His ship shattered and broken, Poole begins dying, but at the last moment, an "anti-Xeelee" (whom it is implied is a being created by the Xeelee to be like them, except travelling like a tachyon backwards in time, the better to mould the Xeelee's early evolutionary history) takes a liking to Poole, and converts him into an intangible immortal being of "quantum functions". In this form, Poole travels the universe, but out of boredom, eventually begins to lapse into a quasi-coma- until an unexpected event occurs: a savage in a glass box, having travelled through a wormhole like Poole himself. "History resumed." (This final event is one of the early plot points of the "Ring").