SEVEN
Gathering call, came the beep, slicing through Quath’s concentration. She crunched over crumbling slag and looked for silvery green streaks.
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!
<I was delayed. Am proceeding to—>
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.*
<All celebrate, in your presence.>
*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.*
<I have been so…obvious?>
The Tukar’ramin drew Quath nearer, washing her with comfort and forgiveness.
*Your doubts drag at every step you make.*
<I have kept to the task.> 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?*
<I…> She hesitated. How to tell this most enfolding of all creatures that the snug universe was a vortex, sucking them all down to nothing? <I am a mere quadpodder and more solitary.>
*But Beq’qdahl is solitary, too. Alone, seeking rare soils. Her pods do not shamble as yours do.*
Beq’qdahl again! Quath said primly, <We each have our ways.>
*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 fully perceive this. Yet—>
*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. <I, I have no vector.>
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, <My doubts are only temporary, I assure you—>
*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 must have been fierce.>
*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.*
<I got their fierceness, too,> 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.*
<Leadership?>
*Eventually, yes—if you display the questing mind we need.*
<I…I…>
*This deep trait is what has plunged you into bleak despair after Nimfur’thon’s burning. It brings pain, but can also bring wisdom.*
<A cursed inheritance,> Quath said bitterly.
On the Tukar’ramin’s great wrinkled hide flashed a hormonal code. *We will encrust you. A small addition for your new task.*
<The prospecting—>
*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.