Prologue: 67,580,000 BC

Against stupidity the Gods themselves struggle in vain.

Friedrich von Schiller

“Help me!” The voice of ROLAND, assailed, resounds among the mountainous stars. MERLIN stirs from the brooding temper that has lately gripped her in a fog and a funk. Too slow.

“Wake up, sleepyhead!”comes another cry. “What's the matter with you?” It is GUINEVER, scintillating past her, to the rescue of their hapless colleague. MERLIN can only grunt in answer. She falls in behind.

ROLAND is a small speck of brightness almost overwhelmed by the greater beasts of the Drove. Some have broken loose from the main stream, collectively headed, as ever, in long, slow iterations towards a distant metal-rich nebula, the wrack of a supernova that stirred this corner of space, long ago. MERLIN wonders if they have ever had any other destination. But some of the Drove – no more than a few splinters from the trunk of a great tree, but this is increasingly a trunk made of splinters – are now shearing off, tempted beyond frustration or prospect of control by a more toothsome distraction immediately to hand. It is a red dwarf, swirling in veils of the Oort cloud of a distant, yellowish sun. The red star is small, and dim, and old, and rank with loamy rottenness. No wonder that some of the friskier outliers of the Drove give in so easily to temptation. No wonder, either, that they overwhelmed the weak bleats of ROLAND. Pathetic though he is, MERLIN thinks, one can hardly blame him.

Space rings with the calls of the Drovers, the gravitic keening of the Drove. MERLIN, trying hard to concentrate, ravels space towards the melée, where she sees GUINEVER giving chase to a few of the more recreant Drove, while trying to console ROLAND, and subliminally – she believes – scolding MERLIN for dawdling.

“Some of us”, she chides, “some of us seem to have to do everything round here.” MERLIN broadcasts contrition and assurance that she'll get there as soon as she can. But at the front of her mind is the memory of her meeting with the Drove Elders; the worry that girt the countenance of SOLOMON; the anxiety that radiated from SATURN, eldest of all, for all that he said almost nothing. This problem is bigger than poor ROLAND. Bigger than all of them. And it can only get worse. How can she stop them – stop them, that is, forever – and she, alone, when, right now, it will take her, and GUINEVER, and ROLAND, and whoever else they can rustle up, all their power and concentration to whip in a few chancing strays?

She had met them in a designated Xspace. At the appointed coordinates she shimmered into being on a snowy hill-slope. A blizzard had just passed and the world was dazzling white, and blue with sky, and green with fir and larch. Ahead of her and slightly above was a hunting lodge, an impressive log cabin with a vast picture window reflecting the blue-white scene, built on an even greater platform of massive cut stones. She wondered how anything could have been built so casually in such a remote place. But the views must be wonderful.

She was met at the door by a butler in crisp uniform who helped her off with her ski-suit and directed her with accomplished smoothness to a great salon. She made the usual vain attempt to smooth the untidy mass of her long, brown hair from her face to better admire the view, which, through the floor-to-ceiling picture windows running the whole length of the left-hand wall as she entered, was every bit as terrific as it promised. At the far end of the salon, ahead of her, was an immense fireplace. A great fire was burning – larch logs hissed and crackled in the grate. On either side, two men lounged, in the casual-but-smart way that only the truly prosperous and confident can lounge, on stylishly worn chesterfields. One of the men was strong, hale and very masculine. He looked every inch the habitual skier. He had sharp, blue-eyed features beneath steel-gray hair which, she just knew, would never dare go awry. Not like hers. The man rose to greet her, all senatorial smile, Argyll sweater and precisely pressed slacks. He broadcast such overmastering warmth of command that she felt herself stifling a small stir somewhere behind her ribcage, and swallowing an unwonted effusion of saliva. But she sensed that the real power resided in the balding and clearly much older man in the conservative suit and dark, narrow tie. The man who did not get up, but who remained, small and frog-like, crumpled into the other chesterfield, silent but for the black lasers of his eyes.

“MERLIN, it is good of you to come,” said the standing man, the one with the hair. He proffered a hand and she took it. It was firm and warm and authoritative, and she hoped her returning grasp didn't give too much away. “I'm SOLOMON,” he said, “and my colleague here is SATURN.” The frog-like man smiled and nodded, but said nothing and did not try to rise. SOLOMON indicated a wing-backed, leather chair facing the fire, between the chesterfields, and waved her to sit down. She maneuvered her way backwards into the chair. How she hated pencil skirts. (How had she been wearing a pencil skirt? As far as she remembered she'd arrived in a ski suit. But Xspaces were like that. Especially if you were unused to them, and you were about to be subjected to some kind of mysterious interview – like this). The effort flustered her and she felt herself redden and her hair, like the increasingly wayward Drove, made another attempt at escape. She busied herself in its retrieval, which only made her redden more, and yet still a few strands still wove free.

She was grateful that neither man seemed worried by this. Instead, her next impression was of SOLOMON, standing above her, offering her a drink. “I took the liberty of choosing for you,” he said. “I think you need it. Especially after that long walk through the snow.” She murmured a weak thank-you and took the glass. The brown liquid within gave off the intense odor of K-type dwarfs down at the sticky end of the main sequence. She downed it in one swallow – ease and fiery pleasure coursed through her. “Islay,” said SOLOMON. “Works every time.”

“Thank you, it's ...”

“Purely medicinal, I know. But I'm afraid we've not brought you here just to admire the view and enjoy a decent malt.”

“No, I - “But SOLOMON did not hear her attempted plea: for he had wandered off to regain his place on his chesterfield and, momentarily, his back was turned.

“You will be aware of the history of our species” SOLOMON began, continuing as he seated himself, turning back, with one, swift, almost mathematically precise movement. The choreography made the change in his voice all the more jarring, from the suavity of the welcoming host to the scratchy insecurity of a stern lecturer anxious to convey an important message, but unsure if he'll be able to achieve even the simplest transference, given the youth and inexperience of the audience. MERLIN could almost feel the Xspatial illusion slip, smell the cold, metallic sheen of the currents of space.

“We are creatures of the Continuum, born when the Continuum was born, and destined ever to rein the Drove, steering it to its Destination. So much they teach you in elementary school. But when you get to high school they tell you more. Of the Shepherds, creatures like us – or so we believe – that steered the Drove before us. Creatures who, we think, created us to serve them in this great and eternal task.

“We Drovers are, therefore, not the first. We are, if you will, these Shepherds' Dogs, created to serve our masters, faithfully – and without question. It's what we are. But what they don't tell you in school is that the race of the Shepherds is now gone. Extinct.”

“They are ... gone?” MERLIN felt her limbs go weak, and that peculiar sensation that this body was not her own – that she was only observing the scene – the three of them, in this vast, bright room, with the shining winterscape gloriously present through the panoramic windows.

“Yes, I know. That particular revelation always comes as a shock. But just think about it. Have you ever seen a Shepherd? Or have you met anyone, of any age, who has seen one, or has any memory of having done so? No? Exactly. The Shepherds once existed – yes, they really did – but they have long gone, faded into legend, without our really being aware of it.

“But still, we want our young ones to grow up with hope; that the Shepherds, even if they aren't around much now, might one day return from – well, wherever it is that they've gone – and take back the responsibility of steering the Drove. Well, it ain't gonna happen! But we think it better to lie than to break your hearts too young. There is such a thing as – well – as growing up.” SOLOMON, as if in remembrance of happy times now long ago, allowed a winning smile to crease his face. MERLIN felt herself wanting to smile, too: to giggle, even. An urge she suppressed ruthlessly. This was not hard once she stopped to consider the news behind the smile.

That the Shepherds were gone, forever.

News that made the vastness of space even greater. Even colder. Even more merciless. SOLOMON continued. “We haven't brought you here just to tell you that, though. You'll have discovered that for yourself, sooner or later. Like finding out that Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy don't really exist. We want to tell you – well, something else. But we want to ask you something, first.”

“Me?”

“Obviously, you”

“Why me? Why not GUINEVER or ROLAND or ORFEO or BRITOMART or OLIVER or any of the others?” She regretted her outburst as soon as she’d made it. But to her surprise she was neither chided (as she had expected) nor reprimanded (as she had feared). SOLOMON paused and turned, ever so slightly, to the other man, who remained motionless. MERLIN had the distinct impression that SOLOMON's voice began to stumble, as if veering into the rough from the smoothness of its accustomed fairway.

“Let's say that you look like the most likely prospect for - well – what we have in mind. Now then, what's your impression of the Drove, these days?” SOLOMON spoke now with an enforced casualness that sounded feeble, hollow. MERLIN paused before answering and looked down at her hands, resting palms upwards in a Worstead lap. The answer seemed so obvious that she wondered whether it was a trick question, but when she looked up, parting the curtain of hair that had fallen across her face as she thought, she saw that both men were looking at her intently, their expressions entirely open and sincere. Like they really wanted to know.

“It's the Drove,” she began. “It's getting worse. The beasts are more and more wayward – it is all we can do to keep them on track. They are forever veering off to graze on stars or gas or whatever, sometimes parsecs off course, and they just get more defiant. Sometimes I think it's just us, or just bad luck, or if the beasts have learned to try it on, but lately – well – it might sound impertinent, or lame, or...”

“No, go on,” reassured SOLOMON. “We must have no secrets here. You're among friends, MERLIN. This isn't an inquisition.”

“Oh, well, all right, I'll say it – that no matter how good we are, there just aren't enough of us anymore. I thought we were hard pressed before that – that – well, before HELOISE and BEATRICE left, and I remember that day well...”

“Don't we all. Terrible.”

“But after that, when things were rough, I asked UTHER and ENID what things were like when they were younger, and...”

“Your foreparents, I believe?”

“Yes. And instead of saying that we youngsters never knew when we were born, or some such, they simply sighed and said that we had it very much harder than they ever did. Yes, that's what they said – very much harder.” Her words dropped into a silence relieved only by the crack of a log in the grate. It was so sudden that it made her start, and realize that her cheeks were hot, and that her eyes were moist, and that she was enraged, anxious, and agitated, all at the same time – but she could not work out why. Which made it all the more frustrating.

At last, SOLOMON spoke. “Thank you, MERLIN, for being so candid. Sad to say, though, you are absolutely right. With every age that passes our numbers dwindle, and my fear – our fear – is that we'll reach the point when we can no longer restrain the Drove. It could be that we've already gone beyond that point.” The silence then was as of the chasms between the galaxies; the silence of the limitless void. The dark silence beyond dimensionality, before and after the Continuum, seeping in, and which, more than any other single thing filled all their minds with unutterable terror.

“But ... what then?”

“That, my dear, is a question that all of us ask. All of us of a certain age, that is. But we never dare answer. Perhaps you should like to do that for us?” All of a sudden she felt that she was a little girl again, gamboling through the voids, riding free and careless on the resonant song of her foreparents as she played on the flukes of their vast, recursive, forms, the responsibilities of adulthood not even a speck on a flawless horizon.

“Well, I suppose ... that if we – the Sheepdogs, as it were – were to go on like this, we'd just – eventually – disappear, just like the Shepherds before us, and then... then...”

“And ... then?”

“The Drove would just eat, and eat, until they'd consumed the Universe.”

“That's correct. Well done, MERLIN. It's often very hard to voice the answer that everyone knows but nobody wants to articulate.” Despite the fire, she felt a chill in the air grow. “But, MERLIN, why in all the dimensions of the Universe should it matter?” SOLOMON rose and paced the golden Afghan rug before the fire, his hands waving in time with his discourse.

“If, as we believe, the Drove was created as a kind of by-product of the Big Bang – a swirl of knots and eddies in space-time, if you will – why should they not just be left to get on with it? Perhaps they are part of the natural order of the Universe – agents of its death as well as products of its birth? Why should we seek to restrain them, going to such enormous efforts to steer them, to govern if not to hold back their remorselessly entropic progress, to...”

“Life.” Her voice seemed very small, like a tiny mote. But a mote on which stars condense, on which planets are built. SOLOMON stopped then, and turned towards her.

“Go on, MERLIN. Please, go on.”

“Well, it's often occurred to me - well, to all of us, really – why we're doing this at all - steering the Drove, that is, even though we never speak of it – but there's got to be more, hasn't there? I mean, it's not just about guiding the Drove, but about making choices. Choices about where to steer the Drove, what we can allow the beasts to consume – and what we can't. And maybe I've just got it, but we always keep the Drove well clear of certain main-sequence stars. Stars with planets. Planets that might engender life-forms of baryonic matter.”

SOLOMON looked directly at her, his eyes piercing. This time, though, she did not redden, did not flinch, but met his gaze. SOLOMON's next words were directed not to her, but to SATURN: “See? I told you she was good.”

The implied subterfuge confused her. “Good? Why? What for? It's always seemed obvious - about avoiding planets, and life – so obvious that nobody actually makes the point, it's that obvious... isn't it?”

“Yes, MERLIN, quite right. So obvious that almost nobody actually makes the connection. You'd be surprised how few people actually do, you know. Very surprised. In fact, you're the first in your cohort we've met who’s done so. But now you've passed that hurdle, you need to ask yourself another question. A deeper one.”

“About life?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I guess that if we're letting it grow, making sure that the likeliest stars are not consumed, then it's got something to do with the Drove, to...” She stopped dead. A thought flashed through her mind like an electric arc. She felt her skin tingle, her face chill. She took great care with her next few words, pronouncing each one, syllable by syllable, to make sure she got each one right before letting it loose on the air.

“It's all about finding some new life-form to take over. To herd the Drove. Or to manage it – somehow. When – well, for when we've all gone.”

The silence was palpable. SOLOMON strode over to her and crouched down before her, so that she could meet his eyes without her having to look up. And so he could infuse his next words with added drama. “Not to herd the Drove, MERLIN. To destroy it.”

No, not silence now, but a surge of panic, a sudden desire to escape. She felt her throat constrict, so that her next words came out as a hissing rasp. “But that's – that's -”

“Yes, I know,” said SOLOMON, with great gentleness, “it runs against everything we live for – against everything we know. Some might even call it heresy. But it's more than a matter of our eventual extinction. The fact is that the Drove is increasing. You may not really be aware of it yet, as you can only really deal with it piecemeal, most of the time, given that it's so spread out. It's there, all the same, and it's that, more than anything, that explains why you and the others are having such a tough time of it. We've run some projections – that's SATURN and me, and some of the other elders. And there'll come a time when we'll simply be overwhelmed.”

“When? How?”

“Don't be alarmed. It's still long away yet, even accounting for reasonable error. But that's no good reason for not making preparations now. Not just to continue to run the Drove, but to remove it – to remove its threat.”

“But what difference will it make – whether the Drove wins out, sooner rather than later?”

SOLOMON stood up, huffing and straining slightly as he stretched. “You know,” he said, “you get a lot stiffer when you get older. It's the skiing, you know. Kinda gets to your knees. But the real bummer is that it plays merry hell with my golf. Can't get that swing anymore. What was that, MERLIN? Fatalism?”

“Well, no...” She looked down again, at her knees. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. Your question is a fair one. Of course it probably doesn't matter. But we, the Elders, have conceived an objection to a victory for the Drove that comes too early. Well, two objections, really. The first is simply aesthetic. If the Drove wins too soon, it will prevent this iteration of the Continuum reaching ... how would one put it?” SOLOMON turned to SATURN who now made the first of what would be only two spoken contributions to the meeting. His voice, when it came, sounded surprisingly lively and rounded. His eyes sparkled as he spoke.

“Its ... 'fullness'?”

“Thank you, SATURN, I think that puts it very well.” SATURN nodded. “The other reason is simply one of obligation to those who came before us.”

“The Shepherds. But why? If they are gone?”

“Because, MERLIN, they saw fit to create us, to continue their task, even when they were gone. So the next question you must ask yourself is – where did we come from? What are our origins?”

MERLIN was utterly blindsided by this question. She was amazed that such a question had never occurred to her before, not once. She’d always had this vague notion that they, the Sheepdogs, were wished out of nothing, as the Shepherds ran on their relentless, eternal quest. It seemed that SOLOMON read her mind even as the thoughts coalesced in it.

“What you have to realize, MERLIN, is that despite the immense power that we know the Shepherds had, not even they couldn't defy the laws of the conservation of matter and energy. We came from somewhere. And that somewhere was...” SOLOMON's voice petered out into a kind of wheedling upward cadence, like he was fishing for something. For a short spell MERLIN was nonplussed. The effect of all these cosmic revelations, dealt at such speed, was one of numbing stupefaction. But realization dawned. She came to herself, then, seated in a magnificent stillness. She felt her hair prickle with static, and stand away from her face like a halo. “We came from life, from baryonic matter – from a planet.”

“Indeed, MERLIN. From the proverbial warm little pond. It was they, the Shepherds, who raised us up, who evolved us, who transfigured us into this dimensionality, imprinting us into the very fabric of the Continuum. Just as they had been. And, when you think about it, that's a good reason for steering the Drove away from planets. One never knows from which puddle the next generation of Shepherds might crawl. Those that sleep in some gutter, if you will, but look up, wondering, at the stars.”

“But where, SOLOMON? Where was this planet of our ... birth? And what were we like ... once?”

“Who knows, MERLIN? If there was ever such knowledge, it is now lost. And perhaps it is better so. After all, the planet's star might have gone nova long since. It might even have been in a different Continuum from the one we presently inhabit. There can be no space, now – no time - for regrets. And, in any case, we must move on. Our turn has come to find a species which we can raise, in our turn. But with a difference. This species will not simply continue what we do, though: we must create a race of destroyers.”

MERLIN found herself in a state of increasing agitation, now: “but why can't we simply destroy them ourselves?”

“That's a good question, MERLIN, and I am glad you brought it up,” said SOLOMON, who turned to the drinks cabinet behind SATURN's chesterfield, and poured three more shots of Talisker. “If I might say so, that you can even conceive of such a question illustrates your maturity. It shows that you can – how would you put it, SATURN?”

That warmth and sparkle again, from the shadows of the second chesterfield.

“'Think outside the box'?”

“Exactly so. So, MERLIN, to answer you - two reasons, again – and again, one is aesthetic,” he continued, handing round the reassuringly heavy, clinking tumblers – “who wants to be the first to destroy the subjects of their life's work, not to mention the work of their entire species? As I said, it's practically a heresy.

“And even if you overcame that one, how would you go about committing such ... such genocide? I mean, practically? The Drove are creatures of a similar order to us – M-dimensional relativistic manifolds, wrinkles in space-time – but much more powerful, if only of trifling intelligence. And we were created – created, mind you – to nurture, not to kill. The means for destruction must be built into this new generation of creatures, right from the beginning.

“What beats me, frankly, is how they can be destroyed without altering the fundamental connectivity – the topological order, if you will – of the Continuum itself, and perhaps destroying that, too. Throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Cheers!”

The niceties of the communal enjoyment of single malt cannot cover a crucial, final question forever, and such was the case now. MERLIN saw, as she lowered her glass, that SOLOMON and SATURN had lowered theirs, too, in synchrony with hers, and now looked at her, expectantly.

That sickening feeling plays itself, round and round, again and again, in one horribly obsessive knot of recursion, agonizingly tight, as she gains on GUINEVER and ROLAND and sees that DANTE and ELAINE have joined the chase. No wonder she can hardly keep her mind on what's in front of her. But five of them are too few to rein in the swarm of hundreds of the gigantic Drove now descending on the red dwarf, scattering comet-cloud debris like balls on a frenetic four-dimensional pin-table. In the end, the five Drovers can only hover, and gather, and wait, as the ravening Drove descend to feed on the small star, warping it into nothingness, altering the gravitational balance of the space immediately around it.

Punching holes in space-time.

There is little they can do to alter the changing flux of cometary debris, now directing itself, slowly at first, towards the yellowish G-type dwarf less than two light-years away. The dwarf with that hopeful retinue of silicate-mantled planets, at least one of which has retained warmth and volatiles suitable for the kind of life that SATURN and SOLOMON appear to have in mind.

GUINEVER broadcasts anxiety and regret. ROLAND is darkly shamefaced, but GUINEVER's anger is spent, exhausted. She, too, knows that it's not his fault. DANTE is just numbed. He has seen this kind of thing too often, lately, to feel anything more than a dim resignation. Only ELAINE cries aloud, to no-one in particular, her howl of anguish causing barely a ripple in the uncaring void: “What's wrong with them – and with us?”

But MERLIN's question carries far greater emotional resonance for all that it is semantically much simpler. Cold pricked her arms and face. She looked up at SOLOMON and asked in as level a tone as she could muster: “Why me?”

Silence again, for an interval that could have been eons or attoseconds. She saw SOLOMON, and SATURN, and the rest of the room – the golden Afghan, the chesterfields, the fireplace – as if they were at some immense distance, at the wrong end of a telescope.

“MERLIN, my dear MERLIN...” she feels a dry warmth as SOLOMON picks up her right hand and squeezes it within his. “That's the most interesting question of all. And one to which neither myself nor SATURN nor anyone else has any convincing, logical answer. Except to say that we just know it. It's you. Your task. You have to find a way.”

“But where? How? How can I even begin?” Tears start in her eyes.

“I'm afraid we have little more idea than you do. We'll try – of course, we'll try – to offer us much help and support as we can,” said SOLOMON. But we do have at least one clue.”

“Yes, you ... do?”

“It's here, now. All around you.”

MERLIN looks up, imploringly, at SOLOMON. His expression is warm. Laugh-lines crease the borders of his mouth, and soften the hardness of his ice-blue eyes.

“It's this Xspace, isn't it?”

“Yes, MERLIN, it is. Xspaces don't just pop up randomly. The have to have internal coherence. To even exist, an Xspace has to have what you might call a 'back-story'. After all, what explains these chesterfields? This rather nice rug? This entirely splendid 22-year-old scotch? This house? Even the view – this … well, this planetary prospect? And, most of all, the forms we now inhabit? They are more real than just illusions, you know. And the minds of the forms we inhabit? Such engaging clutter! All that stuff about 'Father Christmas' and 'skiing' and 'golf'. Now where did all that come from?” MERLIN was now quite unable to decide whether the Elder's question was rhetorical. In any event, she was all wrung out - she decided to let him answer it himself.

“From you, MERLIN – from you. You might not have realized it, but you created this Xspace, and everything in it. Everything. I congratulate – we congratulate you, on your good taste. Especially the scotch.”

MERLIN had broken through her local credibility barrier. All she could now do was laugh. But this did not appear to be a joke. SOLOMON wasn't laughing. Neither was SATURN. Her laugh stuttered and stopped.

“But still, why...?”

“Look at it this way. It's the way we're made. To be sure, we live most of our lives in a fairly linear way, starting at the beginning, chasing the Drove, and fading out somewhere else, later. But we can do more than that. You know this. We are connected, you and me, and SATURN here, and all your young friends, to much else that is in the Continuum. Past, present – and future. Your Xspace gives us the best clue for your search for a suitable candidate. Your quest, if you will, for life. Really, it can only be a matter of instinct.”

SOLOMON let drop her hand with a final squeeze of reassurance, and raised his glass. The bright light of a westering winter sun sparkled in its brown depths. “It's just a hunch. But if I were in your position, I'd – well, I'd just follow the Islay.”