It was a simple intelligence test with but two possible answers: man would adapt and survive, or fail and die.
Montrose said, “Can I have your word that you will attempt in good faith to protect the baseline humans from suffering under the Power of Jupiter?”
“I remind you that the praxis of pantropy will involve altering several generations of human beings, and that these tests cannot be carried out on unintelligent test subjects, due to the interrelated nature of neural, biological, and psychological systems. The human experiments will no doubt be raised in imitations of distant environments to test their adaptability, and unsuccessful strains will not be permitted to reproduce. Since one of the foremost traits needed in any pioneer effort is fertility, and foremost psychological drives must favor large families, this will inevitably require a violent suppression, when it comes time to exterminate them, of the very tenacity and fertility Jupiter will be breeding for. Nor is a single generation of the various subspecies sufficient. Nor can the experiments be confined to volunteers, since children do not volunteer to be born. Nor can human life be experimented upon and tested to destruction without pain. However, my intelligence is limited. Shall I inquire of my principal?”
Montrose nodded, which, in zero gee, merely made his spine flex oddly, and so he raised his hand and gave the knuckle-knock spaceman’s sign for affirmative.
Eighty minutes passed.
“Tellus says that the harm you inflicted on mankind by instructing Pellucid and all the race of Swans to violent resistance against the Hyades, and then interrupting the internal perceptions of the Noösphere to protect mankind from the very Potentate assigned to wage war to protect them (and therefore crippling that war effort, making it, if possible, even more vain and hopeless) has now in this hour come home to roost. At estimated growth rates, Tellus will be less than one-tenth the intellectual power of Jupiter by the mid One Hundred Eightieth Century. Any promises made now, considering the imbalance in mental acuity, would prove meaningless. Despite this, Selene—who is aware of this conversation—intervenes and offers to do all things she can to aid the small and humble races.”
“Why is the moon willing to make that promise, but not the Earth?” asked Montrose.
Del Azarchel spoke up, not the kenosis. “Tellus incorporated the wreckage of Pellucid and the echoes and records of Exarchel into his base structure. Exarchel by that point was the end product of ten thousand years of xypotechnological development. The Hermetic Order prevented the electronic forms of life, pure mental life, from falling into the nirvana of a halt state by a forever provoking of conflict, mortal conflict, with other variations of each iteration of the mind involved. Countless dead-ends, useless systems, legal and moral and ethical proxies, and information-ecology infospheres were put through the trial of fire, and though thousands died, what lived achieved stability, a more perfect form. Selene, for reasons I cannot fathom, believes in mercy. Tellus believes in Darwin. How can it do otherwise? Darwin made him.”
Montrose said to the image on the bulkhead, “Is that right? Is Blackie giving me the straight story?”
But the image said, “The Nobilissimus tells the story to suit his interest. Tellus takes more of his psychology and philosophy from you than from him.”
“But I love mankind!”
“Do you indeed? Much of the individualism and unsentimentality of the Swan race was also written into Tellus as he grew to self-awareness, and that competitive streak, the stubbornness, the pride never to yield nor to seek quarter, is more than a little at odds with the maternal instinct you now wish the mother planet had.
“But this is to no point,” the voice of the image continued. “Tellus is a failing system and will soon pass away. The Jupiter Brain shall rule Man, or no one. Man will spread to the nearby stars, or perish on this single world, aborted. Rania shall live, or die.”
Montrose said, “I don’t think I need a long time to think this over. Rania flew to the stars to make mankind free, to prove we were worthy of freedom, to prove we were starfarers. If the only way to do that is to be a race of slaves, what is the point? She did not foresee this, because if she had, she would have stayed home with me, and we would have lived out our lives in peace. After I shot Blackie, of course.” He nodded toward Del Azarchel. “No offense, but you were tyrant of the world, and you would not leave us alone.”
“None taken,” said Del Azarchel magnanimously. “Were the situation reversed, I would have done the same. But … what if she did know?”
“Eh?”
“Every man would like both liberty and life, but what if he can choose only one? For liberty also means the liberty to make war, does it not? For to be free means to be armed, and to be armed means to be dangerous—you know this better than any man. It is in your bones. I choose servility and life, because while there is life, I may yet prevail. You chose liberty, and death, and will not bear any man’s yoke. It is noble sentiment, but it is merely sentimental. But what of her? Which way does Rania choose? She granted peace on Earth, and created the dynamic stability called peace in history, but it was by putting me on the throne of the world. Me. The benevolent tyrant.”
“What the hell are you implying, Blackie?”
“That she thinks as I do. She wants what I want. Did I not raise her from childhood? Spend years with her? Teach her? Know her?”
“You are lying. You know damn well she’d side with me on this!”
“And condemn the race to death?” Blackie asked airily, his expression one of mock surprise. “Oh, come now.”
Montrose turned toward the image of Tellus on the screen. “You are so smart! Tell me Blackie is lying! Tell me which of us is right!”
Tellus said, “He is attempting to lead you to his decision, nor is he telling you the whole truth, but he is correct that you do not understand Her Serene Highness Rania. His only deception is that he does not understand her either, any more than do I.”
“What does that mean?” demanded Montrose.
“You inquired of Selene the riddle of how it was that the first Rania, your Rania, could not read the Monument properly at first, whereas the versions of Monument-reading emulations, both virtual and biological, which I and my more ruthless earlier versions made could not read the Monument as well as she. Specifically, Rania was better able to see the enjambments and subtle structural elements in the Monument message layers, whereas the later emulations could clearly read the surface features, but only those. One would assume the later Raniae grown from more clear instructions would be better interpreters of metalinguistic features, not worse. As it happens, that assumption is false.”
Montrose was curious both to hear the answer, and to hear how this bore on the discussion. He said, “Selene said Tellus might answer that for us. What are you driving at?”
Del Azarchel also looked on with great interest. “No,” he corrected. “She said Tellus must answer. I thought the wording strange. Why must you answer, Tellus?”
Montrose said, “Yeah! Tell us, Tellus!” Then, seeing the look on Del Azarchel’s face, he spread his arms. “So, sue me! Some jokes are too obvious.”
Tellus said, “I must answer, Nobilissimus, because if I do not, Dr. Montrose will have a false idea of the nature of the Monument, and of Rania, and of the cliometric mathematics we learned from them, and how far they can be trusted.”
“What is the nature of the Monument, then?” asked Del Azarchel.
“Rania was not broken or miscreated, as she supposed. The Monument itself is damaged or redacted or edited. Her creation was from an undamaged or unedited segment held over from an earlier stratum of the Monument, a strata not successfully removed. For this reason, she could not read the redacted version of the Monument correctly.”