(She bowed to Del Azarchel.) â⦠and a core of self-awareness filling the worldâs interiorâ¦â (She bowed to Montrose.) â⦠it pleased the Hyades to uproot our many peoples and cities and societies and fling them to the stars, that we might serve this purpose forever hereafter. Had the two of you not proved to the aliens that we humans have the ability to create new forms of sophotransmogrified life, it is more than likely we would have been ignored, and the expedition returned in failure to its home star in Taurus, never to meddle with us again.â
Montrose and Del Azarchel stared at each other.
âYou provoked the aliens by mining the Diamond Star,â said Montrose to Del Azarchel, âBut they would have just gone away, if I had not created Pellucid at the core of the world? That donât sit right.â
Del Azarchel smiled a cruel smile. âYou created Pellucid out of fear of Exarchel, which I created out of fear of you. Perhaps I should be grateful that you opposed me! Evolution proceeds through war. It stirs the survivors to greatness.â
âGreatness? The Hyades just stole more than half the globe. We caused it, and you smile. How do you live with your stinking self, Blackie?â
âI fix my eyes on the future. Regret is for the weak.â
Montrose turned to Zoraida. âWhy spread our life around? Why not their own?â
âThe glyphs on the skyhooks did not say. Perhaps the Hyades also spread their own colonies, at a higher cost of resources, from their own people,â said Zoraida. âAll that the message glyphs written in the hulls of the slave ships revealed was that the life of man is cheap. Hyades did not spend any resources building us. We are a windfall.â She tapped the temple of her skull. âTo find the human race is like finding a billion cheap computer chips made of meat lying in the wild wood, unattended.â
Del Azarchel said, âBut then we spread our culture, not theirs. Humans, not Hyades, occupy more stars.â
Zoraida said, âNo doubt the corn seed says the same thing about the farmer and his children. In this case, we are seed which grew too many thorns, and scratched their grasping hands. I interpret the Cold Equations to say that they will not return for a second sweep. Can we not trust the Monument in this? We repelled them. Mankind will be left to our own devices forever after: free, ignored, unhindered.â
Del Azarchel said, âBut Amphith ö e said the opposite. She said the aliens departed at their will, not that they were repelled.â
Zoraida said, âThose of the First Comprehension operate from limited information, and supply the defect from their own imaginings. Of course, one theory is that Hyades did not linger because our race is too belligerent to survive the long aeons needed to be servants useful to them. They will not come again because, by the time they return, the world will be overrun by rats and roaches, and all our cities emptyâI do not speak what I myself hold true. This is the theory of the Epicureans who rebel against the local Judge of Years, and seek to change the cliometric plan to allow us to exhaust our wealth rapidly in dissipation.â
Montrose wondered blankly if this was the identity of the mastodon cavalry he and Del Azarchel earlier glimpsed. Montrose said crossly, âBut you are pretty sure we humans drove the Hyades off?â
She nodded. âDoes that anger you?â
âThere should be poxing celebrations and fireworks! Who wins a war and doesnât tell their own common folk? Youâre keeping the little people in the dark.â
Zoraida said serenely, âWe of the Second Comprehension do not tell the underlings needless information. If we were victorious, it would make them proud. If the losses victory cost has doomed us to extinction, it would make them despair. Their nervous systems cannot stand the strain: it causes