Toby knew he had an obligation to keep the social glue in place. Not that he had to like it. He smacked a fist into his palm as he walked away from the jammed room.

Concerned, Besen asked, “She really got to you?”

“Naysay. Forget it.” But he knew he wouldn’t.

TWO

The Shredded Star

Toby missed having Quath live outside. Anything that big should be free beneath the stars, not closed in.

He was sure of this despite knowing that Quath’s kind had evolved out of a burrowing species that liked to dig in snug and tight beneath the ground. How such a race developed intelligence was a riddle. It seemed unlikely that something that wormed into dark, smelly crannies and ventured out to hunt for game would need much in the way of smarts. On the other hand, he reflected, humans had holed up in caves a lot, or so Isaac said. What made a creature develop intelligence was a deep question. After all, mechs came to have quick minds and nobody remembered when or how. Not even Isaac.

But the real reason Toby thought Quath should be outside was that Toby now had no excuse to go hull-walking himself. He felt an itchy, restless energy that he couldn’t erase with workouts in zero-grav. At least when he did visit Quath, it was in spaces so big that Toby could practice his low-grav skills.

At the moment Quath was in the abandoned agro dome. The high arch reflected back Toby’s huffing and puffing as he did rebounds off the walls. He would coast across the dome, maybe try to bank a little in the ventilator winds. Zooming toward the opposite wall, he pinwheeled his arms in mid-flight to bring his legs around, so that they could absorb momentum and rebound like coiled springs. A lot more fun than lifting dead weights, like some kind of demented machine.

Quath stood at the dome floor’s center, eyes swiveling to follow Toby’s ricocheting. She sent a hissing note of derision:

<You make much needless effort.>

“I wouldn’t expect a giant cockroach to understand.”

<My people would never sup in your foul kitchens, as did roaches.>

“You eat stuff that would gag any self-respecting pest.”

<My people once hunted such as you for an occasional stimulating mouthful.>

This startled Toby. He grabbed a steel strut and clung to it, panting. “Really?”

<They were native to our world and of the order primate, as you call yourselves. Not so skilled as your kind—not hunters. They smacked their lips over blue-green worms that thronged in brittle trees.>

“Were they, well, like us?”

<Intelligent? No. They had thin little arms and legs, like you. Also the same fixed eyes, each locked into a side of their heads. They could not revolve those heads all the way around, either. Very limited creatures—like you. But they tasted wonderful, and their spines, heated long over a fire, snapped open to emit a famous blue odor. To suck the thick, crisp marrow from the blackened bones was a great delicacy.>

“Ugh. I’m trying hard to think of you as a buddy, big-bug, but if you go on like this—”

<It was an honor to be even a small morsel for The People.>

Toby could sense the capitals in Quath’s hissing mind-voice and decided to not pursue the matter. Quath was serious. Maybe it was common for intelligent beings anywhere to think of themselves as the crown of creation—The People—and everybody else as a smart animal at best. Savvy smarts and egomania went hand in hand. Or pincer in pincer.

After all, suppose Quath had been a thousand times smaller. It wouldn’t matter that she was supersmart—if Toby shook her out of his bedroll, he would step on her without a thought. He certainly wouldn’t inquire into what she thought about the nature of life.

“I think I could pass up honors like that. Anyway, many-eyes, you seem to have settled in here okay.”

<I hope my excretions may be of help in enlivening the soil here.>

“So generous of you. Look, I was sent here to see if you can figure what your own folks are doing in their ships.”

<I do not know. Though I can guess.>

“They’re still hauling that huge ring. Only it’s glowing more, a kind of ivory.”

<They carry their great burden as a defense against the mechs. Some of our aged texts suggest a further role for it, as well.>

“It sure seems to keep them away, all right. But why are your people gaining on us?”

<They may be needed. The cusp moment approaches.>

“Uh, what’s a cusp?”

<A sharp point in an otherwise smooth curve, my amusing mote.>

“More geometry. Between Isaac and his numbers and you with your always using math talk, I don’t know—”

<Properly considered, all reality is geometry.>

“Oh yeah? Look, I bite into an apple, it tastes real good. Where’s the geometry in that?”

<It is of the [untranslatable].>

Toby hated it when Quath said something and then the programs in his head, and in Quath’s too, couldn’t make enough sense between them to get the job done. All that came through was a fizzy blurt and a bland, flat [untranslatable]. “Okay, then where’s the geometry in a kiss, huh?”

<It is simple from the view of my kind. Relations taste of the [unknown] and [untranslatable]. Anything else would make no [unknown].>

“Oh, glad it’s so obvious. How silly of me.”

<My program senses that there is something more to your speech pattern.>

“Yeasay, we call it ‘sarcasm.’”

<I cannot understand such a pattern.>

“Let’s just call it [untranslatable], bug-boy.”

<I believe I understand. To us perhaps it is like [unknown].>

“Aaahhh!”

This was driving Toby up the wall—literally. He was glad he could work out his frustration by climbing through the struts of the dome, leaping across wide spans, burning calories to clear his mind. It was getting hot in here—hot all through Argo, in fact. The domes were absorbing radiation from the astronomical fireworks outside.

Stinging sweat dripped into Toby’s eyes. He clambered over struts and beams, swung in the nearly zero-grav, and let go. He spread his arms and beat against the air, flapping like an awkward bird, and slowly fell toward Quath. The alien caught him at the very last moment before he would have smacked painfully on the deck. “Oooof! Thanks.”

<You pretend to be a kind of being you are not.>

“That’s part of being human, you ol’ giant grub.”

<There is an element of that in us as well. Otherwise we would not have spanned the stars in search.>

“In search of what?”

<Of [untranslatable].>

“Oh no, not again!”

<I think it is knowledge of the things we cannot say which makes us alike, tiny thinker.>

Toby scuffed up some dead soil with his boot, sending a shower of gray dust spurting up into the low-gray dome. He still had some irritations to work out, some thinking to do about his father. He leaped and swung up on one of Quath’s extended telescoping arms. “Maybe I—”

—Toby! Bring Quath to the Bridge, right away.—

Killeen’s sharp voice cut into his concentration so abruptly that Toby let go of the arm, coasted, and thumped back into the dirt. “Okay. But Quath won’t fit in—”

—Get moving!—

It turned out that Quath could scrunch down in the corridor outside the Bridge, bend two eye-stalks around the entrance, and see most of the wall screens. Quath looked uncomfortable, her steel-jacketed legs cocked at odd angles and wedged against bulkheads, though she said nothing. Killeen wanted Quath to try more communication channels with his own kind, the Myriapodia. “After all, I spent days trapped in her belly, once,” Killeen said casually.