Poole, sitting cross-legged on the thin cushion, settled back on his haunches. He peered into the girl’s calm face. There was something about Shira that troubled him. It was hard to remember that in the absence of AS treatment, her chronological age was the same as her biological age; and youth, Poole realized with a twinge of sadness, had become a novelty in his world. But for a girl of twenty-five she had an inner deadness that was almost frightening. She had described the bloody history of mankind, the depressing vista of endless, undignified war between the stars — even the Qax Occupation, of which her knowledge was firsthand — with flat disinterest.

It was as if, Poole realized uneasily, life held no meaning for this girl.

He leaned forward. "All right, Shira, let’s not play games. I know what you’re doing here; what I don’t yet know is why."

Shira dropped her eyes to the empty tray, the cooling food. She asked quietly, "And what is it, in your judgment, that we are intending to do?"

Poole thumped his fist against the Xeelee-material floor. "Your earth-craft is a honeycomb of singularities. And that, apart from the hyperdrive, is all you seem to have brought back through time.

"And you’ve stayed in Jovian orbit. You could have used your hyperdrive to go anywhere in the System, or beyond…

"I think you’re planning to implode Jupiter; to use your singularities to turn it into a black hole."

He heard Harry gasp. Berg touched his shoulder. "My God, Michael; now you know why I wanted you here. Do you think they can do it?"

"I’m sure they can." Poole kept his eyes locked on Shira’s downturned face. "And it’s obvious that the Project is something to do with the overthrow, or the removal, of the Qax from their future Occupation. But I don’t yet know how it will work. Nor have I decided if we should let them do it."

Shira lifted her head to him now, her weak blue eyes lit by a sudden anger. "How dare you oppose us? You’ve no idea what we intend; how can you have the audacity—"

"How can you have the audacity to change history?" Poole asked quietly.

Shira closed her eyes and sat in a lotuslike position for a few seconds, her thin chest swelling with deep, trembling breaths. When she opened her eyes again she seemed calmer. "Michael Poole, I would prefer you as an ally than as an enemy."

He smiled at her. "And I you."

She stood, her limbs unwinding gracefully. "I must consult." And without saying any more, she nodded and left.

Poole and Berg picked at the cooling food; Harry watched them through a haze of static.

Chapter 8

Parz, alone, curled tightly, floated in Spline entoptic fluid.

"Jasoft Parz. Jasoft. You should wake now." Parz uncurled abruptly, the dense entoptic liquid and his skintight environment suit making the movements of his limbs heavy. He blinked to clear sleep from his eyes. A single light globe floated with him, casting a shadowless light on the rough, bloodred walls of the three-yard-wide chamber that contained him; the heavy fluid, disturbed by his movements, cast graceful, waved shadows on the walls.

For a second he was disoriented, unable to remember where he was, why he was here; he thrashed, helpless as a trapped fish, clumsily swimming toward the nearest wall. Tubes trailed after him like transparent umbilicals, linking him to a heavy metal box fixed to one wall. "Parz. Are you awake? It is time." The voice of the Qax — of the new Governor of Earth, the bleak, murderous Qax from the future — sounded again, but it had an oddly calming effect on Parz as he clung to thick folds in the fleshy wall of the chamber; his fragmented attention clustered around the words, and something of his composure returned.

He whispered, finding his throat closed and dry. "Yes, I’m awake."

"I will open the eyelid."

"No, please." Jasoft, with a bizarre sense of modesty, felt reluctant to have the curtains of this makeshift sleeping chamber drawn aside before he was fully ready. He pushed away from the wall and operated controls embedded in the right wrist of his suit. "Give me a minute."

The Qax did not reply; Parz envisaged its impatience.

Parz’s skinsuit, a transparent overlay over thin cotton garments, had been designed for long-duration wear. Now Parz felt the material whisper over his skin; his pores were cleansed, his beard, toenails, and fingernails trimmed back. The inside of his faceplate extruded a nipple that pressed into his lips, and an ice-cool liquid flavored like fresh apple juice coursed into his mouth. When he was done he opened his mouth and let ultrasonics work at his teeth.

He emptied his bladder and watched the waste filter back along the pipes to the wall unit for recycling.

His breakfast and toilet over, Parz spent a few minutes bending and stretching, trying to work all of his major muscle groups. He worked particularly on his back and shoulders; after eight hours in a fetal position his upper spine — still heavy with age, despite the AS treatments — creaked with a papery stiffness. When he was done he was breathing a little deeper and he felt the tingle of fresh blood reaching his flesh. Ruefully he realized that this was as good as he was going to feel all day. These suits were good at what they did, but living in one was no substitute for a decent cabin: for waking up to a shower with fresh water, and a breakfast of something you could actually bite into, damn it.

Well, that hadn’t been an option. Nor had his attendance on this whole damn mission of the Qax’s, of course.

"Parz," the Qax rasped. "You’ve had five minutes."

Parz nodded. "I’m sorry," he said. "I needed time to wake up properly."

The Qax seemed to think that over. "Parz, the next few subjective hours could be the most significant in the history of both our species. You are privileged to act as the only human of your era to witness these events. And you took time to cleanse yourself after your sleep?"

"I’m human," Parz snapped. "Even when the world is coming to an end I have to put my trousers on one leg at a time."

The Qax considered that. "And your metaphorical trousers are now on?"

"Open the damn eyelid."

The walls of the Spline’s huge eyeball trembled, sending small shock waves through the heavy entoptic fluid; the waves brushed against Jasoft’s skin like light fingers. Muscles hauled at sheets of heavy flesh, and the eyelid lifted like a curtain. Through the rubbery grayness of the Spline’s cornea salmon-pink light swept into the eyeball like a false dawn, dwarfing the yellow glow of Jasoft’s light globe, and causing his slender, suspended form to cast a blurred shadow on the purple-veined retina behind him. Jasoft swam easily to the inside face of the pupil; feeling oddly tender about the Spline’s sensations he laid his suited hands carefully on the warm, pliant substance of the lens.

The huge lens turned the outside universe into a blurred confusion of pink, gunmetal-gray, and baby-blue; Jasoft kept his eyes steady, giving his eyes’ image-enhancing software time to work. After a few seconds deconvolution routines cut in with an almost audible click, transforming the blurred patches to objects of clarity and menace.

There was Jupiter, of course: cyclones larger than Earth tracked across its bruised, purple-pink countenance. Another ship glided past — a second Spline, its pore pits bristling with sensors and weaponry. The eyeball Parz inhabited rotated to follow the second ship, and swirls in the entoptic fluid buffeted Parz, causing him to bounce gently against the lens.

Now Parz’s Spline turned, driven by some interior flywheel of flesh, blood, and bone; the eye swept away from Jupiter and fixed on the baby-blue patch he’d seen earlier, now resolved into a tetrahedron of exotic matter. Sheets of elusive silver-gold stretched across the triangular faces of the Interface portal, sometimes reflecting shattered images of Jupiter, sometimes scattering elusive glimpses of other times, other starfields, of a younger Jupiter… of a defenseless past.