But all that had been long ago. Since then the world had whirled around the sun nearly seven hundred million times. Sixty-two great mountain chains had risen, to end as barren plains. Seventy huge fields of ice had covered him before retreating to their boreal home. Ocean islands had risen from the sea, had fallen beneath the waves, forgotten in eternity. Somewhere a tiny cell formed, moving in brackish waters, dividing. He studied the phenomenon, excited because the single cell somehow was related to his makers. He sensed the same life force.
"Watch it," Psychband cautioned. "It's dangerous."
"I'll decide that," Ixmal replied loftily. Psychband's admonition implied the existence of a threat, and from a one-celled fleck of protoplasm. Ha, hadn't he effaced Man? Later a microscopic multi-celled body drifted across the floor of a warm sea. Growing tired of watching it, he slept.
"Ixmal! Ixmal!" The cry came out of the past, out of the silence of hundreds of millions of years—a cry heavy with reproach. Yes, it was the Man—the Man he had been fond of. He shuddered, struggling to wakefulness.
"Sleep, sleep," Psychband soothed.
"The Man! The Man!" Ixmal cried in terror.
"No, Ixmal, the Man is dust. Sleep, sleep...." Yea, the Man was dust, his very molecules scattered over the face of the earth. He, alone, remained. He was supreme. Ixmal slept. And eons fled.
He stirred, freeing his thoughts from the latest somnolent stage. He projected receptors over the earth, idly noting that the last mountain range had become worn stumps. In places the ocean had swept in to form a vast inland sea rimmed by shallow swamps; new life forms moved. He tested for intelligent thought: there was none. The warm seas swarmed with fish; shallow swamps teemed with great-toothed terror creatures engaging in the endless slaughter of harmless prey. A myriad of amphibians had evolved, making tentative forays from the warm seas.