The Theological Regulatory Authority issues a seizure order for Oolon Colluphid's research materials—and Colluphid discovers, with some urgency, that he is considerably better at being right than being invisible.

Oolon Colluphid calls Divna Allay from a freighter in the dark between systems to tell her what Hurkel found at the bottom of the Spawning Pools—and somehow, over six hours, the theological becomes personal.

Ninety-four meters beneath the Spawning Pools of Viltvodle VI, Hurkel Ransen finds the thing that has been waiting four billion years for exactly one purpose. It is empty now. It worked.

Viltvodle VI is a planet with three million years of unbroken theological tradition, one elderly archivist who has been keeping secrets for thirty-seven years, and something at the bottom of the deepest pool that predates the planet. The Babel fish are more beautiful and stranger than the proof-and-disproof argument prepared anyone for.

The Theological Regulatory Authority would like to remind Colluphid that all planned research activities in the Viltvodle VI system are on hold pending a fourteen-month review. The publisher would like to remind him about the commercial window. The university has opened a formal inquiry. He's leaving in four days.

Colluphid travels to Brontitall for a theologian's perspective on the moral catalog. Divna has notes, a diagram, and a story about the mentor the TRA's review process coincided rather unfortunately with.

Hurkel has spent nine days checking the four-page memo. It is no longer four pages. The Babel fish fossil record, it turns out, has a problem—and someone sealed the archive forty-one years ago to make sure no one could find it.

Colluphid turns from design flaws to moral failures—the things God chose rather than merely neglected to fix. The list is darker than he expected, and it keeps leading somewhere he didn't intend to go.

Six months after publication, Oolon Colluphid is the galaxy's most famous atheist—and the most privately dissatisfied. His publisher wants more. His desk drawer contains a question he hasn't answered. His spare room contains a research assistant he hadn't noticed.

The signing tour is over. The party is over. Oolon Colluphid reads his own book for the first time as a reader—and discovers what he has actually written.