The octahedron had not the chance to disperse before Montrose shouted, “You ain’t finished here, you bucket of spit! Hold your plagued horses! That answer won’t fly! We spent five thousand seven hundred forty years and change zapping volunteers across the wild black yonder to God knows what hell pits inside the brains of alien mental systems—and you think you can yerk us out and pay us in pus?”

Del Azarchel said, “We require knowledge of your process of appeal or reconsideration.”

There is no appeal and no other answer based on the approach vector you have defined.

Del Azarchel said, “We have not been sufficiently recompensed for our earlier answers to your questions! It would be untoward for a lord of your high estate to be known to cheat his underlings. If you cheat your lessers in small matters, your peers will know you will cheat them in great matters.”

Some drops hovered in midair. One or two floated back up and rejoined the octahedron.

We are controlled, as are all things, by the mathematical necessities of cliometry, by our duty. Hyades acted beyond its proper circle of duty and introduces an unexpected vector into the cliometry of local, Orion Arm futurity. The resource you require is exceeding rare, as no Domination can produce nor reproduce it. We are limited to picotechnology. Bondi-Forward particles are an application of attotechnology.

Montrose said, “We can read the damned cliometry as well as you! We did not set out from Ain until enough humans had made enough contacts with lost and scattered races to equal this in value!”

Del Azarchel said, “Ain was aware that one of the elements in the galaxy had betrayed the others and is actively interfering with the cliometry of harvesting younger races and regathering old ones back into the Collaboration. According to Ain, and to Hyades, the vector of future history we introduced by creating Man to be the emissary and intermediary for the Orion Arm civilizations will undo, partly or completely, the disunion and confusion created by the Monuments.”

Discard as irrelevant: nothing do we owe ye.

But the drops were still floating up and not down, rejoining the main mass. Something was holding the attention of the emissary.

Montrose said, “The Authority at M3 in Canes Venatici assumes right and power to continue the legacy of the lost Archon of Orion! By law, all lesser civilizations—including you—within Orion fall under M3’s rulership. The primary obligation is to complete the unfinished project of sophotransmogrification. We just helped you with your damned pustule-sucking project! You must reciprocate. If a failure to reciprocate were to become widespread, this would deincentivize the conduct of cultivation!”

Discard as irrelevant: M3, not Praesepe, is liable.

Montrose said, “In a pig’s eye, jerkhole! I just gave you the same reason one of your thugs gave for conquering the human race! The same damnified epidemical reason! If you are not bound by your own laws, how can your legal system work? It is just corrupt?”

Comment rejected: There is no corruption. We adhere perfectly to our duty. You act with partial information.

Once more, the two men exchanged knowing looks. That was interesting. You act, not ye act. The Domination was saying Montrose himself, as an individual, had acted without complete information.

Del Azarchel said, “My lord, if I may, what information was Dr. Montrose missing?”

Know: At the time when Montrose and Ain entered into their covenant, Montrose knew not that Hyades is a dying dominion, fated not to last long, as younger and more cohesive dominions under our sway are taking over ever more of the duties once assigned to Hyades. Man was too young and incoherent to be adopted into the Collaboration, but Hyades persisted, sparing ye when it would have been more efficient to obliterate the species and reseed your world with a life principle more in keeping with the cliometric vectors currently ongoing.

Hyades risked elevating Man. This decision was erroneous, for Hyades was deprived of its expected return on investment by the Vindication of Man, granting your race an undue and unwelcome equality with Hyades, and depriving Hyades of the use of your services during the stipulated term of indenture.

Desperate to correct for this error, Ain for Hyades broadcast human minds to various points across the Orion Arm, and this act did indeed correct for much of the damage done by the Monuments, which otherwise several lesser races would have discovered and by it been lured to recalcitrance and rebellion.

Between the time of that first broadcast there/then in the Ain frame of reference and here/now in the Vanderlinden 133 frame of reference, mankind has taken possession of several of these Principalities, Powers, Virtues, and Potentates into which your mental seeds were planted. These have now left their predictive path, and begun to mold the Orion Arm into an anthropocentric cliometric mode.

The turmoil of your youthful race has disturbed a number of arrangements and will soon severely disturb others. The cost of correcting the cliometric vectors back to their predicted channels diminishes the reward allegedly due you to zero.

Montrose thawed his mouth so that he could grin his ghastly grin. “Well, damnation and botheration! Ain’t we a sight? Good for us!” Then he laughed again. “Causing trouble, eh? Good for us!”

Del Azarchel said, “Sir! We have knowledge and evidence necessary to present to M3. Any failure to assist us cannot help but be construed as a treasonous—”

Montrose said on a private channel, “Hold up, Blackie! I think we are on the wrong trail here. Let me try something.”

Del Azarchel answered back on the same channel, “What did you have in mind?”

Montrose said, “I was wondering what Rania would do. Mind if I try? I don’t think we can threaten this thing, not with nothing we got, not up our sleeve or down our trousers. Praesepe might, just might, stick us into the mail bag for the next scheduled run to M3, if there ever is one, so as his boss could roll an eyeball over us, but Praesepe ain’t going to fork over what he owes, ’cause he reckons he don’t owe it, right?”

Del Azarchel said, “A man with an empty tank must take his next breath where he finds it. Go ahead. I am curious.”

3. Why Need Ye Her?

A.D. 81500 TO 82700

Aloud, Montrose said to the Praesepe emissary, “You asked what Man needs to serve better, to serve the needs of the project to engineering the stars and planets into thinking machinery and unify them, you mean, I reckon. Well, Man needs Rania. We cannot have peace without her, and her absence is the reason why the humans that Ain spread around the Orion Arm are causing trouble and turmoil.”

The octahedron turned many times. Time passed. Eventually it spoke again, Declare: Why need ye her?

Del Azarchel said, “She was able to persuade mankind to foreswear war. It was a gift that we don’t understand, although we have diligently studied her techniques.”

Privately, Montrose sent, “Shut up, Blackie. You are still going down the wrong rabbit hole with this critter.”

Declare: What evidence present you that there/then Rania maintained at M3 frame of reference would have the effect of halting human divarication into the Orion Arm cliometry within the time frame Praesepe currently contemplates? Why need ye her?

Del Azarchel ignored Montrose and said, “Ah, we believe that energy entanglements on a fine level continue between us, which reach to some point outside the lightcone of the Big Bang…”

Declare: Why need you her?

Del Azarchel said awkwardly, “We, ah, we are not sure what this energy entanglement portends, but surely a rational curiosity would impel so advanced an order as yourself to investigate.”