Radiant

his eyes when he saw me. He glared with utter disgust, not only despising my blemished cheek but my face as a whole, the cells in my body, and everything down to the subatomic level. In his mind, I was obviously made from the wrong kind of quarks.

'You took long enough!' he growled. His voice suggested he was the sort of diplomat who eagerly volunteered for missions where he got to make threats.

'Youn Suu took a mere forty-three seconds from the time I first called her to the moment she appeared on the bridge.' Those words came from the one person I knew in the room, Captain Abraham Cohen. In a low voice, he added, 'Thought I should get the exact time… in case one of these schmuck diplomats decided to kvetch.'

Captain Cohen’s eyes twinkled at me. He was a delicate wispy-haired man who loved to play the fond Jewish grandpa. Often he could be charming, but sometimes I wanted to shout in his face, I’ve already got a grandfather! My occasional annoyance at Cohen, however, was nothing compared to Tut’s. Tut was utterly obsessed with our captain — particularly the possibility that Cohen might be a fraud. One night, Tut had walked into my cabin at three in the morning, sat on the edge of my bed, and whispered without preamble, 'Nobody’s really called Abraham Cohen. It’s too much, Mom. Abraham Cohen. Abe Cohen. The name has to be fake. I’ll bet he’s never even met a real Jew. He steals all that Yiddish from bad movies. You want to help me pull down his pants and see if he’s circumcised?'

I’d declined. Tut left and disappeared for three days, during which time his only communication was a text message from the brig listing all the cultures besides Judaism that practiced circumcision.

There was more than one reason why Cohen would rather talk to me than to Tut.

'Youn Suu,' the captain said, swiveling in his command chair to face the diplomats, 'this is Commander Miriam Ubatu and Ambassador Li Chin Ho. Commander, Ambassador, this is Explorer Youn Suu. First in her class at the Academy.' (Cohen always introduced me that way. I’d actually been second in my class, but every time I tried to correct the captain’s claim, he chose not to hear.) 'Youn Suu will know what’s going on, you watch.' He swiveled back to me. 'Five minutes ago, we received a distress call from our embassy on Cashleen. There’s been trouble.'

'At the embassy?'

'No. In a Cashling city named Zoonau. The embassy sent us footage.'

Cohen turned a dial on the arm of his chair. The bridge’s main vidscreen changed from an unremarkable starscape to a picture of what must be Zoonau. It looked like a typical Cashling city — enclosed in a giant glass dome and devoted to one of the five 'Worthy Themes' that fascinated the ancient city-builders: water, mirrors, shadow, illusion, and knots.

Zoonau was dedicated to knots. The buildings were made of dull gray concrete, bland and unpainted, which might have produced a drab panorama; but every skyscraper body turned in twists and bends, even full loops and elaborate braids, made possible by carefully placed antigrav fields, which prevented unbalanced weight distributions from causing structural collapse. No street ran straight — they all intertwined, circling, crossing, passing over or under each other. It was a profusely contorted labyrinth: like living in a mandala.

Fortunately, Cashling cities had computerized voice-guides built into every streetlamp, able to direct passersby toward any desired destination. And if you didn’t like the roundabout nature of the streets, you could always get above the problem. Every twenty paces, knotted ropes rose from the ground, strung all the way to the dome. Cross-cords connected from rope to rope, along with the occasional solid rope bridge and macrame walkways that offered far more direct routes than the streets below. At one time, Cashlings must have been as nimble and strong as orangutans if they found such traverses practical.

But no longer. Even if Cashlings were physically able to clamber through rope jungles, they couldn’t be bothered. In the footage of Zoonau displayed on the vidscreen, every single Cashling was down on the ground… and not doing much of anything.

Cashlings were roughly humanoid, with two legs, two arms, and one head; but they had almost no torso, so their gawky legs reached nearly to their armpits. Though none in the vidscreen picture wore clothes, they showed all the colors of the rainbow, plus quite a few shades no self-respecting rainbow would tolerate. Cashling skins were naturally adorned with vivid swirls, stripes, and spottles. Each individual had unique coloration, and most augmented their birth appearance by adding tattoos, slathering themselves with cosmetics, and randomly juggling their pigmentation genes.

But making themselves more eye-catching was the Cashlings’ only field of expertise. Otherwise, they were laughingstocks: a race of lazy fools, practically incapable of taking care of themselves. Their species would have died out from sheer incompetence, except that less decadent ancestors had created cities like Zoonau: fully automated self-repairing havens that satisfied all the residents’ needs. Cashling cities served as nannies to creatures who remained pompously infantile their whole lives.

As I watched, flecks of red began drifting from the top of Zoonau’s dome. The flecks looked like blood-colored snow. Soft. Slightly fuzzy. Floating gently. Not real snow — more like airborne seeds. I’d seen pictures of Earth thistle fields lost in blizzards of their own thistledown… and numerous nonterrestrial plants also emitted clouds of offspring, sometimes so profusely they could smother unwary Explorers. I wasn’t aware of such plants on Cashleen, but I’d never studied Cashling botany. Explorers cared more about the vegetation on uncharted planets than on worlds that were safely developed.

The red seed-fall started to settle: a dusting of crimson on the streets, soon thickening into solid mossy beds. The Cashlings themselves seemed untouched — not the tiniest speck on their colored hides. A few tried to catch seeds drifting past, but when they opened their hands, their palms were empty. The vidscreen showed one Cashling man bending to pick up a handful of the stuff… maybe thinking he could make a snowball. But as he reached down, the red particles fled: slipping just out of reach. When he withdrew his hand, the red seed-things flowed like water, back to where they’d been.

'So, Youn Suu,' Cohen said. 'Do you know what the red stuff is?'

I hesitated. Crimson particles. Able to move so they couldn’t be grabbed. Forming into thick patches. Like moss…

The streets were now coated except for tiny clear patches around each Cashling’s feet; and the blizzard was still falling. Getting thicker. The camera barely penetrated the cloud of red, but I could make out the wall of a building… and moss climbing that wall as fast as a human could walk… climbing the ropes too, spreading across the whole knotted network until every rope looked like cord covered with plush crimson velvet…

Red moss. That could move. That could see the Cashlings and get out of their way.

A chill went through me. I said, 'It’s the Balrog.'

'Balrog?' echoed Ambassador Li. 'What’s a Balrog?'

'A highly advanced creature,' I said. 'Much more intelligent than humans.'

I looked at the picture again. The moss had begun to glow: shining dimly as the city grew darker. Mats of fuzzy red clotted on Zoonau’s glass dome, cutting off sunlight from outside. Streetlamps flickered to life, but their bulbs were already covered with crimson fuzz. 'The moss goes by many names,' I continued, trying to keep my voice even, 'but when interacting with Homo sapiens, it calls itself the Balrog. The name refers to a fictional monster from Earth folklore, originally appearing in J. R. R. Tolkien’s-'

Li made a strangled sound and kneaded his temples as if I’d aggravated his hangover headache. Neither he nor Ubatu was seated — Pistachio’s small bridge had no guest chairs, and safety regulations forbade visitors from sitting at an active control station unless they were qualified to operate the station’s equipment — so Li just tottered shakily from one foot to the other until he overcame whatever spasm had gripped him. 'Explorer,' he said in a forced voice, 'we don’t want your thoughts on literature. Stick to what’s relevant.'

'This is relevant,' I replied. 'When an intelligent alien adopts a name from human mythology, it’s making a statement. If you met an extraterrestrial that introduced itself as Count Dracula, would you let it near your throat?'

'He would if it offered him trade concessions,' Ubatu said.

'Now, now,' murmured Captain Cohen, 'no garbage talk on my bridge.' He turned back to me. 'Go on, Youn Suu. Tell us about Balrogs.'

'It’s not Balrogs plural.' I gestured toward the screen as Zoonau continued to disappear under a blanket of red. 'That’s all one creature: the Balrog. It’s a single consciousness, distributed over quadrillions of component units usually called spores. And the spores have been found on hundreds of worlds throughout the galaxy.'

'So it’s a hive mind?' Li muttered. 'I hate those things.'

'Yes, Ambassador,' I said, 'it’s a hive mind. The spores stay in constant telepathic contact with each other, regardless of how far apart they are. Instantaneous contact, even when separated by thousands of light-years. The Balrog is like a single brain with lobes in different star systems, but still intellectually integrated. Some experts believe hive minds are the next evolutionary step above individual creatures like ourselves. We’ve certainly encountered lots of hive minds in our galaxy: not just the Balrog, but the Lucifer, the Myshilandra, possibly Las Fuentes-'

'Hold it,' Li interrupted. He was massaging his temples again. 'Let’s get something clear. How smart is this Balrog?'

'Smarter than Homo sapiens and our usual alien trading partners,' I said. 'How much smarter, nobody knows. The Balrog is so far beyond humans, when we try to measure its intelligence, we’re like two-year-olds trying to rank the IQs of Newton and Einstein.'

Li curled his lip in disgust. 'How typical. Explorers love saying that humans are idiots. You enjoy thinking you’re at the bottom of the heap. That’s where you’re comfortable.'

'Now, now,' Captain Cohen murmured.

'No, really,' Li said. 'What makes her think this Balrog is smart? Better technology?' The ambassador waved his hand dismissively. 'Better technology isn’t a matter of intelligence; it’s just how long you’ve been in the game. We have better machines today than the ancient Chou Dynasty, but we’re not a milligram smarter.'

'Oh God,' Ubatu groaned. 'He’s going to quote Confucius again.'

'Ambassador Li,' I said (all the while watching the city of Zoonau being buried alive), 'you don’t grasp the nature of superior intelligence. Suppose you create a brand-new intelligence test. Give it to average humans, and they’d finish in, say, an hour, probably with a number of mistakes. Give it to the most intelligent people in the Technocracy, and they might finish in half the time, with almost no mistakes. But if you approach the Balrog with your test in hand, it’ll say, ‘What took you so long? I’ve been waiting for you to show up since last Saturday. I got so bored, I’ve already finished.’ Then it will hand you a mistake-free copy of the test you just invented. The Balrog can foresee, hours or days or months in advance, exactly what questions a person like you would invent. It doesn’t read your mind, it knows your mind. That’s superior intelligence.'

Li snorted in disbelief. I wondered why. Because he couldn’t imagine a universe where he wasn’t on the top rung? 'Look,' I said, 'when we classify the Balrog as ‘beyond human intelligence,’ we don’t mean it’s faster or more accurate in mundane mental tasks. We mean it can do things humans can’t. In particular, the Balrog displays an uncanny ability to intuit Homo sapiens thoughts and actions. Not just vague predictions but precise details of