Del Azarchel favored him with a cold stare.

“What?” said Montrose, shrugging and spreading his arms.

“You simply try to be a boorish clod, don’t you?” drawled Del Azarchel.

“Twenty-mule-team-loads of fun.”

“Do you recall when you were insane—more insane—during the Expedition, and I was cleaning up your zero-gee excretion clouds? How much of that was the real you? You wear the same moronic grin.”

“I figure it’s all me, brain damage or brain augmentation,” said Montrose. “And, hot horny-toad in deep-fried damnation, but I surely like being me! Like it a lot! O’ course, I’ve never been a swaggering scared tyrant with the blood of innocent millions on my hands and a firepoker up my rectum. So I ain’t got much basis of comparison.”

Del Azarchel turned from him, raised his head, and spread his arms as if addressing a large assembly (which, of course, he had done many times in his life). His voice rang out like a trumpet of gold, pitched precisely to fill the chamber, syllables timed so that echoes would not obscure his words:

“Most great and noble, elevated and esteemed Mother Selene of the Order of the Discalced Friars of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, by your kind leave, the Judge of Ages, the highly evolved Menelaus Montrose, and our royal self, Nobilissimus and Senior Officer of the Hermetic Order of the Irenic Ecumenical Conclave of Man give you greetings and salutations and express our humble thanks for having been invited into your gracious hospitality. If you would see fit to address us, our gratitude would be magnanimous!”

Only silence answered.

“Wow,” said Montrose in a flat and nasal voice. “That were so much better than my saying yoo-hoo. Ninety words to my nine, so that’s one order of magnitude less efficient, but yet somehow-r-’nother you got the same result, most exactly.”

“Nine? You surely are not counting ain’t you as one word?”

“Aintit?”

Del Azarchel lowered his arms. “She knows we are here. I do not detect any other doors, or any way to go further into the mountain, even though there is an extensive community living here. Have you any ideas more penetrating, mayhap? You boast you are so much smarter than I. Elicit speech from her.”

Montrose shrugged. “I could yodel yoo-hoo again.”

“Perhaps there is something she wishes us to do.”

“We could take off our shoes.”

“What? Why?”

Montrose shrugged again. “It was good enough for Moses talking to a smoldering shrubbery. Anyhow, you would think superintelligent beings would not stand on ceremony.”

“I am not sure about that,” said Del Azarchel slowly, thoughtfully. “Maybe it is the opposite. Maybe the higher a being is, the less he speaks literally.”

“Why? Something wrong with plain talk?”

“It is inefficient. Consider: language in its first stages of evolution is entirely metaphorical. Music is the most ambiguous but also the most moving form of communication. Even precise and scientific language is merely a less ambiguous, more colorless and less moving metaphoric speech than a layman’s. To a higher mind, even the ambiguity might be something used properly to communicate, not merely to the reason, but to the whole person. The reason why we see no obvious signs of the Hyades governing Earth is because of that very efficiency. Their ambiguity is deliberate, and to the enlightened mind, speaks volumes. They need no open signs of power.”

“Or their notion of efficiency means they retreated after we put up a fight.”

“You are an insane man. The Earth was prostrate! So said the Swan.”

“And there might be Fourth Comprehension above what he is cleared to know. He said someone is occupying the old memory space that Pellucid used to fill. Something so smart as to make even Sister Lunatic here look like an idiot.…” And in a slightly louder voice, Montrose called, “Ah! No offense meant there, Sister.…” and then to Del Azarchel he continued, “… And that revived version of the Tellus Mind might know what was done to repel the aliens. And Mother Selene might know. If we can get her to talk. Maybe there is a microphone switch we are supposed to twitch?”

Del Azarchel shook his head. “Space is too vast to engage in trade or commerce between beings of such unequal power. Conquest is wiser.”

“And leaving us the hell alone is wiser yet. You know how much energy is needed to accelerate Uranus to even point zero one eight percent of the speed of light. The Hyades just did something our civilization could not afford. We’re too poor and mean on the cosmic scale of things. So what did they get out of this?”

“I know the benefit to us. Earth-like worlds we lacked the will and resources to claim as our own will be ours once the deracination ships arrive. For the first time, a single disaster against the Earth would not and could not exterminate the race.”

Montrose said, “You look mighty sour about it.”

Del Azarchel scowled and turned away. “This is not as I had imagined.”

“So what are these statues for? They’re ceremonial, too, I take it. Put up as a message to us? Was this whole room meant to be a message? A welcome message? According to you, Selene thought this was an easier way to convey a simpler message than to speak aloud in English. It must be some puke powerful memorandum to be worth all this time we could have already spent talking!”

“These statues of us—you and I are like dogs who, having seen a human baby weaker than us grow up to control the world in ways we cannot comprehend, are baffled to see that child now grown carrying pictures of us, her favorite hounds,” said Del Azarchel.

Montrose said, “Meaning you don’t know either. Is it a footrace, then? A wager? You and I going to see who figures out this puzzle first, and brag until the end of time? Or do you want to solve it together?”

Del Azarchel did not answer, but instead stepped to the statue of himself, touched it with his hand, stared at it for a moment, his eye taking on that momentary look of vital and magnetic energy that accompanied an increase of the firing rate to the optic nerve. He turned his head, and then his body, in a slow circle. “Nothing. A round room. Or perhaps slightly oval. Two images of us. Two votive candles. Whether this means we should be prayed to or should be praying, I cannot say.”

“What is the water for? To drink? Wash our hands?”

“Wash your sins, you idiot. It is a baptistery.”

“Well, idiot I may be, but an idiot savant. The room is slightly oval. It is the same size and shape as the opening statement of the Monument. Look at the ratio of eccentricity to the circumference. There is probably Monument writing underfoot, just not lit up.” He bent down and touched the floor surface. It was smooth and unyielding.

Then Montrose shrugged. “Aside from that I am stumped. If this is a race, you win. I cannot puzzle out the riddle. Selene jawed to us on Earth, and again when we splashed down in the moon dust. Now that we are here, she shuts up.”

Del Azarchel said, “Perhaps she passed beyond the phantasm boundary you established. Something we did now forces her to treat us as if invisible.”

Montrose remained kneeling, his fingers on the black and unmarked floor. “Something between now and when she spoke to us at splashdown? We were meant to stare at the outside of this cathedral for a good long time. I thought it was to get us to confirm that she had built it right. We are the only Old-Stock Elder-race men left.”

“Basilica, not cathedral,” said Del Azarchel absentmindedly.

“What’s the difference?”

“A cathedral is the seat of a bishop.”

Montrose turned his head. “I figured out how to get her to talk to us. What she’s waiting for. I win this round.”

Del Azarchel said, “Tell me.”

“Admit I win, and I will.”