By the end of the second day she was fit enough to walk around the ward. Like a lot of her fellow patients, she sat in front of the big picture window overlooking Durringham, saying very little. Civil engineering crews were arriving hourly, fat bright-yellow jeeps crawling down the muddy streets. Programmable silicon buildings were mushrooming in the ruined semicircle of mud. Power cables had been strung up; once again electric lights began to shine in several districts during the night.

As far as she was concerned it was wasted effort. There were too many memories, too many dead children out in the jungle. This could never be her home again, not any more. She kept asking the Kiint and the hospital AI if anyone had found Jay. Always the same answer.

Then on the sixth day, Horst and Jay walked into the ward, happy and healthy. She clutched Jay to her, not letting her daughter say anything for a long time while she reaffirmed her will to live by the contact.

Horst pulled a couple of chairs over, and the three of them stared down at the city with its industrious invaders.

“This is going to be a very busy place for the next century,” Horst said, his voice a mixture of surprise and admiration. “Do you remember our first night? The old transient dormitory’s gone now, but I think that’s the harbour where it was.” He pointed vaguely. The circular basins of polyp had survived.

“Will they rebuild them?” Jay asked. She thought all the activity was tremendously exciting.

“I doubt it,” Horst said. “The people who’ll be emigrating here from now on will be wanting five-star hotels.”

Ruth raised her gaze to look across the sky. The morning rainclouds had just departed eastwards, heading inland to soak the villages upriver. They’d left a patch of pristine sky above the town and its boundary of gently steaming jungle. Five brilliant stars shone through the glaring azure atmosphere, the closest one showing a definite crescent. She thought one of them might be Earth itself.

There were forty-seven terracompatible planets sharing its orbit now. All of them stage-one colony worlds, ready to absorb the population from the arcologies.

“Are we going back to Aberdale?” Jay asked.

“No, darling.” Ruth stroked her daughter’s sun-bleached hair. “I’m afraid we lost this world. People from Earth will come here and make it very different to what it was. They don’t have the kind of past to overcome here which we do. It belongs to them now. We need to move on again.”

The bus rolled smoothly across the docking ledge, and linked its airlock with the reception lounge. Athene was waiting for the pair of them, standing proud in a silky blue ceremonial ship-tunic, the star of captaincy absent from her collar.

I came back,sinon said. I told you I would.

I never doubted you. But I would have understood if you’d gone on with the crystal entity. It was a fabulous opportunity.

Others took that opportunity. It doesn’t cease to exist because I refuse it.

Stubborn to the very end.

One day humans, or what we become, may make a similar journey by themselves. I would like to think I played my part in the culture which will set us upon such a road.

You are different to the Sinon who left.

I have a soul of my own now. I will not return to the multiplicity; I mean to live out my life in this form.

I’m glad you have found yourself again. I need someone around the house who can keep my appalling grandchildren in line.

He laughed, a harsh brazen clacking. Every day, all I wished for was to return. I was afraid you didn’t want me to.

I would never think that thought. Not of you, no matter what you’d done.

I have brought someone with me who suffers far more than either of us.

So I see.she moved forward and gave a slight bow. “Welcome to Romulus, General Hiltch.”

It was the moment Ralph had dreaded most of all, passing over the threshold. If there was no forgiveness here he would never find any within this universe. He couldn’t even bring himself to smile at the stately old woman whose face contained so much genuine concern. “I have no army to command any more, Athene. I resigned my commission.”

“Tell me why you have come, Ralph.”

“I came out of guilt. I ordered so many Edenists to their death. The Liberation ruined what it was supposed to save. It existed for vanity and pride, not honour. And it was all my idea. I need to say I’m sorry.”

“We’d like to hear you, Ralph. Take as long as you want.”

“Will you accept me as one of you?”

She gave him a compassionate smile. “You wish to become an Edenist?”

“Yes, though it’s a selfish wish. I was told an Edenist can relieve his burden by sharing it with every other Edenist. My guilt has turned to pure grief.”

“That’s not selfish, Ralph. You’re offering to share yourself, to contribute.”

“Will it end? Will I be able to live with what I’ve done?”

“I’ve brought up a great many Edenist children in my house, Ralph.” She put her arm in his, and started walking him towards the exit. “And I’ve never had a serpent yet.”

It took several weeks for all the mundane functions of government to return to normal after the Confederation was transferred out of the galaxy. People realized that their circumstances would change, in many ways quite profoundly. Religions strove to incorporate or explain away the singularity’s gospel of the universe. Joshua didn’t mind that: as he told Louise, conviction in one’s God nearly always equated to a conviction in self. Time might well see an end to the undue influence religion had on the way people approached life. Then again, knowing the perversity of humans, maybe not.

Starflight was also altering. Travel between stars never more than half a light-year apart was incredibly quick, and cheap.

Every reporter who interviewed Joshua asked why he hadn’t taken the Confederation stars back again. Quite infuriatingly, he just smiled and said he liked the view from out here.

Governments weren’t so fond of it. There could never be any outward expansion again, unless new propulsion methods were developed. Funds for wormhole research were quietly increased.

There would be no more antimatter to terrorise planetary populations. The stars where the production stations orbited were all left behind in the galaxy (though Joshua had teleported their crews out). Politicians turned their eyes to the defence budget, seeing how funds could be shifted towards more voter-friendly spending sprees.

The Kiint provider technology was regarded with fascination by the general public as it worked its miracles on the Returned worlds. Everybody wanted one of those for Christmas.

Earth’s population was almost schizophrenic over the new stage-one planets available. On the one hand, their own climate had been reset to normal, making the arcology domes redundant. But Earth’s surface would take a generation to restore. And if it was restored with forests, meadows, jungles, and prairies, there would be a diaspora from the arcologies which would ruin everything. However, if the population was spread around the new planets (less than a billion each), all of them would have a natural environment, allowing them to keep their present level of consumerist industrialisation and not totally screw up the atmospheres with waste heat. Assuming that many people could be moved economically—say if you used those nifty little Kiint craft, or something came out of all that new superdrive research.

Small, subtle changes were manifesting in all aspects of Confederation life. They would merge and build on each other. And eventually, Joshua hoped, transformation would become irresistible.

But in the meantime, the methods of governance remained the same. Income had to be earned. Taxes still had to be paid. And laws had to be enforced. Backlogs of court cases worked through.