TWELVE

Quath knew she should remain fixed in the present, moored in the reality of craggy reaches and massive buttresses. She had to keep watch on the podia Beq’qdahl led in the plains below. They kept slipping nearer. Only Quath’s ranging shots kept them at bay.

But the tangled world within beckoned….

She had found the one Nought, she was sure of that now. Edging closer, lightly touching the tiny pale spheres of their separate selfhoods, Quath had finally pressed against one who had the tang and bite she recognized. The earlier Nought that she had invaded, yes, she saw the resemblance—but not the same. This property in itself was intriguing, but she had no time to inspect the myriad rivulets of meaning in these sublattices.

Quath now saw that with each close encounter she was learning a different pathway into Noughts. Each entrance brought fresh perspectives. And pitfalls. The portals of her own Nought had ushered Quath into a miasma.

At first it had been like dusky radiance descending through murky memories, creaky with age. Yellowed filigrees rotted and fell away, lace parted, cobwebs lifted from glinting, brass-hard facts… which themselves dissolved like singing dust beneath the rub of remorseless time.

Inside the Nought, yes… But where?

Quath had felt herself walking through a broad courtyard like that which gave onto the Hive’s great hall of worship. The walls cast an embroidery of shadow on stones—only the floor was not rock at all, but bones, white skulls, worn red carapaces, skeletal cages of ribs and abdomens. They snapped as she clumped over them, making her way back into a wide, gloomy past. Empty eyesockets seemed to follow her wobbly progress. Whispers and words bubbled from the street of bones. Some were sharp and bitter, ripped from throats which still longed and yearned. She could not understand these twisted, clangorous sounds. Abruptly she saw that they came from the podia past, stitching blood and marrow and desire and history into a tight sound-knot.

Her solid footing grew flesh-soft. Quath plunged forward helplessly, each frightened step taking her up to the knee in the cloying, mossy past. Suddenly she was falling, falling—and petrifying fear shot through her like red pain.

No! her subminds cried. She landed in soft feathers.

Here beneath the street of the dead lay a labyrinth of sultry darks. Its angled corridors fanned like fingers into webbed designs. Quath tried to follow. She was running hard now.

Though she knew that in some sense she was merely immersed in the falsity of another’s electro-aura, she could not extricate herself. It was like the time before, with the Nought who had held her, but far worse. She was not pinned to the sliding experiences of one Nought now, but caught in some swamp of deep desire, some collective mystery.

The shambling things came to her, finally. She had heard their feet slapping on the worn, ebony floors, not pursuing but still coming. They loomed up in the dank darkness that seemed to come streaming out of the walls. Pervading and consuming shadows, exhaled by far antiquity.

Quath lurched away from them. Whacked hard against a brittle corner. Stumbled on.

Though they had only two legs these Noughts were quicker than she expected. They drew closer in the alloyed silence and then she saw their faces and knew it all.

<Tukar’ramin!> she called.

The talus slope she slid down sent boulders crashing before her, like heralds announcing the coming of a queen. <Tukar’ramin!>

Her experience had jarred her deeply, but now the world was not muddled as it had been before. A hard-edged clarity pressed toward her out of the congealing, sharp air.

*I feel you weakly.*

<Here! Here I am! Narrow your spectrum and we can cut through the electroblizzard.>

*I tried to send reinforcements but they were blocked and ambushed. Beq’qdahl and others have isolated your area. They serve an unwise faction of the Illuminates. They seek—*

<I know, I know. Forget them—I have made a discovery!>

*Do not dismiss their threat—*

<I know the source of the Philosoph genes.>

*What? How could—*

<It is these Noughts!>

*Impossible. Little Noughts could not have—*

<They were not Noughts then. They have been so trampled by the mechs that they muster few resources now. But long ago they knew our Elders. The Philosoph elements entered us then.>

*You delved into them?*

<Deeply! And found my origins!>

*I… I see. This is even stranger than I had imagined.*

<Imagined? You suspected these Noughts?>

*From the beginning I sensed complex elements beneath the surface chatter of their minds. I was curious. That fact, and the arrival of more Noughts in a ship—it all aroused my slumbering suspicions.*

Quath had thought that there could be no more surprises in this day, but a lancing thought came to her. <The station! You sent Beq’qdahl and myself there. You knew me for a Philosoph and—>

*Yes. If there were any uncovered aspects of these supposed Noughts, I knew you were the best of the podia to seek it out.*

<You should have told me the true nature of my task!>

*No. Your ability lies in the formulating of questions—and those cannot be assigned.*

<But, but—some hint! It would have saved me much soulful worry.>

*Anxiety is your lot.*

<That is what it means to be a Philosoph?>

*This you must discover. The genes express themselves in many ways.*

Quath felt empty, adrift. <To be so related to such Noughts… many of them I have already killed….>

*Quath, I master great weighty arrays of information, and have a bounty of technical skills far transcending yours—but I do not and cannot have the queer talent you manifest.*

<But… what does it mean, to be related to these mites?>

*I can venture no answer.*

<Who can?>

*You.*

<No, there are others,> Quath said with sudden conviction. <The Noughts.>