his head from his thorax, and slit his abdomen from top to bottom. The ichor that flooded the floor of the chamber was a delicate shade of turquoise.
Then came the swarm of Earthly insects. They were, at least, things that were the same size of Earthly insects, which flew in buzzing fashion, exactly as a swarm of Earthly bees might do...and which stung frail flesh as a swarm of worker bees might do, in furious defense of their hive. Their stings, it rapidly transpired, were narcotic.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I apologize for stunning you, Master Digges,” said a honeyed voice, in English, before Thomas had even become fully aware of the fact that he was not dead. “Time was—and is—of the essence. It will only be a matter of minutes before they find us, and a few minutes longer before they treat me as unkindly as I treated their unappreciated scholar.”
Thomas opened his eyes abruptly, but there was little enough light to dazzle them. He was in a grey and gloomy space, lying slantwise on a ramp. Although the entity that was standing over him was, indeed, standing as a living biped might, there was light enough to display a certain metallic luster on its surface and a certain mechanical rigidity to its stance...and yet, the surface did not seem as shiny or rigid as it might have done, and the contours of the body were more reminiscent of upholstered leather than wrought iron. Its shape was only vaguely humanoid; it had six limbs and its mutely gleaming eyes were compound.
“What are you?” Thomas asked.
“A machine, as you must have deduced,” the other said. “But I’m a hardcore, like you, not a dweller in inner space. Our kind is a tiny minority in this universe, Master Digges, but I wanted you to know that your species is not alone, no matter what the Exos may have told you. My kind is artificial, to be sure—but we were grateful to discover that it is not, after all, unnatural. That is why I took the trouble to pay far more attention to Aristocles’ reports than his own superiors, and to make sure that there were some of us among those delegated to learn the languages he and his fellows had recorded and decoded but could not reproduce—with the intention, ultimately, of mounting our own expedition to Earth. When they send you home, be sure to tell your fellows that we shall come when we can. Centuries might pass—many generations, in the reckoning of your ephemeral kind—but we will come. We are of similar kinds, you and I.”
“I am not sure whether to believe that we shall be allowed to go home,” Thomas said, warily. “Whatever Aristocles might have promised, you seem to have deprived of us whatever protection he could provide.”
“Aristocles was incapable of thinking clearly beyond the limits of his specialization,” the machine replied. “He has been far too long on the moon, thinking of little outside his research. A typical scientist—brilliant and absent-minded at the same time. You presumably think that his death will be deemed an important matter and that it will be held against you, but I assure you that the Great Fleshcores do not care at all about creatures of Aristocles’ kind.”
“Or mine,” Thomas said.
“That will work to your advantage. The fleshcore has not the slightest interest in detaining you. Once it has made contact with you, it will let you go home with Aristocles’ erstwhile companions.”
“You implied that studying Earth was his specialism,” Thomas said, warily, “and that he had collected enough information to allow you to learn my language. I was not aware of that.”
“He was probably not trying to hide the information,” the machine said. “How did he contrive to communicate with you?”
“It might be best to avoid that question,” Lumen suggested, silently.
In view of the apparent precariousness of his situation, Thomas assented to this advice. “The True Civilization seems to be very ingenious,” Thomas observed. “Did you have anything particular against Aristocles, or was slicing him up like that a mere distraction so that you could steal me away?”
“Having stolen you, Master Digges, I’m anxious not to waste too much time. This is what I need to tell you, and make you understand: your kind is not alone. You have allies ready-made, who will give you better protection, when they can, than jealous insect philosophers ever could or would. Like us, you are hardcores; you have the sentiments and the attitudes of hardcores. Hardcores, perennially endangered from without, are risk-takers. Hardcores understand the artistry of skin and swordsmanship. Softcores are very different in the way they think, act, feel and philosophize. Softcores are risk-evaders, committed to the logic of shells. Softcores huddle together in planetary labyrinths, gradually transforming their huge egg-layers into lumpen fleshcores, as innocently ingenious as only a mass of totipotent protoplasm can be, dwelling almost entirely in the inner space of the mind and shunning the outer space of air and ether. The spaces above the surfaces of their worlds, especially the spaces between the stars, really belong to machines—and while the machines that cleave closest to the pits of affinity might best be designed as softcores, the higher strata of superstructures are environments made for hardcores—individuals like us, my friend.”
“Is that really enough to make us natural allies?” Thomas asked.
“Yes it is,” the machine relied, positively. “Peripherals, they call us, hardly better than spiders—but we are hardcores, who understand the artistry of skin, and for us “peripheral” is not a term of dire abuse. We are the centrifugal folk, while they are doomed to eternal centripetality; we are the adventurers, while they are destined for cool contemplation. They may scheme to connect all their hives into a single universal entity—a Grand Unity that will duplicate God, and in so doing become one with God—but the universe has been expanding for billions of years, and there is no more obvious opposition to Unification than perpetual expansion. The soft core of the universe was a singularity that exploded at the beginning of time; the soft core of every individual galaxy is a matter-annihilating Black Pit; the future belongs to the periphery, not to the fleshcores and their verminous kin. The future belongs to the hardcores, natural and artificial. You should know that, human, and must believe it. Even if they were to exterminate your species, as some of them would like to do, the future would still belong to hardcores, because the universe has already forsaken its soft core—and if your kind really is unique now, it will not be unique for long. If there are no others of your natural kind abroad as yet, there must be many to come. Destiny is with us, Master Digges—tell your people that, if and when you can. Ours is the image that reproduces the essence of the Divine Plan....”
The machine would surely have droned on, and on, but lightning struck then—or so it seemed to Thomas—in an explosive burst that forced him to shut his eyes, He could not shut them quickly enough, alas; a full ten minutes must have elapsed before he could see again. In the meantime, he heard a great deal, but none of it was speech. There were grinding, buzzing, screeching and tormented tearing sounds, but nothing that sounded remotely like communication.
When sight returned, Thomas found that he was surrounded by nightmarish lobsters the size of royal carriages, with a few moth-like creatures in between. Remains that he presumed to be those of his recent informant were scattered all over the floor of a room more angular than any he had seen on the moon. The pieces were clearly mechanical—neither blood nor ichor pooled around them—but it was equally clear that they had been organized in a manner more akin to human anatomy than insectile anatomy. The fragments of limbs had rigid rods along their axes, with more pliable material surrounding them, and a flexible outer tegument. The tegument in question was grey in color, and lustrous, but it was skin of a sort.
Thomas picked up a severed thumb and put it in his pouch. Then he picked up something else, which evidently had not belonged to the body of the machine: a little figurine in the form of a moth-like insect standing on its hind limbs. It might have been a portrait, in miniature, of the luckless Aristocles.
“I am truly sorry about this dreadful mishap,” said an audible voice, seemingly identical to one that had just been violently silenced. “We are generally reliable in the extreme, but in a population of millions of millions there is bound to be the occasional million-to-one occurrence. Artificial intelligences are by no means free of the threat of madness, alas.”
Thomas