Catalog is taking sides, and should not, but the rule of law, for Juridicals, is that hope must never be lost, justice and balance never abandoned. The Mantle, after all, is about the diversity and eternal prospect of living change in a universe filled with life! Is that no longer true? Is this what Catalog felt, facing the Gravemind—a total consumption of alien reason, of ancient, mad hopelessness?

And then it happens.

There is a soft, liquid sound from the center of the island. Both turn to see what it might be. The artifact, the circle of blunted towers, is moving. The towers extend, connect, form a nested cage. The base expands.

“The Flood,” the Ur-Didact says. “We have to leave now!”

Through low gray clouds, we witness another change—in the skies above the planet. Arc by arc, curve by curve, star roads appear where none were before, surrounded by a purple fringe of Precursor superluminal passage—a kind of motion, of travel, not seen for ten million years, but now apparent around the ecumene, perhaps across the galaxy.

Then, something screams down from the sky—a single mottled gray and white ovoid ten meters long. It plunges upright into shallow water, shooting out a spray of steam and burying one end in the muck, while the other end is already dissolving.

“Spore capsule!” the IsoDidact says. “No time remains.”

The two Didacts agree at least on this.

For the last time, the two Didacts stand barely a long arm’s length apart and then, slowly, back away, neither turning, before they are many paces separated—to return to their separate craft, to rise to orbit in separate ships.

Catalog is refused entry into the Ur-Didact’s sphinx. Something is wrong.

* * *

Even as we pick up the Librarian, prepare to rise to Audacity, and witness Mantle’s Approach climb up behind us, matching our destination vector—the air is pierced by a plunging haze of millions of spore capsules. Some drop into ocean or land, more yet explode high in the atmosphere. Spore clouds tower into gray-brown thunderhead plumes, then fan out in winding drifts, dominating, covering, concealing.

The triad of Catalog can do nothing but observe. And what I observe, far below, is the clearing of the brownish-gray clouds, revealing a warty formation of spore mountains. Any organisms remaining will soon be absorbed by the Flood.

Audacity has determined there is enough local potential that it can carry us all swiftly to the margins of Thema 34 before making the final jump to the greater Ark. Keyships will soon be the only vessels allowed to approach the installation.

The IsoDidact and the Librarian link arms on the bridge. “He’s coming to the Ark with us,” he tells her.

She appears stricken, uncertain, lost. “What are his plans now? To sit in his fortress like a trapdoor spider, so that he can leap out and destroy ages from now?”

“You don’t know that.”