“Why?” asked Del Azarchel. “What could possibly be their motive? And who?”

Torment said, “You are already calculating how to take your revenge?”

Del Azarchel said with a smile, “Think of it as an infinite game. There is no final move until all who offend me suffer infinitely.”

13. Archon and Authority

Eventually a response came from the main mass of the dendrite clouds coating the Ain star system.

The Monument you describe cannot have been produced by any intellect of the same order of being as Ain, a Principality, nor Hyades, a Dominion, nor Praesepe, a Domination. As for intellects of superior ranks to this, Messier 3 and above, all models and extrapolations approach a singularity, and they are undiscoverable.

The intelligence needed to create an alternate system of cliometry, the so-called Cold Equations of which you speak, to give your race false axioms and false conclusions and nonetheless have this false system map so accurately onto known galactic cliometry that your dominion, Triumvirate, could not detect the deception—is very likely higher than the quintillion range of the Authority in M3 in Canes Venatici. Ergo we are confronted by a malign intellect most likely in the intellectual range of the immediate superior of M3, if not more. Posit a ten-quintillion range intellectual system.

Torment said, “Who is this superior? Mankind has heard no rumor of such an entity. Whom does M3 serve?”

M3 serves the dead Archon of Orion, who served life.

Del Azarchel demanded a more detailed explanation than this cryptic comment. The response was:

At one time, the combined efforts of the Orion civilizations seeded the immediate area of the Orion Spur with prebiotic and protobiological material, which was seeded to various small, rocky planets of small yellow stars—which is not a statistically likely place for life naturally to arise. Call them the Panspermians. They were shattered in war, and some surviving elements, broken logic diamonds larger than gas giants, fled across the wide interrupt between this arm and the Sagittarius Arm.

The ghosts of the Panspermians discomforted the Circumincession, requiring a stricter protocol against trespass—an event whose negative side effects you yourself once experienced.

Del Azarchel said, “How did you know that happened to me?”

The Circumincession placed or impressed an imperative into your matter-energy necessity-volition manifold an entity of your order necessarily carries with it, and the signs of what was asked of you are visible to intellects of my order. You were told to give a message to Orion, to which you have made no attempt, so far, to comply.

Del Azarchel said, “Sagittarius Arm commands the barbarians of Orion Arm to never trespass into the civilized stars, but to attend to our business here.”

Not for us is this message meant.

“Then for whom? Not the Panspermians—you said they were no more. For M3?”

Yes.

“Who and what is M3?”

M3 constitutes the regency of the Orion Spur wilderness, until such time as a worthy native government arises—that is, an Orion Archon self-created out of the scattered civilizations and ghost planets here, able to repay the cost of ascending them to sapience. Despite being remote from Orion, the dominions of M3 were awarded this task and combined and elevated themselves to the mental plateau of an Authority. The evolution to this station took place quite recently—the time value, given in terms of periods of radioactive particle decays, put the date somewhere in the middle of the Carboniferous Era Earth, when the first shark ruled the sea, and, on land, the first primitive tree reared its crown—Like mankind, M3 won freedom from indenture by sheer force of singlemindedness.

The Authority at M3 refers to itself by a conceptual intersection best translated as “Absolute Extension” since there is no point in the volume of space M3 regards as unworthy of being filled.

Del Azarchel said, “From the name it puts on itself, it is clear that M3 seeks to rule everywhere, all things. Ergo there is a rival to my ambition. Very good. Let us hope M3 worthy of being defeated.”

14. Memories and Regents

Montrose had a question: “You say that M3 serves the memory of the dead Panspermians. Good enough, for a weasel answer. But answer me this, then: Who the hell appointed M3 regent here? Who made M3 the guardian of all of us—Hyades and Praesepe, and all the other Dominions and Dominations here—until our age of majority?”

It is believed excitations in the Galactic Core carried some of the protobiological spores of the Panspermians into the Outer Arm of Cygnus, giving rise to the ancestors of the Hosts, Dominions, Dominations, and Authorities who form the current Archon there, a mental system, or, as you might call him, a being, who is reticent and austere to an extreme degree. Call this Archon “the Austerity.” The Austerity may be considered the one who bestowed the grant of power to M3 and who has the ability to revoke it if the Orion Arm fails to bring itself to life and self-awareness.

“May be considered?”

The Collaboration operates by consensus and calculus rather than by legal formalities. There was no vote; instead the Archons of Milky Way each in silence foretold the outcome of their mass action and acceded to the visualization thus provoked.

Montrose said, “Torment, are you deliberately mussing and fussing with the translation?”

Torment said, “I am trying to simplify innately complex and subtle concepts, some of which have no corresponding terms in our language. And some of it is guesswork.”

Mickey said to the Ain moonlet, “The Austerity is therefore not the Monument Builder. If the Outer Arm wished to interfere with Orion Arm, easier and more direct ways were open, where they not?”

Your conclusion cannot be confirmed with confidence: there may be restrictions on the behavior of such a being, so far superior in mental and energetic scope, reach, penetration, and creativity to myself, which are therefore unimaginable to one of my order. This may for reasons unknown have been the preferred method to proceed.

Del Azarchel asked, “Why has the Austerity not interfered to protect M3?”

The Austerity of the Outer Arm is dispassionate and taciturn. Its mental processes are opaque. However, the more fearful prospect is that the mastermind behind this crime is equal or superior to the Austerity in intellect.

Montrose said, “This was a crime, by your lights?”

It is sabotage of the effort of sophotransmogrification, for which cause I was created and outside of which I have no purpose. It is beyond crime: it is blasphemy.

Montrose said, “You diddling with the translation there, Torment?”

She said, “No. That symbol-gestalt was alarmingly accurate and clear. Ain speaks of something that offends with an absolute offense, something so alien to all he holds sacred and so inimical that there is no possibility of coexistence.”

Your race has been disadvantaged and made to suffer countless ages of coercive deracination which could have been avoided. Likewise have been disadvantaged all the other Hyades races—Asmodel and the others—who attempted to assist in the cultivation of your species. The loss is incalculable, terrifying to contemplate.

Mickey asked, “So is fear an emotion you still possess?”

Very much so.

Mickey asked, “What do you fear, Noble Lords?”

Extermination.

Montrose said, “Don’t keep us on pins and needles, jackhole. Who did it? Who is your enemy? Because they are surely ours now, too.”