Authors: Gregory Benford
“Some say we’re worse off than we were on Snowglade,” she said.
“Could be.”
“They figure that string’s up there ready to move any minute. We’ll never get back through it.”
“Unless we can figure when it’ll move,” Killeen countered.
“How?” she asked.
Killeen grinned. “No idea.”
Besen laughed. “Well, least with you back everybody’s not so glum.”
Killeen blinked. “Huh?”
“I’d given up on us. We just sat around starin’ at the ground till you showed up.”
He was genuinely startled. “Why?”
“Jocelyn tried to pull us together. It just didn’t work.”
Killeen said nothing and she went on, “We followed you ’cause you had a dream we believed in. That’s the only reason to leave
home, ever.”
“Dream’s gone.”
“Yeasay, we know that. We’re not dumb.” She gave him a stern look, mouth pursed.
“And Cybers’re worse than mechs.”
“You got more than one dream in you though.”
Killeen was startled again. “What?”
“You’ll think of some way. We know that.”
He did not know what to say and covered this by standing up. “C’mon, you can show me the area.”
Her wide mouth seemed to hold some suppressed mirth at his awkwardness. She said solemnly, “Yessir.”
By all the precepts he had learned, to idle in a huge camp like this, clearly conspicuous from the air or even from orbit,
was foolhardy. Bonfires at night, smoke plumes by day, regular arrays of tents—all these mechs knew well. Cybers, too, presumably.
He walked by the Bishop slit trenches, already fragrant, and tested the grab-pole running along one side for strength. More
than once, when a boy, he had squatted beside a trench without one and lost his balance. This pole was a long alum-ceramic
arm from some meáhtech, caught in Y-sticks at the ends. It took his full weight as he squatted and did his daily ritual, always
performed after breakfast. The Bishops had long since lost their shyness about such matters and did not erect any shelter
around the trench; even in the longlost Citadel, privacy had been a minor concern. He walked over the spur of the next low
ridge and saw that this Tribe felt differently. Some had fold-up shields, one even with a roof. But farther down the valley
he saw a rivulet, gorged with the recent rain, serving first as drinking water and then, downstream, as a sewer.
“Plain dumb,” Besen said at his elbow.
“The river?” he asked.
“Yeasay. Already got dysentery in some the Families. Big camp like this, you get a worse sickness, it’ll jump aroun’ pretty
quick.”
“Any signs yet?”
“I heard rumors,” she said.
“Let me know if you hear more.”
“Hard gettin’ much from ’em.”
“Howcome?”
“They’re full of talk ’bout righteousness and how if they follow the true path everything’ll turn out right and so on.”
“Could be some their Aspects ridin’ them a little hard.”
Besen surveyed the valley as she said, “Yeasay. From the High Arcology time seems like.”
Killeen felt oddly pleased. “Most young people don’t care enough about history to remember stuff like that.”
She turned to study his face. “How can you not? Only way we can make sense of all this.”
“Sure—if you’ve got time. We’ll be hustlin’ pretty hard now.”
Her eyebrows narrowed. “Forget who we are, what’s the point goin’ on?”
“Right.” Killeen was obscurely proud of her quiet vehemence. This Tribe might succumb to His Supremacy, but he was quite sure
the Bishops would not.
“Besen…I’m glad you’re with Toby. He and I aren’t getting on well right now.”
She smiled. “Rough times for us all.”
“The time when a boy breaks away and makes his own path, well…”
“I know.”
“I…I appreciate the help,” he finished lamely.
“You’re not doing so bad,” she said, and went back to her labors. Killeen stood regarding the valley and wrestling with his
thoughts. In principle he was in a simple situation. A Cap’n followed Tribal orders. But he sensed something deeply dangerous
in all this.
“Reportin’, Cap’n,” Jocelyn said formally. He had not heard her approach.
“You take care those chips?”
“Kicked a li’l ass, looks like it’ll be okay.”
“Good. How’re our reserves?”
“Not much.” She punched her wrist and a graphicdisplay
inventory of edible supplies appeared in Killeen’s right eye, available on blink-access.
He studied the hills. There had been thick woods in the arroyos. Many were clogged by mudslides. Swaths of trees were already
gray and dead. “Bet we’ll scavenge the territory around here fast, too. Pick it clean.”
“I’ll see if the Families got any food stores.”
Killeen gestured toward the creek that snaked its way down the dusty valley. “Water’ll be no problem for a while. If something
samples that creek downstream, though, it’ll know we’re here.”
“Cybers?”
Killeen scowled, looking at the sprawl of Families open and careless in the valley. “Likely. Point is, what we get from fightin’
Cybers?”
Jocelyn studied his face. Did she suspect anything? he wondered.
He had told Shibo as much as he could about his time inside the Cyber. She had agreed that until he understood it better,
it was probably a bad idea to relate the story in full to others.
To the Family’s questions he had let on, without actually lying, that he had somehow stowed away on the body of a Cyber and
then escaped from the subterranean nest when a chance came. He could scarcely explain the colliding sensations that had assaulted
him inside the Cyber’s body. Those memories now provoked shudders of disgust in him. Images from them shot through his sleep.
He had intentionally worked hard the day before in hopes that fatigue would grant him oblivion in sleep. But the brooding,
shifting dreams had troubled him again. This morning’s fire had roused him from a terrifying sensation of suffocating in spongy
air that swarmed into his lungs whenever he tried to draw a clean breath. To be yanked into the real world, even one with
a raging fire to be put out, had been a relief.
“We have any choice?” Jocelyn asked, her eyes concerned. Killeen wondered if he seemed odd to the Family; certainly Jocelyn
was acting a little awkward and formal with him. Shibo, too, had been careful with him since his return, as if he were both
fragile and unreliable. Well, Killeen reflected, maybe he was.
“Prob’ly not. Looks like Cybers’re mostly interested in guttin’ this planet, though, not usin’ its surface.”
He gestured above, where a thin skirt of clouds partly obscured a distant gray mottling. Patches of Cyber construction arced
in polar orbits low on the horizon. The long arc of the cosmic string was a faint, pale yellow scratch across the sky. Something
turned at the limits of his vision. He focused on it but saw only a thin trace image moving in equatorial orbit. Cybers owned
space but for some reason did not use sky assault against them. Why?
Jocelyn said, “They suck the core dry, take all its metal, we’ll have nothin’ but scrap left. That’ll kill all the plants,
and prob’ly us, too.”
Killeen listened to Arthur a quick moment and said, “My Aspects say there won’t be any big change in temperature for a while.
Quakes are the big problem.”
“His Supremacy says—”
“Look, a man who thinks he’s God can’t be trusted much.”
“I think we should believe in him.”
“Believe him, or
in
him?”
Jocelyn said warily, “I’ve watched him several more days than you have. He was most gracious. After all, we were people who
suddenly dropped from the sky and placed demands on his Families—food, shelter. He helped us get away from the shuttles, before
the Cybers tracked them. He is a natural commander!”
“Look, ’member how Fanny was?
That’s
leadership. This guy—”
“He is using new methods,” Jocelyn said adamantly. “These are terrible times, the old ways don’t work.”
“They’re all we’ve got.”
“Well then, by our mutual laws, as Elder he should have appointed a new Cap’n. You were gone, prob’ly dead. So if he’d stuck
by the laws, you wouldn’t be Cap’n now.”
Ah
, he thought. “Who would?”
She hesitated, then said, “His Supremacy asked me and I took on settling into camp. Negotiated with other Families.”
“You’re to be commended. That’s all for now,” Killeen said, giving her a clipped salute. He pointedly turned his back to survey
the valley again.
His Ling Aspect broke in on his thoughts:
That officer likes the taste of command. My experience is that even dangerous times do not slake that thirst
.
Killeen kicked a stone, enjoying the satisfying
thunk
as it bounded down the slope.
His Supremacy’s tent was sultry with sweet incense and tangy sweat. The fifteen Cap’ns arrayed in a crescent before the broad
black desk stood stiffly at attention, as ordered. A layer of blue smoke hung over their heads. The cloying
smell caught in Killeen’s throat, making him cough. His Supremacy frowned at the sound and repeated his command.
“All Families will commit the same strength in this attack. We strike simultaneously. We all risk, we all triumph.”
Killeen thought,
And if we lose, nobody’ll be positioned for rear guard, nobody’ll cover our ass
. But he did not dare say it.
“We shall follow our same, victorious tactics—the way of right action that has brought us so far. Following the assault, we
must destroy as many of the Cyber buildings as we can.”
Killeen said, before caution could intervene, “I am most sorry, but I do not know the proper tactic.”
His Supremacy turned almost lazily to gaze directly into Killeen’ s eyes. Until now the swarthy, compact man had delivered
his speech with his eyes fixed on the blue haze, as though secrets lurked high in the tent.
“I had imagined that you would have learned the revolutionary developments in battle I have brought about.”
“I’ve seen your weapons. Quite extensive, some I’ve never heard about, but—”
“Cap’n of the Bishops—a Suit unfamiliar to me as yet, but one I am willing to allow into my company of the devout—I understand
your ignorance. When I foretold the arrival of your Family, I said the help which would fall from heaven would demand shaping.
I and my officers are willing to fashion you to my higher ends, rest assured.”
“Well, sir, I appreciate that. My Family will need—”
“Perhaps you have not noticed that no one, in addressing me, uses the slight and paltry honorific ’sir.”’
Killeen made the gesture he had seen the other Cap’ns use—a bow, while stepping back and casting his hands down at the floor.
It seemed to imply total acceptance.
His Supremacy nodded, looking almost bored. “You practiced the frontal assault, on whatever world sent you?”
“On Snowglade, yeasay—but hardly ever, ’cause mechplexes got their perimeters bracketed. Pick you off fast…” It took an effort
to conclude, “Your Supremacy.”
“I devised a devastating new way to use the frontal attack. It involves designating one Family as prime warriors, those who
expose themselves early, to draw fire. A second party then surprises the enemy by springing forth from concealment. Then the
main body assaults the nest.”
“That second party—how do they stay hidden…Supremacy?”
“By slipping into the tunnels of the vile Cyber nests.”
Killeen frowned and said nothing. But the short man in his brilliant uniform looked reproachfully at him and said, “You have
much to learn here, Cap’n. My revelation, which yielded this splendid method, assured me of our victories. It is not as though
we proceed forward in shadow and uncertainty.”
Killeen nodded, not knowing what he could say.
“I foresee our triumph, carried on the wings of God, and my shoulders. You see, Cap’n of the Bishops, I have ascended to the
panoply of Gods. As the representative of the Essential Will of nature, I am necessarily Divine in my own right.”
His Supremacy explained this as if he were talking to a bright but ignorant child. Killeen had questions to ask but something
in the curiously blank eyes of His Supremacy kept him silent.
His Supremacy nodded as if satisfied and then shouted suddenly, “Sound the convocation! I must prepare the Families for the
next step in their destiny!”
Cap’ns and underofficers scurried to alert their Families. A rank of armed men and women fell to, their full running
gear gleaming from a fresh polish. They clanked and wheezed as they escorted His Supremacy outside, dwarfing him in their
sheathed shock boots.
Killeen sent a quick summons to Jocelyn, Shibo, and Cermo. The assembly was already nearly complete in the valley outside,
their Bishops positioned in rectangular ranks to the right flank of the formation. The brief address by His Supremacy to his
Cap’ns had barely followed what Killeen knew of Tribal forms. Most of it he had found incomprehensible. Now His Supremacy
would address the entire Tribe.
The Tribe comprised all the surviving Families of this portion of New Bishop. No one spoke of the other Tribes which had lived
on this world. Apparently mech cities had lately begun using humans in their conflicts. Though there had been incidents of
that on Snowglade, Killeen’s Family lore held that competition among mechs was more like pruning unwanted branches from a
fruitful plant. Here, though, mechs warred with one another. Had the Cybers timed their invasion to take advantage of that?
Killeen walked down onto the valley floor beside the Cap’n of the Treys. Afternoon sunlight broke in patches through the cloud
cover. He searched for the cosmic string but it was invisible. If it began spinning and preparing to suck again from the core,
Killeen intended to get his Family to flat ground, no matter what the Tribe did.
It seemed like a long time since the Treys’ Cap’n had led him away from His Supremacy’s tent, past the transfixing burial
ceremony. Killeen mentioned that to her and the Cap’n replied, “Had a few more since. Cybers’re operatin’ over the next mountain
range—what’s left of it. Couple Cybers nailed some Sebens, left the bodies with those mite eggs buried in their guts.”