“Ummm.” He recalled the sensuous moments, his deep, troubling sweats. “Not really.”

<You are too close, too (untranslatable] for judgment.>

“So I can’t really think about Shibo? That’s why I’m so messed up?” He felt exhausted, and not from his running. He let himself slide down, back to the wall, legs splaying out until he was sitting in the alley.

<Myriad impulses scurry and clash across the single, open stage of your mind. Factions hide offstage and shout from the wings. They are your suppressed, accomplice minds, and you cannot consult them directly, as can I.>

“That’s . . . why we feel so much . . .”

<Pain? In a way—but do not conclude that such as I do not also know inner bloodknot clash. I can speak to all my subminds, which does relieve some of the tough, sinewy agonies.>

“And we can’t.”

<You find yourselves through action. Through your bodies the deeper cellars of your layered mind can speak.>

Toby wondered if he would ever know what stormy emotions tossed him about on the surface of a deep, troubled inner sea. He shrugged. “In that case, maybe I’ll feel a smidge better if I do something more than sit on my fat ass, waitin’ for Cermo to fall over me here.”

<I admit I have no idea what you can do. I acted perhaps hastily, blocking them. I may have merely worsened your position in this grave matter.>

“Hey, without you I’d be having my spinal chips picked clean.” Toby got to his feet, feeling lighter, easier in himself.

<Still, when they seize you, I cannot—>

“Like my grandfather used to say, bug-brain—Cheer up! We’ll live to piss on the graves of our enemies.” It seemed odd to be giving Quath a pep talk.

<He must have been a strong man.>

“Part of the line. We got plenty more like him.” It felt good to say it, even if he didn’t really know if it was true. Maybe no son ever did know.

<I do not know where this course leads.>

Quath rustled her legs, then restlessly played her boosters, hovering in air. People in the street nearby looked up, startled, and moved away. They were pretty savvy, but Quath was a bit much.

“Neither do I. We can’t stay here, though. You’re kinda conspicuous and I’m a wanted man.”

<What then?>

“I dunno. We flew Argo in through the grand entrance and they were ready for us. Is there a back door to this place?”

Phase Creatures

Above the disk nothing made of metal or ceramic can survive.

Perpetually the great turning disk grinds down the stuff of stars. Tides suck inward, shredding.

The Eater itself holds eternally captive the gathered masses of a million dead suns. The ancient matter itself vanished in seconds of stretched agony, drawn down the steepening slide of space-time. But the memory of these transient masses lingers in curvature.

To the outside, a ghost warp testifies to the dead. Ten billion years of sacrificed matter—stars and dust, planets and cities, lost civilizations and their records, their hopes—have their single tombstone in the mute remaining distortion. A galaxy’s ancient pain persists as silent gravitation.

Blobs of already incandescent matter spiral in, skating on the curvature at speeds higher than found anywhere else in the galaxy. Incessant pull whirls doomed matter in a final frenzied gyre.

The blobs collide, smash, reform, rub. Magnetic fields mediate the friction. Snarls of plasma stream and whirl. Currents churn.

Magnetic vortices grow. The fields twine and loop through the condemned kernels. In tight collisions, fields themselves annihilate against each other. More energy flares forth.

Above such brutal furnaces skim the phase creatures. They had once been of the mechanicals. Now they exist not in hard circuits or ceramic lattice-intelligences. They have evolved out of self-directed necessity. To drink more energy they have learned to dissolve.

As torrents of hard radiation lance through them, they are plasmas. This gathers in fluxes and stores them in long-range correlations.

When the flood ebbs, the phase creatures change. In the cooler spots above the disk they can condense. Lacy filaments become gaseous discharges. The power so generated they broadcast outward, to lesser ranks who can store it.

The phase creatures themselves use these fluxes to organize themselves into free-floating networks. Circuits without wires. Electrons flowing only in their own self-consistently generated magnetic fields. Pinched currents that snake and flare. Voltages and switches. Light-quick, gossamer-thin.

Lively intelligences dance there. Inductive, silent, invisible.

They enter the discussion that has been teeming above them, in the cooler realms. With silky elegance their thoughts merge with the hard beings who are the cruder, earlier forms of mechanicals.

But the phase creatures still know their origins. They share the thought patterns of the metallic forms. They converse.

I/We do not understand why these odd, primitive primates should be studied at all. And what is this arrival?

You/I summoned |>A<|, who was concluding the elimination of remaining organic life on the planet of these primates’ origin.

This |>A<| is a strange mixture of intelligences.

I/We know. Tolerate it. Here:

Greetings. I employ the single-consciousness approximation. This you may find uncomfortable.

Regard: How narrow.

We/You tried it before and found it stifling.

We should accommodate |>A<|.

Very well. But what a demented limitation!

Bear with |>A<| for a moment.

To plumb the recesses of primate thinking such strictures are necessary.

Why study them, then?

Their sense of beauty is like no other. Variant organics are unique, as well, but these have long duration here at True Center.

Beauty? We are arbiters of that.

I seek to find wholly fresh reaches of grace and flavor. These are species-specific, lavish in lore.

A needless luxury. We face sterner issues now.

Beauty is as vital to our being as any of your raw pursuits.

Is that an insult?

Never—but a fact.

Careful, then.

I intend no offense. I am a specialist intelligence, with my own drivers. Let me point out to you gathered minds what a richness these primates have! These are the creatures who developed the Five-Digit Motif. It grips the perceptual centers as can no other! And then there are their inner, colorful emotion-curtains. Wondrous! Their Subverted-Maximal Abstractions. All wonderful creations!

I/We are more concerned with their possible danger to us. All because of some semi-mythical knowledge they carry.

But without knowing they carry it. That is important. They must not learn what they possess!

I believe they sense some special destiny which they carry. But they do not know its nature, that is clear. Such beings carry deeper knowledge as narratives. To primates, a myth is a deep story which answers the difficult questions of their lives.

I/You thought that myths were simply someone else’s religion.

Of course, but I speak of primates. I have studied them well.

Then you are the one who must enter the Wedge and act for us there.

Why? I have other matters—

You know them best.

But I have never been to the Wedge.

I do not wonder, with your time spent on the beauties of underlife.

The Wedge is treacherous.

Indeed. But we/you have breached it with minor forms. Even now the tiny informants have filtered into their portal city. They are keeping close watch on the primates of the ship—those we allowed to enter.