When he listened inwardly, he could hear a distant murmuring, voices merging like a sea. It was the Conclave, the community of minds that spanned Sol system and now embraced him, a community of which he would be a part for ever. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I hear them.’

‘So what do you want to do now?’

‘I don’t know—’ A child’s shoe hit him in the chest.

Tod had thrown it. ‘You can save the world, but you can’t catch me!’

‘Oh, yes? . . .’

The four of them ran, and their laughter echoed from the banks of the drying Martian canal.

So Earth died but did not die. So Symat died, but did not die.

I did not die, of course.

How could I die? I had completed this project, but I have completed projects before, and history just keeps on piling up, whatever I do. So here I am, in the dark, alone.

Waiting for what comes next.

I remember so much, yet so little. I have seen mankind rise and fall - quite a story! But what stays with me are the faces, the endless torrent of faces, from Symat the ragamuffin whom I loved, to Symat the idealistic messiah-boy whom I bred to die. Each face blossoms like a flower and fades to dust, leaving me alone once more. Each face is a betrayal. Yet they are all I have.

Sometimes it feels as if it has all been a dream, from the instant I put Gemo Cana’s pill into my mouth. Perhaps in a moment I will wake to find myself under the shining domes of Conurbation 5204. And then, with my cadre siblings, I will run, laughing, in Sol’s yellow light.

TIMELINE

TIMELINE

Note: this timeline refers to events in this book, and in the earlier books of the ‘Destiny’s Children’ series (Coalescent, first published 2003, Exultant, 2004, and Transcendent, 2005); and also to earlier books of my ‘Xeelee Sequence’ (Raft, 1991, Timelike Infinity, 1992, Flux, 1993, Ring, 1994, and Vacuum Diagrams, 1997). See also the timeline in Vacuum Diagrams.

Singularity: Big Bang