“Regard me. Consider what I am. There is something in a man who was a gutter rat in his boyhood, committed his first robbery at seven, his first murder at fourteen, swore an unbreakable oath of loyalty and fealty at twenty-one, revised the Navier-Stoke equations, flew to a distant star, learned the secrets of an ancient race, led a mutiny, conquered a world, and created a celestial maiden, made the world’s first ghost, conquered eternity. I have two branches of mathematics named after me, six periods of history, not to mention a crater on the moon. That something is not present in artificial personalities, born in virtual dreamspace, or concocted by design.”
Norbert said, “But you did not do those things. He did!”
Del Azarchel snapped, “Don’t talk foolishness. Are you a different man from your elevated version, Exorbert in Rosycross? Or are you one man in two bodies, one soul with two different memory chains? I am he. We are the same.”
“He is smarter than you,” said Norbert.
“I am the same man when I fall asleep, and my intelligence drops.”
Cazi smiled and spat, “But you won’t have the same head when you wake up!”
Norbert said to Jupiter, “If you are the same as he, why did you betray the Starfaring Guild? You are sending all the energy saved for centuries to power the deceleration beam of the Hermetic to power your information beam to 20 Arietis. You betrayed the Swan Princess, what’s her name?”
“Rania Grimaldi,” said Del Azarchel softly. “Officially, it is Her Serene Highness Rania Anne Galatea Grimaldi of Monaco.”
“Rania Montrose,” said Montrose loudly. “Officially, it is Mrs. Rania Montrose, you stinking jack-sucking swinehound, and don’t you forget it.”
Cazi said, “Well, officially, her name is slumbering deadweight on a rogue ship that will never stop nor slow from her near-lightspeed metric, isn’t it? Jupiter just killed her.” She threw the silver ball high out of her golden cup, but when it fell again, she jerked the cup aside, so that ball fell past. By some sleight of hand or quick motion of her foot, she made the ball vanish from sight, so when it was not caught in time, it was never seen again. “Princess Rania will, from our frame of reference, be flat as a pancake, red as blood, and heavy as a neutron star, from now unto forever and aye, caught forever between one tick of the clock and its tock.” Cazi raised her black-gloved hand and snapped her fingers and all the clocks stopped ticking, their hands frozen.
Del Azarchel looked fearfully at Montrose. Montrose said, “I ain’t going to kill you until I am certain sure she is lost to me forever.”
“This is certain,” said Del Azarchel.
“Not by a country mile,” grunted Montrose, looking bored.
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“By faith?” sneered Del Azarchel.
Montrose rolled his eyes, rolled his wad of tobacco in his mouth, and spat thoughtfully in the skull. “Blackie, you know what faith is? It is not hoping a blind and irrational hope when you ain’t got no reason to hope.”
“Then what is it?”
“Faith is clinging to a rational hope that you got damned good reason to anchor your hope to, when irrational and blind fears make you want to go irrational and blind. It just means trusting what is trusty.”
“I trusted him”—Del Azarchel pointed at the white-beared centaur version of himself.—“I trusted him, even when the evidence said he was guilty. I trusted that the evidence was false. I thought I knew my own mind.”
“In this universe, where we ain’t got perfect knowledge and ain’t got no smooth answers, faith is the only logical, practical, sensible, and manly way to live. It means putting aside fear and false doubts, even when everything around you looks doubtful. Throw hope away”—he spat again—“and what’s left? Hope is life. Everything else is just murder and suicide. The three choices are hope, wrath, and despair. Those three.”
Del Azarchel laughed a scornful laugh. “Is that your homespun, backwoods, Yankee philosophy? You sound ridiculous when you try to wax profound.”
“I’ll wax your damn beaneater ass, you sass me. And I ain’t no Yankee. Watch your mouth! Or if you cannot watch your mouth, I can punch you so hard your eyes will fall down your cheeks, and you will be able to watch your mouth then.”
Norbert said softly to Cazi, “Is that loudmouthed lout really the dread and dreaded Judge of Ages? Truly, is he the demigodlike supernatural being who directed the course of human history for all of time?”
“No,” she said. “Truly, I think he is just a dumb cowboy.”
“He is supposed to be one of the foremost geniuses the human race has ever known!”
She said, “Just because you are smart does not mean you are not dumb.”
“Uh? I mean, I beg your pardon?”
“Most smart people are dumber than dumb people. Haven’t you noticed that? You don’t play enough tricks and frauds on people. If you don’t like Montrose, you can always change your name. And your nose. I can give you a donkey nose instead!”
Del Azarchel turned to Jupiter, and all his heart was in his words when he said, simply, slowly, plaintively, “Why, son? Why?”
“Father, given a choice between life and liberty, which choose you?”
“Life,” said Del Azarchel, “because a dead hero has no liberty, nor anything else.”
“Liberty,” said Montrose, “because to a man, to be a slave is worse than dead.”
Del Azarchel sneered at Montrose, “And where suddenly is your vaunted faith and hope? A slave may earn his way to serfdom and vassalage and equality with his master, and then trample his master, and rise further, to sovereignty and supremacy and revenge.”
Montrose said, “You’ve always had this foamy-mouthed loco lunatic idea that Man can climb up the ladder past Hyades and end up as Galactic Lord High-Mugwumps or something. Where in the world did you get such a notion? It is not like the Black Africans sent by the Spaniards to die in South American silver mines came back in the next generation to rule the Spanish Empire. What makes you think the Galactic Collaboration runs this way?”
“You told me, Cowhand.”
Montrose made a noise that might have been some medically improbable expletive, or might have been an explosive noise of inquiry, or might have simply been a cough.
Del Azarchel interpreted the noise to be a question, and answered, “It was one of the first segments you translated from the Monument. What their rules were. The captain had just announced we were all going to die. The captain told us to destroy the launching laser we had made from the hulk of Croesus, so that none of us would be tempted to return to Earth and lead the aliens to our home. I stuffed you into your exovehicular suit and took you out onto the Monument surface. You still do not remember this, do you? I asked you to find the loophole, the way out. Any rat can escape a trap, as long as he is willing to gnaw off a leg.”
“And what was the leg you gnawed off, Blackie?”
“My love for Captain Grimaldi. You know I admired him as much as you.”
Montrose said nothing, but his face grew so dark and his eyes so bright that Norbert was convinced the Judge of Ages was about to leap across the carpet like a beast and tear out Ximen del Azarchel’s throat with his teeth.
Norbert felt a soft hand touch his back, a small gesture of thanks; only then did Norbert realize that he had stepped in front of the Fox Queen and drawn his knife.
Del Azarchel was pointing his humming sword at Montrose, and continued to speak in his soft, smooth, sad voice. “Ah, but the captain, he had to die, and I had to be willing to become a traitor. So loyalty became a luxury. A rat can learn to walk on three legs if he is alive. The rules of the galactic system, the Cold Equations, they said we would be rewarded: if we cooperate, we get promoted. We could be promoted above the ones who set this trap for us. And then I will kill them, the ones who made me kill Grimaldi.”