SIX

The jut and tumble of these ragged mountains snagged Quath as she fled. Sharp stone teeth nipped at her. She stumbled several times, barely catching herself. Fresh outcroppings had flowered into spreading black fans, liberated by the last quake. They rasped on her undercarriage. Her minds rattled with percussive confusion and her only reaction was to move, run, escape.

It had been a near thing. She had almost been caught and pinned, drawn into the Nought mind she had invaded.

Yet that was impossible. Hers was a well-ordered, multiple mind, capable of calling up enormous volumes of knowledge, of marshaling mental resources in a microsecond, of overwhelming with layered mass any simple, linear Nought mind. When she had carried her own Nought inside herself she had merely verged on its mind. Preoccupied, she had made only glancing contact. Occupying her second Nought had been equally simple. And, she now saw, each time some unsuspected barrier had fallen.

All her wrenchings and lacerating blows had not gained her freedom from this latest, apparently minor intelligence. Trying to extricate herself, she had found her self-aura immersed in a swampy, sucking underlayer. It was cloying and thick, a muddy sludge of clotted, unconscious impulses, memories, gnarled subsystems.

Here was where this Nought truly lived. Quath had sensed its raw, sticky pull in a jolting instant of profound surprise. The mind’s upper layers were mild and obliging, like cool, smooth corridors beneath the linear engagements of the conscious—while far below, in chambers walled and ramified with bony purpose, lurked a complex, ropy labyrinth of strange power.

Or minds. Quath was not even sure the Nought was a single intelligence.

Its highest echelons had seemed to be more like a passive stage than a directing entity. There, on a broad, level area above the syrupy seethe, factions of the undermind warred. An abyss yawned.

Instincts spoke quietly, effectively, never falling silent. Emotions flared prickly hot—heckling, yearning, always calling the higher intelligence away from its deliberations.

Zesty hormones surged—not to carry wedges of information or holistic images, as in Quath, but to flood the bloodstream with urgent demands.

Organs far from the brain answered these chemical heralds, pumping other hormones into the thumping flow, adding alkaline voices to the babble.

Ideas rose like crystalline towers from this swamp, glimmering coolly—but soon were spattered with the aromatic chemical murk, blood on glass.

These elements merged and wrestled, struggling armies rushing together in flurries, fermenting, spinning away into wild skirmishes. Lurid splashes festooned the brittle ramparts of analytical thought. A churning mire lapped hungrily at the stern bulwarks of reason, eroding worn salients even as fresh ones were built.

Yet somehow this interior battle did not yield mere confusion and scattered indecision. Somehow a single coherent view emerged, holding the vital, fervent factions in check. Its actions sampled of all the myriad influences, letting none dominate for long.

Quath marveled at the sheer energy behind the incessant clashings, and at the same time felt a mixture of recognition laced by repulsion.

This Nought’s inner landscape was far more complex than it should be. No wonder it had not attained the technological sophistication of the podia!—it labored forward in a howling storm, its every sharp perception blunted by fraying winds of passion.

But by the same stroke, it had a curious way of skating on the surface of these choppy, alchemical crosscurrents. Some balance and uncanny steadiness came from that. It was much like the way they walked—falling forward, then rescuing themselves by catching the plunge with the other leg. This yielded a rocking cadence that echoed the precarious nature of the being itself.

Not a single mind… and not multiple, interlocking intelligences, such as Quath.

She should inform the Tukar’ramin, she knew. This discovery came as a complete surprise, with implications Quath could not fathom. But for now she was unable to think clearly. Her smaller minds urged different courses, yelping and squirming. She silenced them and imposed a stony resolve: keep far enough away from the Noughts to escape detection. She had to learn more of what they were.

Cobwebs of the Nought mind still clung to Quath. They brushed across her field of vision, shimmering traceries of doubt. The very air clamored with skeptic winds.

In rattled confusion Quath stumbled on.

SEVEN

Killeen was sleeping deeply when the first hard jolt rolled through the mountain. He came awake at once and rolled out of the tent, coming to his feet as Shibo followed him out. A second shock knocked him down.

Jarred, his opticals took a moment to adjust. His eyes automatically cycled through to their most sensitive mode, because he had left them set for night vision. But this made the landscape glare as if under a noonday sun.

Brilliance cascaded down, bleaching out colors and shadows. The entire bowl of the sky glowed with rich gold.

The Syphon. The cosmic string was again revolving, sucking the rich ore from the planet’s center. Imploding rock far below sent immense waves. He felt through his feet the slow, rippling surge of colossal movements thousands of kilometers below.

“Out!” he called on comm. “Leave the ravines. Get into the open!”

He and Shibo had slept in their full boot rigs. They swept up their packs and were headed out of the arroyo when he saw that Toby and Besen were sitting, pulling on their boots.

“Belay that!” he called. The ground wavered beneath him, making it hard to stand. “Run barefoot.”

Toby looked up at his father vaguely, still half-asleep. They had given him what pitifully few medical measures the Family still had against the pain and infection of his wound.

Killeen scooped up Toby’s pack and Shibo got Besen’s. “Come on!” she yelled.

A rock as big as a man came thundering down the ravine. It rolled straight through two tents above them. It thumped hollowly and rushed by. Edges smashed off, showering them with shards as it lumbered past. It took their tents with it.

They ran up the slope until they reached the scree. Killeen helped Toby stumble along the parts where recently settled dust made slippery going. The boy was still groggy and cradled his left hand. Killeen kept an eye out for the stones clattering down and steered Toby away from them.

The sky’s steady glow made it easy to dodge the debris and boulders that rumbled past them. Not everyone was as quick or as lucky; surprised cries of pain came from the ravine below.

They stopped when they got onto a flat, open slab of rock. The tall granite buttress and angular crest above seemed already scoured of loose stone. “Rally here!” Killeen called on comm.

—Shut up!—Jocelyn shouted furiously.—Bishops! Home on my point!—

“Jocelyn, it’s clear over this way,” Killeen said.

—Bear on me! Don’t rally to Killeen!—

The ground shook and rolled and trembled endlessly. Bishops crawled and ran up the flanks of the saddleback, fleeing the ravines which funneled rockslides. Killeen said no more on comm.

Jocelyn was clinging to a chimney slope nearby. It looked safe as long as the shoulder range above didn’t slide. Few Bishops joined her. Most made their way to the ground below Killeen. The quakes eased slowly. Jocelyn’s area held. After a while she inched down the slope and led her small party across the saddleback. She came onto the open slab where by now over a hundred Bishops had spread out so they could easily dodge the tumbling rocks.