"But these were Makers, remember, capable of unparalleled expertise in accomplishing their purposes. They looked like big bugs. Well, humans look like skinned apes. There has never been a more potent creative force in the galaxy than the Makers. The machines were right to respect it. The remnant Makers turned their attention to a new direction. They went to magic. They knew about magic, of course, as most of the living cultures of the galaxy employ it to greater or lesser extent.
Those inhabiting a Chroma zone can do many marvelous things. A sorcerer in a Chroma zone can stop any machine.
The problem is that there is more to the universe than Chroma zones. The default zone seems to be nonChroma, akin to our White Science magic but less impressive, and that is where the machines dominate. So the machines simply mined the magic piecemeal, destroying the zones and the cultures within them. Magic alone could not balk them.
"The Makers set out to make magic universally available, regardless of Chroma zones. With that they could not only halt the machines, they could be forever independent of them. Who needs a machine to fetch food, when he can conjure it himself? To do manual labor, when he can lift and move objects magically? Anything the machines could do, magic could also do. But magic does not seek to do it; it has to be learned and invoked. So magical folk generally don't lose their initiative. However, that risk could be minimized simply by having only a few creatures with the full panoply working to benefit the others.
"The Makers wanted to become what they had never been before: magical creatures independent of Chroma zones. To become the most effective magical creatures ever to exist. But they lacked the time. It would take perhaps another hundred thousand years, even with directed evolution, to make themselves sufficiently apt. In that time the machines would complete their destruction of the galaxy. They had to do it much sooner.
"So they devised a startlingly new way. Instead of developing their bodies to be fully magical, they developed their minds. They devised a way to share those minds with the bodies of creatures who were already magical. It was to be a kind of symbiosis, a collaboration between the galaxy's finest minds and the best bodies of other species."
Havoc paused. "In sum, what the Makers, and especially the Dreamers, were designing was a new form of life that could accept the service of the machines without being corrupted by it. That could practice magic anywhere, because it was transmitted from the zones to their bodies. That was only the beginning. They developed new applications, such as near-future seeing, diffusion, and wormhole expansion, that were immensely useful when required. Understand, the machines' far future seeing is not magical; it is based on calculation. Flip a coin once, the side that settles face-up is chance. Flip it a million times, the two faces will appear virtually evenly. So the far future can be determined by analyzing the initial parameters. But with near future seeing, the first flip can be called. That is a formidable asset. It took the Makers forty thousand years to develop their new devices, and perhaps five thousand more to prepare for their implementation across the galaxy. Only in the last two thousand years have they actually manifested. The remnant Makers still are doing it; Gale encountered one Dreamer who was simply waiting. Waiting for the next prospect to merge with, anywhere in the galaxy. And those exotic new hybrid life forms are—"
He paused. "The Glamors."
The others simply stared. Havoc was wreaking havoc with their comprehension, per his namesake.
"We are the Makers," Havoc continued. "That is why the machines accept us and serve us. We were designed to meet their criteria. All we had to do was ask. Unfortunately we did not know it, and neither did the machines. That is the supreme irony. The minds of the Dreamers reached out and occupied those living creatures that were ready for the transformation. As it happened, the younger the conversion occurred, the more fully the Glamor developed the new powers the remnant Makers had developed. Regardless, we are what we were searching for; it is our Maker component that provides us the extra magical powers we possess. We are perhaps half human, or half any other creature, and half Maker. We are galactic hybrids or symbiotes, like Gale's lichen."
He paused again. The audience continued to stare, stunned by the revelation.
"This also explains another quality of the Glamors. The original Makers suffered a 99% attrition per generation, and had to breed like mad to maintain their population and avoid early extinction. That is no longer the case with them, but the underlying urge remains. We have inherited the urge to mate, and indulge it constantly. We are attractive to normals, so they participate with pleasure. When we encounter each other, we really go at it, as my wife, mistresses, bath girls, and other female associates know."
There was sympathetic laughter. Havoc's way with women, and their way with him, was notorious. Maker hundredfold breeding—that did explain a lot.
"But in going to living creatures they lost their own identities. It was like being born again, as babies. They brought the powers but not their memories. We had to discover the powers ourselves. This is why it took us so ironically long to catch on. But now we have done so. Now we are ready to usher in a new era for the galaxy.
Welcome to the new order."
There was applause, modest at first, but swelling as the full significance sank in. It really was a new order, in nature as well as in personnel.
"Now we need to establish jobs for the machines to do. They will serve all needy living creatures, as directed by the relevant Glamors. The crippled will no longer suffer. The mentally incompetent will have assistance. Those with worthy projects, such as building superior housing or growing better food, will have competent servitors. Such public works will be the department of the competent Mistress of Mistresses, Monochrome, who will be helping not only Charm and Earth, but the rest of the galaxy. There will be a necessary program of defense from threats to galactic welfare, possibly from Andromeda, supervised by my daughter Flame. There will be superior entertainment for all, supervised by my daughter Weft. We will see that the machines have plenty to occupy them. But we will also see that they do not corrupt us by unnecessarily soft living. This is the lesson the remnant Makers learned, and they made Glamors invulnerable to any such subversion. We don't need the machines; what can they do for us that we can't more readily do for ourselves?"
Shee stood behind him, dropping her dress, as breathtakingly lovely as she was crafted to be. "Well..." she said meaningfully.
There was a shout of laughter. "Do for yourself, Sire!" the naughty girl Scent called. "The machine girl dares you!"
"Apart from that," Havoc added hastily. "We will be working out more details in the next few days. Concerning the other services of the machines, I mean." Shee sat down again, nude, smiling, the momentary cynosure.
He paused again, looking around. "I have two remaining items before we adjourn to the dance. First, a song to celebrate our accession. We living folk are ultimately creatures of the soil, having at last achieved dominance over the powers of the inanimate. So I will adapt an old, old song of ancient Earth, though I doubt it was intended for this particular occasion." He gestured to his wife and mistresses. "Ladies, bring forth your instruments." He brought forth his musical dragon scale, opening his mind to them.