Great Sky River

by Gregory Benford

  Once the opening charge was made, and the Kings were done, Cermo and Shibo spoke in opposition. Following tradition, Killeen sat in the middle of the crowded bowl carved from a hillside. Each speaker took turns at the center of the bowl. Except for the perimeter guard, the bare scooped rock held all known humanity.

  Shibo said few words but conveyed much. She was respected. Though she gave the same picture of Hatchet’s killing that Cermo did, her words weighed more heavily. In the Witnessing, all that mattered was the final vote of the assembled Families. Every person convinced by Shibo’s simple eloquence was a gain.

  After her, Ledroff spoke as Cap’n of the defending Family. He was vague, saying that Killeen was reliable and not the kind of Family member who would ever attack a Cap’n unless it was in some way unavoidable.

  Killeen thought this did him no good at all, but he was not prepared for Fornax.

  As presiding Cap’n, Fornax was nominally neutral. But as the wiry man began, Killeen saw that his every sentence was slyly shaped.

  Fornax’s lined face wrinkled with skepticism even as his mouth formed wry, scornful phrases. He treated gravely everything the Kings claimed. Then Fornax passed over the Bishops’ version as mere opinion.

  He did it subtly, choosing his words to soften the facts and round them to his end. His face, turned up to the rings of faces, carried a sorrow at what he had to say.

  Killeen could not tell if the expression was real. He did know that Fornax could reasonably expect to exert much power in Metropolis as the senior Cap’n. Though a King would still run Metropolis, the new King Cap’n would necessarily be less powerful because he or she would be fresh. The more Fornax appeared as a wise figure, the greater would be his influence among all the Families.

  Fornax sat down and it came to Killeen by tradition to say the last words.

  Killeen felt himself alone. Yet he did not doubt what he should do. Against Fornax’s eloquence he had no wordy defense. The gathered Families looked at him with expectant faces.

  “I speak flat and plain. You know what happened. Point to all this is why. You can’t know that without feeling it yourself. So I call on the one way you can see that and feel it and know it for what it was. Not through talk can anyone do that. Only this way.”

  He stepped back a pace as though admitting someone else to the flat slab of tan-flecked gray rock. This was the speaker’s spot; Hatchet had spoken often from that already worn place.

  I know you’re listening. Killeen made each word separately in his mind. You must have stored it. Bring it. That’s the best way.

  Something shimmered at the speaker’s spot. A whirlwind frenzied the air.

  And abruptly Killeen was there again.

  The mechplex. The vast shadowed plain dotted by gray-moist contortions.

  In awful, gravid grace the events unfurled. The Fanny-thing shambled closer to the figure which Killeen only slowly saw was himself.

  Hatchet stepped forward. Unhitched his harness and then his pants. Let them drop. Reached out. Drew the scaly thing toward him.

  She cupped him with a blunt, budded hand.

  With a quick soft jerk he entered between the canted thighs.

  They worked together. A soft sucking sound came from them.

  And the fragile world of the sensorium shattered. Killeen’s shots came as rushing hard claps that reflected from icewall layers, hammering at the images of falling bodies and maddened frosty air.

  And then Killeen was back.

  He let his breath ease and slow, watching the bowl of stunned faces. He had made no attempt to use his sensorium to reach the Mantis, not since the party had left it in the hills beyond.

  Yet he had sensed what to do. He saw the long journey ahead and knew it whole, though each step his feet sought was fresh as it came to him.

  He said nothing as a shaken Fornax stood. Long moments drifted by as the people recovered. They said little. Talk trickled over Killeen like mild warm rain. He answered the questions with only a few words but that seemed enough. The voices tapered away.

  Fornax called the question. Killeen sat.

  He could not vote himself and did not look up to see the oldfashioned raising of hands. They could as easily have taken a vote through the sensorium, but it still echoed and seethed with the presence that had passed through it like a chill wind.

  Fornax counted, grimaced. His face a grave mask, he summoned up the ancient formal terms, “By a factor three do the assembled Families absolve he who stands in trial. I so validate said judgment. I do welcome the once-pariah back to the manyfold. I do salute the once-cast-out as reborn into the Family of Families. Rejoice!”

  The ritual embrace from Fornax was stiff and unfriendly and told Killeen more about the man than words could. As he stepped back in the still silence the Mantis voice came.

  A good ending. Now that I am summoned forth by your needs, let me speak.

  The Mantis voice was a sure, steady thread in their sensoria.

  I offer you all protection from the buffeting you have received for so long. I express my sorrow at your suffering. (Unintelligible.) I shall keep you here and prevent further attacks. Know this as tribute to the essence of what you are.

  Killeen nodded. He had known this would come. One more step.

  The Families stirred. Fear and hope dawned upon them in equal measure and fought across their faces.

  Your ways must be preserved and exalted in the manner of art. You are valuable. Your quick and savory lives are themselves your highest works. Give this to me and I shall preserve the best in you now and forever.

  A fevered breeze rippled through them.

  The Mantis paused.

  Killeen rose and spoke to the bowl with a powerful voice.

  “Some would live in such a place. There is an old word for it. Zoo. And some would not.”

  The Mantis countered:

  Without my skills, the Marauders will have you. I am but one element in a complex beyond your imagining. I cannot stop the Marauders, for they proceed from a longer logic. Forces align against you.

  “Not everything’s against us,” Killeen said dryly. “The magnetic mind, it made you speak true ’bout that.”

  The Mantis voice returned, cool and sure. Killeen could see by the transfixed eyes of the Families that they heard.

  True, I cannot conceal what was forced from me. Organic intelligences do range elsewhere in the zone of the Eater (as you call it) and measures are proceeding to see that they do not unite. You are such an element. Though diminished now, your potential is harmful. Thus vectors intersect and bequeath for you a future of perpetual onslaught from the Marauders. (Unintelligible.) Only if you consign yourselves to my aid shall you survive.

  These thoughts came with the solidity and massive presence of words written in granite.

  The rude scooped-out depression seemed suddenly a small place, a bowl into which the Mantis voice poured, encompassing the human tribe and defining its puny position.

  People stirred, fitful expressions of wonder and fear flickering among them like summer lightning. They all knew from their sensoria that this intelligence was massive, complex, vastly calm. From it came tremors of large intent, an impression of solidity and complete, unblinking honesty.

  Killeen waited for the effect to wear upon the Families for a long moment. He remembered his father’s old words, back at the Citadel: Thing about aliens is, they’re alien.

  The Mantis might be honest and it might not. Any sense of that was a human projection. He had to remember that. He could not assume that he understood the machine. Or that it fully comprehended them.

  I ask now that you agree to accept my shelter against these harsh winds which shall continue to buffet you. Agree, and I shall enter into a partnership with you Families. I may be able to rescue other humans still lost in the plains of this planet—though I must tell you there are few such. Agree, now, and we can begin.

  Killeen waited again for the effect of the forceful th
oughts to disperse. Then he raised one hand in a fist.

  The Families noticed him standing there, still at the speaker’s spot. He stood silently and looked steadily ahead, waiting until the tension and focus he felt could spread through his own sensorium and into theirs. Scattered remarks died down. The bowl quieted. He could hear Snowglade’s soft winds stroking the hills. Humanity watched him. He now had to speak of his own vision. He had to make it real to them.

  “To follow the Mantis way is to ensure that there will be no true destiny remaining to us now, or our children, or to that long legion which will come forth from us. You can take the Mantis’s shelter, yes. You can hide from the Marauders. Raise your crops. Birth sons and daughters and see them flower, yes. That would be human and good. But that way would always be hobbled and cramped and finally would be the death of what we are.”

  Killeen swept his gaze through the ranks of watching eyes, seeming to catch each in turn for a brief moment.

  “There is another course. A larger way. One that believes—as you did here today, in your vote for the Witnessing—in the enduring worth of simple human dignity.”

  In the sudden alarmed and yet excited looks which greeted his words he saw in the Families, for the first time in his adult years, a heady opening sense of possibility.

  THIRTEEN

  He had expected the Mantis to respond with an icily reasoned attack. Or some strange mindstorm. Perhaps with an assault on Killeen himself.

  He had certainly not expected utter silence.

  The Families were apprehensive as they left the bowl. No one knew what the Mantis’s lack of reply meant.

  Killeen felt a vast sense of relief as he walked back from the Witnessing.

  Toby chattered at his side, eyes dancing with bright visions. Killeen had awakened those thoughts in the Families and the experience had drained him.

  Speaking, he had felt for the first time what it was to drive forth into the unforgiving air your own self, projected through the weblike sensorium but riding finally on the resonant tones of pure voice. Words were blunt, blind things to use in aid of the clear way he himself saw the world. He wrestled with them like strange tools, forcing their soft meanings to drive hard facts into the minds of the others. Words not only meant things, they made the mind feel and stretch, the blood pound faster.

  He had sketched for them his way, the tale of the Argo. From the Families had come an answering song, a muttered assent peppered by questions, doubts, naysays which bobbed like flecks on a dark ocean. They did not all agree. At best a fraction had the resolve and spirit to follow where the ideas led, to take the first few steps marked in uncertain sands.

  But some had it. Some had heard.

  He had never thought it could be so exhausting. He had great respect for what a Cap’n had to summon up. His mouth was dry and his legs ached as though he had been marching for hours.

  Then he felt the pressing weight of the Mantis mind returning to his sensorium.

  Despite your phylum’s limitations, you are capable of surprises.

  “Thanks most kindly and fuck you,” Killeen said.

  The people walking nearby heard the Mantis as well. They all stopped, heads tilted back. The Mantis seemed to crowd the very air with its presence.

  Even given my great abilities, your invitation is at root impossible.

  “It’s an expression, not a proposition.”

  I see. I have interrogated historical compilations from our cities, circling Snowglade. Among the messy archives of (admittedly, nearly indecipherable) human lore, there are faint traces of such a craft named Argo. It may have been built to reach your Chandeliers. Apparently, when we began to spread over Snowglade and carry out the necessary changes in it, your forefathers elected to store the fast-vanishing human technology.

  “You understand my offer?”

  Your threat, yes. (Unintelligible.) Indeed, if you attempted to reach the Argo by yourself, I could easily stop you. I can cause Marauders to block your path.

  Killeen smiled coolly. “Sure. Stoppin’ us is easy. Just kill us.”

  Which is precisely what I do not want, of course. I had believed that I could complete my art in one human generation. I see now this cannot be. You are deeper and stranger than I suspected.

  Shibo broke in, “Always be some stay here, in zoo. You use them.”

  But do they represent the full range of your odd talents? This I do not know.

  “You’ll find out. Just let some of us go.”

  A hollow pressure rang through the sensorium, repre senting some alien reaction Killeen could not interpret in human terms.

  I will do more than that. I shall even help you.

  Killeen did not take part in the cheering that broke out among the Bishops and Rooks nearby. Wary, he wondered what the Mantis’s true thoughts were, and motives.

  “Mantis present now?” Shibo asked.

  “I can feel it.” Killeen rubbed his face. He had a headache that ran like strips of fire along his brow. He asked her to press the spots behind his ears at the base of his skull. That was the old Bishop way of releasing the pain and it soon brought easing. His senses seethed and sought, awakening. To him her hands were purring ruby-hot.

  “It’d always be like this if we stay here,” he said as the warmth crept over him. “Mantis’ll be there in the background.”

  “Watching?”

  “Wish it was only. Naysay noway we can stop it.”

  “Senses us?”

  “We could get rid of it if we shut down our sensoria. Went blind.”

  “Don’t want.”

  “Me either. I… I’ll try…”

  Carefully he focused his attention on the points where the faint buzzing presence entered him. He pushed it away. Gently, carefully. Then harder. The subdued hum vanished.

  “I think it’ll go if we want.”

  She nodded. “I feel too.”

  “Still around though.”

  “Yeasay. But it goes.”

  “I’d’ve never got through the Aspect storm without it. I’d be in a trance, same as that woman Hatchet used have as his translator. Her Aspects must’ve panicked on a raid.”

  “Crafter couldn’t fix her?”

  “That’s what I figure. Mantis gave me just enough help. It’s some use.”

  “I don’t like though.”

  He knew what she meant. Life under a benign umbrella would always hint of distant eyes.

  Slowly she let her eyes stray from the stars visible out the window. She looked at him aslant, speculatively. A thin knowing smile illuminated the smooth planes of her face.

  “The interlock commands I had. The sexcen modifications. They’re gone.”

  She said nothing, just smiled.

  He kissed her neck, face, mouth. All tasted of the air and soil but the mouth was stronger, deeper, moist. His knees dropped him to the rough dirt floor. His teeth searched for the pullstring of her jumper. The weave was harsh and his beard scraped a purr from it. The cloth came free and slid easy and she locked her legs over his back. The small room was twilight cool and had no bed. They rolled over twice on the fragrant lumpy dirt. His saliva soaked through the cloth before he got it all off her using only his mouth. He would not give up his hold on her, or she hers. They rolled again, this time against the wall, stubbing toes, bumping knees.

  She wriggled away. A popping sound, snaps. She slid free of her exskell.

  Then he encountered in the gathering dark her hip, her marvelous compact breasts. His tongue discovered her back, sharp shoulder blades, furred nape of the neck. Kneading. Rubbing away the riverrun layered silt of tension and fear that had built up in them both. He felt thick years of it shimmer and dissolve. Her teeth plucked delicious pain from his lips. His chin bristled in her hair. A wind blew down from her great nostril mountains. Layers peeled away and he felt deep within an old Aspect of his, a woman, sliding down his arms and into his fingers. He had not felt it this way before, with Veronica or Jocelyn. A soft
womanly weight came into his touch. Going layers down. Access. Slow nudges. Rolling down slow tremors together, they moved in a hovering hush. Her legs enclosed him. Cradled heat burst into his mouth. Grab, release, return, circle. A liberating toss of the hip brought bone to bone. Bellies opened and a shoulder fell through to the vexed heart. The woman in him felt her trip-hammer pulse quicken, ebb, come again. A hushed audience seemed to attend each movement, the slick slice of him and her together ramifying up into higher chords. Fit snug. Passages widened as muscles stuttered. He grasped and suspended himself, felt her spiral up. Heat lifted her hair.

  Twists and twinges set off sure long motions and he felt in the instant the meaning of the grotesque statuary he had seen back in the mechplex. The tortured coiling thing reflected his need for this and yet in its relentless plunging power and opening fissures managed to get the whole thing profoundly wrong. The Mantis would never know them. There was a press of essences beyond the digital romance. A deep-buried spirit filled organic life. It came from origins in the way the universe was made, and generated out of itself the life each mortal being felt throbbing in every sliding moment. The Mantis had robbed such moments as this from the suspended minds of the suredead but it could not surecopy this; Killeen knew this fact solidly and forever in the mere passing twist and twinge of a second. She felt it too, gave him a flex and thrust that brought moist skirtings into him. She loosened a knot in his wrist so it snapped up into his elbow, whizzed through his shoulder, wakened a hollowness behind his right ear. She kissed him, sinking teeth into soft gums. Their tongues slid rough over each other, finding the slick underside. Hothearted, she nicked him higher. Something had unlocked him and he felt the secret source of the power he had that day in the bowl, the push behind his solid words. Life regenerate. As he was his father had been and Toby would be: tongue into ear, moist brush of seabreeze. His father lived. He passed the movement back to her and her teeth drew red lines down his throat. A bead grew from a slow delirium firepoint. Centripetal violence clasped them both. It hit him hard.