The little fairy figure danced in front of him again, curtseying. The miniature black uniform she wore was a replica of the Hermeticist spacefaring garb: black with threads of red running through it like the veins on a leaf, with a mirrored cloak. About her tiny wrist was an even tinier hoop of red metal. In her high, sweet voice, she said, “Certain formalities needs must be honored in the breach. There is no one to act as Seconds, or surgeon, and I assume you will not accept the ship’s brain to act as judge?”

Montrose sighed. “No, you can be judge. I think you are honest enough, in your own twisted way, to stop yourself from pulling any funny business during a proper duel. Damnify and infect my male member if I can figure why. You are the kind of man who can kill a million people without blinking an eye, but you will not cheat at cards.”

The little figurine curtseyed. “Simple enough. My sense of honor is important. The lives of lesser men are not. Will you come?”

The staircase that descended from the spire to the floor of the tower was an ancient design: the first part, where gravity was half, was merely an open space down which he jumped; then came three-quarters gravity with its spiral ramp, loose at the top and tight at the bottom; and below that, stairs. When he reached the bottom stair, he was in one Earth-normal gravity of acceleration again.

He opened the iron-bound oak door and stepped into an herb garden. A fawn was nibbling the grass to one side. To the other babbled and lapped the endless brook that wound all the way around the ship. The season here was springtime. Looking upward, he could see the cluster of light sources and heating elements peeping out from behind the wood-wrapped black ball where the singularity engine and the alien machinery of the diametric drive were hidden, along with the thinking machinery of the ship’s brain. Clockwise, he saw the band of the garden rising up, tree leafless. In the middle of winter was the round shadow of night cast by the machinery sphere. Directly opposite, to the counterclockwise, was summer, and the lamp cloud that served as a miniature sun glittered in the brook as it ran, dazzling. Autumn was directly overhead, a mile away.

He saw the stars to the aft, including the Praesepe Cluster, now some eight hundred lightyears behind them. Unlike a proper sailing ship, the Solitudines Vastae Caelorum currently was flying with her sails before her, distended by an invisible and nigh-impossible spray of ionized helium particles issuing from the diametric drive, energy whose imparted momentum, at least in the frame of reference for the ship, was met by no equal and opposite reaction.

These stars were redder than they should have been and gathered more closely together, albeit only his superhuman Patrician eyes allowed him to detect such a thing. They were traveling above ninety percent of the speed of light. To the fore, the entire hemisphere of stars was occluded by the rose-colored film of the sails.

He brought his eyes back down. The fairy figurine beckoned. He followed the little finger-sized doll a hundred paces to where an airy gazebo of white and pink with columns carved into fretted lace stood next to a glass bridge, lightly arched, that leaped the endless brook. Within was Blackie del Azarchel, smoking a thin cigar. At his feet were two boxes, one of cedarwood and one of battered metal painted olive green. Both were open. The green metal box held the Krupp dueling pistol Montrose had brought and which, last time he’d seen it, had been safely packed in his private supply chamber halfway between the soil level and the outer hull, under gravity slightly higher than Earth-normal. On the dark velvet in the cedar box was another pistol Montrose of course recognized. He had last seen it in the hands of the homunculus used by Jupiter in their duel. Montrose was not in the habit of forgetting any pistol down whose barrel he had stared in what might have been the last moment of his life, but was not. Blackie’s own pistol. He had saved it from since that day.

On a clean white sheet laid out between the two boxes were cartridges of chaff, slugs and accelerators, beam guides, a miniature lathe and other chaff-cutting tools, a programmer’s pin set: everything needed to pack and prepare a weapon.

To one side of the gazebo was a full set of dueling armor, standing on its metal boots, helmet open and empty. To the other side was another set. But behind each stood a young man in livery: one was in black and gold, Rania’s colors. The other was in black and red and purple. Their faces were albino white and eyes pink, and their hair was as fine as the down of a newborn.

“No smoking on deck,” said Montrose coldly, without any other greeting. “You want to strain the air recycler?”

3. A Gentlemen’s Agreement

“I granted myself an exception to the ancient rule, as captain. I grant you your choice of arms and armor,” said Del Azarchel airily, and as he waved his hand, the blue cigar smoke left a circle in the gesture’s wake. “Obviously you are more used to your piece than mine, but then again, it might throw me off my aim to use yours.”

“You’re cracked, Blackie. More cracked than normal.”

“I thought about leaving your piece where I found it, but since you know I am master of the ship, then you know I could have done anything while you slept, including replace your spinal column with a tube of explosive cord, and the idea of your outrage that I touched your pistol, ran my fingers over it, took it apart, and looked at it—well, you touched the girl I made for myself, my wife, my queen, and more intimately than I can tolerate to think, so there is that. And, well, I don’t need you to give orders to the ship’s brain any longer, do I? You are a waste of limited oxygen supplies.”

Montrose said, “There ain’t no way to put any fight on equal terms. We ain’t even supposed to talk to each other. Our Seconds are supposed to make the arrangements. Your brain is in the computer, another Exarchel. These androids—how did you cobble them together? They are your creatures, too. Why should I trust any of this is on the level?”

“Actually, they are Rania’s work. She had all the larger animals—deer, foxes, dogs—preestablished to take on a human form when and if tasks requiring human hands might come up. All I did was twitch the genes from female to male, because the idea of Rania’s handmaidens helping us into our dueling gear or seeing the bloodshed—well, it is not fitting for the gentler sex, even when dealing with homunculi.”

“You could have put anything inside the guns, inside the armor.”

Del Azarchel grinned his charming, devilish grin and leaned back. “Well. I will tell you what. If you agree to the duel, I will have Novexarchel—as I like to call him—vacate the ship’s mind. Twinklewink can be restored from backup archive and act as judge. She knows the rules for how to conduct a duel. Glitterdink and Dwinkeltink can act as Seconds. I will take whichever one you do not.”

“Novexarchel—as you like to call him—would be agreeing to commit suicide. Jupiter was willing to die, too, just for the chance to shoot at me. What if this is all just a trick and Novpusarchel—as I like to call him—is just pretending to be Twinklewink or whoever?”

Del Azarchel shrugged, still smiling, spreading his hands as if to show how innocently empty they were. “Why would I bother? I could have cut your throat with my shaving razor while you slumbered. But riddle me this: I am planning on traveling to M3 to discover the secret of the Monument Builders and marry Rania. She will never agree to a divorce, nor would I: the concept is barbaric. I would never dream of asking you to violate the solemn oath you made in a church to her, nor would I accept her as a fitting queen if she were the type of woman to break an oath.”