She cannot judge him. She has no right, no capability, and he does not understand why that knowledge is so little comfort in the face of her slander. "I contribute to the cause of Order in this world!" he snarls, surging to his feet. It is true. It must be true. He cannot conscience that it might not, on balance, be entirely true.

He cannot. And so it is true.

"I have lived for millennia, but your life can be measured in days," he reminds her, his voice unacceptably uneven as his body continues to resist his control in favor of the autonomic signals sent by foreign emotions. "You are nothing, you are a gnat on the face of this planet, you are a -- a mayfly!"

He did not mean to stutter or to repeat a motif, and he makes a frustrated gesture as Janan quietly and justly reminds him, "She is a life."