“I figure that without some amount of meddling, I never would’ve learned to read. Sure as hell that ain’t natural, squinting at squiggly lines on a piece of cloth and all. That Monument holds all the secrets of our future, gentlemen! And if a man h’ain’t got the right to take a few risks with his own brain—a brain I trained into shape without no help from any man in this vessel, I warrant—than what rights has he got?”
Sarmento i Illa d’Or spoke next. He was from the Hispanosphere, and, by the agreed-upon conventions governing in-cabin speech, he had waited until each of the Indosphere members had spoken. He had been a wrestler, a weightlifter, the only person other than Menelaus willing to use the Camp ring in the gym. It was only because Menelaus fought dirty, using illegal blows and holds, that the gym circuits had halted their matches. He and Menelaus, grimacing, smiling, and growling at each other, had privately agreed to finish the match some day, but that day never came. Sarmento i Illa d’Or won his berth for his work in the topology of algebraic curves and surfaces, particularly valuable since topology and knot-theory was the main avenue of approach of most of the Monument symbolism so far translated.
“Anglo, you go too far!”
“Ain’t I got the right to go as far as I can take me?” answered Menelaus.
“What is ‘right’? What is ‘wrong’? These are but airy words for pleasant and unpleasant. What you are attempting may well make life more difficult for us. You might be willing to risk, but we are not! We are mountain-climbers are roped together in one rope, and you might want to topple into the cold, but not I. With your brain damaged, you will be a burden to the expedition, to our cause.”
The voice of Sarmento i Illa d’Or held a strange note of relish. It was almost as if he were trying to say the exact thing to urge Montrose onward, while seeming to say the opposite.
He was also one of the younger men, a member of Del Azarchel’s clique. He had also been there, at that wild night of drinking and dancing and laughing, before the launch. He was the one, in fact, who had brought up Chandrapur’s analysis while they sat in a circle, drinking toasts and talking long into the night. When Menelaus proposed a toast to the intelligence augmentation—“we all know some poor bastard will have to risk afore we can read the Monument”—it had been Sarmento who had slapped him on the back (a little harder than strictly friendly) and said, “It will not be you! I will be the first to take the Promethean Formula! You Anglos do not have the cojones, eh?” Menelaus had pushed the cork back into his bottle, and hefted it upside down in his fist for a little glass bludgeon, and stood, but Del Azarchel pulled him back down into his chair, laughing, and told him it was just a joke.
Narcís D’Aragó spoke. He was the only other military veteran at Space Camp. The man had fought in the North African campaigns, beneath the skies gray with deathclouds. Montrose and D’Aragó had shared the unspoken bond that men in uniform had even when out of uniform, even when among civilians. He had been included on the expedition for his breakthroughs in the Linear Programming problem, particularly regarding strongly polynomial time-performance in the number of constraints and variables.
Menelaus was confident that this grim young soldier would back him.
“On the one hand,” D’Aragó spoke in a voice as colorless as ice, “anyone brave enough to bollix his own brain does not need to listen to anyone less brave. If we are not willing to face his needle ourselves, we don’t have a say in how he spends or wastes his life.”
But then Menelaus was disappointed to hear him continue, with no change of tone, “On the other hand, we are still a unit. Let us not waste a man whom the expedition needs. These things should be done in the proper order, controlling the variables, with a medical crew standing by. Captain Grimaldi is the senior expedition officer: He had not given permission.”
Montrose said, “By the letter of the law, he ain’t got no jurisdiction until we rendezvous.”
Narcís D’Aragó made an noise in his throat like someone tearing a handkerchief. “Then talk to Del Azarchel! He is the pilot here, and outranks you!”
Now Del Azarchel had rotated his cot so he faced aft. He was about two meters away, and was staring at Menelaus: he had strong, dark features, eyes that flashed greenish-gray, and the stubble of his shaven cheek gave his jaw a wolfish look. From Menelaus’s point of view, he seemed to be hanging like a bat upside down (if that word had any meaning in microgravity). He looked like a lazy panther, perhaps ready to sleep, perhaps ready to strike. His eyes were cold, but a half-smile seemed to play around his lips, as if this whole drama had been organized for his personal amusement.
The pilot said laughingly, “Gentlemen, why talk this little talk? We are involved in a great emprise, a bold expedition! Does Señor Montrose contemplate anything as dangerous as the great star voyage ahead, when we shall fling a two-thousand-meter-long space vessel at ninety-five percent of the speed of light into the pathless night? An asteroid the size of a small coin, striking us head on, would have the comparative velocity of a bullet from a supercollider: the energy would be like an atomic bomb. None of our odds are good. And when we reach there, what do we find? A puzzle box! A big dumb object! Ah, perhaps an intelligence test? Gentlemen, what happens if we fail that test? The universe is waiting outside the frail little walls of our bubble of air, indifferent stars in their billions, endless wastelands of empty vacuum. What if that cruel universe puts us to trial and we fail?”
Melchor de Ulloa answered, “But what will Captain Grimaldi say? Montrose, he is your friend: You will listen to him! You cannot just throw a friendship like that out the window—we all know you only got aboard this expedition because of your pull with Grimaldi.”
Sarmento i Illa d’Or said, “Well, maybe he should jab himself, then. He comes from one of those Anglo lands, where for three hundred years nothing is done but to dream of past glories.”
Melchor de Ulloa said back, “Discord is always caused by selfishness. We are a unit, like D’Aragó said. We have to act as one body. Captain Grimaldi is the head of that body. What can one member do if he does not consult the head?”
Del Azarchel flashed his white teeth in his wolfish smile. “Montrose! Consult only your mad and fiery heart! We are the Paladins of Charlemagne, the Knights of the Table Round. Our King is that dream we share: that dream to which we proffer our very lives! What other loyalty is there? We are the new people, the new race: the first interstellar men. Would you have the first act of our newborn species be hesitation?” His eyes blazed with wild emotion, and he called out: “Montrose! Are we not closer than brothers? Do not flinch! I will protect you, no matter what sort of monster you become!”
Montrose was staring with haunted eyes at his friend. Who had once likened the quest for the future to be like unto a knight-errantry? Montrose could not recall.
Ramananda said urgently, “Anything could be in that needle! So you said, Montrose! When you turn into the superman, the man after man, here and now, how can we trust you? We would be Neanderthals to you … or apes. You might treat us as a man treats his hound, with love and care, or a man treats a wolf, as a beast to be killed.”
Del Azarchel said triumphantly, “It is too late. See the look in his eye!”
“I will remember,” said Montrose. “I will remember my humanity.”
Sarmento said, “The Anglo will never do it. He is craven.”
“I ain’t no Anglo. I’m from Texas!”
Just like looking down the barrel of a pistol. Menelaus pulled the trigger.
4. Dreams
A.D. 2235–2306