Not only that, you could actually tell you were embedded in a sheet of stars. If Pirius looked straight ahead his eyes met a kind of horizon, a faint band of gray-white light that marked the position of the Galactic equator: the light of millions of stars muddled up together. Away from the plane, overhead or down below, there were only scattered handfuls of nearby stars — you could immediately see how thin this disc was — and beyond that there was only blackness, the gulf, he supposed, of intergalactic space.

The corvette wasn’t alone. It was one of a stream of ships, a great thread of swimming sparks that slid across the face of the Galaxy. If he looked around the sky he could see more streams of light, all more or less parallel to this one, some of them passing back to the center, others running out to the periphery. Occasionally a companion ship passed close enough to make out detail. These were usually Spline vessels, vast meaty spheres pocked with glistening weapons.

Nilis was watching him. Pirius started to feel self-conscious.

Nilis waved a hand. “Marvelous, isn’t it — all this? A human Galaxy! Of course, if you were to drop at random into the plane of the Galaxy, chances are you’d see little enough evidence of human presence. We’re following a recognized lane, Ensign, a path where ships huddle together in convoys for mutual protection — this convoy alone is hundreds of light-years long. And you can see the Navy Splines assigned to guide and shield us. We’ve driven the Xeelee back to their Prime Radiant in the Core, but they are still out there — in the galactic halo, even in other galaxies — and they are not averse to plunging down from out of the disc to mount raids.”

Pirius glanced up uneasily at the dark dome of the sky.

Nilis went on, “But even so, even on a galactic scale, you can see the workings of mankind. Think of it! On hundreds of millions of worlds right across the Galaxy’s disc, resources are mined, worked, poured into the endless convoys that flow into the Core — and there on the factory worlds they are transformed to weaponry and fighting ships, to be hurled inward and burned up, erased by the endless friction of the Front itself. Of course, after so long, many worlds are dead, used up, exhausted and abandoned. But there are always more to be exploited. So it goes on, it seems, until the Galaxy itself is drained to feed the war, every bit of it devoted to a single purpose.”

Pirius wasn’t sure what to say. “It’s remarkable, sir.”

Nilis raised an eyebrow. “Remarkable? Is that all?” He sighed. “The Coalition discourages the study of history, you know. That’s according to the Druz Doctrines, in their strictest form. There is no past, no future: there is only now. And it is a now of eternal war. But I have looked back into the past. I have consulted records, libraries, some official, some not, some even illegal. And I have learned that we have been devoted to this single cause, to expansion or war, for twenty thousand years. Why, the human species itself is only some hundred thousand years old!

“It’s been too long. We have become rigid, ossified. There is no development in our politics, our social structures, even our technology. Science is moribund, save for the science of weaponry. We live out lives identical in every respect to those of our forebears. You know, there used to be more innovation in a decade than you see in a thousand years now.

“In a way, the Xeelee themselves don’t matter anymore — no, don’t look so shocked, it’s true! You could replace the Xeelee with another foe and it would make no difference; they are a mere token. We have forgotten who we are, where we came from. All we remember, all we know, is the war. It defines mankind. We are the species that makes war on the Xeelee, nothing else.”

“Sir — is that such a bad thing?”

“Yes!” Nilis slammed his fist onto the arm of his chair. “Yes, it is. You know why? Because of the waste.” He reeled off statistics.

Around the Front there were a hundred human bases, which supported a billion people each, on average. And the turnover of population in those bases was about ten years.

“That means that ten billion people a year are sacrificed on the Front, Pirius. The number itself is beyond comprehension, beyond empathy. Ten billion. That’s more than three hundred every single second. It is estimated that, in all, some thirty trillion humans have given their lives to the war: a number orders of magnitude higher than the number of stars in this wretched Galaxy we’re fighting over. What a waste of human lives!

“But there is hope — and it lies with the young, as it always did.” Nilis leaned forward with a kind of aged eagerness. “You see, at Sag A East, despite a lifetime of conditioning, when it came to your crisis you — or at least your future self — threw off the dead imperative of the Doctrines. You improvised and innovated, you showed initiative, imagination, courage… And yet, such is the static nature of this old people’s war, you are seen as a threat, not a treasure.”

Pirius didn’t like the sound of that “conditioning.”

“That is why I asked for you, Ensign.” Nilis looked out at the swimming stars, the silent, ominous forms of the Spline escorts. “I reject this war, and I have spent most of my life seeking ways to end it. That doesn’t mean I seek defeat, or an accommodation with the Xeelee, for I believe none is possible. I seek a way to win — but that means I must overturn the status quo, and that is enough to have earned me enemies throughout the hierarchies of the Coalition. It is a lonely battle, and I grow old, tired — and, yes, afraid. I need your youth, your courage — and your imagination. Now, what do you think?”

Pirius frowned. “I don’t want to be anybody’s crutch, sir.”

Nilis flinched. But he said, “That brutal honesty of yours! Very well, very well. You will be no crutch, but a collaborator.”

Pirius said uneasily, “And I don’t see why you’re alone. What of your — family? You said something about a brother.”

Nilis turned away. “My parents were both senior Commissaries, who made the unpardonable error of falling in love. My family, and it was a family of the ancient kind, was as illegal on Earth as it would have been on Arches Base. The family was broken up when I was small — I was taken away.

“Of course my background is the key to me; any psychologist will tell you that. Why, the Doctrines deny women the right to experience giving birth! What a dreadful distortion that is. You yourself, Pirius, you were hatched, not born. You grew up in a sort of school, not a home. You have emerged socialized, highly educated. But — forgive me! — you are nothing but a product of your background. You have no roots. My background is, well, more primitive. So perhaps I feel the pain of the war’s brutal waste more than some of my colleagues.”

This made little sense to Pirius. On Arches, there was contraceptive in the very water. Men could get women pregnant — the old biology still worked — but it would be a pathology, a mistake. A pregnancy was like a cancer, to be cut out. The only way to pass on your genes was through the birthing tanks, and you only got to contribute to them if you performed well.

Nilis went on, “Since I lost my family, I have been neither one thing nor the other, neither rooted in a family nor comfortable in a world of birthing houses and cadres.” He glanced at Pirius. “Rather like you, Pirius, I have been punished for a crime I never committed.”

Pirius heard a soft sigh. Glancing back he saw Torec, standing behind a half-open door. She was wearing a shapeless sleeping gown, and her face was puffy with too much sleep.

Nilis looked away, visibly embarrassed.

She said, “You’re teaching him to talk like you do, Commissary. Pretty soon he won’t sound like Navy at all. Is that what you want?”