When she and Nimfur’thon had boasted and challenged each other to come out here they had both been brave beyond question. Now Quath felt timid strains lacing her speech, fed from her subminds. Those were always cautious. They demanded incessant consultation. They made basso doubt and hesitation ride out beneath her carrier wave. She hated how these unwanted clues to her inner nature slipped through her filters, making her easy to read.
Nimfur’thon said confidently, <They are mere statistical fluctuations, low-limper friend. Feedback stabilization will catch the bulge and tuck it back into its mother sac.>
Quath stopped to measure her position, using fixes on two nearby peaks. No moons circled this world; for easy navigation, she sighted on the high station captured from the mechs by her brood. This glimmering spoil of warfare pleased Quath’s subminds, a sign of their thundering success on this world. They had deftly gutted the mech-station superintendents, the Horde of Podia descending with complete surprise and zestful courage. Quath was proud to be part of such a daring thrust into an inner mech province.
Quath surged downhill—clanking, jingling, ringing—as her pods found footing on skittering stones. She arrowed on Nimfur’thon’s peeping redness. Calmly, letting no color into her warble, she said, <Still, we are very close….>
<Monopody, you are. Stop worrying!>
Quath’s mind clogged for an instant as she sensed a servo whine hotly—eeeeeeii—in a forepod. She thought of the Tukar’ramin safely working in the Hive, beyond the brimming ridgeline. She and Nimfur’thon should be there, celebrating with the rest of the Hive’s brood.
Quath had tramped these hills many days with Nimfur’thon as they labored together. They had struggled with the fluxtube cannisters. Nimfur’thon had splintered a pod bone when a bulkhead tipped over. She had been unable to walk without agony until Quath fetched an artificial replacement.
Nimfur’thon’s new pod shaft worked better than her natural organic one, as usual. Quath envied Nimfur’thon the fresh pod, making her faster; she had no natural pods left at all. Nimfur’thon’s long, prickly body gleamed with purpose, nearly all of it covered in metallic cowlings.
The Hive had seen cause to outfit both Quath and Nimfur’thon with the latest in advanced cybertech, whole subsystems of handsomely self-powered organs and limbs and antennae. They were honored to be so chosen, but that did not leach from them the free high spirits of the young.
<Has memory fled you, Quath? We swore to slip away and meet, to brave fierce energies and watch the plasma dance on the hills!>
<I—we have—>
<Your ossicles overload at this small flight?> Nimfur’thon sent in sharp chatter. In parallel she lifted a singsong, I, we have!…I, we have! on a sour sideband of her carrier, taunting.
<No, I—I—>
<A groveling ground-burrower you become, CicadaQuath. Your thorax trumpets, but at the cusp moment—>
<Enough, cyst-sucker! I shall soon be upon you!>
Quath’s bravado rang false. Like all her ground-burrowing race, she was terrified of heights. And even more of flying. Her subminds pealed their alarm. She mustered all her courage.
With a lurch Quath birthed a rosy egg of flame beneath her. She jetted up a granite-flecked cliff face. All through Nimfur’thon’s chiding Quath had been planning, vectoring. Now, expending all her reserve in one spurt, Quath arced up the stony wall and—fuel guttering out in black fog, rockets choking down—she scrabbled at the boulders of the peak.
Clutched.
Teetered on the brink.
Fanned the blue air—
—and caught.
—Jitjitjit-eeeee—screamed a linkage, but Quath scrambled to safety, feeling the safety-warmth as her center of gravity slid into snug position above solid ground. Her hot fear changed to pride.
<Pay homage here!> Quath barked.
<How did you—? Ah, squeezed out your last dollop of fuel. Not wise.> Nimfur’thon was a squat disk on the plain below.
<You bray of wisdom? You, who jibed me into ambling here?>
Quath felt suddenly exposed on this high point. She spied sheets of phosphorescence hanging in the air—near, chillingly near.
Nimfur’thon’s rippling signal now betrayed a thin thread of doubt.
<The Syphon forms,> Quath cried.
Yellow steam gouted from far hills. Mudworked buildings crescented that ridgeline, temporary housings for the fluxtube formers.
<Go down the reverse side, Quath. Away from the Syphon.>
Quath scrambled downslope, sending boulders clattering with her bumpers. <And you? We must hurry.>
<I will cross this plain. We will meet in that low rut, there>—Nimfur’thon squirted a vectored grid image—<and watch the Syphon.>
Quath gave a heaving grunt as she geared up in haste.
Nimfur’thon called boisterously, <We deserve a good gaze at it. This is our first, not like a vinegar-souled multipodder who is bored with it all. We have labored hard for these moments.>
Quath ignored these repeated justifications and focused on the skittering gang of rocks that herded before her, racing and leaping downhill. No moment to be buried in the embrace of pebbles, no. She skirted a ledge, made a grinding controlled slide—
<Quath—there are animals here!>
<Impossible. This area was burnt fine.>
<No, I have stirred them out with my pounding. They swarm from their pits.>
Quath turned and crosshaired Nimfur’thon on the plain. Dots jiggled about her graywhite disk. <Flyers. Birds.>
<No, Noughts. They are the worst. Pests, into everything.> Nimfur’thon fired flame into the dots. They blackened and tumbled.
