Gren said, "No, Rodi. Hear the rest. The growths are nervous tissue. They contain information... it's like a false memory. And an obsession. I walked to a wall and touched tiles in a certain way; control panels unfolded -- and I knew how to work weapons mounted in the hull... The Exaltation is a deception, the message of the Integrality a way to enable a war fleet to approach the Ring.

"Your poetry is being spread from Holism by closed inseparability net. Not all the Exaltation has yet been infected. But... but finally..." His rheumy eyes fluttered closed.

Rodi shook frail shoulders. "Gren... tell me what to do. We've got to stop this--"

Gren's mouth gaped, spittle looping between his lips.

Holism Ark had become an alien place. Rodi watched weapons pods erupting from walls still coated with uplifting Integrality slogans.

He thought of trying to find his parents. He envisaged their grisly welcome, overlaid with spinal knots and blank, driven faces.

He shuddered and swam towards the flitter hangars. There was no way he could influence events here. Perhaps if he made his way to the battle site...

Then what?

He readied the flitter for launch, trying to lose himself in activity.

He skimmed the surface of the Ark; the blisters which had puzzled him earlier had now opened up to reveal the snouts of weapons and guidance sensors.

He pulled away. Much of the Exaltation, he saw, was still unaffected and held its formation. He flew to the tip of the flying wedge.

For the first time in three thousand years, the great Arks were leaving hyperspace.

His heart heavy, he swept ahead of the fleet and dropped into three-space.

He was in a mist of blue-stained stars. A torus glowed: Bolder's Ring, still hundreds of light years away but already spanning the sky.

He pushed towards the Ring.

The flitter passed through the last veil of crushed matter and entered the clear space at the bottom of the Ring's gravity well... and for a few seconds, despite everything, Rodi's breath grew short with wonder.

The Ring, a tangle of cosmic string, glittered as it rotated. There was a milky place at its very center, a hole ripped in the fabric of space by that monstrous, whirling mass.

Xeelee were everywhere.

Ships miles wide swept over the artifact's sparkling planes, endlessly constructing and shaping. Rodi watched a horde of craft using cherry-red beams to herd a star, an orange giant, into a soft, slow collision with the Ring. The star's structure was breaking up as cosmic string ripped into its flank--

A dozen flesh-pale spheres hurtled over Rodi's head, spitting fire.

They were Spline: the warships of the Integrality. They tore towards the star drovers and battle was joined.