<I see no way to answer my questions.>

*There are other, perhaps even grander issues, Quath. Of such matters I bring news. The slabs you brought to me contain enough information for the Illuminates to contemplate a daring adventure, something the podia have never dared brave: a voyage to the very center of the galaxy.*

<But all the texts say that is impossible—you remarked so yourself. The mechs muster enormous forces there.> Quath clambered through a mire of muck and ripped soil. Great quakes had torn these mountains savagely.

*The slabs tell of a time when organic beings—the ones who wedded their genes to ours, perhaps—ventured close to the black hole at the very center. There may be a way in, free of mech interference. It will require all our resources, however.*

Quath stopped beside a ravine. In the forest beyond were the humans she was tracking. The telltale she had planted flashed for a microsecond; her own Nought was among this company. But she could not think of the hunt now.

<I volunteer my sinew and soul to such an enterprise.>

*That may indeed be necessary.*

Something in the Tukar’ramin’s tone made Quath inquire, <We…could learn much at the Galactic Center?>

*One hopes. The mechs disguise their activities in the inner few light-years. For millennia the Illuminates have wondered at their incessant collecting of pulsars, their veiled experiments. We can scarcely hope to extinguish such beings if we do not know their deepest, perhaps most dangerous abilities.*

<I have only meager abilities. I know of nothing of—>

*You have something we must possess.*

<What? How is that possible?>

*Your Nought.*

<I…I do not…>

*I sensed your small passenger while you were still in the Hive.*

<I…I intended to…>

*Know that I fathom your crosscurrents and dark broodings, Quath. We have not had a Philosoph in the Hive for a great while. I decided to let you follow your inner compass.*

<My Nought…>

*Perhaps you kept it as a pet; podia have done such before. It is no crime. Indeed, your secret keeping of this mite is ample evidence of the mysterious wisdom that comes, often unbidden, to a Philosoph. Care for your pet well.*

<No, I…>

*Yes?*

<I do not have it.>

*What?*

<I am using it to track the other Noughts.>

Alarm shot through the Tukar’ramin’s projected aura. *The Illuminates themselves now need it! It was a principal on the ship that brought them here—a vessel we must have.*

<But I—>

*Find it!*

With that command the Tukar’ramin’s aura blew away as though a breeze had taken it. Quath had the sense of the Tukar’ramin’s hurrying to convey this information to some distant place.

She should have felt some elation at this sudden turn. The slabs she and Beq’qdahl had found now proved more important than any fabulous dream. Her Nought was somehow a key because of its ship. Quath’s transgression—hiding the Nought and lying by omission to the Tukar’ramin—had been lightly passed over.

Yet she felt somber and vexed as she quick-stepped toward the forest ahead. If the Illuminates did not know how to answer Quath’s questions, what authority in all the podia could? Was it possible that the terrible vision of an utterly empty and meaningless universe was unquestioned, even at the highest levels?

Restless, Quath cast forward with her aura, hoping to pick up some pinprick taste of her Nought. Finding it would not be easy if she relied on the few quick flashes its telltale emitted in a day. She had slipped it into the crude equipment it wore, elemental augmentations like a crude parody of the podia’s sleek lags.

She had never thought that she would need to find that particular Nought again, only the pack it joined. What an irritant!

She caught an electro-savor of Noughts spread through the dense, leafy mass ahead. Here in the open it was difficult to taste whether one of them was hers. She amped the signals—and gasped.

Ugly horizontals and verticals everywhere. Unchanging, muted light. And mixed in with these blunt perceptions came a torrent of strong surges.

Silent colorations of fatigue and pain. Bitter red smells of fear. Yellows of shame.

Rasping pride. Banging, loud confusion. Acrid envy, livid malice, and incomprehensible muddy longings.

All seething, unknown, under an oily smear of senses. It was difficult to believe that these Noughts were so unconscious!

Cryptic semisentience floated through these minds. They suffered continually from forking senses. Their entire thought-train was constantly interrupted for messages detailing their surroundings, their hungers, their incessant sexual signaling (even when exhausted!)—their tumbled, vivid, small worlds.

Quath gingerly focused her aura down to a needlepoint and thrust it toward one particular Nought who lay several hills ahead. Was this hers?

She could not tell, awash in the scattershot jostling of quick, coarse perceptions. In this sticky swamp she could not even separate its subminds. Carefully she held its muscles rigid, made it stand up from where it crouched. Did this feel familiar?

One of its upper limbs was pressing a soft thing against its face. No, into the face. An awful salty burst told her that this was a mouth, perhaps its principal one. Certainly it enjoyed an enormously augmented tasting system, for the food cast piercing rivulets of lava-hot bile all over the interior of the mouth-pouch.

Its fellows were staring at the Nought. She perceived that they would find alarming the act of spitting the food out onto the ground, where it could perhaps burn the foliage. These Noughts were gaunt; wasting of food would arouse suspicion. She must not frighten them before she found her own Nought, or they might all flee in a panic. Quath forced the thing to swallow the stuff, just to get the taste away.

What could this primitive form do? She had not entered her own Nought in this way; she was getting better at it. Curiosity egged her on.

She made it stand on one foot, then another. The sensation of bipedal instability was strangely exhilarating. She made a pod take a step, caught the body as it began to fall, and then brought the other leg up to join the first. This sensation of courting disaster, falling and catching oneself, carried a delicious excitement.

She stepped again, and again. The legs carried the impacts of walking upward and she quickly learned to absorb these with the cumbersome knees. A single knobby columnar spine as though it rode on a cushioned pediment of hips and buttocks.

Worse, it ached at the lower back. The muscles there were firmly knotted, as though this was a constant condition. What poor design! And they were so unimaginative that they simply tolerated such irksome pains!

She rotated the head and saw a surprising proportion of what she knew had to lie outside the Nought—but missing the fine-grained texture Quath knew, and overlaid with freightings of emotion.

This Nought could scarcely see anything without immediately reacting to it. Passing a low bush with tiny red berries brought gushing forth a hard hunger. The shaded sky above demanded to be searched for threats. A moist breeze crept into its primary nostrils and visions of rain sounded warnings. A nearby face excited memories of happier times, laughter, a warm fire—

But Quath saw that this approaching face emitted sounds which disturbed this host-Nought. The face gave quick signals of alarm. A wrinkling just below the top hairline. Its single mouth parted and lips slightly reddened, bringing teeth further into view. A narrowing of the space between the hair-hedges above the eyes.

Apparently Quath was not managing this Nought well, despite her exciting discovery of two-podded walking. She thought she had done that quite expertly. How well could such a rudimentary construction perambulate, after all?