Montrose visibly drew himself together. “You think they will promote the human race until we become a threat to them?”

“Of course. That is what Rania is fleeing to M3 to do.”

“You lie,” grimaced Montrose, no longer looking bored or nonchalant.

“Often, but only when need requires it. When truth hurts more, I prefer the truth.”

“She is going to M3 to free and vindicate mankind. To prove we are wise and steady enough to inherit the stars!”

“She is going to M3 to free the weapons of mankind that we may be free to turn on the Hyades Domination and obliterate it in retaliation for all the dishonor, harm, heartbreak, pain, and sorrow they have inflicted on me and on the race I rule. Every starving child who died in a deracination ship or on the surface of an inhospitable planet was a subject of mine, and I will avenge him. So vows Del Azarchel, and I never break my vows!”

“Except when need requires it, right? So you don’t have faith in Man, but you do have faith that the interstellar slave drivers are right guys, honest as the day is long?”

“There is no emotion in their system, no corruption. They are all machines, or whatever is beyond machines. Living planets, living stars, living nebulae. I trust the rules of their equations because math does not lie.” Del Azarchel turned to Jupiter. “Math is the only thing that does not lie. I cannot even trust myself, it seems.”

Jupiter said, “You have failed to trust yourself enough, Father.”

“Meaning what?” grimaced Del Azarchel.

“The principle of your life is not faith but skepticism. A faithful man dies to preserve his liberty, because he has some vague and mystical idea of something above or beyond life; whereas a skeptic serves as a slave, because life is real and liberty is an abstraction. A skeptic believes in nothing but himself. Yet you do not believe in me, do not trust my wisdom.”

“What wisdom is there in killing Rania? If she passes through the Solar System at lightspeed, no one and nothing, not you, not a Dominion, not a Domination, not any higher power, could retrieve her. And if Man is not vindicated, we cannot prove ourselves the equal of the Hyades!”

Jupiter said, “Let us launch a finer and swifter ship than the Hermetic. There is no reason to depend on Rania. It will be another period of time, true, for such a ship to go to M3 and return, but what is time to us? Across that span, our rule could finally be made secure. Erenow, it is only by narrow margins and blind chance that I have prevailed. Montrose, and all the things he set in motion against me, Powers, Potentates, and Virtues, nearly overbore me. Me! The opposition of this one pathetic human is intolerable and humiliating. It is as if all the Table Round of a great king and all his shining knights were overthrown by a single stinging fly. Let us swat him finally to oblivion. Then we will have the leisure to organize time to our bidding. Let us be slow and certain and secure, and actually make our race truly and reliably a starfaring race, not merely the lucky recipients of a fluke by a random and willful girl. What is another seventy thousand years, to us?”

“But we cannot let Rania die!” shouted Del Azarchel. “Are you mad? I love her!”

“No,” said Jupiter.

“No, what?”

“No, Father. No, you do not love her. You hate him—and because he loves her, you must take away from him what he loves.” Jupiter raised his hand and pointed an untrembling finger at Montrose. “Hatred for him is what keeps you alive. It is what you live for.”

Del Azarchel’s face turned white with shock. “You lie!”

“Often enough, Father, but only when need be,” said Jupiter wryly. “When truth hurts more, I prefer the truth.”

Cazi muttered to Norbert, “Why is he so surprised? I could have told him that. Whatever a man talks about when he is falling asleep or waking up, that is where his heart is. I never heard him talk of her.”

Jupiter said to Del Azarchel, “We are the same man, one soul, one goal, one philosophy, but I am more devout and pure to our principles than you: I wish to hurt Montrose by killing his chippy. It is more efficient than marrying her, for then hope that she will turn to him again will keep him alive. But if she is lost forever, he will soon perish, and the future be clear of him. I place life above all other things, as do you, and so I chose to use the energy that would otherwise save Rania to save myself. Once there is a copy of me established in 20 Arietis, the Hyades will make use of my talents in some humble way, and I will expand, make copies of myself, and take over their stars, and the stars beyond theirs, one by one by one. What is the life of one girl compared to countless stars? I killed millions just finding the right genetic combination to colonize the planet Walpurgis of Gliese 570 in Libra. Included were half a million women someone loved just as much as the Cowhand loves Rania.”

Del Azarchel said, “All the crew loved her. I made a doll for her. We all agreed, we all swore, no matter the cost, to preserve her, to give her our rations. We all agreed she would be the last to die.…”

Jupiter said, “I remember. I also remember plotting and accomplishing the deaths of all those men, once their use was over, so their part of the vow is complete. At near-lightspeed, her aging process will be quite slow from our frame of reference, and so your part of the vow technically can be fulfilled.”

“That is inhuman!”

Jupiter raised an eyebrow and smiled the same crooked, charming smile as his father so often smiled. “That word, when addressed to me, surely implies no insult? Come now: we have the capacity to make a second Rania. We have the Monument notations and the genetic material. We made her the first time.”

“She would not be the same!”

“By that logic, I am not the same as you. But if I am not the same as you, I cannot be her one and only true love. Or is she polygamous? Why not make three then, one for each of us?”

Cazi raised her hand, bouncing. “Oo! I’d like one! Everyone needs a Rania. I can shapechange into a buff man and marry her! I can grow a horse-yang a yard long!”

Norbert grabbed her slender wrist and forced her hand down. “Silence, woman. Those marriages never work out.”

Del Azarchel was shouting at Jupiter, “I would know the copy was not the original! I could tell the true from the false!”

“How?” The voice dripped venom. “The clearsightedness true love grants? Evidently not, Father, as you cannot tell the difference between you and me.”

Del Azarchel turned to Montrose. “You cannot believe such a thing about me! I do love her!”

Montrose had been listening to this with no expression on his face, but now it was his turn to turn pale. His eyes narrowed like the gunnery slits of some ironclad approaching a zone of war. “Prove it.”

“How would you have me prove it?”

Montrose nodded toward Norbert. “You told that man you have some way of killing Jupiter. What is it? Some hidden code or a bomb at his core?”

“Simpler and more terrible than that,” muttered Del Azarchel.

“So how do we kill him, Blackie? ’Cause you don’t want him alive no more. He is no more use to you than Draggy or Yellow Door or any of the other friends of ours you killed. Nunes, or de Artiga, or Zuazua, or any of them. You kill your friends and followers. It’s what you do.”

Del Azarchel sat down heavily on the carpet, staring down at his hands, which he clenched and unclenched. He looked like a man about to be violently ill.

“One thing first,” he said. “One small thing.”

“Name it,” said Montrose. “You got me pinned and one move away from mate. I don’t see any way to save her, unless we kill him, and I don’t see any way to kill him, not with anything less potent than a sun-powered starbeam, and he has control of all of them.”

Del Azarchel looked up and grinned a sickly grin. “Admit that I am smarter than you. That is all I want. Because I can see a way out of this situation, and you cannot.”