All good, but the rubble gave pests myriad hiding places. Quath clambered with six legs onto a high notch in the mountain. The main gathering of Noughts was one peak farther away, and she hoped they were as dull-sensed as they had appeared to be in the battle, or else they might detect her here.
*Quath!* came the Tukar’ramin’s call. *I bring grave word.*
*No, far worse. There is conflict among the Illuminates.*
*Yes.*
*I cannot fathom it myself, young podder, and I am far more skilled than you. This is the first time I have ever been privy to any Illuminate proceedings. To tap into a small fraction of the flow is to sense vast, sliding conjectures as tides in one’s very soul. Do not ask me to describe it, for I cannot. Conflict rages among them like the smashing of suns in my mind’s sky. I—I am still recovering my teetering equilibrium.*
Quath said, though she did not. The Tukar’ramin’s signals carried a sucking undercurrent of doubt and gray fear.
*Some Illuminates do not want any foray into Galactic Center. They wax fiercely.*
*They sense a larger design behind this. A mech artifice, perhaps, to draw us into the Center.*
*I had been so told, and until this moment I had never doubted. You are a Philosoph, Quath—you cannot know the wonderful shelter that we unmitigated intelligences know….*
Quath had a thin glimmering of what the Tukar’ramin felt. To have that certainty shattered by the spectacle of the Illuminates’ differing among themselves must be a terrifying experience. Quath felt sympathy for the Tukar’ramin—and abruptly felt how far she had come from the Quath of her simple Hive days. To feel anything but unblemished awe for the Tukar’ramin would have been incomprehensible only days ago.
*Other Illuminates think it is our true historic destiny to use these trifling Noughts, who by pernicious accident carry a key to the inner region.* The Tukar’ramin’s muted carrier frequencies ran somber, muddled, tossed with flecks of pale doubt.
*They differ. They have studied all these events and some feel that the Noughts were sent here as part of a larger work.*
*A concept we do not fully understand. Some mechs do things for inexplicable reasons. They term it “art.” Such works seemingly have no use.*
*Not necessarily. Some Illuminates feel the Noughts came in the ancient craft as an aid in stabilizing the mech city conflicts.*
*Perhaps. Like us, the mechs use a hierarchical system of command. The entities controlling this world before our arrival were low on the mech ladder of being. This was a mere tendril, an operation at the periphery of mech interest.*
Quath suppressed her momentary shock at this news. All along she had supposed their efforts here were of great import, driving terror into mechs everywhere.
*In such cases, control must be delegated to the local level, and liberal use must be made of the stimulus of competition among subunits.*
*Efficiencies arise out of carefully regulated conflict. Note how much more diligent were your own strivings, small one, when you were stimulated by your rivalry with your sister, Beq’qdahl.*
How little had escaped Tukar’ramin’s attention! Had she engineered every detail of Quath’s life?
*This use of inter-unit striving is nearly universal. The mechs had a unified design for this world. But individual mech cities and complexes here were allowed—even encouraged—to compete for resources, for challenging roles. Even the cells of all living things act in such a manner, jostling each other, seeking nutrients and higher tasks. Delicate chemical balances keep the process under control. When it goes well, the whole organism flourishes.*
*Indeed. With mechs, as living things, there is a danger to such a process. These tensions can spill over into greedy excess. It is known as cancer. A wild burgeoning of ego—of blind aggression by a part against the greater whole. The mid-level mech minds on this world began striving in deadly earnest. They employed new, vicious weapons against each other.*
Quath experienced a leap of understanding.
She detected a rumble of satisfaction coming from Tukar’ramin, accompanied by something else… a hint, perhaps, of respect?
*Indeed, young one. Your nimbleness of mind is pleasing. Noughts had long infested the interstices of mech culture as no more than irritants, occasionally employed for small purposes by lesser mech entities—more often, seen as pests to be squashed underfoot. Until the cancer began. Then they proved powerfully useful to one of the warring sides. The result was catastrophic. Their alliance weakened mech power in this system.*
*Just so. It is why the Illuminates risked sending our expedition, with the precious Great String, to this place so near the fringes of mech power.*
Quath felt she was beginning to sense some of the scope of this tale. It was vast, intimidating.
*Certainly. But the cancer spread so rapidly, and our might descended upon this system so quickly, that we were able to establish ourselves before they could act to eradicate the cancer. With the string at our disposal, we defeated all expeditions sent to “cure” this wayward mech colony. And the Illuminates estimated that economics would prevent any truly massive counterstrike. This outpost was too unimportant to merit any such major undertaking.*
*Nevertheless. Mechs elsewhere may have sought to send aid to their brothers here in more subtle forms, using sneaky tactics to slip medicine under our cordon of guard.*
Quath felt a burst of insight.
*That is what is believed by some of the Illuminates—those who see the vessel as a deadly missile, sent by our enemies, carrying agents harmful to our cause. It is why I received orders to sear them. It is why, at first, I sent you and your sister after them, to destroy them one and all.*
Tukar’ramin paused, then resumed in lower tones.
*But now other Illuminates contend that these strange new Noughts are special in yet another way. That theirs is a destiny linked somehow with ours. It is all so very confusing. Evidence on their ship points in both directions at once. There is a clear sign of mech design in their flight profile and in shipboard traces. Yet those ancient slabs you found have caused many Illuminates to believe that there is much more involved.*
Quath’s subminds whirled with the complexity of the choices. It reminded her of the queer conflicting emotions she had felt while hunting the Noughts out on the hard-scrabble planet surface.
She detected an echo of her own confusion resonating openly from Tukar’ramin, and found that more disturbing than anything else.
*This is a crisis unlike any in my long life, little Quath. I obey a majority of those Illuminates who are within range to bear and judge on these matters. Since th
is mission itself was a venturesome one, that majority consists of several who believe in daring, in doing, in taking swift advantage of the opportunities hinted at in the ancient slabs.*
Tukar’ramin shook her great form, rejecting the question before it was spoken.
*What I know is how. The rude laws of matter and light, of blunt mechanics and silky thermodynamic flows.*
*I do not know why. That is not the strength of our race, as you must realize by now, little Philosoph.*
*Of course. You did too, once. But I have observed the genes of the old, dead race emerge in you, gathering, reaching out. You will know better what to do in this grave whirl of chaos.*
*Yes. Then we are doomed. Only our single-minded ferocity has given us sway over this world and others.*
*Then let us decide this matter before the howling storm of doubt besets us! Find your Nought and let us be done with it.*
Quath trumpeted a brave song-answer, clarion-clear and sharp. The blaring sound was ceremonial. Yet it was oddly gripping—even now, when she knew the falsity of all such gestures before the immense questions surrounding the podia, encircling all life.
Newly resolute, she lumbered up a fissured scarp. She found a crevice near the brow of the peak, as close as she could approach the Nought gathering without revealing herself.
Deftly she probed the night. She brushed against a faint reek of mechthought. It was clotted with pain and mired in agonized confusion. Probably, she thought, the last of its kind in this area. It seemed to be nearby, perhaps watching the Noughts as well. Its typical jangling and zigzag patterns were somehow immersed in Nought caterwauling, making it hard to find. Deal with it later, then.
She probed again. Voices, pale hungers, timid musics—and abruptly her electro-aura drew her into the field of a Nought. Its essence resembled that of her own Nought, but Quath was unsure if it was identical. A tender-skinned thing this was, excitable, with spotty aches distributed through its body. It had the same stubby but clever hands, knobby spine, the surprisingly long legs with impossibly small pods to balance them on. It radiated feeling-tones that rattled the air with their timbre, and Quath suddenly understood.
This one had the same flavor as her own Nought, because it had the same sex. How shockingly strange, to render the sexes so differently. Why? This one was taller, heavier, with 1.8 times the ratio of muscle mass to body mass than the last Nought she had entered. Was that the intention—specialization of function through altered bodies?
No, she sensed immediately that these differences descended from the natural origins of the Nought. What selection pressure would force such divergences among the sexes? What advantage could it possibly have? On the contrary, Quath could see immediate conflicts in such an arrangement. She had simply never suspected that the strong Nought flavors meant sexual differences—indeed, seemed to salt the very air between them.
So she had mistaken this Nought for her own because it, too, was muskily male.
She held its muscles semirigid, as it seemed to want to do. With some effort she made the unnecessarily complicated apparatus of bones and interlocked muscles contract and stretch, successfully bringing a tool toward the face. Smells wafted up into cavities in the head, where recognition-flares called warm welcoming cries.
She let the semiautomatic systems of the Nought bring the food into the primary mouth. She allowed it to chew. Sense-sounds exploded in Quath’s electro-aura, which she understood were the sensations of taste that this creature enjoyed. The savor of masticating food swam through it, building notes upon submelodies, making a small symphony of gratifying song.
Three others of its kind were gathered near. A primitive naked oxidation bristled yellow-hot at the center of their little group. The Nought basked in its infrared emissions.
Acoustic patterns played through the Nought’s head. Quath saw that this was their only means of communicating at short range. Had they kept this as a nostalgic tribute to their early forms? Or—startling thought—were they still this elemental?
Quath tried to sample the subminds of this Nought but found a mire. Where were the kernels of subsidiary intelligence? The interior bramble was too confusing to sort out now. She turned to more practical matters.
The Nought could say nothing without Quath’s taking more control. What was discourse like in this ancient acoustic mode?
Gingerly she released the mouth. Curved the lips. Curled the fat, soft tongue that—now that Quath concentrated on controlling it—seemed to swell to fill the entire mouth.
“Food good,” the Nought said.
Quath made sure the words carried a simple meaning. Less chance of error that way. The two words had bloomed naturally in the Nought’s mind, streaming up from the concept-swamp. Quath had inspected them carefully as the Nought’s nervous system began to transmit the instructions to the mouth to emit the sounds.
Two words, very nearly the simplest possible message. A good start. They complied with the language’s rudimentary grammatical rules, which were astonishingly one-dimensional, with hardly any methods of adding shadings of meaning in parallel dimensions of discourse. It was almost like speaking to a grooming mite in the Hive.
But this experiment seemed to bring disturbed features blooming in the faces of the other Noughts. She decided to cover this mistake, whatever it was.
“Mouth feels wrong,” the Nought’ s mind reported saying. Was something wrong with Quath’s control? The other Noughts displayed widened eyes, slightly opened mouths, and more of their curious, archaic white teeth.
“Fire is good,” she made the Nought say. Perhaps slightly complicating the sentence would settle the problem. She took special care to make the lips and tongue do their appointed jobs well.
Among its companions Quath saw more sliding of muscles and tendons beneath the sallow skin. These simple signais conveyed tension but she did not know how to read them accurately. Small furrowings deepened near the eyes. Mouth muscles struck lopsided positions. Yes, a lack of symmetry was probably supposed to communicate concern. Or anger, possibly including threats? It was all so confusing.
And they babbled at her, the acoustics coming in such a mixture of modes that Quath could not tell if they were speaking the same language as this Nought she had entered.
“I do not feel so good,” Quath made the Nought say.
She elevated it to its precarious two feet and walked it away. The others did not follow immediately. Good. Quath did not want to provoke these simple beings into suspecting what was happening.
The rattle of acoustic complexity that pursued her confirmed Quath’s suspicions. Each of these things spoke a kind of idiosyncratic self-language. Their mouths were so inelegantly and inexpertly made that each minor slide and hitch of muscle and cartilage rendered words differently.
How inefficient! Each word would have to be separately filed and tagged in the quick-mind, associated with a remembered word from some individual, and then in turn integrated with the other words in their primitive linear sequences—all in order to catch the meaning.
That would tie up enormous submind space. No wonder they had never advanced beyond a one-dimensional model of language!
They started at the beginning of a word sequence and had to march helplessly past every single sound group, before comprehending the whole. Yet that was essential, given the endless trouble they would have to go to in order to filter out and translate the infinite variety of pronunciation that came flooding into their knobby little ears. What conceivable purpose could there be to allowing this unending variation?
Whatever the reason, the Noughts were still concerned. One of them rose and called after Quath’s possessed Nou
ght. Quath decided to vacate this being rather than try to repair the situation.
But when she tried to let go of the small mind, her connections would not sever.
She yanked. Nothing.
Harder. Still she could not free herself!
Some dim perception was trying to leak up from her sub-minds into foreground consciousness. No time for that. She had to get free before the Noughts understood. They might then damage this Nought in their tiny anger. If Quath was still present, the trauma might surge back along her own electro-aura and do her injury.
She needed something to jar herself loose from the curiously sticky, hampering aura of the Nought. She made the hands slide over the body, seeking some useful tool. Ah, there.
Then she had a very good idea. She swiftly carried it out.
FIVE
As a simple Family member Killeen immediately joined in the jobs essential to setting up camp. The Tribal supply train had brought meager provisions partway up the granite slopes and each Family had to haul their portion to their campground. The wind was coming up stronger and colder with nightfall. His Supremacy’s tent dominated the broad stone crown of the mountain and his staff was erecting some sort of altar in front of it.
Killeen and Shibo pitched their small tent in a narrow athwart the gathering wind. Toby and Besen were nearby. They all divided the skimpy food supply and figured how to cook the strangely spiced ingredients.
Much of the Tribal supply had been stolen from mech stores. The stuff was gooey and lime green; Killeen guessed that it had been foodstuff that fed and lubricated the partly organic mech components. Spices had been added to make it barely edible. A thin reward for a day of hard marching. When Bishops protested, Tribal officers said mysteriously that there would be more to eat later that night. Small fires already dotted the mountainside with flickering orange dabs. Killeen didn’t like this and started telling his people to stop.
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