“There won’t be that many, by then.” Rove’s voice was all solemn regret about the necessity of someone else’s sacrifice. “I don’t think much of the underground infrastructure came through, if I recall Charen’s models. Running water, power, all of that will fail sooner rather than later. Fuel will run out, there’s nowhere to import food from, no medicine. And, of course, no real government, nobody keeping the peace, no emergency services. Give them half a year, they’ll fall over themselves to pledge fealty to anyone who promises them discipline and peace.” He suddenly looked hungry, dangerous, the veneer of civilization wearing thin. “When I first met Charen and realized what she’d discovered—more than she ever did, idiot savant that she was—do you know what I felt? When I stood, like Alexander, and looked out over that vast expanse of many worlds? It was ghastly. Because it wasn’t an emptiness. Everywhere you looked, there were things. You’ve seen some of them, the vermin and the monsters. The universe was infested. And we weren’t the great power we thought, either. They were stronger than us. Any one of them could have marched into our world and taken it from us, exterminated us. We’d lost our place at the centre of the universe. It’s not the way the world should be, Lucas. I could tell immediately that it was a mistake. Creation is for humanity, not for crawling things.”

“But you worked with the rats.”

“Do you think I wanted to? Subhuman creatures that would lord it over us because they arose earlier? But they had so much we needed, and they ate up my promises about giving them access to the Earth. I already knew the Earth, our Earth, had no future. Weakness, Lucas. It was overcome with weakness, all those petty minds…But now we have a new chance, a new Jerusalem. We can put it to rights, make a new world that we can be proud of, a world for the strong.”

Surely he was practising his rhetoric so he could brainwash his troops? But no, Lucas suspected he was finally seeing the real Daniel Rove. Is this all? he thought numbly. Is this petty provincial dictatorship what you moved Heaven and Earth for? It all seemed inexpressibly sad. Looking ahead, he wasn’t sure what would be the worse outcome: Rove living three hundred years as the unchallenged god-king of his own Aryan personality cult, lording it as emperor of a broken, feudal England, or a young usurper cutting the man’s throat after ten years because they wanted a chance to wear the big hat and sit on the fancy chair. Both options seemed equally unappetizing.