"How long have we got now?" Genar-Hofoen asked.

"Half a minute," Amorphia replied.

The man's hands were on the table. He rolled his arms, letting his hands fall open. He gazed at Dajeil. "I'm sorry," he said.

She looked down, nodding.

He looked at Ulver, smiling sadly.

The Sleeper watched, fascinated. The wall of energy tumbling towards it sloped slowly back within both hyperspatial domains, forming two immense four-dimensional cones as the energy grid's withering blast hesitated in its progress across the skein of real space even as its slowing wave-fronts still thrust out across the grids" surfaces. The slopes" angles increased as the boundary's skein presence began to break up, detaching from the grids themselves and beginning to dissipate. Finally the separate waves on the grids began to dwindle, collapsing back from their tsunamic dimensions to become just oceanically enormous swells, deflating above and below the skein until they were mere twin waves advancing across both the energy grids towards the doubled furrows which the Sleeper's own motors were still churning in the grid.

Then those twinned waves did the impossible; they went into reverse, retreating back towards the Excession's start-point at exactly the same rate as the Sleeper was braking.

The GSV kept on slowing down, still finding it hard to believe it was going to live.

It reacts, it thought. It signalled abroad with the details of what had just happened, just in case it all got suddenly threatening again. It let Amorphia know what had happened, too.

It watched the ridges on the surface of the grids as they retreated before it and slowly shrank. The rate of attenuation implied a zero-state at exactly the point the Sleeper Service would come to an Excession-relative halt.

Did I do that?

Did my own mind-state persuade it of my meriting life?

It is a mirror, perhaps, it thought. It does what you do. It absorbed those ultimate absorbers, those promiscuous experiences, the Elench; it leaves alone and watches back those who come merely to watch in the first place.

I came at it like some rabid missile and it prepared to obliterate me; I backed off and it withdrew its balancing threat.

Only a theory, of course, but if it is correct…

This does not bode well for the Affront.

Come to think of it, it doesn't bode all that well for the whole affair.

Bad timing, maybe.

IX

Dajeil looked up, tears in her eyes. «I-» she began.

"Wait," the avatar said.

They all looked at it.

Ulver gave the creature what seemed to her like an extraordinarily long time to say something more. "What?" she said, exasperated.

The avatar looked radiant. "I think we may be all right after all," it said, smiling.

There was silence for a moment. Then Ulver collapsed back dramatically in her seat, arms dangling towards the floor, legs splayed out under the table, gaze directed upwards at the translucent dome. "Fucking hell!" she shouted. She tried accessing the Jaundiced Outlook's senses, and eventually found a view of hyperspace ahead of the Sleeper Service. More or less back to normal, indeed. She shook her head. "Fucking hell," she muttered.

Dajeil began to weep. Genar-Hofoen sat forward, watching her, one hand to his mouth, pinching his lower lip.

The black bird Gravious, which had been peeking round the corner of the door and shivering with fear for the last few minutes, suddenly bounced beating into the air in a dark confusion of furious movement and started wheeling round the room screaming, "We're alive! We're going to live! It's going to be all right! Yee-ha! Oh, life, life, sweet life!"

Neither Dajeil nor Genar-Hofoen seemed to notice it.

Ulver glanced from one to the other then leapt up and tried to grab the fluttering bird. It yelped. "Oi! What-?"

"Out, you idiot!" Ulver hissed, lunging at it again as it swooped for the door. She followed it, turning briefly to mutter, "Excuse me," to the others. She closed the door.

X

The Torturer class Rapid Offensive Unit Killing Time had been far enough away from the Sleeper Service and its war fleet not to have felt threatened by the Excession's projected blast-front and yet close enough to see what the GSV had done.

It had looked upon the vast weapon that the Excession had unleashed and been dumbstruck with awe and a microscopic amount of jealousy; hell, it wished it could do that! But then the weapon had been turned off, called back. Now the Killing Time had a new series of emotions to cope with.

It looked at the ships the Sleeper Service had scattered about it and felt an instant of disappointment; there would be no battle. No real battle, anyway.

Then it experienced elation. They had won!

Then it felt suspicious. Was the Sleeper actually on the same side as it, or not?

It hoped they were all on the same side; even the most glorious of sacrifices began to look rather futile and pointless when carried out against such ludicrous odds; like spitting into a volcano…

Just then the Sleeper Service signalled the warship and asked a favour of it, and the Killing Time felt pretty damn good again; honoured, in fact. This was what war should be like!

The Killing Time agreed to do as the GSV requested. The ROU sounded proud. It was not an attractive tone. How depressing, the Sleeper Service thought. That it should all come down to this; the person with the biggest stick prevails.

Of course, this was only one fray. There was another matter to be dealt with; the Excession, and it had proved comprehensively unable to provide any sort of answer to that.

Anyway, I ought not to be so hard on the Killing Time just because it is a warship. There have been a surprising number of wise warships. Though it would be fair to say — as I think even they would admit — that few started out headed on such a course.

To live for ever and die often, it considered. Or at least to think that you're going to die. Perhaps that is one way of achieving wisdom. It was not a completely original insight, but it was one that had, perhaps understandably, never struck the GSV with such force before.

The Sleeper watched the humans aboard the Jaundiced Outlook respond as the avatar told them they'd been reprieved. It would follow their reactions, of course, but it had other things to do at the same time. Like think about what it was to do with the new knowledge it had.

It watched its distributed warcraft rise within the skein of real space; raptors within an infinite sky. Meat, could it do some goodly mischief now… It started by diverting a few hundred ships in the direction of the Not Invented Here.