Into him, from some outer circle of being, came shrill warning. He ignored it. Let the conscious mind of him thrash about, in terror of what was to happen. He would not return to it. He was here, his bodiless entity, watching mind function in dauntless disobedience to the laws lifeless destiny laid down.
He watched the fall of that glowing particle in rigid fascination. Now would come the rearrangement of this vast webwork about him. New thoughts, different emotions—and volition that thwarted destiny. For destiny's only death for a purple light came from a green.
But destiny could not rule life's dark rebel.
Again the warning, the clamorous scream to return, to fight. But he would have none of it. He felt a tender pity for that being whose conscious mind was obedient to what the stresses and strains of his vast body demanded. He would not return.
The dark rebel struck.
In the timeless moment of its striking, all space seemed to still. And the conscious mind of Oldster, that aged being, stilled as well. His animal struggles ceased. Alone in his mausoleum of darkness, he was filled with a pulsing wonder. He felt the force fields girding him together lose their prime energy.
And then expansion.
"I am dying," he whispered.
He looked about him, peering into the darkness that would show him nothing. And suddenly he remembered that which he had seen in his inner being. The dark rebel, falling, falling, striking. The cataclysm that followed, the white light of explosion, the pell-mell exchange of suns. The rearrangement of desire.
And in full measure the meaning of that astounding event came. The thought hummed, swelled, until he was flinging it out beyond him in mocking wave after wave, into the face of that universe that had mocked him with its dead answers. In this last moment of expansion the pain and formless searching of his years vanished in the ultimate triumph. He had had choice between two events, being and not-being.