Rodi raised an eyebrow. Sarcasm? “Please describe your world.”

“What world?”

It took some time to achieve a common understanding.

The stranded crew had observed the layer of soupy liquid at the star rim. The liquid was full of complex molecules, left over from the supernova’s fusion fury.

It was their only hope.

With astonishing audacity they had terraformed the ring-shaped sea. Then they began to mold their own unborn children.

Their descendants swam like fish in a dull red toroidal ocean, chattering English. They didn’t need hands or tools; only the old Comms System had been left for them, lasing its message to the skies. Rodi imagined the Comms Officer tapping a broad, unwearing key with his mouth or tongue.

Rodi sent down a small, sturdy probe. It was a passing novelty among the fish-folk. Rodi wondered if they thought he was swimming somewhere inside.

There was a death among the fish-folk. A corpse fell from a school of wailing relatives and settled slowly to the star’s glowing surface.

Rodi’s probe took a tissue sample from the corpse.

The fish-folk were beyond the reach of the glotto-chronology dating technique. Rodi turned to genetic analysis. Two groups on Earth will show divergence of genetic structure at a rate of one percent every five million years.

Rodi found that the fish-folk had swum their ocean for fifty thousand years.

That appalled him. How long had this damn Xeelee war dragged on? How many human lives had been wasted?

The fish-folk weren’t too impressed by the Integrality.

“All mankind is joined in freedom,” said Rodi. “The worlds in home space are joined by inseparability links into a neural network; decisions flow through the net and reflect the wills of all, not just one person or one group…”

And so on.

The Comms Officer was silent for a long time. Then: “What you say means little to us.”

“Your world is unchanging. You are isolated. You are cut out of the great events which shape the greater human history.”

“But great events mark our lives,” said the Comms Officer, and Rodi wondered if he had given offense. “Our convocations, for instance. There are places where we swim in concert and cause the ocean to sing. We did this not long ago.”

That puzzled Rodi. It sounded like a starquake, a sudden collapse of the crust; that would make the whole star ring like a bell.

Could they cause a starquake?

Perhaps they had some way of manipulating the star’s ferocious magnetic field. And after all, a quake had disrupted the Exaltation inseparability net not long ago.

After a fortnight Rodi took his leave of his friend.

“Wait,” the Comms Officer said unexpectedly. “I have a message to give you.” And he transmitted: “Our grand Foe, / Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy / Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven.”

“What does it mean?” asked Rodi.

“Unknown.”

“Then why do you send it?”

“Every Comms Officer is taught to send it.”

“Why?”

“What is ‘heaven’?”

“Unknown.”

Rodi thought of the rhyme the Moon children had taught Thet. To wage by force or guile eternal war / Irreconcilable to our grand Foe, / Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy…

The pieces fit together, he realized, astonished.

He transmitted his conclusion to Holism Ark for analysis.

Rodi went through the motions of lifting the flitter back to hyperspace, his thoughts clouded.

Once more his mission hadn’t unfolded as he’d been taught to expect.

The humans in this region had been forced to find their own ways to come to terms with the events that had stranded them. If they hadn’t they couldn’t have survived. So — why did they need the Integrality? — or a junior missionary like himself?

Was the Integrality’s crusade meaningless?…

The Exaltation’s formation had changed.

His speculations driven from his mind, he stared at his monitors. Around Holism Ark the fleet’s symmetrical pattern had been distorted into a wedge; at the tip the Arks’ fleshy walls were almost touching. Flitters scurried between the Arks; hundreds of closed-beam inseparability net messages radiated away from Holism Ark.

What was happening?

He pushed into Holism Ark. The maintenance bay was deserted. He flew through an axis filled with a harsh light. People rushed past, wings fluttering.

Men and women came along the axis shoving a cannon-like piece of equipment. Rodi recognized a machine-shop heavy-duty laser. He had to press against the wall to allow the team to pass. Their eyes passed blankly over him.

Rodi noticed a fist-sized, fleshy lump on the back of the neck of the nearest man, at the top of his spine.

The freefall common room was unrecognizable. Rodi clung to a wall and stared around. The floating tables were being cleared away; he saw a group of children shooed through the commotion.

There were more bulges on the spinal columns of the crew. Even the children were affected. Some sort of sickness?

A hundred crewmen worked to bolt together a huge, cubical lattice. Eventually, Rodi realized, it would fill the common room. Medical devices and supplies were strapped to struts. Rough hands pushed a man-sized bundle of blankets into the lattice. Then another, and a third…

Crew members in sterile masks unwrapped the bundles.

Suddenly Rodi saw it.

This was a hospital. It was being built in the soft heart of the Ark — the most protected place in case of attack. And towards the hull they were taking heavy-duty lasers — to use as weapons?

Holism Ark was preparing for war.

Rodi’s head pounded and there was a metallic taste at the back of his throat.

Thet came sweeping across the bustling space, towing a small package of clothes.

Rodi pushed away from the wall and grabbed her arm.

“The philosopher returns,” Thet said, grinning. Her eyes sparkled and her face was flushed.

There was a growth at the top of her spine.

“Thet… what’s happening?”

“I’m going to Unity Ark. As a Battle Captain. Isn’t it fantastic?”

“Battle? Against who?”

“The Xeelee. Who else? Why do you think we came all this way?”

Rodi tightened his grip on her upper arm. “We came for the Integrality. Remember? We came to remove war, not to wage it.”

She laughed in his face, her mouth wide. “That’s yesterday, Rodi. It’s all gone. And you know who we have to thank? You. Isn’t that ironic?” With fingers like steel she prised open his hand and kicked away.

“Where’s Gren?”

“In the sanatorium,” she called back. “And, Rodi… that’s your fault too.”

Rodi hung there for long minutes. Then he turned to the makeshift hospital.

Gren lay in a honeycomb of suffering people. Bandaging swathed his neck.

Rodi touched the shrunken face. Gren’s eyes flickered open. His face creased as he recognized Rodi. He whispered: “…our grand Foe, / Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy / Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven!” He grimaced. “You have to admire the planning. Over thousands of centuries, even as humans died before the Xeelee, they hid those words among thousands of fragments of verse, and built an epic deception…”

“Please,” Rodi said miserably, “I don’t understand any of this.”

Gren stirred. “I’m sorry, Rodi. The truth is that the Integrality is a fraud, an epic deception spanning millennia. Our mission was a lie which has allowed this huge armada to penetrate Xeelee space, its true purpose unknown even to generations of crew.

“The reassembled poetry was the key, you see. Hearing those words ignited something in each of us — something locked in the genetic code that defines us. We began to suffer explosive growths—”

Rodi fingered his own smooth neck.

“You’re a lucky one,” Gren whispered. “It doesn’t always work. A tenth of us are unaffected. Perhaps two-thirds have been — programed. Like Thet. And the rest of us are dying.”