But I will think no more of my wife or of anything beyond the task at hand. The budget for reconciliation is barely adequate, down from an hour before. The star roads are obviously having their effect even out here.

Offensive Bias suddenly appears before me. I am surprised it has survived. Its presence on the lesser Ark, in full, is more essential than reassuring. Somehow, against all odds, it and a relatively small collection of ships has arrived to defend us. The Lifeworkers must have summoned it in the wake of the greater Ark’s destruction. “Portal opening,” the metarch announces. “Didact … I have received a coded signal from Mendicant Bias. It offers no quarter, expresses full confidence in its successful destruction of this Ark—and asks that I transfer to join it. Allowing me to survive and partner with it.”

“Why tell me?” I ask.

“Just in case you were still doubtful about my freedom from the logic plague. I am still here, still with you, Didact. I await your instructions.”

The metarch’s projection fills my vision, complex truly beyond my comprehension.

“Thank you. I have no doubts. Disperse the Halos,” I order.

We see the great violet circle of the portal form out in the starless darkness. The Halos begin to move in stately rank one by one toward that circle.

And vanish, one by one, with fabulous displays of residual radiation—to be placed throughout the galaxy.

String 37

STRING 37

LIFESHAPER • ERDE-TYRENE

I STAND ON the rim of the rift valley where once my Lifeworkers watched over our re-evolving humans. Not far away, Chant’s keyship towers over the parched ground, awaiting my final instructions.

Chant-to-Green stands beside me. Chant is among the last of my aides. Most were lost on the greater Ark or consumed by the Flood.

When I began to realize what my husband intended, I asked her to return to Erde-Tyrene on a special and very dangerous mission, to determine the extent of Flood conquest in this system, and if possible, to scour and save whatever portion of humanity remained behind. She gladly took the assignment. And now her work is paying off. Erde-Tyrene has been left unchanged since my last visit and humans have been recovered.

The air here is quiet; the entire continent lies torpid under a wave of summer heat. To the east, I can see for many kilometers. To the west, a great dust storm draws a line of brown across the horizon.

“There’s very little time, Lifeshaper,” Chant says. She does not need to remind me. In her time here, she has located only a few hundred humans, in clumps of four or five, spread across tens of thousands of square kilometers—mostly very old or very young. With a few monitors, she has carefully gathered these few, and now they are in stasis on her research vessel, parked a few hundred meters from the keyship.