The Spline had become carriers, earning their place in the universe by hiring themselves out to any one of a hundred species.
It wasn’t a bad strategy for racial survival, Parz mused. The Spline must work far beyond the bubble of space explored by humankind before the Qax Occupation — beyond, even, the larger volume worked by the Qax, within which humanity’s sad little zone was embedded.
-Timelike Infinity, Ch. 1