Toby could sense the capitals in Quath’s hissing mind-voice and decided to not pursue the matter. Quath was serious. Maybe it was common for intelligent beings anywhere to think of themselves as the crown of creation—The People—and everybody else as a smart animal at best. Savvy smarts and egomania went hand in hand. Or pincer in pincer.
After all, suppose Quath had been a thousand times smaller. It wouldn’t matter that she was supersmart—if Toby shook her out of his bedroll, he would step on her without a thought. He certainly wouldn’t inquire into what she thought about the nature of life.
“I think I could pass up honors like that. Anyway, many-eyes, you seem to have settled in here okay.”
<I hope my excretions may be of help in enlivening the soil here.>
“So generous of you. Look, I was sent here to see if you can figure what your own folks are doing in their ships.”
<I do not know. Though I can guess.>
“They’re still hauling that huge ring. Only it’s glowing more, a kind of ivory.”
<They carry their great burden as a defense against the mechs. Some of our aged texts suggest a further role for it, as well.>
“It sure seems to keep them away, all right. But why are your people gaining on us?”
<They may be needed. The cusp moment approaches.>
“Uh, what’s a cusp?”
<A sharp point in an otherwise smooth curve, my amusing mote.>
“More geometry. Between Isaac and his numbers and you with your always using math talk, I don’t know—”
<Properly considered, all reality is geometry.>
“Oh yeah? Look, I bite into an apple, it tastes real good. Where’s the geometry in that?”
<It is of the [untranslatable].>
Toby hated it when Quath said something and then the programs in his head, and in Quath’s too, couldn’t make enough sense between them to get the job done. All that came through was a fizzy blurt and a bland, flat [untranslatable]. “Okay, then where’s the geometry in a kiss, huh?”
<It is simple from the view of my kind. Relations taste of the [unknown] and [untranslatable]. Anything else would make no [unknown].>
“Oh, glad it’s so obvious. How silly of me.”
<My program senses that there is something more to your speech pattern.>
“Yeasay, we call it ‘sarcasm.’”
<I cannot understand such a pattern.>
“Let’s just call it [untranslatable], bug-boy.”
<I believe I understand. To us perhaps it is like [unknown].>
“Aaahhh!”
This was driving Toby up the wall—literally. He was glad he could work out his frustration by climbing through the struts of the dome, leaping across wide spans, burning calories to clear his mind. It was getting hot in here—hot all through Argo, in fact. The domes were absorbing radiation from the astronomical fireworks outside.
Stinging sweat dripped into Toby’s eyes. He clambered over struts and beams, swung in the nearly zero-grav, and let go. He spread his arms and beat against the air, flapping like an awkward bird, and slowly fell toward Quath. The alien caught him at the very last moment before he would have smacked painfully on the deck. “Oooof! Thanks.”
<You pretend to be a kind of being you are not.>
“That’s part of being human, you ol’ giant grub.”
<There is an element of that in us as well. Otherwise we would not have spanned the stars in search.>
“In search of what?”
<Of [untranslatable].>
“Oh no, not again!”
<I think it is knowledge of the things we cannot say which makes us alike, tiny thinker.>
Toby scuffed up some dead soil with his boot, sending a shower of gray dust spurting up into the low-gray dome. He still had some irritations to work out, some thinking to do about his father. He leaped and swung up on one of Quath’s extended telescoping arms. “Maybe I—”
—Toby! Bring Quath to the Bridge, right away.—
Killeen’s sharp voice cut into his concentration so abruptly that Toby let go of the arm, coasted, and thumped back into the dirt. “Okay. But Quath won’t fit in—”
—Get moving!—
It turned out that Quath could scrunch down in the corridor outside the Bridge, bend two eye-stalks around the entrance, and see most of the wall screens. Quath looked uncomfortable, her steel-jacketed legs cocked at odd angles and wedged against bulkheads, though she said nothing. Killeen wanted Quath to try more communication channels with his own kind, the Myriapodia. “After all, I spent days trapped in her belly, once,” Killeen said casually.
Toby blinked. His misgivings aside, he had to remember that his father had been through horrendous adventures with Quath. Maybe they communicated with each other in ways he didn’t fully appreciate.
