And yet we triumph over our own base nature at last, Kern reflected with satisfaction. And of course, there was a tiny grain of truth to the insults the NUNs threw her way, because she didn’t care about colonists or the neo-imperialistic dreams of her fellows. She wanted to make new life, in her image as much as in humanity’s. She wanted to know what might evolve, what society, what understandings, when her monkeys were left to their own simian devices…To Avrana Kern, this was her price, her reward for exercising her genius for the good of the human race: this experiment; this planetary what-if. Her efforts had opened up a string of terraformed worlds, but her price was that the firstborn would be hers, and home to her new-made people.

She was aware of an expectant silence and realized that she had got to the end of her speech, and now everyone thought she was just adding gratuitous suspense to a moment that needed no gilding.

“Mr. Sering, are you in position?” she asked on open channel, for everyone’s benefit. Sering was the volunteer, the man they were going to leave behind. He would orbit their planet-sized laboratory as the long years turned, locked in cold sleep until the time came for him to become mentor to a new race of sentient primates. She almost envied him, for he would see and hear and experience things that no other human ever had. He would be the new Hanuman: the monkey god.

Almost envied, but in the end Kern rather preferred to be departing to undertake other projects. Let others become gods of mere single worlds. She herself would stride the stars and head up the pantheon.

“I am not in position, no.” And apparently he felt that was also deserving of a wider audience, because he had broadcast it on the general channel.

Kern felt a stab of annoyance. I cannot physically do everything myself. Why is it that other people so often fail to meet my standards, when I rely on them? To Sering alone she sent, “Perhaps you would explain why?”

“I was hoping to be able to say a few words, Doctor Kern.”

It would be his last contact with his species for a long time, she knew, and it seemed appropriate. If he could make a good showing then it would only add to her legend. She held ready on the master comms, though, setting him on a few seconds’ delay, just in case he became maudlin or started saying something inappropriate.