"Well, at least we know what’s going on now," Harry said brightly. "But now comes the difficult bit. Do we help them… or try to stop them?"

The basket of blue light at the zenith had grown to the size of a fist.

Shira shrugged, almost casually. "I have no more influence to exert on you. I can only rely on your wisdom."

"Right." Michael pursed his lips. "But you weren’t so keen on trusting to that wisdom earlier, were you?"

"We did not believe you would understand," she said simply. "We calculated it was more likely to yield success if we proceeded alone."

"Yes," said Parz coldly. "Perhaps you were wise to attempt such a course, my dear. I have learned that these people, from fifteen centuries before our shared era, are behind us in knowledge and some experiences, but are our peers — more than our peers — in wisdom. I suspect you knew what the reaction of these people would be to your schemes; you knew they would oppose you."

Shira looked at Michael uncertainly.

He said, somehow reluctant, unwilling to be cruel to this young, earnest girl, "He’s talking about hubris, Shira. Arrogance."

"We are attempting to avert the extinction of the species," Shira said, her voice fragile.

"Maybe. Shira, to my dying day I will honor the courage, the ingenuity of the Friends. To have constructed the earth-craft under the very eyes of the Qax; to have hurled yourselves unhesitatingly into an unknown past… Yes, you have courage and vision. But — what right do you have to tinker with the history of the universe? What gives you the wisdom to do that, Shira? — regardless of the validity of your motives. Listen, you scared us all to death when we thought you were just trying to create a naked singularity. That would have set off an unpredictable explosion of acausality. But in fact you’re trying to disrupt causality deliberately — and on the largest scale."

"You dare not oppose us," Shira said. Her face was a mask of anger, of almost childish resentment.

Michael closed his eyes. "I don’t think I dare allow you to go ahead. Look, Shira, maybe the whole logic of your argument is flawed. For a start the philosophical basis for the whole thing — that particular resolution of the Wigner paradox — is speculative, just one among many."

Parz nodded. "And where is the evidence of this onward advance of life that you’ve based your hopes on? The most advanced species we know are the Xeelee. But the Xeelee don’t fit the description, give no evidence of sharing the goals you’ve advanced. They show no signs of having the gathering and recording of data as their key racial motive. Indeed, their goal seems to be very different — the construction of their Kerr-metric gateway to another universe — and they seem prepared to destroy data, in the form of structures on an intergalactic scale, to do it. So how will this cosmic eye, this Ultimate Observer of yours, ever come about, if even the Xeelee don’t want to lead us toward its formation?"

Her nostrils flared. "You’re not going to help us. You’re going to try to stop us. Michael Poole, you are—"

Poole held his hands up. "Look, don’t bother insulting me again. I’m sure I’m a fool, but I’m a fool who doesn’t trust himself where a final solution to the history of the universe is concerned. I’d do anything to avert the imposition of such a ‘solution,’ I think."

"Perhaps the Project won’t, or can’t, succeed," Shira said. "But it remains humanity’s best and only hope of removing the Qax yoke."

"No," he said. He smiled, an immense sadness sweeping over him; he felt irrationally ashamed at his systematic demolition of this young person. "That’s the clinching argument, I’m afraid, Shira. The fact is, we don’t need your Project." He nodded to Parz. "Jasoft has told us. Humans will get out from under the oppression of the Qax. It won’t be easy — and it will cost the Qax almost everything — but it will be done, we know that now, and it will come from the simple, surprising actions of a single man. From the unpredictability of humanity." He studied her empty face, the surface of an incomplete personality, he realized now. "Ordinary humanity will beat the Qax in the end, Shira. But that’s beyond your imagining, isn’t it? We won’t need your grandiose schemes to sabotage history to win freedom."

"But—"

"And the only way that destiny can be subverted, as far as I can see," Michael pressed on, "is if we leave that portal open; if we allow the Qax themselves more chances to change history — in their favor. I’m sorry I had anything to do with building the damn thing, unleashing all this trouble in the first place. Now, all I want to do is to put that right—"

"You’ll be killed," Shira said, as if clutching at straws of argument.

He laughed. "Funnily enough, that doesn’t seem to matter so much anymore… But I don’t want to take you all with me, if I don’t have to. Harry, give me an option to get them off before we hit."

"Working," Harry said calmly. "Thirteen minutes to the portal, now."

Parz seemed to squirm, uncomfortable, in his chair. "I’m not certain I deserve such a reprieve," he said.

"Then think of it as an assignment," Michael said briskly. "I need you to get this girl off the ship. Do you think she’s going to go voluntarily?"

Parz briefly studied Shira, who still stood before Michael, clenching and unclenching her small fists. "Perhaps not," he said sadly.

"Twelve minutes," Harry said.

Chapter 14

From a scarred, bruised socket in the elephant-gray hide of the Spline, a three-yard-wide eyeball popped into space, trailing a length of thick optic nerve. Antibody drones, squabbling and scrambling over each other, swarmed over the translucent surface of the eyeball and along the length of the nerve trunk. Red laser light sparked from the mouths of a dozen of the drones, sawing at the trunk; at last the trunk parted, with fully a yard of its length disintegrating into laser-sliced fragments. The warship surged up toward the blue mouth of the Interface portal; drones, scrabbling to hang on, slid away from the abandoned eyeball and from the severed trunk, still spitting at each other with tiny, fierce bolts of laser light.

As the Spline receded to a knot of bruised flesh Jasoft Parz turned and surveyed the interior of the eye chamber. His only companion, the Wigner girl Shira, floated somewhere near the eyeball’s geometric center, her thin body curled into a loose fetal position, her eyes half-closed. Studying her, Parz felt suddenly vulnerable in this chamber, dressed as he was only in this ill-fitting, rather worn gown of Michael Poole’s. The entoptic fluid had been drained, the eyeball hurriedly pumped full of air, to accommodate the two of them; and he had forgone his skinsuit, in order to share the dangers Shira would have to face.

He shivered with a sudden chill of fear, of nakedness.

He sought something to say.

"You must not fear the future, my dear. Michael Poole has done his best to preserve us from the fate he has decreed for himself. We have air in this chamber sufficient for many hours, and Poole has given us heating elements, a packet of water and food. We should survive long enough to be picked up by the craft of this era. And I’ve every reason to believe you’ll soon be reunited with your own people, on the earth-craft."

Now she swiveled her head to face him; her watery-blue eyes seemed bruised, as if from the aftermath of weeping. "Cold comfort from a servant of the Qax, Jasoft Parz."

He tried not to flinch. "I can’t blame you for that," he said patiently. "But such labels are behind us now, Shira. We are here, you and I, in this ancient time frame; and here, after the destruction of the Interface, we will spend the rest of our lives. You must begin to accept that, and think forward—"