"Why didn’t he tell me?"

Harry’s expression hardened. "He didn’t know how to tell you. He was genuinely concerned about hurting you — I hope you believe that. But the basic reason was that the two of you haven’t shared a moment of closeness, of — of intimacy — since you were ten years old. That’s why." He glared down at Michael. "What did you expect? He turned to his friends, Michael."

"I’m sorry."

"So am I," said Harry earnestly. "So was he. But that was the way it was."

"There’s the trouble with living so damned long," Michael said. "Soured relationships last forever." He shook his head. "But still… I’d never even have heard about it if you hadn’t been transmitted out to persuade me to come in from the Oort Cloud."

"They — the multigovernment committee set up to handle this incident — thought I’d have a better chance of persuading you if you didn’t know; if I didn’t tell you about the death."

Michael almost smiled. "Why the hell did they think that?"

"What do multigovernment committees know about the relationship between father and son?"

The walls of the wormhole seemed to be constricting like a throat. Still the lightning-like splashes of light shone through the walls. "I think it’s time," Michael said. "You’ll handle the hyperdrive?"

"Sure. I guess you don’t need a countdown… Michael. You have a message."

"What are you talking about? Who the hell can be contacting me now?"

Harry, his face straight, said, "It’s a representative of the rebel antibody drones. They’re not unintelligent, Michael; somehow they’ve patched into a translator circuit. They want me to let them talk to you."

"What do they want?"

"They’ve ringed the hyperdrive. The drones consider it, ah, a hostage."

"And?"

"They’re willing to sue for peace. In the spirit of interspecies harmony. They have a long list of conditions, though." Harry frowned down at Michael. "Do you want to hear what they are? First—"

"No. Just tell me this. Do you still control the hyperdrive?"

"Yes."

Michael felt the tension drain out of his neck muscles, it seemed for the first time in days; a sensation of peace swept over him. He laughed. "Tell them where they can stick their list."

Harry’s head ballooned. He smiled, young and confident. "I think it’s time. Good-bye, Michael."

The hyperdrive engaged. The Spline warship convulsed.

Ribbons of blue-white light poured through the cracking walls of spacetime; Michael could almost feel the photons as they sleeted through the absurd fragility of the lifedome.

A lost corner of Michael’s consciousness continued to analyze, even to wonder. He was seeing unbearable shear stresses in twisted spacetime resolving themselves into radiant energy as the wormhole failed. At any moment now the residual shielding of the lifedome would surely collapse; already the flesh of the Spline corpse must be boiling away. Knowing what was happening didn’t really help, of course — something which, Michael thought, it was a bit late to discover.

Harry’s Virtual imploded, finally, under the pressure of the godlike glare beyond the dome.

Bits of the wormhole seemed literally to fall away before the Crab. Cracks in spacetime opened up like branching tunnels, receding to infinity.

Michael wasn’t sure if that should be happening. Maybe this wouldn’t go quite to plan -

Spacetime was shattering. Michael screamed and pressed his fists to his eyes.

On the earth-craft, the image of the Interface portal glittered on every data slate.

Miriam Berg sat on scorched grass, close enough to the center of the earth-craft that she could see, beyond the flattened construction-material homes of the Friends of Wigner, the brownish sandstone shards that marked the site of the ancient henge.

Jasoft Parz, clothed in a fresh but ill-fitting Wignerian coverall, sat close to her, his short legs stretched out on the grass. The Narlikar’s only boat stood on blackened earth close by her. The D’Arcys had returned her here, after her retrieval of Shira and Jasoft Parz from the Spline’s severed eyeball.

She was aware that Parz’s green eyes were fixed on her. That he was almost radiating sympathy.

Well, damn him. Damn them all.

Her legs tucked under her, Miriam stared at the slate on her lap, at the delicate image of the portal it contained, as if willing herself to travel into the slate, shrinking down until she, too, could follow Michael Poole through the spacetime wormhole. If she concentrated really hard she could shut out all the rest of it — this strange, rather chilling man from the future beside her, the distant activities of the Friends — even the damned thin air and irregular gravity of the devastated earth-craft.

The moment stretched. The portal glimmered like a diamond in her slate.

Then, with shocking suddenness, blue-white light flared silently inside the portal, gushing from every one of the tetrahedral frame’s facets. It was as if a tiny sun had gone nova inside the frame. The light of the wormhole’s collapse glared from the slates carried by Parz, the Friends, as far as she could see; it was as if everyone held a candle before them, and the light generated by that failing spacetime flaw illuminated all their young, smooth faces.

The light died. When she looked again at her slate the portal was gone; broken fragments of the exotic-matter frame, sparking, tumbled away from a patch of space that had become ordinary, finite once more.

She threw the slate facedown on the grass.

Jasoft Parz laid his slate more gently on the ground. "It is over," he said. "Michael Poole has succeeded in sealing the wormhole; there can be no doubt."

Berg shoved her fingers, hard, into the battered earth, welcoming the pain of bent-back nails. "Those damn struts of exotic matter will have to be cleared. Hazard to navigation."

He said, "It is over, you know. You’ll have to find ways of letting it go."

"Letting what go?"

"The past." He sighed. "And, in my case, the future."

She lifted her head, studied the huge, brooding bulk of Jupiter. "The future is still yours… your own future. There is plenty for you to explore here. And the Friends, of course."

He smiled. "Such as?"

"AS treatment for a start. And, for the first time in your lives, some modern — sorry, ancient — health checks."

Jasoft smiled, quietly sad. "But we are aliens on our native planet. Stranded so far from our own time—"

She shrugged. "There are plenty of you, including the Friends. And they’re young, basically fit. You could found a colony; there’s plenty of room. Or head for the stars." She smiled, remembering the strange voyage of the Cauchy. "Of course we don’t yet have the hyperdrive to offer you. Strictly sublight only… But the wonder of the journey is no less for that, I can assure you."

"Yes. Well, Miriam, such projects might attract these young people, if not me…"

She looked at him now. "what do you mean? What about you, Jasoft?"

He smiled and spread his long, age-withered fingers. "Oh, I think my story is over now. I’ve seen, done, learned more than I ever dreamed. Or deserved to."

Her eyes narrowed. "You’re going to refuse further AS treatment? Look, if you feel some guilt about the function you performed in the Qax Occupation era, nobody in this age is going to—"

"It’s not that," he said gently. "I’m not talking about some complicated form of suicide, my dear. And I don’t suffer greatly from guilt, despite the moral ambivalence of what I’ve done with my life. I certainly believe I left my era for the last time aboard that damn Spline warship having done more good than harm… It’s just that I think I’ve seen enough. I know all I could wish to know, you see. I know that although the Project of these rebels — the Friends of Wigner — has failed, Earth will ultimately be liberated from the fist of the Qax. I don’t need to learn anything more. I certainly don’t feel I need to see any more of it laboriously unfold. Do you understand that?"