Did the Illuminates know? The simple fact that those lordly beings had split over the destiny and use of a mere Nought argued otherwise.
Could the Noughts hold some crucial tidbit of the puzzle? Suddenly the notion did not seem entirely mad.
Quath reeled for the smallest fragment of an instant. Then the ageold lessons asserted themselves. She focused outward, beyond the raucous clamor of her subminds.
For the worst had come. Beq’qdahl’s gang now moved to attack.
Quath had lain hidden among the broken strata above where the Noughts clustered. Their rear guard had already passed and their destination lay not far beyond.
Here the faults were like fractured planes snapped off in midair. Shelves of stone jutted at a platinum sky. Beq’qdahl and her podia had crept among these to within easy range of the Noughts, who milled in confusion.
Quath caught the ready signal from Beq’qdahl. They would wreak havoc. She had to give the Noughts time and warning.
<Hold!> Quath called. She let the signal scatter through the spectrum. Her Nought was sure to sense it.
Beq’qdahl jerked with surprise. <Quath!>
<Yes, traitor.>
<You have dogged us, hurt us!>
<You disobey the Tukar’ramin. There was a time when you would have rather bitten off half your legs.>
<There was a time when you were not a fool.>
<Oh, was there? Perhaps it was when I helped your vain self.>
Beq’qdahl was cautious, striving to conceal her anger. <Ambition is no sin.>
<Nor loyalty.>
<I follow the Illuminates!>
<Some Illuminates.>
<Stand clear of these animals while we do our work. Then we shall deal with you.>
<No, you’ll deal now—>
Quath sent a hard, prickly burst toward Beq’qdahl’s voice. It scattered among the walls of rock.
The battle began. Quath ran and dodged. She had chosen her position well. Her superior equipment enabled her to block most shots. She disabled three podia with quick, stuttering pulses. But her armaments were wearing thin.
Beq’qdahl was the key. The others would flee if their leader fell. Quath reached out with a cone-shaped aura and touched Beq’qdahl.
Now she saw into Beq’qdahl’s true self. Her goals were simple. Lounging in burr-rich strands. Sucking down sweetbreads and plotting meanness, guilty only of casual malice and ignorance, stuffed with a bland assurance of self.
Beq’qdahl would have been no worse than this, but for the distant conflict of Illuminates. For such a minor, accidental matter, should she die?
Quath could not reason the question. Had her Philosoph genes left her alone, she knew, these vexing issues would not even arise. Gathering herself, she rushed forward.
The moment came when Beq’qdahl was exposed—and Quath could not fire.
She clambered instead over the last upturned layers of fractured strata and ran pell-mell into the milling band of firing, fleeing Noughts.
Cries, shrieks, bangs. They brushed against her like passing motes. Her superior shields were up and their bolts were no more than pesky itches.
Her Nought! There! Shedding opalescent waves of heat. Helping another Nought to its—no, her—feet.
But Beq’qdahl had now seen which was Quath’s Nought. Quath could see Beq’qdahl carefully aiming for the small figure.
Still Quath could not fire. This was Beq’qdahl, strand-sharer. Beq’qdahl…
The simmering presence of her Nought abruptly broke through Quath with rainsquall momentum. It—no, he—comprehended the quicksilver essence of the moment. He turned and picked Beq’qdahl out from the jumbled landscape.
Aimed. Fired.
And Beq’qdahl burst open. Flames leaped from the holed bulk of her.
Quath felt a jolt of sudden pain. She heard dismayed anguish leak from Beq’qdahl. It spattered through the spectrum.
Her friend and rival was dying. The projectile weapon of the Nought had breached her main compartment. Fragments lodged in Beq’qdahl’s subminds. Unless Quath hastened to salvage what scraps she could, Beq’qdahl would dwindle, ebb, die.
Leaden remorse filled Quath. But she kept on.
Toward her Nought. Ignoring the stings and arrows of the harrying crowd around her.
Toward the appointment she had made with the whirl and gyre of gravity and time.
