Montrose felt his cheek burning; he was actually blushing. “I don’t need a lecture on what it means to be a Texan from you, Spanish Simon.”

“Evidently you do. Then you will help me free her?”

“Of course. It’s the first thing I said to her when I spoke. But you ain’t answered yet. I know why I’m doing it. Why are you? You like slavery!”

“Not for my mother.”

“But she is not really our mom!”

“Honor says otherwise. Will history remember this event? No one will cherish our names as worshipful if we pass by this opportunity.”

Amphithöe listened to this exchange with the bewilderment on her pretty features becoming fear. She flinched with surprise when Del Azarchel whirled on her. “Mother! Your master, if he be on this vessel, or whoso holds your indenture, who is it?”

“The ship owns my name, and the Nausilogue, Isonadey, is the ship’s voice,” she said. “When Isonadey speaks, I answer.”

“A man?”

“How could he not be? He is also captain of the crew.”

“Then take us on the instant to him!” said Del Azarchel.

Amphithöe took a folding fan from her sleeve, snapped it open, and hid her expression behind it. Her eyes would not meet theirs. “Surely this will produce the disquiet I was thawed to reduce.”

“Don’t worry,” said Montrose soothingly. “We just want to talk to him.”

“No, we don’t,” said Del Azarchel sharply. “Mother! As your son, I implore you! We seek your liberty, the only gift we can bestow the short time in this era we tarry!”

Montrose rolled his eyes and sighed. “I guess your mom in real life treated you better than mine did.”

Del Azarchel gave him a dark look. “She was thrown from her house and comfort, wealth, and position, for me. A saint who wed a devil! You see why I disapprove of miscegenation.”

“Meaning me and Rania? Them’s fightin’ words, Spanish.”

“Then come fight, Texan. Look!”

For Amphithöe had turned and moved in a gliding movement, surprisingly poised and swift considering the constriction of her green kimono and the pitch and roll of the deck, and leaped up the ladder to the poop deck, graceful as a gazelle.

And they both marched after the fleeing Nymph, double time.

3. Voice of the Ship

The two men came to the upper deck, and found Amphithöe pleading with the anthropoform Melusine captain, Isonadey, in a language neither Montrose nor Del Azarchel understood.

Isonadey stood glaring down at her with his all-black eyes glistering, and his sixfold antennae rising and falling in agitation. With him were the first mate, also a Melusine; two harsh-faced Chimerae in bright red coats; and six child-sized ebon-skinned bald dwarves, Locusts, dressed in heavy tunics with white scarves, their antennae twitching in unison, who were gathered near the navigation equipment.

Del Azarchel took a stance before Isonadey, threw his silver cloak back, and put his hand on his longsword. “We demand the manumission of Amphithöe, our mother!”

Menelaus grinned, which showed his overlarge teeth and Adam’s apple. “You just figuring on sockdolaging any rancid whoreson who gets in our way, just like that? Hot damn! But you are one brassy-swinging groin-clanger!” And he stepped up to Del Azarchel’s left shoulder, put his hands on the grips of his white glass pistols, but did not draw. “No parley nor argument nor nothing!”

Del Azarchel gave him a glance of surprise. Menelaus then realized that by we Del Azarchel had not meant the two of them. He had been speaking in his capacity of World Suzerain. It was the royal we. But Del Azarchel then grinned his devilishly handsome grin at Menelaus, and said, “That was the parley, all that need be. The captain must surrender! Here I have the final argument of kings.”

Isonadey flattened three pairs of antennae against his head, so that they rested along the ponytail of his hair, and raised his hand. He spoke in ponderous tones: “Violence is both impermissible and inadvisable. The allocation of resources, whether self-aware or not, is determined by the cliometric calculations. Amphithöe of Lily falls under the Concubine Vector, which is a pleat manifold in the attractor basin describing exocollateral interpersonal relations. Ancient report says you gentlemen are both master cliometricians, who shaped the manifold of destiny? Then contemplate the shape as it would be for those whose hibernation fees fall below any predicted future income. Slavery is objectionable; surely to kill those useless to the social order is worse?”

While he spoke, the two Chimerae standing behind Isonadey merely squinted and, aiming lasers built into their tear ducts placed small round dots of light atop various spots on the heads and chests and torsos of Del Azarchel and Montrose. Metallic ornaments the Chimera wore on shoulder belts also clicked open and pointed small barrels and emission apertures at the two men.

Whips made of silvery metal came slithering out of hidden sheaths in the sleeves of the Chimerae, and the whips giggled and whispered in soft voices to each other in the Sylph language.

Del Azarchel exchanged a glance with Montrose. “What do you say, Cowhand?”

“I say one of us can beef highpockets here before the Chimerae lads cut us to bits.” Then Montrose said to Isonadey, “Cap’n! What does your social order these days do for wills and reputations? You got family?”

Isonadey narrowed his black-within-black eyes, and his golden antennae swayed on his head in annoyance before he flattened them again. He opened his tongueless mouth, and three voices issued from his throat. “Of course I have family! Am I not human?”

“They be able to live down the shame of being related to the guy who killed two famous historical antiques? Where’s your sense of hospitality? Didn’t we, between the two of us, I mean, invent your planet or something?”

Every crewman on deck, including the two Giants, now turned eyes toward the scene on the high rear deck, and several had drawn Chimera-style serpentine weapons, or pistols built around serpentine cores. Serpentines were the Sylph technology of self-repairing artificial brains housed in sinuous metallic cords. They were an absurdly old technology, and absurdly perfect, able to repair and restore themselves indefinitely without error.

Isonadey seemed frozen in thought. The antennae on his head now stood, twitching, as if he were frantically radioing some other point.

With a slither of steel, Del Azarchel drew his sword. The words Ultima Ratio Regum were written on the blade, along with the emblem of a horned circle of olive leaves surmounting a cross: the royal insignia of the Hermetic Order. At the same moment, Montrose raised his glass pistols.

The Chimerae, moving with one accord, a blur of lizardlike speed, darted in front of Isonadey, blocking Montrose’s line of fire. Montrose stepped back, holding his pistols wide, trying to get a clear shot. During this moment of distraction, however, Del Azarchel had the tip of his sword at Isonadey’s throat.

Del Azarchel said, “In your cliometric calculations, Captain, I decree that the laws make an exception when imperial blood is concerned. Any mother assigned me is gentled and ennobled by that assignment, becomes an empress, and is manumitted at public expense.”

Isonadey said coolly, “A dozen weapons are on you. You cannot escape alive.”

Del Azarchel grinned. “Escaping alive is the highest priority of a man without honor.”

Isonadey’s eyes grew wide. Less coolly, he said, “You cannot fight the whole ship, the whole human world!”

Del Azarchel laughed like a madman. “Can I not? History says otherwise!”

Montrose said to the captain, “Ha! You flinched!” and to Del Azarchel, “He’s yellow. Stick him.”

Unexpectedly, Isonadey threw himself forward, as if trying to impale himself on the sword of Del Azarchel. But, no, he was not throwing himself forward; he was crumpling up in a ball, clutching his head. At the same moment, the Locusts fell to the deck and curled into foetal positions.