FOURTEEN

Quath knew only one imperative in the clangor of combat: the Nought. Her Nought.

The Nought excursion had come down the mountainside at a considerable distance from Quath, surprising her with their speed. Beq’qdahl and her gang had moved to intersect them. Quath had watched them speeding up the broad, jumbled valley below.

Her own progress across the high, broken strata was slower. She called out to the Tukar’ramin for help.

*Chaos reigns here, Quath’jutt’kkal’thon. Insurrection infests our Hive.* The Tukar’ramin’s heavy, somber musks shot powerfully through Quath’s electro-aura.

<I need help!>

*Know that I understand. But I am besieged here in what was once my grand province.*

<Send only a few, then.> Quath sent desperate lacings of need.

*I can spare no more. I sent help twice but both groups were ambushed. The renegade podia who jump to the command of the divisive faction of the Illuminates—they clog the passages nearby. Such heresy! Such treason!*

Quath clambered across gutted mech carcasses, crunching them without taking notice. She did not doubt that the Tukar’ramin was in the right, but prudence alone should be her guide now. <What shall we do?>

*Remain loyal to our injunction! The glorious Illuminates, the leaders of the true Path—they still say the Noughts of the ancient ship must be found.*

<I can reach the principal Nought,> Quath replied. <What then?>

*You must escape with it. Return to their aged vessel.*

<Send a shuttle. I can rendezvous—>

*The shuttle landing fields are captured by the renegade podia. They are everywhere!*

Quath saw that her view of events had been hopelessly narrow. She had fretted over issues of fate and death, while all around her, no doubt, podia had conspired and schemed. Insurrection against the Tukar’ramin! Worse, the revolt was fueled by division among the Illuminates. The idea still dizzied her.

<You cannot seize a shuttle?>

*I barely hold my fastness in the Hive.* This admission rode on a gravid undercurrent of black dismay.

<Beq’qdahl has many. I cannot hold them for long!>

*You are better equipped than they. Remember, they outfitted hastily for their slimy task.*

<Even if I can capture my Nought in the racked play of battle, surely they shall dog me to exhaustion.>

*I can render no help, Quath.*

This somber hormone-tinged message sobered Quath as she struggled down the mountainside. Noughts already sprang and dashed among the lower foothills. Their agility made them difficult targets. These were swifter and more crafty than the packs she had slain so long ago, in defense of betrayer Beq’qdahl.

She saw Beq’qdahl now, a pale fog seeping among some smashed mech buildings. Her defenses were good, then. To delay them Quath would need guile and craft abounding.

She stretched a cone of electrointerrogation down among the Noughts. Now that their own small auras pulsed readily, she could enter them more deeply. She did—and recoiled.

How could she have missed this? The many flavors of Nought separated into two groups. Not a crude set, like digital/analog or acoustic/magnetic, but an ancient distinction: sex.

She had known these Noughts still kept the rudimentary mechanism laid down by simple evolution. She had experienced it earlier, when she entered the male Nought. Now she saw why she had been unable to extricate herself readily from its swampy clutch. To them, sex was an absolute bedrock. It defined them powerfully. Quath’s inability to untie these primordial knots in the Nought mind had nearly trapped her.

Had they not learned to banish such primitive and blinding forces in the personality? The podia had long ago seen the male as irrelevant, easily supplanted by genetic tailoring. Some were kept in preserves on the homeworld, but only for historical interest.

Among the Noughts, though, the sharp tang of sex clouded every perception, every judgment. How could they think in such a howling storm?

She sifted through the scattershot scents and harmonies of the Nought pack as it went into battle. So many conflicting emotions! And not delegated to subminds, either. Instead, myriad impulses fought and scurried across the open stage of the sole mind. Factions shouted and clashed inside each Nought. Instinct, reason, the whole motley company of hormone-steeped emotions—each breathed in the veils of sex that spiced every fervent moment.

What impossible complexity! No wonder they seemed so antic. Their inner worlds were scenes of endless combats.

This further clouded her search. Just as she despaired, though, she sniffed her own Nought. Here it was—safe! Her antennae picked up tangs of it below, moving fast.

Its aura mingled with another’s—the Nought Quath had briefly occupied before. The two of them were circling one of the podia. Quath clattered downhill. If she could get within range—

The two Noughts were clearly planning on assaulting the hexpodder. Quath was too far away to be sure she could hit the podder without striking the Noughts. Instead, she pried up the musky layers of her own Nought’s mind, searching for some inlet.

There. Quickly she injected a lump of knowledge about the hexpodder. It would be jarring to the Nought, but perhaps it could assimilate the data.

Yes—she watched as the Noughts struck the podder cleanly with disabling shots.

Good. She could help them somewhat. But would she be smarter to simply collect it and scurry away?

No, there was something else. As she settled into the back recesses of her Nought’s electro-aura she felt springy threads of connection. It was linked to others here. The web vibrated and undulated with a curious song of thick emotion and feral, emerald instinct.

As the Noughts scampered downslope Quath struggled to understand this new facet. Though each Nought imagined itself quite individual, beneath their consciousness lay thick, sinewy connections. They operated proudly alone yet yearned for union. That was why sex had such heft for them. To disconnect the Nought from the others would do it severe injury. While her orders from the Tukar’ramin were clearly to excise this one Nought, she saw now that this would not work. Noughts did not live by head alone.

She had scarcely sensed any of the depth of this Nought when she had carried it down from orbit. She had ignored its pain of separation from its kind. Now she saw that Nought links, if severed, damaged all.

The two Noughts met others. One produced a sharp, eager spike throughout her own Nought’s buzzing self. Here was true resonance. Her Nought felt a symphony of urgings heavily laced with the complex musk of sex.

No, she could not yank it from these strange moorings. She would have to devise some better way.

Meanwhile, booming shots and rattling near-misses caromed through the foothills. Quath ran desperately toward the valley floor, where a battle was beginning. One of Beq’qdahl’s gang sighted in on her Nought below. Quath sent a crackling blast into the podder. It tumbled over and began to smoke.

Good. This podder was a stranger to Quath, and she was able to brush away the stigma that came welling up from her subminds. But in the valley was Beq’qdahl, and Quath did not know what she could do there. She felt a hard, sinewy knot of conflict arise in her. She tried to force it down into her subminds but they would not accept the bulked fibers. It churned in her like a bleeding pink cyst. Could she truly kill her own kind in defense of a Nought?

Quath could not unravel the bristly knot. She ran on.

FIFTEEN