Tides of Light (14 page)

Quath woke panting, pods tangled, the speckling of her tracheae bulging red, yellow, red again in hasty rhythm. A buzzing
call for her echoed through the groined alcove. Quath answered and found a summons from Danni’vver.

She dismounted anxiously. Her mind was a snarled maze. Her hydraulics knotted and filled with a pressing ache.

Hastily she smeared a vomit drop on an acid spore. This eaten, Quath hobbled forth, favoring one leg which had splintered
a knee. She limped through vaults astir with work. A pentapod hailed, but otherwise she was ignored. This was nothing new,
and in fact was what Quath desired this day. The weight that had descended upon her did not welcome company.

droned Danni’vver at the entrance to the central chasm.

—Danni’vver consulted her slate, rather than look directly at Quath—will be delayed.>

Danni’vver flicked open a port in her barnacled hide. Moistly she studied Quath for a long moment and said, error, the Tukar’ramin will enter you.>

Quath felt the spaces within her suddenly burst. Fear flooded out. Awe squeezed her spiracles shut until the air wheezed through
tight slits. Embarrassed, she was sure Danni’vver would notice. The wall parted with a soft rumble that covered Quath’s rasping
breath. Quath teetered forward on stiffening limbs. She knew she would be seen for what she was.

*Terror pins you.*

The shimmering thought came as she gazed up, tilting to register the height. A vast bulk moved in the webs. Moist beads drifted
in a tingling cloud. Massive arched stoneworks gave the hushed air a pressing weight.

Quath began,

*Do not attempt to state your inner self. I see.*

Vibrant light played in the Tukar’ramin’s body, which spanned the upper chasm. Quath had never been alone with such an august
being. She struggled to take it all in. The bulbous presence bristled with uncountable legs.

She felt a probing. Fine wires laced through the muddy inside of her. She dully sensed a phantasm dancing, spinning—and then
gone, evaporated.

*It is not Nimfur’thon’s death that infests you.*

The words rang cold though they floated awash and welcoming in Tukar’ramin’s warm sea.

*Cease. The weight you carry must be lifted by degrees. Immersion in our Path will help.*

know
the Path.>

*No myriapod can trace more than a branch or two of the
Path, Quath’jutt’kkal’thon. Do not add arrogance to your burden.*

The pressing fear welled up again and Quath sucked in breath to cry out.

*I see it. Know it. But you must journey through that mossing.*

*The Factotum will show you the Chronicle to a depth you have not seen. Explore it. See the sweep of us. This will restore
you.*

Quath left, stumbling on numbed pods, spiracles sucking and bristling in agitation.

Within the Chronicle, time engulfed Quath.

The Factotum—a dry, fussy sort—had left her moored in a cloying mesh that reeked of use by many bipodia. This place was usually
used for the elementary education of the very young, the slow-witted.

Quath could barely remember that phase. She had been totally natural, then, with no machine-augmented capacity. Weak, soft,
dumb. She had memorized the Verities of the Chronicle, of course. Now it all felt useless to her. She had lost her faith.

So now she was back here. Among the smells of youth. Helmeted, pinpricked in all her senses.

And before her gaze the vast story opened.

She knew the outlines, had learned this lore without ever truly thinking about it. Images of antiquity flitted by. For the
ancient multipodia life was uncaring, a sweet gambol. Even myriapodia lounged amid luxuriant sticky strands. They basked,
pap-gorged.

Yet in time the race spread over the homeworld. The sciences and philosophies of those distant times were numbed by the pervading
slackness.

The podia had not always been this way. In early drawings fierce, long-extinct animals took the pincer in their throats, struggled
mightily, went still. Lazy though they had been, the ancients had cleared their world of such vermin.

Unchallenged, the race lounged. But their parent star had arced into the inner precincts of the Galactic Center. Mechs began
to foray into the realm of the podia. The enormity of mech purpose became clear. Only by reproducing at a fevered pace could
the podia match the mechs’ expansive verve.

Their slit-eyed spirit revived. After that came scientific discoveries that made sense of all things.

What is your concern?
The Factotum was ever alert, feeding Quath a torrent of data, all encoded in hormonal tangs and filigrees.

You would like some educational facet of the Chronicle?

Quath was in a vagrant mood. Her mind skittered on the surface of a teardrop that shimmered like a planet, surface tension
tugging her to skate on its icy sheen. She braced herself as finely orchestrated scents began singing “Harnessing the Collapsed
Stars.”

The introduction quickly shuffled through conventional lore. Suns’ deep fires inevitably ebbed. The nearly burntout stars
imploded, their pyre a flash seen across the galaxy. The smaller ones left cores of pure neutrons. Spinning, their polar caps
spitting out particles, they beamed frantic search-
lights, pulsing steadily: galactic lighthouses. A useful source of energy.

Once the spinning slowed, podia could approach. Teams of strandsharers blocked the circling streams of particles, dammed the
energy, silencing the pulsar, converting it to useful purposes.

They had found that mechs were drawn to pulsars, not only for their wealth of energy but for gargantuan scientific experiments.
The purpose of these elaborate works, carried out above the poles of pulsars as they gushed electron-positron plasmas, remained
unknown.

Mechs had stimulated suns to supernova throughout the zone surrounding Galactic Center—apparently, to generate pulsars. By
laying traps for mech squadrons in near pulsars, the podia had enjoyed their first military successes.

Without warning, terrible fear welled up. Quath met it for the first time in the images swimming before her.

A nebula shimmered with the delicate pink of birthing stars. Nearer, a pulsar flickered, gravestone for a vanquished sun.

Across the thin sheet of light oozed a dustcloud, blotting the nebular face—a precise image of the death that awaited all
the podia, all beings, everything.

Nimfur’thon—first singed brown and then blackening, her flesh crisp and brittle, cracking away.

Nimfur’thon was nothing now, gone. Quath felt sadness for her strandsharer, for the spirit that had quadded simply with her
in the Hive warrens. But that sadness was the mere skin of the beast that slouched below, the thing that Quath could not voice
to herself until this moment, as the dustlanes blotted the nebula’s fair glimmering.

Dust. Darkness. All-swallowing death.

Quath felt a chill of dread, not for Nimfur’thon but for herself.

Quath pressed for the Factotum.

Yes? Your instruction is not complete
—

The usual history was there, in abundance. How the ages-long war with the mechs began. How the race had seen the challenge.
How the highest of all the podia, the Illuminates, understood what the landscape of science had implied: the holy cosmic view.

But not all agreed. Dissenters called the Interlopers opposed the Synthesis. Debate raged. Finally, all disagreement was banished,
liberating the energies of the race. Then, knowing the truth, the race went on to—

Quath clicked off this standard stuff.

Yes?

That is not customarily requested
.

Was there a hesitation?
Well. I suppose
…

A gloss of more history. Dates, places, facts—planets and aeons, now all faded. Then, plunging on, Quath was suddenly in the
midst of the Interloper vision, as quoted in their texts.

The death of the individual was a fact, they said, brute and unavoidable. There was no rebirth for each of the podia. There
was
no
hidden message in science.

A resonant, silky voice sang from some ancient bower:

IT IS OUR STATION TO LIVE WITHIN LAWS THAT GIVE US BEING, BUT OFFER OF THEMSELVES NO PURPOSE OR PROMISE, NO TRIUMPH AS A SPECIES.
THE UNIVERSE ALLOWS US A PLACE IN ITS SYSTEMATIC WORKINGS BUT ONLY CARES FOR THE SYSTEM ITSELF, NOT US
.

Quath gasped, to see such things so baldly stated.

Yet she felt an answering dread inside herself, a swelling feeling of greeting. These ideas she too held. The crisping moment
of Nim’furthon’s death had brought these thoughts forth. They would not submerge again, ever. She listened further to the
soft, confident voice that chanted its final truth:

EVEN THIS MANNER OF STATING THE TRUTH

MISLEADS
.

THE WORLD OUTSIDE OURSELVES

IS IN FACT INCAPABLE OF CARING. WE EXIST

AS RANDOM HAPPENINGS IN A WORLD WHICH

IS ORDERLY

IN ITS LAWS, BUT WITHOUT ANY PLAN BEYOND

THE GRAVID WORKINGS OF DYNAMICS
.

Quath recoiled, as though an eating strand had suddenly writhed and turned into a serpent.

Here it was, what she had feared. Now it was substantial and unmoving, a solid chunk of history. Other podia had seen the
same vast chewing abyss. The world was a rotten, hollow thing. One touch and it split.

Quath’s hearts pumped erratically; she could sense each thumping liquid surge through a different tube. Hormones showered
her, rendering with tangs and savory threads the dry drumroll of history.

The heretics easily refuted the Synthesis by which Quath had lived. History, carved by a different knife, became unrecognizable.
There was talk of religious mania induced by the merciless, unending mech war.

But the Synthesis was
not
religion, Quath argued to herself, it was a philosophical
discovery
. Religions had come and gone before. None had caused the podia to rise as one.

Unrelenting, the hormone-savored logic rolled on, over
Quath’s objections. The Illuminates had come into full being in that vastly ancient time. Their iron rule prevailed.

Images flared, one by one: spindly podia smashing nests, cutting strands. Disbelievers gutted, wailing, and left hanging to
shrivel under strange suns.

The Synthesis spoke of rational podia seeking the light, Quath heard. But she could not quell her own thoughts. Did
this
look like the labors of logic? How could the Synthesis be so sure of its assumptions?

She abruptly yanked away. The Factotum must have been watching closely.
You leave?

Angrily, Quath spat,

It is not done. No benefit accrues from
— and the Factotum launched into a hoary, cobwebbed oration.

she interrupted.

Quath realized that the Factotum would take the words literally and erase the conversation. Perhaps that was just as well.
The poor creature could not deal with these questions.

Perhaps, Quath told herself grimly, no podia could.

Then why was she so burdened?