“If all goes as planned,” said Big Montrose, “then the first beam impact bathes the Cahetel cloud in radiation, destroying ninety percent of its mass in the first nine seconds of the war. The cloud disperses as fast as it can, and the beam spreads to compensate, becoming less focused and so less potent. Another nine percent of the mass is destroyed during the next two years. Shortly after that, the Black Fleet passes through the area, using their worldlet-based observatories and weapons to detect and destroy the final nine-tenths of one percent. The real task begins then, a long hard war to insure no smallest particle finds other little bits of matter to attach to and convert into picotech substance.
“That one-tenth of one percent will haunt us for years,” Big Montrose continued, “but without matter and without energy, what good is it? Technology is the ability to use units of information to manipulate units of matter-energy into new forms. No matter how high the level of technology, there are Planck limits and Heisenberg limits to how much information can be packed into how small a space—and we can starve any small clouds coming from that remnant, and burn them with the solar beam if they approach closer than Neptune. That gives us an eight-hour sighting and response time, rather than the two-year interval we are dealing with now.”
“You’re optimistic,” said Little Montrose.
“Damn right I am!” Big Montrose grinned his alarming gargoyle grin, which looked monstrous when portrayed on a smile several feet wide. “Both Tellus and me have thought through every possible maneuver a decentralized cloud-shaped being could perform. It cannot move faster than the speed of light; it cannot see faster than the speed of light. So the first hint Cahetel can possibly have of our plan, the first thing it sees, is the core beam passing through the heart of the cloud. I don’t care what it is, if it is made of matter, made of small particles held in electron clouds around nucleons, held together with the weak and strong nuclear forces, then, by God, it comes apart. There is just too much energy in that beam for anything to absorb it. If it tries to disperse, the outer segments of cloud can only move as fast as their mass can account for if the remaining mass of the cloud is converted to pure energy and used as a perfect fuel—and in any case not faster than lightspeed. We keep opening the cone of the beam to kept the fleeing cloud segments under continuous fire. Hell! We’ve finally got them! The laws of physics are on our side. No matter how advanced these aliens are, they cannot break the laws of nature!”
“I meant you are optimistic by which I mean idiotic.”
“How you figure? What do you think you thought which Tellus ain’t thought through a zillion times over from every angle?”
Little Montrose said, “If it was that easy for conquered races to fight off the Hyades, they would not be the Hyades. And the Dominion at Praesepe Cluster would not have conquered Hyades and the other dominations. And the Authority at M3 would not have conquered Praesepe and the other dominions.”
“You’re a pessimist. Other planets might not organize resistance like this. Or maybe out of every thousand planets, only one gives in without a fight, and we are among the nine hundred ninety-nine that get our backs up and put out claws. Like I said, we thought all this through! Inside and out!”
“All theory. You sound like Del Azarchel.”
“Have some faith in smarter minds than yours.”
“Why am I here, again?” said the little Montrose, with a sour look on his face. “As a pet for myself?”
“To keep me honest, squirt.”
“Well, how honest was your little show just now?”
“What do you mean?” asked Big Montrose uneasily.
“You killed that man.”
“He ain’t got no folks, no mother to mourn him, no orphans left behind.”
“So that makes it worse, not better, don’t it?”
“You know I had to do it, squirt.”
“You didn’t had to do it so slowlike. Did you? I saw. You put your foot on him, pushed halfway down, let them hear him scream, and then crushed the life out of him. Pure sadism. Why not shoot him?”
“No shells in the damn gun. Besides, I had to do it slowlike enough to make my point.”
“The point was that some of these critters have that one little bit of Blackie’s brain that loves Rania, and that thought is a red-hot iron thorn in the tender groin of your self-love.”
The giant slowly shook his head. “You ain’t reading my heart aright.”
“Don’t need to. All I need to do is read my own heart. It’s all there plain enough.”
“Now I wonder why Pinocchio did not just step on his damned cricket. I am beginning to see the drawbacks of a conscience that talks aloud.”
“What? Gunna step on me, too?”
“It’s tempting…”
“Yeah,” grunted Little Montrose. “I know. That is why most consciences don’t talk aloud.”
The big man was silent for a moment, trying not to let a scowl darken his features. Slowly he stood, and small rivers poured from his vast limbs. Robotic arms, large enough to serve as cranes in the dockyard for seagoing battleships, draped the yards of fabric around him. It was easier, given his size, for the arms to hold the cloth segments up to his body and send sewing machines the size of mice scampering on many legs up and down the yards, to sew up seams. It was easier to sew on buttons rather than to button them. Big Montrose did not wince as the damaged arm had its bandages changed, and was wrapped up again to his chest.
Finally, he was once again the very picture of ancient military sartorial splendor. Big Montrose said, “If the solar beam ignited on time, we should see it light up all the sails in a moment. Now is not the time to fret on past misdeeds, eh? This will make up for it all. They will not send a Third Sweep if this Second Sweep is deep-fat-fried and gobbled up whole: they are just as much slaves to their goddam Cold Equations as we are to them.
“With the threat of the Hyades gone”—Big Montrose grinned—“the human race will have forty-six thousand years to kick back and enjoy ourselves before Rania arrives with our manumission papers. Jupiter will have no rationale to maintain his control. By the flaming dung in the latrines of Hell, what will a puny twelve thousand years of servitude to Jupiter be then? A few millennium of sadistic eugenic practice, experimenting on human babies, committing genocide on unwanted breeds, forced marriages, inseminations and abortions and abominations—everything Jupiter did to create the colonists and then the Myrmidons—” Big Montrose snapped his fingers, making a noise like the thud of a bass drum. “Ha! What will it mean? Merely a footnote in history!”
Little Montrose said, “You mean it’s a footnote we are hoping Rania won’t read when she gets back?”
Big Montrose scowled.
Little Montrose said, “I understand that there are things I can no longer understand. I am like a dog to you. But a dog knows when his master is in pain. Just because you are smarter, don’t mean you’ve changed your nature. The conscience still works the same way. You can push just so far and no farther. You push the conscience by playing tricks on yourself—and you have to play along with the trick, let it fool you, or it won’t work. Then you can stretch the truth and stretch it and stretch like India rubber. But there is always an outside limit. Always. When you try to stretch it too far, it snaps back and hurts you.”
Big Montrose said, “I’ve always done whatthehellever I had to do, to get what I want. So why is this different?”
Little Montrose sighed and spread his hands. “Now, I reckon, I’d’ve said I’ve always done whatthehellever I had to do, to get done what was right. If you were at rest with yourself, you would not have made a little Jiminy Cricket for yourself. Which brings us back to my first question. Why am I here?”