Within the highest tower of the greatest port, he sat, one man opposing an empire.

Idiotic? he asked himself.  No.  Because they cannot hurt me.

Glaring down at the ocean, now momentarily visible, he inspected the wet miles of distance that lay beyond the Manhattan Citadel, his home.

It could be worse.

How?

When there's nobody else in port, you sometimes get fidgety...

Looking at the waters, he watched the great plume cover them again, like an opening fan.

Someday, maybe...

Dr. Malacar Miles was the only man on Earth.  He was lord, he was monarch here.  And he did not care.  The Earth was his.  Nobody else wanted it.

He stared through the bubble-window.  It afforded him a prospect of half of what remained of Manhattan.

The smoke was a great cloud, and a mirror that hovered showed him the orange burning when he maneuvered it at the proper angle.

It blazed.

His shields absorbed this.

It burned; it was radioactive.

His shields absorbed this too.

There had been a time when he had actually paid attention to it.

He stared upward, and the Earth's dead moon in quarter-phase was there before his eyes.

For three, ten seconds, he waited.

Then came the ship, and he sighed.

My brother is hurting, said Shind.  Will you give him more medicine now?

Yes.

I saw this thing long ago.  Beware.

Before moving to the laboratory, Malacar stared down at the thing which had once been New York City's heart.  Long gray vines had whipped their ways around the bases of killed buildings, climbed high.  Their leaves were coarse, long, rustling.  The smoke blackened them, withered them.  Still they grew.  He could actually see the movement.  No human being could live in those canyons of masonry they wound.  For no special reason, he pressed a button and a low-yield atomic missile destroyed a building miles away.

I will have to use karanin on your brother.  It will impair his respiratory functions a bit.

It will do more good, will it not?  Over-all?

Yes.

Then we must.

Go get him.  Take him to the laboratory.

Yes.

He looked out one more time, out across his kingdom and the patches of its ocean that showed through smoke.  Then he departed the high deck.

The winds that swirled about the world had deposited their rubbish as he had watched.  As always.  The only human inhabitant of the place, he was neither especially paternal nor antagonistic about the view.

The drop-tube took him to the lower level of his citadel.  To test them, he broke three alarm circuits as he moved along a corridor.  Entering the laboratory, he saw Shind's brother Tuv waiting.

He extracted the medication frolit its wall-slot and blasted it into the small creature.

He waited.  Perhaps ten minutes.

How is he?