Children of Time

The next Portia, who is a great priestess of the Messenger, emerges from her molting cocoon. There are tensions between Great Nest and the other spider temples. The religion of the Messenger is now the primary form of government in Great Nest and beyond, though there are different interpretations of the Messenger’s signals and plans. Portia visits Fabian, a male who exhibits significant intelligence and ability, to check on his progress on one of the Messenger’s tasks. Portia suggests that they mate, but Fabian is hesitant, fearful of the danger to males in the mating process. He makes a plea to Portia to understand the plight of the males in the society. She is frustrated by Fabian but encourages him to keep working.

She visits Bianca, her former peer, who is being held prisoner for heresy. Bianca insists that the Messenger is not divine or mystical, but only a form of metal that is pushing the spiders to create more metal. Bianca argues that the religiosity of the temple is hindering the species’ scientific discovery and collective progress.

Lain and Holsten hold a clandestine meeting with Karst and Vitas. They discuss various options, but Karst and Vitas refuse to join forces with Lain. (Vitas is curious to see what happens if Guyen is successful, and Karst resists because he sees no chance of victory.) Lain tells Holsten that she is willing to die to preserve humanity. On their way back to the small group of engineers, they see that the door has been tampered with, and Lain and her people are attacked as the other humans attempt to regain control of Holsten as a prisoner.

Fabian has been missing, and Portia is angry with him. He explains that he was in the underneath areas of Great Nest, and this confession only incenses Portia further because of the danger that he risked. He tells her that he has discovered a way to reprogram ants very quickly, which would revolutionize the spiders’ work. However, Fabian refuses to give this Understanding to Portia either through mating or direct transfer. He is therefore confined in her peer house, but he escapes easily, using the ants that he has already reprogrammed throughout Great Nest. He goes to Bianca’s prison and offers to help her escape with him to Seven Trees, where he can make sure that the ants leave her alone. She is initially suspicious, but agrees, and they leave together.

Guyen’s followers take Holsten to their living area in what was once the communications bay. He watches the children and is struck by how far he has come from that level of innocence. He is taken to see the ancient Guyen, who is now only kept alive by various forms of machinery. Guyen insists that he is not interested in becoming immortal; he asserts that his ability to plan was why he was given the responsibility to save the human race. After seeing the failure of the moon colony and the terraforming, he knew that Kern’s World was the only option for humanity’s survival, and he didn’t want to work his specialized staff to death. So, he brought up this other crew and spent his own life preparing the ship to go to war with Kern’s satellite. Holsten recognizes that he could easily kill Guyen and prevent him from uploading his consciousness to the computer, but he decides against this course of action.

As Great Nest works to accomplish the Messenger’s directives, other spider cities begin to pose a threat to the city’s resources and dominant philosophy. In Seven Trees, Bianca has gained a high status, while Fabian has struggled even as he develops ways to apply his new Understanding of how to program the ants. When Great Nest sends a column of ants to take over Seven Trees’ mines and force them to serve Great Nest, Bianca brings Fabian to the powerful citizens of Seven Trees. He convinces them to allow him to take a few hundred ants against the invading column. He uses his invention of scent architecture to strategically defeat the Great Nest ants. The female spiders insist that he tell them how he accomplished this victory, but he refuses to share his Understanding. Instead, he promises to defeat Great Nest in exchange for the enactment of laws that will protect the rights of male spiders. The Seven Nest spiders argue about what to do, fighting between embracing this possible new future and maintaining the traditions and instincts of their species.

Ages pass. Holsten shares a meal with Guyen, who explains that arranging matters has taken more time than he’d planned. The people that he pulled from cold storage kept having children and kept working, and as the generations progressed, each new group of humans knew less than those who had come before. In answer to Holsten’s questions about the status of the lunar colony, Guyen explains that the ship was already so far away that he could never have saved them. In that moment, though, Guyen’s face and manner change, and he accuses the lunar colony of treason. When Holsten hears this, Guyen loses any support that Holsten may have had for him. When Guyen attempts to upload his consciousness into the ship’s computer, Holsten stalls him and creates chaos. Lain and her engineers take advantage of this and hold Guyen hostage, but he has already begun uploading himself. Lain kills Guyen, and as the life support systems flutter, she orders Vitas and the engineers to try to stop the bits of Guyen that have successfully integrated with the ship.

Fabian, the lead warrior Viola, and their assembled troops all arrive at the Great Nest. After a tense couple of hours, prisoners are brought to them. Portia and her peers have been overthrown, and the spider nation-states are now at peace. Fabian meets with the lead females after the war’s end. He fears that they will rescind the freedoms and protections granted to the males in Seven Trees. He pleads for himself and all those of his gender, insisting that his peer house also has his Understandings about the ants. He states that whichever city will welcome them will receive the benefit of this new technology. The lead females agree to uphold the rights of males, but only after heated debate, and the vote is close. Only slightly more than half agree to grant males protection from death and the right to make their own peer houses. Fabian is killed in his workshop two years later.

Meanwhile, in orbit over the planet, Kern has almost entirely merged with the Pod. The fights with the Gilgamesh have depleted her reserves, and she is now running out of time. She pushes her followers on the surface to create a workshop so that she can transfer herself to the surface and prepare her people for the arrival of the Gilgamesh.