Hormones are great weavers of illusions. That was most clever, using the natural response of yourself and her to mask your speech. Little problems, indeed. Quite probably the Mantis could not penetrate it to understand what you meant. Still, I do feel you could perhaps have negotiated with it a more safe resolution of—

Killeen cut off the Aspect with a gruff grunt. Shibo lifted an eyebrow at him, as if suspecting what went on. He grinned.

Cermo-the-Slow asked about some details and Killeen answered with only part of his mind. He was tired but he did not want to rest. There was so much to understand and so few clues. He would have to listen to his Aspects more than ever, but always on guard against their incursions, their willfulness.

He wondered idly if the Mantis had such problems. What was an anthology intelligence? Wasn’t Killeen, with his Aspects and Faces and own self-doubts, a collection of minds? As he grew older, parts of himself came into view like fresh landscape.

That was what the Mantis missed. Mech civilization was beyond humanity’s grasp in many ways, but of one thing Killeen was sure. The machines lived forever in some sense, their myriad selves gathered up and reprocessed in some collective mind. The impulse to do that must have come long ago from the same despair that afflicted humans—the sure knowledge of a personal, final end.

So the mechs had made immortality their greatest aim. Renegades who wanted to preserve all their minds were condemned. Somehow, mech civilization had decided that only a fraction of a single consciousness was worth saving. So it promised a salvation of sorts. Killeen had listened to the rantings of his own Nialdi Aspect and knew that the idea of some God-granted life was a powerful drive. Humans had believed that, too. Mechs had made it real. They had sought and found a way out of the crush of matter and time. Their world was one of perpetual obedience to a single order, because to disobey meant true oblivion.

And that was where the Mantis had missed the essence of the thing. Killeen knew this in a way he could not express, any more than he could say out loud what he felt when he put his arm around the shoulder of his son. But he knew it all the same.

Death’s sure and steady measure was not pure evil. It brought an intense poignant richness to every moment. To mortal men each day came once and forever and struck sure into the heart. The machines would never know that. They lived in a kind of still gray death, where no one moment meant anything, because all moments were alike.

Only the dreaming vertebrates knew that life held more than that.

Which was why the Argo voyaged up. They moved across dark vaults beneath shimmering stars, the great sky river, perhaps to some tranquil end and perhaps equally to final black oblivion. But outward. Outwanrd.

* * *

He was passing down a corridor on the way to see to some trouble when Cermo-the-Slow and three Rooks stopped him to ask about still another problem. There had been no time to call a meeting of Families, a Witnessing of all the events which had befallen them so quickly, a time to sort it all out. But when they had all settled on a solution to the problem Cermo grinned and said, “Yeasay, Cap’n.”

The four of them matter-of-factly departed. Killeen stood looking after them blankly This was a ship and she was under his helm. But he had not fully thought of the fact that this was the first time in a long drumroll of centuries when the conditions of the title were again met. Killeen blinked and even mouthed the word out loud. Then, slowly, he nodded.

Timeline of Galactic Series

2019

A.D.

Nigel Walmsley encounters the Snark, a mechanical scout.

2024

Ancient alien starship found wrecked in Marginis crater, on Earth’s moon.

2041

First signal received at Earth from Ra.

2049

First near-light-speed interstellar probes.

2060

Modified asteroid ships launched, using star-ship technology extracted from Marginis wreck.

2064

Lancer

starship launched with Nigel Walmsley aboard.

2066

Discovery of machine intelligence Watchers.

2067

First robotic starship explorations. Swarmers and Skimmers arrive at Earth.

2076

Lancer

arrives at Ra. Discovery of the “microwave-sighted” Natural society.

2077

Lancer

departs Ra.

2081

Mechanicals trigger nuclear war on Earth.

2085

Starship

Lancer

destroyed at Pocks. Watcher ship successfully attacked, with heavy human losses.

2086

Nigel Walmsley and others escape in Watcher ship, toward Galactic Center. Humans launch robot starship vessels to take mechanical technology to Earth.

2088

Humans contain Swarmer-Skimmer invasion. Alliance with Skimmers.

2095

Heavy human losses in taking of orbital Watcher ships. Annihilation of Watcher fleet. No mechanical technology captured due to suicide protocols among Watchers.

2097

Second unsuspected generation of Swarmers emerges.

2098

First in-flight message received from Walmsley expedition: “We’re still here. Are you there?”

2111

Final clearing of Earth’s oceans.

2128

Robot vessels from Pocks arrive at Earth carrying mechanical technology. Immediate use by recovering human industries.

2175

Second mechanical-directed invasion of Earth, using targeted cometary nuclei from Oort cloud. Rebuilding of human civilization.

2302

Third mechanical-directed invasion of Earth. The Aquila Gambit begins successive novas in near-Earth stars. Beginning of Ferret Time.

2368

First mechanical attempt to make Sun go nova. Failure melts poles of Earth.

2383

Second nova attempt. Continents severely damaged.

2427

Fourth mechanical-directed invasion of Earth. Rebuilding of human civilization.

2593

Fifth mechanical-directed invasion of Earth. Diplomatic ploy thwarted.

2763

Fifty-seventh Walmsley message received: “Are you there?”

3264

First expedition launched toward Galactic Center from Earth.

4455

First appearance of fourth chimpanzee species; clear divergence from host,

Homo sapiens,

the third species.

FLIGHT OF HUMAN FLEET TO GALACTIC CENTER “THE BIG JUMP”

29,059

Formation of added geometries to Wedge space-time around the central black hole. Old One manipulation of local Galactic Center space-time, apparently in anticipation of further mechanical-Natural violence. Mechanical forms carry out first incursions into Old One structures.