Authors: Gregory Benford
Before dawn something moved nearby. He carefully peered out. A large animal was creeping closer. The largest creature he had
ever seen was an old orange chicken back at the Citadel. This thing could easily eat the chicken in one gulp. Something about
its large teeth told Killeen that this idea might be pleasing to the animal.
Plainly it had scented him. After all his years of hunting mechs and being hunted by them, he had no idea how to deal with
the animal. It came nearer. Its ears flattened. Killeen held his rifle at the ready. Silently he stepped from the door of
the shed and stood watching. The animal froze. They remained that way for a long time. A strange sense of communion stole
over Killeen. Its yellow eyes were clear and deep.
Pale dawn seeped around them. The animal finally licked its lips with bored unconcern and walked away. It stopped at the corner
of a storage bin nearby and looked back at him once and then went on.
As Killeen set out walking again he realized his rifle was set for an electromag pulse. It would have had no effect whatever
on the animal.
Without thinking about much of anything, he felt conflicts within him flare and simmer and die. Beneath this world’s calm,
the natural clasp of life pealed forth its own silent message.
The day was sharp and clear. He found berries and edible leaves and kept going. Faint sounds from a second destroyed mech
city made him skirt around it until he could find another route.
From a distance the buckled ramparts reminded him of his last sight of the Citadel, at the Calamity. Innumerable times he
had replayed that day in his dreams. The very air had seemed to roil and stretch, he remembered. Rippling radiances had washed
the clouds even before the mech attack on Citadel Bishop began, giving them some warning. Not enough, though, for the mechs
had thrown immense resources into their assault. His father had been at the center of the Citadel’s defense. Despite the desperation
that crept over them all as the first reports came in, all bad, Abraham had kept a calm, unhurried manner. Killeen had been
nearby when the mechs breached a Citadel wall. Abraham had direeled
an effective flanking attack on the intrusion. Killeen had not even comprehended the mech purpose until his father’s deft
sally cut off the head of the mech advance and chopped the remnants to pieces.
But then he had lost sight of his father in the hammering chaos of multiple assaults. Mech aircraft had bombed the central
Citadel and the ramparts fell.
Killeen had helped carry ammunition to the air-defense guns as strange lights filled the sky. They all had sensed unseen presences
above the battle.
When Killeen’s wife, Veronica, died he had ceased to register very much. He had felt her death in his sensorium, since they
were linked. But it had taken a long chaotic time to find her, to be sure.
He stood on a far hill, looking back meditatively at the mech city. Part of him relished the sight of the mighty mechs brought
low. Another remembered the Citadel, and not only because of the city. The sky far beyond began to move with washes of pale
luminescence in a way that reminded him of the Calamity. The luminosity was in the air itself, not the fainter play of colors
in molecular clouds. The sight chilled him.
Yet it also recalled his encounters on Snowglade with an entity which had somehow spoken through the magnetic fields of the
planet itself. The thing had talked incomprehensibly of Abraham, and of issues Killeen could not follow. Recalling that, he
wondered if the magnetic being had been at the Calamity, had lit the sky with its witnessing. Why should such a vast thing
care for the doings of a small, inconsequential race? There were no answers.
Killeen finally shook off the mood and moved on. The quiet of the natural world enfolded him.
But then a biting sulfuric tinge filled his nose. A hollow
bass note caught at the outer edge of his sensorium. A mech trace?
It carried a strange sugary aftertaste, though, unlike any mech signature he knew. His sensorium translated its electromag-tags
into smells because that was the human sense directly linked to memory centers; a brief whiff of an old odor brought long-buried
memories welling up, often of use.
Killeen slipped between the slumped trunks of trees that somehow still showed fresh green growth. The land had collapsed,
but root systems seemed resistant even to the implosion of the planet. He flitted quickly among the tangled growth and peered
ahead.
Siiiggg!
—something fast cut the air near him. He dropped into a dry streambed and strained to feel his way forward through his sensorium.
Hot smells rang through him.
He angled along a ridgeline and three more times the quick, thin wail sliced the silence. Something was shooting at him, but
not well. A fourth bolt caught him slightly and he smelled a cutting microwave pulse. It had the pungency to blow out the
inner structures he knew by the name Diode, but whose function he did not fathom. He felt his own Diodes clamp down, sheltering
themselves.
Silence. Cautiously they popped open. His sensorium filled with regained color and perspectives. He carefully edged up to
the ridge rim and used a lightpipe to steal a glance over it.
A lone mech was struggling up the opposite face of the ridge. Deep scars marked its thick shell. Bolts had crisped away the
steel. Its angular design was unlike anything Killeen had seen on Snowglade.
Without thinking he aimed at the mech and caught it full in the forward antenna complex. It stopped for an instant.
Killeen could see no damage and he fired again. This time the mech clearly blocked the shot. His electrobolt ricocheted off
into a ruby flare that momentarily lit the scene against the encroaching gloom of twilight.
His Ling Aspect cried:
This is a totally unnecessary risk! Run while you can
.
“Run long enough,” Killeen grunted.
He dimly saw that he needed to strike out at something, anything. Suddenly meeting a mech had brought out all his suppressed
anger.
He had seen sophisticated defenses like this before. Nothing in Family Bishop’s weaponry could penetrate it. The chunky mech’s
treads caught on an outcropping. It swiveled, bringing projectors on its side around to have a full field of fire at him.
Killeen ducked, knowing the fringing fields of a broadband microwave burst could catch him even well below the ridgeline.
He hunkered down, gritting his teeth hard to tell his subsystems to button up.
But nothing came. Not even a whisper.
He risked a glimpse. The mech had flipped over and was burning. Through the curling black pyre he saw a cyborg approaching,
its body a complex set of coupled, interlocking hexagonal blocks. Thick brown skin wrinkled and stretched as it made its way
up from a broken valley below. A shot had blown open the mech. Its lateral carbosteel housing puckered outward into twisted
fingers, a clear sign that the cyborg had somehow triggered an internal energy supply.
Killeen decided to lie low. This cyborg was probably part of a team assigned to clear out any remaining pockets of
mechs or humans. If he ran it could easily catch him. His only hope lay in the possibility that the cyborg had not registered
his own small, ineffectual fire.
He shut down all his systems again and moved to his right, downslope, seeking more shelter from the rocky ridge. The burning
mech was so near that without acoustic amping he could easily hear the crackling and then a loud bang as some vat exploded.
Standing still, panting, he thought he could hear the quiet approach of the cyborg: a rustling, clicking cadence as carbosteel
limbs articulated.
The cyborg’s noise grew against the pop and snarl of the flames. It should have reached the mech by now. But the sounds did
not stop. Instead the steady rhythm seemed to move to his left, skirting around the mech’s pyre.
And slowing. It was coming around on him from above.
Killeen carefully backed farther downslope. The cyborg might not know what was over here; it would be cautious.
Stealth was his only ally. He might be able to slip back over the ridgeline as the cyborg crossed, keeping low so that his
opponent missed him. Then he would have a few moments to run. He strained to hear the whispery sound of the cyborg’s flexing
leathery hide.
There—it was clambering up over the last shelf of rock which crowned the ridge. Softly he backed away. Time contracted for
him and he heard each cyborg step, each swivel and adjustment of pads as they sought purchase on the steeply sloped stones.
The alien was near the top now. Killeen could not tell how far away it was. In the enormous silence, punctuated only by the
snapping of the mech’s oily fire, his natural hearing seemed to amplify each small sound into deep significance. Somewhere
upslope on the ridge a pebble rattled
down. Killeen heard it before he saw it bounce off a boulder and scatter fragments into the soil.
His eyes followed the pebble’s probable trajectory back into a saddleback where a shelf petered out. It had been a natural
wash once and he guessed that a steep streambed led down from there, spreading out onto the other face of the ridge. Which
implied that the cyborg had paused at the top, maybe resting but more likely just waiting, cautious, probing throughout the
spectrum before it exposed itself on the other side.
The saddleback was not far away. If he was right, the cyborg was reconning the far slope. But he did not dare power up any
of his sensory net to check.
Killeen set himself and in one quick rush was up and over the nearest jagged shelf. He rolled over the peak and down into
a wash of gravel. He came up on his feet, feeling bulky and awkward without any of his inboard systems running. Sluggishly
he ran downhill, his joints aching, looking for shelter.
A glance back. The cyborg’s tail antenna was disappearing beyond the saddleback as it headed down the other side. But the
alien wouldn’t take long to figure matters out.
Killeen ran pell-mell, stumbling on stones and nearly sprawling more than once. There was no place to hide. The planetary
convulsions had brushed this slope free of large boulders and the gullies were folded in, shallow. He searched for any minor
cranny in the ridgeline, but the few small caves had fallen in. He ran completely past the burning mech before the idea struck
him.
The mech lay blistered and broken now, shattered by internal explosions. Flames began to gutter out. Thick, greasy smoke licked
the rocky slope.
Killeen chose a crimp in the hull just above the heavy
tread assembly. He looked back at the ridgeline. Something moved there and he did not take the time to see what the cyborg
was doing. He flung himself into the stove-in section of the burning mech carcass. He was caught immediately in a tangle of
parts and smelly goo.
Still no sign that the cyborg had seen him. Without his sensorium, the usual mech attack modes—microwave, infrared saturation,
hyper-fléchettes—would give him no sign unless they struck him square on.
Cowering in the stinking jumble of the ruined mech, he felt a slow rage building. He had been chased and hurt and mistreated
and he was damned if he was going to go out this way. He could wait for the cyborg to go away—assuming it did not return to
harvest the mech for parts or scrap. But something made him peer out, wanting the big thing to lumber into view, wanting at
least one clear shot at it. Ling barked in incredulous anger. Killeen instantly slapped the Aspect down.
He listened intently but could pick up nothing this close to the smoldering fires. He would have to expose himself to see
what was going on.
Now that he looked closely at the mech body, he recognized housings and struts and assemblies like those he had yanked out
of destroyed mechs back on Snowglade. The outer skin had looked odd, but apparently the same principles of basic design ruled
among all mechs at Galactic Center.
Carefully he inched out. Most mechs had visual detectors that registered rapid movement, and the cyborg seemed at least as
sophisticated. He saw movement on the ridgeline. Coils of acrid smoke stung his eyes, blurring his vision. He began to wonder
if it had been such a brilliant idea after all to hide here. All the cyborg had to do was amble up and overturn the mech body
and—
Without any warning the cyborg appeared in his field of view, a watery image refracting through the pall of sour smoke. It
articulated deftly over the broken ground, antennae swiveling. But it was not coming toward him. Instead it surged with startling
speed across the broad wash of the streambed. A parabolic dish turned and Killeen felt a faint buzzing in his neck. Even with
his sensorium deadened, the chips he carried along his spine had picked up the cyborg’s burst.
Such a powerful pulse could not have been simply a comm signal. The cyborg was firing at something. Something that worried
it considerably, for it now scrambled forward, its double-jointed limbs clashing with haste, its pads sometimes slipping on
the loosened topsoil.
Killeen bit his lip to try to restrain himself, but it was hopeless. Long years of training, the recent humbling capture—these
combined to make him seize his narrow-bore rifle, the one inherited from his father and his grandfather before that, and jack
a precious shell into it. He leaned against an aluminum strut and aimed with luxuriously deliberate care at the forward comm
housing of the cyborg. He squeezed off the round. It struck the base of a big spherical web antenna, shattering it. The cyborg
lurched visibly.
Killeen knew that ordinarily he would never have gotten such an easy, unopposed shot. The cyborg must have been in serious
trouble before it lumbered into view. Which meant that something was coming after it. More mechs. This cyborg had been unlucky
enough to meet overwhelming strength when it was alone.
Killeen made himself tuck the rifle back into his side sling. He had vented his rage, and already he felt a tug of regret.
He had felt odd moments of connection with the cyborg which had carried him down from orbit and finally set him free. He owed
that single cyborg some gratitude, perhaps.
But the outrage perpetrated upon him had needed vengeance, by a law as old as humanity, and now that need had been met.