<Quath! Something—>
Dazed, she fixed on Nimfur’thon. But the signal cut off.
She sent a burst to the Hive through a haze of noise. An answering tone came, and the brood view at once tilted back down the glowing strand of metal, veering into the slumped hills. A hurricane wind had flushed clear the air. The eerie light of the core metal dappled the plain with shadows. But something wavered—
The tube. It twisted, hummed, curled into a helix, straightened again. Light surged the walls.
A bulge formed. Grew.
Quath watched the image, awash in it. The fattening flux-tube rippled. Flexed. And looped suddenly, faster than the eye could follow. Out, across the plain. Its metal soup escaped. A blinding white ball spilled over, splintering rocks, spreading.
The gray pancake of Nimfur’thon crouched in a shallow draw. Rock above her singed where the bubbling liquid touched. The tide hesitated and then lapped over, blackening, blackening, blackening everything.
<Nimfur’thon!>
Now the images came too fast to comprehend.
The legs jerking. A ripping scream. Footpads melting where they touched bubbling white. Nimfur’thon turning, her pods splintering. Skin popping open. Guts pouring out—to flame into brown smoke.
Nimfur’thon’s walking pods melted slowly into the ooze. Her manipulating pods clutched frantically at the sky, as if to pull herself up.
Orange plumes cracked the upper bulkhead. Armpods beat at the flames in spasms. Yellow tongues ate. A bulkhead blew open. Gobbets spattered.
This was the way Quath would remember Nimfur’thon. The vision seared away all other memories. For what seemed a long time
Quath could see nothing but this licking moment of death. Her opticals registered other inputs, but
her mind rejected them. She stood frozen. Silent. She began to tremble.
TWO
The Syphon guttered out. Colossal magnetic knots crimped the flow. The glowing wall of pressure became again the lone cosmic string, its golden razor beauty hanging at the poles of the planet. A calm returned. Above, a dark tangle of coldhardened core metal orbited. Forms moved among this newly grown maze, polishing, cutting, making vast works.
The helical instability was diagnosed. There was indeed sign of Nought interference.
Labor parties crossed the plain toward the fluxworks. They carried Nimfur’thon’s remains, sectioned, back to the Hive. Few spoke to Quath, not because they considered her shamed—inspection of Nimfur’thon’s tracer log showed the risk was her own—but rather because they were busy restoring the fluxtube projectors, which had fused to slag.
As the teams labored, Quath sloughed back to the Hive. Her joints and seams ached from pinprick damage. Danni’vver, assistant in training to the Tukar’ramin, sent beeping questions during Quath’s march, asking details of how the two had maneuvered so close, and—from supple dartings of phrases—sensed the cloud that now descended over Quath.
There followed a rest period which Quath tried to embrace. She failed. She felt in the warren walls the strumming of motion from other multipodia, who did not rest. She listened to the urgent, fever-shot data that would not let her sleep.
The looping instability was a setback, throwing off their schedule. Legions of their fellow strandsharers orbited far in space beyond the Cosmic Circle. They awaited the gouts of metal to begin their weave. The pace in the Hive must quicken, then. Finally she silenced her subminds’ irksome voices. She fell into a slumber gratefully, legs folded close and tight in the slick webbing; for something dark pursued her.
Quath woke panting, pods tangled, the speckling of her tracheae bulging red, yellow, red again in hasty rhythm. A buzzing call for her echoed through the groined alcove. Quath answered and found a summons from Danni’vver.
She dismounted anxiously. Her mind was a snarled maze. Her hydraulics knotted and filled with a pressing ache.
Hastily she smeared a vomit drop on an acid spore. This eaten, Quath hobbled forth, favoring one leg which had splintered a knee. She limped through vaults astir with work. A pentapod hailed, but otherwise she was ignored. This was nothing new, and in fact was what Quath desired this day. The weight that had descended upon her did not welcome company.
<You realize that you are blameful?> droned Danni’vver at the entrance to the central chasm.
<Of necessity.>
<Your Ascension will be slowed.>
<Yes.>
<Addition of a manipulating arm, to render you>—Danni’vver consulted her slate, rather than look directly at Quath—<pentapod, will be delayed.>
<Yes.>
<It is good that you reconcile so easily. Some do not have that ability, though they be myriapodia.>
<Yes.>
Danni’vver flicked open a port in her barnacled hide. Moistly she studied Quath for a long moment and said, <Despite your error, the Tukar’ramin will enter you.>
Quath felt the spaces within her suddenly burst. Fear flooded out. Awe squeezed her spiracles shut until the air wheezed through tight slits. Embarrassed, she was sure Danni’vver would notice. The wall parted with a soft rumble that covered Quath’s rasping breath. Quath teetered forward on stiffening limbs. She knew she would be seen for what she was.
*Terror pins you.*
The shimmering thought came as she gazed up, tilting to register the height. A vast bulk moved in the webs. Moist beads drifted in a tingling cloud. Massive arched stoneworks gave the hushed air a pressing weight.
Quath began, <Abbess, I have abysmal sorrow—>
*Do not attempt to state your inner self. I see.*
Vibrant light played in the Tukar’ramin’s body, which spanned the upper chasm. Quath had never been alone with such an august being. She struggled to take it all in. The bulbous presence bristled with uncountable legs.
She felt a probing. Fine wires laced through the muddy inside of her. She dully sensed a phantasm dancing, spinning—and then gone, evaporated.
*It is not Nimfur’thon’s death that infests you.*
