The Tyranny of Heaven

A.D. 171,257

We may with more successful hope resolve

To wage by force or guile eternal war

Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,

Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy

Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven...

Paradise Lost, John Milton

Rodi climbed through the hatch and into the flitter. The craft was a box the size of a small room. He threaded his way through the interior.

There was a girl in one of the pilot seats. She turned. Tall and muscular, she wasn't much older than Rodi's twenty years.

Rodi tripped over a locker.

The girl's eyes glittered with amusement. "Take it easy. You're Rodi. Right? I'm Thet."

His face hot, Rodi took the seat beside her. "Glad to meet you." The instrument panel before him looked utterly alien.

"Well, buckle in." Thet punched fat buttons. Monitors showed muscles contracting in the Ark's hull. "And don't be so nervous."

"I'm not."

"Of course you are. I never understand why. You've taken flitters outside the Ark before, haven't you?"

"Sure." He tried not to sound defensive. "On inter-Ark hops. But this is my first mission drop—my first time out of hyperspace. It's a little different."

She raised fine eyebrows. "We didn't evolve in hyperspace."

"Maybe. But it's all I know—"

An orifice in the hull opened and exploded at them; the flitter surged into hyperspace. It was like being born.

A Virtual image of the Ark swam into their monitors. Holism Ark was a Spline ship: a rolling, fleshy sphere encrusted with blisters. It was a living being, Rodi mused, and it looked like it.

He wondered briefly what those blisters on the hull were. They couldn't be seen from within the Ark...

The flitter receded rapidly. Hyperspace smeared the Ark's image.

Now more Arks came into view. The flitter skirted islands of huge flesh as it worked its way through the fleet.

At last the flitter surged into clear hyperspace; Thet swung the flitter about.

Holism Ark was lost in a blurred wall of ten thousand Arks that cut the Universe in half. This was the Exaltation of the Integrality. Rodi imagined he could hear a thrumming as the great armada forged onwards; flitters skimmed between the huge hulls and rained into three-space.

"We're privileged to see this," Rodi said.

"Definitely," said Thet laconically. "A sight that hasn't changed for three thousand years." She snapped the flitter away; the Exaltation became a blur in the distance. Her shaven head gleamed in the cabin lights. "I'll tell you how we're privileged. After a hundred generations it's us who are around as the Exaltation reaches Bolder's Ring, the true Prime Radiant of the Xeelee. And so the sky here is full of lost human colonies. Bits of ancient, failed assaults. Instead of a dozen missionary drops a century we're getting a hundred a year. Which is why they're pressing almost anybody into service."

"Thanks," he said drily.

She grinned, showing teeth. "So I'm your tutor on your first drop. And I'm not what you expected. Am I?"

Rodi said nothing.

"Look—I'm resourceful, a good pilot. I'm no great thinker, okay?... but you're different. Top marks in the seminary, Gren tells me. You should soon surpass me. And with all that understanding you should have no fear. The Integrality says that the death of an individual is unimportant."

"Yes." That was a child's precept; he clutched the thought and felt his anxiety recede.

"And you do believe in the Integrality. Don't you?" Her voice was sly.

Was she mocking him? "Of course. Don't you?"

She didn't reply. She stabbed at the control panel. The flitter popped out of hyperspace.

Stars exploded around him. Half of them were colored blue.

He gasped. Thet laughed.

It's a simulation, he told himself. Just another sim.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Thet watched with amused contempt. "Get your bearings."

The stars blurred together. Behind him they were tinged china blue. Ahead of him they formed a mist that hid... something, a hint of a torus shape—

"Bolder's Ring is ahead," he breathed.

"How do you know?"

Because that was the way everything was falling.

Thet said, "We've been space-going for a hundred and fifty millennia, probably. And yet we're still children at the feet of the Xeelee. Makes you sick, doesn't it?"

Rodi shrugged. "That's why we've been trying to wreck that thing for almost as long. Envy."

Thet paged through images on her monitor. "Shocking. And of course we of the Integrality are here to put it all right... ha! There's our goal." The screen contained a single spark of chlorophyll green. "Human life... or near enough to show up. A worldful of straying lambs. Right, Rodi?" And she drove the flitter through the crowd of stars.

On Holism Ark there were sim rooms of Earth. This little world, Rodi decided, was like a folded-up bit of Earth. They swept over oceans that sparkled in the jostling starlight—and then flew into an impossible dawn.

It was impossible because there was no sun.

"It doesn't make sense," Thet murmured. The light was diffusing down from a glowing sky. "Where's that damn sunlight coming from?... And the planet's only a quarter Earth's size, gravity a sixth standard—too low for this thick layer of air..."

Rodi smiled. The little world was like a toy.

Thet poked buttons in triumph. "Contact! About time..."

A Virtual tank filled up with a smiling male face, long and gracefully austere. He spoke; Rodi picked out maybe one word in two. After a few seconds he flicked the translator button mounted in his thumbnail.

"...this equipment's a little dusty, I'm afraid; we don't get too many visitors. It's only chance I was in the museum when the alarm chimed—"

"We represent the Exaltation of the Integrality," said Thet formally. "We come from beyond the stars. We are human like yourselves."

The man laughed; his eyes' folds crinkled. "Thank you, my dear. You're welcome to land and talk to us. But you'll find we're quite sophisticated. Use this signal as a beacon. The name of this area is Tycho..."

Thet let Rodi pilot the flitter out of orbit. Fifty miles above the surface the little craft shuddered; Rodi's palms grew slick with sweat.

"That wasn't your fault, surprisingly," Thet said calmly. "We just passed through a kind of membrane. It's—healing—behind us. Now we know how they keep the atmosphere in. And maybe this is where the sunshine comes from. Interesting."

The Tycho museum perched at the summit of a green-clad mountain. A tall figure waved. The mountain was at the center of a plain which glistened with lakes and trees. The plain was walled by a circle of jagged hills. As they descended the hills dipped over the horizon.

Rodi landed neatly.

The air carried the scent of pine. Through the day-lit membrane Rodi could see stars; towards the horizon they were stained blue. He breathed deeply, invigorated.

Thet whooped. "I love this dinky gravity." She did a neat double back somersault, her long legs flexing.

Their host walked around the curve of the little museum. He wore a white coverall and he was at least eight feet tall. He smiled. "Welcome," he said. "My name is Darby."

Thet landed breathlessly and introduced herself and Rodi. "Come to my home," said Darby. "My family will be more than excited to meet you. And you can tell us all about your... integrality."

Rodi looked around for a transport. There was none.

Darby said nothing. He held out his hands. Like children, Rodi and Thet took hold.

Rodi saw Darby's coverall ripple, as if in a sudden breeze.

The museum, the flitter slid away.

Rodi looked down. He was flying, as if in a glass elevator. He felt no fear. Hand in hand they soared over the curves of the little world.

Darby's home was a tentlike, translucent structure; it was at the heart of a light-filled forest. The days were as long as Ark days, adhering to some ancient, common standard. Thet and Rodi spent four days with Darby's family.

Thet looked out of place in all this domesticity: squat, brusque, embarrassed by kindness. She let Rodi talk to the adults while she sat on the leaf-strewn ground telling Integrality parables to Darby's two children. Each child towered over Thet. Their earnestness made Rodi smile.

On the final day Darby took Rodi by the hand. "Come with me. I'd like to show you a little more of our world."

They flew soundlessly. Houseboats floated on circular oceans; clumps of dwellings grew by the banks of rivers. Everywhere people waved at them. "This is a peaceful place, you see, Rodi," Darby said. "There are only a few thousand of us."

"Yes. And this orderly world has risen from the debris of war... just as the Integrality teaches us to expect. As I've told you, the Integrality is a movement based on the inter-meshing of all things. Local reductions in entropy occur on all scales throughout the Universe, from the growth of a child to the convergence of a galaxy cluster. Order is to be celebrated..."

Irritation touched Darby's face briefly. He said nothing. Rodi fell silent, faintly embarrassed.

At a savannah's heart sat a simple dome. "This is a place we call Tranquility," said Darby. "What I'm going to show you is a kind of monument. On seeing this perhaps you'll understand why your sermons are a little out of place here."

They landed like leaves.

Rodi peered through the clear dome wall. Boulders littered a patch of bald earth. There was a craft, a spiderlike structure as tall as a man. Gold foil gleamed through years of dust. Its colors faded beyond recognition, a flag lay in the soil.

"Here is the original surface of the planet, preserved through the terraforming," said Darby. "Airless."

"The craft looks very old. What is it?"

"Human, of course. This is one of our first spacecraft. Do you know where you are yet?"

Rodi turned and met Darby's mild eyes.

"This is the Moon," Darby said. "The original satellite of Earth. It was used in some ancient assault on the Ring... abandoned here, millions of light years from home, and terraformed by the handful of survivors." He smiled. "Rodi, every glance at the night sky tells us where we are and how we got here. We live surrounded by the rubble of the past, the foolish sacrifices of war.

"We have had to come to terms with this, you see. We have made our peace with the Universe. Perhaps your Integrality has something to learn from us."

Rodi stared for long minutes at the ancient craft. Then Darby took his arm. "I'll take you back to your flitter. Your companion is already waiting for you."

Hand in hand, they flew to the grass-coated walls of Tycho Crater.

The flitter soared through hyperspace.

"Those damn kids taught me a song," Thet said. She recited: "We may with more successful hope resolve / To wage by force or guile eternal war / Irreconcilable to our grand Foe... That's all there was."

Rodi frowned. "Strange sort of kids' song."

"Sounds very old, doesn't it? The kids say they learn it from older children, and so it's passed on." Punching the controls briskly, she said, "Well, that's your first drop. Wasn't so bad, was it? Next one solo, maybe."

Sunk in depression, Rodi tapped at the data desk built into his thumbnail. "What do you know about glotto-chronology?"

Thet snorted. "What do you think?"

"It's one of our standard dating mechanisms. Starting from a common root, the languages of two human groups will diverge by a fifth every thousand years." Tiny numbers flickered over his nail. "About half of Darby's vocabulary is close to ours. That makes the colony about three thousand years old... This war has endured for millennia."

"We know that." Thet's brow furrowed as she concentrated on her piloting. "This is actually a bit tricky. The inseparability net is breaking up a little; the guidance beacons are flickering... there are ripples in hyperspace; large mass movements somewhere. A quake on a nearby neutron star?"

Rodi found himself blurting, "Is it always like that?"

"What?"

"Darby..."

"What did you expect? To convert him?"

Rodi thought it over. "Yes."

She laughed at that. She was still laughing as they passed into the warm interior of the Ark.

Holism Ark was a sphere miles wide. Its human fabric was sustained from huge chambers strung around the equator, where the Ark's spin gave the illusion of gravity. There were industrial zones, biotech tanks, sim rooms, health and exercise facilities. The weightless axis was a tunnel glowing with light. Tiled corridors branched away to riddle the Ark.

The flitter docked at a pole. Rodi slipped his arms into a set of light wings and swam along the axis. He was due to meet his seminary tutor, Gren, to discuss his voyage, and he tried to lift his mood. He stared around at the bustling life of the Ark: people coasting to and from work, children fluttering stubby wings in some complex game. Rodi felt isolated from it all, as if his senses were clouded by his depression.

There was a free fall common room at the center of the Ark. Gren met him there, tethered to a floating table. Gren was a round, comfortable man. Over a coffee globe he congratulated Rodi. "I was interested by that bit of doggerel Thet picked up," he said. "Did you know we've found similar fragments before?"

"Really?" Rodi hung up his wings and fiddled with his table tether.

"Strange, isn't it? These scattered bits of humanity slavishly maintaining their scraps of verse. We've a data store full of them... But what's it all for?" Gren put on a look of comic puzzlement.

Rodi drew a coffee globe from the table's dispenser. "Gren, why are the Ark's corridors tiled?"

Gren sipped his drink and eyed Rodi. He said carefully, "Because it's more comfortable that way."

"For us, yes. But this Ark is a Spline ship. How must the Spline feel? Once the Spline were free traders. Now we've sanitized this being's guts and built controls into its consciousness. Gren, we preach the wholeness of life, the growth to completeness. Is that a suitable way to treat a fellow creature?"

"Ah. Your first drop didn't turn out as you expected." He smiled. "You're not the first to react like this."

Rodi cradled the coffee globe's warmth close to his chest. "Please take me seriously, Gren. Is our philosophy, this great crusade to the Ring, a sham?"

"You know it isn't. The Integrality is a movement based on centuries of hard human experience. It has quasi-religious elements. Even the words we use—'seminary,' 'mission'—have the scent of ancient faiths. That's no sham; it's quite deliberate. We want the Integrality to be vibrant enough to replace other faiths... especially man's dark passion to die on a mass scale."

"War—"

Gren thumped the table, his round face absurdly serious. "Yes, war. And that's why the resources of planets were spent to send the Exaltation here, to the site of man's greatest and most futile war.

"Rodi, come to terms with your doubts. Humanity is large: scattered, diverse. You found the Moon people discouraging. Well, they have found their own peace. That is not a threat to the validity of our crusade."

Another table drifted by. A young couple whispered into each other's mouths. Rodi watched them absently, thinking of his parents. Both of them worked in the Ark's biotech tanks. He recalled their pride when he was selected for the seminary, and then for the missionary cohort...

Gren was smiling again. "Anyway, you haven't long to brood before you go out again."

Rodi looked up, startled. "You still think I'm suitable?"

"Of course. Do we want ignorant fanatics? We want young people who can think, boy.

"Now. There's a neutron star, not far from here. Spinning very fast... we've picked up a signal from its surface."

Rodi stared. "A human signal?"

Gren laughed kindly. "Well, of course a human signal. Why else would we send you?"

Rodi finished his drink and pushed the globe back into the table. "I guess I'd better find Thet..."

Gren laid a warm hand on his arm. "Rodi, this time you're on your own. Go and get some sleep; you've a few hours to spare—"

The flitter seemed empty without Thet.

The Spline's orifice dilated and Rodi returned to hyperspace. He began to thread his way out of the Exaltation, keeping his breath carefully level.

A Virtual sparkled into existence; Thet grinned. "Going solo this time, kid? I just called to wish you luck." Rodi thanked her. "Listen, Rodi... don't let me get you down. I rag everybody, and my opinions are my own. Right? And you did okay, down there on the Moon. Be safe." She winked at him and the Virtual dissipated.

Feeling warmer, Rodi dropped into three-space.

The neutron star was one of a binary pair. It was the remnant of a blue-white giant, once so bright it must have made its companion star cast a shadow. Perhaps there had been planets.

The giant had exploded.

Planets evaporated like dew and layers of the companion star blasted away. The giant's remnant collapsed into a wizened, spinning cinder as massive as Earth's sun but barely ten miles across.

The new neutron star dragged down material from its companion and rotated ever faster. The spin deformed it until at last it was virtually a disc, its rim moving at a third the speed of light. Spin effects there canceled out the star's ferocious gravity and a layer of normal matter began to accrete...

A human ship had blundered here, scarred by some forgotten war; Rodi found a battered wreck in close orbit around the neutron star. The crew had no way back to hyperspace and no way to call for help.

And in this dismal system there had been only one place that could conceivably sustain human life...

In Rodi's monitors the neutron star was a plate of red-hot charcoal. A point on the rim was emitting green laser light, picking out a message in something called Morse code. The message was one word of ancient English. "Mayday. Mayday..."

Rodi set up a reply, in the same old tongue and code. "I represent the Exaltation of the Integrality. What is mayday?"

The reply came a day later.

"Apologies are offered for the delay. It took time to locate the Comms Officer. I am the Comms Officer. What do you want?"

"My name is Rodi. I have traveled here in an Exaltation of Arks. I have brought you good news of the Integrality—"

"Are you human?"

"Yes, of course. How long have you been stranded?"

"Stranded where?"

Rodi pulled at his chin. "Would you like to hear of events in the galaxies? Of the wars with the Xeelee?"

"What are galaxies?—Cancel question. Please understand that this is the first time the Comms System has evoked a reply—"

"Then why have you maintained it?"

"Because we always have. The role of Comms Officer is handed from mother to daughter. We know we came from somewhere else. The Comms System is the only link with this other place, our origin. How could we abandon it? Are you in this other place?"

"Yes. You are not alone."

"How reassuring."

Rodi raised an eyebrow. Sarcasm? "Please describe your world."

"What world?"

It took some time to achieve a common understanding.

The stranded crew had observed the layer of soupy liquid at the star rim. The liquid was full of complex molecules, left over from the supernova's fusion fury.

It was their only hope.

With astonishing audacity they had terraformed the ring-shaped sea. Then they began to mold their own unborn children.

Their descendants swam like fish in a dull red toroidal ocean, chattering English. They didn't need hands or tools; only the old Comms System had been left for them, lasing its message to the skies. Rodi imagined the Comms Officer tapping a broad, unwearing key with his mouth or tongue.

Rodi sent down a small, sturdy probe. It was a passing novelty among the fish-folk. Rodi wondered if they thought he was swimming somewhere inside.

There was a death among the fish-folk. A corpse fell from a school of wailing relatives and settled slowly to the star's glowing surface.

Rodi's probe took a tissue sample from the corpse.

The fish-folk were beyond the reach of the glotto-chronology dating technique. Rodi turned to genetic analysis. Two groups on Earth will show divergence of genetic structure at a rate of one percent every five million years.

Rodi found that the fish-folk had swum their ocean for fifty thousand years.

That appalled him. How long had this damn Xeelee war dragged on? How many human lives had been wasted?

The fish-folk weren't too impressed by the Integrality.

"All mankind is joined in freedom," said Rodi. "The worlds in home space are joined by inseparability links into a neural network; decisions flow through the net and reflect the wills of all, not just one person or one group..."

And so on.

The Comms Officer was silent for a long time. Then: "What you say means little to us."

"Your world is unchanging. You are isolated. You are cut out of the great events which shape the greater human history."

"But great events mark our lives," said the Comms Officer, and Rodi wondered if he had given offense. "Our convocations, for instance. There are places where we swim in concert and cause the ocean to sing. We did this not long ago."

That puzzled Rodi. It sounded like a starquake, a sudden collapse of the crust; that would make the whole star ring like a bell.

Could they cause a starquake?

Perhaps they had some way of manipulating the star's ferocious magnetic field. And after all, a quake had disrupted the Exaltation inseparability net not long ago.

After a fortnight Rodi took his leave of his friend.

"Wait," the Comms Officer said unexpectedly. "I have a message to give you." And he transmitted: "Our grand Foe, / Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy / Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven."

"What does it mean?" asked Rodi.

"Unknown."

"Then why do you send it?"

"Every Comms Officer is taught to send it."

"Why?"

"What is 'heaven'?"

"Unknown."

Rodi thought of the rhyme the Moon children had taught Thet. To wage by force or guile eternal war / Irreconcilable to our grand Foe, / Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy...

The pieces fit together, he realized, astonished.

He transmitted his conclusion to Holism Ark for analysis.

Rodi went through the motions of lifting the flitter back to hyperspace, his thoughts clouded.

Once more his mission hadn't unfolded as he'd been taught to expect.

The humans in this region had been forced to find their own ways to come to terms with the events that had stranded them. If they hadn't they couldn't have survived. So—why did they need the Integrality?—or a junior missionary like himself?

Was the Integrality's crusade meaningless?...

The Exaltation's formation had changed.

His speculations driven from his mind, he stared at his monitors. Around Holism Ark the fleet's symmetrical pattern had been distorted into a wedge; at the tip the Arks' fleshy walls were almost touching. Flitters scurried between the Arks; hundreds of closed-beam inseparability net messages radiated away from Holism Ark.

What was happening?

He pushed into Holism Ark. The maintenance bay was deserted. He flew through an axis filled with a harsh light. People rushed past, wings fluttering.

Men and women came along the axis shoving a cannon-like piece of equipment. Rodi recognized a machine-shop heavy-duty laser. He had to press against the wall to allow the team to pass. Their eyes passed blankly over him.

Rodi noticed a fist-sized, fleshy lump on the back of the neck of the nearest man, at the top of his spine.

The freefall common room was unrecognizable. Rodi clung to a wall and stared around. The floating tables were being cleared away; he saw a group of children shooed through the commotion.

There were more bulges on the spinal columns of the crew. Even the children were affected. Some sort of sickness?

A hundred crewmen worked to bolt together a huge, cubical lattice. Eventually, Rodi realized, it would fill the common room. Medical devices and supplies were strapped to struts. Rough hands pushed a man-sized bundle of blankets into the lattice. Then another, and a third...

Crew members in sterile masks unwrapped the bundles.

Suddenly Rodi saw it.

This was a hospital. It was being built in the soft heart of the Ark—the most protected place in case of attack. And towards the hull they were taking heavy-duty lasers—to use as weapons?

Holism Ark was preparing for war.

Rodi's head pounded and there was a metallic taste at the back of his throat.

Thet came sweeping across the bustling space, towing a small package of clothes.

Rodi pushed away from the wall and grabbed her arm.

"The philosopher returns," Thet said, grinning. Her eyes sparkled and her face was flushed.

There was a growth at the top of her spine.

"Thet... what's happening?"

"I'm going to Unity Ark. As a Battle Captain. Isn't it fantastic?"

"Battle? Against who?"

"The Xeelee. Who else? Why do you think we came all this way?"

Rodi tightened his grip on her upper arm. "We came for the Integrality. Remember? We came to remove war, not to wage it."

She laughed in his face, her mouth wide. "That's yesterday, Rodi. It's all gone. And you know who we have to thank? You. Isn't that ironic?" With fingers like steel she prised open his hand and kicked away.

"Where's Gren?"

"In the sanatorium," she called back. "And, Rodi... that's your fault too."

Rodi hung there for long minutes. Then he turned to the makeshift hospital.

Gren lay in a honeycomb of suffering people. Bandaging swathed his neck.

Rodi touched the shrunken face. Gren's eyes flickered open. His face creased as he recognized Rodi. He whispered: "...our grand Foe, / Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy / Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven!" He grimaced. "You have to admire the planning. Over thousands of centuries, even as humans died before the Xeelee, they hid those words among thousands of fragments of verse, and built an epic deception..."

"Please," Rodi said miserably, "I don't understand any of this."

Gren stirred. "I'm sorry, Rodi. The truth is that the Integrality is a fraud, an epic deception spanning millennia. Our mission was a lie which has allowed this huge armada to penetrate Xeelee space, its true purpose unknown even to generations of crew.

"The reassembled poetry was the key, you see. Hearing those words ignited something in each of us—something locked in the genetic code that defines us. We began to suffer explosive growths—"

Rodi fingered his own smooth neck.

"You're a lucky one," Gren whispered. "It doesn't always work. A tenth of us are unaffected. Perhaps two-thirds have been—programed. Like Thet. And the rest of us are dying."

Rodi turned away.

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.

At first the humans had the advantage of surprise. The ponderous Xeelee construction ships scattered in confusion. One of them was caught in the cross-fire of two Arks; Rodi could see its structure melt and smolder. More human ships dropped out of hyperspace and the battle spread.

But now a Spline ship splashed open. Rodi watched people wriggle in vacuum, soaked by spurts of Spline blood.

A Xeelee nightfighter covered the wreck with wings a hundred miles wide.

There were nightfighters all around the battle site. Fire bit into the sides of the laboring Spline.

It was a massacre.

Rodi could not bear to watch. Each Ark was a world, millennia old, carrying families... He increased the scale of his monitors, turned the battle into a game of toys.

But now the Xeelee fighters pulled away. They folded their wings and hovered outside the mist of debris, almost aloof.

The human ships tore into the defenseless construction vessels. Out of control, the orange star splashed against the Ring surface.

The Arks withdrew to hyperspace. One of them whirled as if in jubilation, spitting fire in all directions. Wrecks sailed into clumsy orbits around the Ring.

The Xeelee fighters departed, wings shimmering.

Rodi closed his eyes.

This had been no triumph for the humans. The Xeelee had given them a meaningless victory; they had simply not wished to slaughter.

Couldn't the human crews see that? Would this happen again and again until every Ark was disabled, every human life lost?

No. He couldn't let it occur. And, he began to realize, there was a way he could prevent it.

He opened his eyes, rubbed his face, and lifted the flitter to hyperspace.

The neutron star scraped the surface of its companion, just as it had in that dream time before the metamorphosis. "Integrality for the Comms Officer—"

"Greetings, Rodi from the Integrality."

Rodi, in broken bits of old English, described the futile battle.

The Comms Officer mulled it over. "I understand little... only that people are dying for a foolish purpose."

"But with your help, I can avert many deaths."

"How?"

"Not all the Exaltation has been... contaminated. The virus of words is spreading via inseparability net links. If we break those links, the spread will stop."

"And how can we disrupt this inseparability net?"

"Cause a starquake."

He had to expand, to explain what he meant.

The Comms Officer hesitated. "Rodi, there are two things you should know. We cause these events for specific religious and sexual reasons. They are not—a sport. Second, many of us will lose our lives."

"I know what I'm asking."

A monitor flashed: another craft had dropped out of hyperspace near him. A Virtual tank filled up with a grinning face.

The craft was Unity Ark. The face was Thet's.

She said, "They told me your flitter was gone. It wasn't hard to work out where you'd be. You're planning sabotage, aren't you?"

Rodi stared at her.

"Are we still in contact, Rodi of the Integrality?"

"Yes, Comms Officer..."

"Rodi, you have one minute to begin your approach to Unity. After that we open fire. Do you understand?"

"Comms Officer, what is your answer?"

"I must consult."

"Please hurry. I am desperate."

Thet's smile broadened as the minute passed. Rodi realized that the metamorphosis was a liberation for her; she made a much better warrior than missionary.

"Time's up, Rodi."

"Integrality? We will do as you say."

"Thank you!"

And Rodi slammed the flitter into hyperspace; Thet snarled.

The Exaltation was beginning to split up.

The Arks, the metamorphosed battleships, continued to drop into three-space... but they returned battered and bleeding, and there were fewer each time.

The bulk of the fleet, now isolated from infection, cruised on its way.

Rodi probed at his feelings. Had he betrayed his race by wrecking this grand design?

But the stratagem itself had been a betrayal—of the generations who had lived and died in the Exaltation, and, yes, of the ideal of the Integrality itself.

He wondered if Gren's hypothesis, of a key embedded in fragments of poetry, could hold truth. It seemed fantastic... and yet the fragments of verse had indeed been laid there, like a trail. Perhaps there were a dozen keys, scattered across the light years and centuries, reinforcing each other—some perhaps even embedded in the structure of the space through which the Exaltation must pass.

Or perhaps, Rodi thought bleakly, no key was necessary. He thought of Thet. She, in retrospect, had been all too willing to throw over the ideals of the Integrality, and indulge in warfare once more—key or no key.

But the perpetrators of this epochal plot had been too clever. In their search for a fine lie they had stumbled on a truth—the truth at the heart of the Integrality's philosophy—and that truth, Rodi realized, was driving him to act as he did.

And so in the end it was the truth which had betrayed them.

Rodi would never see his parents again.

But the Exaltation would go on. He could join another Ark, and—

Thet's voice hissed through the distorted inseparability net. "I know... you've done..."

Unity Ark loomed in his monitors, its bulk cutting him off from the Exaltation.

"Thet. There's no point—"

The flitter slammed.

"...next time..."

Roaring with frustration he dropped into three-space, emerging poised over the Ring.

Unity Ark closed, bristling with weapons. Thet's image was clear. "It's over, Rodi."

Rodi took his hands from the controls. He felt very tired. "Okay, Thet. You're right. It's over. We're both cut off from the Exaltation. We're stranded here. Kill me if you like."

Unity Ark exploded at him. Thet stared into his eyes.

Then she cried out, as if in pain.

The Ark veered sideways, avoiding Rodi, and disappeared into the mist at the heart of the Ring.

"Integrality calling Comms Officer."

"This is the Comms Officer."

"How are you?"

"I am not the one who spoke to you previously. My mother died in the recent convocation."

"...I'm sorry."

"Did we succeed?"

In simple terms, Rodi told the story.

"So, in the end, Thet spared you. Why?"

"I don't know. Perhaps the futility of it all got through to her. Perhaps she realized that with all contact with the Exaltation lost her best chance of survival was to take the Ark away, try for a new beginning in some fresh Universe..." And perhaps some lingering human feeling had in the end triumphed over the programing.

"But now you are stranded, Rodi. You have lost your family."

"...Yes."

"You are welcome here. You could join my sexual grouping. The surgery required is superficial—"

Rodi laughed. "Thank you. But that's well beyond my resources."

"What, then?"

He remembered Darby's wise kindness. If the Lunar colonists welcomed him, perhaps the loss of his family would grow less painful...

"We will remember you, and your Integrality."

"Thank you, Comms Officer."

Rodi turned the battered flitter and set course for the Moon.

Fragments of humanity. Relics of forgotten battles, aborted assaults...

Here was the most extravagant mission of all.

Once the system had been a spectacular binary pair, adorning some galaxy lost in the sky. Then one of the stars had suffered a supernova explosion, briefly and gloriously outshining its parent galaxy. The explosion had destroyed any planets, and damaged the companion star. After that, the remnant neutron star slowly cooled, glitching as it spun like some giant stirring in its sleep, while its companion star shed its life-blood hydrogen fuel over the neutron star's wizened flesh. Slowly, a ring of companion-gas formed around the neutron star, and the system's strange, spectral second system of planets coalesced.

Then human beings had come here.

The humans soared about the system, surveying. They settled on the largest planet in the smoke ring. They threw microscopic wormhole mouths into the cooling corpse of the neutron star, and down through the wormholes they poured devices and human-analogues, made robust enough to survive in the neutron star's impossibly rigorous environment.

The devices and human-analogues had been tiny, like finely jeweled toys.

The human-analogues and their devices swarmed to a magnetic pole of the neutron star, and great machines were erected there: discontinuity drives, perhaps powered by the immense energy reserves of the neutron star itself.

Slowly at first, then with increasing acceleration, the neutron star—dragging its attendant companion, ring and planets with it—was forced out of its parent galaxy and thrown across space, a bullet of stellar mass fired at almost light speed.

"A bullet," I said. "Yes. An apt term."

A bullet directed at the heart of the Xeelee Project.

"But," Eve said, "when the single, immense shot had been fired, little thought was given to those abandoned within the star, their usefulness over..." 1

1 See Flux