Tides of Light

by Gregory Benford

  “That is enough!” His Supremacy’s eyes flickered with a strange pale cast.

  “I demand that you—”

  “No one demands of God. You will now—”

  “Some God! You’re just a—”

  His Supremacy made a small gesture with his hand. One of his guards stepped smartly forward and clipped Jocelyn expertly on the side of her head with a pistol, as if he had done the same thing many times. She went down heavily and lay still.

  “Stake her,” His Supremacy said. “She is obviously ridden by the demons she has battled.”

  He gazed out over the ridgeline where Bishops were gathering. A knot of them had formed behind Killeen, who stood absolutely still.

  “And as well, I see there are others among the Bishops who seem to neglect the holy nature of my office.” This was plainly calculated to throw fear into the Bishops.

  A Bishop man shouted, “You’re bunch cowards!”

  “You turn ’n’ run pretty quick, for a God,” a woman called sarcastically.

  Some Bishops’ hands began to creep toward their weapons but His Supremacy’s escort leveled theirs immediately, catching them by surprise. His Supremacy said hotly, “I believe I see demons dancing in the eyes of many here. Careful of your wild talk.”

  “Keep your damn hands off Jocelyn,” a voice yelled from the knot behind Killeen.

  “Yeasay!”

  “Gutless bastard!”

  “Yellowbellies!”

  “Fatass poltroon!”

  His Supremacy gestured slightly and two men in his escort started toward the knot. They trotted forward, trying to see who had yelled.

  Killeen said, “Stop them or you’ll have a fight.”

  His Supremacy gazed at him as though looking down at an insect. “You would threaten the deputy of All Living Holiness?”

  “Just predicting,” Killeen said evenly.

  —and as he finished saying it he clenched his jaw solidly shut against a sudden boiling turmoil inside. The wedge at the back of his mind was a swelling sore. Pressure bulged through him. His vision narrowed down to a tight blue cone centered on the swarthy face of the strutting little man.

  His Supremacy raised a hand and his guard stopped. He licked his lips and assessed the gathering crowd of Bishops. Killeen wondered if the man had the stomach for a shootout at close quarters. If so, a lot of people would die very quickly.

  But then the curious vacant look came into His Supremacy’ s eyes and Killeen saw that the man would try to talk himself out of this.

  Talk. Endless empty talk. All Killeen’s buried anger and sorrow rushed into his throat. Bile stung his mouth. A storm swept from the jellied presence at the back of his mind, blowing through him.

  His Supremacy went on, “We are marching to meet again the bountiful grace of God as it descends from heaven. I say to all you brethren, turn away from these decriers of the immaculate path. Your Cap’n Jocelyn has erred gravely. She caused you many, many tragic losses upon the exalted battlefield. Be rid of her. Let—”

  —and compressed rage ripped the air like a scalding release. Killeen felt a squeezing pulse of electromagnetic energy hum past his shoulder. It refracted the air with its wake and struck His Supremacy solidly in the head.

  Killeen dove sidewise and hit the ground. The Cyber pulse had come from above and his first thought was to find the source. But as he rolled to his left he felt a sudden sweet dwindling of the heavy wedge behind his head. He realized in a rush that it was his Cyber who had fired the bolt. He sat up amid cries and shouts.

  The little man who called himself His Supremacy was down. Killeen somehow knew there was no more danger. He stood up and walked to the crumpled form.

  Tribe members gaped at their fallen leader. Confusion swept them. They looked for the source of this assassination and saw nothing.

  The madman seemed even smaller in death. In repose Killeen could see that the face had carried its expression of dignity and power through sheer effort of will. Relaxed, it was an ordinary, bland face. But that was not what caught his eye. The pulse had fried away a big section of His Supremacy’s temples where the comm gear and sensorium were lodged. The violence of the overheating had blown the entire molding material out of the head, revealing something beneath.

  All along the skull lining lay an elaborately gridded inset. The heavy mesh was embedded below the ordinary gear.

  Killeen knelt and plucked at it. Through his enhanced nerves he felt a repellent strumming sensation. The reek struck solidly at his memories.

  “Mechtech,” he said. He peeled back more skin.

  Shibo squatted next to him. Her eyes widened when she saw the intricate sheath all around the crown of the head. It tapped into the brain directly with myriad connections. “Micro’tronics.”

  “No scars on the scalp. Been in here awhile, I’d judge,” Killeen said tightly.

  “What… what could it…” Shibo said.

  “They must’ve got him before the Cybers ever came here. He was leadin’ the Tribe by then and this must’ve been how he got that high.”

  “They could give orders directly this way.”

  “Yeasay. And be sure they were followed.” Killeen looked cautiously at the Tribe members nearby but they all seemed in shock. They stared at the shattered head in confusion. He wondered what this would do to their precious faith.

  Shibo said, “I guess when the Cybers came, mechs turned him against them.”

  “Yeasay. That’s why he wouldn’t allow anything but attack, never mind the cost.”

  “This…” She seemed unable to say the words. “Humans run by mechs…”

  “We’re just pawns here.”

  “It must have been awful. He was trapped inside there.”

  “Poor bastard. He wasn’t just crazy after all.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Quath squeezed her shot cleanly between the Noughts. The narrow spike struck soundly against the strange mech-ridden Nought. She felt the inner mech presence disintegrate, fragments and figments whirling off into emptiness. Good.

  Her plan, hatched all through the smoldering night, hung only moments from completion. Until minutes ago, the Noughts had been perfectly arranged. She had only to act.

  But then had come this squabble among the Noughts. And far worse, the arrival of Beq’qdahl nearby. Quath could feel her elegant plan slipping away.

  Time slowed for her. Her subminds sorted and arrayed the flashflood of implications.

  The mech parasite had been cleverly concealed. Quath had fleetingly felt it before, on the mountaintop. But the muggy Nought minds had obscured the steel-edged intelligence that scurried shadow-thin whenever Quath probed.

  In the instant of killing, the mech lurker splashed open. Quath caught the maggot essence of it, the delicate, mosaic power. It had cleverly fastened upon a Nought weakness. Quath stretched and snared the scent of that Nought flaw: a black, festering need, heavy and clogged with bloodknot pain.

  Yes! With monumental irony, this poisoning soft spot hinged upon the Noughts’ great strength. Their wisdom, she knew, flowered forth from their keening sense of mortality. That gave them the sure grasp of each passing moment as unique and, if one peered remorselessly into it, luminescent.

  Yet from that bedrock strength many Noughts fled. Their dewy fever drew them to fantasies of being not Noughts at all, but instead the most powerful of agencies, somehow linked with the embodiment of all nature itself. Madness! Surely wisdom meant accepting your station in a hierarchy of life and intelligence. To claim grotesquely huge powers belied all that life taught.

  But in grasping this Nought facet Quath saw that her own podia were equally foolish. The Verities, the Synthesis—were they any different? To claim a connectedness between self and inert matter. To intone beliefs in unseen powers.

  Clever mechs, to see this Nought vulnerability. A bitter chill ran through Quath as she realized that the mechs must then fathom the deepest motivations of the podia, as well.


  After such knowledge, the mechs must have enormous advantage over the podia. Why, then, had they allowed podia to seize this planet so easily?

  Quath felt the very ground slipping away beneath her, all in the fractional instant that her minds knitted together thin threads of suspicion that had been waiting for so long.

  Yes!—there was more to the mechs than the podia had ever guessed. Her subminds rattled off long-smoldering riddles:

  Their introduction of these Noughts and the ancient ship into the struggle with the podia.

  The strange mech experiments near pulsars, never explained.

  Their defense of Galactic Center against all lifeforms, for unknown purposes.

  Of course, one of Quath’s subminds argued, energy densities were great here. Mechs were supreme at harnessing the raw flux of currents and photons. Life was more vulnerable to such hard energies. In the natural scheme of matters, organic life would not naturally be drawn to dwell near the all-gnawing appetite of the black hole. Even the podia, encrusted with ceramics and tough alloys, suffered from the ripping hail of protons in deep space. The soft Noughts were far more threatened by the endless sleeting effusions of the hole.

  Yet they came. Why? Quath had never pondered this mystery to its depths—indeed, until this moment, had not seen it as a profound puzzle.

  All life, whether swaddled in bone or carapace or filmy flesh, seemed to feel that Galactic Center held a goal, a secret. A clue, perhaps, to the meaning of their brief passage.

  But what did they seek? Why?

  Did the Illuminates know? The simple fact that those lordly beings had split over the destiny and use of a mere Nought argued otherwise.

  Could the Noughts hold some crucial tidbit of the puzzle? Suddenly the notion did not seem entirely mad.

  Quath reeled for the smallest fragment of an instant. Then the ageold lessons asserted themselves. She focused outward, beyond the raucous clamor of her subminds.

  For the worst had come. Beq’qdahl’s gang now moved to attack.

  Quath had lain hidden among the broken strata above where the Noughts clustered. Their rear guard had already passed and their destination lay not far beyond.

  Here the faults were like fractured planes snapped off in midair. Shelves of stone jutted at a platinum sky. Beq’qdahl and her podia had crept among these to within easy range of the Noughts, who milled in confusion.

  Quath caught the ready signal from Beq’qdahl. They would wreak havoc. She had to give the Noughts time and warning.

  Quath called. She let the signal scatter through the spectrum. Her Nought was sure to sense it.

  Beq’qdahl jerked with surprise.

 

 

 

 

 

  Beq’qdahl was cautious, striving to conceal her anger.

 

 

 

 

 

  Quath sent a hard, prickly burst toward Beq’qdahl’s voice. It scattered among the walls of rock.

  The battle began. Quath ran and dodged. She had chosen her position well. Her superior equipment enabled her to block most shots. She disabled three podia with quick, stuttering pulses. But her armaments were wearing thin.

  Beq’qdahl was the key. The others would flee if their leader fell. Quath reached out with a cone-shaped aura and touched Beq’qdahl.

  Now she saw into Beq’qdahl’s true self. Her goals were simple. Lounging in burr-rich strands. Sucking down sweetbreads and plotting meanness, guilty only of casual malice and ignorance, stuffed with a bland assurance of self.

  Beq’qdahl would have been no worse than this, but for the distant conflict of Illuminates. For such a minor, accidental matter, should she die?

  Quath could not reason the question. Had her Philosoph genes left her alone, she knew, these vexing issues would not even arise. Gathering herself, she rushed forward.

  The moment came when Beq’qdahl was exposed—and Quath could not fire.

  She clambered instead over the last upturned layers of fractured strata and ran pell-mell into the milling band of firing, fleeing Noughts.

  Cries, shrieks, bangs. They brushed against her like passing motes. Her superior shields were up and their bolts were no more than pesky itches.

  Her Nought! There! Shedding opalescent waves of heat. Helping another Nought to its—no, her—feet.

  But Beq’qdahl had now seen which was Quath’s Nought. Quath could see Beq’qdahl carefully aiming for the small figure.

  Still Quath could not fire. This was Beq’qdahl, strand-sharer. Beq’qdahl…

  The simmering presence of her Nought abruptly broke through Quath with rainsquall momentum. It—no, he—comprehended the quicksilver essence of the moment. He turned and picked Beq’qdahl out from the jumbled landscape.

  Aimed. Fired.

  And Beq’qdahl burst open. Flames leaped from the holed bulk of her.

  Quath felt a jolt of sudden pain. She heard dismayed anguish leak from Beq’qdahl. It spattered through the spectrum.

  Her friend and rival was dying. The projectile weapon of the Nought had breached her main compartment. Fragments lodged in Beq’qdahl’s subminds. Unless Quath hastened to salvage what scraps she could, Beq’qdahl would dwindle, ebb, die.

  Leaden remorse filled Quath. But she kept on.

  Toward her Nought. Ignoring the stings and arrows of the harrying crowd around her.

  Toward the appointment she had made with the whirl and gyre of gravity and time.

  NINETEEN

  Shibo fell before the first volley.

  The Cybers opened up from the shattered ridgeline above. Their timing was perfect. His Supremacy’s escort was still startled, confused, scrambling for cover.

  Killeen had just started to get up when he felt the stinging bolt go by his leggings and saw it strike Shibo a glancing hit. She toppled forward from her knees. No visible damage on her suit. A tech-disabling shot, then. He grasped her shoulder and rolled her over.

  “Close… that time,” she gasped.

  “Can you feel your legs?”

  “Yeasay.”

  “Arms?”

  “Yea… yeasay.”

  “Move ’em.”

  The pulse had knocked out most of her exskell. It heaved and jerked in a dying spasm. The riblike frame wheezed, purred, and went dead. Without it she had less strength than even the simplest augmentation of leggings and shocks gave. She would not get far if they had to run.

  And it looked like they would. The Cybers were cutting up the escort guard.

  “Can you walk?” he asked.

  “Don’t know. Head’s li’l wobbly. Here—”

  She got up onto one elbow and grunted with the effort of rising to her knees. A pulse ripped by with a loud whoooom.

  Killeen started to help her further and into his mind came a sharp, pointed imperative. Something was narrowing down on his back. He felt it as a circle of compressed heat. It rasped against his sensorium.

  He spun away. A bolt frayed the air where he had been.

  For the first time in their long battle with the Cybers Killeen had a sudden, sure knowledge of where the fire came from. His sensorium Dopplered back along the bolt path and found among the rocks a smudge of greasy fog.

  He knew immediately that this was his enemy. Unbidden, he felt its raw immensity. It was a mind that came from a place of shining movements, from moist dark spaces, from velocities bleak and hard. All this sudden, crisp certainty came streaming from the gravid wedge that rode in the back of his mind.

  He rolled to his left.
The enemy probed for him through the thickening haze of electrodeception that flurried across the rugged slope. A blizzard of flickering images cycloned by. It swirled through the milling mob of humans as they scattered.

  He fumbled for his last projectile weapon. Clicked it into place. Sighted carefully —

  —and felt intruding a feathery streamer of sorrow and hesitation. Not his.

  The somber emotion washed through him, stilling his hand. Reasonless, it spoke only of regret.

  Killeen sucked in air to break free of the heavy, choking mood.

  Shibo gasped nearby, “Leave me. Get clear. I’ll be—”

  He fired. The bolt hit just where he had known to aim.

  Instantly the air cleared. The snow-squall of flitting electrodeceptions was gone.

  Through a compacted instant Killeen felt a sad spike of longing. Again it came as a flowing, many-streamered emission, from the shadow-blue weight behind his mind.

  He saw Besen was well sheltered downslope. Toby—

  His son was firing carefully from slight cover nearby. Killeen called to him, “Fall back!” Toby came running.

  “Come on,” he grunted, hauling Shibo to her feet. She wobbled weakly.

  Hissing bolts refracted through the nearby air. Splashes of infrared strobed running figures into flash pictures of desperation. Microwaves rattled.

  And something else boomed down from the vault above.

  He and Toby got Shibo down the steepest slope. They were making for the shelter of a dry wash when Killeen felt rather than heard the hammering sound of pursuit. A massive thing bore down on them. He barely had time to turn and glimpse the crusted, warty hide.

  It loomed even larger this time. The barrel-chested trunk had a glazed ceramic cast. Great shanks of carbo-alum worked noisily to carry the thing forward. He could not clearly see the head. Encrusted antennae and projectors sprouted like gleaming weeds on the wrinkled, fertile hide. A shimmering protection enveloped it. It moved to block shots coming toward them.

  Then it was upon them.

  A hurtling jolt. Scrabbling haste. Many-ribbed fingers snatching at them.

  They slammed into resilient webbing. Jostling shadows heaved them roughly. Oh no, Killeen thought. Again.