"It sounds like hell."

"They're completely happy."

"That's hard to believe."

"Only because you remember the Empire, Stipock. If you forgot the Empire, you'd live like them and be happy, too."

"What do they make of things like the starship, then?" Stipock asked. "If they don't know about technology, what do they think of the fact that you're still young after fifty years or so, that these people you've got in here don't get any older?"

"They think," Jason said, "that I'm God."

Stipock laughed uproariously. "Well, I hope you set them straight on that!"

"I never tried," Jason answered, shrugging.

"You're joking," Stipock said, and then saw that he was not. "What are you doing, setting yourself up here as the local deity? What right do you have to force them into superstition and ignorance?"

"The ignorance is unavoidable. And they made up the idea that I was God all by themselves."

"You could have told them it wasn't true."

"And accomplished what? You've been pampered all your life, Stipock, just like everybody else in the Empire. Well, they've got a hard life out there, and no precedents, no parents, no one to teach them. Except me. I'm their parents and their teachers and their ties with the past. They needed a foundation, and I'm that foundation. Why else do you think people believe in God? They can't live without faith."

Stipock was silent, said nothing, but told himself, This man is insane. This man is playing God with people's lives. I've got to stop him somehow.

"Garol Stipock," Jazz said, "you can try to stop me all you like. As long as all you do is talk, and as long as you obey the laws."

"The laws? You're the laws, aren't you?"

"I wrote them. But they stand alone now. The government is entirely in their hands. I visit now and then, to install a new Warden, to take people who've excelled into the ship to sleep. You won't find it oppressive."

Stipock got up and walked out of the tube. He didn't look back to see if Jazz was following or not — the footsteps behind him soon told him that. He went back to the control room, and went to the door that led outside. He began unlocking it, but when it came to unfastening the seal, it wouldn't budge.

"Sorry, Stipock. Keyed to my thumbprint. And in case you get any ideas, it's keyed to my living thumbprint. Wrong temperature, no pulse, and no electric current, and the door won't open. In fact, if I'm dead and I touch the button, the control room blows up. The Fleet's little anticapture system."

"Are you keeping me a prisoner here?"

"It depends on what you plan to do when you go out there."

"I plan," Stipock said grimly, "to tell them all what a lying crazy bastard you are."

"Still a rebel," Jazz said. "Do you think they'd believe you?"

And Stipock calmed down, slumped as he realized how stupid his impulse had been. He would be a stranger to them all. Why should they believe him?

"Garol," Jazz said, "strange as it may seem, I know how you feel. A man once played God with my life, and I hated him for it for a while. But eventually I realized that what he was planning was good. I still had no choice but to obey him — but I didn't want another choice. The vision was good.

"I have a vision of this world, Garol. I imagine it being a simple, peaceful place, where people are happy, by and large. I at least want to give it a good start. And if that means giving them a deity to worship until they no longer need one, then I'll give them a deity."

"Why did you even wake me?" Stipock said. "Why did you even use that tape?"

"Well, as for that, if you don't cooperate, I'll simply put you back to sleep and wake you as I woke the others, with no tape at all. So in the long run you'll be part of the colony one way or another."

Stipock laughed bitterly. "Then put me under, because the way I feel right now, I'm sure as hell not going to cooperate."

"You're a brilliant man, Stipock," Jazz said. "There have been only eleven significant advances in Empire technology since the beginning of the somec. Four of them were yours."

"Four?"

"I count the probe. Stipock, I don't think the way you do. I can help people solve their human problems and I've taught them everything I could learn out of the ship's library. But I can't invent. And in a world with no metal, they need invention. We need it. Now if I put you under and woke you up mindless, maybe you'd still become an inventor and maybe not. Kapock was a designer and he still has great sensitivity — but Linkeree was a businessman and now he carves in wood. You see?"

"So you do need me."

"We can survive just fine without you. But I want your help."

"I won't help you as long as you're playing God, Captain Worthing."

Jazz shrugged. "It's your choice. I'm walking out of here in three days. They expect me then. Either you'll come with me as you are now, or you'll come with me as an infant in a box. Up to you."

Stipock shouted, "You really believe you're God, don't you, juggling with people's lives as if they didn't have anything to say about it!"

Jason sat down at the control board, swiveled the chair around to face Stipock. "People never decide the major events in their lives, Dr. Stipock. The major decisions are made for them. The only things that people decide are the minor things. Whether they'll be happy or not, for instance; whom they'll love and whom they'll hate; how trusting they intend to be. You can decide to trust me, and I'll decide to trust you, and then maybe you can be happy, if you've got guts enough to be."

Stipock, bright red with rage, leaped for Jazz Worthing — no clear plan in mind, of course. Just a vague but overpowering urge to cause pain. And pain was, indeed, caused. Stipock lay on the floor, holding his arm.

"That'll be a nasty bruise, Dr. Stipock. Remember — you may have won a few duels on Capitol, but the Fleet trains its soldiers to win. And I always will."

A gross misappropriation of funds, Stipock thought humorlessly. He felt the anger and humiliation of a cripple — unable to control his own fate, hopelessly trapped and yet capable, completely capable, if only he could set himself free of his handicap.

Jazz stayed busy the rest of the day, and Stipock began looking over his shoulder. He began wondering, from time to time, why Jazz was so calm and easy about having him loose in the control cabin, as if he posed no threat at all. But from time to time — in fact, whenever it occurred to him to try to attack the starpilot — Jazz would almost playfully, absentmindedly flash out a hand and bruise Stipock, a sharp, quick pain somewhere on his body. A reminder. And Stipock would put down any idea of resistance.

What Jazz was studying, and what Stipock read over his shoulder, were charts and readouts from the computer on probable population figures, depending on different variables. Now and then, curiosity aroused, Stipock would ask a question. "Which of these is accurate?"

"All of them. But the best predictor seems to be the max–max–mini figures — maximum fertility, maximum available resources, minimum environmental hostility. The people out there seem to like having babies. At least, they don't want to quit having them bad enough to invent twin beds," Jason answered, and Stipock couldn't help laughing.

And reports, all written by Jason himself, on the progress of the colony under each Warden. The names were all familiar — Kapock, Steven Wien, others that he had known or heard of. "Who's this Ciel?"

"Kapock's oldest son. Second generation. The first native–born that I appointed as Warden."

"Why do you call them Wardens?"

"I like the word."

"And why call it Heaven City, and the Star River , and all this other mumbo–jumbo."

"I like mumbo–jumbo."

Angry again, Stipock went away from the control and fumed quietly in a corner for a few minutes. He and Jazz spoke no more that day, until Jason yawned, looked at his watch, and said, "Time to sleep,"