Count to a Trillion

by John C. Wright

  It was a maddening thing to stare at, because the mind’s eye kept seeing patterns in the chaos, like seeing faces in the clouds. Surely those four dots there were meant to form a square? The three overlapping circles—what could it be but the alien version of a simple Venn diagram? And didn’t that set of glyphs look something like the Bohr model of the atom? Or maybe the rings of Saturn? On the other hand, that cluster of squiggles in the northeast quadrant looked like the coastline of Norway, and that set of hooked sine waves looked like his Aunt Bertholda’s nose.

  Montrose said meditatively, “The main figure in the main statement is an isosceles triangle, but what does it stand for? And the oval that surrounds it—could mean anything. Look at the symbols the Monument Builders put at the two foci. See? That value is the difference between the hydrogen atom and hydroxyl molecule natural-emission frequencies, 21 centimeters and 18 centimeters multiplied to twelve values by the Fibonacci sequence, forms the ratio between the foci and the major axis of the figure. It is the kind of mathematical nicety any technological civilization expecting to make contact with any other technological civilization would expect us to know. I mean, if we are not listening on the Cold Hydrogen radio-frequency, we are not animals curious enough to be interesting in talking, I guess. And if we don’t have the math for the Fibonacci sequence, well, then, we are too dumb to talk to. So that part is pretty obvious, which is why that put it in the alpha group, the opening statement cartouche.”

  “No, I know that,” said Del Azarchel impatiently. “The opening sequence was the first thing we translated. It sets up the basic logic signs, affirmative and negative, A is A, all that. The two legs of the triangle represent their symbol for a binary choice. Either-or. That is not what I am talking about. This equation here. It only flickered into the floorscreens for a moment, at the sixty-eight-minute mark. They—the other version of you and the other version of me—derived this expression from folding the image like an origami, getting the Eta and the Epsilon sequence to overlap…”

  Montrose could not take his eyes from the opening sequence. Filled circle meant “is” and empty circle meant “is not,” and that capital-V-looking doo-dad meant “either-or.” The symbols at the corner of the main equilateral triangle of script each stood for a principle of formal logic. The law of identity, or “is” is “is”; the law of noncontradiction, or “is” is not “is not”; and the law of mutual exclusion, or “either-or.”

  The Beta Sequence sprang directly out of the Alpha Sequence. Here were transformations topologically identical to Venn diagrams and Tables of Oppositions. Logic and then mathematics. Dash stood for the number two, isosceles triangles for three, hexagon meant nine, nine-sided polygon meant eighty-one. Like the ancient Greeks, the Monument Builders did not seem to have a letter for one or zero, but instead used a complex expression for the concepts: two divided by two and two minus two. Radiating from the Beta Sequence in order were certain irrational numbers like pi and the square root of two that any mathematician would find fascinating. Then was the Pythagorean theorem. Next was some theorem human geometry never stumbled across. Then, like old friends, were the Euclidean solids, but written out as Cartesian algorithms.

  “The Monument is a No Trespassing sign,” said Menelaus.

  “What?” Del Azarchel asked. His voice was tense.

  Menelaus noticed Del Azarchel’s eyes were swiveling slowly in their sockets, not able to focus on Menelaus’s eyes. It seemed an odd phenomenon.

  Montrose spoke slowly enough to match Del Azarchel’s biological frame of reference. “It does not say: Welcome to the stars. It says: You belong to us.”

  4. Intelligence Test

  Montrose saw his own face in the tabletop glass turn toward him, turn toward the camera, turn as if he knew the sleepwalker version of himself would see this scene from this angle.

  The lips moved. It was gibberish. Somehow, whether from memory or inspiration or some quirk of his own mind, he recognized it as an invented, impromptu thirty-six-tonal language with several parallel channels of communication:

  The Diamond Star is an intelligence test as well as a trap. It is a watering hole. Their voyage from Epsilon Tauri will take eight thousand, six hundred years. Assuming they launched immediately when we began star-mining in earnest, we have until A.D. 10917 in the Eleventh Millennium.…

  There was also a pain in his head, an ache behind his eyes, as if his nervous system recalled the strain it had just been under, and was rebelling against attempting such strains again.

  By mining the Diamond Star we proved our race was smart enough to be useful slaves to the hegemony of machine intelligences swarming through the Hyades Cluster one hundred fifty-one lightyears from Earth. The relative difference in racial intelligence means that energy expenditures to launch the Earth-Conquering Armada will be minimized: They cannot afford to accelerate their World Armada past point zero one eight percent of the speed of light, some five million meters per second. The calculations shown here describe the energy expense to conquer us will be below detectable threshold values: In military terms, the equation puts their war coffer amounts at near zero. This is due to the steepness of the negative power imbalance, which stands as near-vertical. Because of our relative worthlessness as a slave-race, but because of the relative cheapness of transport costs, they intend to use the human race as a form of …

  Click. Del Azarchel had shut off the table. It was like a spell being broken. The look in the eyes staring up at him from the glass was gone. The strange notes of music, the eerie song, went silent.

  Intend to use the human race as a form of … what? But it was gone.

  Menelaus rubbed his temples. His mouth was dry. “The Earth is in someone else’s backyard. Our civilization, everything we have, our smarts, our accomplishments, the natural resources of the solar system, our future, our golden future … they own it.”

  “Who?”

  “Some sort of union of powers, a hegemony, seated in the Hyades Cluster, dominated by a single influence: a Domination. An agency of some sort, an Armada, was launched from the star Epsilon Tauri.”

  “Eh?”

  Montrose was glassy-eyed. “Ain,” he muttered. “Oculus Borealis. Coronis. One of the Hyades sisters.”

  “Montrose! What are you—?”

  Montrose straightened up and spoke in a clear, level voice. “When the Hermetic mined the Diamond Star, disturbances in the photosphere, output changes, could not be hidden. Call it eighty years and change for the light-signal to reach the star 20 Arietis, which is apparently one of their decision nexi, and then another fifteen lightyears to reach the star Epsilon Tauri. Pox! I reckon they have already launched. There must have been some visible change to the output of Epsilon Tauri, because Earth is in the beam-path of their launching laser … And it is not a who. It’s a what. Biological life is not really suited for star travel. Too short-lived…”

  Montrose drew a deep breath.

  “Blackie, I think we’re in trouble.”

  A note of music came from Del Azarchel. It was a mournful, solemn sound, like the wind from an oboe. It came from his amulet of red metal.

  Blackie scowled at his wrist. “The others were listening to us.”

  “Others? Others from what?”

  “Come! We are summoned.”

  “Summoned where?”

  But he was talking to a retreating chairback. There was a click and a hiss as the door unlocked and opened.

  9

  Extraterrestrial Conflict Resolution

  1. Shipsuit

  Menelaus trotted after, and caught up to the nonwheelchair as it slid down the corridor. “But we’re right in the middle of something important here!”

  “They must be included. We dare not defy their call.”

  “You told me you were the Master of the World!”

  “And I also told you the only title of mine that means anything is Senior of the Landing Party.”

  “Come again?”

  “Th
e Hermetic is still aloft. Come, you have a lawyerly mind: What was the official end-date of the expedition?”

  “Uh—When the final report to the Joint Commission gets filed.”

  “It is not our fault the Commission disbanded while we were away, is it? You are also summoned. You are now awake and fit for duty. No longer on the sick roster.”

  There came a clatter of many booted feet. Down the corridor toward them came Del Azarchel’s coterie of ministers and secretaries, footmen and officers, and a squad of Conquistadores in morion helmets, breastplates, and pikes.

  The group also had a wardrobe master and a valet. Montrose stared goggle-eyed when the valet started stripping the tunic and trousers off of Del Azarchel, whose throne did not stop moving during this whole, awkward operation. The back of the throne folded down, changing it into something like a gurney, and assistants in blue uniforms with deft motions pushed the naked body of the Master of the World this way and that, in order to wriggle him into his clothing. It was done as nonchalantly as a nurse diapering a baby. The other courtiers and soldiers marched alongside, looking at nothing, noticing nothing.

  One or two of the valets attempted a similar deal on him, but Montrose shrugged them away, grabbed the clothing out of their hands, and ran around a convenient corner with the bundle.

  He unfolded it. The garment was a spacer’s uniform of ultra-lightweight black silk, with fittings at the wrists and neckline to accept gauntlets and helmet. The fabric looked almost like an organism, because countless tiny tubules for air and coolant ran through the cloth, like the branching veins in a leaf.

  But the garb was clearly ceremonial: instead of painting his feet with insulator, for example, he was given a pair of black toe-socks decorated with clips of silver. A scarlet and sable oxygen hood hung down his back, obviously meant for show, not use, and a square of bright-cloth, mirror with its patterns of solar cells, was hung from one epaulette. It was not plugged into a battery, nor was there a parasol wand, so it was also for show, not to protect him from radiant solar heat in a vacuum.

  Oddly, the gauntlets were not real gauntlets, there was no lining of pressure-reactive control material: They were just made of soft fabric, not vacuum-proof, and just tucked into his belt at a jaunty angle. Even more oddly, the left sleeve of the uniform was shorter than the right, leaving one forearm bare. Even if he had donned the left gauntlet, it would not have mated with the wrist fittings.

  A valet came looking for him. Montrose was willing to let the other man dress him, for the simple reason that one could not fasten up a shipsuit properly by oneself, and Montrose did not know how closely this simpler copy mimicked the original.

  He jogged back, finding Del Azarchel waiting in a garden-space beneath a blue dome, and a fountain and pool of water splashed on the tiled floor not far away. The throng had grown. Del Azarchel was now surrounded by a crowd of retainers and courtiers larger than what had been there before. He was telling them about the coming Armada from Epsilon Tauri. Montrose heard a tense question or two, and then a breath of relief swept through the garden-chamber. The courtiers were chuckling. “Eight thousand years,” said one, a handsome youth in a metallic wig. “It is further in our future than all recorded history rests in our past—”

  Del Azarchel raised his hand, and the courtiers, all of them, fell silent as if a switch had been thrown. Del Azarchel was now dressed in a black shipsuit like Montrose wore, except that there were silver fittings at his throat and shoulders.

  Montrose came forward, caught sight of himself in the glass on the wall behind Del Azarchel, and smiled. “We’re not going to shave our heads? The suit officer won’t let us board if we don’t have clean skull fits.”

  Del Azarchel smiled with the left half of his mouth, raising one eyebrow. “You think this is not real? It is very real, I assure you. Hylics are not allowed to wear these fabrics. Only us.”

  “Who-lacks?” Montrose recalled that the Iron Ghost version of Del Azarchel had also used the word.

  Del Azarchel made a rueful smile. “Hylics. An unfortunate term, perhaps, coined in more contentious times—it refers to the common people, the mundane ones, those who trod the earth.”

  “Whad’ya mean only us? Us who?”

  “The Men of the Stars. The Learned. We who possess the secret knowledge. You remember the perfume of outer space? That smell, the strange ozone smell of the outer darkness? You remember what it is like to step into the airlock, and hear the ringing in your ears as pressure returns, and catch a whiff of that strange odor, it tingles in the nose like dark smoke, long after the valve is shut and the atmosphere is pumped in. You recall? Those who wish to depart the Earth and smell that scent, they are our servants here, and students. They are called by a nobler name: Psychics.”

  From the looks of pride that stiffened on the faces of the men around him, Montrose understood this referred to the dandies in jeweled coats, wearing their odd wigs of white wire.

  “I thought they were your roughhouse boys. Knights and bishops and, and, uh, rooks or whatever you call them. Count Dracula and Duke Ellington and so on.”

  “Think of them as a Mandarin class. They have the power to rule, it is true, but it is due to the merit of their several attainments, the exemplary nature of their service to human destiny.” The men stood taller at these words, proud as petted hounds. “The elite of this new age are the acolytes and familiars of the Highest Order; students of the hidden truth; men who have moved beyond the Hylic stage of pure selfish materialism. It is a meritocracy of the mind, the rule by philosopher-kings. And so we call them Psychics.”

  “Not people with way-cool mind powers? Damn. You got to pick a better word. That’s just misleading. I was sure folk in the future world would be able to focus their brainwaves, and blow folks’ skulls off, phlegm like that. What do you call the highest order, if these guys are just the students?”

  “Pneumatics.”

  “Jesus up a tree, you gotta talk to someone about picking better names for stuff, Blackie.”

  Del Azarchel beckoned to a figure in white. The man stepped forward. It was the old Oriental doctor who had first examined Montrose when he awoke. This man did not wear one of those metallic wigs. Did that mean he was a servant, a Hylic, rather than a boss?

  Del Azarchel said to Montrose: “I am sending you ahead of me, to the Conclave, because of this business I must here conclude. My court does not seem to be taking the matter very soberly—which is to be expected. Large numbers can stagger the mind, and large numbers of years dull the imagination. I will come rapidly. Meanwhile, the ride will give you an opportunity to be examined, since you just had another episode of your, ah, other self. If you would, please.”

  Montrose had been pushed around a bit too much of late, especially with Del Azarchel playing a swift trick with that drink, and then accusing him of poaching his old lady. He thought it was about time to dig in his heels.

  “Sending me? I’ll be damned first. You can ask. You seem to forget that I don’t work for you.”

  “And you seem to forget that you are still a member of the crew, and I am in charge of the landing party.”

  “What? That means landings on the Monument surface! Or some other alien body we might encounter. You are talking as if we never came home.…”

  “This Earth is not the one we left. To us, it is an alien body. The ship is still aloft, and her weapons are all that hold the globe in check. Did you resign your commission?”

  He thought, but did not say, There are no weapons mounted aboard the ship. That had been one of the conditions permitting her to launch. Instead he said, “But the Captain is dead.”

  “A new Captain was appointed, as per our articles. Did you resign your commission?”

  “No, I reckon not.”

  “Then you are still a member of the crew. As soon as the doctor discharges you officially from the sick roster, you must report for duty. The carriage is yonder. Please move briskly. Time is short.”

  “
Short!” snorted Montrose. “Eighty centuries! What do you consider a long time?”

  “A man might not have the patience to count to a trillion,” answered Del Azarchel coldly, “but the number is real whether he counts it or not. A man might not think he will live to see the future. But it will come, with him, or without him, by his effort, or by the effort of others. I am asking you to report to the Conclave not as a penalty, but as an honor, that you might be one of those men who will shape the future and make it come as it ought.”

  Montrose had nothing to say back to that.

  2. The Buried Carriage

  Then the double doors slid shut, and Montrose found himself alone with the doctor.

  “Please sit,” said the doctor in a voice that brooked no disagreement. “I will not have all my work on your skull undone merely because of a fall.”

  Montrose realized that he could argue with the Master of the World, but not with a sawbones. He sat. He felt lightheaded as soon as he did, and this scared him a moment. Maybe his head was not back to normal after all. “Doc, I am feeling a little dizzy.…”

  “That’s normal,” the doctor snapped.

  “Normal for what? You didn’t give me any pills or anything.”

  “Normal during descent.” The old man’s eyes crinkled as he stared at Montrose, with what seemed a rather impatient look. “This leg is a gravity train. After we leave the peninsula, there is a drop-off as we descend beneath the continental shelf. We have to descend to reach the main line, which follows the curve of the mantle of the Earth in a suborbital arc.”

  “How do you maintain the tube walls against the pressure of the magma?”

  The doctor shook his head. “Something called magnetic capillaries inflate a pipeline, which is composed of something else, a heat-resistant substance called openwork carbon nanofiber. Ovenwork? Something like that. I’m not an engineer. It uses up a great deal of energy to maintain pipeline integrity, but these days—” His shrug was eloquent. Energy was so inexpensive, that it was not even worth finishing a sentence to explain it.