Tides of Light (16 page)
Authors: Gregory Benford
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,
Quath allowed herself a glance at Beq’qdahl’s large, hairy mass.
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.
Captured mech ships and a large orbital station aided this. Quath and Beq’qdahl had both been privileged to pilot flights
to the captured mech station, the nearest they had gotten to where the orbital weavers conjured their deft magic.
No hope of such lofty labor now. All surface-working podia had to find rich upturned seams. All who could be spared became
prospectors.
more difficult to—>
.> Beq’qdahl dipped her proboscis sarcastically, impaling on it a burr of spitfood.
Quath bristled cilia.
?> Beq’qdahl plucked a mite from a moist slickstrand.
.>
Beq’qdahl leaned closer gracefully, her hydraulics wheezing.
, not hug the ground like a grub.>
Quath framed a reply and suddenly saw that Beq’qdahl would be a success. Beq’qdahl’s smooth, successful, uncaring manner came
naturally because she was in touch with deeper wellsprings, she sensed the way things truly were. And in that clear world,
the Synthesis was talk and the Summation a promised sugar dollop meant to quiet children, not a thing podia took seriously
for long. That world was real. Relentlessly real.
Gathering call
, came the beep, slicing through Quath’s concentration. She crunched over crumbling slag and looked for silvery green streaks.
Gathering call
.
She slipped a needle into the flaking silver-green, measured and clattered her ossicles in frustration. The stuff wasn’t
palazinia
. Finding a lode of palazinia, the rarest of the bonding pastes, would have been a coup. This scrap, glinting falsely—Quath
kicked at it—was worthless.
Gathering call
.
She answered, dreading.
Rendezvous! Noble Beq’qdahl has found a deep seam of—
Savagely she clicked the message off. Another feat for Beq’qdahl.
This was the fifth important find since the prospecting and mining had begun,
all
Beq’qdahl’s. Most of the other podia were kept busy mining Beq’qdahl’s discoveries, leaving the field clear for Beq’qdahl
to find more, to stand out even better. Quath had pondered giving up prospecting—she wasn’t good at searching; she moped and
rambled when she should scuttle, ferretlike, poking into every cranny—and becoming a miner. But something inside made Quath
keep on, trying to best Beq’qdahl. She would
not
yield the ground so easily. If only—
Quath’jutt’kkal’thon. Summons!
No. Do not rendezvous. Return to the Hive. To the Tukar’ramin
.
Down slippery strands slid the Tukar’ramin, a great glistening mass of polished steel and grainy carapace. Gusts of warm well-being
spread through Quath as feelers stole into her mind, sensing all. Nervous, jittery tensions smoothed away.
*Rejoice, small one.*
*No formalisms please; they tax the mind by seeming to mean something. Rejoice, because you need no longer slough the crumbled
land. I know you dislike that.*
The Tukar’ramin drew Quath nearer, washing her with comfort and forgiveness.
*Your doubts drag at every step you make.*
The words came out more stiffly than she intended, but Quath clutched at the phrase out of a sense
of dignity.
*Must you always go sober-suited?*
down to nothing?
*But Beq’qdahl is solitary, too. Alone, seeking rare soils. Her pods do not shamble as yours do.*
Beq’qdahl again! Quath said primly,
*But you are none of you alone!* Faint, chiding exasperation. *We are bound on the great, final task. The thermweaves we spin
around this star will clasp firm its burning energy. Our fellow podia will soon harness the crackling electrodynamics of the
Galactic Center which rage nearby. Soon we shall combine all such energies. Thus gathered, and the mechs banished—and who
can doubt that we shall do so, given our great victory here?—we can use the tamed power to communicate with other Starswarmers
in far galaxies.*
*I lick you do not. We span the galaxy to bring
meaning
to matter. Not simply within our own minds—the castles of besieged reason—but in the stars themselves.* She made the eight-legged
sign.
Quath shuffled, not knowing what to reply.
*I sense your unease remains.*
Quath sent a sharp command to her podding subtask brain, willing its nervous dance to cease.
When the Tukar’ramin spoke again, gaudy hormonal spurts brought a new gravity to the resonant words. *You are a manifestation
of a rare trait in our kind, Quath’jutt’kkal’thon.*
Afraid of exposure, she answered,
*No. The deep secret behind our expansion from our home system I shall now reveal to you. Long ago, we encountered a race
of small beings who explained the nature of the coming mech onslaught. Our savants of that time saw that our own lazy nature
meant that we would fall before the mechs. So we blended genetic material with the small ones, to amplify our aggressive side.*
*They were. I do not know what physical form they took, but they were both canny and persistent. In selecting these subtle
mental traits from their DNA—for we shared that fundamental helical carrier—we necessarily incorporated other facets of them.
One such is a capacity to doubt, to question.*
Quath said with false bravado.
*Perhaps. But you are surely the rare form we call a Philosoph. The conventional wisdom of the Synthesis, as handed down by
the Illuminates, is enough for most. Even those who do not believe—such as Beq’qdahl—function well within that context. But
leadership of our race depends on the Philosophs.*
*Eventually, yes—if you display the questing mind we need.*
*This deep trait is what has plunged you into bleak despair after Nimfur’thon’s burning. It brings pain, but can also bring
wisdom.*
On the Tukar’ramin’s great wrinkled hide flashed a hormonal code. *We will encrust you. A small addition for your new task.*
*Is not spiritually fitting for you. We are lacking labor in the Hive itself, due to the mining. Here I will sense you better,
as you work. There—you have the code? Apply to the Factotum and be encrusted with your new tool.*
A gesture told Quath her audience was done. She skittered away. Liberation from prospecting! And an encrustation—!
Next to promotion, which would mean an added pod, encrustation was the highest tribute to a podder. Quath could preen in the
warrens, displaying her addition without baldly announcing it. A plus, definitely. Yes. Her spirits rose.
Quath clattered past Danni’vver, hurrying to the nearest terminal. She beeped the code number and awaited the news, her servos
humming. She could ponder the odd news of her nature later, when there was time. After all, she was a Philosoph—whatever that
strange name implied.
The screen flickered fretted ivory. An image of the new tool formed.
Gorge rose in Quath, an acrid blue that rasped her thorax. Swimming before her was a stapling gun. A simple, brainless tool.
A simpleton encrustation so low as to be an insult.
The days passed with an ache in each hour.
Quath had some use of the stapling gun, occasionally tacking machines and crates to the Hive walls in the company of a rabble
of robots she directed. The small Hive creatures squeaked and jibbered in their stuttering minilanguage. Quath felt a stab
of embarrassment whenever an acquaintance happened by.
But in time this faded. After all, she was laboring, like all the podia, and gradually she came to feel that this was her
rightful station. Facts had their own hardness, but one could sleep upon them.
Quath did not mind the studied way some myriapodia now ignored her conversation. There was always someone to talk to, anyway.
The myriapodia were distant and boring, in truth; they cared only for their many mechanical jewelments, and how to acquire
yet one more.
Aeons ago the idea must have seemed a good one, Quath thought: augment the podia as they aged, to use their experience and
shore up the stiffening organs. But now these encrusted mammoths preened more than they worked. And the Quath they snubbed,
the quadpodder they passed without seeing as she labored among brainless robots—that Quath knew that these bright myriapodia
would inevitably vanish forever, no matter how many stringy muscles and clogged veins they replaced.
One night Quath passed a gang of miners and prospectors as she returned alone to the communal webbing, down the inert gray
arterial corridors. One called out,
today.>
Beq’qdahl came into view. Three podia escorted her. The fresh leg gleamed silver and Beq’qdahl bowed toward them, articulating
well, with color splashes at her throat that were almost convincingly humble. But her eyes drifted randomly, fogged, unattended
by a saturated brain.
to celebrate?> a quadder shouted.
. A rare honor!>
remain with four. That’s
it
, isn’t it?>