“Listen to me!” he shouted. Your doubts are not completely your own. They were placed there by the aliens. We must answer them with a great, inextinguishable resolve!”

“It is a wheel,” Justin said, his calm voice swelling in the silence.

“If we survive, grow strong, and defeat the enemy, perhaps we’ll get off the wheel,” Joshua said.

The Buddha smiled. “Long before then our descendants will be looking around with suspicion in their hearts for another species that may pose a threat to us simply by existing. The wheel’s circular logic is perfect, convincing and unbreakable, and perhaps even ultimately necessary. Remember, the wheel’s logic does not require that there be any actual threat.”

“But you do not deplore it.”

“I only describe it,” Justin said. “To judge the nature of things as they are would be folly.”

“Then perhaps we should embrace the wheel.”

“Embrace it? What happened to turning the other cheek?”

“Did I say that? I didn’t say that. Someone else said that.”

“Then, once again I must ask: what will we become?”

“A Pentecostal apocalypse, probably.”

Loud murmurs of assent burst from many parts of the room. The nanotech specialist glanced down at the floor, looking wounded and forlorn, as if he now saw that he had fallen in with insane people. Then, as the murmurs died away, Justin turned his gaze again on Joshua and said, “Perfect vindictiveness?”

“Perhaps not,” Joshua replied. “Strength has options. Perhaps events and relationships can be reshaped in ways that are not yet apparent to us. Maybe a thousand years hence it will be possible to forge a circle of survivor civilizations that can avoid conflict. Maybe such a circle already exists.”

Justin smiled. “It may be just such a circle that destroyed us.”

Louder voices rose in agreement, but it seemed to Joshua that attitudes were becoming prone to shifts without warning and, soon perhaps, without any logical cause. The people were growing exhausted and confused under the pall of constant worry and relentless deliberation. And there was too much to worry about. Even if the enemy never found them, their internal problems might prove overwhelming. At even the simplest biological level there was the question of genetic variability. There was simply not enough variety in a sampling of humanity this small. New techniques for DNA manipulation would have to be developed if the species was going to flourish.

“May I suggest a healing/’ Joshua said, realizing suddenly that he had to offer something that should be perceived as both a clear plan of action and an escape. “May I suggest that we consider biotiming across to the brown dwarf?”

“And how will that help?” Justin asked, and Joshua knew that his friend was not objecting this time; he simply wanted the advantages of such a course spelled out. You’d better tell them the truth about themselves, his eyes said to Joshua.

“If we biotime,” Joshua said, “there will be no time for our exhaustion to become internal strife. Leit us save our energy for what must be done at the dwarf star. Sleep will make the journey short. And I cannot help feeling that we need the time away from ourselves, so we can heal our wounds.”