A flaming finger seemed to wander across the colored clouds and torrents of rock and ice of the immense volume of destruction. It was the starbeam, swinging like a searchlight away from Jupiter, now visible as it reflected off the vast nebular mass of the newborn cloud. The starbeam was moving away from 20 Arietis in the constellation Ares and aiming toward the constellation Canes Venatici.
Norbert looked up, shocked. Even with the sun above the horizon, there was a high white point in the sky, brighter than Venus seen at dawn. It was Jupiter, burning. It was a small, pathetic, secondary sun that painted their shadows clear and dark upon the grass.
Norbert saw that everyone was looking at him.
It took him a moment to remember himself. He straightened up and said, “Jupiter has honorably carried out to the last particular all the terms agreed in the covenant. The duel is ended.”
Montrose, bleeding, looked over at where Del Azarchel stood, munching popcorn. “Well, what do you say, Blackie?”
Del Azarchel favored him with a supercilious look. “And what do I say about what?”
“Ever since you fooled me into solving Exarchel’s divarication problem for you, everything you have done has been in order to create that monster brain to be the god of man and rule the human race. All the Hermeticists you deceived, all the work you stole, everything we did to nurse that huge freak to a level far, far above human intelligence, posthuman intelligence, or the intelligence of living moons and worlds. You achieved it. Now you saw it blow itself to bits.”
Del Azarchel nodded, looking pleased with himself. “I think the experiment was a great success.”
“Are you satisfied? Can I sleep now, without any further interruptions? It is only seventeen thousand, five hundred years and change before she returns. Will you leave me the hell alone? Is our duel over?”
Del Azarchel nodded. “Mankind has achieved a stable starfaring form of polity. It will degenerate without Jupiter to lead it, of course, and interstellar trade and commerce will come to an end a few years before Rania returns, but by then she will be moving slowly enough and be close enough that Hyades will not bother to interfere, if I read the Cold Equations correctly. We will win our manumission, and mankind will be elevated to equality with Hyades and the other serfs of the Authority M3.”
“You mean we will be free and independent!”
Del Azarchel shrugged. “Free in name only. My vision will rule here, a vision of monarchy, authority, glory, and power, and your vision of liberty will fail. You have already shown yourself willing to compromise. I think she will cleave to me, and not you, when she comes.”
“You lie. You don’t know her. You don’t know her, and you lie.”
“Normally, such words would call for a passage at arms, but right now I am not in the mood, and you are a mess. I want you to see her on my arm, as my bride, before I kill you, Cowhand. And so our duel is over for now. I suggest a hiatus, a respite, a holiday, to last for seventeen thousand, five hundred years and change. Then we can take up against the disputes that separate us. Agreed?”
Without waiting for an answer Del Azarchel saluted Menelaus Montrose, smiled a wicked smile, handed the unfinished bag of popcorn to Norbert, and turned and marched off. Montrose attempted to rise and go after him, but Sgaire pushed him down and beckoned for his surgical trees.
5. Fox Maiden, Man Wife
Del Azarchel was surprised when he found Cazi sitting on a gravestone at a turning of the white walkway weaving through the graveyard. He looked back toward the hill, seeing what looked like two versions of Montrose, one in armor, one in the sober garments of a second.
He jerked his thumb back toward the Cazi who had been acting as the second during the duel. “Which one of you is fake, my dear?”
Cazi was dressed in a simple red dress with a wide black belt, cinched tightly to show off her figure, and she wore black gloves to her elbows and black stockings to her knees, and about her ankles were bangles and charms. Her hair was a wild red cloud, and her eyes yellow sparks.
“All of us, I think.” She shrugged, which emphasized her cleavage. “I lost track centuries ago. So are you going to resign as Lord of Evil?”
“Resign? No. Retire? Yes. For I’ve won,” said Blackie.
Cazi crossed her legs and kicked them back and forth, idly. “You always seem confident, even when you fib. My next lover will be an honest man.”
“I have a right to be confident.”
“You think you do, do you?” she said archly.
“You see, I was able to study the Second Monument of the Omega Nebula for years. It was redacted the same way as the First Monument of the Diamond Star, so it contained the same message. All the information for how to build Rania was there, and I know the genetic codes for Captain Grimaldi backward and forward. If Rania is as the Monument says a Monument emulation creature must be, then I have won her heart during these years.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“The Monument was created for a higher purpose. What purpose that is, I do not know. Rania is designed to serve that purpose. Even if I do not know what it is, I know this: if all my work and all my wars and all my striving here in the First Empyrean Polity of Man fulfills some part of that grand plan, her designers would have rendered her unable not to favor me.”
Cazi said, “Montrose told me that the Monument was redacted—rewritten—by someone else, some other race, also for some purpose he thinks must be at odds with the first. And all your plans are all based on this cliometric calculus you learned from the Monument, right? But your blueprints included the redacted segments of the Monument. What if her purpose is grander than that? What if she is loyal to the older purpose, whatever it is? There is so much no one knows.”
“One day I will know all.”
“One day, so you say.”
“For now, I have preserved the human race, lifted it from its childhood on Earth to its maturity among the stars. Nothing can be greater than that.”
“Oh, really?” Her look of superciliousness was even more supercilious than his, for she could arch her eyebrow higher and wrinkle her mouth more deeply.
“You think he has won? The Cowhand? He will never win!”
“I think if you loved Rania, you’d talk about her, and not about him.”
“I had my doubts, but if it were not my love of Rania that made Jupiter hesitate to shoot, what did? I watched the duel carefully. The copy of my body was better, faster, more accurate. I cannot lose.”
“He lives for love. You live for hate. You will destroy yourself. That is what hate is.”
“What do you know of love and hate?”
She hopped to her feet. “I know that love is sacrifice. I am going to give up being a Fox Maiden, turn into a real woman, be fertile and have babies, and grow old and die, and I will never see the end of your duel with Meany. I have come to ask you to be the best man!”
“What? Me? We did not exactly part, my dear, on the best of terms.…”
“Men are always so freaked out by a little unexpected castration! I gave it back! You went to a shop and had it stitched back on! Besides, it will do me good to see you at my wedding, because you will be defeated by another man.”
“I can also lend him my dirty socks, and give him a toothbrush that I used to use.”
“So will you come?”
“Who is so insane that he would marry you?”
She looked scandalized. She pouted. “You are kidding, right? It is not obvious? Norbert. You know those Rosicrucians do not think like baseline men.”
“So you will be Mrs. Unpronounceable Name That Starts With an M. And you are going to give up shape-changing and politics and intrigue and toying with the destinies of lesser men? For what?”
“For babies!”
“To eat, knowing you. You will regret it. You will wake up at midnight, wishing you could grow wings, and go eat some politician you wish you could replace.…”