Nightfall_at_Algemron

"Outside" was their great problem now.
They do not know.
They still do not know.
In that regard at least they were safe. The hosts who carried them about, the mobile worlds, were blissfully ignorant of what they carried. Oh, when they first took possession there might be some small difficulty, some little straggling of the stubborn parasitic "intelligence" that clung inside these creatures, but old habits were soon enough unlearned, and things settled down. The tangle grew in the glow of warmth, and the host discovered how not to struggle, discovered that everything was so much easier if it just gave up the troublesome habit of thought and will. There was so much other thought, so much other will, waiting to relieve it of the difficulty. Sooner or later, it always gave in.
There was always the hope that things could become simpler. There were those far away, great minds, huge knots and matrices of thought native to other tangles on the outside. They looked forward to the day when a host would be perfected that did not straggle at all, a little world even more perfect, one capable of swift movement, far travel outside, which did not put up the tiresome battle for its own autonomy. As if there was any such thing. As if any one creature by itself could lay any kind of claim to intelligence. Mind came in numbers, and the proof of it was the way that the poor pitiful spasms of thinking that the present "outside" worlds manifested were unable to resist the presence of genuine thought, genuine will, for very long.
They do not know…
It was the tangle's eternal consolation. Their way of life, if anything, brought intelligence to those unfortunate wandering spasmodic shells, poor purposeless things lurching and staggering about the outside world in their little bodies and ships. Once a tangle took hold in one of those small worlds, brought it direction and purpose, then were they intelligent, then would they know. Someday they would all know. Someday the stroke and curl of thirty or fifty or a hundred bodies would enlighten them all, the twining of useful and purposeful thought as it bred inside them.
The Others, one thought came from some distance, from another tangle, they come closer now to finding the way to bring that time when worlds no longer resist us .
The time comes.
It comes. They have found the place where the secret is hidden.
They have found the one who will find the place.
Soon now.
Soon…
Thoughts stroked and writhed against one another in luxuriant pleasure. Soon the enablers, the ancient devices, would be found. For so long they had been thought to be only myth, random thought, erroneous imagination. Then an image had come drifting along the thoughtways, leaked from somewhere perhaps, cast away by some being that had seen such a thing and not recognized it for what it was, but the Others recognized it, the one true group intelligence that did live outside. They searched in that great dubious emptiness of "physical reality" and found what they sought: the truth of the image, the source of the enablers, the devices that would make all the outside safe for their kind, would turn all of it into an endless infinity of unresisting worlds, hosts that did not have to be subdued.
But the Others were delayed.
They were delayed.
Sorrowful commiseration that such a delay should have to happen. The first place that had held the enabling devices had been inadequate. Not as expected, not as predicted. The devices had been interfered with. The Others had not been able to make use of them. Many of the wild host-creatures, willful, destructive, uncooperative, had come to that place and made it impossible for the Others to be there, to take what they desired.
Agitation. Thought curled and writhed against itself, frustrated. From somewhere came a faint sound, unpleasant.
The sound repeated.
The tangle asserted itself.
The sound choked off.
They had all been angry, but the anger was unnecessary. There was another source for the enablers, the Others said.
Soon they would come there, be brought there. Soon the source would be revealed, and all would once again go to plan.
The thought came curling into their own, colder and clearer than one of the voices of their own tangle.
We will know soon where that place is. Prepare your hosts to set about our business.
A stirring, a sense of amusement. They are always about your business, for we are always about your business. All are the same.
See to it that what you say is true. Put your hosts to following these, to watching for them. Come to grips with them. Make hosts of them if you can, but be ever with them once you have found them.
Images: Three ships, and the wild hosts associated with the ships. A woman, a weren, a human mutant, and a mechalus. A fraal. and a human of sorts, though that was changing.
The tangle writhed and squirmed even at the distant thought-image-of-an-image. There was something about the last one, the light, unlike their light—but a sensitivity as well, a mind that was almost a mind like theirs, even though he was only one.
Impossibility.
The tangle writhed more violently. Agitation. From outside again came the unpleasant sound, the scream. The tangle asserted itself.
Silence fell again, and all bathed in the warmth, the light, once more uninterrupted.
Find them, said the voice of the Other. Follow them. Call us when you do. Tell us where they go, what they do. Make hosts of them, if you can. Great will be your reward, for what they seek and what you can force them to find will make our world what we wish it to be at last.
And they will not know
They will not know.
Satisfied, eager, thoughtful, ready, the tangle smoothed and preened and stroked against itself, bodies writhing among bodies in the warmth, thought knotting through thought.
Outside, unregarded, water ran down the face of the world, and great sobs shook it until the tangle finally asserted itself again and choked the air away.
Chapter Five
Several weeks later they prepared for their final starfall into Algemron. Everyone's nerves were on edge.
The first problem with this system was exactly where to arrive. Much of it was theoretically neutral territory, but there was a lot of that to police and only one force doing the policing: a little Concord task force based on Palshizon at the edge of the system. Gabriel and everyone else discussed this via comms before their final starfall.
"If we go in under escort from the Concord ships there, we won't have this problem," Angela said. "We could," Enda replied and glanced at Gabriel. Gabriel said nothing for the moment.
The problem was the war. In a way, it was an offshoot of the Second Galactic War, continuing even though the Thuldans and Austrins had long since ceased that particular conflict. Some of their client worlds, however, had been slower to give up the war, and the inhabitants of Galvin and Alitar had been slowest of all. Only the Monitor Mandate, some years back, had prevented the two planets' "parent" stellar nations from becoming directly involved in the conflict, but even the Mandate had not been able to stop the "children" quarreling and killing large numbers of one another at every possible turn. While the Concord might not approve of this, there was nothing it could do about it at the moment. It kept a Concord Administrator permanently in the system, a woman named Mara DeVrona, which to Gabriel's mind was a clear indication of how desperately intractable it considered the situation there. They kept the little base at Palshizon, which conducted an escort system for ships passing through the system, trying to
bolster the economy and local stability by keeping trade moving. Still, there were problems with their presence as well.
"If we do report there," Enda offered, "and they decide to query Gabriel's records. Well, that would be bad."