drawbacks.
'Quite so, Mr. Takagama,' replied the little alien. 'However, I should point out that had I or our hosts intended you harm, you would not have been repaired and awakened.”
'Repaired?' Carol was confused.
'Of course. You both received a very high dosage of ionizing radiation and were severely damaged during your… ah… acquisition.' The small alien hummed for a moment. 'Of course, you were not so severely damaged as your more aggressive and combative opponent in the next environment locus.”
It gestured with a loose-lipped head toward the clear aperture Carol had seen earlier. That bubble-window still displayed the fallen kzin next to his singleship. The whitish tendrils wrapping the orange-furred figure were moving slowly.
Bruno nudged Carol. 'That ratcat must have received Principle knows how high a dose when the Sun-Tzu exploded. How could they repair such damage so quickly?”
Before Carol could reply, the larger of the two aliens trumpeted loudly. The other alien fluted and sang back.
'My esteemed colleague is quite correct,' the smaller alien crooned, honey voiced. 'The briefing with our hosts was quite explicit that haste was crucial. There is not time to deal with these niceties, as I mentioned earlier. We must take action, with your help.”
'I don't understand,' Carol frowned.
'Nor should you at this point. Suffice it to say that because of your… altercation… with these… kzin creatures… you have succeeded in rousing forces you would not have wished to disturb, had you but known. That difficulty must be addressed immediately.”
The larger of the three-legged aliens trumpeted again, a martial brass band.
'Again, my colleague is quite right,' sang the alien called Diplomat in clear bell-like tones. 'If we live long enough to address the problem properly.”
Frustration grew in Carol. She knew that they were in trouble, but it irked her not to know that trouble's extent. 'At least tell us what will be done with us, why we have been captured.”
The little alien cocked both heads at Carol in different directions. 'You have not been captured, Captain Faulk.”
'What would you call it, then?' drawled Bruno. 'It seems to me that the universe has been pushing us around a lot.”
'Mr. Takagama, are you feeling well? Paranoia is not a common condition for your naive species, according to my briefings. As for the term 'capture,' I would think the word 'rescue' more appropriate, were I you.”
'Rescued from what?' asked Carol, feeling a cold chill run across her shaven skull and down her back.
Now they were getting to it. 'From the Zealots,' replied the small alien. 'A delicate balance of power has been upset by your unwitting actions.”
Carol did not like the sound of this. 'Zealots?' The alien called Diplomat sang quickly. 'There exist different factions of our low-temperature hosts.
Some are traders in information and goods to life-forms like ourselves. Other factions have… ah… more obscure concerns.' 'Obscure?' Bruno prodded at the alien, seeming just as out of place as Carol felt. 'You mean hostile?' A slow roll of one of the heads, flashing eyes. 'The Zealots are a Traditionalist group with very different attitudes than our hosts. They will arrive soon, and will attempt to destroy us all. Thus, we must most assuredly not be present at that time.' Again, the enclosure with its false sky and too-green grass seemed to whirl around Carol. The alien ground pushed firmly up against her feet, but she felt as if she were in free fall.
'Bruno?' she murmured. She glanced over and saw that his eyes were narrowed, face pinched. 'Yes, Captain-my-captain?' Carol sighed. 'We appear to have fallen right into someone else's war.' A snort. She felt Bruno squeeze her arm. 'You sure know how to show a fella a good time.' Carol turned back to the aliens. 'What happens now?' She needed more information, fast, but the issue of their fate needed to be settled first.
Again, the creature cocked both heads in different directions. An expression of confusion? 'What every intelligent being would do under these circumstances.' Carol licked her lips. 'And that would be?… ' 'We run,' chorused both the little alien and Bruno.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Radiants moved throughout the young universe, and plumbed the diverse strangenesses within it. The beings burned as bright as their cores with curiosity, all on behalf of They Who Pass.
There was much to learn, and vast room for such a broad education. The sentient clouds of plasma swam within vast seas of glowing gas and lanes of sparkling dust, ever seeking, and felt the electrical equivalent of awe.
All they learned, they reported to their creators on the other side of the cosmic string.
But some parts of that fresh reality were beyond the abilities of the Radiants to explore. The world of cold matter defeated the ever-curious plasma beings. The very touch of dark solids greedily drained away the heart-fire of the incandescent gas clouds. The Radiants were forced to ignore their innate programmed curiosity for a time, and avoid the enigmatic points of darkness that swung around stellar fires.
There was still much to learn, and an entire new universe as lecture hall.
To They Who Pass, this new universe made little sense. It seemed paradoxically composed of two extremes: the very hot and the very cold. The Radiants could easily explore the former conditions on behalf of their masters, but the bitter chill remained quite deadly. They Who Pass grew intrigued at these newest findings from the other universe, and sent fresh instructions through the cosmic string window to their Radiant servants. This still-stranger frontier of cold must be explored as well.
Under careful instruction, the Radiants recapitulated the original act of their own genesis. They used the interactive properties inherent to matter far colder than their own diffuse blaze. Instead of patterns implicit in the dance of atoms stripped bare of electron clouds, subtle and little-known forces pushing and pulling at atoms were investigated.
Tests began. Cool gas clouds were visited and influenced at a distance by the Radiants. The beings of plasma reached out with tools of collective force into the dusky strangeness. Linear chains of atoms met and branched, joined, and were torn asunder with careful prodding. Complexity grew, as did the knowledge of the Radiants.
They Who Passed marveled in their distant way at such knowledge, and urged their servants to continue the investigation. Regardless of the medium used, Mind was formed from Pattern. Perhaps even this killing blackness could give birth to Mind, and thus fresh servants, in yet another mode of existence.
Much was discovered about condensed matter. It was blunt, willful, incapable of vibrating with the singing energies that were the lifeblood of the Radiants. But diffuse clouds of dust were not enough. With great care, the Radiants learned to come near the cold deadly spheres of matter, and study their composition by deft inductance. Patterns were imposed by the Radiants into slow currents of superconductive liquids, found in pools on the cold lumps of matter. There, as in the plasma clouds of the Radiants' birth, impurities lent a non-homogeneous nature to the medium: raw material for the primitive minds even then forming structures within the liquid.
As electromagnetic forces were not sufficient to touch and move cold matter, a skin of protective polymer was fashioned over the superconductive liquid. Flexible struts of crystalline material gave shape and strength under the brute, inexorable pull of gravity.
After a time, a bulbous entity heaved itself out of a pool of liquid helium. It slowly extruded a strand of matter from its center. The tentacle slid along the cold surface, and finally wrapped around a small rock.
Slowly, the dimly thinking coldlife automaton lifted the rock against the light gravity. It waved the prize toward the glittering plasmid cloud orbiting the cold planetoid. The tentacled construct felt something like a frigid triumph, and quested around for new objects to investigate.
Thus were the Dark Ones born.
For many revolutions of the galaxy, the Dark Ones carried out the bidding of the Radiants in the world of cold matter. The Radiants themselves continued their explorations at the other end of the spectrum, basking in heat and light unimaginable. Together, the two classes of Mind explored the new universe, finding things awesome and
