“I love her,” said Montrose. “He’s just an ass.”
Vigil said, “I can see his eyes when you speak. Your death he never ceases to contemplate, and before his mind’s eye, he holds the details lovingly. He must need you very badly indeed, for his desire to see you dead is being checked by a stronger desire.”
Menelaus turned and looked at Del Azarchel. “I thought your hate for me was the only real, sincere, not-baloney human emotion inside that man-shape make-believe you call your immortal soul, eh, Blackie? What hankering you got in your black heart that is stronger than hate?”
“Curiosity,” answered Del Azarchel. “I was a scientist before I was a sovereign, was I not? Not only do I wish to recover my bride and queen and greatest handiwork, but to discover who wrote the Monument, the original Monument—for you and I have seen only a redacted version, an edited and false copy. I want to know the reason and purpose of the message. Only then will I understand who Rania truly is.”
Montrose uttered a curse. He turned to Vigil. “You are pretty damned smart. Can you figure what is his reason for needing me? Or why I should help him?”
Vigil said, “No. But I do recall that Princess Rania was born and raised aboard the Hermetic, which was controlled by a very simple artificial intelligence, but one which was programmed with certain laws and customs, including such things as inheritance. Is that legend true? She was captain of the ship at a very tender age primarily because the ship’s circuits would not obey the mutineers, who slew the first captain, but would obey someone of his bloodline, and she was close enough, as a clone of the first captain, to fool the simple machine. I have an intuition—a level-three intuition, mind you—that Rania, during her solitary return journey, programmed the alien ship according to what she herself knew and thought proper.”
Del Azarchel said, “You have struck the mark, Lord Hermeticist.” He scowled at Montrose. “The alien vessel is inhabited by an artificial mind which I cannot dislodge, which the False Rania, in perfect impersonation of the true one, for some mad reason taught and programmed with all her ideas, including her notions of marriage. Since you are the ex-husband of Rania, once I persuaded her that the False Rania was false, the ship declared you—as Rania’s lord and master—to be sole heir to her property. Rania is rather old-fashioned, even by my standards.”
Montrose swore an oath and exclaimed, “Ex-husband?”
Del Azarchel smiled thinly. “Your marriage was annulled by an act of Parliament of the Tellurian Concordat, sometime back in the Third Millennium. I forget which century.”
Montrose said, “And the ship’s brain does not recognize the legality of an act of Parliament to abridge a sacramental oath, I take it? Not if Rania, false or true or any sort of Rania, was the one who programmed it.”
Vigil said, “The alien ship is treating the discovery of the falsehood of Rania as the same as death, then. That is highly significant.”
Montrose said, “Why?”
“It means your voyage will not be in vain,” said Vigil. “This was not a deception practiced deliberately. Something beyond expectation, beyond even their expectation, happened at M3.”
Montrose turned to Del Azarchel. “What now? If this Table don’t disband and let you use their Lighthouse, what then? Are you going to draw the sword and threaten this group here to turn the deceleration beam right and proper into your sails?”
The Chronometrician spoke out of turn, cackling, his yard-long antennae swaying. “He has lost the desire and drive. The dark emperor of all mankind realized that he needs this world intact, unmarred by war, filled and overfilled with excess population!”
Vigil nodded. He turned and squinted at the statue of Torment. “You will pass out of range of the most powerful broadcast apparatus of the Empyrean, and so be beyond the retaliation from Triumvirate or any of the Powers of the greater planets. What would be your desire then, O murderess world?”
Torment said, “My thoughts are not like yours, but to be the mother of worlds, and to spread my children farther than even highly favored Tellus, that would be ambition indeed, and the old races that I love, the ancient things crafted by Hermeticists, nothing would be absorbed into the bland uniformity of the proud Patricians then. And you, my accuser, is your vengeance satisfied by exile, eternal exile?”
Vigil said, “If I were not satisfied, I would order my internal creatures to adjust my thoughts until I were. For I am true to my vows and must ever be.”
Montrose said, “Wait a sec. A minute ago, I was the only one in the room who knew what was going on. Have you all figured out what my plan is, that quick?”
Vigil said, “I am descended from Narcís D’Aragó and share something of the sense of honor he wished planted in his creatures, the Chimerae, which in turn formed the first templates for the Myrmidons, the Third Human Race. Of the Five Races of Man, only that race, of which I count myself a cousin, traveled to the Second Empyrean in Sagittarius and looked on the legendary beauty and strength of the lost worlds of Aachen and of Avalon, of Trethevy and of Trevena, and Tintagel the Fair, whose name hangs in song like a bell of silver. Do you forget that the man who was master of that Empyrean is here?”
Montrose said, “Sorry. What am I missing?”
Vigil said, “You have sailcloth but no vessel, no launching laser. But you are patient, and you served aboard the Hermetic, whose laser was merely an orbital platform, not something drawing power from the core of a sun.”
Del Azarchel said, “I had to tear out most of the interior of my vessel, the Emancipation—”
“My vessel, you skunk!”
“—to make room for cisterns to hold my migrant population, who are aquatic. The ship is not suited to make the voyage to M3. She may not make it to Ain without an entire redesign from the axis keel outward. I was planning on looting this entire planet to get the provisions I needed, but you seem to have a better plan, Cowhand. I do not know what it is, but I know this youth here deduced it, and that tells me enough. Lord Hermeticist! The orbit of your primary is highly elliptical, is it not? How do you survive the summers hotter than Mercury and atmosphere-freezing winters colder than Pluto?”
Vigil said, “There are hibernation cities at the planetary core, with tombs enough for ten times the surface population. And I seek the return of the Strangers to their proper place. We will stay and man the acceleration beam for all the ages you may require. At long last—finally at long last!—the projects of terraforming Hellebore and Bloodroot, Sainfoin, Mandrake, and Nightshade, and the other wasted moons of Wormwood, which we of Torment abandoned only due to our racial hatred and pride and strife, will no more be neglected.” Vigil turned to Montrose. “Have I guessed correctly? You meant to take Hellebore with you.”
Montrose nodded. “You got it. It would have been a slow, slow voyage, but I am used to slow. But now here is Blackie, who needs my help to sail my wife’s ship. As I recall, the alien ship anchored its sails to her hull with impalpable strings of force. I am assuming they can pass through solid matter without harm, without being noticed. The cities at the core are solid enough to serve as anchors. And I know how big the sails of Rania’s supership are. So we just anchor the ship at the core of Torment, erect the sails as large as the orbit of Venus, and the payload to surface area is still so huge it don’t matter, not with the amount of power the Iota Draconis beam can put out. We take the whole planet with us.”
Vigil said, “It will be but a very short while, decades only, until the Argosy arrives with populations of Sinners from 61 Ursae Majoris and Delectables from 47 Ursae Majoris. They will bring enough peoples to overswarm Bloodroot and will complete the terraformation. However tenuously and thin the thread might stretch, it will not be broken, and a next Table of Stability be seated, and ensure the continuation of mankind as a star-faring race, resisting forever the thousand temptations of each planet to make herself isolated, autarchic, and alone.”