Despite herself, she felt stirred -- excited. "Like before the Core Wars?"

He looked wistful. "No. No, we'll never recapture those days. But still, it would be a great project to work on." He studied her appraisingly. "I hear the new city will be twenty thousand mansheights, from side to side. Think of that. And that's not counting the Corestuff mine they're going to build from the base." He smiled, wrinkles gathering beneath his eyecups.

Thea stared into the south -- into the far downflux, to the place where all the vortex lines converged.

Slowly, they began to Wave back to the Crust forest.

The Hero said, "Even the Ur-humans would have been impressed by twenty thousand mansheights, I'll bet. Why, that's almost an inch..."

The goals and purpose of the great wars were lost; but still humans fought on, enraged insects battering against the glass-walled lamps of the Xeelee constructs.

The Xeelee, unimpeded, appeared at last to take pity. Humanity was -- put aside.

But humanity had been a mere distraction. All the while, the Xeelee confronted a much more dangerous enemy.

PART 6 ERA: Flight

PART 6
ERA: Flight

Secret History

Secret History

C.A.D. 4,000,000

At last the Project was complete.

The migration alone had taken a million years. While the night-dark Xeelee fleets streamed steadily through Bolder's Ring and disappeared into the folded Kerr-metric region, other races flared in the outer darkness, like candles. Freighters the size of moons patrolled the space around the Ring, their crimson starbreaker beams dispersing the Galaxy remnants that still tumbled towards the Ring like blue-shifted moths.

But now it was over. The Ring, its function fulfilled, sparkled like a jewel in its nest of stars. And the Universe that had been modified by the Xeelee was all but empty of them.

Call it the antiXeelee.

It was... large. Its lofty emotions could be described in human terms only by analogy.

Nevertheless--

The antiXeelee looked on its completed works, and was satisfied.

Its awareness spread across light years. Shining matter littered the Universe like froth on a deep, dark ocean; the Xeelee had come, built fine castles of that froth, and had now departed, as if lifting into the air. Soon the shining stuff itself would begin to decay, and already the antiXeelee could detect the flexing muscles of the creatures of that dark ocean below. It felt something like contentment at the thought that its siblings were beyond the reach of those... others.

Now the antiXeelee turned to its last task. Seed pods, spinning cubes as large as worlds, were scattered everywhere in an orderly array, millions of them dispersed over the unraveling curve of space. The antiXeelee ran metaphorical fingers over each of the pods and over what lay within: beings with closed eyes, ships with folded wings, refined reflections of the antiXeelee itself.

The work was good. And now it was ready.

...There was a discontinuity. All over the Universe the pods vanished like soap bubbles.