But what did they seek? Why?

Did the Illuminates know? The simple fact that those lordly beings had split over the destiny and use of a mere Nought argued otherwise.

Could the Noughts hold some crucial tidbit of the puzzle? Suddenly the notion did not seem entirely mad.

Quath reeled for the smallest fragment of an instant. Then the ageold lessons asserted themselves. She focused outward, beyond the raucous clamor of her subminds.

For the worst had come. Beq’qdahl’s gang now moved to attack.

Quath had lain hidden among the broken strata above where the Noughts clustered. Their rear guard had already passed and their destination lay not far beyond.

Here the faults were like fractured planes snapped off in midair. Shelves of stone jutted at a platinum sky. Beq’qdahl and her podia had crept among these to within easy range of the Noughts, who milled in confusion.

Quath caught the ready signal from Beq’qdahl. They would wreak havoc. She had to give the Noughts time and warning.

<Hold!> Quath called. She let the signal scatter through the spectrum. Her Nought was sure to sense it.

Beq’qdahl jerked with surprise. <Quath!>

<Yes, traitor.>

<You have dogged us, hurt us!>

<You disobey the Tukar’ramin. There was a time when you would have rather bitten off half your legs.>

<There was a time when you were not a fool.>

<Oh, was there? Perhaps it was when I helped your vain self.>

Beq’qdahl was cautious, striving to conceal her anger. <Ambition is no sin.>

<Nor loyalty.>

<I follow the Illuminates!>

<Some Illuminates.>

<Stand clear of these animals while we do our work. Then we shall deal with you.>

<No, you’ll deal now—>

Quath sent a hard, prickly burst toward Beq’qdahl’s voice. It scattered among the walls of rock.

The battle began. Quath ran and dodged. She had chosen her position well. Her superior equipment enabled her to block most shots. She disabled three podia with quick, stuttering pulses. But her armaments were wearing thin.

Beq’qdahl was the key. The others would flee if their leader fell. Quath reached out with a cone-shaped aura and touched Beq’qdahl.

Now she saw into Beq’qdahl’s true self. Her goals were simple. Lounging in burr-rich strands. Sucking down sweetbreads and plotting meanness, guilty only of casual malice and ignorance, stuffed with a bland assurance of self.

Beq’qdahl would have been no worse than this, but for the distant conflict of Illuminates. For such a minor, accidental matter, should she die?

Quath could not reason the question. Had her Philosoph genes left her alone, she knew, these vexing issues would not even arise. Gathering herself, she rushed forward.

The moment came when Beq’qdahl was exposed—and Quath could not fire.

She clambered instead over the last upturned layers of fractured strata and ran pell-mell into the milling band of firing, fleeing Noughts.

Cries, shrieks, bangs. They brushed against her like passing motes. Her superior shields were up and their bolts were no more than pesky itches.

Her Nought! There! Shedding opalescent waves of heat. Helping another Nought to its—no, her—feet.

But Beq’qdahl had now seen which was Quath’s Nought. Quath could see Beq’qdahl carefully aiming for the small figure.

Still Quath could not fire. This was Beq’qdahl, strand-sharer. Beq’qdahl…

The simmering presence of her Nought abruptly broke through Quath with rainsquall momentum. It—no, he—comprehended the quicksilver essence of the moment. He turned and picked Beq’qdahl out from the jumbled landscape.

Aimed. Fired.

And Beq’qdahl burst open. Flames leaped from the holed bulk of her.

Quath felt a jolt of sudden pain. She heard dismayed anguish leak from Beq’qdahl. It spattered through the spectrum.

Her friend and rival was dying. The projectile weapon of the Nought had breached her main compartment. Fragments lodged in Beq’qdahl’s subminds. Unless Quath hastened to salvage what scraps she could, Beq’qdahl would dwindle, ebb, die.

Leaden remorse filled Quath. But she kept on.

Toward her Nought. Ignoring the stings and arrows of the harrying crowd around her.

Toward the appointment she had made with the whirl and gyre of gravity and time.

NINETEEN

Shibo fell before the first volley.

The Cybers opened up from the shattered ridgeline above. Their timing was perfect. His Supremacy’s escort was still startled, confused, scrambling for cover.

Killeen had just started to get up when he felt the stinging bolt go by his leggings and saw it strike Shibo a glancing hit. She toppled forward from her knees. No visible damage on her suit. A tech-disabling shot, then. He grasped her shoulder and rolled her over.

“Close… that time,” she gasped.

“Can you feel your legs?”

“Yeasay.”

“Arms?”

“Yea… yeasay.”

“Move ’em.”

The pulse had knocked out most of her exskell. It heaved and jerked in a dying spasm. The riblike frame wheezed, purred, and went dead. Without it she had less strength than even the simplest augmentation of leggings and shocks gave. She would not get far if they had to run.

And it looked like they would. The Cybers were cutting up the escort guard.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

“Don’t know. Head’s li’l wobbly. Here—”

She got up onto one elbow and grunted with the effort of rising to her knees. A pulse ripped by with a loud whoooom.

Killeen started to help her further and into his mind came a sharp, pointed imperative. Something was narrowing down on his back. He felt it as a circle of compressed heat. It rasped against his sensorium.

He spun away. A bolt frayed the air where he had been.

For the first time in their long battle with the Cybers Killeen had a sudden, sure knowledge of where the fire came from. His sensorium Dopplered back along the bolt path and found among the rocks a smudge of greasy fog.

He knew immediately that this was his enemy. Unbidden, he felt its raw immensity. It was a mind that came from a place of shining movements, from moist dark spaces, from velocities bleak and hard. All this sudden, crisp certainty came streaming from the gravid wedge that rode in the back of his mind.

He rolled to his left. The enemy probed for him through the thickening haze of electrodeception that flurried across the rugged slope. A blizzard of flickering images cycloned by. It swirled through the milling mob of humans as they scattered.

He fumbled for his last projectile weapon. Clicked it into place. Sighted carefully —

—and felt intruding a feathery streamer of sorrow and hesitation. Not his.

The somber emotion washed through him, stilling his hand. Reasonless, it spoke only of regret.

Killeen sucked in air to break free of the heavy, choking mood.

Shibo gasped nearby, “Leave me. Get clear. I’ll be—”

He fired. The bolt hit just where he had known to aim.

Instantly the air cleared. The snow-squall of flitting electrodeceptions was gone.

Through a compacted instant Killeen felt a sad spike of longing. Again it came as a flowing, many-streamered emission, from the shadow-blue weight behind his mind.

He saw Besen was well sheltered downslope. Toby—

His son was firing carefully from slight cover nearby. Killeen called to him, “Fall back!” Toby came running.

“Come on,” he grunted, hauling Shibo to her feet. She wobbled weakly.

Hissing bolts refracted through the nearby air. Splashes of infrared strobed running figures into flash pictures of desperation. Microwaves rattled.