It was not far to the house from the Cresta Gateway. Rex was nearly there when Regina came running to throw herself in his arms, laughing and crying at once.
Presently he held her back to look at her, and marveled. She had completely lost her former glossy smartness: having a child to look after had made her settle for practical neatness rather than bandbox elegance. She wore a white sweater and white shorts and flat shoes, and her hair was simply caught in a band. But she was far lovelier, and Rex realized, even if she herself did not have the important clue, that she was at last one in mind and body, having come to accept herself as she was.
“The baby?” he said.
“Princess? Crawling in the grass at the back. We made a playpen, Venus and I.” At his expression she laughed. “Oh, we’re the greatest of pals now, Venus and I. When you’re stuck with somebody for eight or nine months there’s only about three things you can do — live at opposite ends of the kingdom, live together and snarl all the time, or just be friends.”
“Princess?” said Rex.
“That needn’t be her name. Since we hadn’t decided on a name together, I called her that — it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, though maybe it should have been in Latin? — as a sort of pet name, one we can always use even though we name her Dawn or Mary or Venetia — ”
“Venetia?”
She laughed again. “Oh, well. We’ll talk it over, of course … she just seems like a little Venetia to me.”
At the house they found Venus patiently waiting for them, curious, naturally, but taking it for granted that Rex would want to see Princess first of all. Princess, or Venetia, was really an unusually beautiful child, he decided, and remarkably healthy. The moment he saw her he changed his mind, like so many other fathers, and told himself he hadn’t really wanted a son after all.
Even after that nobody commented on the fact that Rex, who had hoped to be gone for only three or four months, had been away for ten, or asked what had happened. He satisfied their curiosity on the first point by telling them briefly that the quickest way he could get back from Earth had been by a slow ship to Cresta, but even then nothing about the real purpose of his mission was said.
Left alone after lunch while Venus and Regina attended to Princess and settled her for the afternoon nap — apparently it took two of them to do it — Rex reflected that he might have anticipated this. Regina was glad he was back and in no hurry to hear his news, in which might be included the necessity for further action, further expeditions. And Venus had the patience of the ages.
Meanwhile, there was something which had to be done. He went down to the cellar and then the vault. At the wall board he did what the technicians of Section K had told him to do, after Hilton reluctantly agreed. Basically the effect was to merge the Chuter and Cresta Gateways, so that people on the Cresta side found themselves in Chuter direct, without having to touch Limbo. There were ways in which he could still use both Gateways himself, and return to Limbo. Without real understanding, he did as he had been told. The job would not have been difficult but for the fact that he had felt it necessary to know from the equipment here how many people were making use of the Gateway. Without such provision he would remain completely in the dark about Cresta and Chuter. He therefore had to include relays which the Terran technicians considered simple but which gave him a lot of trouble. Millionman or no, good craftsman though he was, he was an indifferent technician.
It was late in the afternoon before he left the vault and sought out Regina and Venus.
He found Venus in the kitchen, preparing something very elaborate for dinner, no doubt in honor of his return. He began to feel hungry at once.
“Where’s Regina?” he asked.
“At the lake with Princess. She only slept for an hour. Regina takes her there two or three times a week. She’s determined Princess won’t ever be afraid of water.”
“It’s a long way — ”
“We made a chariot for Princess. You’d have done it better… .”
“But I wasn’t here.”
“No. It’s a sort of wheelbarrow. We tried to make springs, but that beat us. It doesn’t seem to matter — Princess likes the bumps.”
Venus was working with a quickness and assurance which was entirely like her, but her obvious total command of the kitchen was something new.
“You do the cooking now?” he said.
“Some of it. By the way, after dinner I’m going to bed with a viewer and a play.”
“I thought we might all discuss — ”
“Nonsense. You don’t want me around. Or even Princess, but that’s no problem, she won’t be anyway. She sleeps well, that’s something.”
Feeling he was being sidetracked from one topic, if not two, Rex said, “You were never as good a cook as Regina.”
“Now that’s not very nice, Rex. I always do my best — ”
“But now you are. You’re making something absolutely marvelous. I can hardly wait.”
Venus said casually, “I’ve been teaching Regina to swim properly, the last couple of months. It’s something she wants to do well. And she will. You’ll be surprised. And she and I have been working in the kitchen. I may have picked up a few things — ”
“She couldn’t teach you a thing. And you know it.”
Venus wiped her hands, took a last look round to see that all was well and drew him with her into the lounge.
“They told you?” she said quietly.
Rex was almost certain that she was talking about something he had not been told, but hazily guessed.
“Not exactly,” he said. “Hilton told me you would tell me.”
“But you know …?”
“Please, Venus,” he said, “let’s have no more sparring. Hilton told me to remind you of Ron and Phyllis — ”
“Oh.” There was sadness in her face.
“And of the time you turned your back.”
Now the sadness was pain. “Rex, I wonder if you know what you’re doing to me,” she said.
“I don’t, but it seems I have to do it. I was to remind you you were tricked into being the first Millionman.”
Bleakly she murmured, “That’s something I don’t need reminding about. It’s something I remembered even as I looked at the cases and read the labels Rex, Regina and Venus.”
“Hilton said,” Rex went on, “ ‘If she sounds bitter, remind her that it was she who decided there should be one other Millionman — you.’”
The sadness and the pain were gone, replaced by resignation that was almost her old serenity. “Yes,” she said. “And I’m almost sure I made up for everything with that. You’re not as I thought you’d be, Rex. You’re not tortured, like me.”
“Tortured? You?”
“The Millionman experiment was not a success. Twentymen, yes. They’re not perfect, they’re not geniuses, yet the relatively few Twentymen in the galaxy are holding Doomsday back.”
Rex nodded. “I’ve seen that.”
“In an ancient war there were suicide pilots … that meant something then. A man had to be prepared not merely to risk his life, which was nothing — every soldier in action does that every day — but actually to surrender his life as the price of some hypothetical military gain. Those suicide pilots wanted to live, yet they were prepared to die. Now it’s different. Most people are prepared to live, but they want to die. So it’s never too difficult to create a Twentyman. A stable dominant has to be found, and that’s the most difficult part of it. Still, if you can’t find one among twenty, you can find one among a hundred.”
“There is selection?”
“For the dominant, yes. The others are just any nineteen ordinary suicides of the same sex. You see, psychosis, perversion, weakness don’t go through. Neither does talent or courage. All these things cancel themselves out.”
“Courage in suicides?”
“Oh, yes. Surely you don’t believe in that old myth that the suicide is necessarily a coward? What’s braver than accepting that your own death is the best answer to the current situation? Putting out your own light? Regina has started back with Princess, by the way.”
“You say talent doesn’t go through — yet you know things like that. And so does Regina.”
“Psi talent is still rare, but there are ways to develop it. The main rule about psi is that there are no rules. It seems to be one of the few things that are concentrated in Twentymen — or Millionmen. Yet you lack it almost completely.”
She shrugged. “Talking isn’t one of my favorite occupations, Rex. You know that. What do you want?”
“That’s the trouble. I don’t know.”
“So you want me to tell you what I think you should know.”
“Yes.”
“That would amount to my directing you.”
“Not necessarily. Let me direct you — you said ‘tortured.’ You’re tortured. I’m not, you said.”
“Yes. Maybe it’s blind chance. Maybe it’s because I can’t help seeing into people’s hearts, and you couldn’t do it if you tried. I can’t be a fighter, Rex, because I understand too much. ‘To know all is to forgive all’ — even if that’s not always entirely true, it certainly stops you from fighting and really trying to win.”
Rex said abruptly, “Venus, who are you?”
“Well, I was Phyllis, as perhaps you guessed — ”
“You said talking isn’t your favorite occupation. Why not tell me in about three sentences the plain facts that you know and I don’t, and let me worry about what use to make of them?”
“I could … Rex, do you know what has to be done?”
“Yes.” He didn’t say, “I think so.” He said simply, “Yes.”
“Anything more I tell you may make it harder for you to do what has to be done. Think about that.”
He hesitated. He thought of Regina and Princess. And he found them an excuse or even a good reason to wait for a few more days.
But he wanted to know about the Crestans. What they did could be the crucial point.
He was already certain what had to be done. But there was one more test.
“I’ll wait,” he said. “But it has to come — you know that.”
“I know that,” said Venus. The pain was back in her eyes.
• • •
After dinner and Venus’s departure as promised, Regina asked no questions, so Rex told her nothing. She told him a lot. The next child, she told him firmly, must be two years older than the first. She loved him, but since there was no pharmacy in Limbo …
He was able to tell her that he had learned how to take care of such problems, even in Limbo. She was obviously pleased to hear it.
He did tell her, since she was curious about his visit to the vault, what he had done about Cresta and Chuter.
“That’s wonderful,” she said. “Why was it left to you to think of it, though? Wasn’t it obvious?”
“I wonder,” he said.
They listened to the Schubert Ninth, and Rex heroically kept himself awake, remembering the first time they had listened to Schubert together. He had nothing against the Schubert Ninth, though it was long; but he had made a Gateway trip from Cresta that day, the trip that had nearly killed Regina.
Suddenly in the middle of the third movement, as his eyes drooped and he forced them open again, she jumped up and switched off the music.
“Bed for you,” she said firmly.
“And you?”
She looked at him, sprawled in his armchair, and laughed. She laughed far more readily now, Rex reflected drowsily.
“Tomorrow,” she said.
• • •
Every day Rex went down to the vault. He had told the Johnstones that the Gateway would be ready in three weeks, allowing time for his own return to Limbo. No doubt there had to be discussions in Strand 7. A lot had to be taken on trust.
But the days and then weeks passed, and nobody went from Cresta to Chuter. Nobody. Not even one to report.
Well, maybe they were stubborn. Perhaps, with another big shipload of organic matter from Earth, they really felt they were going to make a go of Cresta.
Yet Rex was sure it went deeper than that. “They have to help us. They MUST help us.”
Even Cresta, the most independent world he had found, was a dependant. A dependant relative. Not a world with courage and freedom of action. There was no such world.
And finally one day he talked to Venus, again when Regina set off with Princess for the lake. He set out clearly what he wanted to know, and she told him.
She was right — it made it harder. At the same time, however, what she told him crystallized everything.
As a young but highly regarded executive in Section K, just married and very happily married, she first became involved with Limbo (it wasn’t called Limbo, of course). Here was a white elephant abandoned by the section which had gone to enormous, expensive trouble to create it. What could be done with it?
That, at the time, was only a minor problem. Her husband Ron, also in Section K, was asked to become a Twentyman. Asked — that was a little unusual. Suicides and would-be Twentymen dominants were so common that it was rare for anyone not actively thinking of becoming of Twentyman or part of a Twentyman to be invited into the circle. But Ron, Section K thought, would be more useful to them as a Twentyman. He was told, they were both told, that Phyllis too (Venus) was a Twentyman natural, but (Venus was bitter about this) they stalled on her.
So Ron was to become a Twentyman. He went to the clinic at the appointed time, a routine affair. Nothing ever went wrong. The process was well established.
But Ron died. So did the others. It didn’t matter about them, because they were would-be suicides anyway. It mattered intensely about him. Unlike millions of others, he had never even sought to be a Twentyman dominant. He had been talked into it.
Phyllis, or Venus as Rex still thought of her, was shattered. She was pregnant at the time, and she was a one-man woman. There would never be another man for her. While her baby was growing in her, she worked, since she had to work on something, on the Limbo project.
And she achieved cold, brilliant success.
A cold, brilliant overseer was needed. The human race was in a sorry mess. Population explosions had led to frantic colonization of the galaxy, but nobody had guessed what would follow that… .
Section K had had a plan for Ron and later, when that failed, Venus. A special Twentyman with all ties broken might see the Answer, if there was an Answer. After Ron’s death Venus took over, for something to do.
Venus had learned by this time that Ron had been meant to be a Thousandman, the first ever. And something had gone wrong.
Coldly, dispassionately, in a manner diametrically opposed to her essential nature, Venus set up the project — in her last months of pregnancy and before she was even a Twentyman.
Someone would be sent to Limbo alone to live there and lose involvement with Earth and the human race. The new matter-transference would be used with deepsleep and certain psychiatric techniques to insure that the Supremo should have all impersonal knowledge and no personal knowledge whatever. The Supremo would sleep perforce for ten years and exist in Limbo for another ten. After that, the Supremo, it was hoped, would know what to do.
Venus had her baby, a girl, and never looked at her. Venus had turned her back on everything except Project Supremo, which had sustained her for eight months. Now she wanted to die, like so many others.
They tricked her by making her think she was to be one of the nineteen to feed a Twentyman. Her baby would be looked after, of course. She accepted gladly.
Instead, she was the dominant. And she was not merely a Twentyman at the end, but a Millionman.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine women died willingly to make her. She would have screamed at the cruelty of the trick that had been played on her, but for the fact that as a Millionman — there was no failure this time — she had become a unique being, unable to scream about things which could not be helped.
She still abandoned Regina, but she went to Limbo instead of to heaven or hell.
On her awakening in Limbo, things were different. She would never forget Ron. Having known and loved Ron, she remembered her previous existence as Rex and Regina had never done. And perhaps that was the trouble.
She never managed to become uninvolved, and she knew it. Her idea, formed when she was an ordinary girl of twenty or so, not even a Twentyman, remained sound. But she was not the one to put it into practice.
There was only one Gateway then, the one to Earth. It was in the vault, only to be discovered when the occupant of Limbo had attained serenity and poise and ice-cold clarity. Venus found it at once.
She did not spend ten years awake in Limbo. She spent scarcely two. At about the time Regina was fourteen, Venus, who had made the Limbo plan, saw the inadequacies in it and in herself.
First, she was not the Supremo. A man was needed, and not an entirely lonely man. Such a man, instead of being utterly impartial, was bound to be in some ways more involved than ever with the future of his race elsewhere.
Secondly, she knew too much. The process intended to divorce the Supremo from personal involvement with the human race had to go deeper. He had to remember still less. Yet at the same time, he had to be able to learn something of the situation in the galaxy. He had to be able to see it for himself and make up his mind about it and about what had to be done. She did not then know much about matter-transference, an expensive system with many snags.
So Venus went back to Earth. Her old boss was dead, a fact which for the good of Project Supremo was perhaps as well. She could never have worked at full efficiency with the man who had killed Ron and tricked her.
The new chief was John Hilton.
The new plan took four years to work out and put into effect. Venus never saw her daughter, never sought to see her. And then, when the vast Section K computers were asked for the names of young men and women most fitted to figure in the key roles of Project Supremo, one of the first names to issue from the machines was that of Venus’s daughter.
• • •
“Possibly John Hilton arranged that deliberately,” she said. “He was in on the original plan, as a young man. I think he was horrified at my abandonment of … I may as well go on calling her Regina.
“You were a brash young man, less assured in fact then and overconfident in manner. But I felt sure you were right. Regina … she was curiously rootless. My fault. She had known love all right, but not from her family. And there had been no man in her life. She was keen on the idea, as a theory — ”
“Did we ever meet? Regina and I?”
“No. We all agreed, including yourselves, that the first meeting should be in Limbo. And I was to return with you… . I don’t have to tell you any more, do I? You know all you have to know. Perhaps it might be better if you knew a little less… .”
Rex knew what she meant, but had not been aware that she knew.
“You’re so young,” he said wonderingly.
She smiled. “I was born in 3607, which makes me forty-five. But I’ve lived less than thirty years — funny, I’ve never bothered to work it out. Ten off for my first long sleep, a little over five for the second. And deepsleep has a rejuvenating effect. I suppose, practically, I’m around twenty-five.”
“About what I always thought,” said Rex. “No wonder it didn’t exactly spring to my mind that you were my mother-in-law.”
“And yet … you always knew, didn’t you?”
“I knew something. That one time I made a pass at you it was partly because I wanted to, but also because — ”
“You wanted to find out. Yes.”
There was a long pause. Both knew what was coming, but neither was in a hurry to go ahead.
At last Venus said, “You’ve made up your mind, Rex?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m certain. The only doubt is whether I have to do it myself or if it’s possible to ask you.”
She smiled. “Of course it’s possible to ask me. It’s possible to ask anyone anything.”
“Not this.”
Her smile faded. “I knew all along. The creation of you as Supremo, the revision of the plan, the setting-up of six Gateways and all the rest of it were all theoretically unnecessary … yet I couldn’t go ahead on my own responsibility. I created the plan, but I couldn’t face the conclusion. No, Rex, you needn’t ask. Just tell me you’re certain it’s the only way.”
“It’s the only way.”
“Right,” she said briskly. “You do me credit, Rex. You have the moral courage to order what no one else could order, and to order someone other than yourself to do it.”
“It’s no order — ”
“Now, don’t let me down, Rex. After all, I’m not your mother, but I created you. You have broad shoulders. Take the responsibility, and never deny to yourself or anyone else that you took it.”
“All right.” He smiled faintly. “You know, of course, that you’re not making it difficult for me, Venus. You’re making it easy.”
“Let me try to make the other part easier for you too. You have to stay here. You have to be the general who gives the brutal order and then sits back and watches. That’s why you were created. That’s why you’re here. Goodbye, Rex.”
It was so abrupt that he was caught off guard. She kissed him lightly and said, as even a Millionman mother couldn’t help doing, “Look after Regina.”
Then she left him. He forced himself not to move.
Venus know far more of the workings of Limbo than he did, having helped to set them up. She would return straight to Earth. She knew how.
It was only a few minutes later that Regina dashed in.
“What’s happening?” she asked breathlessly.
The ESP gifts of Venus and Regina were not identical, but they shared each other’s special abilities to some extent. Venus sensed feelings, mainly, and Regina things, but Regina had clearly sensed something far more than the simple fact that Venus had gone down to the vault, alone.
“Where’s Venetia?” said Rex, stalling.
“She’s sleeping. I left her outside. What’s happened to Venus?”
Rex found he couldn’t say anything. He was, as Venus said, the general who gave the brutal order and then sat back in safety to watch. He, and not Venus, was the greatest criminal in history.
“She’s gone,” he said at last. “I don’t think we’ll ever see her again. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“Without her there would be no Venetia,” said Regina. “You went away. You said you’d be back, but you weren’t.”
Rex looked at her wryly. It was the first time she had reproached him over that. Although he would never argue about it, because a man ought to be with his wife at such a time, he would never feel guilty either, because he had to go to Earth, he had to take the one chance of getting there, and once there he could have done no more than he did to get back in time.
Regina threw herself in his arms and said, “I didn’t mean that, Rex. But Venus? You have to tell me what’s going on. Did you send her away?”
“I didn’t have to. She knew what she had to do.”
“Because of us?”
He shook his head. “Nothing so unimportant as the convenience of two people.”
“Well, tell me!”
“How do you feel about Venus now, Regina?”
She shrugged impatiently. “Oh, she’s … well, she and I are linked somehow. She could be my sister. If that’s what you’ve got to tell me, don’t pile on the suspense.”
“She’s your mother.”
Regina drew in her breath. She had not expected that. Yet once she heard it, it made so much sense to her that she didn’t argue, didn’t protest about any of the difficulties, such as the curiosity of a twenty-five-year-old girl having a daughter of nineteen.
“Well, we’re straight now,” she said at last. “I think everything’s been put right between us. Come to that, I never did or said anything to her I might regret for the rest of my life. And I did throw the switch, the first time I had the chance.”
“Didn’t you know all along?”
“No,” she said frankly. “There were times when I hated her. I was jealous of her, and of her and you. I thought you two were a pair, and I was odd girl out. Then I gradually got to know she’d never deceive anyone. That she was sad. That in some way her life was over. That she loved me … Now it becomes clear. She never loved you. You were all right, you were a friend. But she loved me… .”
“A little thing,” said Rex. “She can cook perhaps even better than you. But she — ”
“I know.” There were tears in her eyes, startling Rex, because Regina never cried. Even when she was bowed down by weakness after the Cresta trip, he had not seen a tear. He had seen her cry only from happiness or relief.
“I must go and see if Venetia is all right,” she said, jumping up.
Princess was Venetia now; they had never agreed on it, it was taken for granted. And Rex was glad that that had been established even before they knew that Venetia was Venus’s granddaughter. Occasionally they called her Princess. That would stick too.
When Regina came back she was thoughtful again.
“Venus has gone, you said. By the way of the vault?”
“To Earth.”
“There’s another Gateway, then?”
Rex now had an easy way to stall for a while. He told her what Venus had told him. But at the end …
Regina faced him. “What’s this thing she’s gone to do?”
“Destroy Earth,” said Rex quietly.
• • •
The words didn’t register. Regina stared at him blankly.
“Isn’t it as obvious to you as it was to her and to me?” said Rex harshly. “Some sons and daughters never cut loose from their mother’s apron-strings. That’s what happened with the children of Mother Earth. They weren’t forced, like you, to live for the whole of their childhood and adolescence without a father and without a mother. The umbilical cord was never cut. They went on depending on Earth. The children of Earth, all over the galaxy, never grew up, because Earth was so big, so powerful, so efficient in the early stages that it was never necessary for them to grow up. Those settlements that did cut themselves off failed, perhaps by chance, perhaps by — ”
“Destroy Earth?” said Regina incredulously.
“We’ve seen six of the colonies. Bullan, apathetic. Cresta, desperate. Chuter, self-canceled because Earth didn’t come back to help. Landfall — ”
“Never mind about Landfall. I was there. You weren’t.” She paused. “Landfall,” she admitted, “could never begin to be a decent place to live until the ties with Earth were broken, but …”
“Landfall and all the others. Some sons go on living with widowed or divorced mothers, contentedly sucking the teat at the age of thirty, thirty-five, forty. Usually, girls rather disgust them — ”
“Rex, for God’s sake drop the allegories. You really mean — ”
“There’s only one way to do it.”
“The most inhuman mass murder in history?”
“Yes.”
“And Venus agreed?”
“We didn’t discuss it. She knew.”
“You sent her?”
Rex didn’t even wince. “She went.”
“To do what, exactly? What were your instructions?”
“I told you, there were no instructions. She knew.”
“Don’t keep saying that!”
“She went to Earth. That’s all.”
Regina jumped up. “Destroy Earth? That will be easy, of course. All she’ll have to do is buy a firework. Why, it’s nonsense. How could she possibly …”
They looked at each other, suddenly close again. Venus was no ordinary woman. Whatever had to be done, she would be able to do. She didn’t have to be instructed. She would find a way to do it.
“But she’ll come back …” whispered Regina.
Rex shook his head. “You know better. If she destroyed Earth, could she allow herself to escape before the end? No. She’ll stay. So would I, if — ”
Regina was suddenly furious. “But you let her go, and didn’t go yourself? Even if it’s necessary … Well, maybe for the greatest good for the greatest number it might be. How should I know? I’m only a Twentyman. Rex — we’ve got to stop her.”
Regina’s sudden appeal was to him as her husband. He followed her as she ran to the cellar, raced down the stone steps scarcely touching them, and leaped into her case… .
It didn’t move. She shut the lid behind her, opened it, stared at Rex frantically, shut it again.
Rex tried his own. It didn’t move either. And Venus’s case was locked.
“Break it open!” Regina exclaimed.
There was nothing in the cellar with which to do this. Rex went with Regina to the workshop. There he caught her in his arms gently but firmly.
“Regina. This is no use.”
“Maybe, but we’ve got to try, haven’t we?”
“No. Venus wanted to go.”
“Wanted to …? Nonsense. How could anyone want to — ”
“She knew it had to be done. She knew she had to do it. I was created merely to confirm what she knew.”
“If a mere Twentyman like me can’t commit suicide, how can a Millionman like — ”
“Regina.” His voice was no longer urgent, but soft. “You were right. This was what you saw. What you knew. Why you fought exploration of the Gateways all along. Yet you knew, as you fought, that it couldn’t be stopped.”
“It?”
“What Venus calls Project Supremo.”
“And you,” she said bitterly, freeing herself to step back and look at him, “are the Supremo.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“Venus is and always was behind it. I’m pretty sure from what she told me that the original project, the one that killed your father, was vaguer, more optimistic, less realistic. We’re part of Venus’s plan. Hers alone. We were needed, I was needed, as a switch is needed. You don’t complete the circuit as you build a relay. You include a switch so that when the time is right, someone can — ”
“A switch,” she whispered. She didn’t flare at him this time for introducing another allegory.
“Yes, a switch. I was the switch. At the right time — ”
“I did know.”
He said nothing.
She said quietly, “All right, so I’m in it too. In her plan, I mean. When I saw the switch on her plinth, I knew it would be far better for all of us if it was never touched. But I knew I had to close the switch, and I did it. So …”
Her eyes were full of tears. “I think I knew then that by reviving Venus, I was killing her. And yet I had to do it.”
Rex kissed her very gently. He did not feel like a murderer.
Without megalomania, he thought: I’m not the biggest mass murderer in history. I can’t usurp God. There can be no life without death. That’s the way the universe was made.
• • •
Two months later they found the way to the vault again open to them. But when they got there, there was no sign of any Gateway to Earth. That remained Venus’s secret.
And there was nothing Regina could do.
It was not until after Prince was born (they called him Ron and sometimes Prince, as they called his sister Venetia and sometimes Princess) that the relay setup in the vault showed that the Cresta-Chuter Gateway had been used at last. First a few went to Chuter. Then a pause. Then some of them returned. Then many began to use the Gateway.
“Now they know Earth is gone.”
It wasn’t Rex who said that, it was Regina.
And it was Rex who said, “Venus is gone too.”
“Well,” said Regina, with the brutal practicality of a mother of two, “she left me for nineteen years. I must try to remember that. Before I abandon Prince and Princess, something would have to happen to me that …”
She shuddered. “She was a lovely woman. But I believe now some of the things you told me just after she left. Her life must have been over before we ever knew her. Being a Millionman, maybe she was glad of a great, important, unanswerable, unavoidable excuse to die.”
It was a strange epitaph, and it might have been better expressed. But Rex thought there had seldom been a truer one. And Regina said it.
• • •
They were happy. Regina never left Limbo, would never leave Limbo again. Rex went to one of the Gateway worlds only occasionally, to keep in touch with events in the galaxy. What he saw was good, and he was pleased. Any surgeon who cut off a leg would be glad to have it confirmed that the leg was incurably diseased.
He had to keep on watching what was going on.
He would always have to watch what was going on.
Some day he might be needed again.