<But it’s the whole point!>
*I do not believe so.*
This reduction of the center of the matter to, to an opinion, stunned Quath. Without this peg the edifice collapsed.
<Will the Illuminates survive forever?>
*That is not given to us to know.*
Several of the elderly myriapodia sent discreet low-frequency signals to Quath, urging an end. Other podia murmured and rustled.
*Remember, it is the essence of us which propagates.*
More homilies. Quath felt a sudden rush of embarrassment at being so exposed. They all mutely accepted, all of them. They kept silent. Which meant that none truly believed. Only stupid, blind Quath still questioned.
*This has proved to be a blossoming exchange. Are your quandaries resolved?*
<I…yes.>
*I suspect you are more disturbed by Nimfur’thon’s passing than the rest of us. Know that we understand.*
<I…I know.> To cover her fear and confusion she retreated into the ritual of <I give thanks.> Quath returned to knee-cock, raak, raak.
Podia nearby pinched their cilia in disapproval. Beq’qdahl openly jibed.
The unfalum, their shared holy food, passed from pincer to pincer. Quath took a strand numbly, engorged it, and began to pull the sticky wad into strings. The manipulae inside her mouth tugged the sweet filaments and spread them into sheets, expanding the surface area. Fine-boned manipulae pressed these against tasting buds, to heighten the sense. Quath sat and worked her mouth, as did the others.
Why was she alone burdened with these doubts? Quath wondered. Yet she could not give them up.
The confluence ended with singing and smacking noises as they devoured the last of the unfalum. Quath made a show of clenching her thorax, but no matter how thinly she pressed the unfalum, somehow Quath could not swallow, could not truly eat of the essence of their shared vision.
SIX
That evening she podded away from the Hive, which floated shadowlike above a wrecked dry plain. She wandered among the hills north of the Syphon. Tomorrow she would return to the ferment of work, but now something drew her out of the secure warrens.
The land trembled as though this planet were breathing. If so, Quath thought in her distraction, the world would begin to gasp its last quite soon enough. Inexplicably, the image disturbed her.
A roof of clouds drifted overhead, bellies bulging blue with rain. A wan glow from the setting sun drenched the landscape in lazy oranges and reds. Quath shifted to transopticals and saw the Cosmic Circle in orbit, inert and dull without the prodding of the podia’s magnetic fields.
She longed to labor up there, to help fling the incredible sharpness of the Circle into the breast of this dying mudball. That was glory, honor, destiny.
The Circle was the most precious of her race’s natural resources. The names of the podia who had found and captured the Circle would ring down through history forever. Possession of the Circle gave the podia the key to slitting the throats of whole worlds. They had used it against the mechs who opposed their move into Galactic Center.
It could be hurled against mech craft at immense speed. After it had chopped ships, there was a way to make it suddenly radiate enormous bursts of electromagnetic radiation, frying all unprotected mechs within an entire solar system. The Circle Masters were benefactors and warriors beyond all comparison in the history of the podia. Quath was proud to tread the ruptured ground beneath their handiwork.
On this rumpled plain mech ruins clogged the ravines. Smashed mech factories gaped like rotted teeth. Mech carcasses still smoked from past battles. Podia had stripped others of useful parts so that only the shell remained. Quath swelled with pride at the devastation her kind had wrought.
Even this lightly defended world had demanded the best of the podia. They had fallen upon it while the local mechs were beset by internal struggles. The Illuminates had detected signs of exceptionally vicious mech intercity competition. Those wise beings had then ordered the Hives to descend. Once enough of the surface was secured for construction of the magnetic clamping stations, the Cosmic Circle had been brought into play. Their victory here opened the possibility of penetrating into the mech fortress stars even closer to the tantalizing core of the whirlpool galaxy.
A herd of grazing animals caught sight of Quath and scattered, pell-mell. Even for animals, they seemed stupid and graceless. To think Nimfur’thon had hesitated a precious time too long, out of concern over such base creatures! This was a crude planet, incapable of hatching more than Noughts in its scum of sea and sky.
Some scattered Noughts—mere planet-bound creatures, with crude devices—remained here. Only after the mech defeat had the podia even noticed them. Disemboweling their world would finish such trivial beings.
Yet some podia still fell to their assaults. Even such minor creatures could hurl podia into the blackness that Quath now knew to be everywhere, behind each apparently solid object.
As it had swallowed Nimfur’thon, so it would, inevitably, suck down Quath, the Tukar’ramin, everyone, everyone and everything, making a vile joke of continuity.
Quath plucked up a boulder in irritation and flung it skyward, arcing toward a distant herd of dull-witted grazers. The stone smashed great holes as it bounded through them, felling a few. Smaller animals hopped in panic from their holes. They melted into the shadowed dusk and Quath turned, weary, back to the floating alabaster mountain that was the Hive.
The Syphon lanced skyward again. This time the Cosmic Circle held steady in its course and the Syphon did not snake sideways. No burning lash fell, letting streaming yellow gush forth.
The podia took special care with this first successful firing. The Circle spun perfectly, caressed by sinewy fields. They would have to repeat the exercise many times before abandoning this scrap of a world, each time made a bit more difficult because of the shifting pressures below as the planetary mantle collapsed.
Quath took refuge in the bustle of work. She volunteered for excess time at the feedback-stabilization monitor. Canted forward to sense the rippling green display, integrating differential inputs, she felt the pressing hollowness of life lift away. If there was no redeeming facet in things, atleast there was this: A blur of activity hid the fact that activity meant, finally, nothing.
As the Syphon steadied its rush of core metals, the Hive lifted farther. Quath watched from a viewing blister. The ground below heaved and broke, spurting fountains of dust. The land groaned. Pebbles rattled on the blister’s underbelly. Animals stumbled in panic as hills slumped. Pits opened beneath their feet.
Quath felt her resting strands quiver and she turned, away from the chaos outside. Beq’qdahl nimbly enveloped herself in a webbing, saying, <A good show.>
<Yes.>
<I think we’ll start mining tomorrow.>
Quath allowed herself a glance at Beq’qdahl’s large, hairy mass. <You’re looking forward to it’?>
<Isn’t everybody? It’s a chance to show what you can do on your own.>
Quath had not thought of mining that way, but Beq’qdahl’s self-assurance made the point obvious. With each sucking of the Syphon the crust churned, exposing fresh seams of rare minerals. Many ores were needed in the thermweb weaving now going on in orbit. To thread the great bands of coldformed nickel-iron required bonding pastes and weldings, so freighters lofted a steady stream of mixed materials from the surface.
