Mace laughed briefly. “I think you’re working it out, policeman. Knowing the limitations of deduction, the Snowmen decided that to record events — and only to record — was the highest calling of life. And that’s all they want to do. They took apart their world, rebuilt it as a monstrous storage system… used all the material at their disposal to freeze as much data as they could. They won’t do anything with our proof; for fourteen billion years they have merely watched time unravel—”

“There’s your streak of poetry again, Mace.”

“Your Assimilation must fail,” Mace said bluntly.

Kapur sighed. “Why?”

“Think about it. The Snowmen have no motivation we can connect with. Our actions will mean nothing to them — we, almost by definition within their Gödelian philosophy, dance meaninglessly before them. Even their own destruction would be no more than an event, a final act to be stored and noted.”

“That can’t be all, Mace. There must be more. Every species wants to grow, to develop.” Kapur reflected. “Even if all they wanted was a greater data storage capacity—”

“Come in, Kapur. It’s over. I’ll call in the Spline.”

“No.” Kapur closed his eyes, tried to keep the trembling out of his voice. “I still have time.”

With slow insolence, Mace said, “It’s your mission, policeman.”

Without returning to the yacht Kapur had Mace download more human datasets and propositions; and he learned quickly how to input new material — his own reflections and feelings — into his Eye stores.

That took most of a day.

Kapur slept briefly, nestled within the meadow scents of his cold-suit.

When he turned to the ’Flake once more, he had six hours left.

The Snowman had not changed. The human proof of Gödel remained lodged within its abstraction of a belly, a cold, primitive lump.

Kapur began to download data to the probes: more and more, as rapidly as he could. Mathematics first. He found data on an ancient, failed, experiment, a life form based on the Incompleteness theorem, a bizarre disaster which had resulted in the destruction of a moon, a loss of human life…

Then, on a whim, music — he watched as ancient compositions frosted into veils of blue ice within the ’Man.

Human history. He told the ’Man of the Xeelee, humanity’s vast, implacable foe; and of how mankind was seeking to mobilize the resources of a Galaxy in its war.

He told the ’Man what the humans on board the Spline ship planned to do to the Snowflake.

He told of his own fears, doubts — his awe, here before the Snowflake, with the Galaxy a cloud beneath him; of his almost superstitious response to Gödel; of his fear of failure, and his petty relationship with Mace.

The ’Man was like a mirror, one part of his mind told him, or like a Virtual psychoanalysis program. There was no one there to respond, he knew now, but he told it all anyway.

He told the ’Man of his own, tenuous, qualifications for this Assimilation mission. That he was a policeman; that he specialized in the resolution of the cruel, the vicious, the most bizarre crimes. His job was to work through the sites of crimes, trying to see the smashed property, the bones and scattered flesh, through the eyes of the perpetrator.

Kapur was qualified enough to seek the motivation of the Snowmen, after twenty-five years striving to unravel the minds of aliens within his own species.

All of this shivered into the heart of the Snowman, without comment or reaction, without praise or disgust.

Kapur, his time spent, grew ashamed. He fell silent, arms akimbo, before the maw of the Snowflake.

The ’Man watched steadily.

And, at last, Kapur understood.

Something like a ripple passed under Kapur; it was as if space were a lake on which his encased body floated, passive.

“Kapur.” Mace’s voice was strained. “The Spline.”

Kapur felt enormously tired. “What about it?”

“…It’s gone.”

Time had run out. The Spline had opened its laser-cannon orifices.

…The ship had been torn aside, dragged from its site like an eyeball from a socket, thrown a million miles across space; it had been left spinning, bruised and torn.

Kapur returned to the yacht.

“Were there injuries?”

Mace’s face was wide, blank, angry. “What do you think? But the automatics are functioning; the ship’s returning to pick us up. What did you do to the damn ’Flake, Kapur?”

“It was not I who tried to open fire on it,” Kapur said softly. “What happened?”

“Gravity waves,” Mace said. “Like a tractor beam.” Suddenly fear broke to the surface of Mace’s hard features; his Eyes seemed even more incongruous, metal islands in a sea of human emotion. He pointed through the viewport, picking out a palm-sized patch of darkness. “From the direction of the Virgo supercluster; although that’s probably coincidence…”

“I caught an echo of the beam.”

“Kapur, I think I know how they did it.”

“The Snowmen?”

“Mach’s principle. I think they can manipulate Mach’s principle.”

Kapur shook his head.

With a kind of irritated patience, Mace said, “The Spline is embedded in a Universe of matter. That matter tugs at the Spline with gravity fields — but the fields surround the ship uniformly; they are equal in all directions, isotropic and timeless.”

Kapur frowned. “And you think the Snowmen have a way of making the field — unequal?”

Mace laughed uneasily. “I guess you learn a lot in fourteen billion years.”

Kapur turned the concept over in his mind. The Mach beam was spectacular, he decided. But the Universe was filled with spectacular weapons and technologies.

Gödel’s theorem, though. That was something else. That was truly terrifying. Mace, young, unimaginative, had responded more to the blazing of a zap gun than to the fact of a Universe without bottom or top, without meaning, unknowable. Kapur almost envied him.

“I think I’ve figured it out,” he said to Mace.

“What? Their motivation?” Through his fear, Mace looked briefly interested. “Tell me, policeman. I knew there had to be something; every sentient species has goals.”

“We had the pieces of the puzzle, almost from the start,” Kapur said. “In their design of the ’Flake, the Snowmen had already made near-optimal use of matter, by recording information right down to the thermodynamic limit… which is set by the background temperature of the Universe. But they knew from Gödel that there will always be more events to record.”

Mace’s face crumpled sourly. “Oh. Are you telling me that they are waiting for the Universe to cool down… just so they can store more data?”

Kapur smiled. “The idea is pleasing. In the aeons since the building of the Snowflake, they’ve already achieved a six-fold increase in capacity! And in another forty billion years the capacity will double again…

“Patience, Mace. That is the key.”

Mace stared into Kapur’s face, the lines around his Eyes betraying hostility. “Policeman, sometimes you frighten me.”

Kapur, obscurely pleased by this reaction, did not reply. Mace said, “Do you think there’ll be another attempt?”

“To Assimilate?” Kapur shook his head. “I doubt the ’Flake would let us come so close again.”

He turned to face the emptiness of the viewport. With eyes no more than human he looked beyond the filmy sails of the laser yacht and saw the Spline coming to collect them. It moved cautiously, all weapons orifices open.

Over centuries and a million battles, mankind moved into a position of something like dominance over its peers. And it began to confront the Xeelee, who moved through space like ships over the surface of an ocean.

Gradually, slowly, humans probed the great projects of the Xeelee. A hundred epic quests were undertaken, a hundred names thrown up to resonate through the long afternoon of human history…