Tides of Light

by Gregory Benford

  Killeen had witnessed the fate of those brave Families. The assault ratio must have been at least one Family per Cyber. The first rush had brought down two Cybers and things had looked good. Then men and women began to fall on the plain as though blown over by a sudden soundless wind. Killeen had not been able to pick up any signatures of microwave or optical or even kinetic-kill weapons. People fell in midstride, as though picked up and slammed into the ground by an invisible giant.

  The rush came to a sudden halt. Families regrouped behind the fallen, smoking Cybers. Even there some weapon picked them off one at a time. They tried a rush toward the magnetic generators that loomed above like mud-colored, rectangular hills—and fell by the dozens, their strangled cries twisting through the comm.

  The Bishops answered the blaring attack signal of His Supremacy. More Families poured over the distant hills. They spread out and moved in jerky dashes between the covering shelter of arroyos and clumps of trees and boulders. The battlefield was a gray scabland left by some recent magma-spewing vent which had obliterated the life there. Whether this was by accident or design Killeen could not tell. The Cybers had already bored tunnels in the barely cooled lake of lava. Cracks in the crusty scab gave some shelter as the Tribe descended and brought withering fire to bear on the four remaining Cybers.

  Had they been mechs, the directed bursts would have sheared away legs and burned out antennae. Here, nothing happened. The Cybers paused, as though reassessing the situation, and then went on picking off the darting human targets, as if nothing more bothersome than a summer’s rain fell upon them.

  Killeen had been running at the middle of the Family. He saw the first Family members fall and ordered everyone down. They had poured a torrent of fire on the nearest Cyber, and succeeded in blowing away several appendages. But even the natural, warty skin repelled all shots.

  This Killeen could not believe until be tried three successive bolts straight into the exposed midsection of the thing. Only after all three failed, fading away to mere luminous blue traceries in the air, did he notice the slight shimmer that hung over the Cyber, and hear the crackle of ionizing air in his sensorium.

  That was when he called retreat. His Supremacy had immediately broken into Killeen’s comm line and cursed him, demanding another full assault. Killeen had hesitated for a long moment, while Bishops died all around him. The chaos of the rest of the battlefield had stormed against his sensorium, blinding him with its agonized calls and screamed pleas.

  He had to resist the press of centuries of Family tradition, the absolute rule that said an Elder of the Tribe must be obeyed, especially in the split-second tumult of battle. Killeen had paused, agonizing, and that was the moment when he saw Loren, a boy Toby’s age, blown apart. The boy simply went to pieces. Something had struck him in the chest and made a bloody flower of him. Even though Loren was down in the apparent shelter of a lava crack, the burnished rock failed to stop whatever the Cybers used.

  He called retreat then. Similar orders seemed to echo faintly in his comm, coming from other Cap’ns, but he could not be sure. He had provided some covering fire for the main body of Bishops, but harshly commanded that no one try to recover any fallen bodies. They had lost eleven getting off the plain, and still more working their way through the arroyos and over the ridgeline. He had barely stopped the retreat from turning into a rout. And all the while, he had ignored the mad, rattling curses of His Supremacy.

  The only blessing in all this was that the children, pregnant women, and older Family members were all with the supply train. That was an improvement over their clashes with mechs on Snowglade. The abilities of the Cybers more than made up for that, though.

  Killeen let himself wonder for a moment about the next time he saw His Supremacy. Would the man order him hoisted up on a spit, like the suffering remnants of people he had seen at the Tribal camp? There was a fair chance of it. Nonetheless, Family Bishop had to make for the designated rendezvous point. Without the Tribe the Family would fare badly in the open countryside; they simply knew too little about this world to survive for long.

  For a moment Killeen weighed his own personal fate against the needs of the Family. He had seen quite enough of His Supremacy’s tactics already. They were ruinous used against Cybers, and probably not highly effective against mechs, either. His Supremacy’s victories had come with mech allies, after all. And after Killeen’s insubordination on the battlefield, His Supremacy would certainly put the Bishops in the thick of things in the future, where he could keep better control of them—whether or not Killeen still lived to lead them.

  He sighed, and Shibo lying beside him cast a wise, pensive look. She knew what he was stewing about, yet said nothing. He took out a chaw and bit into its dense, sugary grains. Cermo came in with the rear guard. Killeen scowled at him, his usual signal that he was not in the mood to talk. He needed to think.

  On balance, he had to lead them to the rendezvous. It was to be at a mountaintop, apparently a site having to do with one of the locals’ revered religious symbols. There they could meet the supply train. Then, if they decided to leave the crazed leadership of His Supremacy, they could slip away with full packs and bellies. That was worth risking his personal fate; in the end, no true Cap’n could decide otherwise.

  His Arthur Aspect observed:

  One should expect religious fervor, even rabid fundamentalism, in the face of such calamity as these people have endured. Be mindful that their ardor reflects an underlying fear they can barely contain. They have been rooted from their homes—

  “So were we,” Killeen muttered.

  Yes, but we have dwelled for years in the comfort of Argo.

  “We didn’t turn crazy, not even in the worse times on Snowglade.”

  What about Hatchet? Wasn’t he unbalanced?

  Killeen remembered the closed, tight look to Hatchet’s face. “Naysay—just plain mean. Thought he could strike a deal with mechs, when all the time they were usin’ him, planning a zoo for us all.”

  I won’t belabor such distinctions. But do notice that the Tribe also experienced apparent victories over the mechs when the intercity conflicts gave them an advantage. The crushing advent of the Cybers followed, however. Plus the disemboweling of their planet. Their strong reaction, their need for a perfect leader who embodies their hopes, who tells them that he speaks for God—such an effect is quite within the bounds of human responses.

  “You makin’ excuses? This guy says he’s God.”

  I merely point out that the Tribe can still be effective, and it may not be best for the Family to leave it.

  Irritably Killeen called up his Ling Aspect and asked, “What you say?”

  A smart Captain plays to his superiors’ foibles. I—

  “Foibles?”

  A slight frailty in character. Staff discipline is essential, and I cannot fault a commander who disciplines a Captain—

  Killeen jammed the small voice back into its recess and stood up. They should move on before the light gave out completely. The rest had made his feet more sensitive. He would have to march awhile before some numbness returned to them.

  Lined faces watched him with interest. One in particular, that of the woman Telamud, seemed to blaze with energy. She got up and walked stiffly, legs straight. Eyes open wide and blinking, she looked around. Experimentally she rocked to the side and then flexed her knees, as if trying out her calf-shocks. She walked again, tongue flicking out to taste the air, breathing rapidly. Some others had noticed by this time. A man stood and asked her if she felt all right. Killeen wondered if she had a sudden fever. Telamud looked around as if she had never seen any of them before. She began to shake. Killeen feared she was going into Aspect storm, her riding intelligences overwhelming her. She shook harder, a low gurgling coming out of her open mouth. Then she fell, completely limp.

  Telamud’s friends examined her, slapped her, tried to bring her around. The woman came back slowly, groggy and ashen. She could say nothing, but sh
e seemed able to walk all right.

  As Killeen looked around, drops began to patter through the decks of leaves and branches above. It was a pale green rain, alien and cold, curtains of it moving like filmy lace among the trees.

  The Family lay sprawled as though dead. Some had already taken food from their packs, as though settling down for the night.

  “Heysay, rain,” someone said drowsily.

  Another answered, “Never thought I’d hate rain. Never got enough on Snowglade. But now…”

  “Water above, water below,” Killeen said. “More in my blisters than’s comin’ out that sky.”

  A man called, “It’ll keep the Cybers in, I’ll bet.”

  Killeen shook his head. This futile logic had no basis, but the fatigue in the man’s voice was deep. He called up his inventory of old tales and said, “You ’member Jesus? The Great Cap’n? Well, I’m greater, ’cause I’m walkin’ on more water than he did.”

  The small joke got a laugh, and he cajoled a few to their feet. They were too tired to resist very much, but Killeen knew he could not get much more out of them before their reserves would be gone. Then he would face real rebellion.

  “C’mon,” he called. “Step proud! Double rations t’night.”

  Their mood lightened a little and the column moved off slowly into the gathering murk.

  TWO

  Quath pursued the Noughts with a strangely mixed glee.

  She enjoyed the mad dashes she could perform, racing from one fleeing band of panicked Noughts to the next, chopping and blasting and cutting them. It was a consummation of her plan, and a great joy.

  Yet vagrant impulses shot through her. She felt glancing pain as the Noughts died. She suffered a momentary trembling fever as they fled in fear.

  This unsettled her, slowed her arms fractionally, veered her aim. So Beq’qdahl cried,

  Quath replied, hoping none of the podia noticed how shaken she was.

  came the joint cry of the armed podia. Quath joined their rush.

  Up ragged ridgelines, through gray mech ruins and gutted green forests, and down onto the smashed steppes of this fractured place, they harried the stupid, witless Noughts.

  Quath’s adroit plan had worked. Her captured Nought, when released in the area where the largest packs of Noughts were thought to prowl, immediately sought out its fellows. A tiny device attached to the Nought gave a locating signal several times a day. Quath had tracked them and had guessed their intention of again attacking some of the magnetic field stations which controlled the movements of the Cosmic Circle.

  And now the trap she had laid for them had sprung, catching thousands of the mites. As Quath made haste through a mech factory, searching for hiding Noughts, the Tukar’ramin’s voice sprang fullblown into her aura.

  *You are a true fierce and canny sort,* she said. *I have observed your admirable scheme unfolding. Be careful that you do not risk yourself in these brute encounters, however.*

  Quath replied.

  *I can bring you glad news, too. The second of the encoded slabs, which you extracted from the Nought ship, is now decoded as well as can be done. It is truly valuable.*

  Quath felt Beq’qdahl, who was clambering up a nearby slope, seethe with amber-shot jealousy. She pretended not to notice.

  *The Illuminates.*

  Quath’s subminds babbled in a crossfire of astonishment.

  *They have deftly picked their way through the thicket of compressed meaning in those slabs.*

 

  *These two slabs bear directly upon large matters.*

 

  *Yes, across the span of suns. I have received instructions from all those Illuminates within light-travel time of this system. Two are here, overseeing our orbital constructions. Even now they debate among themselves.*

  Quath blurted.

  *Quath—*

 

  *The answers we all believe—the Summation—the Illuminates themselves formulated. That wisdom is ancient indeed. Now they do not delve into such matters. They ponder how to accomplish our grand purpose. Remember what I revealed to you before, about your own nature?*

  Puzzled, Quath paused to reflect. At the same time she plowed through a stand of twisted trees, their bark stripped (eaten by Noughts? she wondered). She searched for targets. But Beq’qdahl had already bagged the two Noughts Quath had been trailing, and now loudly trumpeted her puny victory out of ego-need. Quath turned and raced down a talus slope.

 

  *You approach this subject with hesitation?*

 

  *The fateful cast of genes. We incorporated facets of that ancient race; they surface perpetually in us.*

 

  *You cannot be purely anything, Quath. That is the legacy of that lost species—to see each aspect of life as mitigated.*

 

  *No matter. Your pain, your indecision, your questing after higher answers—that is your trial and labor and destiny.*

 

  *Certainty is the lot of those who do not ask questions. Such are nearly all the podia. We have mastered the material world, we ken its workings. But we do not puzzle at the questions you do, Quath.*

  Quath shouted in a strange lonely anger.

  *As a Philosoph you should now know that the traits long ago genetically implanted will manifest themselves in you in ways that are unpredictable and disturbing. Further, they shall increase with age. You may display the inborn traits of ancient beings, or a combination of podia nature and theirs.*

 

  *There are other, perhaps even grander issues, Quath. Of such matters I bring news. The slabs you brought to me contain enough information for the Illuminates to contemplate a daring adventure, something the podia have never dared brave: a voyage to the very center of the galaxy.*

  Quath clambered through a mire of muck and ripped soil. Great quakes had torn these mountains savagely.

  *The slabs tell of a time when organic beings—the ones who wedded their genes to ours, perhaps—ventured close to the black hole at the very center. There may be a way in, free of mech interference. It will require all our resources, however.*

  Quath stopped beside a ravine. In the forest beyond were the humans she was tracking. The telltale she had planted flashed for a microsecond; her own Nought was among this company. But she could not think of the hunt now.

 

  *That may indeed be necessary.*

  Something in the Tukar’ramin’s tone made Quath inquire,

  *One hopes. The mechs disguise their activities in the inner few light-years. For millennia the Illuminates have wondered at their incessant collecting of pulsars, their veiled experiments. We can scarcely hope to extinguish such beings if we do not know their deepest, perhaps most dangerous abilities.*

 

  *You have something we must possess.*

 

  *Your Nought.*

 

  *I sensed your small passenger while you were still in the Hive.*

 

  *Know that I fathom your crosscurrents and dark broodings, Quath. We have not had
a Philosoph in the Hive for a great while. I decided to let you follow your inner compass.*

 

  *Perhaps you kept it as a pet; podia have done such before. It is no crime. Indeed, your secret keeping of this mite is ample evidence of the mysterious wisdom that comes, often unbidden, to a Philosoph. Care for your pet well.*

 

  *Yes?*

 

  *What?*

 

  Alarm shot through the Tukar’ramin’s projected aura. *The Illuminates themselves now need it! It was a principal on the ship that brought them here—a vessel we must have.*

 

  *Find it!*

  With that command the Tukar’ramin’s aura blew away as though a breeze had taken it. Quath had the sense of the Tukar’ramin’s hurrying to convey this information to some distant place.

  She should have felt some elation at this sudden turn. The slabs she and Beq’qdahl had found now proved more important than any fabulous dream. Her Nought was somehow a key because of its ship. Quath’s transgression—hiding the Nought and lying by omission to the Tukar’ramin—had been lightly passed over.

  Yet she felt somber and vexed as she quick-stepped toward the forest ahead. If the Illuminates did not know how to answer Quath’s questions, what authority in all the podia could? Was it possible that the terrible vision of an utterly empty and meaningless universe was unquestioned, even at the highest levels?

  Restless, Quath cast forward with her aura, hoping to pick up some pinprick taste of her Nought. Finding it would not be easy if she relied on the few quick flashes its telltale emitted in a day. She had slipped it into the crude equipment it wore, elemental augmentations like a crude parody of the podia’s sleek lags.

  She had never thought that she would need to find that particular Nought again, only the pack it joined. What an irritant!