“Foxes!” exclaimed Cazi brightly.
“And what factor got factored out once the Foxes put one of their creatures, a Patrician, in the purple as a Lord of the Golden Afternoon?”
“The Fox factor!” exclaimed Cazi, bouncing up and down and applauding. Strands of wild red hair escaped from her coiffeur, and the jouncing pulled loose some ribbons of her kimono in the front, exposing a dangerous glimpse of cleavage.
“Right again. The Nobilissimus implied that Jupiter lost control of history, but boasted that history regained its sight and destiny when the Patricians rose to authority, presumably not under Jupiter’s control. This leads to a strange conclusion indeed: The unpredictable Foxes created a race able to predict them. That defeats this special ability. But who is so insane as to erase themselves from history?”
“Foxes! Foxes! FOXES!” screamed Cazi, leaping in the air and performing a complete backflip, while folds of her ruby-bright kimono came undone, and lit candles or pointy hair ornaments flew out of the unwinding mass of her hair, stabbing the frightened carpet, who blushed.
Norbert continued: “That led to an even stranger thought: the question of means. How was it done? Not by human science. It stands to reason that anyone who knows how to do a thing knows how to undo it. The Monument Builders discovered how to predict the large-scale self-aware multiple-component interactive events we call history. If there were a means to unpredict it, to rewrite destiny like a scroll, not even Jupiter could anticipate such a means or counteract it. No man and no potentate, not the Nobilissimus and not Tellus his Ghost is wise enough to outsmart Jupiter. Only the Monument Builders are. They are from some higher level of intellectual topography inhabited by Dominions, or Authorities, or Archons, beings for which we have only hypothetical names.
“Then there was the question of timing. Neptune was created after the Ultimate White Ship returned, presumably based on this anti-cliometric math the Jupiter Brain could not analyze or counteract; and Neptune was created by the Patricians, who in turn were created by the Fourth Humans; and the Fourth Humans in turn were created after the previous Omega Nebula expedition returned with the Penultimate White Ship, presumably based on a simpler form of the same math.”
“Fox math!” shouted Cazi, arms high and wide, standing on one toe in midair and spinning rapidly. Norbert could not see what was holding her up, but he did not expect to understand the posthuman races. A bushy red tail had unfolded from behind the wide many-folded bow of her sash and was whipping about in the air, and little flickers of white fire fell from it.
Cazi’s head stopped turning, even though her body continued to spin rapidly, as if her neck were suddenly no longer interested in anything her body was doing. Norbert could not see any seam, discontinuity, or elastic twist in the neck, so the sight was both unsettling and inexplicable. The un-rotating head quirked an eyebrow at Norbert. “Is fox math a real sort of math?”
Norbert swallowed, decided all posthumans were insane, and continued in a calm and level voice. “If it is not, no doubt it should be, ma’am.”
“I want to shout ‘foxes’ again,” pouted Cazi, descending to kneel on her couch, and letting her floating pearls fly and weave around her head, somehow drawing the wild strands of hair behind them. Other pearls darted across the floor, and any scattered hair needles they touched clung to them, and they towed them back to her. “Ask more rhetorical questions!”
Norbert spread his hands and shrugged (an unintentionally alarming gesture, since he still held a dagger in either hand). “Ah, milady, but there are no more questions to ask.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Then I will ask. I can change my face. How did you see through me? I must be losing my touch!”
“It was not you, ma’am, but the company you keep,” said Norbert. “On the way here the Nobilissimus told me, not in so many words, that the Judge of Ages had to be behind nearly everything the whole Fox Maiden race did throughout all of history. Since legend says the Judge does not act like the Master of the World—I mean he does not use the lives of men as puppets—I assume the Judge of Ages planned out the unpredictable cliometric vectors of the Fox race with the knowledge, approval, and cooperation of their Fox-Queen. So with whom else would he be consulting?”
“The queen of the FOXES!” she called out in great relish. “Oh, you please me. Now tell me what I was consulting him about, if you want to live, eh?”
Norbert smiled. “My life is at no risk. You were talking of Rania, and how to see to the Vindication of Man.”
She said, “And how did you know that?”
Norbert said, “Because there is no other matter on which the Judge of Ages and the Master of the World agree. It is simple once you see the pattern. Jupiter does not want Rania’s return, nor does he seek the Vindication of Man. What other conclusion is there?”
Montrose said, “That Blackie is against Rania’s return. He likes slavery, and the easiest way to keep mankind chained to the Hyades is to prevent the Vindication of Man.”
Del Azarchel raised an eyebrow. “I am taken by surprise. I had supposed all this to be your doing.”
Montrose looked sincerely outraged. “What? Me prevent Rania’s return? You nuts?”
“No, not prevent her return, only to maneuver Jupiter into attempting to prevent her return, so that this forces me to destroy Jupiter, my own son and masterpiece. Otherwise, if she returns and mankind is freed from Hyades but not free from Jupiter, this would be gall to you—you have plans ready for the various eventualities occurring after her return, have you not? Or have I overestimated your subtlety?”
Cazi rolled her beautiful yellow eyes and said to Norbert, “You see what it is like, living with two insane conspirators who are insanely old. Every event not arranged by one, he thinks is the work of the other. They both think we are just props and bit-part players in their two-man epic. Even after the Swans spanked them like brats and sent them to stand in the corner at Jupiter, wearing conical dunce caps, they will not learn. They are stubborn.” She shrugged, which once again displayed the creamy curve of her shoulders to her advantage. “I hope they never learn. I like stubborn. It’s cute.”
Norbert looked between Cazi and Del Azarchel. “You two have had dealings with each other?”
Cazi narrowed her eyes. She smiled such a thin smile and wide that it was alarming. “I was born in the Fortieth Millennium, and have been gnawing at the entrails of Tellus and Jupiter, the little slavedriver and the great, from that time to this. I once visited the Ximen at his home, to see if he was worthy of Princess Rania, because I was curious to see if he could make me betray my master Menelaus.” She licked her lips as if in great relish. “I stole something from him then, which he can never recover. He will not admit it, will you, Ximen? Not the proud Master of Everything in the World except himself. Do I not speak the truth, Ximen?”
Del Azarchel said to Norbert, “She never speaks the truth. Not the whole truth.”
Cazi pouted, “I speak the fun parts of the truth.”
Del Azarchel said, “She is not even the real Cazi. The race is composed entirely of totipotent cells, and they can rapidly grow and ungrow organs as need be, or turn their entire bodies into a thinking mass like a Myrmidon. They change shape and impersonate each other. Whoever best impersonates Cazi is elected Cazi.”
The fox woman sniffed in disdain. “I ate the dead brains of my predecessor and I am possessed by her ghost; we maintain continuity better than your crude Myrmidons. But now you made me say something that disgusts my pretty Norbert of Promixa, so now he will not love me! I should call my deadliest guards!”