Tides of Light

by Gregory Benford

  He watched a running woman retreat under covering fire from the Family. A UV bolt struck her in the lower back, bathing her in crisp darting fireflies. Dying blue sparks glowed in the gloom. She fell. It was Lanaui, an old friend. Too far away for him to do anything. He strained forward, watching, hoping that the shot had not damaged her major systems. Twangs and booms came as Family hammered away at Cyber targets. Lanaui moved. She rolled over and hobbled to the shelter of a burntout mech transporter. From her gait Killeen could tell her power systems were dead. Now she would have to flee using only normal human strength. A Cyber could run her down easily.

  “What”—Jocelyn bit her lip—“can we do?”

  He said carefully, “Can’t make the hills, not without cover from the Tribe.”

  “I agree.” From her stiffness he saw that she was having trouble yielding enough even to ask advice from him.

  “Can’t keep goin’ either.”

  “No.”

  Microwaves rattled through Killeen’s sensorium. Nearby Family members ducked, but he just leaned against the smashed factory wall. He was afraid that if he sat down his legs would refuse to get up.

  “Night comes, we’ll stand out by our body IR.” Killeen felt an idea percolating somewhere and the only way he knew to get it out was to keep talking, let his subconscious send it floating free.

  Jocelyn’s eyes kept darting as she surveyed the combat grids in her eyes. She was having trouble keeping up with the situation as parties of Bishops fell back toward the rough, gullied terrain opened by the recent quakes. “Right Think maybe we should send the fastest out? Leave the rest, have ’em provide cover?”

  This violated all Family combat doctrine and she knew it. Her eyes fixed on him for an imploring moment.

  “They’d just hound us down,” Killeen said curtly. No reason to let her know how much this proposal disgusted him.

  “I… I guess we’re stuck here. If we can hold our lines through the night—”

  “Never happen. We don’t even know if Cybers sleep. Once they got us pinned, they can call in whatever they want”

  “Then… then…”

  Since there was no point in making matters worse, he hid his irritation by flicking his sensorium to infrared. It might give him an idea of how Cybers saw their situation. He remembered the time in their Hive, how they automatically interpreted objects as though illumination came from the floor. Yet obviously they had adapted well to the surface.

  As night thickened, the ground shone more fully, brighter than the mottled molecular clouds above. This resembled the Hive lighting and probably gave them some further advantage. The cool, splashing streams were darker than the land now. The forested hills were holding their heat well and glowed like soft green carpets. He turned toward the fault line and saw a slight brightening where apparently lava coursed beneath. As if to confirm his guess, the ground trembled slightly, like a beast shaking off a fly. Beyond the fault cleft he could see the black ribbon that was the new river. It frothed as if excited to be cutting a fresh bed through the valley, running dark and swift.

  “Wait,” he said. “Wait just a minute.”

  He watched the night cautiously. A Cyber had been moving to their left and now it was gone. Was it beyond view, or had it simply tuned to his sensorium so well that he now missed it entirely?

  He fired a short microwave pulse toward where he thought it might be and then crawled around the shelf of broken rock that sheltered him. Shibo was already moving back to the next line. Killeen ran heavily along the shelf and then angled in toward a gully. Something sang past him as he sprawled down the slope. Dirt jammed in his shin shocks and he had to stop to work it out. By the time he looked up, Shibo had ordered another fallback.

  —New drill! Toby!—Shibo called.

  Killeen saw his son’s signifier move back toward the river. The boy was running fast.

  —Carmen!—Shibo sent.

  The woman broke from cover and dashed. She had to leap over the fallen body of a Bishop man who had been hit only minutes before. The man’s suit gave no life signs so nobody had tried to retrieve his body. They were leaving everything now, even supplies and ammo. This was the rear guard and it had to stay light and quick.

  Killeen called to Jocelyn, “We’re comin’ in soon.”

  —Give us a li’l bit time,—she answered.

  “Damn little left,” he said.

  Nearly all of Family Bishop was evacuated. But among the factory walls and gullied land many bodies lay, too many.

  —Killeen!—Shibo ordered.

  He heaved himself up on weary legs and plunged across the dry wash. It was a hard run to the next skirmish line and his eyes began to cloud with the exertion. Blue dots danced at the edges. The cool air cut in his throat.

  He tumbled over an outcropping of sharp stones and rolled into the dry wash beyond. He fetched up against a pile of mechmess. In the rolling his vision had clicked back to normal human and he lay for a long moment, gasping in total darkness. He switched back to IR. Shibo crouched nearby but she did not even look at him.

  —Besen!—she sent.

  Killeen got up on his knees, his shocks wheezing as loudly as he did. The gritty soil got into everything and he had to clear his suit collar in order to turn his head and watch Besen angling in from a factory ruin. She came into the dry wash at a dead run and was nearly under its edge when something orange struck her helmet. She seemed to fly forward and hit the ground solidly. She did not move.

  —Toby!—Shibo sent as though nothing had happened.

  Killeen reached Besen and tapped in the codes at the back of her neck. Her running numbers all read zero.

  Toby loped into the gully, moving easily. A microwave bolt hummed harmlessly over his head.

  He saw Besen. “What—what—”

  “She’s…” Killeen could not make himself say it.

  Shibo sent,—Harper!—

  Toby knelt beside Besen’s body and lifted her arm. She was face down and when he rolled her over they could see a fine web of cracks in her faceplate. They were electrostatic fractures. Through them they saw her eyes, still open. She gazed at them as if about to ask a question, one Killeen knew he could not answer.

  Harper came running into the dry wash, panting. She squatted down and immediately let loose a UV shot back the way she had come.

  Shibo sent,—Jocelyn! All in.—

  —Hold there,—Jocelyn replied.—Nearly got your rig ready.—

  Shibo duck-walked over. Toby said numbly, “She can’t be. She can’t just…”

  “Hit her clean,” Killeen said, and instantly regretted his bluntness.

  “No. No.” Toby fumbled with her helmet.

  “Leave her,” Shibo said.

  Toby unlocked the collar ring. He gave it a one-quarter turn and lifted the helmet free. The trailing connectors into Besen’ s neck popped free of their sockets but there was no answering jerk from the body. Her eyes were still open.

  Toby touched her face. “Besen, listen. Wake up. Come on. Wake up. Besen—”

  “Take it easy. Toby,” Killeen said numbly. People hardly ever came back from a system attack like this.

  “She’s just out, that’s all. Just out. We give her a stim, she’ll be okay.” Toby started rubbing Besen’s cheeks.

  Shibo said, “Check her indices.”

  “Just out, is all.” With fumbling fingers Toby reached around and rotated Besen’s head. He and Killeen had to take off her backpack to get a clear look at her internal monitors. The digital circle at the top of her spine was uniformly blue. Numbers slid through each window, cycling meaninglessly.

  Shibo glanced at them and then looked back at the hills where the Cybers were. “Looks bad,” she said.

  “No. No.” Toby rubbed her face harder, faster. “She’s overloaded, sure. That’s all though.”

  “Could give her a stim,” Killeen said, reaching for his pack. He had to make the gesture even though it was the last bulb he had.


  “Chancy, doing it right away,” Shibo said. “Systems need reflex time.”

  “I’ll bring her back,” Toby said. “She just needs blood in the head—”

  “Here.” Killeen helped Toby screw the stim bulb to Besen’s head.

  Toby stared into Besen’s unblinking eyes. “You got wake up.”

  A microwave bolt whooshed overhead. Shibo said gently, “We have to try her now.”

  Toby licked his lips. His mouth wrenched jaggedly. “If her systems overstim…”

  Killeen put his hand on his boy’s shoulder but he could think of nothing to say.

  Toby’s hands trembled over the bulb. “How… how can I? If…”

  “She’s yours. You must decide.”

  Toby’s face was white. He looked at Killeen for a long moment. Then he took the stim bulb and asked, “What—what setting?”

  Killeen said, “Better try full. She’s pretty far gone.” He thought Besen was almost certainly dead but the next moment would make that plain enough. He would have to get Toby away fast, though, no matter how much the boy wanted to linger over the body.

  “Okay.” Toby clicked the setting all the way over.

  “Son, I—”

  Toby triggered the tab. It made a small percussive thump.

  Besen jerked. Her lips opened. She coughed. Toby lifted her to a sitting position and they all saw the indices stop rolling on her neck. She blinked furiously.

  They looked at her speechlessly. She coughed again and said, “I… what…”

  Toby embraced her and began crying.

  Two quick IR pulses raked the air.

  “Get her walking,” Shibo said.

  Toby and Killeen helped Besen to her feet. She stared at them blankly.

  —Shibo! Start falling back!—Jocelyn sent.

  Shibo called, “Harper! Cover! Carmen—go!”

  Toby massaged Besen’s neck. “Got to go now. Just a step, that’s all. Here, lean on me.”

  Shibo said gently, “Toby, Besen—we have to go now.”

  “What?” His head snapped up. “No, she—”

  “Rest the flanks’re folded in,” Shibo said.

  Killeen took Besen’s other shoulder. “Come on, we’ll get cut off.”

  “Her pack,” Toby said.

  “Leave it.”

  “No, wait—” Toby reached into the pack. He fiddled with an unseen catch for a moment and then jerked something free. “I gave her this,” he said, holding up a chain with a small yellow pendant on it. “Don’t… don’t want damn Cybers get it.”

  “Yes, take it.” Shibo looked at Killeen. “Cover.”

  Killeen lay against the wall of the steep dry wash and fired a quick burst into the night. Shibo and Toby fell back with Besen. Killeen slid back down to Besen’s pack and found her weapon. He expended it noisily, throwing several high-energy pulses at every flickering target in his sensorium. Return fire chipped and burned the brow of the wash. He ducked under it and fled, running with a sudden fevered spike of fear. All the way to the riverside he was acutely aware of how big and tempting a target his back was.

  He slid down the narrow sand embankment of the river and crashed into Jocelyn. An IR pulse whispered close by.

  “How many more?” she gasped.

  Three Bishops were manhandling a big mech part down the slope. Killeen looked around and saw Toby and Shibo getting Besen into an awkward assembly of mech sheet-metal that floated in the water.

  “None,” he said, and started toward the water.

  “Three’s the most for that. No room for you.”

  “You sure?”

  “Get down that way.”

  “Look. I want—”

  “Shut up and move.”

  “I—” Killeen shut up.

  “You’re the last, then. Help us with this.”

  Jocelyn was crisp and efficient again. She worked well when following a plan. But there was more to being Cap’n than that.

  Three large men rolled something forward on its edge. In the infrared it looked to Killeen like a big shell. He grabbed it and helped splash it into the shallows. The water was cuttingly cold at his ankles. He smelled the tint of Cybers nearby. Microwaves spat from the embankment above.

  Big chunks of rock caught at his feet as he held on to the shell. It bucked and tossed in the frothing current.

  “Get in,” Jocelyn said.

  Killeen hesitated. Already the team was bringing down another piece of sheetmetal that some crafter had quickly bent into a crude cup shape. The metal had already lost most of its day heat and was so dim he could barely see it.

  “How many to go?” he asked.

  “Just us,” Jocelyn said.

  “I’ll stay till—”

  “Go.” Jocelyn looked at him squarely, her features blotched by the infrared glow of her face. “I’m Cap’n, I stay till the last.”

  “Yeasay.” No point in arguing.

  Killeen stepped into the shell as Jocelyn held it steady. He lay down awkwardly. The shallow bowl rode only a hand’s height above the black water. Jocelyn pushed him off. The river snatched him to itself as though he were a valued bauble. It swept him along, jostling the shell and throwing bitterly cold spray into his face. He tossed over hidden ridges and banged down hard.

  He stayed as low as he could. His infrared image would be submerged in the cold water. Cybers on the shore could easily miss him. Or so went the reasoning.

  He waited and clung to the smooth inner shell as the rush and roar of the water rose around him. No shots sang through the air nearby. He wondered how far the torrent would take him. It had not occurred to him until this moment that the Family should have been told how long to stay in their makeshift boats. Now they might disembark anywhere and end up spread far down this unknown river.

  He lay worrying for a while before he recognized the faint odor of the shell he was riding. It was the used carapace of a mech. He rode down the raging rapids in the hardened skin of his oldest enemy.

  SIXTEEN

  Quath crawled carefully forward. She had nearly exhausted her armaments now. It was time to use care and guile, else the day was lost.

  The Noughts continued to fall. Against Beq’qdahl’s band they would have been squashed long before. But Quath had maneuvered in the gashed landscape and caught the attacking podia from behind. Like an ephemeral gauzy cloud she had danced upon the slopes. The extra outfitting the Tukar’ramin had provided worked and purred and salted the very air with deceptions. When podia fired at her the shots went wide, baking the already tortured soil.

  But the game was narrowing. The Noughts were backed to the river now and there was little Quath could do for them.

  She heard Beq’qdahl bray excitedly,

  Quath tuned to the far mountain, where tiny Nought auras flickered. She had wondered why these distant Noughts did not give battle.

  One of Beq’qdahl’s podders asked,

  Hope leaped in Quath. But Beq’qdahl answered,

  Of course. Quath had forgotten that Beq’qdahl did not know which Nought was crucial. Still less did she suspect that in the end, they might all be necessary, how interdependent these seemingly autonomous beings were.

  Beq’qdahl cried.

  Quath caught a distant podder with a quick burst of ultraviolet. It lurched, disoriented, and rolled down a hillside, snapping two legs. Good.

  As she drew closer to her own Nought she caught a tremor of the scorching outrage it—no, he—felt. Not toward the attacking podia, but toward the distant main body of Noughts.

  These nearby Noughts were webbed together by the gossamer strands Quath could now feel ever more strongly. Their curious tension between self and other gave forth a binding energy. There was true sinew in them. She felt the translucent threads gradually cloaking her own minds. Their touch was cool and oddly comforting.
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  And their smoldering rage arced among them. A marrow-dark anger at their own kind, fueled by betrayal. Quath realized with a start that the bitter scents were akin to the core-hot ire she felt toward Beq’qdahl and the other traitors.

  Quath’s mood rose alkaline in her dry throats. She slipped down a yawning gap freshly torn in the hills. Her Nought was ahead, his mood urgent. Those close to him fought on, wrapped in a haze of burning fatigue. Despair laced bile-yellow through them.

  Quath saw Beq’qdahl clambering forward in short rushes, using the shelter of the shattered rock and broken mech factories. Gloom descended. Orange flames crept up the cowling of a dead hexpodder nearby.

  Quath switched to her full normal vision. The soil simmered in crisp pinks. The far mountains cooled faster, fading blue redoubts sinking into the night. A purple-black streamer marked the great fault line.

  She articulated softly forward. A multipodder appeared briefly and she quickly numbed its microwave dishes with a stinging shot.

  As she turned, she saw a Nought retreating. Before she could even judge which of the podia might catch the little fleeing form, a sharp bark split the night.

  Too late. Another Nought wounded or lost.

  And the web among all the little creatures wrenched and tore violently. This was what they felt in the face of death—if anything, even stronger than Quath’s stunned recoiling from the flat facts of the universe. A deeper sadness, laced with somber mortality. It was worse, she saw, to be small and fragile and still face the great night. Yet these things did.

  Too late. Too late.

  SEVENTEEN

  Killeen had tried to sleep in the makeshift boat, but the shallow mech carapace spun and slewed and rocked endlessly. Once he had dozed off, but only because the current had swept him into a slow vortex inlet. He did not know how long he had circled there.