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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
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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.
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"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 "
"I accept I am trapped," she said. "I accept little else."
"Trapped in the past? You shouldn't think of it like that. We have been brought to a new era in many
ways a better era, a golden age in man's history. Think of it, Shira; the humans of this era are looking
outward, only beginning to explore the potentialities of the universe in which they are embedded, and of
the resources of their own being. They have banished many of the ills social as well as physiological,
hunger, disease, untimely death which, thanks to the Qax, our lost contemporaries endure. There are
many projects here for you to "
"You don't understand," she snapped. "I do not mean trapped merely in the past. I mean trapped in the
future. Thanks to the destruction of the Project by the insane arrogance of Michael Poole, I am trapped
in this single, doomed timeline."
"Ah. Your vision of globally optimized event chains "
"Don't speak to me of visions, collaborator." Her words were delivered in an even, matter-of-fact tone,
and were the more stinging for that. "What visions have sustained you?"
He felt the muscles of his cheeks twitch. "Look, Shira, I'm trying to help you. If you want to insult me,
then that's fine. But sooner or later you're going to have to accept the fact that, like me, you're trapped
here. In the past."
She turned her head away again, quite gracefully, and bowed it toward her knees; her body rocked a
little in the air. "No," she said.
He began to feel irritated. "What do you mean, 'no'? Once the damn Interface is closed down you'll have
no way back to the future."
Now, unexpectedly, she smiled. "No shortcut. No, I accept that. But there is another way back. The
longer way."
He frowned.
She went on, "I mean to accept AntiSenescence treatment here. If I'm offered it, or can buy it. And
then "
" and then it's a simple matter of living through fifteen centuries fifty generations and waiting for
the reemergence of singularity technology. So you can start all over again. Is that what you mean?"
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Her smile lingered.
"How can you think in such terms?" he demanded. "You got to know Michael Poole; after two centuries
of life his head was so full of detritus, of layers of experience, that at times he could barely function. You
saw that, didn't you? Why did you think he spent decades, literally, alone in that GUT ship in the
cometary halo? And you're talking, almost casually, about lasting more than seven times as long. How
can any purpose endure through such an immense time scale? It's beyond the human..."
The girl did not reply, but her smile lingered on, inwardly directed; and Parz, despite his superiority in
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