Authors: Gregory Benford
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.
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
.
They were inside the Cyber. A cutting reek swarmed in his nostrils. Again he felt the mucous-moist compartment close about
him. Shibo’s grasp eased and she lay back into the foamy stuff. A blur of mad acceleration took them away.
Killeen saw that Shibo was bleeding. It hadn’t been only a tech hit, then. He cursed himself.
Her eyelids fluttered and her system indices rolled meaninglessly, so her internals were damaged as well. He ignored the thumping
progress of the Cyber and slapped a quick patch on her belly where the rich blood oozed forth.
“Toby! Got a stim bulb?”
“No… no, I—”
“Damn!” He had used his last on Besen.
“You… hang on. I’ll get…” He could not finish because he had no idea what he could do.
Shibo heard him and turned. She could not speak. Fresh light broke across her dazed features.
Killeen turned to find that the entire wall of the Cyber’s body had gone transparent.
The Cyber covered ground with lurching strides. They were already beyond the frantic running forms of the battle. It carried
them jolting down the ridgeline. He saw Tribe members fire at the Cyber but the shots had no impact. The Cyber reached the
tree line and plunged into the cloaking shelter.
Killeen saw now that the apparently glassy wall was in fact a projection, an image. He watched the forest shoot by. His sensorium
still functioned, though it was fuzzed by errant
stripes and flecks. He reached out—and felt something high and massive.
“Damn,” he said, disbelieving.
“What?” Toby asked. He held on to the moist webbing that enclosed them.
“Something above us. In the air. The Cyber’s ’fraid.”
“Mech?” Toby braced himself against the fast, rocking pace. The Cyber’s many legs came slamming down in a strong, rippling
cadence.
“Naysay—” Killeen’s throat tightened, squeezing off his breath.
He could speak no more. Swelling anxiety reached him, punching through all insulation between his mind and the other’s.
The Cyber was terrified of what it had to do next. Yet a sense of duty propelled the thing swiftly forward.
They suddenly swerved. The wall scene of rushing emerald veered upward. The trees’ symmetrically spreading limbs crisscrossed
the blue above like cabling. And in that deep blue a dark spot grew.
The great long stripe came down the sky like a plunging rod. Out of the west the slim shape swept, poking at them like an
enormous pointing finger. Now they could see that the Skysower had the color of ancient wood. Along its length carbon-dark
veins laminated the deep mahogany. Vines wriggled over the great stretched slabs that gleamed like polished teak.
All this Killeen took in in an instant as his Aspects cried out. Grey said:
It moves… around the equator… so comes down… different spot each time… sowing…
Killeen felt the Cyber gathering itself around them. He held Shibo and whispered to Toby, “Lie down.” He worked himself flat
on the spongy cushion.
So large… a third of the planet’s radius… although is spinning… looks to us… as though… it falls straight down… and lifts
off… nearly vertically…
Killeen caught the tightwound anxiety that permeated the Cyber, its struggle to quell an ageold terror. The conflict seemed
like a babble of separate voices at cross-purposes. Ancient alarms rang and reasoned tones urged caution, while others adamantly
urged the Cyber to do what it knew it must. A cacophony beset it.
No, not it—she. He intuitively sensed that the thing was female. Yes—but in a strange, dry, mechanical sense of the term.
He sent blunt encouragement to her. She faced a challenge, he knew.
Go
, he sent.
Do it
.
And in the quick-swimming thoughts of the Cyber he felt its victory over its own primordial fears. One solemn, clear voice
towered above the mad crosstalk.
Her triumph over herself was announced by a throaty roar that burst under their compartment. Thrust pressed them deep into
the folds of foam. The Cyber was flying.
The wall showed a swooping view of trees as great thick trunks rushed past. The Cyber rose through them on its flaring jets.
In a moment they banked and soared across a broad leafy plain that was the top of the forest. Killeen looked down on the huge
platter of the world below, scarred and stained and cut. The treetops were bare. Their thick branches curled over to form
the familiar umbrella effect.
The view tilted again, veering around to peer upward.
The stubby nub end of the Skysower came rushing toward them.
But no seeds popped forth. Instead, long ropy vines curled out. They descended with blurring speed.
Killeen watched one flash past the Cyber. It was close enough for him to glimpse smaller black strands that coiled helically
around each other, like the strong ropes he had known in the Citadel.
Dozens of these tendrils shot toward the forest below. The Skysower’s downward speed flung them into the tree-tops. Some snagged
in the bare branches there. Along these a reflexive tension ran. They suddenly tightened.
Killeen watched great undulations ripple down the snagged vines. He sucked in his breath as he saw what was about to happen—and
before he could breathe again it was done.
Each caught vine heaved upward. Simultaneously, alongside the Cyber, the Skysower’s tip reached its lowest point. For a prolonged
instant of popping strain the great broad nub hung in the air, drifting eastward. Then it began to rise with gathering momentum.
At this instant the whiplash effect sent a surge along the extended vines. They yanked the trees upward. Some upper branches
split and gave way. But others held. With a sudden lurch the trees came free of the soil.
They shot up from the forest, trailing their root systems. As if shaking themselves free of their planet, the trees lashed
at the end of their tethers, spraying clods of dirt. Retracting vines brought the trees into a herd below the Skysower’s blunt
end.
As this happened Killeen felt a solid
thunk
. The wall screen veered again. They were attached to the side of the Skysower. The Cyber’s legs extended grapplers and clung
to the surface.
Killeen could see bushes and shrubs nearby. The Cyber grabbed these tufts. It also quickly bored shafts into the knotty surface.
He felt immediately the reason why. The air in their cramped compartment seemed to gain a weight of its own, pressing them
down. His Arthur Aspect said:
You should be prepared for substantial acceleration. Grey calculates that we must endure over two normal gravities within
a few more seconds.
A vast hand mashed Killeen into the floor. It grasped his chest and would not let him breathe. Toby lay pale and drawn on
the other side of the compartment. “Shibo…” he got out, but no more. She lay still and white.
Time slowed to a plodding succession of painful heart thuds. Killeen’s sensorium seemed filled with wet sand.
Hollow, drawn-out thumps and pops reverberated through the compartment. He tried to reach for Shibo’s hand. Even with his
motored right arm his fingers could not crawl across the slight space between them.
This acceleration is partly gravity and partly centripetal. As we rise, the gravitational component lessens as the inverse
square. The centripetal fraction, however, is constant and—
Killeen moved his lips soundlessly. “How… long…”
I estimate from observation (not that Grey is any use in this—she is really quite spotty in her recollections) that the object
touches down into the atmosphere roughly every twenty minutes. We should experience less than two gravities for one-quarter
of this period, as we swing
up. That will occur in about five minutes. However, we face a worse problem before that. In fact, the effects are becoming
apparent.
Killeen’s ears popped.
We are leaving the atmosphere.
It was hopeless. His arms were leaden logs. He could not reach his helmet to twist the screw-seal. And he did not know if
the rugged treatment of the last few days had kept the O-rings intact.
Wind whistled through the compartment.
The shrill sound came from hair-thin seams in the wall.