‘Yeah,’ said Saphothere.

‘Saphothere,’ Coptic interrupted, ‘we’ve got company.’

The three of them turned their attention to the sky and the object becoming visible there: distant still, but growing closer.

‘Another reason for him not sending a missile against us,’ Meelan observed.

‘That’s it, then,’ said Saphothere. ‘Let’s go and kill the bastard before he can do anything about it.’

‘Sounds reasonable to me,’ said Meelan.

The sky was growing dark and the effect was something like silt boiling up from the bottom of a deep pool. Wave after wave threw dark bands of shadow across the landscape. Polly looked up, feeling her mouth grow dry. This simply did not happen here — after a downpour like last night’s, the sky usually remained clear for many weeks, and Polly had yet to witness any true extremity of weather. But this had an immensity: the bands of cloud spreading out from that central boiling point seemed almost solid. And that there was no sound as yet made it all the more threatening.

‘What now?’ asked Tack, as he too stepped outside Aconite’s house.

‘The Nodus,’ said Polly. ‘We knew it was close.’

Makes a kind of insane sense for it to arrive now. Makes you wonder if the Heliothane haven’t unified everything yet. Perhaps there’s still much they don’t know.

‘Does this mean Cowl has failed—or is he about to succeed?’ Tack asked.

Polly turned and stared at him. ‘Succeed at what?’

Still gazing at the sky, Tack said, ‘At shoving human history down the probability slope and creating his own time-line at the top of the slope.’

‘You still believe that?’ Tack returned his attention to her, as she went on. ‘That’s just the great Heliothane lie told to justify continuing their extermination of Umbrathane. Admittedly their attempts to get to Cowl are in themselves justified because of the many Heliothane lives he has taken. But that doesn’t make it any less of a lie.’

‘What?’

He looked confused, and Polly realized she was pulling another bulwark of belief from underneath him, but it had to be done.

‘Cowl is working to prevent the omission paradox,’ she explained.

‘And I thought I was confused,’ said Tack, rediscovering the sense of humour for which Saphothere had once beaten him.

Polly went on, ‘Cowl escaped Heliothane persecution, and he gave the Umbrathane an escape route too. The energy he carried in the big jump took him back before the Nodus and do you know what he found?’

‘Tell me.’

‘He found life without DNA. He found life that bore no relation to anything he knew, with minimal probability that it would develop into the life we know in the few centuries he had before the Nodus arrived.’

‘And that means?’

‘You have to be as utterly arrogant as Cowl to believe that you are the source of such a critical omission paradox.’

‘You said that before and I still don’t get it.’

‘Cowl believes he is the source of the Nodus—that if he doesn’t start DNA-based life in this ocean, there will be no life as we know it later. That by omission he will destroy the time-line and become a unique, unreferenced being, perpetually trapped in his own alternate.’

‘So he’s a good guy?’

‘If a good guy is also one who’s regard for any life but his own is nil—and who would, given the opportunity, wipe out the entire Heliothane Dominion.’

‘But surely he could do that by doing what the Heliothane claimed he was doing?’

‘No. He only has geothermal taps here. The energy levels he would need require a sun tap at the very least. That’s just another Heliothane lie.’

‘So what the fuck is going on?’

‘That,’ said Polly, pointing at the sky.

Gathering in a wheel above them, thick black clouds turned and rolled, expressing spokes of lightning. A low, growling storm was reaching them now. And behind these strange cloud formations a shape was resolving.

‘A ship?’ Tack wondered.

‘Maybe. Or some living being in itself. Or even a seed pod.’

A flattened sphere now filled a quarter of the sky, the lower edge of it lost beyond the horizon. Segmented like an orange, it was translucent, and higher cloud layers showed through it as through a distorting lens. Other clouds broke over it, like the waves of a sea splashing over a boulder. As they watched, it tilted and came fully into view. In consonance with the tilting, the ground began to vibrate. Then came immense flashes of lightning, cracks in the heavens revealing another reality, and the gunshot crashing of thunder.

‘What’s happening?’ Tack yelled.

‘Seeding,’ said Polly, leaning close. ‘As the Heliothane knew, because their first interstellar probe sent back evidence of it elsewhere after Cowl had gone. I don’t know how Aconite found out, which is why we have to get to her—she must have some access to the future that is her own.’

‘But why didn’t she tell him?’

‘Because as long as he struggled to solve his omission paradox, he would not turn his full fury on the Heliothane. She has spent her life blunting the edge of Cowl’s rage.’

Nandru took that moment to add, I’m so glad you explained all that, Polly. There was me thinking it was all a bit complicated.

‘Nandru,’ said Polly out loud, glancing apologetically at Tack. ‘It gets even simpler now. As we move into the Nodus, the chances of the Heliothane reaching Cowl increase dramatically. And when that happens we’ll need to be on the other side of the planet, at least, if we want to survive. We need Aconite and we need her as soon as possible.’

I can help you, but it means I must leave you, and I won’t be able to come back this time, as I must be both the program and the memory.

‘What the fuck are you on about?’

Don’t be so unfriendly.

‘I’m sorry, but things just got a lot more urgent.’

Well, goodbye, Polly.

‘Wait! What are you—?’

Polly felt him go, just as he did when he transferred his awareness to Wasp.

‘What the hell?’ said Polly, then shook her head in irritation. Reaching up, she brushed her fingers through her hair then brought her hand down for inspection. There were gritty white crystals on her palm. She blinked and looked up. It was snowing, only this was no snow that she recognized.

‘We have to get to Aconite—she’s the only one who can help. She has to have a way out of here.’

Just then there came a loud clattering and droning from inside the house, and they whirled round as something shot out of the door to loom over them.

‘And hello!’ bellowed Nandru-Wasp.

The tension in the New London Abutment Control Centre was palpable. Maxell watched the screens and wondered just how much longer she could wait in the hope of totally completing this herculean task. So much had been invested and so much would be lost, whether they succeed or failed, so justification of the latter was not something she wanted to contemplate. Then the tension notched up a level.

‘We have closure!’ shouted an interface technician.

Maxell was frozen for half a second. They had time—they still had time.

‘Do you have a mass reading?’ she asked.

‘Not yet… still calculating… I’m putting it up on a subscreen,’ the technician replied.

Maxell felt her mouth go dry as she saw the figure. The subscreen opened in a band across the bottom of the screen and filled with digits. Abruptly it contracted, the number being rounded off and displayed with an exponent, because it was simply too big to fit on the screen.

‘That cannot be taken out of existence,’ moaned Carloon.

‘Nevertheless,’ said Maxell, ‘we will try.’ To the interface tech she said, ‘Send the signal.’

‘Sent,’ replied the tech.

Now it was a matter of waiting. The tachyon signal would arrive at the moment of transmission, but the transit of the microwave beam was nominally six minutes. They were now utterly committed and history would judge them—if any history there was to be.