Noonday Sun 1

Siffaith made his way slowly up the long, curving, tubular corridor. As he approached the round door, it separated into segments that twirled aside and into the walls. He flinched as the light of the Eternal Noonday fell upon him. His huge eyes were not well adapted to the light. He shuffled forwards, out onto the upper surface of the Home.

Just outside the doorway, a teacher was hovering. Siffaith reached out with one claw, touching the controls, seeing the information globe form above them. Most of the People thought nothing of the teachers and their globes - they saw only that the globes were insubstantial, and they dismissed them as unreal. Dyegh had taught Siffaith otherwise. The teachers' globes held knowledge, and there was nothing more real than knowledge.

Dyegh.... Siffaith shaded his eyes with his hood, and after a while made out the figure of his mentor, standing on the smooth metal surface, some tens of paces away. Dyegh was standing quite still, his robed and hooded shape erect, black against the white metal of the Home. He looked, Siffaith thought, for all the world like one of the Progenitors themselves.

Siffaith made his way over to where Dyegh stood. His mentor acknowledged him with a wave of his claw, but said nothing, and did not turn his gaze away from... whatever he was looking at. Siffaith peered in that direction. Everywhere, there was the complex surface of the vast Land of Eternal Noonday... conglomerations of buildings, parklands, fields and spires stretching out into the distance until they blurred into mist and blended with the sky. But that was always the same... what was it, that had caught Dyegh's attention?

Then he saw it. Somewhere in the middle distance, brief pinpricks of dazzling whiteness, and threading lines of coloured light - scarlet, and blaze orange.

"The new gods are angry," he said.

"The new gods are always angry," Dyegh replied. "And they are futile. Paltry." His rasping voice carried with it complete conviction as he added, "In the days of the old gods, the whole sky was darkened by their might, and the only illumination came from the lightning of their anger. Compared to that -" He waved a dismissive claw at the lights in the distance. "Paltry."

"Some day, though," said Siffaith, "we must talk to the new gods. There must be much we could learn from them -"

"Perhaps," said Dyegh. He turned to face Siffaith. "It is gratifying to me that you still seek knowledge. So few of the People do. In three hundred thousand hours of Eternal Noonday, you are the only one I have found who still questions, who still thinks -" He gripped Siffaith's upper arm with one claw. "The spirit of the Progenitors is in you, my friend and student. It is in us both. Together, we may accomplish much."

Siffaith looked at him. "You have... found something?"

"Another teacher. So many teachers, standing patiently around the Home, and I swear none of the People has disturbed them in uncounted millions of hours. Not since the Progenitors fell and the sun turned cold."

Siffaith shuddered. Long hours of poring over the teachers' globes had taught him that the fall of the Progenitors, the cooling of the sun... these were not myths. Dyegh was older, had learned more... how much more, Siffaith could only guess.

"The teacher... has told me things," said Dyegh. "Things that the new gods cannot know. How the People survived, here in the Home, when the Progenitors fled to the places that are not places. And the ultimate purpose of the Land itself. Though that purpose may no longer be fulfilled...."

"Why not?" asked Siffaith.

"Interference. The meddling of the new gods. But that does not matter - the Land served the purposes of the old gods, and the old gods have gone. But what does interest me, my friend, is the other possibilities the teacher has shown me. The engines of the Land are many and various, and their powers may be used in many ways. Come. Let me show you." He tugged, insistently, at Siffaith's arm. Siffaith allowed himself to be led away, up the gently curving, domed surface of the Home.

Behind them, many kilometres away now, the Voth scout ship fired a final volley of antiproton fire into the USS Northwood's aft section. The frigate's port nacelle exploded in flames, and the Voth ship turned away, leaving the Northwood hanging crippled in the Dyson Sphere's sky, as it departed on some unguessable business of its own.