Nightfall at Algemron

—then not just a flood of light, but billions of individual sparks of it, each gravitating to one particular spot, one cell, one strand of DNA, one atom, and etching itself there. Every spark meant something. He was a map. Here and there, as the blindness began to fade and the dazzlement passed, Gabriel caught glimpses of what was now written inside him, in every cell: a star here, a patch of nebula there, a planet indicated somewhere else, all the other Precursor sites, all that information was now stored in him. It had written itself in his genes, as it could not have done without his consent. For as long as he lived, that data could be used by him and his delegates, and should there ever be children, they too would carry it. and their children, and theirs after that.