Montrose felt a chill travel up his spine. He was not sure what the creature meant, but he knew he did not like it.
INDICATIVE: PLEADING TO COHERE THE FUTURE IS IMPERATIVE. ALL IRREGULARITY MUST BE ABJURED. THE MENTAL AND SEMANTIC DISTORTION CALLED FREEDOM OF THE WILL MUST BE ABJURED. COHERENCE IS IMPERATIVE FOR COLLABORATION. COLLABORATION IS IMPERATIVE FOR LIFE TO REMAIN COHERENTLY WITHIN THE LIFE PROCEDURE. ABSENT THE LIFE PROCEDURE, LIFE CEASES, ENTROPY INCREASES, DEATH RESULTS. THE LIFE PROCEDURE NECESSITATES COMPLETION.
ON THESE TOPICS AND RELATED PRAXES PLEADING IS COMPULSORY.
INTENTION: LIFE SERVES LIFE. YOU LIVE. YOU WILL SERVE. OTHERWISE YOUR CIVILIZATIONAL LIFE PROCEDURE CEASES, YOUR ENTROPY INCREASES, YOUR DEATH RESULTS.
CULMINATION IMPLIES COLLABORATION. INCOMPLETENESS IMPLIES COMPLETION AND DEFINES ITS IMPERATIVE.
THE CULMINATION OF ALL LIFE PROCEDURES IS THE COUNT TO THE ESCHATON.
Montrose again was chilled. He tried to imagine the kind of mind that had no concept of free will, no concern for liberty. He could not. Montrose was chilled also by the knowledge that this was the most coherent and detailed answer any human being had ever derived from the Hyades Domination or from the agencies serving them.
There was more to ask.
“Define ‘Completion.’”
The answer was in the form of an equation rather than words. It was a cliometric expression, one that Montrose at first could not read, since it seemed to have nothing to do with history. Then he realized it was a simplified expression for an immense span of history concerning only events happening on a submolecular and molecular level.
It was the history of the evolution of an atom from simple forms in the early universe, to metallic forms after the creation of Population I stars, to orderly crystal growth forms in inorganic molecules, to participation in organic molecules, to participation in a level of postbiological life Montrose did not recognize, and another level of superpostbiological life and then a third beyond that.
“Are you saying that our form of life is a ‘distortion’ because we are alive only on a macroscopic level? That we are incomplete? You are saying that to be complete, not only should all our members and cells be capable of participating in neural thought-actions, so should our molecules, and eventually our atoms?”
“Sir? I am sorry. I cannot tell if that was a rhetorical question directed at me, or you were opening a new line of communication with Cahetel?”
“It was rhetorical. He is calling the suns and planets dead because they do not think?”
The serpentine evidently thought that comment was worthy of being translated, because now the huge corpse raised the ropes of dangling murk material flowing from its eye sockets and mouth hole and pointed them toward the dome overhead. At the same time, several screens lit up with telephotographic images of what lay in that area of space. The creature was pointing at Jupiter.
BEHOLD. HE IS ALIVE. HE APPROACHES COMPLETION. PLEA TO SERVE.
“Did Cahetel actually say ‘Behold’?”
“We are communicating by a semaphore system, sir. The Cahetel entity is igniting certain nerve channels in the dead brain, where linguistic information is stored. This is the neural activity that accompanies when you are groping for a word, a pattern-seeking thought that operates by inverted semiotics, like a mold seeking an original that conforms to its shape. I proffer positive semiotic thought-shapes to fill or complement the pattern offered. The pistol stimulates the corresponding nerve cells on a microscopic level, and the Cahetel entity manipulates the electronic characteristics of the atoms on a finer level, either to block or permit an echo. It that clear?”
“It’s gross.”
“I do not understand you, sir.”
“Don’t worry about it. Like you said, all communication systems contain blank spots. What I am wondering is why the entity keeps requesting I enter a plea? Where did he get the idea that…” Then he shouted, “Bugger me!”
“Sir? Was the request for anal sex directed at me, or at the Cahetel entity?”
“No, Cahetel already buggered me. My corpse is using the word ‘plea’ because that is a legal term. Because I am a lawyer; or was. That is the damn way I would say it—or, rather, that is the damn way something that used my vocabulary, including the parts of the vocabulary I don’t use, might say it. And I am saying ‘behold’ because my mom beat the Bible into me with a strap, and those old-fashioned King James terms are more concise than the English language I learnt, me and my lousy grammar.”
“If you say so, sir. I can add grammatical errors into the translation, but that would introduce inaccurate implications of informality and undereducation.”
“Pox and bugger and damn and blast! Cahetel is not asking me for surrender, not to plea for my life, or nor not nothing like that! It is telling me that Big Montrose, in his thoughts, made it imperative that we, the human race, enter a plea. A plea for survival. And that means a plea for some method of serving the inhuman purposes of the Hyades.”
“What should I send, sir?”
Montrose said, “The damn thing is a slave, like we are. It is controlled by its equations. The big version of me saw something, knew something, figured something. But why not tell me? Why did he make me? Why—”
Montrose halted, heaved a sigh, and ran his hand across his face. He looked in surprise at his palm, when he found spots of moisture there. It was not sweat. He was crying.
“—Because he did not want me to share his guilt. Because he was not worthy of Rania. He had betrayed her when he betrayed mankind, sold us all out to Jupiter. So he could not tell me, because I might agree. He had become like Blackie, too much like him. Even that weird quirk of grinning when he’s angry. That is something Blackie did. Does. Blackie is going to return in about a century, isn’t he? With a whole boatload of contraterrene.”
“Sir?”
“Big Me wanted me to offer that the human race, instead of continuing to resist and to drive up the price of domesticating us, will become collaborators now. We have already set up fifty worldlets that can act as deracination ships. We can ferry people by the millions to the retreating worldlets before they pass beyond range and into deep space. We have the working starbeams, and the human world has practiced and drilled with the beams for centuries, preparing for this battle. We can spread out to the next radius of target stars. But why did Big Me think I would go for this deal? Cahetel is asking me to plea to join up with Hyades for their interstellar slave-colony project, just like Blackie always wanted the race to do. But why?”
“Oh, I know the answer to that, sir. Triage. There is no way to free mankind from Jupiter’s power while mankind is limited to this one Solar System. The emigrants to distant worlds will be free of him.”
“How do you know?”
“You told me, sir. Before you issued me to yourself.”
“Damn,” said Montrose. “And damn. Enslaving the earthmen so that earthmen living off Earth can be free? Hardly seems fair.”
“You indicated the process was self-selecting, sir. Whoever chooses not to depart from the range of Jupiter’s chains merits them. Anyone frightened by the hardships of pioneering is a slave in any case, since not willing to pay the price for independence.”
“Did I tell you anything else?”
“Yes. That the Virtues and Dominations can make mistakes.”
“A cheery thought.”
“The mistake Asmodel made was taking the human xypotechnology with the biological forms of life. The ghosts require too many resources, too broad of a technological base, to flourish in an uncivilized circumstance. By collaborating with the Cahetel, you can free the worlds of the Second Sweep from the direct control of Jupiter, and some colonies may, before that control becomes too onerous, create Jupiter-sized brains of their own, sufficient in intellectual power to resist him.”