Rudi grinned at him. “Air mo chùram. Which is to say, it’s on my mind, Fred. Now as to where to use these men of yours when they’re ready . . . I was thinking of adding them to my Royal Guard, so I was.”

Fred nodded slowly. “They’ll appreciate the gesture, Rudi.”

“Not that it means following at my arse all the time, mind you. More a matter of stiffening the battle line at crucial points and being the ones who rush around to the hottest fires.”

“Sounds like . . . useful work.”

“Sure and if you’d said fun I’d have called for the healers of souls.”

As he turned away, Virginia slapped her husband on the shoulder. “Turns out you were right about how to handle your folks,” she said. “Just don’t let it go to your head, you hear?”

Fred laughed shortly. “One platoon? I don’t think that’s too likely.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVEN

BOISE
PROVISIONAL CAPITAL, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(FORMERLY BOISE, IDAHO)
AUGUST 8, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

General-President Martin Thurston looked down from the gatehouse. His aides glanced at each other; one was annoyed, the other sweating in a terror he could not have named even to himself. Martin knew it.

I know everything, some corner of his mind thought. The joy was unbearable yet detached. I am knowing. I need not do, only be. The detachment was the joy.

Existence spiraled downward. Beyond matter, beyond the decay of the last particle, there was only information. All that had ever known, all that had ever been, all that had ever thought. Falling inward towards nothing. It was gross material things no more; in some unimaginable future of cycle upon cycle it would never have been made of mere things. Only thought, from the flash as the high-dimensional membranes met at the beginning of a universe to the cold death of proton decay at its end and the cycle commenced again, a universe not merely permeated by mind but one that was Mind. Thought that was thought about thought, endless repetitions spiraling into—

“Sir.”

The vision crashed away in a stab of unbearable sorrow. Thurston turned with a snarl, his eyes locking with the officer’s. The man stumbled backward with a scream, the reek of his sweat harshly, hideously material in a way that made the ruler’s stomach knot; yet even vomiting was itself foul, contaminating. How could you vomit away the gross stuff of your self? One of the guards jumped forward in a clatter of armor and put his big curved shield between the man’s back and the top of the stone stairs at his heel, grunting as the officer’s weight came on the semicylinder of plywood and sheet metal and leather.

He staggered. A hand gripped his arm, and he shook his head, suddenly conscious of the looks of the others.

“What’s the problem, gentlemen?” he asked.

“Sir, you looked, ah, odd.”