Uvarov laughed. “Then what in Lethe’s waters are they? They fit most of the criteria I can think of.”

Lieserl quailed from the harshness of the ruined man’s tone, but she pressed on. “I just don’t think it’s helpful to think of them in that way. They’re doing what they’re doing — wrecking our Sun — because that’s what they do. By accelerating the stars through their lifecycles they’re building a better Universe for themselves, and their own offspring, their own future.” She groped for an image. “They’re like insects. Ants, perhaps.” She glanced around the table. “Do any of you know what I’m talking about? The birds are following their own species imperatives. Which just happen to cut across ours, is all.”

Mark nodded. “I think your analogy is a good one. The birds don’t even have to be alive, in our sense of the word, to accomplish enormous things — changes on a cosmic scale. From the way you’ve described their lifecycles, they sound like classic von Neumann self-replicating machines…”

Uvarov leaned forward; his head seemed to roll at the top of his thin neck. “Listen to me. Alive or not, conscious or not, the photino birds are our eternal, true enemy. Because they are of dark matter, we are of baryonic matter.”

Louise drained her brandy snifter and poured herself a fresh measure. “Maybe so. But for most of human history — as far as we can tell from the old Superet projections, and from the accounts Lieserl has provided us — the enemy of man was seen as the Xeelee.”

Uvarov smiled, eerily. “I don’t deny that, of course. Why should you be surprised at such a monumental misapprehension? My friends, even the comparatively few millennia of human history before our departure from the time streams in the Northern were a litany of ghastly errors: the tragi-comic working out of flaws hard-wired deep into our psyches, a succession of ludicrous, doomed enterprises fueled by illusions and delusions. I refer you to the history of religious conflict and economic ideology, for a start. And I see no reason to suppose that people got any wiser after we left.” He turned his head to Mark. “You were a socio-engineer, before you dropped dead,” he said bluntly. “You’ll confirm what I say. It seems to me that the Xeelee war — or wars — were no more than still another ghastly, epochal error of mankind. We know that the Xeelee inhabited a higher plane, intellectually, than humans ever could: you only have to consider that remarkable craft, the nightfighter, to see that. But humans being humans — could never accept that. Humans believed they must challenge the Xeelee: overthrow them, become petty kings of the baryonic cosmos.

“This absurd rivalry led, in the end, to the virtual destruction of the human species. And — worse — it blinded us to the true nature of the Xeelee, and their goals: and to the threat of the dark matter realm.

“It is clear to me now that there is a fundamental conflict in this Universe, between the dark and light forms of matter — a conflict which has, at last, driven the stars to their extinction. Differences among baryonic species — the Xeelee and ourselves, for instance — are as nothing compared to that great schism.”

Louise Ye Armonk frowned. “That’s a fairly gloomy scenario, Uvarov. Because if it’s true — ”

“If I’m correct, we face more than a simple search for safety beyond this imperilled Solar System. We may not be able to find a place to hide in this cosmos. Even if we were able to found some viable colony, the birds would come to seek it out, and destroy it. Because they must.”

Mark, the Virtual, seemed to be suppressing a laugh. “This Universe ain’t big enough for the both of us… Let me sum up: everyone’s dead, and the whole Universe is doomed. Well. How are we supposed to cope with an emergency like that?” He grinned.

Lieserl studied his face curiously. After their brief physical contact, she felt intensely aware of Mark. And yet, it disquieted her that he could speak so flippantly.

For if Uvarov was right, then it could be that the humans in this fragile old ship were the only people left alive in an implacably hostile Universe.

Lieserl seemed to shrink in on herself, as if cowering inside this recently rediscovered shell of humanity; she looked around at the serious, young-old faces in the candlelight. Could it be true? Was this — she wondered with a stab of self-pity — was this the final ironic joke to be played on her by a vicious fate? She had been born as an alien within her own species. Now she had returned — been welcomed, even — and was it only to find that the story of man was finished?

“I’m sorry,” Mark was saying; he seemed deliberately to calm down. “Look, Uvarov, what you’re saying sounds absurd. Impossibly pessimistic.”

“Absurd? Pessimistic?” Uvarov swiveled his blind eyes toward Mark. “You have sight; I do not. Show me a part of the sky free from the corruption wrought by these dark-matter crows.”

Mark’s grin grew uncertain. “But we can’t escape the cosmos.”

Now Uvarov smiled, showing the blackness of his toothless mouth. “Can’t we?”

Lieserl watched Uvarov with interest. His analysis of the Northern’s situation had a devastating clarity. He seemed to be prepared to address issues with unflinching honesty — more honestly than any of the others, including herself.

Perhaps this was why Louise Armonk kept Uvarov around, Lieserl speculated. As a human he was barely acceptable, and his sanity hung by a thread. But his logic was pitiless.

Spinner-of-Rope folded her bare arms on the tablecloth. “So, Doctor, you know better than all the generations of humans who ever lived.”

Uvarov sighed. “Perhaps I do, my dear. But then I have the benefit of hindsight.”

“Then tell us,” Louise said. “You said humans were blind to the goals of the Xeelee. What were the Xeelee up to, all this time?”

“It’s obvious.” Uvarov swept his empty eyes around the table, as if seeking a reaction. “The Xeelee are the dominant baryonic species — the baryonic lords. And they have led the fight, the climactic battle for the Universe, against these swarms of dark-matter photino birds. They have been striving to preserve themselves in the face of the dark matter threat.”

“And the human wars with the Xeelee — ”

” — were no more than an irritation to the Xeelee, I should judge. But a dreadful, strategic error by humanity.”

The group fell into silence; Lieserl noticed that the eyes of Trapper-of-Frogs had become huge with wonder, childlike. She stared into the candle flames, as if the truth of Uvarov’s words could be found there.

“All right,” Louise said sharply. “Uvarov, what I need to understand is where this leaves us. What should we actually do?”

There was a gurgling sound from within Uvarov’s wrapping of blankets; Lieserl, uneasily, realized that his chair was feeding him as he spoke.

“What we should do,” he said, “is obvious. We cannot possibly defend ourselves against the photino birds. Therefore we must throw ourselves on the mercy of our senior cousins — we must seek the protection of the baryonic lords, the Xeelee.”

Mark laughed. “And how, exactly, do we do that?”

“We have evidence that the Xeelee are constructing a final redoubt,” Uvarov said. “A last defense perimeter, within which they must intend to fall back. We must go there.”

Louise looked puzzled. “What evidence? What are you talking about?”

Mark thought for a moment. “He means the Great Attractor…” He summarized the findings of the anomalous gravity-wave emissions from the direction of the Attractor.

Louise frowned. “How do you know that’s anything to do with the Xeelee?”

“Well, it could make sense, Louise; from the gravity waves we’ve picked up, we know something is going on at the Attractor site. Some kind of activity… something huge. And there’s no sign of life anywhere else…”