Enduring Hope thought he understood. 'And if we attack the black hole,' he said doggedly, 'we could destroy the monads. Is that what you fear?'
'Yes,' Nilis said gratefully, sweat beading his brow. 'Oh, my boy—yes! That is precisely what I fear.'
Kimmer said, 'But even if you are right, there are other galaxies. Other nests of monads.'
Nilis insisted, 'We can't make any simple assumptions about this situation, Marshal.' He spoke rapidly about levels of reality, of interconnectivity in higher dimensions. 'By striking a blow in this one place we may wreak damage everywhere, and for all time....'
Luru Parz said slowly, 'The Commissary fears that if we destroy the monads we will break the thread—don't you, Nilis?—the shining thread of life, of creativity, that connects this universe to those that preceded it, and to those that will follow. To kill them would be patricide—or deicide, perhaps.' She smiled. 'Ah, but I forgot. In this enlightened age you don't have gods—or fathers, do you? It's entirely appropriate of humanity that when we do find God, we try to turn Him into a weapon, and then kill Him.'
-Exultant, Ch. 58