Luru Parz said slowly, “The Commissary fears that if we destroy the monads we will break the thread—don’t you, Nilis?—the shining thread of life, of creativity, that connects this universe to those that preceded it, and to those that will follow. To kill them would be patricide—or deicide, perhaps.” She smiled. “Ah, but I forgot. In this enlightened age you don’t have gods—or fathers, do you? It’s entirely appropriate of humanity that when we do find God, we try to turn Him into a weapon, and then kill Him.”
“Shut up, you old monster,” Kimmer said.
Luru Parz said coldly, “But this is why I’ve been trying to stop you, Nilis. To stop this pointless research.”
His jaw dropped. “You—it was you? You obstructed me, you blocked me from the data, the processing resources I needed? I thought you were my ally, Luru Parz. It was you who said we must study the black hole in the first place!”
“Study it sufficiently to destroy it—that’s all we needed. Not this! Knowledge is a weapon, Nilis. That’s all it is. I always feared that if you rooted around for long enough you’d find some reason not to complete the project. Academic fools like you always do.”
Maybe she was right to block him, Enduring Hope thought. He recalled his conversation with Blue, who had foreseen exactly this outcome: that sooner or later Nilis would find a reason to fall in love with Chandra, and would try to stop the attack.
Nilis said darkly, “Listen to me. My analysis is hasty. And it contains more questions than answers. Regardless of any pan-cosmic responsibility, if we were to destabilize this monad complex, we don’t know what the result would be. The damage could be huge. I can’t begin to estimate it—” He shook his head. “Damage on a galactic scale, perhaps.”
Luru Parz pushed past Nilis to face Kimmer. Her face was alive, intense, but Hope thought it had the intensity of a sharpened blade, not a human expression. “Then let it be so. Marshal—we must do it regardless of the consequences. This is our one chance, don’t you see?”
Kimmer said, “But if we cause such devastation—if the Galaxy center detonates—”
Luru shouted, “What of it? Let the Galaxy be cleansed! Marshal, I have seen the human race populate a Galaxy once; we can do it again. And this time it would be a Galaxy free of Xeelee. We must do this.”
Nilis laughed, a brittle sound. “Marshal, you aren’t listening to her? Why, you fool—”
Kimmer’s reaction was immediate. He swung around and swatted the Commissary aside with one gloved fist. Nilis fell backward, clattering clumsily against a bulkhead, blood seeping from his mouth.
Enduring Hope ran to him and cradled his head. “Commissary, Commissary,” he whispered. “You can’t go around calling a marshal a fool!”
Luru Parz seemed to have recovered her detachment. Breathing hard, she said, “Our debate here is irrelevant anyway.”