If we men are—as the Judicator Ragama told me—more like unto the Absolute himself, then surely the machines are more like unto Ragama and the Watchers. Creatures of pure will, patterns animating matter and energy. When first I’d encountered Brethren, the beast told me that it had peered across the manifold future and had seen the coming of the Quiet at the end of days. If the machines could not move across time and along its rivers as the Watchers could, they at least could perceive those higher dimensions. Perceiving the Quiet, Brethren had been bent to his will, made to serve his purpose: to
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