Are you the one I seek? You emit a pungent reek, similar to his, I see. But your essence is shaped with less angularity, and colored in the deeper hues of frying gases. No, you are not that one. Be gone.
His Supremacy’s mouth twisted with dark rage. “You are not God! You come from the Cybers. You must! Say it! Be gone with you, foul demon!”
Killeen held himself back, unsure. This was the very voice that had called to him years before, on Snowglade. It had advised him to not rebuild the Bishop Citadel, and to seek the Argo. After the Bishops had found Argo buried under a weathered hillside, Killeen had expected further contact with the voice, more orders—but nothing had come in the two years of Argo’s voyaging. He longed to answer it.
But here? The voice would be heard by all, and might reveal what Killeen should do next.
He tried to guess what His Supremacy would make of it, especially since the man’s red face had already knotted with frustration. The act of receiving the message might in turn make it impossible for Killeen to act upon it, if His Supremacy could somehow turn the information to his own ends.
So many of you small things, each with a different aroma and shape. Vexing! Creation is diverse, but trivially so—what need can there be for this variety, these endlessly multiplied shadings and nuances? It is not as though you mites are works of true craft, after all. It simply makes my task more difficult.
“Flee, foul agent!—or we will crush you!” His Supremacy put all his considerable throaty power into the jeering shout.
You venture to clash with me? To crush a being made of the most tenacious fields? My magnetic skirts could sweep you to dust, little worrisome grub. The discharge of my merest idle thought would wreak charring violence through a thousand such as you. But no matter—I cannot be bothered to fathom the mire of vile scents and squashed angles that make up your fledgling race. I cannot rummage through a legion of such, all to deliver a message of muddled meanings. I go.
The roiling seethe began to ebb from the heavens. The pressure in Killeen’s sensorium trickled away.
“No! Wait!”
He leaped in the air, arms flung up as if to grab the retracting lines of blue flux high above them. “I’m Killeen! Here!”
The lacy pattern of radiance paused and rippled. Killeen watched it shoot fresh feelers downward, following the arcing magnetic field lines of the planet.
So you are. I sense your flat odor and slanted self. Good—I tire of this pursuit, this obligation. I received this injunction from a power which sits farther in toward the Eater than do even I. Though my head can reach up into the realm of cool, sluggish worlds such as this, my many feet stand upon a crisply ordered plane of storm-cut plasma, the accretion disk that hotly feeds the appetite of the Eater. From far inside my tossed realm comes this frame of questions which I now ask.
Killeen watched His Supremacy as these words poured down. The man’s anger seemed bottled up, making his eyes bulge and lips protrude. His jaw waggled to the side, back and forth. But he gave no orders. Killeen stepped clear of his Family so his sensorium would be as clean as he could make it.
“Tell me—last time, you said somethin’ calling itself my father was there. What—
The first is a question. How is Toby?
Any doubts Killeen had harbored about the meaning of that strange sentence, years before, now vanished. Who but Abraham would ask first about his grandson?
“He’s fine—growin’ like a weed. Standin’ right here beside me. See if you can pick up his—”
I perceive a weaker aura, yes, somewhat similar to yours. I shall relay it backward, down magnetic lines which spiral into the Center. It shall be refracted into the tangle of geometries where something darkly awaits. There is a spray of antimatter near my footpoint, arising from some artificial means, and thus I cannot guarantee precise transmissions of such flimsy data as your minute auras.
“My father’s there with you? Tell him we need—”
Not here with me, no; all I ken is the assertion that he lived farther in, whirling somewhere in time-racked eddies.
“Lived? Does he live still now?” Killeen’s voice tightened.
Forms such as yourself seem to lurk there, for purposes not revealed to me. I cannot tell if that particular unit persists. The presence there of such inconsequential, primitive entities is a greater mystery than anything in your messages, little mind, but I shall not trouble you with issues you cannot comprehend. Attend you, then: The next message is Apply the Argo ship’s codes to the Legacies.
Killeen shouted, “Legacies? But we’ve lost—”
Silence, small mind.
“Our ship is gone!”
Unconcerned, the electromagnetic entity above stirred as though restless. It cast auroras of shimmering green into the nearby clouds, pressing them back so that the whole vault of the sky opened. The high cirrus banks yawned, as if to bite the somber sky beyond.
The messages I am enjoined to deliver are not simple statements, but rather microscopic intelligences—fragments of the mind that sent them. Thus I must wait for this speck to conjure up some reply to you. It now says, Then you are lost.
“But that’s—”
His Supremacy shouted, “Cap’n of the Bishops! I command you to desist. Converse with this agent of corruption will confuse all our Tribe and bring error to us all.”
Killeen glanced at His Supremacy and waved him away, trying to think. His father—
“I warn you!” His Supremacy’s voice gained menace. “Dealing with—”
“Cermo! Perimeter star!”
The Bishops broke rank and reformed into a well-spaced, outer-directed phalanx. The air sang as their sensoria focused outward, crisping the tangled fields of the other Families.
Killeen said levelly, “I’ll brook no interference. This is no devil or God-killer. Leave us be!”
“I command—” But His Supremacy broke off the sentence as he felt the impact of the massed, merged Bishop field.
Weapons came down from shoulders, clicked on, pointed at primary targets—beginning with His Supremacy.
“We Bishops require a moment. Hear me! I invoke the ancient rules, the first and most revered among them being Family privacy.”
The valley buzzed with unease. The other Families made no move. His Supremacy clenched his fists but only watched as Killeen turned his sensorium back skyward.
I was not to deliver these portents until you were free of the grasp of mechanical intelligences. That was why I did not speak to you on your ship. It is inhabited by mechanical forms which should not receive the key to the Legacies.
“Argo’s got mechs aboard?” Killeen had known some small forms still evaded capture after the successful human mutiny on Snowglade, but he had thought they were powerless and insignificant.
Mechanicals are pervasive. They are the dust that hangs between the suns.
There was almost a note of sympathy in the brooding voice that pressed through Killeen’s sensorium.
“Look, is there any way my father can help us? We’re trapped here. Some other lifeform’s ripping the whole planet apart. No way we can get free, unless somethin’ powerful as you aids us.”
I am a messenger, not a savior.
“Tell my father, if he’s still alive. Send us help!”
The small mind I can interrogate sends wails of remorse, if that is any comfort to you. But nothing else. My powers are not at its disposal, in any case.
The colorful traceries began to fade.
“Don’t leave us here!”
Farewell.
“No!”
But it was gone.
Killeen slumped to the ground with sudden fatigue. A heavy depression settled into him like a cloud and he panted as if he had been running. Color seeped from the world.
Shibo tugged him up. Hands supported him. Toby put an arm around his shoulders and brought Killeen forward. The Bishops still held their defensive star formation. The air was tense as the other Families studied t
hem, hands hovering not far from weapons.
Shibo said, “It will return. Don’t give up.”
Killeen gazed around at the bleak, dusty plain and the ranks of ragged humanity that filled it. “Right. Right,” he said automatically, without believing the words.
His Supremacy’s voice boomed, “We have frightened it, be sure of that. The being fled our show of solidarity before it!”
Killeen shook his head and said nothing. He expected instant retribution from His Supremacy but the swarthy man merely glared. An empty, glazed look came into his eyes.
His Supremacy turned from the Bishops and began intoning more of the ancient litany. Killeen made a sign and the Bishops relaxed from the star formation, making straight ranks again. But the edgy tension on the plain, though muted, did not go away.
Beside Killeen, Toby whispered, “That guy won’t forget.”
Besen added, “Maybe that sky thing scared him. Sure did me.”
“Hard, scarin’ a man who’s already God,” Shibo said wryly.
Killeen listened to the rest of the service numbly, the words passing like raindrops sliding on a windowpane.
When the ceremony was finished he led the Bishops from the plain. They stepped smartly, though their eyes were hollow and distracted. He registered the bitter whisperings from the other Families. Some called taunts and threats. He let it all slip by. He was remembering his father’s face.
As they passed the clump of officers around His Supremacy, the man gave Killeen a pinched, assessing look, eyes narrow and dark. “We will speak to you later, Cap’n,” was all he said. Then he turned away sharply and stalked off.
Killeen’s Grey Aspect said:
Yon Supremacy…has a lean and hungry look. Such men are dangerous…as the ancients said.
Killeen nodded, but compared to what the Bishops had just lost, the opinions of mere men seemed quite trivial.
PART FIVE
Skysower
ONE
Twilight seeped through grimy clouds, casting pale blades along the hillside where Family Bishop retreated. Killeen stopped and looked back. The tail guard had just reached the foothills of this slumped ridge and would stop there to defend their rear.
“Hold till we clear the summit,” he sent to Cermo.
—Yeasay,—Cermo replied at minimal comm level. They were keeping their transmissions few and weak, to avoid detection by Cybers in pursuit.—Running low on ammo.—
Killeen did not answer because there was nothing he could do. There was no more ammunition with the main body of the Family, where he was. Given the Cybers’ ability to attack from any direction, there was no point in reinforcing either the advance guard or the rear party.
Cermo had been forced to use arms and energy-store to pick off the small, tubular things that were trailing the Family. These dog-size creatures seemed to be miniature Cybers, with reddish carapaces and aluminum-sheathed legs. Unarmed, they had followed the Family ever since the disaster at the magnetic generating stations. And they had proved smart, too; they hung back and scattered when Cermo sent people to pick them off, delaying the Family still further.
Even one of the cyborged insects could give away their position, and there were thousands of hiding spots in the jumble of the valley they had just left.
He walked up the steep hillside. His feet were blistered and he favored his left, hobbling slightly. Some water had gotten into his thigh sleeves and had dribbled down into his webbing socks. All the boot- and compressor-shock tech in the world could not keep pressure off the sore, inflamed tissue of his heels.
The water had come from geysers bursting suddenly from a sandy canyon. They had been crossing it at full speed after the battle. There had been no time to stop and check, and now dozens of Family limped along with the same ailment.
—I’ve found Jocelyn’s beeper,—Shibo sent. She was already over the summit, leading the advance guard. Killeen sent a quick trill note as acknowledgment, hoping that would be less telltale than a human voice if the Cybers picked up the transmission.
The message brought a glimmer of cheer. Jocelyn led the Family’s other party, cut off during the battle. Their fallback plan of retreat was working, then; she had found a way along parallel ridgelines and passed through the low canyons beyond, leaving a signifier, as planned. That meant they hadn’t been forced to skirt around any Cybers, which in turn implied that perhaps the aliens were not following the Bishops at all. Slim evidence, but Killeen grimly allowed himself that hope. At this point, hope was as vital as energy.
But then Shibo sent,—More dead,—and Killeen’s mood darkened.
He cut in his reserves of power, and bounded up the last long shelf of shattered rock before the summit. A red sunset cut momentarily through the smoky cloud deck, casting stark shadows in the rutted arroyos beyond. He reached the top, panting. He expanded his sensorium momentarily and picked up Shibo’s green tracer. Closeupped he saw her dispersing her party to the flanks, where they took up defensive positions.
Killeen boosted off on full power and made his way down the steep slope in a series of jumps. His compressors wheezed and he let his calves take most of the shock, but his feet howled in pain.
Strangely filigreed foliage cloaked the arroyos. He slowed to get through it. Spindly trees formed a green canopy over him as he passed Family members in the shadows. The tough, warped trunks still clung to the ruptured soil and already had begun to correct their slant, turning to seek the sky along new verticals. Though there were wide swams cut in the willowy, silent forest by hillslides and fresh, carving streams, life seemed able to hang on tenaciously. Sharp paw prints testified to the survival of large animals, though Killeen seldom saw these except at great distances. They were wary of mechs and Cybers and men alike.
He found Shibo sitting at the base of a rise, staring upward. He followed her gaze and saw a body hanging from a large, gnarled tree. “Any of ours?”
“Naysay,” she answered. “Looks like a Jack.”
Several Family members followed them as they approached the tree. The woman’s gaunt body swayed on fiberweave ropes, expertly trussed. Her entire chest and stomach bulged with one of the glassy, opaque blisters Killeen had seen before. This one was oozing milky fluid from its peak.
“Looks ’bout ready. It’ll pop soon,” Shibo said.
“Right. How long ago did Jocelyn come by here?” Killeen asked.
“I figure couple hours. Her beeper was pretty played out.”
“Where was it?”
“Down where I was sitting.”
“So either she left it here so we’d see this…”
“Or somethin’ left this by the beeper.”
“Yeasay—after she’d gone on.”
Shibo peered at him, the blades of bone beneath her cheeks seeming to stretch her browned skin taut and shiny. “Which?” she asked uncertainly.
Killeen tried to figure how a Cyber might think. “Why’d Jocelyn point out this? More likely she’d steer us away.”
Shibo nodded. “So some Cyber found her beeper and left this.”
Killeen stood back and watched ants swarming over the face of the body as it turned slowly in the wind. “Wonder if it’s s’posed to scare us.”
“See that?” Shibo pointed.
The hands and feet were pierced. From the bloody wounds protruded green stalks ending in fully opened yellow blossoms. The flowers seemed to grow out of the woman.
Killeen felt a sick chill spread through him, remembering the grotesque sculptures of the Mantis. The same horribly rendered theme. “Why’d a Cyber do that?”
“Combined plant and animal,” Shibo said.
“Some kind of message?”
“Why’d it do that?”
“Thing ’bout aliens is, they’re alien.” He spat on the ground in exasperation. Why did both Mantis and Cyber make this “art” warping humans and plants?
A man nearby moved toward the body and extended his knife to cut the ropes.
; “No!” Killeen knocked down the man’s hand.
“I’s just fixin’—”
“Don’t touch it.”
“—get it down, poke the thing that’s livin’ inside it.”
“It’s prob’ly tagged. You cut it down, alarms go off, Cybers come running.”
The man looked outraged. “You let it grow in there, come out, it’ll be one more Cyber!”
Shibo said, “Naysay. They grow their li’l helpers in us, not themselves.”
The man blinked and then a pale, washed-out expression stole over him and he turned away. Killeen looked down the rise to the forest, where Bishops were straggling in from the long retreat. They slumped down, not even bothering to lean against trees, and lay with their heads resting on their carry-packs.
“We’re ’bout played out,” he said reflectively.
“Can’t stop here,” Shibo said. “Cybers know this place.”
Killeen nodded. “Might come back.”
He wondered if Cybers found it any more difficult to move and seek at night. Probably not, since he remembered their natural optical senses worked best in the infrared. Which meant that the gathering gloom gave Family Bishop no advantage here.
He walked to the middle of the gathering crowd and sat, his legs gratefully ceasing their aches. The quakes had shaken most of the odd, triangular leaves to the floor of the forest, providing a deliciously soft loam for rest. Approaching Bishops’ bootsteps made no noise whatever, and the ebbing twilight suffused the scene in a soothing, serene light.
His feet screamed for release, but he did not dare take off his boots for fear that he would not be able to get them back on when his feet swelled. He was tempted to expand his sensorium and get a quick head count, but the hanging body had made him wary of even the slightest electromagnetic tracer.
And in any case, he knew the rough dimensions of their loss. Family Bishop had been the outer flanking element in the assault, a relatively less dangerous position affording a clear escape route. They had gone in after the forward units sprang from their concealment in the Cyber tunnels. The battle had played out on the plain beneath the magnetic generator buildings. Those units had appeared directly among the Cybers.
Tides of Light Page 24
