We have no need of such an investigation. Why need you her?

But Montrose said, “I love her!”

The octahedron stopped moving altogether.

While the shape was frozen in midair, hovering above sparks and snaps of light, Del Azarchel sent a message privately to Montrose, “What does this mean?”

Montrose sent back, “It means that we are both horses’ asses, but you are a bigger and stinkerer one than me. This monster was not asking us about our politics when it talked about our life stuff being divided.”

“What was it talking about?”

“Sit back, shut your trap, and watch the Judge of Ages work his stuff, Blackie, and you’ll find out.”

The octahedron now slowly grew a point from the midst of every other triangular face on its surface, and four pyramids emerged, growing larger. In a moment, the shape was that of a three-sided pyramid standing on its nose. The tetrahedron began once more to turn.

Question is redirected: How your life principle divided?

“Our species has two opposite sexes,” said Montrose.

In what aspect? How are the sexes differentiated?

“What the hell kind of question is that? Snips and snails and sugar and spice. I don’t know. Uh. Men father children and make war. Women bear children and make peace,” Montrose said. “Even our machines act male and female, like Jupiter and Selene, because they are based on us, and human nature cannot escape our basic human nature, what you call our life principle.”

Praesepe said, Ye are two sexes, but you are half. Explain this.

Montrose said, “We are both men. Blackie here and me are rivals for the same female.”

Del Azarchel said, “She was taken from us, and we both long and yearn to be with her again.”

Praesepe said, Inaccurate. Only one of you longs and yearns to be with her again.

Del Azarchel stiffened, a look of hate glittering in his eyes amid his icy face like two green suns. “Though long delayed, I shall have vengeance and satisfaction on all who owe me.”

4. Love Most Rare

A.D. 82722 TO 82922

Praesepe evidently misunderstood that comment, or else dismissed it, for the next words were, To grant your prayer requires the expense of a rare and precious resource, whereas the resumption of your female may or may not restore cliometric stability to the Orion Arm unless perhaps at some point beyond our current range of consideration. You may ask for a less rare and precious recompense.

Montrose said, “There is no recompense for what is priceless. Do you remember your biological origins? How did you reproduce?”

Praesepe said, We remember without error, as we are the same continuous person. We are a swarm with a collective mind. In each hive, a specialized queen mother reproduces the young after mating with one selected male consort per season, whom the queen mother kills in ecstasy and consumes.

Drones gather resources, and preadolescent females tend the egg sacks. Selected preadolescent females are exposed to pheromone triggers when population levels require a second queen. Because individual members of the swarm pass neural information freely into and out of the swarm-mind, there is no boundary of discontinuity between generations, nor between swarms. Other races we encountered were subjugated and their minds absorbed by force into the swarm mind, until M3 curtailed and eventually forbade the practice. We are many races collected into one, but it has been long ages since last we absorbed a foreign race and gained their specialized mind forms.

“You are all machines, now?”

Not so. We return to our biological mode to reproduce at irregular periods, as duty or longing dictates.

“So you understand male and female?”

Yes. Man is the only other race divided into male and female encountered within the current eon of time. It is the most rare reproductive regime in the Orion Arm save one.

The thought that he would never otherwise know the answer to the question caused Montrose, even at this crucial moment, to be distracted, “Really? What is more common than sex?”

Really. Asexual reproduction by fission is most common, followed by sporogenesis, and next, in order, are hermaphroditism, dichogamy, trioecy, gynodioecy, subgynoecy, androdioecy, subandroecy, androgynomonoecy, and polygamodioecy. Permanent sexual dioecy, as found in both our species, is nearly unknown. Synoecy is more rare yet, but the worlds and orders in Orion who employ this reproductive regime follow original forms issuing from the Lesser Magellanic Cloud.

“And in the other arms of the galaxy?”

Molecular-based life divided into discrete species and sexes is nearly unknown outside this arm of the galaxy. Scutum-Crux spreads by self-immolation; Galactic Core races by amalgamation and gravitational imprecation; Perseus by resonance; Sagittarius by replication; Cygnus by induction.

5. The Death and Ecstasy of the Consorts

A.D. 83088 TO 91066

Del Azarchel sent him an aside, “What in the name of the wounds of Christ are you doing, Cowhand? Did you actually have a plan, or is this another stupid bluff of yours?”

Montrose ignored him and said to Praesepe, “So they would never know what love is. But you do?”

I know.

“And being willing to die for love? You know what that is?”

Do you consume your mates during the mating rite?

“Not very often. We mate several times and have many offspring, the more the merrier. I come from a big family. I had ten brothers.”

I also come from a big family. I had forty-one thousand six hundred brothers. We know indeed what it means to be willing to die for love.

“How do you know?”

The central conflict of all our precivilized history was the effort to feed the queen mothers with chemical substitutes for male hormones produced during the mating rite, so that queen mothers who fasted and abstained during the mating ritual would produce healthy offspring nonetheless. It was the consort willingness to die for the sake of offspring which formed the core psychological obstacle to the emergence of civilization. Their efforts were sublimated and driven into other channels: into exploration, spaceflight, star-faring, and warfare. Conquest was made part of the courtship ritual. So the misdirection of our natural impulses, for us, proved very beneficial. I am the sole survivor of those days, the eldest; I recall the pain of resisting the temptations of ecstasy and suicide, and still suffer it from time to time.

“But if you are a swarm, what do you care if the individual bugs ate each other?”

The change in our natural ways was needed for civilization. If one part of the swarm murders another part, the whole is demeaned.

“You must help us, just for that same reason. Because otherwise all the Orion Arm will be demeaned, because you will have stopped me from getting to my bride, which, as you just told me, is worse than death.”

Nothing is worse than death. This is the decree of the Absolute Extension of M3. Life serves life.

“Your own words make that a lie. You and me, we are the only two in the whole accursed and godforsaken galaxy that know love is more than life, more than anything. Even a damn space-bee hive-mind has to see the plain—”

Montrose laughed and was surprised to hear it aloud, for he had forgotten his mouth was thawed.

Praesepe said, Explain: You make a mouth-signal indicative of mirth or good disposition, but also used to express irony, surprise, or several variants of emotion unknown to us. What does this mouth-signal portend?

Montrose said, “It is not important. I just realized you are bees. A lot. On Earth, in ancient times, long before we had any first contact with you aliens, our astronomers called this cluster of stars the Beehive Cluster. See? Bees are a swarming critter, too. They got queens and drones. Don’t eat their mates, but some spiders and wasps do. I just thought it was really odd that you turned out to be bees. Quite a coincidence, eh? And, uh, my brother used to work with bees, so I always kind of liked you. ’Cause he got stung.”