6. Impossibility of Performance

“Blackie. I been thinking about your offer. If my happiness has to be sacrificed to save the whole Earth … I mean … If I meet all the folk in heaven what are killed by the Hyades during the invasion, and their women and little kids, and they all look at me and say—you could not give up your wife? Not to save the whole human race and all its future? Damn it all! I mean, what would I say?”

Del Azarchel smiled, and it was one of the saddest sights Montrose had ever seen. Blackie’s face was not built for sadness.

Del Azarchel let out a long, low sigh, and said heavily, “You will tell them that the Princess is worth more than worlds to you, or else you are not a man. You cannot foreswear her. I do not mean you ought but you will not: I mean you shall not and you can not. You cannot even imagine yielding her to another man, even if you can force the words which seem to mean that to come out of your mouth.”

“Blackie, to save the whole poxy Earth, I could … wa … walk away from … I mean, all the people … I mean, once she and I talked it over, I could get her to come around…”

“Cowhand, I will not agree falsely to something you cannot do.”

“I can do this!”

“Tell me you want to see her in my arms. Say that you would be delighted to see her bend her sweet face up toward mine, and as I lower my lips…”

“I’ll burn this damn world to ashes and stuff the ashes up your anus before I’d say that.”

“See? You cannot even say it. I know. I cannot say it. We are alike. I would burn worlds also for her, and count the cost light.”

Montrose lowered his head, shamed. “What kind of man puts his own happiness before his whole damn planet and everyone on it?”

“When a woman is involved?” said Del Azarchel to himself. “All men.”

7. Recurring Dream

“Cowhand, do you know I have a recurring nightmare, where I wake up, and, because my brain has more neural interconnections than before, it takes me longer to come out of sleep. My brain is fogged for a minute, or longer. And during that moment of fog, when I cannot remember where I am, I think that she has died because we ran out of rations, or the lockers were exposed to heavy ions from the drive core. And I think I will never find the body, her body, because the internal lights are out.

“In the dream, I am carrying a picture of the Virgin Mary, that we told her was her mother, because we thought it evil to raise a child with no ideal of motherhood. The picture is what she had to clutch instead of a doll when she was sad. I could not even give her a dolly as a child.

“And in the dream, I cannot hear her crying, and I throw myself down one cramped corridor to the next, in total darkness, and I cannot hear her crying because she is dead, and I did not get the picture to her.

“You understand I wake up in tears when this happens? I am not a man prone to tears. Then I sigh and laugh in relief, because it is a dream, merely vapor in the brain. And then I remember my wedding day is soon to come, and that all the people of the world will finally be unified in one joy, and even the deadliest of enemies will be reconciled when my Princess takes them hand in hand and speaks such words that humans cannot deny.

“And I remember that she has cured the Divarication problem, so that an emulation with all my skills and values, loyal to all things I serve, can fly to the Diamond Star, and return with the infinite wealth I need to maintain my reign and maintain the absurdly high levels of energy-use my infinitely wealthy world-kingdom requires—and all the people, being filled with good things, will be content, and the realm will be secure, and the race will survive.

“And all because she agreed to take my hand in marriage.

“And so I leap shouting for joy awake in my bed, and put my foot on the floor, but then the fog parts, and I recall that this was but a dream also.

“She did not marry me.

“She married Crewman Fifty-One, who picks at his anus and flings poop like a monkey when he is insane, smearing the recycler with a smell that can never come out, and there is no window to open for fresh air aboard a ship; and when he is sane, he practically does the same thing, for he talks about his poop and his anus more than seems normal.

“And this crazy, ungainly, proboscis-nosed scarecrow of a barbarian is the one who has my Rania in his arms. This disgusting monkey-thing with dangling arms and lolling tongue and crooked male member that he inserts … but no. It is not to be thought of.

“And I get out of bed, and put my foot on the floor, and the fog does not part, for this nightmare, it does not end, and I am still in it.

“Sometimes it is a week or two between this dream. Sometimes a year. Sometimes a thousand years. But it always comes back.

“I do not know where that little picture is. The one of the Virgin we told her was her mother. One of the other Landing Party must have taken it, or Rania hid it. I searched the ship. Many times. They all were very, very fond of her.

“I cannot talk to them about her. I can talk to you. Even though I hate you so bitterly that I will make the day you die a worldwide holiday to be celebrated with feasts and fetes and festivals and games and circuses from now until forever—even so.

“You alone know what it is, my heart. You cannot depart from the Princess Rania, even in your thoughts, because I cannot.”

15

The Conjurers of Fate

1. Worse Things Are Seen at Sea

“Hey. How do you know what my male member looks like?” objected Menelaus.

“I know you are not an idiot, because your augmentation to posthumanity is what started all these events.”

“Uh?”

“Aboard the ship, Cowhand. I was the one who gave you sponge baths when the other crewmen wanted to kill you for the moisture in your coffin system and the meat on your bones; and it is not as if you kept your diaper on during your, ah, episodes of scatological excitement. I saw more of that member than I care to recall, and I fail to have nightmares about it only due to my abnormally stable and well-balanced psychology. Say a prayer of thanksgiving to the winged monkey of winkieland who no doubt serves you in place of a guardian angel that you remain amnesiac about the horror and privation we endured.”

2. A Companionable Silence

The two men were silent, standing together, for a long time. Menelaus looked over where his friends, and the judge of honor, and the Iron Ghost versions of the men he’d killed, were all standing ready for this grim business, but none a one of them spoke or made any gesture. Del Azarchel was right. None of them wanted to see this bloodshed.

And he was right that none of them understood.

Eventually Montrose said, “So it’s no deal, no matter what either of us wants? Can’t be done, can it? Even if I said I would serve you like a manservant, you could not have a manservant who was married to Rania, any more than you can drive two carpenter’s nails into the balls of your eyes and not mind it. You can say you’d not mind it, and you maybe can make up what sounds like an argument to prove for sure that some men can drive carpenter’s nails into their eyeballs and not go blind—and that argument might sound right sound at first. But not when you actually pick up the nails in your hand.”

“And you,” answered Del Azarchel, “you cannot divorce her, because she would not permit it, having been raised in the True Christian faith, and being a pure and righteous soul, unsoiled. Nor could you abandon her without divorce, because your wedding vow—to love, to cherish, in woe or weal, and to cleave to her unto death—is like all your vows. Made of words, a vow is lighter than spider silk; but for just this reason, a vow is sterner than the unguarded golden gates of paradise, which no strength can force, and no force encompass. What is not made of matter cannot be broken. No, Cowhand. You cannot flee her no more than a man can run so fast he leaves his heart outdistanced by his speed. Where a man is, his heart is, and if his heart departs from his bosom, he dies.”