and then he'll have to see me rule over all that he built."
"You think this because you are a nasty person by nature, Calvin, and you don't understand nice people. To you, the end of existence is to control things, and so you will never build anything, but rather will try to take control of what is already in existence. Your brother, though, is by nature a Maker, as you explain it; therefore he cares nothing about who rules, but only about what exists. So if you take away the rule of the Crystal City - when he builds it - you have accomplished nothing, for he will still rejoice that the thing exists at all, regardless of who rules it. No, there is nothing else for you to do but let the city rise to its peak - and then tear it down into such a useless heap of rubble that it can never rise again."
Calvin was troubled. He had never thought this way, and it didn't feel good to him. "Honor‚, you're joking, I'm sure. You make things - your novels, at least."
"And if you hated me, you wouldn't just take away my royalties - my creditors do that already, thank you very much. No, you would take my very books, steal the copyright, and then revise them and revise them until nothing of truth or beauty or, more to the point, my genius remained in them, and then you would continue to publish them under my name, causing me to be shamed with every copy sold. People would read and say, 'Honor‚ de Balzac, such a fool!' That is how you would destroy me."
"I'm not a character in one of your novels."
"More's the pity. You would speak more interesting dialogue I you were."
"So you think I'm wasting my time here?"
"I think you're about to waste your time. Napoleon is no fool. He's never going to give you tools powerful enough to challenge his own. So leave!"
"How can I leave, when he depends on me to keep his gout from hurting? I'd never make it to the border."
"Then heal the gout the way you used to heal those poor beggars - that was a cruel thing for you to do, by the way, a miserable selfish thing, for how did you think they were going to feed their children without some suppurating wound to excite pity in passersby and eke out a few sous from them? Those of us who were aware of your one-man messianic mission had to go about after you, cutting off the legs of your victims so they'd be able to continue to earn their livelihood."
Calvin was appalled. "How could you do such a thing!"
Honor‚ roared with laughter. "I'm joking, you poor literal-minded American simpleton!"
"I can't heal the gout," said Calvin, coming back to the subject that interested him: his own future.
"Why not?"
"I've been trying to figure out how diseases are caused. Injuries are easy. Infections are, too. If you concentrate, anyway. Diseases have taken me weeks. They seem to be caused by tiny creatures, so small I can't see them individually, only en masse. Those I can destroy easily enough, and cure the disease, or at least knock it back a little and give the body a chance to defeat it on its own. But not all diseases are caused by those tiny beasts. Gout baffles me completely. I have no idea what causes it, and therefore I can't cure it."
Honord shook his oversized head. "Calvin, you have such native talents, but they have been bestowed unworthily upon you. When I say you must heal Napoleon, of course I don't care whether you actually cure the gout. It isn't the gout that bothers him. It's the pain of the gout. And you already cure that every day! So cure it once and for all, thank Napoleon kindly for his lessons, and get out of France as quickly as possible! Have done with it! Get back about your life's work! I'll tell you what - I'll even pay your passage to America. No, I'll do more. I'll come with you to America, and add the study of that astonishingly crude and vigorous people to my vast store of knowledge about humankind. With your talent and my genius, what is there we couldn't accomplish?"
"Nothing," said Calvin happily. He was especially happy because not five minutes before, Calvin had decided that he wanted Honor‚ to accompany him to America,