35

Time passed. After a certain point, even the measurement of time became meaningless. For Michael Poole this moment arrived when there was no nuclear fuel left to burn anywhere, and the last star flickered and died.

Already the Universe was a hundred thousand times its age when the Xeelee left.

Sombrely Poole watched the stars evaporate, through collisions, from the subsiding husks of galaxies, or slide into the huge black holes forming at the galactic centres. Then, as the long night of the cosmos deepened, even protons collapsed, and the remaining star-corpses began to crumble.

Poole wearied of puzzling over the huge, slow projects of the photino birds.

He sought out what had once been a neutron star. The carbon-coated sphere, drifting in orbit around a gigantic black hole, was being warmed - at least, kept to a few degrees above absolute zero - by proton decay within its bulk. Poole, as if seeking comfort, clustered his attention foci close to this shadow of baryonic glory.

Maybe there were other baryonic sentients left in the Universe. Maybe there were even other humans, or human derivatives. Poole did not seek them out. With the closure of the Ring, the baryonic story was done.

Michael Poole, alone, huddled close to the chill surface of the neutron star. His awareness sparkled and subsided.

The river of time flowed, unmarked, towards the endless seas of timelike infinity.