Torment said, “Ain believes a special breed of men can be bred and modified to be able to withstand the psychological stresses involved. Either Swans or Myrmidons could be used for the basic template. The races must be combined eugenically and conditioned by various forms of stress to achieve the proper cultural sociopsychology and cliometric vector.”

Montrose glared at Del Azarchel. “Where the hell is your Lucifer pride when we need it, amigo? Don’t you claim to rule all people? Rule like a father, you always said. The subjects of a monarch are bound to him by a personal oath, you said, not a form of rule like a democracy, which you said was horrible and impersonal. Remember all that bollocks talk? Well, Pappy, they is going to twist your children into warped things that like dying alone among alien machines in far places just so Hyades and his bosses in Praesepe can make phone calls and open embassies.”

Del Azarchel said, “My subjects should be eager to make whatever the sacrifice is needed for whatever benefits me. You are talking to the man who ordered Jupiter to run the eugenics camps. I do not flinch from the task of staining centuries and scores of centuries with blood. I am the first Hermeticist and the chief of them, and their sole survivor. We sculpt races using the chisel of pain.”

“Whatever benefits you, yup!” Montrose smirked. “Where is the benefit here?”

“We get a ride to our next destination, in Praesepe, and then onward. All these people will be dead, less than memories, before we arrive at M3.”

Montrose’s smile widened. “Where the real Rania will find out how you treat your children, Pappy. Can I call you Pappy? I never knew my dad. Died before I was born. You had a dad. What was he like? Loving and caring? No? Not so much? More like—lemme see—you are right now, issat it, you damned bastard?”

Del Azarchel turned away, to hide the shame and anger in his face. “You presume to speak of matters beyond your ken and above your station. Were I not avowed already to kill you for your many offenses and injuries, I would make that vow anew, here and now!”

Torment said, “I can say part of what Ain is thinking. Either Montrose or Del Azarchel must go to M3 to offer eyewitness testament of the Monument and be examined in whatever way, invisible to me, the Monument changed you: not a physical change, for you have worn many new bodies since the days of the Hermetic expedition. It is something subtle, a distortion of timespace perhaps, a cloud of potentiality, which follows your memory chains each time your minds are downloaded from body to body.”

Del Azarchel said, “A soul.”

Torment said, “The word has misleading implications. But I am beginning to wonder how much Ain knows about the universe. I cannot guess. So, perhaps there is something like a governing principle, a monad, a soul, if you will, that was changed by the Monument.”

Montrose grunted, and spat, and watched the ball of icy spittle drifting slowly toward the surface of the moonlet, but miss and go into orbit. “I hate having my arm twisted.”

Del Azarchel said, “We are in a position to have our arms twisted only because you decided to use Torment as a sling bullet and threaten the giant with it, who charged us extra for our impertinence. This is your fault.”

“My fault or not, Ain needs us more than we need him!”

Torment said, “Ain needs but one of you. Ain knows well enough that if one of you balks or hesitates, the other will volunteer, since you both wish to travel to M3, and meet Rania, and leave your rival far behind.”

Del Azarchel turned back to stare at Montrose. Montrose said slowly, “If we worked together…”

Del Azarchel said, “It would be a bluff, and Ain would see through it. We do not dare trust each other, and neither of us dares risk to be left behind. Therefore, we will both agree eagerly to Ain’s terms, no matter how harsh. Selling a planet into slavery—one planet out of a hundred—is a small price. That is why I shall always prevail over you.”

“The plague you say.”

“Always.” Del Azarchel’s voice was almost sad, and his eyes were haunted. “I am always willing to pay the price. A messiah sacrifices only himself; I am willing to sacrifice others, innocent bystanders, anyone, everyone. That makes me greater.”

“Damn me to hell.” Montrose sighed. “What was I thinking when I asked you to remember your devil’s pride? If any man ever deserved to be buggered with a lightning bolt by God Almighty and Mighty Pissed Off, that’d be you, pardner! Why not let’s you and me get out our shooting irons and settle things here and now. Only one survivor means he gets to bargain with Ain, eh?”

Mickey laughed. Both men looked at him. “I have the solution,” he said. “Your pardon, but it is obvious.”

2. The Circular Garden

A.D. 73727

Not long after, Montrose stood in a garden of the Solitudines Vastae Caelorum. A colonnade of pillars rang in a circle here, with a goldfish pond in the center, and to the left and right were cherry trees and forsythia bushes.

Hidden in nooks in low walls and benches were motionless white birds, slumbering; in small hutches were white rabbits; and, crouched in covets, little white deer. All were in suspended animation. Montrose did not care to thaw the decorative livestock. The greenery, however, had been mostly thawed; only here and there stood a tree or hedge bone-white and eerie in its timeless hibernation.

The fairies, which were mechanical rather than biological, were active. In and among the blooms, like bees, these tiny constructions darted and flew on gauzy or glittery wings of dragonfly, wasp, moth, or butterfly. These were petite female figurines in gowns of lace or glittering light, with tiny crowns or scepters adorned with many-pointed stars.

The world was a cylinder as narrow as a glass coin sitting on its brass edges, or as narrow as a tambourine with a transparent drumhead on either side.

To the eye, a babbling stream, with many a winding meander, run past the fane in what seemed an upward slope, ever more steeply, until, about three-fourths of a mile away, the water was flowing directly upward amid perpendicular the topiary bushes and small trees. In that quarter, the grass was brown with summer heat.

Directly overhead the stream passed through gardens splendid with autumn colors, and these gardens reached up and above and down again to either side like an arch or rainbow.

Then the waters flowed down again, if more slowly than it would seem they should if they were falling down a nearly vertical white slope, with the tops of leafless trees pointing parallel to what seemed level, sliding down a curve through perpendicular gardens, and then along an ever more gradual slope, shading from winter to spring.

Of course, this was an illusion of viewpoint: anyone standing at any other point along the stream, or walking through the seasons along the pathway that meandered along with the stream, in many places leaping over it in a gracefully arched bridge, would see the stream nearest him as level, with gardens reaching up before and behind, while overhead the waters would seem to cling to a narrow ribbon of ceiling and chuckle through upside-down trees hanging like living stalactites.

To the left and right were stars, visible through a vast sheet of hull material as transparent as air. The constellations were the same as seen from Earth, with only a few stars out of place. The turning of the stars matched the pace of the stream, for the waters were not flowing downhill—that word was meaningless aboard this vessel—but due to Coriolis forces.

Here and there in the garden was a fane or gazebo holding library books, wine bottles, or wardrobes for materials not meant to be endlessly recycled nor revised. In two places rose tall and slender towers with conical roofs, from which a pennant snapped, adorned with lozenges of black and gold. Through the upper window of each tower could be glimpsed the frills and ornaments of a woman’s boudoir. Rania—assuming the False Rania had been duplicated from the true one accurately in this respect—evidently preferred to sleep in partial gravity, a personal quirk of hers. Montrose was bitterly ashamed he had not known all her personal quirks.