But now the Office of Cultural Rehabilitation waded in. This department of the Commission was a sister to the ancient Assimilation program, which had been tasked with absorbing the resources of conquered alien races for the benefit of mankind’s projects. Rehabilitation had the mission, still in fact ongoing, of seeking out relics of older waves of human colonization. These pre-Third Expansion pockets of humanity, having been seeded before the establishment of the Coalition, were of course non-Doctrinal by definition. Many had even lapsed into eusociality, becoming Coalescences. But all of them had to be brought into the fold, their populations reeducated. The ultimate goal of Rehabilitation was to ensure that every human in the Galaxy was assigned to the single goal of the great war.

Now, it seemed to Pirius, Rehabilitation officers were expressing concern about Nilis’s Project, not in case it failed, but if it succeeded. Would it actually be moral to end this war? The entire human economy of the Galaxy was devoted to the war: if it ever ended, the resulting dislocation would be huge. And without the war’s unifying discipline, how could central control be maintained? There would be riots; there would be starvation; whole worlds would break away from the light of the Coalition and fall into an anarchic darkness.

One dry academic even suggested that a true reading of Hama Druz’s writings showed that that ancient sage had been arguing, not for the conquest of the Galaxy, but for the continual cleansing of unending conflict. The war had to go on, until a perfect killing machine had been forged from imperfect mankind. Of course victory was the ultimate goal, but a victory too soon could imperil that great project of the unity of a purified species. . . .

Torec and Pirius were amazed. But since they had come to Sol system, it wasn’t the first time they had heard people actually argue against victory.

Pirius thought he could see what was really going on here, beneath the dry academic discussions. These ancient agencies weren’t concerned for the myriad people in their care; they were only concerned about their own survival. If the war went away, he thought with a strange thrill, any justification for the continuance of the Coalition itself, and its Galaxy full of ideological cops, would vanish. And then what?

Perhaps he was growing cynical.

The session overran its allotted time. At last Gramm banged his gavel, and ordered the committee to reconvene in the morning.

While they had talked, the planet had spun on its axis, taking Conurbation 11729 and its busy inhabitants into its shadow.

Nilis’s party was assigned quarters on a residential floor of the huge building. The room given to Torec and Pirius seemed impossibly luxurious. After a while, they stripped blankets off the too-soft beds, making themselves a nest on the floor.

But a bot called, sent by Nilis. It contained some technical updates Gramm had requested, and Pirius, as Nilis’s representative, was to accompany the bot to the Minister’s office. Reluctantly Pirius allowed his uniform to slither back into place over his body.