why? He threatens the Great Work! Why spare him?”
The inhuman Del Azarchel replied: Because I have given my word—machine or not, alive or not, I am still the Nobilissimus Ximen Del Azarchel, Senior of the Landing Party!
The next voices were as hushed and cowed as the tiny noises made by mice. “Chairman, I move that we release the hatch—” “Seconded” “—call the question?” “If there are no objections, the motion—”
The next noise he heard was the very quietest click, and the sigh of the door-pistons.
The big doors opened. Out he went.
“Well,” he muttered to himself. “I hadn’t expected on that! Now what?”
12
A New Age Dawns
A.D. 2400
1. Images
The skies above Utrecht were lit with fireworks like flowers of red and silver-white, brilliant against the stars or against the huge, ghostly image-works. Microwave cannonades from De Haar castle had heated the air to clear away the threatening clouds, and only a few nimbus, rosy and silver in the reflected lights, hung near the horizon.
The images loomed through the midnight like towers of smoke. Menelaus could only guess at their meaning. Huge in the east and west, their cowls tangles in the stars, were bearded monks in cassocks, each holding aloft a pale sword half-transparent in the light of the rising moon. Elsewhere across the constellations was an image of a child in swaddling, leading a parade of strange figures that promised what the year to come might bring, cornucopias of prosperity, goats whose teats dripped ambrosia, waddling Buddha-figures with sacks heavy-laden with gold.