“Every manner of good, Lucas. Did you never wonder how I ran rings around the rats, for all their lauded technological superiority? Charen was walking in and out of their data systems on the back of the ice-world machine. If you can access a system from elsewhere on the dimensional axis, you can circumvent any kind of security. That was Khurram Khan’s original work for the Home Office, you know? A panic about how to keep their state secrets secure. They never realized they had the key to the universe a hair’s breadth beyond their fingertips. But by then I’d already snapped up Charen and was using her to talk to the next civilization over that understood the maths. She’s already sequestered a store of the rats’ technological advances, translated and ready for use. I’ve bankrupted half my companies ensuring that I have the necessary resources to build their useful toys. All in place, Lucas, all waiting. If only Khan and her menagerie can do their damn job.” Rove let out a long breath. For a moment he looked twenty years older, the real man, shorn of the youthful twinkle he always saved for the cameras. “Bugs and monkeys and vermin and queers,” he said softly. “What sort of a way is that to run a universe? I’ll be glad when we’re rid of them.”

Lucas stared at him, knowing that this, now was the moment he could turn back. He wasn’t as smart as Rove, and he lacked the man’s vast influence and ambition. But he had two strong hands, one of which was superhuman in its capabilities, and Rove’s neck was thin. He felt the will to do it rise in him, a sudden surge of violence born as much from personal frustration as from a desire to do the right thing. But an instant of visceral satisfaction would gain him nothing in the long run. And then Rove’s eyes snapped open; he was awake and alert again. Lucas ensured his own expression was professionally neutral and servile, as it always had been, and that appeared to be satisfactory.

III

Once, there was a species of fish-like creatures who had been the masters of their Earth. That Earth had become a frozen ball of ice where only microbial life survived, yet the fish-creatures themselves persisted, even though they no longer lived. Their last act had been to make their world their greatest work, their archive, their mausoleum.