“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to get Green back to the Face car. Then I’ll return here and—”

Paul felt his breath grow shallow. “And what?”

Without replying Taft turned away and stepped through the airlock; the membrane closed behind Green’s booted feet.

Paul sat for long minutes. The humming of the car’s instruments was the only sound. Through the windows Taft and Green were silhouetted against a glowing Face, the pair of them looking like a single, struggling insect.

Paul imagined Taft’s return, those bloodied, space suited hands reaching for him, as they had for Green—

There was a joystick at the front of the car.

He pushed himself out of his chair and stood swaying. He took cautious steps along the narrow aisle, looking neither to left nor right.

Nervously he pushed at the joystick. The car lurched a few yards; Paul stumbled back, grabbing the arm of the nearest chair. He felt a grin spread over his face. Had Taft expected him to sit patiently and wait to die? He pushed the stick once more. Motors whirred and the car slid along the Edge.

Taft dumped Green’s inert form and came floundering back up the slope, a toy figure gesturing in tiny frustration.

Paul settled into a seat and let the satisfaction of the small victory settle over him. There would be plenty of time to face the future later… when the car reached Corner Mountain, with nowhere else to go.

The car patiently climbed the Edge’s increasing slope. The brightness of the Faces continued to increase; at last the car’s lower windows opaqued automatically.

Paul could see Taft following, a silver-suited doll riding an open maintenance buggy up the dizzying slopes of the Edge. For the first few hours Paul let Taft speak to him. When the half-rational arguments turned to sobbed pleas for understanding Paul snapped the radio off.

The Corner Mountain became visible as a sharp angle against the stars. The car slowed to a halt, tipped up at about thirty-five degrees.

Paul closed his helmet and stepped through the airlock. His footsteps were light, airy; Green had told him how, this far from the mass center of the Lump, gravity would be down to a third that at the City. The brilliance of the surface hit him with a soft impact. Heat soaked through the soles of his boots. With an odd sense of calm he worked his way up the slope to the summit, his feet on the tilted surfaces to either side of the Edge.

At last he stood unsteadily at the summit itself, feet wrapped around the sharp-edged point, arms extended for balance. The vertical lurched around him as his inner ear sought the way to the center of mass of the Sugar Lump.

Taft had abandoned his vehicle and was scrambling up the dazzling ridge. Paul felt a huge peace, as if he were once more in the metaphorical palm of the antiXeelee. He turned slowly, feet working around the summit. Three square Faces as wide as Earth shared corners at the point where he stood; he saw Edges disappear into infinity, watched Faces collapse into glowing lines of abstraction.

Sugar Lump. Edge. Corner Mountain. He found himself laughing. Harmless words used to shield men from the astonishing truth of a world shaped like a cube, of a made thing whirling and sparkling in space.

Taft stood before him. The light showed him to be a machine of pulleys, cables and gears; quantum functions sparkled unnoticed around his eyes and fingers.

Paul smiled. And jumped backwards.

Taft stumbled forward, reaching. Then he was gone, eclipsed by an Edge.

Paul let his limbs dangle. Spline warships paddled across his view like agitated fish.

He was approaching a glowing Face. What next? Would he strike, bounce away, proceed skipping and sliding? Would the impacts crush his bones? Would the heat of the surface reach through the suit and boil his flesh?

The certainty of his death was unreal, intangible, un-threatening.

Now, why should that be? Was his death to be as great a mystery as his origin? Would he die ignorant of the answers of both the great questions of his existence — where did I come from? and where am I going to?

Or perhaps the two answers were somehow linked…

He found he hoped Taft and Green would survive.

The Face rushed at him. Wave functions rippled like grass in a breeze.

Folded ships hung around him like moths.

There was a sense of motion, a thrumming of huge engines somewhere; as if the Sugar Lump and its contents were a great liner, forging through some huge sea.

The antiXeelee cradled him. It studied him dispassionately, huge and cold. Paul felt knowledge wash over him, and slowly understanding grew.

The cube planet had been created at that moment — far in the future of mankind — when the Xeelee reached their full glory. And were ready to depart.

(Depart? Where to? Why? The answers were — awesome; beyond his comprehension.)

On its completion the cube — with its guardian, the antiXeelee, and with a million others — had been sent on an impossible voyage, forging back through the unfolding ages to the birth time of the Xeelee themselves. The Xeelee would erupt fully developed from the cubes, shaking out the wings of their beautiful spacecraft and ready for their huge projects. Paul sought human words to capture the vast concepts sailing around him. Vacuum diagrams! The cube worlds were antiparticles, moving back through time to initiate their own creation. The whole of Xeelee history was a single, vast vacuum diagram, closed and complete of itself.

But… what of me?

Now Paul sensed a monstrous amusement. He was cupped within gigantic palms for an unmeasurable period; the time engines surged steadily into the past—

And then he was lifted up and released like a captive bird.

He looked down. He was outside the Sugar Lump, falling towards it. Spline ships converged. There was the City, still alive with the hopes of Taft and the rest, spreading over the meteorite debris. On the rim of the debris was a fallen figure, a young man in a soiled spacesuit lying facedown on the glowing surface.

Understanding came at last.

I have no beginning. I have no end. My lifeline is caught up in the vast Xeelee expedition into the past. I am a vacuum diagram, too, closed on myself. He remembered the absurd refrain: “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here…”

He tumbled into the head of the fallen man. Skull darkness hit him like a physical shock, and he felt the pieces of his understanding shatter like a dropped vessel, his memories seep away.

In the end he was left only with a vast amusement. Then even that fell away.

Paul opened his eyes.

His body ached. He lay facedown on a surface that glowed with white light. Grass, or fine hair, washed over the surface.

What is this place? How did I get here? And…

What’s my name?

His face grew slick with sweat; his breath sawed through his mouth. He perceived the shape of answers, like figures seen through a fog. He writhed against the shining ground.

The answers floated away.

A meaningless jingle ran around his mind: “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here…”

The grass vanished. He waited, hollow.

A hundred heroes, a hundred fragments — but understanding did not come: What was the goal of the Xeelee? Why were they trying to rebuild their own history?

And what was the significance of Bolder’s Ring? — why were the Xeelee trying to escape from the Universe itself?

Like leaves, the centuries fell away. Humanity’s growth in power and influence grew exponentially. But the legend of Xeelee achievements — the manipulation of space and time, the Ring itself — grew into a deep-rooted mythology.