Once, human scientists had called it the seething vacuum. And now it was inhabited.

The Qax was a creature of turbulent space, its "cells" a shifting succession of Virtual particle sets. Physically its structure extended over many yards -- a rough sphere gigantic in subatomic terms containing a complex of Virtual particle sets which stored terabits of data: of understanding, of memory stretching back over millions of years.

Like the shadow of a cloud the Qax cruised over turbulent space, seeking humans...

PART 7 ERA: Photino Victory

PART 7
ERA: Photino Victory

...Is it over? Is humanity destroyed? Lethe, Eve, we've covered millions of years. We've seen the flight of the Xeelee, the victory of those photino birds. It must be over. What can be left to show me?"

"Watch," she said patiently. "Watch..."

Shell

Shell

A.D. 4,101,214

"I've found a bird from the Shell -- a bird from space!" Allel ran into the village bursting with her news, her baggy bark shirt flapping.

But nobody was impressed. She couldn't understand it. Younger children turned back to their games in the dust.

Her mother, Boyd, absently cuffed Allel's fourteen-year-old head. "Don't bother me," she growled, and went about her business.

Boyd's face was a scarred, complex mask as she moved amongst the groups of men and women, massive and formidable in her coat of quilted cow-tree bark, planning and talking urgently. It was already late afternoon; that evening Boyd would be leading this ragged army south in another assault on the defense of the Bridge.

Allel knew how important this was to her mother; eventually they had to secure a crossing over the river Atad and gain access to the south -- otherwise the northern glaciers would surely crush their tiny village before many more winters. Boyd's fists were clenched white as she argued. Allel knew she was brooding over the prospect of another bloody failure, and decided to keep out of her way.

She found her grandfather, Lantil, ferrying bowls of excrement and other waste from the bark teepees to the clusters of cow-trees at the heart of the village. Lantil dumped out the bowls into the trees' root systems and tiredly tolerated his granddaughter's chatter.

She told him how she'd gone out of the village alone and scrambled over the rocky shoulders of Hafen's Hill, a mile or so away. At the summit she'd thrown herself flat, panting, and stared up in wonder: in the afternoon light the Shell was a glowing quilt, and she'd soon forgotten the wind from the northern ice fields that probed at the crude seams of her shirt...

Allel's was a world without a sky. Instead the Shell swept from horizon to horizon, covering the land like a glowing lid of blue, green and startling orange. She'd traced the familiar lines of the ocean boundaries and watched clouds wind themselves into an upside-down storm directly above her. She reached up a finger as if to stir the storm on that great plate hanging over her--