Cut the bullshit. Remember what you said to that kid Daniel: you admired him because he had responded to this wretched child Lucia on a human level. You were as pompous as always, but you were right. Well, look at Lucia now, George; look at her with that scrap of a baby. I wouldn’t trust you to adjudicate on the future of humankind. And I’m not interested in your self-pitying whinging about whether you’ll die childless or not. But you are a fully functioning human being. Act that way . . .

Of course. It was obvious.

I walked up to Rosa, and said as softly as I could, “Here’s the deal. I’ll help you disarm Peter. But you have to open this place up. Connect with the world. I think Lucia has suffered, and if I can stop that I will.”

She glared at me; her anger was taking over. “What right have you to make such pronouncements? You’re a man, George, and so is that murderous fool in the rock. This is a place built by and for women. Who are you to lecture us on our humanity?”

“Take it or leave it.”

Gnawing her lip, she studied my face. Then she nodded curtly.

Together, we crossed to Peter’s cleft in the rock. But things didn’t go as planned.

“I couldn’t hear you,” Peter whispered. “But I could see you. You’ve come to some kind of deal, haven’t you, George? A deal that is bound to preserve the hive.” He sighed, sounding desolate. “I suppose I knew this would happen. But I can’t let you do this. I shouldn’t have let you talk about negotiating at all. I’m weak, I suppose.”

“Why can’t we talk? . . .”

“It has to stop here, or it never will. Because the hive is ready to break out. Think about it. Hives need raw material—drones, lots of them, living in conditions of high population densities, and highly interconnected. Until the modern era, less than one human in thirty lived in a community of more than five thousand people. Today more than half the world’s population lives in an urban environment. And we are more interconnected than ever before.”

“What are you saying, Peter?”

“When the breakout comes it will be a phase transition—all at once—the world will transform, as water turns to ice, as a field of wildflowers suddenly blooms in the spring. In its way it will be beautiful. But it’s an end point for us. There will be new gods on Earth: mindless gods, a pointless transcendence. From now on the story of the planet will not be of humanity, but of the hive . . .”

“Peter.” The situation was rapidly slipping away from me. “If you’ll just come out of there—”