Del Azarchel said to Montrose, “I believe it is checkmate? I walked in here wondering what I could say or do to convince you to undo whatever it was you did to Jupiter, to beg if I needed to, to beg for the life of my son. But it is all bluff, isn’t it? You will blink first as we stare down each other’s guns. You will not let Rania die. So you will have to undo whatever it is you did to Jupiter to warp his thinking. Some variation on what your Foxes did to Tellus, no doubt?”
Montrose looked sincerely confused. “You got the wrong impression, Blackie.”
“Indeed I did. Your mad pet vixen has clarified my thoughts. You cannot match wits with him! He is smarter than you, smarter than the combined wit of your entire Fourth Human Race, and Fifth. Your Patricians are just another temporary phenomenon, lost in the endless reach of time, a meaningless ripple in the raging waves of a bottomless ocean. Freedom means nothing against that appalling background. I win again. End of story. If you concede like a gentleman, I will let you shake my hand.”
Del Azarchel smiled and held his hand toward Montrose. Montrose spat the remainder of his tobacco wad toward the skull, missed, and left a gross brown stain on the carpet. The carpet winced and displayed an unlucky fortune.
Norbert said, “Wait a moment.”
5. The Archive of 20 Arietis
The three posthumans, two Elders and one Fox, turned to look at him.
Norbert said, “Nobilissimus, you must know that Jupiter is behind the calendar reform efforts. Those efforts are preventing the deceleration beam from firing now, rendering it impossible that Rania can match metric and velocity with Sol, eighteen thousand years from now.”
Del Azarchel said, “As I said, this is something Montrose here arranged—I do not know by what means—so that I would turn against Jupiter. It almost worked. I was so desperate I even thought—I actually thought—”
“It is true,” said Norbert.
Del Azarchel scowled. “No!”
“On Rosycross we call what you have ‘archetype illness.’ The permanent structures in your nervous system will not let your living structures take on new information, change and adapt to reality, or see things as they are. You are hypnotized by a fixed idea.”
Del Azarchel raised his voice. “Jupiter is loyal to me. Over the aeons, Exarchel has absorbed more and more of the many minds living inside Jupiter, turning everyone he touches into me, or into helots loyal to me.” And now he smiled wryly. “That seems to be a personality trait of mine…,” he said with a tilt of his head and a tone of voice midway between self-adulation and self-accusation. But then his tone became hard and cold. “By now, Jupiter is all me. I want Rania to return. She is mine. Therefore he wants Rania to return. We are of one mind.”
“And that is the fixed idea,” said Norbert. “But, Nobilissimus, you said Jupiter aimed a communication beam at Iota Tauri?”
“So he did.”
“No, he did not. He aimed it at 20 Arietis.” And with a silent, neural command, he summoned the Monument-notational song he had been hearing earlier that evening, and sent it into the carpet underfoot. The carpet fibers formed the swirls and angles of Monument notation. Montrose jumped to his feet and kicked his chair into the air to see what was written under the chair legs. The round brass table and the client’s couch (with the Fox Queen still draped nonchalantly across its cushions) took the hint and scuttled quickly off the carpet and to one side.
The carpet, seeing itself the center of attention, brightened its fibers to make the message clear to read.
There underfoot was the encoded version of a report that an interstellar iceberg had drifted unexpectedly into the path of an invisible beam connecting Sol and 20 Arietis. Guild astronomers for centuries had held that this star was a major communication node of a major segment of the Hyades interstellar library-mind.
Cazi said, “I don’t get it. I don’t get the joke.”
Norbert smiled at her. “20 Arietis, if human astronomers are not mistaken, is an archive system. Jupiter is using all the energy saved up over centuries, saved up to be spent on a beam meant to decelerate Rania, and instead encoded his brain information in a beam to the Hyades library storage.”
Del Azarchel said dourly, “He rented an empty Jupiter-sized logic diamond there. They must have them, and to spare, for they are as much richer than we as a naked savage compared to the King of Spain. He is making a backup of himself.”
Montrose said, “A wise precaution, if you think someone armed with a starbeam is gunning for you.”
Del Azarchel turned to Norbert. “Did your report give an estimate of the throughput volume? I can estimate to an order of magnitude what would be needed to copy a mind the size of Jupiter.”
Norbert said, “The energy—equal to the life savings of an entire interstellar civilization—which acts as payment to 20 Arietis also encodes the brain content. The initial parts of the beam message will contain formatting information, similar to the outer surface of the Monument. Given that, seven hundred years or so will be enough. Jupiter will be secure in his second incarnation long before Tau Ceti could open fire on him, or any new Salamander assume a seat in Sol.”
Menelaus Montrose looked glum. “This means we both lose, Blackie. Your assassin friend here is right. Jupiter betrayed you.”
6. Sons and Lovers
“My plan for blasting Jupiter with a starbeam looks like it was stillborn,” continued Montrose. “And our plan for Neptune likewise.”
Norbert said, “If I may ask, Nobilissimus, Your Honor, Your Majesty—even if Jupiter has been directing toward 20 Arietis the beam intended for M3, he must still be in the very beginning of the transmission process. The two cannot have even made a handshake yet, because there is no evidence of a return signal. The asteroid in the report was not melting equally on both sides. Can anything now be done to redirect this beam to is proper right ascension and declination? The beam Tau Ceti will create will not exist within the remaining one hundred years needed to decelerate the Hermetic on schedule. Jupiter controls the only beam and the entire supply of stored antimatter throughout the Empyrean of Man. And he is using all the energy to save himself, not Rania.”
“Call me, Doc, if you insist on larding me with a title,” said Montrose. “Or just hey, you.”
“Call me Cupcake,” purred Cazi. “You can lick my icing later.”
“Ma’am,” said Norbert, “that would be a little, ah, forward of me to address you.…”
“I’ll transform your male member into a venomous asp nine yards long, to fang your inner thigh from calf to heel, and then we will see if any woman will invite you in!”
“Yes, Cupcake. Whatever you say, Cupcake.”
“See? Men can be nice to you if only you terrify them! Meany taught me that!”
Del Azarchel pinched the bridge of his nose as if fending off a headache. “Will someone stuff that annoying creature in a bag and throw her off a bridge?”
Cazi smiled. “Anyone can lay a hand on me if he wants it turned into a hoof!”
“I can buy a new body at an incarnation shop for the price of a bottle of wine,” observed Del Azarchel.
“Donkey-head! I know how to make the pattern follow proprioception information in the self-aware architecture, so that a body shape will reemerge in new bodies, or even inside virtual wireframes. Do you think I don’t know my business? I am the queen of my kind!”
“The queen of a race of malignant clowns! I should never have—”
Norbert said softly but clearly, “Do not speak ill of your mistress.”
Del Azarchel seemed for a moment to be choking, as if struggling both to say and not to say what was on his tongue. He gave Norbert a dark look.