Del Azarchel bowed and gestured toward Montrose, smiling, both eyebrows raised. “Behold him. You see, my dear Swans, the Judge of Ages, he is a cowboy, and he knows that the Red Indians, no matter how brave they are, cannot stand up to the pressure of sheer numbers from the White Man.

“This is (and, ever since the time of the Witches, always has been) the final executioner’s ax which the Judge of Ages bore above the throats of every generation. And now, by accident, in your haste to slay Exarchel, you have done in Pellucid, triggered a global system failure, and brought the ax upon yourself.”

Winged beings had not stopped landing from the Tower. More were present, and more, until the hills surrounding were shivering and glinting with what seemed snowbank upon snowbank of white metallic wings. The millions of eyes, like the eyes of peacocks seen in some drugged hallucination, flashed and glinted silently, the glittering of a tropic sun on diamond-brilliant waves.

Montrose said to the Anserine, “Sirs! Now that you are masters of your own world and judges of your own age, what provision will you make for the innocent?”

The tall Anserine said, “You think the matter disastrous for us? It is not even difficult. We have set events in motion.”

“What events? What?”

The tall Anserine said, “Do not concern yourself with the lives of others. For now, see to your own life! Our intent is benevolent, but, to one of your level of awareness, inexplicable. You will save yourself much needless mental anxiety if you now, this moment, make peace with Ximen del Azarchel: otherwise the route we have planned for you will be more convolute. Go speak with him!”

Montrose stepped closer to Del Azarchel, lowering his voice and saying, “I am not sure what they are threatening. They say we must make peace. But has anything changed between us?”

“Divorce Rania.”

“You know that’s impossible. And there is still Grimaldi’s murder.”

“And your treason and ingratitude.”

“So, Blackie, What happens if these Swans decide to open fire on my clients with that many-miniature-suns weapon you mentioned, or something even worse?”

Del Azarchel’s smile turned into a sneer. “You should trust your own Cliometric calculus. Kill ten billion helpless people, whose only crime was that the Swans destroyed the Xypotech infrastructure maintaining their biosuspension? Work out the math in your head. If they do that, in two data-generations, the psychological pressure from guilt and cynicism would turn them into—well, into Hermeticists. Or do you think that any logical being can embrace genocide, when needed for his own survival, but reject servitude, which, by any measure, is a far less grievous offense? If they indulge in genocide, I win. See their wings a-shine with signal traffic! They know it, too. Your rugged honor-bound individualists could not commit billionfold mega-mass-murder in cold blood without losing their souls to me. They will not act. But I shall.”

Montrose gripped his arm, then winced, breathless with pain, because he had gripped Del Azarchel with his maimed hand. He hissed, “What counterthrust did you have planned?”

Del Azarchel shrugged his hand aside and pointed at the horizon. “She is rising now. See that light? Looks like daybreak on the western horizon? It is not daybreak.”

“What is it?”

“It is shipbreak.”

The mountains to the west were lit up as if with cherry flame, and the rain clouds above, still weeping the memories and libraries of Exarchel, were stained cerise and purple and magnificent magenta as if a second twilight were rising to encompass the dome of the sky. It was faster than a sunrise when a second sun rose above the peaks, red and flattened in the distortion of the atmosphere. Montrose squinted, seeing the morning star and perhaps a sliver of the moon by day, its ghostly handprint reversed.

Montrose said, “That is the sail of the Emancipation.”

Del Azarchel said, “The ship as well, and her various escort craft to help work the shrouds—but you cannot see her at this distance. I was toying with the notion of simply burning your revenants like ants with a magnifying glass by pulling in the focal length of the lightsail. A simple and effective means to make war on earthlubbers, as we spacefarers like to call you. You should know its effectiveness. You, after all, commanded the Giants to do the same to my people and my civilization. Every emulation recorded in a mainframe you annihilated was a person, a thinking being.”

“A thinking being who thought to conquer and enslave the world!” Montrose snapped.

“A loyal being carrying out the orders of his sovereign, the only sovereign in world history to impose world peace—I had already mastered the world. She is mine, then, and now and forever. I am within my rights to crush rebellion and disorder, and to do whatever is needed to save my civilization that I made from alien invasion. If I call surrender, and order all the world to lay down her arms in the name of peace, I must be obeyed! Anything a man may do by right to save himself alive, how much more right have I, to save worlds and aeons unborn? If I call upon my ship to put down the upstart Swans, who dare prevent me?”

“My ship,” corrected Montrose. “You just took her.”

Del Azarchel said, “Return my fiancée and the life I was fated to enjoy, and I will give you your ship back. Until then, do not voice complaint to me about mere material possessions. With all your buried wealth and factory space and bottomless geothermal wells, you did not have the wealth, across all those years, to build yourself another?”

“Since every time I woke, the world was in another Dark Ages produced by you, you plague-spotted son of a clap-blinded whore—”

“You insult my mother? That saint—?”

“Me? Your whole damned life is one big insult to your mother’s memory, Blackie, as you damn well—”

Montrose turned his head. Dolphins, a dozen or more, were levitating overhead, motionless. They wore wings akin to those of their human counterparts, except a cloud of drizzling mists also issued from the feathers, or from a web of studs dappling their sleek bodies. They stared down with grave black-within-black eyes. From above and behind those eyes rose very long whipcords of golden neurotelepathic tendrils

Twelve of the many-color-cloaked Second Humans also had gathered in a loose semicircle. Now the thin, silver-haired Anserine man raised his hand, and, as one gesture, so did a dozen other of the Swans.

They spoke in the same voice, human and dolphin. “Gentlemen, your levity is appalling. That you would squabble and threaten the Earth with war even at a moment like this is atrocious. Whatever debt of gratitude the human race may have owed either of you, either for a peaceful reign of which you boast, Ximen del Azarchel, or your benevolent offer of sanctuary from the ravages of time you extended, Menelaus Montrose—that debt is cancelled. No more will any hibernation facilities accept anyone bearing your genetic code, either of you.”

Montrose stared up at the narrow faces of the sea-beasts, then looked wildly at the remote, dispassionate faces of the equally inhuman humanoids, saying, “You can’t do that! I have to slumber until Rania comes back.”

Del Azarchel said, “And I as well, since she will leave him and cleave to me, when that great day comes.” Del Azarchel could slow his aging process tremendously, but even he could not endure the immensity of time before Rania’s return.

The Anserine said in unison, “She is lost to you forever. Both of you have abused your timelessness and your immunity from years. We, the one mind of the planet Earth, hereby revoke your immunity of years and condemn you to mortal lives. No other punishment is fit.”

Montrose turned away, his stomach hot and knotted.

Del Azarchel tossed back his head, and drew back his lips, an odd expression halfway between a smile and baring one’s teeth to bite. “Anserine! What will you do if I give Emancipation the command to open fire?”