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6. Star Map

The Hyades Cluster, at 151 lightyears away, was not the top of the system of lines representing the hierarchy. Functions connected it to the Praesepe Cluster in Cancer, some 550 lightyears away.

Praesepe was shown as the ascendant power in control of the local area of the Orion Arm of the galaxy. The Monument described traffic and control leading not just from Praesepe to the civilization in the Hyades Cluster, but also controls leading to Xi Persei in the California Nebula (1500 lightyears from Sol), the Pleiades (440 lightyears), M34 in Perseus (1400 lightyears), and the Orion Nebula (1600 lightyears) centered at the Trapezium Cluster. The notation showed this last location was the center of engineering activity, where the native civilization was making new stars. Praesepe also ruled the civilizations centered in the Coma Berenices Star Cluster, centered on the A-type binary 12 Comae Berenices: According to the Monument, one star of the pair had been artificially agitated to extreme stellar output.

Six interstellar polities of unimaginable immensity were under the control of whatever ruled the Praesepe Cluster. No human empire, until the rise of the Hermeticists, had learned how to control even so small a dustspeck as that third of the Earth which happened to be dry land, much less conquering and occupying other worlds, gas giants, stars, interstellar clouds of dust. These far-reaching supercivilizations seemed concentrated only in immense clusters of matter-energy, such as star-clusters where the stars were thick, nebula where new stars were being formed.

And yet there was something above and beyond even the Praesepe civilization and its half-dozen servitor civilizations: orbital elements described traffic between this and M3 in Canes Venatici, a globular cluster outside the rim of the galaxy, some 33,900 lightyears distant.

“How do you translate these three glyphs?”

“I think they are proper names, or, rather titles. The first one you translated—back when you were Baby Stinky—as referring to a superior power confronting an inferior, and you called it ‘Hegemony.’ Note the best translation, because it is not merely political superiority, but intellectual, a matter of further time-binding. I called it ‘Domination.’ The notation measuring information volume and matter-energy consumption says that they are so far above us that they can have only a master–servant relationship. A man who owns many flocks to a shepherd-boy.

“The next stands in like ratio with the first: a transcendent authority. I called it ‘Dominion.’ They are as far above us as a shepherd above a sheepdog, a creature that can serve its purposes in a limited way, and can have a reciprocal master–pet relationship, but not a contract. The Dominion is seated at the Praesepe Cluster, relatively near to us.

“But look. Even they are beholden to a power beyond. Whatever holds authority at M3, in Canes Venatici, is represented by the symbol reflected on itself twice, representing two orders of magnitude: it indicates the extension of influence in every direction. An absolute power, a form of being that never ceases to replicate and expand itself. An absolute Authority. It stands to us as a man stands to the benevolent or malevolent microbes or protozoa living in his sheepdog’s stomach, something of interest to the shepherd only insofar as it might prove useful or harmful.”

7. The Absolute Authority

“So we have to go to the bosses that own the Hyades, and get them to call it off. Five hundred fifty lightyears away!” he breathed, awed by the audacity of it. It would be a thousand years and more to go and return, even if the Hermetic could attain the night-to-lightspeed velocity her name boasted, and, more difficult, descend back into the metric of normal space at the destination.

Yet if the calculations were correct that the Armada approaching Earth from Hyades was loitering at one tenth of one percent of lightspeed, such a round trip was feasible. It could be made before the Solar System fell.

But Rania said, “The Dominion of Praesepe is of no significance.”

Montrose took a moment to adjust to that comment. The entities who controlled a large fraction of the Orion Arm of the galaxy. No significance.

“Then where are we going?”

“To the throne of the overlords of their overlords.”

“To M3? What then? We’re going to stoke the Hermetic to ramming speed, and blow the wogs to smithereens with a filthload of antimatter, right? Niven’s Law says that any ship with enough power to step on the toes of lightspeed, that ship has enough power to fry a planet like an egg. Yeah. That’d make a right shiny firework.”

She actually laughed. Rania threw back her head and laughed a silvery laugh, and her earrings sparkled in the darkness with the motion of her golden head. “Darling! You simply must read the decryption. This civilization … these godlike beings … they occupy a globular cluster.”

“Well, that don’t mean…”

“Messier Object Three is their seat. M3 is made up of several hundred thousand stars. The whole star cluster shifts like a variable even over the course of a single night: countless stars of the RR Lyrae type are crowded in the center, and they can double in brightness in a few hours. If you refer to the Zeta Segment, which contains star descriptions, the Monument says the output variation is a pollution or by-product of their stellar engineering efforts, Dyson spheres choking or releasing excess radiation. And what we see now is borne on lightwaves issued thirty-three thousand years ago. They may have achieved more by now.”

“What if we used Earth’s whole supply of contraterrene?”

“Earth? My husband, if the whole of the Diamond Star V 886 Centauri were flung like an anarchist’s bomb into the core of the cluster, the energy discharge would be less than what we see as differences of output in the cluster stars in a single evening. Blow up a planet? It would be like rushing into a country of several hundred thousand households and shooting one man.”

He opened his mouth to say that, in the cartoons, the Star Fleets were always rushing across to Lundmark’s Nebula or whereverthehell to blow up the enemy homeworld—but he realized how infantile that would sound, so he just said crossly: “So fine. Then there’s no point to going. It’s too far, anyway.”

“A gentler way is open to us.”

“What way?”

“To prove our case in the court of heaven for the freedom of Mankind.”

“Go to them? The ones who said in their message that they owned us?”

“I have read the message of the Monument, and seen the truth that it contains. Now you and I must go, armed only with that truth, and face the alien stars, the Archons of the Orion Arm, and demand of them we must be free.”

“Why would they free us?”

“Their own laws compel it. Look at the math: a method of determining, in the aggregate and in the long term, the efficient from the inefficient rules of behavior.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that they will treat us like wolves if we are wolves to them, but like men if we prove ourselves their equals. These values allow us to escape their Concubine Vector. Their own sense of efficiency will not allow them to waste a valuable resource. Read! In the Cold Equations of the universe the balance scale weighs our utility to them as subjects, less the risk and cost of conquest, against our utility to them as partners, less the risk and cost of cooperation. They have reduced these complex matters, which so bedevil the governments of Earth, to an algorithm. If we act as their equals, they must recognize us.”

“And what does it mean to be their equals?”

“It means to be a starfaring race.”

8. Aren’t We Now?

“Well, hurrah! We made it! Uh—” He saw the look on her face. “Didn’t we?”