Jonathan laughed at her question. “Save your breath. To them it’s no more than a man spraying bugs in a kitchen. It’s an infinite universe—at least a very big one—so come to think of it, why shouldn’t there be a killing star here and there? Maybe you get this kind of scared, twisted killing culture in any given galaxy as often as you get individuals who commit murder.”

Thaw Tint said, “But even your culture recognizes that killing in self-defense is not murder. We should have no disagreement, since you would have done the same.”

“But we weren’t there yet,” Jonathan said. “And it doesn’t follow—logically or anyway you want— that we would have necessarily wanted to destroy you once we learned of your existence.”

“Really?” Thaw Tint said, giving a good imitation of disbelief. “Your word alone is scarcely… well, not something that my race could take to the bank. I personally believe you, but others of your kind would certainly have had other opinions.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jonathan said. “Tell me, how often do you do this—knock off whole intelligent species, I mean.”

Thaw Tint did not answer.

And as Jonathan looked surprised at the enemy’s silence and thought gotcha, Hollis wondered what the Jesuit philosopher John MacQuitty would have made of the present situation. He had seen the human species being called to a great and grand destiny. “And that evolutionary destiny is the discovery of the universe,” he wrote, explaining that people would go freely and consciously into a revealing universe, that they would begin to understand loneliness, and that God lay within the loneliness of the cosmos. “Humanity is being called upon to go into a newer, stranger sort of womb than we have ever known before. That is what the Earth has really been headed for, during all of its four and a half billion years.” And she wondered about what loneliness could possibly mean to a being who had always existed, who could never not exist, and whose infinity was as much a mystery to itself as her own finitude was to her.

Hollis laughed bitterly to herself and asked, “Have you ever tried to transcend this kind of paranoia? You might succeed by contacting a culture very early, to avoid later violent contact, perhaps by placing observers when the culture is still young, perhaps even by influencing the growth of fundamentalist religions to thwart the advance of space science.”

Thaw Tint did not answer, making her feel that her arguments were feeble and naive. Her uncle Gi-sum had made her feel that way once, when as a little girl she had asked him why all people couldn’t be “nice.”

And as Jonathan Wayville looked across the room to where Hollis sat in her chair hugging her terrycloth robe around her, he realized that she was probably the last woman alive, the last female he would ever see, and it startled him to admit how little he knew or felt about her.

Later, when Thaw Tint had retired to some hidden ante chamber, they sat silently for a long time. Finally, she turned her head and gazed at him with crazed, moisture-laden eyes and quivering lips.