Authors: Gregory Benford
“Y’know,” Toby mused, “Quath told me once that the mechs, they don’t send their best down to kick us around on the planets.
They just use the dregs.”
Cermo bristled. “They send ’em, we kill ’em. Mechs big, mechs small, don’t matter.”
Killeen stared off into space, and Toby knew he was seeing again the long history of humiliations Family Bishop had suffered
at the hands of mechs. Together they had witnessed human bodies used by mechs as biomachine parts. As lubricants. As decorations.
As bloody, twisted chunks of what the Mantis thought was beautiful.
“Yeasay, Cermo—they could be coming to scoop us up,” Killeen said. “Or worse.”
“We got to run,” Cermo said.
“Yeasay.” Killeen turned to a wall screen. It spilled with swirls of brooding dark and smears of blazing luminescence. The
plane of the galaxy, alive with deadly energies and shrouded histories.
“But where?”
T
oby stood on the hull and gazed out, through the gliding stellar majesty toward True Center. The entire galaxy spun about
a single cloud-shrouded point. So much brimming brilliance, made to waltz by a hub of remorseless dark.
Already the ship was gaining momentum, cutting across shrouded dust lanes and bringing fresh splashes of light into view.
Toby felt a smoldering anger at the mechs who were approaching on blue-white exhaust plumes, driving
Argo
to flee. They were relentless, riding their lances of scalding plasma, an age-old enemy that would hound down any remnant
of humanity. They had been just a light-day away, hiding somewhere in the churning murk.
Even in this swirl of stars there was little chance to escape.
Argo
’s long-range scanners had picked up mech exhaust images coming from several directions—cutting off the easy orbits, the ones
out and away from the Center.
So their trajectory was being pressed ever-inward. Toward the black hole that squatted at True Center. A trap.
Toby had listened to his Isaac Aspect consult even older, scratchy Aspects, and then go on about the huge dark star, but it
all seemed so strange, so impossible. Through ten billion years the galaxy had fed it. Stars had been swept into it by the
tides of gravity and dusty friction. Once, civilizations had thrived around those lost suns. As their parent stars were swept
inward, to be baked and shredded and devoured, whole alien races had been forced to flee or die.
Isaac’s history lessons were pretty sparse about those distant times. Much was imagined, but little known. Some civilizations
had escaped, Isaac said. They had made strange, metallic colonies that harvested the great energy resources here. Ahead of
Argo
lay such refuges. Cities of the center—alien, enormous, forbidding. Greater than Chandeliers, and far older.
He shook himself and turned to his task—coaxing Quath in for the Family Bishop Gathering. The bulky alien labored with the
last walls of her intricate nest, stacking the bricks in a sheltering nook where two farm domes met.
“Come on, big-bug, it’s about to start.”
Quath hefted a thick slab without apparent effort.
species’ ceremony. [untranslatable] I show respect by not attending.>
“It’s more like a brawl with rules. Anyway, the Cap’n wants you there to speak.”
“Look, dung-master, this is
important
.”
“Huh? Why?”
Toby followed Quath’s double-jointed gesture. Now that he swept his gaze around, he picked out a soft, ivory glow all around
Argo
. It danced and shimmered, like a mist blown by an unseen wind. “Pretty. So what?”
“Yeah, life’s tough. Still, so what?”
Toby frowned. He had always thought that
Argo
’s magnetic fields kept all the dangerous stuff away. But such fields could not stop weightless light, and he knew that the
really harmful stuff was much higher in frequency, far above what humans could sense.
“You can see the hard radiation?”
“Ummm. I better get back inside. You’re coming too—Cap’n’s orders.”
“Quath, you started tearing apart your wasp-nest and packing it away before we even knew mechs were coming. How come?”
“You think so?” Quath never said anything lightly. Or else an alien sense of humor didn’t come over that way. For all Toby
knew, losing a leg might be a great joke for Quath. Toby had seen her take off one of her own legs once and make a strange
sucking sound. He had assumed Quath had been crying or groaning, but maybe it had been a parlor game.
“Pretty fatalistic, ol’ crap-crafter.”
Toby could not extract any further explanation from Quath, and by the time he got the alien inside the Gathering had already
started. Aces and Fivers arguing with Bishops—even though they shared a lot of cultural manners and even ancient tales.
Luckily, the first part was a kind of disorganized dance, and music hammered through the large hall where all Family Bishop
mingled with people they had picked up from New Bishop, the last world they had fled. A happy mob. Except, of course, for
the assigned watch officers—no Family could ever relax entirely.
Toby tried to fall into the mood of a Gathering. Quath wanted to stand in a corner, towering over everyone, eyes gazing into
an abstract distance. Toby joined a group-gavotte, remembering the words from childhood.
Put your hand on your hip,
Let your backbone slip.
Snake it at your feet
Motion in the meat
Flip it to your vest
Shake it to the one you love best.
Not too dignified, but then Gatherings often weren’t. From watching his father Toby understood the underlying strategy.
Get people loosened up and feeling connected. Encourage them to dance and sing and call up worn memories of celebrations back
on the homeworld. Play loud, boisterous music. Roll out the ceramic vats where grains and grapes lingered, making whiskeys
and beer and wine. Let the Family get thoroughly into the alcohols. Even though they had enzymes swimming in their bloodstreams
that would cut the effectiveness, the drinking did lift their spirits in time-honored fashion, making them more proud, confident—and
reckless. Jack up the music a notch. Then confront them with a question that called on their resources, their sense of who
Family Bishop was and where they should go.
Toby knew what Killeen was doing, but that was no reason not to enjoy it. He danced with Besen, had some of the crisp fresh
wine, let its heady essence swarm up into his head.
Not enough to addle him, though. His own father had faced a big problem with alcohol, in the long time after the death of
Toby’s mother. Then Killeen met Shibo and got the hard drinking behind him, pulled himself together and then became Cap’n.
Toby knew little biology, but he understood that there could be a tendency for the son to carry a potential weakness of the
father—so he watched his drinking. He couldn’t just depend on the helpful little enzyme friends.
It was a fine Gathering. He was even starting to feel real affection for Cermo. Considering how Cermo had been riding him,
that had to be attributed to the alcohol.
Cermo had a creamy chocolate skin, gleaming sugar-rich in the soft lighting. One of the things Toby liked about the Family
was that they kept the age-old differences in humans alive. Eyes were brown and blue and black, skins rough or smooth, yellow
or pink or chocolate, noses lean and pointed or broad and commanding or perky and upturned. Something in their genes didn’t
let these differences get ironed out, smoothed away through the generations. It added interest and spice, a flavor of a time
when humans adapted to different places by slanting their eyes to see better, smudging their skin to ward off the sun, tapering
their faces to keep warm.
He didn’t care that nature had done it for them, through slow, natural selection. Differences were like an ancient book, incomprehensible
messages from an honored past, worth preserving. His own broad nose and slanted eyes seemed imminently practical. So did his
swarthy skin and scratchy beard, just coming in. Inheritances. Deep history.
Then the throbbing music ebbed. Time to decide.
Killeen began to speak. He was not an ornate talker, like some Toby had heard, but his plain, flat way of putting things had
a kind of simple eloquence. He told them the hard facts of their predicament. The mechs coming.
Argo
’s fuel reserves. Air and water and fluid balances. Fine for a while, but not enough for an extended, high-boost flight out
of Galactic Center and into some possible refuge.
Quath testified to the mech’s probable plans. They would box in
Argo
, trap her in the whirlpool near True Center.
Then he used the Family sensorium. Every member saw in one eye the ancient engraving, with its meaning superimposed. Killeen
read passages, his voice booming.
“‘Consumed the five kinds of living dead in still-glowing holy heat.’ There
was
a time when the mechs fell before us!”
The Family stirred, eyes staring into a dusty past.
“‘She shall rise as shall we all who plunge inward to the lair and library.’”
Killeen stood on a raised platform, dominating the crowd. His voice became more powerful, not by trick of timing but from
a fullness of conviction. “They went there. Long ago. Even though she and they were ‘fevered still in ardor for humanity’s
pearl palaces’—they left.”
Voices rose in agreement. There was in them a plaintive note, calling for connection with their own fabled history. Some sobbed.
Others cursed.
“We are now besieged by mechs. They bear down upon us. True”—Killeen gestured to Quath—“we have allies. Quath’s species is
following us, too, carrying that huge device of theirs, the Cosmic Circle. Powers we do not master, yes. Methods we cannot
comprehend, yes. They are living creatures and offer us aid because of that holy connection, a sharing of all those who arose
naturally
from the very atoms of the galaxy itself.”
Hoarse calls of thanks to Quath. Of sputtering, cold-eyed rage against mechs.
He paused, fury trickling away, reason returning to the strong face. “But even with their help, only
we
can decide where we shall go.”
Killeen slowly cast his gaze across the faces he knew so well, over three hundred strong. “We all had relatives who died fighting
Quath’s kind. That time is over. Now we fight alongside those we called the Cybers, and now term the Myriapodia.”
Something in his bearing called up that past, and used it in Killeen’s cause. Toby could see the effect on the crowd. Killeen
was the man who had plunged through a Cyber-carved hole, clean through a planet—and lived. Killeen had ridden inside the Cyber
Quath, prisoner—and had gotten away alive. He had talked with a magnetic being who spoke through the sky itself. And still
earlier, Killeen had dealt with the Mantis and won them their freedom.
Now all that weight of history pressed down in Killeen’s favor. His eyes burned. His grave manner commanded. His people heard.
“We have a choice of turning to fight, against odds we do not and cannot know. Or we can choose to run and hope to escape.”
Glittering eyes sweeping them all in. “Is that it? Is that
all
?” Scornful curled lip. “No! No! I say there is a third way—a way opened by this tablet from our own distant ancestors.”
Toby growled, seeing how firmly the Cap’n held the room in his grasp. The rolling voice that lapped across Family Bishop was
sure, certain—but Toby was not. He saw what was coming with a sense of helpless dread.
“We can follow them—the ancients. Into whatever lair they sought. It may still be there!”
Family stirred, murmured.
“Again, they had powers we cannot match—yeasay. Methods we cannot comprehend—yeasay. So their descendants—our cousins!—could
still be there. The Family of Families—‘where eternity abides.’ What can that mean? What does it promise? Let us go—go and
find out!”
From the roar of hot assent that rose and vibrated hard around him, Toby knew they were bound on a desperate course, and though
he loved his father and wanted to follow him, the fear that coursed cold through him brought a shameful weakness to his knees.
Why was his father doing this? Where had his caution flown?
He’s risking the Family to find out . . . what? About the past. What the Family means.
His Shibo Personality came forward unbidden. Her pale presence was a soft voice against the hubbub of white-eyed celebration
that bubbled joyous all around him, jostling elbows and happy sweat and wrenched mouths.
They do not know what he fully wants. Does even he? I love that man, as much as this shaved-down self I have become can love.
I fear him now, too. He promises a lair. He may bring them only a liar.
A
ngular antennas reflect the bristling ultraviolet of the disk below. Shapes revolve. They live among clouds of infalling mass—swarthy,
shredding under a hail of radiation. Infrared spikes, cutting gamma rays.
Among the dissolving clouds move silvery figures whose form alters to suit function. Liquid metal flows, firms. A new tool
extrudes: matted titanium. It works at a deposit of rich indium. Chewing, digesting.