Pirius thought he understood. This man, so alien to anything in Pirius’s background, was conscientiously trying to make an impossible decision, a decision that could save or doom mankind, one of a hundred such decisions that faced him daily, against a background of half-truths, hope, promises, and lies. “We both have our duty, sir. As you implied, perhaps mine is easier.”

Gramm rubbed his eyes with fleshy fingers. “Lethe, Ensign, that pompous old fool Kolo Yehn was right. Whatever we’re running out of, at least there’s no shortage of courage. Get out of here.” He waved his hand. “Go, before I have to throw you out.”

Pirius reported this conversation to Nilis. He didn’t anticipate the Commissary’s reaction.

“You see what this means.” Nilis was whispering, wide-eyed, his hands locked together in a white-knuckled grip.

“Sir?”

“Gramm is going to say yes—he’s going to back us. Of course he has to get the decision from his committee. But if he backs it, it will be hard for any of them not to follow along. We’re going to the Core, Ensign. We’re going to have our squadron.” Nilis padded around his room, plucking at his fingers.

Pirius shook his head. “Then why aren’t you leaping with joy, Commissary?”

“Because they’ve called my bluff,” he said rapidly. He seemed terrified. “While I was pushing against a locked door it was easy to be bold. But now the door has swung open, and I have to deliver on my promises.” He turned to Pirius. “Oh, my eyes, my eyes! What have I done? Pirius, what have I done?”

Part 3

THREE

Genetically, morphologically, I am indistinguishable from an inhabitant of Earth of the long dark ages that preceded spaceflight.

I rejoice. For that changelessness is what makes me human.

Let others tinker with their genotypes and phenotypes, let them speciate and bifurcate, merge and blend. We unmodified humans are a primordial force who will sweep them all aside.

It must be this way. It will avail us nothing if we win a Galaxy and lose ourselves.

—Hama Druz

Chapter 35

There was no place. There was no time. A human observer would have recognized nothing here: no mass, energy, or force. There was only a rolling, random froth whose fragmented geometry constantly changed. Even causality was a foolish dream.

The orderly spacetime with which humans were familiar was suffused with vacuum energy, out of which virtual particles, electrons and quarks, would fizz into existence, and then scatter or annihilate, their brief walks upon the stage governed by quantum uncertainty. In this extraordinary place whole universes bubbled out of the froth, to expand and dissipate, or to collapse in a despairing flare.

This chaotic cavalcade of possibilities, this place of nonbeing where whole universes clustered in reefs of foamy spindrift, was suffused by a light beyond light. But even in this cauldron of strangeness there was life. Even here there was mind.

Call them monads.