<I realize.>

<You’re buzzed that Beq’qdahl is now a hexpodder, while you remain with four. That’s it, isn’t it?>

<I am really not in the mood—>

<Grub! Rotten cicada!> The wobbling quadder lurched toward Quath, threatening.

Quath skittered aside. Another farted sourly in contempt, spewing an acrid yellow cloud. Beq’qdahl pretended indifference, studying the grainy walls.

Quath ducked down a side passage and away, to the moist gossamer communal bedding, to sleep.

Sleep.

Yet sleep came fitfully, laced by hot lightning behind the eyes.

Quath tossed and clutched at her smooth bed weavings. At times she awoke and then it was the long Dreamtime when they journeyed from her homeworld at far below light-speed. They had hung in swaying pearly sacs and voyaged through the notsleep, bodies slowed, minds floating among fog-racked visions best forgotten later….

Just before dawn the distant sounds of Beq’qdahl’s celebration finally died away. Quath expected deep sleep at last. Instead she awakened soon with tingling palps, flushed with a vision.

The Tukar’ramin, shrunken and old, lecturing. Not the enduring, enfolding Tukar’ramin she knew, but a doddering old podia who repeated the rote wisdom of the dead past. Despite the technical magic that let the Tukar’ramin span the gulf between minds, and heal, she was still an ancient podder, no more.

In the dream Tukar’ramin had described how the mechs would fall before the podia and the cutting Cosmic Circle, vanquished by life triumphant.

In the dream Quath had cried, You know our mission is empty! and the Tukar’ramin, shocked, fell crashing into brass and ceramic and gristle and withered bony parts. Thorax and antennae clattered on the warren floor. She fell and fell and fell—endlessly, authority squeezed to nothing beneath the crushing weight of remorseless time.

Awakening, Quath saw for a glimmering moment that her preoccupation with death held a clue. Somehow, this bore upon all events here at Galactic Center. But how? The small races of Philosoph that laced thinly through her gave no clue.

NINE

Once more the Syphon sucked hard. Again the planet’s husk cracked and spat vast plumes of brown dust.

It was fortunate that this world had no major oceans, or a different fraction of the crumpled crust would have been submerged with each Syphon firing, impeding the mines. That fact had helped select this world for the thermweaving. It overrode the absence of moons, whose ripping apart would have provided convenient building materials. What’s more, there was a curious, ancient orbital device at the equator, which the podia might find useful later.

But now, word came of disturbances aloft. The podia used the captured mech orbital station as a shipping depot. But something had now intruded into the depot, delaying transports. This news was buried in the rush of Hive labor. Quath did not bother herself with such large problems, though she still ached to work in orbit, above the seethe of dust and gravity. She did her tasks and sought solace in marveling at progress beyond her Hive.

Already the podia had captured a small fraction of this yellow star’s light. Their weaving proceeded apace in orbit, deploying broad planes ribbed with photosensitive silicon. When finished, the weave would be only a framework, of course, for later expeditions. They would render the planets into light-sopping materials—a tedious task—in preparation for harnessing the star’s total flux.

By the time that happened, Quath expected she would be long dead, and the dream of Starswarmers touching between galaxies in the Summation would be, for Quath, dust. The others did not see this, or care. It was one thing to know in an abstract way that one day you would die, and another to wake in the night and feel your hearts thumping. To delve into your subtask brains and feel the prickly oxygen entering bloodstreams, the slow sluggish purr of tissues rebuilding, a hydraulic tug where titanium met cartilage, the dull orange burning of stored calories…and know they will cease, you will plunge into blackness.

With repetition these somber moments lost some of their bite. Quath began to see herself as a simple being, humble before the brute facts of living. She labored with the ratlike robots, using her massive stapler when great strength was needed, followed orders, and kept to herself. From murmurs of transmissions in the Hive corridors she overheard more talk of Beq’qdahl’s successes. Beq’qdahl is rising, the myriapodia observed. As though Beq’qdahl were a confection baking, puffing itself up, and they were indirectly the cooks. To Quath these matters no longer stung.

Thus she was not disturbed, when work teams reorganized, that Tukar’ramin ordered her to accompany Beq’qdahl as an equipment carrier. Being a young Philosoph did not free one from the rub of the world.

Ahead rumbled the bulky Beq’qdahl, legs scrabbling on rocks.

Her crescents of phosphorus made a small splotch of day amid the night. Quath lurched behind, jumping at each tremor of the rock for fear that another shifting of the crust had begun. Overhead hung the Cosmic Circle, its aura dull when not in use. The sharp stars were eyes staring out of a swallowing abyss.

<Hurry. I want to probe this outcropping.> Beq’qdahl transmitted only clipped, efficient messages.

Quath labored forward under her load of acoustic sensors. The Tukar’ramin had given Beq’qdahl a complete analytical station, so that tests could be made in the field. The components were bulky. Quath also carried Beq’qdahl’s extra boosting rockets, for escape should magma spurt over the crumpled hills.

<Quick—a differential spectrometer.>

Quath supplied it. Dawn broke as the sun ripened behind thinning clouds. Quath thought of Nimfur’thon and their gambols on these lands, then sprinkled with green. A very long time ago.

From behind a tilted shelf of rock ambled a flock of animals. It was surprising, Quath reflected, that they had survived the land’s heavings. The next round of Syphon firings would surely end life on this world.

Something whined off Beq’qdahl’s high turret.

<Do not jostle me.>

<I did not.>

<I said…>

The animals quickly spread among the shattered boulders. Something thudded into Beq’qdahl’s flank. A pod jerked in spasm.

<They are throwing pebbles?> Beq’qdahl asked.

<No. Those are weapons.> Quath felt a flare of hot pain.

Another shot sang off Beq’qdahl’s bronzed turret.

<These are more than animals.>

<A reasonable hypothesis,> Quath answered mildly.

<But the Tukar’ramin said there were no significant Noughts! No civilization. No artificed works. Only the mechs.>

<So she did.>

Two quick bursts caught Quath in the side. She drew up a battered palp. A salty pus oozed forth.

<Evidently the inspection was cursory,> Quath said evenly.

<You miserable arachnida! These have weapons!>

<Yes, with considerable momentum density, as well. Simple, but—>

Beq’qdahl’s shrill cry pierced the air. Her fifth pod split ripely and belched a foul smoke.

<I am injured! Injured! Help me boost.>

<A minor breaching.>

<Minor? I feel pain.>

<Your waste system has ruptured.>

<Give me the extra boosters!>

Quath abruptly pitched forward. Her rear bulkhead puckered around two steaming holes.

<Off your knees! The boosters!>

<H-here.>

Beq’qdahl strapped on the blue cylinders. Sharp shots rang on her carapace.