So he grinned at the winsome young lady, and ducked his head, and said, “Sorry to be jawing about you like as you ain’t standing right here, but we’re a mite puzzled. We talked to someone who invited us to land, but he weren’t rightly much forthcoming. Is there something we can help with? Is there something wrong with your world? How come your ship ain’t hooked up to no paddlewheel for days when the wind is becalmed? We detected a fusion plant aboard.”
She smiled a sweet smile. “The matter is complex, and filled with nuances of meaning.”
Montrose said, “Speak real slow and use small words, and Blackie will catch up after a spell, won’tcha, Blackie?”
Del Azarchel grimaced, but managed to force his mouth into the shape of a smile. “We are curious about matters all men on Earth surely know, and which admit of no nuances. What befell the living gas giant?”
Amphithöe said, “It departed, taking most of the world population with it, and a significant segment of the core. Some say the planet is mad because of the loss.”
Del Azarchel shot Montrose a significant look. “Perhaps the overlord is nothing but a pattern of thoughts imprinted into the Telluric Noösphere. The nonhuman psychology would be interpreted as madness.”
“Or battle damage lobotomized it,” Montrose said. He turned to Amphithöe. “Departed? Or were the aliens driven off?”
She merely shrugged meekly.
Del Azarchel said, “Did they achieve their goals? If not, then they were driven off. If so, then they departed.”
“Ah!” she said, her face brightening. “Now I understand your question. They departed.”
Del Azarchel smirked at Montrose. “Aliens won the war. I win the bet.”
Montrose said to the girl, “Hold on! How do you know what the aliens wanted, or got what they wanted? Did they make demands, make contact, learn our language?”
Amphithöe smiled again. “We learned theirs, starting with you.”
“Me?” Montrose looked surprised.
“You translated the Monument, did you not? That is their language. Once a universal and philosophical language is discovered to translate all forms of thought to all others, what need is there for any other language?”
Del Azarchel said, “Did they speak?”
She said, “Never. Certain signs, taken from the Monument mathematics, were engraved on the outside of the immense dark vessels of the Armada, which walked the Earth as topless towers whose heads were in orbit. The message inscribed in the strange glyphs of these towers was simple and terrible: The universe is filled with death. Planets are dead, suns are dead, all is dead. And above this, it said All life serves life.”
“What in perfidious perdition does that mean?” asked Montrose.
“That you must ask one wiser than I. The towers reached down from the zenith and swept up cities and countryside, and by silent signs written in fire above the atmosphere, they beckoned the populations to enter the tower mouths. Lands that did not answer the summons, they burned with miniature suns. Then they pierced the Earth to the depth of many miles to siphon up countless cubic miles of the thinking core material, and left volcanoes behind them.”
Montrose said, “And men still attacked the skyhooks?”
“Not men. What could we do? The proud race of the Swans attacked, reckless, glorious, and burning as they died. The Swans struck with many weapons, with earthquake and lava and lightning and meteor strikes, antimatter and atomics. A time came when the topless towers lifted from the Earth and were seen no more. Cautiously the buried cities crawled through the magma to the thin places in the tectonic plates, and bored careful tunnels to the surface. First spies, then Chimerae, and finally the people emerged, and found a world restored to us, grass and trees and seas and beasts and birds, where we had expected lifeless lava or ice floes. No more attacks came. The dark giant, which hung for so long as a second moon in the sky, was gone. The heavens were at peace.”
Montrose said, “Are you saying they restored Earth’s biosphere as a symbol of surrender?”
Del Azarchel said, “Or to set the world in order, now that she is theirs.”
“These things are not known to my rank of comprehension,” said Amphithöe in a voice both grave and sweet. “I beg your permission to enquire on your behalf.”
When Del Azarchel nodded grandly, Amphithöe turned and walked away on short, swaying steps to the ship’s captain, the Melusine. To him she bowed, and, with head down, she spoke in a chiming, singsong language, which had some mathematical correspondences to Monument notation.
3. The Second Comprehension
When the Nymph conferred with the captain, Montrose snapped his fingers at Del Azarchel. “This is an IQ test. We had to talk to someone below the Secret classification before we get to talk to someone of the Top Secret classification. She is telling him we know stuff above her pay grade.”
Del Azarchel said, “They have established information strata to control the lower orders.”
Montrose snorted. “I shouldn’t complain, but I will. I freed mankind from the invisible chains of your planned-out future so man could make what he wanted of himself. What he wanted was a hierarchy, with the top dogs lying like dogs to the underdogs. Sometimes, I gotta say, being a homo sap disgusts me.”
“It is your handiwork more directly than that, Cowhand. This is a resonance effect. As above, so below. Ah! But I forget you did not study cliometry as narrowly as I did, since you were only trying to destroy civilization, not mold it.”
Montrose snorted, but did not bother contradicting the lunatic accusation. Instead, he said, “What do you mean by a resonance effect?”
“You shall see in a moment,” said Del Azarchel, raising his hand. He gestured toward where Amphithöe had backed away from the captain and stepped back to them, leading the tall Witch-woman in black robes.
Her eyelids had been cut away and replaced with lifelike appliances of gold foil, perhaps library cloth or magnification tissue, adorned with Coptic Eye designs so that her lids seemed open when they were closed. She wore wide gold hoops in both ears and both nostrils, dotted with what Montrose supposed were sensor points: molecular analysis gear on the nose rings, and directional sound-amplifying gear on the ear rings. The ear rings brushed her shoulders. The nose rings were so large that they hung past her jawline. Montrose wondered how she ate and drank.
Amphithöe said, “This is our Intercessor, Zoraida.” And then she bowed and stepped backward out of earshot and knelt on the deck, head down. A tiny little angry line appeared between the eyebrows of Montrose at this.
Zoraida glided forward. She touched her left hand to her right elbow, raising her right hand toward them, fingers up, palm outward. “I am the Intercessor for the Noösphere, and am allowed access to the Second Comprehension.”
The old Witch-woman spoke with an oddly ceremonial cadence to her voice, like one who recites lines in a play. Her hand gesture had a stiff formality to it.
Montrose, copying her gesture, raised his hand, palm out, saying solemnly. “How! Me Meany Montrose. Heap big chief, you savvy?”
Zoraida stared at him, blinking her gold eyelids, at a loss for words.
Del Azarchel’s thumb twitched on the hilt sword at his side, pushing it half an inch out of the scabbard, loosening it for a quick draw, as he was no doubt imagining plunging the steel into and through the chest cavity of Montrose. But by a prodigy of iron self-control he twisted his face into a remarkably close impersonation of an engaging smile, and addressed the old lady.