‘Anyway, that is what I consider the Erythro organism to be. I consider it an art connoisseur, a collector of beautiful minds.’
Insigna laughed. ‘By that token, Wu and Leverett must have very beautiful minds.’
‘They probably do to Erythro. And it will continue collecting when scientists from Earth arrive. You know it will end by collecting a group of human beings different from the common run. The Erythro group. It may help them find new homes in space and, in the end, perhaps the Galaxy will have two kinds of worlds, worlds of Earthmen and worlds of more efficient pioneers, the true Spacers. I wonder how that would work out. Surely it would mean the future would lie with them. I regret that somehow.’
‘Don't think of that,’ said Insigna urgently. ‘Let people of the future deal with the future as it comes. Right now, you and I are human beings judging each other by human standards.’
Genarr smiled joyously, his pleasantly homely face lighting up. ‘I'm glad of that, because I find your mind beautiful, and perhaps you find mine equally beautiful.’
‘Oh, Siever, I always did. Always.’
Genarr's smile faded somewhat. ‘But there are other kinds of beauty, I know.’
‘Not for me any longer. You have all the kinds of beauty. Siever, we lost the morning, you and I. But there's still the afternoon.’
‘In that case, what more can I possibly want, Eugenia? The morning is well lost - if we can share the afternoon.’
Their hands touched.
Epilogue
Again, Janus Pitt sat there alone, enclosed.
The red dwarf star was no longer an engine of death. It was just a red dwarf star to be pushed to one side by an ever more arrogant humanity, growing yet further in power.
But Nemesis still existed, though it was no longer the star.
For billions of years, life on Earth had been isolated, performing its separate experiment, rising and sinking, flourishing and undergoing vast extinctions, Perhaps there were other worlds on which life existed, each one isolated for billions of years.
All experiments - all, or almost all, failures in the long run. One or perhaps two that were successes and worth all the rest.
But that was only if the Universe were large enough to isolate all the experiments. If Rotor - their Ark - had been isolated as Earth and the Solar System had been, it might have been the one to work.
But now-
He clenched his fists in fury - and desperation. For he knew that humanity would run from star to star as easily as it had run from continent to continent and before that from region to region. There would be no isolation, no self-contained experiments. His grand experiment had been discovered, and doomed.
The same anarchy, the same degeneration, the same thoughtless short-term thinking, all the same cultural and social disparities would continue to prevail - Galaxy-wide.
What would there be now? Galactic empires? All the sins and follies graduated from one world to millions? Every woe and every difficulty horribly magnified?
Who would be able to make sense out of a Galaxy, when no-one had ever made sense out of a single world? Who would learn to read the trends and foresee the future in a whole Galaxy teeming with humanity?
Nemesis had indeed come.