Telamud’s friends examined her, slapped her, tried to bring her around. The woman came back slowly, groggy and ashen. She could say nothing, but she seemed able to walk all right.
As Killeen looked around, drops began to patter through the decks of leaves and branches above. It was a pale green rain, alien and cold, curtains of it moving like filmy lace among the trees.
The Family lay sprawled as though dead. Some had already taken food from their packs, as though settling down for the night.
“Heysay, rain,” someone said drowsily.
Another answered, “Never thought I’d hate rain. Never got enough on Snowglade. But now…”
“Water above, water below,” Killeen said. “More in my blisters than’s comin’ out that sky.”
A man called, “It’ll keep the Cybers in, I’ll bet.”
Killeen shook his head. This futile logic had no basis, but the fatigue in the man’s voice was deep. He called up his inventory of old tales and said, “You ’member Jesus? The Great Cap’n? Well, I’m greater, ’cause I’m walkin’ on more water than he did.”
The small joke got a laugh, and he cajoled a few to their feet. They were too tired to resist very much, but Killeen knew he could not get much more out of them before their reserves would be gone. Then he would face real rebellion.
“C’mon,” he called. “Step proud! Double rations t’night.”
Their mood lightened a little and the column moved off slowly into the gathering murk.
TWO
Quath pursued the Noughts with a strangely mixed glee.
She enjoyed the mad dashes she could perform, racing from one fleeing band of panicked Noughts to the next, chopping and blasting and cutting them. It was a consummation of her plan, and a great joy.
Yet vagrant impulses shot through her. She felt glancing pain as the Noughts died. She suffered a momentary trembling fever as they fled in fear.
This unsettled her, slowed her arms fractionally, veered her aim. So Beq’qdahl cried, <You’re overshooting! Correct!>
<Yes, yes,> Quath replied, hoping none of the podia noticed how shaken she was.
<Pursue them!> came the joint cry of the armed podia. Quath joined their rush.
Up ragged ridgelines, through gray mech ruins and gutted green forests, and down onto the smashed steppes of this fractured place, they harried the stupid, witless Noughts.
Quath’s adroit plan had worked. Her captured Nought, when released in the area where the largest packs of Noughts were thought to prowl, immediately sought out its fellows. A tiny device attached to the Nought gave a locating signal several times a day. Quath had tracked them and had guessed their intention of again attacking some of the magnetic field stations which controlled the movements of the Cosmic Circle.
And now the trap she had laid for them had sprung, catching thousands of the mites. As Quath made haste through a mech factory, searching for hiding Noughts, the Tukar’ramin’s voice sprang fullblown into her aura.
*You are a true fierce and canny sort,* she said. *I have observed your admirable scheme unfolding. Be careful that you do not risk yourself in these brute encounters, however.*
<We are weapons-augmented, vast one. Fear not,> Quath replied.
*I can bring you glad news, too. The second of the encoded slabs, which you extracted from the Nought ship, is now decoded as well as can be done. It is truly valuable.*
Quath felt Beq’qdahl, who was clambering up a nearby slope, seethe with amber-shot jealousy. She pretended not to notice. <Oh? I am made twofold happy. But…who translated them?>
*The Illuminates.*
Quath’s subminds babbled in a crossfire of astonishment.
*They have deftly picked their way through the thicket of compressed meaning in those slabs.*
<The Illuminates delve here?>
*These two slabs bear directly upon large matters.*
<You speak directly to them…now?>
*Yes, across the span of suns. I have received instructions from all those Illuminates within light-travel time of this system. Two are here, overseeing our orbital constructions. Even now they debate among themselves.*
<Do the Illuminates know the answers that vex and try me so much?> Quath blurted.
*Quath—*
<What of death? Is there meaning to what we do, meaning beyond our final endings? What of—>
*The answers we all believe—the Summation—the Illuminates themselves formulated. That wisdom is ancient indeed. Now they do not delve into such matters. They ponder how to accomplish our grand purpose. Remember what I revealed to you before, about your own nature?*
Puzzled, Quath paused to reflect. At the same time she plowed through a stand of twisted trees, their bark stripped (eaten by Noughts? she wondered). She searched for targets. But Beq’qdahl had already bagged the two Noughts Quath had been trailing, and now loudly trumpeted her puny victory out of ego-need. Quath turned and raced down a talus slope.
<Of course, I recall all that the Tukar’ramin has given unto me. I am a Philosoph, you say.>
*You approach this subject with hesitation?*
<Yes…I wonder, why am I singled out?>
